Fight or Flight

Some quotes

2009-08-29T21:34:00.000-07:00

"You choose your happiness and sorrow long before you experience them."
- unknown

"What is important is to try to develop insights and wisdom rather than mere knowledge, respect someone's character rather than his learning, and nurture men of character rather than mere talents."
- Inazo Nitobe

"People aren't what others decide they are, people are what they make themselves."
- compilation from various sources

"The more you learn the more you realize how much you don't know."
- Albert Einstein

"The media can't tell you what to think but it can tell you what to think about."
- unknown

"We are all atheists, some of us just believe in fewer gods than others. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
- Stephen F. Roberts

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."
- Benjamin Disraeli

"It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'Always do what you are afraid to do.'"
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There is only one success--to be able to spend your life in your own way."
- Christopher Morley

"We don't live in a world of reality, we live in a world of perceptions."
- Gerald J. Simmons

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
- Winston Churchill

"Well done is better than well said."
- Benjamin Franklin

"Imagination is more important than knowledge"
- Albert Einstein

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."
- Buddha

"Don't say I can't do it. Say how can I do it."
- from Rich Dad Poor Dad

"I will make a million mistakes in my life. My objective is not to avoid making mistakes it is to ensure that they are all new ones."
- Derek Pettigrew

"History doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme"
- Mark Twain

"You think education is expensive. Try ignorance"
- unknown bumper sticker

-This collection of quotes was borrowed from a friend's facebook page.

Tryst with Destiny

2009-08-15T01:27:00.000-07:00

The speech was made to the Indian Constituent Assembly, on the eve of India's independence, towards midnight on August 14, 1947. It focuses on the aspects that transcend India's history. It is considered in modern India to be a landmark oration that captures the essence of the triumphant culmination of the hundred-year Indian freedom struggle against the British Empire in India.

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.
At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?
Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.
That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.
And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.
To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.
The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.
It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!
We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrowstricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.
On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the Father of our Nation [Gandhi], who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us. We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.
Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death.
We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good and ill fortune alike.
The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.
We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.
To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy.
And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service.

Childhood Days

2009-08-06T21:25:00.000-07:00

Childhood Days

I made a big decision a little while ago.
I don't remember what it was, which prob'ly goes to show
That many times a simple choice can prove to be essential
Even though it often might appear inconsequential.
I must have been distracted when I left my home because
Left or right I'm sure I went. (I wonder which it was!)
Anyway, I never veered: I walked in that direction
Utterly absorbed, it seems, in quiet introspection.

For no reason I can think of, I've wandered far astray.
And that is how I got to where I find myself today.

Explorers are we, intrepid and bold,
Out in the wild, amongst wonders untold.
Equipped with our wits, a map, and a snack,
We're searching for fun and we're on the right track!

My mother has eyes on the back of her head!
I don't quite believe it, but that's what she said.
She explained that she'd been so uniquely endowed
To catch me when I did Things Not Allowed.
I think she must also have eyes on her rear.
I've noticed her hindsight is unusually clear.

At night my mind does not much care
If what it thinks is here or there.
It tells me stories it invents
And makes up things that don't make sense.
I don't know why it does this stuff.
The real world seems quite weird enough.

What if my bones were in a museum,
Where aliens paid good money to see 'em?
And suppose that they'd put me together all wrong,
Sticking bones on to bones where they didn't belong!
Imagine phalanges, pelvis, and spine
Welded to mandibles that once had been mine!
With each misassemblage, the error compounded,
The aliens would draw back in terror, astounded!

Their textbooks would show me in grim illustration,
The most hideous thing ever seen in creation!
The museum would commission a model in plaster
Of ME, to be called, "Evolution's Disaster"!
And paleontologists there would debate
Dozens of theories to help postulate
How man survived for those thousands of years
With teeth-covered arms growing out of his ears!

Oh, I hope that I'm never in such manner displayed,
No matter HOW much to see me the aliens paid.

I did not want to go with them.
Alas, I had no choice.
This was made quite clear to me
In threat'ning tones of voice.
I protested mightily
And scrambled 'cross the floor.
But though I grabbed the furniture,
They dragged me out the door.

In the car, I screamed and moaned.
I cried by red eyes dry.
The window down, I yelled for help
To people we passed by.
Mom and Dad can make the rules
And certain things forbid,
But I can make them wish that they
Had never had a kid.

Now I'm in bed,
The sheets pulled to my head.
My tiger is here making Zs.
He's furry and hot.
He takes up a lot
Of the bed and he's hogging the breeze.

-Bill Watterson

A lesson in economics

2009-08-04T22:29:00.001-07:00

A Quick Lesson in Economics ........

An economics professor at a local college made a
statement that he had never failed a single student,

but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that socialism
worked; that no one would be poor, and no one would be rich, a
great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we
will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be
averaged, and everyone would receive the same grade; so no one would fail, and
no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged, and everyone got a B..

The students who studied hard were upset, and the students who studied little
were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied
even less, and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too,
so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering,
blame, and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings, and no one would
study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism
would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to
succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away, no one will
try or want to succeed.

Can it be any simpler than that?

Head Hunting

2009-06-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

Hindutva is embarrassed by Hinduness. A new generation of confident Indians has started to move beyond its logic of fear and hate. Will the BJP be able to seize this moment for creative reinvention?

ASHIS NANDY with SHOMA CHAUDHURY

The cascading crisis within the BJP since May 16 and their confused debate on the role Hindutva has played in their electoral defeat tells a fascinating story. It would be premature to read any of this as a signal of either the disintegration of the party or Hindutva, but one could safely say the idea of Hindutva has been defeated by Hindustan for the moment – it has been put on a backburner and challenged to reinvent itself.

The BJP’s dependence on Hindutva as its defining characteristic was bound to turn problematic. Data suggest that at most about 10 percent of BJP supporters vote for the BJP on ideological grounds. The Hindutva project was constructed by tapping into and fostering fear and a psychology of siege among the Hindus—a sense of being a minority in a country in which they are 82 percent of the population.

By itself, choosing Hindutva as its core ideology by a party is not harmful to Indian democracy. If there is a sizeable section of the people who believe in Hindutva — or for that matter Maoism, anarchism or unfettered capitalism — you need political parties to summate these sentiments and even represent them in Parliament, so that you can manage them through normal politics. The Republican Party in America, for instance, always encourages and routinely takes help from the Christian fundamentalists at the time of elections. They know it is a small vote bank but it can be crucial when contests are close. But after the Republicans win an election, they might give their fundamentalist friends some minor, indirect rewards but never cabinet posts, important constitutional positions or even the chance to openly hobnob with the party stalwarts.

The BJP has not learnt this art of political management. They do not know how to treat Hindutva groups like Bajrang Dal, VHP and Ram Sene as merely minor sects to be used only during elections in homeopathic doses. The BJP is stupid enough to allow its lunatic fringe to antagonise its own larger support base of the party. A national party in a highly diverse, plural democracy cannot afford to take its ideology — any ideology — seriously. Nor can it afford to behave as if its entire existence depended on an ideology. This whole ideological stance — making Hindutva their central official line and making the lunatic fringe its official cadre — has been myopic and suicidal. (So has been to take the RSS seriously. The RSS has never been in politics so their understanding of politics is often infantile.)

The Indian genius is to manage contradictions. Most people forget that at one time the Congress Party, the original party of the freedom movement, allowed many of its members to simultaneously belong to the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha or other Hindu nationalist formations. This was quite common in Bengal because a large huge proportion of Bengali freedom fighters came from a background of Hindu nationalism. (For many years you could also be a member of both the Congress and the Muslim League.) It is because such contradictory political impulses were accommodated within the Congress as factions that they were easier to negotiate in the early years. The BJP’s dilemma is that it believes its existence to be predicated on Hindutva; now that they have lost badly, they think Hindutva has become a liability and should be jettisoned. Now the relationship between the BJP and Hindutva will probably become more clandestine.

In itself, such power struggles are healthy and, contrary to all the speculation going on, the BJP is not slated to disintegrate like the Janata Party. In India most parties no longer have power struggles; they are dominated by individuals and families. They only have court politics. The Janata party was a coalition of caste factions; the BJP might turn out to be one of the few parties having political factions. (The CPM is another such party.) With charismatic leaders like Atal Behari Vajpayee and LK Advani past their prime and the second rung of leadership wielding very little charisma, if the BJP wants to survive and do reasonably well, they should “do a Congress”: they should find a Narasimha Rao or Manmohan Singh to lead them. Most of their current and prominent leaders are too high-pitched. They need a low-key leader.

The BJP may be short-sighted in analysing its defeat, but its electoral defeat does point to a defeat for Hindutva itself. At the core of the Hindutva project is a war between Hinduism and Hindutva that is around 150 years old. It began in the middle of the 19th century, when the ideas of Hindutva began to take shape with the Hindu reform movements. These movements were modern and borrowed much from the imperial West. And the new Hinduism that emerged out of these reforms can be considered a colonial product. That is why Gandhi was convinced that all these reform movements, in the long run, would do more harm than good to Hinduism. In this sense, the recent defeat of Hindutva today is also a defeat of the colonizing West in India because the Hindutva project was a gift of the colonial West to Indian consciousness. That does not mean that the globalising West has lost its clout.

Today, both the detractors and defenders of Hindutva are confused about what it stands for. This truth may be unpalatable to many, but Hindutva grew in an atmosphere of admiration of the European nation-state, nationality and nationalism and our attempt to have an indigenous forms of all three. When Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the one who formalized Hindutva by writing a Bible for it, insisted that Hindus must not read the Vedas and Upanishads but read science and technology and western political theory, this is what he had in mind. He was looking for a way to transform a chaotic, diverse, anarchic society into an organized, masculine, western-style nation-state, something akin to Bismarck’s Germany.

To achieve this, the Hindutva project required Indians to repudiate their Indianness, and Hindus to repudiate their Hinduness. That was part of the war. It required a chaotic, diverse society to homogenize itself into something that could be more globally acceptable and would conform to European norms. Public memory is short. Few people remember that Savarkar was an atheist in his personal life – in the western sense. He refused to have his funeral rites according to Hindu custom; he willed that his body had to be taken for cremation in a mechanized vehicle rather than on the shoulders of relatives, admirers and friends. He also refused to give his wife a Hindu funeral, even though women members of the Hindu Mahasabha sat in front of his house on a dharna.

Savarkar’s main criticism of Gandhi, in fact, was that Gandhi was unscientific, irrational and illiterate in modern political theory. By conventional criteria of scientific rationality and political commonsense, Savarkar was not wrong. But Gandhi’s understanding of politics had deeper roots; it came from both his encounter with the bottom of Indian society and with dissenting cultural strands within the West. Gandhi did not believe in the sanctity of the modern nation-state or in conventional ideas of nationality, nation and nationalism. Nor did he care much for the dominant, western, political theories and the West’s concept of scientific rationality. He went on record to say that armed nationalism was no different from imperialism. And some scholars have identified him as a philosophical anarchist. At that point of time, in the high noon of modern colonialism, he seemed a romantic fuddy duddy trying to return to the past.

But the way to the future is often through our past. Gandhi understood that India was particularly well-equipped to craft its own version of a state. It was under no obligation to follow European textbook definitions of the nation-state. He had not read Hegel. The irony is that today many western nations are moving away from the old model and becoming more flexible on issues such as sovereignty, national security and nationality: 14 countries in the world today do not maintain any army and the countries in the European Union have porous borders and have agreed to suspend their sovereignty in matters like human rights and capital punishment. On the other hand, because of our colonial past, India and China are two of the purest forms of 19th century nation-states you can find in the world today.

To begin with, this is precisely what the Hindutva project was about: western political theory telescoped into Hinduism and the West’s political history projected into India. Initially, Savarkar believed in an integrated, secular nationhood and dreamt of a masculine European-style nation-state in India. He was not alone and he was also not the first. Arguably, in the 19th century the idea of Hindutva was first articulated by the Bengali freedom fighter, Bhudev Mukhopadhyay and some would trace to an even earlier period, to figures like Rabindranath Tagore’s friend, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, a Catholic who called himself a ‘Hindu Christian’. (The protagonists of all three of Tagore’s political novels were partly or wholly modelled on Upadhyay.) Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Vivekananda and Nivedita too expressed ideas that could be co-opted by the Hindutva brigade.

But Savarkar was the one to decide that mere geography was too insipid a basis for building a nationality and began to look for an emotional basis and a national community and found them in Hindu nationalism and in the Hindus. The clenched-teeth hatred of Muslims and other minorities came from him. It was not there in the earlier forms of Hindutva, or was present in some in a muted form.

After its defeat in this election, the BJP feels its middle-class base has moved away from it because the middle classes are disenchanted with Hindutva. This is not entirely true. A large section of the Indian middle-class has a weakness for at least the less strident forms of Hindutva. Primarily, this is because the RSS and BJP have strong links with the Hindu reform movements, particularly the Arya Samaj. Both BS Moonje and KB Hedgewar, founders of the RSS, and the Sri Lankan Buddhist nationalist, Anagarika Dhammapala, were inspired by the Ramakrishna Mission. The reason for this in retrospect is clear. All these reform movements contributed to the growth of a new, reformed Hinduism which was perfectly compatible and comfortable with the European concept of a nation-state.

This continuity has led to a form of Hinduism that is perfectly compatible with a modern nation state – in the same way that Protestant Christianity in Europe was the first religion to feel compatible and comfortable with the nation-state, industrial capitalism and secularism. Ultimately, all Indian religious reformers were trying to produce house-broken, tamed, homogenised versions of religion which would sustain a pan-Indian political consciousness and a form of Hinduism for similar purposes. All these reformers had internalised aspects of masculine, Protestant Christianity and so had Dhammapala’s Protestant Buddhism, which many Sri Lankans find very convenient.

Hindu society, however, is notoriously chaotic, diverse and plural. Anyone wedded to the conventional idea of a nation-state obviously finds it unmanageable and subversive. The idea of Hindutva is supposed to be something Hindus can hold on to – become, docile, obedient citizens of a modern nation-state.

All this makes sense to the middle-class, which has naturally invested in the conventional notion of the nation-state and modernity and also wants to protect its Hinduism. The middle class therefore is a natural constituency for Hindutva and its version of Hinduism. In Savarkar’s novel Kala Pani, the only futuristic novel produced by Hindutva, there is an utopian vision of a future India — a totally homogenous society, in which people marry across caste, sect and language and become good, pan-Indian citizens — almost like the insipid, boring predictable versions of Indians one sees nowadays in India’s metropolitan cities. No difference in language or custom: everyone speaking in the same accent, everyone having the same choice in music, cinema, clothes.

Savarkar was prescient because this does look like contemporary, urban, middle-class India. A class that has access to a globalised economy, speaks English as its primary language, and is shaped by its exposure to a homogenising media. What resonance does a Malayali or Bengali or Tamilian of this generation, if brought up in Delhi, have with the vernacular Hindusim of his grandparents or parents? Do all those myriad gods and goddesses with strange names, family priests, ishtadevs and ishta devis make any sense to them? What is emerging instead is a pan-Indian Hinduism that allows you to dip into a bit of Onam and a bit of Diwali and a bit of Durga puja, and that too not very deeply. Contrary to the 'millenia-old' tradition Hindutva ideologues claim, these young Malayalis, Bengalis and Tamilians are a part of a new Hinduism that is a proper religion in the West’s sense of the term. This new faith is no more than 150 years old. It was born in the middle of the 19th century and was directly inspired by Protestant Christianity. And this faith is also a faith you can carry with you wherever you go. It is a kind of laptop Hinduism.

The ‘millenia-old’ tradition Hindutva ideologues claim is actually a very new faith
The Hindutva project in India is destined not to ever occupy centre space though, because when one talks of a Hinduism which is 4,000 years old, we have in mind a religion or tradition that might be shrinking everyday but which still moves a majority of Indians. Most Hindus live with a concept of faith that is diverse, local, intimate and highly ritualised. Hindutva has no access to that world. Apart from economic reasons and the crunch on jobs and infrastructure, one of the reasons why the Shiv Sena could garner so much support for their opposition to the influx of Biharis in Mumbai was the proliferation of chhat puja. The Mumbaikars felt threatened; the Biharis would have faced less of a hostile backlash if they had participated in the Ganesh pujas instead. Interestingly, there are many more Durga pujas in Mumbai and Delhi than there are chhat pujas, but there is no hostility against Durga puja because it has graduated into an all-India phenomenon. Chhat hasn't – yet.

It would be a mistake to conflate the occasional eruption of these hostilities with the belief that the idea of India's plural traditions is a romantic myth. Different castes and sects within Hinduism and different religions have always participated in each other's religious festivals, but they were not steam-rolled into a portable, anodyne faith. Whatever might its middle-class intelligentsia believe, the rest of India has never opted for the Enlightenment model in which you are deemed cosmopolitan only when you feel the other person to be completely equal to you. In Indian traditions, you are equal to others only in the sense that you have the right to think the other communities as inferior to yours, and grant the other person’s right to think that your community is inferior to his – even though neither of you say so openly. In a homogenised, individualised society, the former is seen as cosmopolitanism. In a communities-based society, it is the latter cosmopolitanism that works.

In this continuing war between the traditional, chaotic, diverse Hinduism and the ordered, homogenising Hindutva of the Hindu nationalists, the BJP's electoral defeat is a sign that Hinduism has probably defeated Hindutva. Hindutva expects Indians to live according to European norms of nationhood. But we are Indians: we are incorrigible, cussed and have learnt to live with contradictions for centuries. We have learnt to live with chaos and ill-defined ideas of our selfhood and we have not learnt to be — in fact, we refuse to be — scientific, modern, well-organized and rational. We want to keep options open for the next generation. These are the attributes that have ensured our survival when so many other major civilisations have died. These are attributes that the BJP has to find ways to accommodate.

There is much Advani has to answer for, but he is quite a tragic figure. No one has read him right
(I once interviewed Madanlal Pahwa, one of the assassins of Gandhi and a hardboiled Hindu nationalist, when he was quite old. It transpired that ultimately his most memorable years were his childhood spent in a Pakpattan in the Montgomery district in West Punjab, which had Baba Fareed's mazar. There was a religious fair every year to which he would go to listen to the qawwalis being sung. He called himself a kattar Hindu but his most nostalgic memories revolved around that mazar, the fair and qawwalis. This tells you something. We Indians are accustomed to living with multiple selves and multiple moral ledgers. He was a Hindutvawalla and his language came from there, but his memories came from somewhere else.)

None of these arguments add up to an assertion that Hindutva will die out. What is true though is that, unless it metamorphoses, it will never enjoy the same vigour it did in the last three decades because it is inherently uncomfortable and embarrassed by Indianness and traditional Hinduism. For a generation newly emergent from colonial dominance, there was a fascination and sense of respectful subordination to things Western. But with this new post-independent, post-colonial generation, things are different. Indians have gone back to their own rhythms of life now, so even for the middle-classes, Manmohan Singh's 'West' — with its hair-brained idea that anyone can be a Tata or Ambani — is more attractive to many than Savarkar's 'West'. Aspiration for a global, material identity has overtaken cultural identity.

Given the perceived, electoral defeat of Hindutva, it will be interesting to see what future route the BJP charts for itself. In many ways, Advani is a tragic figure. It is possible that no one has yet been able to read him correctly. Unlike Vajpayee, Advani had lived in a Hindu minority state and went to a Christian missionary convent. Having lived in a Muslim-majority state, Muslims are not strangers to him, and, perhaps, he did not feel the intrinsic discomfort with them that many Maharashtrian, Brahminic politicians do. He was a part of the RSS — and believed in it — but there is a strong possibility that he also recognised in some ways that Hindutva was a political instrument rather than an all-encompassing ideology.

There is much Advani has to answer for. He is culpable for the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and cannot escape history's judgement by saying he was talking of Ram as a cultural icon and not a religious figure. He knew he was creating a explosive communal situation. But his party's reaction to his statement on Jinnah makes him a tragic figure. There was nothing new he said about Jinnah – it is an indication of the state of our political culture that no one seemed to understand what he was trying to convey. Strangely enough, despite the basic differences in their personalities, Jinnah like Savarkar was a person who thought entirely in western terms. Advani was only recognising that when he called Jinnah secular. Let us not forget that Pakistan's first law minister was a Dalit like ours, its first national anthem was also written by a Hindu, upon Jinnah's invitation, and Jinnah avoided the Mullahs like pest. Both men shared the idea that nationality was crucial to a nation-state and a certain amount of violence and bloodshed was normal in the jostling for dominance. Though, I have to admit, Jinnah probably was less open to the idea of violence than Savarkar.

Advani tried to cast himself as a statesman in the Vajpayee mould, but could not repudiate his past. At the same time, he could not project himself as an ideologue with heroic pretensions either as, say, Narendra Modi has done for the sake of the Gujarati middle class. Advani did wear different masks at different times in his career to gain political mileage, but it is likely that he personally has remained somewhat distant from all of them. For all I know, he may be too human to be a perfect politician.

But this only intensifies the problem for the BJP, for if Advani is not fully convincing in his new incarnation, even Narendra Modi seems to have passed his zenith. This election has revealed the limits to his popularity. And his case in some ways is worse because he has not left any escape routes for himself, not even with a cosmetic, dishonest, hypocritical apology or expression of regret for the events in Gujarat 2002. This is likely to haunt him for years, if not for his entire career. So the search for the right leader for the moment has become the BJP's biggest headache – a leader who can lower the divisiveness and high-intensity politics the party has become associated with.

If the BJP abandons Hindutva, what shape can its right of centre politics take? Its economic program cannot go too far right because a majority of Indians live outside the spoils of the neo-liberal economic system. If only for electoral gains, they have to be appeased. What this means is that the BJP could be headed for a different kind of ideology, in which Hindutva will play a part, but there will be other competing, coexisting concepts. There is no reason why even Hindutva itself cannot take on a more benign form. Some of the early thinkers who toyed with the idea of Hindutva — Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, Bhudev Mukhopadhyay, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Vivekananda and Nivedita — were not light-weight thinkers. Even Tagore had played footsy with Hindutva during the Hindu mela days in the first decade of the 20th century. His Gora was not only a response to both Kipling's Kim and revolutionaries like Savarkar but also to his own weakness for Hindu nationalism.

Vajpayee, for instance, held Hindutva as a kind of vague, emotional frame. There's no problem with that; in fact, it can in sometimes be a help. Nawaz Sharif once reportedly told Vajpayee that he, as the leader of the Muslim League, and Bajpai as the leader of the BJP, were best positioned to break fresh grounds in Indo-Pak relations as their constituencies could never accuse them of being wishy washy liberals and ignoring national interests. Above all, like the Maoists must be encouraged to come above ground and become part of the democratic process, the Hindu right too must be politically accommodated. They cannot be annihilated or wished away, just as the Naxals cannot be wished away. (The Charu Mazumdar group in Bengal was wiped out by the police rather ruthlessly, but in barely 30 years, Naxalism has come back as a more powerful political formation. These are idealistic people. It is a pity they have opted for the gun, but the problems and grievances they represent are real. Sitting in urban citadels, one might imagine that one can solve these problems and meet these grievances over the next 100 years and wait for the "trickle down" effect to work, but one cannot expect everyone to wait patiently in the meanwhile.) The same way, if there are rump groups that are rabid enough to believe that they must break down the Babri Masjid, they cannot just be wished away. They have to be politically handled and tamed.

India’s pre-colonial states probably have something to say to us. The Mughal empire, for instance, was a quite a successful state and made some interesting experiments. Contemporary India might get some new ideas from them. The conventions of the empire were in some ways so attractive that the British left them more or less intact for the next 100 years or so. Even the Delhi Durbar of 1911 followed all conventions of a Mughal court. One of the most important of these conventions was that the empire allowed different degrees of allegiance to the centre. The Jaipur state, for instance, was more central to the Empire than the sultans in Bengal.

The BJP has been demanding that Article 370 be abolished and the Uniform Civil Code introduced throughout India. These are legitimate demands in a European-style modern nation state. But why must we follow that route? Instead of haggling on Article 370, one should use it more effectively: go the whole hog with it. Could we have deployed it or some variation of it in Sikkim instead of gobbling it up? Maybe we could have used other versions of it at Nagaland and Manipur, instead of opting for 30 years of bloodshed which has made a whole generation bitter? I am giving off-the-cuff, random examples how we might have thought about the Indian state and given it greater manoeuvrability. We could have even used some of the ideas of Gandhi to avoid overloading our State; we are uniquely well-equipped to design our own version of a State. We did not have to build a standardised nation-state. By default, we have gone in for some innovations — Indian secularism is one example. Both secularists and communalists complain about the compromises we have made with our concept of secularism. So, even though I am a critic of the concept of secularism and do not think it is working well in India, I cannot consider it all bad. But we shall have to innovate and experiment with the building blocks of our polity; we cannot allow the core concepts of our polity to harden into ideas that are too defined. Ours is a political culture in the making.

The current upheaval could be a creative moment both for the BJP and the RSS. Unlike earlier RSS heads before him, Mohanrao Bhagwat is neither a charismatic figure nor a conspicuous ideologue. Nobody expects anything from him and he, therefore, has the opportunity to be more creative. But then 19th century Western political thought, combined with self-hating, compensatory nationalism, Brahminism and half-digested modernity, is a lethal combination. It cuts you off from your native Indian genius. So one remains doubtful whether they will be able to cease the moment?

Eddie Vedder Society lyrics

2009-06-10T07:11:00.001-07:00

Oh, it's a mystery to me
We have a greed with which we have agreed
And you think you have to want more than you need
Until you have it all you won't be free

Society, you're a crazy breed
Hope you're not lonely without me...

When you want more than you have
You think you need...
And when you think more than you want
Your thoughts begin to bleed
I think I need to find a bigger place
Because when you have more than you think
You need more space

Society, you're a crazy breed
Hope you're not lonely without me...
Society, crazy indeed
Hope you're not lonely without me...

There's those thinking, more-or-less, less is more
But if less is more, how you keeping score?
Means for every point you make, your level drops
Kinda like you're starting from the top
You can't do that...

Society, you're a crazy breed
Hope you're not lonely without me...
Society, crazy indeed
Hope you're not lonely without me...

Society, have mercy on me
Hope you're not angry if I disagree...
Society, crazy indeed
Hope you're not lonely without me...

Interview of Angel Pui, CEO of My Wedding Notes

2009-06-08T01:11:00.000-07:00

Chris Wilkinson, CEO of HabiTECH interviews Angel Pui, CEO of My Wedding Notes

Why did you become an entrepreneur?
Entrepreneurs never plan to become one. We are simply not satisfied with the status quo in our everyday lives and we are arrogant enough to want to scratch the itch ourselves while thinking we are the best person to do it.

What did you want to become as a child?
I wanted to be an architect, to build small-scale models all day. I also wanted to be a race-car driver, a pilot, an olympics athlete, a video games or toy maker, and a fashion designer.

What's your favorite part of a typical day?
End of the day, because I know I've done a little more than yesterday, and just a bit closer to tomorrow.

What skill would you most like to improve?
Concentration. I might have ADHD. I can only spend 10 minutes on one task at a time. So I have a comprehensive system doing task 1, task, 2, task 3, then back to task 1 and task 2. 60% of the time, it works every time. (chuckle)

What is the one skill you'd most like to have as an entrepreneur?
Decisiveness. I am a libra, we are known to be indecisive and evaluate all angles of a situation. I'd like to trust my instinct more, sometimes I question why I think or feel a certain way, when it comes naturally or seem too simple of a solution.

What is the one skill you possess that contributes the most to your success?
My ability to mimic and learn quickly. As an entrepreneur, you are often stuck doing everything yourself, so you must be a great salesperson, fundraiser, strategic planner, cold-caller, innovative marketer and designer, all with the shortest amount of learning curve while outputting world-class work that no one can detect is your first jab at it.

What is the most difficult thing you have learned to do?
To cold-call and in a few minutes, convince someone to invest in time and believe in you.

What is the most successful cold-call you have done?
While driving in LA heading to the airport. I saw the Disneyland billboard. I called their 1-800 number, convinced the front-desk to give me the number of the Director of Disney Weddings and then convinced him to see me that same day. He gave me 2 minutes to pitch him why my business will benefit Disney Weddings. I skipped the exit I intended, missed my flight and headed straight to Anaheim. To collaborate and integrate our website would have costed millions of dollars, even just for insurance. He asked me to revisit the idea next fiscal year when their budget renews, I considered that a success. (I even saved the ticket)

What is the best advice you've given other entrepreneurs?
Whatever you do, do the best you can and never set a limit on how far you can go. There is always a better way, a more efficient, faster, smarter way to do things. It doesn't matter what you do, it only counts when it's the best you can do, always try to achieve more. Don't get comfortable, usually your best ideas and best work come from being challenged and in an uncomfortable state.

What has been the most rewarding moment in your years of entrepreneurship?
When I realized my business or my work has benefited others. When a former team member tells you she learnt most of her skills from working with you, and now she's successful and achieving her dreams. When you know you have inspired someone else, it feels great. Be generous with what you have and know.

What has been the most surprising thing you have learnt?
It always seem tougher than it really is, just take it one step at a time, and it can be done. Timing is as important as any skills.

What inspires you the most?
Children and their imagination. We, as children, have the abilities to live in reality while creating a fantasy world constantly. As entrepreneurs, we have the same abilities to better any aspect of our reality, whether on the net or with a prototype

2009-06-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the final quarter being dropped into the world’s first commercial video game, for it was in May of 1979 that Galaxy Game was removed from the Coffee House café at Stanford’s Tresidder student union. I spent a good part of five years feeding coins into Galaxy’s wondrous console, and in return it taught me and several other Silicon Valley denizens valuable lessons that laid the groundwork for much of what we have done since.

I met Galaxy Game in the Summer of 1974. My family had just moved to Palo Alto and I had no friends, so my brother and I rode our bikes around the Stanford campus looking for things to do. I was in 8th grade and the bowling alley got boring quickly, but next door, amidst students and lattes (also a novelty at the time) stood two large consoles, side by side, with odd-looking little black screens. Behind those screens sat a DEC PDP-11/20 powering a riveting game built on a simple concept: use a joystick and a couple of buttons (one for torpedoes, one for hyperspace) to destroy the other spaceships. Best of all, unlike its descendants such as Asteroids, Galaxy was a multi-player game. Those opposing spaceships were controlled by the people sitting next to you, and if you won the game you kept your quarter.

I knew a good deal when I saw one, so I hung around the Coffee House and got to know the game’s co-creator, a Stanford grad named Bill Pitts. That's how I got my first job in high-tech: in exchange for keeping the consoles clean, I got a few dollars per day and a bunch of insider tips about how to play. For example, if your torpedo was on course to destroy an opponent’s ship and that opponent escaped into hyperspace, you could follow him there, shoot again, and destroy him. Imagine the face of a graduate student who thinks he has outwitted that annoying kid, only to find when he releases his finger from the hyperspace button that his ship is nothing but fragments of white floating randomly into the blackness of space. Nothing on Wii matches it!

Galaxy's lessons have stayed with me. Its design was simple and easy to use but with the depth to satisfy the most committed players. Its on-screen dashboard fed players real-time information about fuel, torpedoes, and location, my first inkling that data is critical to making smart decisions.

Finally, in Galaxy achieving your goals sometimes required a jump to hyperspace. My opponents thought hyperspace was a last resort, a refuge from a losing path. I discovered that it was a way to win — high risk and scary, but with a huge payoff. So when in doubt, press the button and make the jump! At worst you’ll lose a quarter, but at best you’ll rule the Galaxy.
-From Google Blog
Posted by Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP, Product Management, Google.

Patience In The Trenches

2009-05-25T20:55:00.000-07:00

RAHUL GANDHI

SHOMA CHAUDHURY, Executive Editor

IF ANYONE had cared to look, the makings of ‘the Rahul factor’ — the new phenomenon on the political landscape that everyone is now agog about — was always there in the making. At its core stands a dignified young man — quiet, thoughtful, measured. A redeeming pool of reason in the noisy indecencies of Indian politics. A man who has taken his time to explore his relationship with power and slowly, almost imperceptibly, transformed the meaning of dynasty. A man whose public utterances mix refreshing candour with an almost academic nuance. A man — unusual anywhere in history — not visibly hungry for personal power; not willing to catalyse it at any cost. If Indians were searching for their Obama — a figure capable of changing the axis of contemporary political conversation — he is here. Not in the symbolic shape of someone overthrowing the oppression of centuries, but (in the curious inversions often common to India) in the shape of a privileged man who has used his privilege to inject a new seriousness into the debased and infantilised public discourse in India.

With the Congress striding into its most significant victory in two decades, suddenly everyone is agreed — Rahul Gandhi is the new elixir of Indian politics. His admirers — across social strata and geographic lines — are totting up his impacts. A high wind of approval is swirling around him. He was the party’s key campaigner; a lot of the victory is his. (The Congress won 75 of the 120 seats where he campaigned.) But Rahul looks intriguingly unmoved by the wind. Happy, but a little bemused, a little outside of himself, as if he understands that the real story lies elsewhere. Understands that true excellence always gathers in slow accretions. This understanding — this dignity and restraint — is key to ‘the Rahul factor’ more than any psephological calculation.

In fact, when everyone is fêting his victory, it is much more revealing to remember how Rahul handled his first taste of defeat. In 2007, he was injected into the Uttar Pradesh (UP) assembly election to revive the Congress’ comatose fortune. This was old-style politics. He was to be the magic potion: one shot of him and a forgetful people would put the party back in power. Instead, the Congress got a humiliating 22 out of 402 seats, and Mayawati shot to 206. The knives were out in an instant. He lacks charisma, the media clucked knowingly. This Gandhi’s a dud, the party said darkly. Yuvraj, yuvraj, his opponents taunted gleefully. “This failure really churned him,” says a young Congress politician from UP.

Rahul could have retreated into the ivory tower of his birth. Instead, while the world dissected him rudely, he courageously began to re-examine what it means to be a Gandhi in contemporary India. In March 2008 — as Mayawati, fresh on the wings of victory, journeyed away from the common man towards rarer and rarer worlds of luxury — he, fresh out of failure, hit the dusty road, meeting small groups of people behind closed doors, out of the eye of the media, asking questions. Tribals, farmers, schoolchildren, fisherfolk, dalits. He went to Orissa and Chhattisgarh, to Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, to UP and Karnataka. Once again, the media mocked him, sneering at his ‘Discover India’ trips, booing his desire for research. (TEHELKA, on the other hand, put Rahul on its cover, calling him “The Long Distance Gambler” exactly a year ago.)

And slowly, as he listened, Rahul’s understanding changed. The difference in Rahul 2007 and Rahul 2009 is that his rhetoric is no longer trading emptily on the Gandhi name, it is no longer about what his father and grandmother and great-grandfather did for this country. He is not asking for votes in the name of the past: he is articulating a new future.

Yet, ironically, it is the name that has made all of this possible. Rahul understands the nature of power. Wisely, instead of repudiating his legacy, he has turned it into the most positive instrument he has. He has wielded dynasty to strengthen democracy. He has used the Gandhi name to open doors that no one else in his party could have. In the process, he has leached it of all negative accusation. Everywhere Rahul goes, he tells the young, “I am the product of an unfair, closed world. I want to use my unfair advantage to prise the world open for you.”

And he has. In an innovative move geared to revive the dead old party root upwards, he hired a firm run by JM Lyngdoh and KJ Rao — former election commissioners and men of impeccable reputation — to run intra-party elections for the Youth Congress and the party’s student body, the NSUI. In the recruitment drives preceding these elections, threeand- a-half lakh new members have been signed on in Punjab; more than six lakhs in Gujarat. Sixty-five thousand new student members in Uttarakhand. Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry are next. Oxygen is coursing through the party.

“You get a true measure of Rahul if you ask the bright young people around him why they have given up brilliant futures to work in his core team,” says Lyngdoh. “As for intra-party elections overseen by an independent body, why has no party tried this before in 62 years? Every party should follow this now. It will strengthen the roots of democracy in India.” Says Rao, “We told Rahul people with criminal records should not be allowed to stand for party posts. He agreed immediately. He has also supported independent audits and complete transparency. What this means is that people doing actual grassroot work now have a chance to get elected into positions of power.”

The Congress has had unexpected victories in Rajasthan — 20 out of 25 seats; Gujarat — 11 out of 26 seats; Uttarakhand — all 5 seats; Madhya Pradesh — 12 out of 29 seats; Punjab — 8 out of 13 seats; Andhra Pradesh — 33 out of 42 seats. And finally, UP — 21 out of 80 seats. All of these successes are being laid at Rahul’s door. But that would be an exaggeration. The Congress wave this election is an aggregation of many things, primary among them people’s gratitude for the minimum decencies of Manmohan Singh, Sonia and Rahul, the NREGA, the RTI, the loan waiver for farmers, the stress on inclusive governance, and the clumsy mistakes of Congress’ political opponents.

UP, in particular, is almost an accidental victory. Mooted strongly by veteran leader Digvijaya Singh, Rahul’s decision to go it alone in UP without the Samajwadi Party (SP) will probably prove epochal in the long term. But this election, though the Congress has won many seats it has not won since Emergency and the tidal wave of sympathy post Indira Gandhi’s assassination, most of the victories have been powered by the Opposition. As one Congress leader from UP puts it, “People were fed up of the ‘Bunty-Babli’ politics of Mulayam and Mayawati. Rahul’s clean, inclusive image became a kind of lightening rod.”

Rahul himself is unlikely to be taken in by the euphoria around him. A stickler for detail and empirical data — the crucial social audit that must go with grand assertions — he will study the statistics. They will tell him that the Congress’ victories in UP have largely been driven by the Muslim vote, alienated from the SP by the Kalyan factor and the Azam Khan fight. They will tell him that a tally of 21 definitely speaks of a “new pro-Congress mood” in UP, but big work remains to be done. They will tell him that Congress has not yet opened its account in Bihar because Nitish Kumar is running a credible government there.

ALL OF THIS will tell him something he already understands deeply: the heady ‘Rahul factor’ is not based on some disembodied Gandhi name or whimsical personal charisma. It is rooted in hard, unglamorous work and the promise of a new kind of politics. This is why, unlike Lalu and Mayawati, Rahul does not seem in danger of falling into the trap of identity cults. Unlike them, he understands the only key to real and lasting power is the work you do for people. It is the dusty road that creates the lightning rods.

On May 16, as the results rolled in, Rahul was not in faraway Delhi. He was in his constituency, thanking people for his victory. As the media crowded around him, expecting the cynical turnabout, asking if he would now take centrestage as PM, or at the very least, as cabinet minister, Rahul reiterated the positions that have made him luminous. “I am committed to building back the party organisation,” he said. More significantly, as brokers and industrialists across the country began to salivate at the imagined benefits of a Manmohan Singhdriven economy minus the Left, Rahul put in a timely wedge: “Progress belongs to everyone,” he said. “We cannot leave huge swathes of India behind. It is the poor who have given us everything, the poor who work in very difficult circumstances.”

Key electoral milestones ahead will tell the real story about the depth of Rahul’s electoral impact. But no one can dispute his psychological impact this election. It is probably giving men like Narendra Modi and Lalu Prasad Yadav some introspective moments. And it might just drive Behenji to a ‘Discover India’ spree herself.

Also read 'The Pilgrim prince' which I had posted in May 2008.

The Humble Tread Of History

2009-05-25T20:44:00.000-07:00

MANMOHAN SINGH
HARINDER BAWEJA, Editor, News & Investigations

FOR THE five years that he remained Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh was credited with little. The only things that came his way were invectives — he is weak, he is a selected, not elected PM, he takes directions from the Madam at 10 Janpath. In short, that he is a mere puppet, a rubber stamp, a man who was selected not because he had any great vision or political acumen; but because he lacked the one singular thing: Ambition.

The dutiful doctor, in fact, made a habit of not displaying any stellar traits. He coursed on, content. Content with not saying or doing anything that the Gandhi dynasty may or may not like; content with being the chosen one; never joining the ranks of his own cabinet colleagues who appeared like power brokers and power hustlers.

Hindsight often lends itself to great wisdom and as Verdict 2009 is now being hailed as a victory of the troika, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi stand out as the two leaders who reaped great benefit for the Congress Party. The third (not necessarily in that order) stands tall as the Governance Man. As senior Congressman Kapil Sibal put it, “The Manmohan Singh government’s contribution was huge and so was his persona, his gentlemanliness and statesmanlike demeanour. In contrast, the Advanis and Karats were seen as political animals and power-hungry opportunists.”

The invectives — again on hindsight — seem to have worked. Manmohan has become the only prime minister since 1971 to win a successive victory after serving a five-year term. And suddenly, many in the Congress who have rediscovered the merits of the ‘selected’ Prime Minister are all praise for achievements they never credited him with — till the EVMs threw up the magical numbers.

The mother and son Gandhi duo had, however, invested faith in him throughout — so much so that Manmohan became the only Congressman to have ever been named as the party’s candidate in advance. On earlier occasions, it was perhaps never necessary, as the Gandhi surname always came with the prime ministerial tag firmly in place. In an amazing display of faith, just before the big battle, Sonia Gandhi covered her photograph with her hand as she held up the manifesto, and said: he is our prime ministerial candidate. And so, as contemporary history is now being written, no analysis of the Victory is possible without accolades being sung to the tune of ‘Singh is king’.

“Sonia chose well in 2004 and Manmohan performed well,’’ is the common refrain at 24, Akbar Road, the party headquarter that has come alive with fresh energy. But there is also an inside story; a lesser known secret. For the record, of course, Rahul Gandhi wasted not a second when asked the rather blunt question — Is Manmohan Singh negotiable? — by a select group of 10 journalists, including this reporter, he was interacting with. The answer could have been different. After all, it was an informal session. But, a few hours later came an email in which he chose to put this question on record and the answer read, “From my side, I know — and I do know my mother’s views on this — that he is the best prime ministerial candidate. He is our candidate and we are going to stick by him. Like we did in the nuclear deal.” And now for the inside story. A very close aide of the Gandhi scion also let it be known that the young pilgrim of progress was working to a longterm agenda and was not thinking of the next five years. That was well-known. What was not, was that because of this long-term view, defeat would not have come as an irreparable blow. To quote the aide, “It will not be a big deal.”

This little secret is important to make the point that even within the Congress, no one, senior or junior, had scripted a tally of 206 for the grand old party (taunted alternatively as buddiya Congress and guddiya Congress by Narendra Modi). To the contrary, some were prepared for defeat and that’s why hindsight lends itself to great wisdom, for, the UPA emerged only a whisker away from the 272 figure. But their number shot up to 322 with help from unlikely, unconditional support by UP Chief Minister, Mayawati.

Till a little before the electoral battle began, Manmohan was not seen, by his own party, as being worthy of driving the Congress’ ad campaign. All posters and campaigns championed the trio with the slogan: aam aadmi ke badhte kadam, har kadam par bharat bulandh. It was in stark contrast to the BJP, which positioned its entire campaign around LK Advani and the slogan: mazboot neta, nirnayak sarkar (determined leader, decisive government). The irony is inescapable — the ‘weak’ prime minister is the one who has emerged true to the BJP slogan.

KAPIL SIBAL is not wrong when he says that Advani and Modi contributed to Manmohan’s victory by running a negative campaign. Interestingly, BJP insiders agree that Manmohan’s (self) image of sobriety and decency went a long way in the UPA’s victory. If the loyal urban, middle-class voter deserted the BJP and swung towards Manmohan Singh for his record of governance and the Congress’ promise of stability, it was due, again, to Advani’s negative campaign. The Congress trio shone brighter than Advani, Rajnath Singh and Varun Gandhi, who collectively revived toxic memories of Mandal and Mandir-style exclusivist, identity-based politics. Abhishek Singhvi, national spokesperson and Congress strategist, says, “Our troika is unmatched and caught the BJP unawares. The PM symbolised decency in politics, the Congress president symbolised stability and sacrifice. Rahul Gandhi symbolised youth power and the ability to experiment. Their mutual chemistry and DNA made it an unbeatable combination.”

The Slumdog Millionaire tune yielded dividends. “Jai Ho for Bharat, Jai Ho for the poor and Jai Ho for the people of India,” is how Congress general secretary, Digvijay Singh summed up the Congress’ victory. Only last year, the mild-mannered Manmohan had surprised his own colleagues by displaying nerves of steel when pushing the nuclear deal. He risked the fall of his government, and if the electorate did not punish the UPA with anti-incumbency, the credit, in large measure, must go Manmohan Singh’s way.

It would, probably, be accurate to say that the ‘invisible’ Manmohan turned out to be a factor. After his bypass surgery, his doctors wouldn’t allow him more than a dozen-odd public rallies, but Advani ensured that the spotlight stayed firmly on the invisible Manmohan. A senior Congressman says, “The prime minister is not a great orator but he didn’t need to speak. Advani did all the talking on his behalf.” And because the BJP supremo pitched the battle presidential-style, Manmohan stands taller by sheer comparison.

Even by his own colleagues, Manmohan was always seen as a half — half a man, half a politician, half a leader. Adjectives always preceded any introduction, but post-elections, the technocrat-prime minister, economist-prime minister has metamorphosed into a complete person, a complete politician, a man worthy of occupying the top seat in government.

Sonia Gandhi has demonstrated that she did choose well. The chemistry of the troika is evident even now. If Sonia Gandhi’s demeanour is any indication, she respects the man and understands his importance. The two made their first appearance together on May 16 — after it was clear that the mandate had gone squarely in their favour — and both displayed faith and belief in each other in different ways. She waited by the door of her house till he drove in, and walking upto him, congratulated him: “mubarak ho”. The photo-op told a story in itself. It spoke of a partnership the two had cemented. The electorate appears to have voted for this partnership. As a BJP leader remarked, “It’s worked to their advantage that while Sonia spent time on the party, Manmohan had a free hand at governance.”

A neo-confident Manmohan is already visible. Yes, Karunanidhi and Mamata Banerjee could prove difficult allies but there is also the quiet reassurance that they will not come close to playing the role Prakash Karat and his comrades did. But even while he was managing the knives that came out each time he pushed liberalisation, disinvestments or the nuke deal, his government stayed focussed on the common India, on the idea of inclusion. This is how Rahul Gandhi articulated the government’s and the party’s social agenda in his interaction with the 10 journalists: “We have two models before us. One is the private sector, India Shining and a focus on issues that don’t impact the people. The people of India have already demonstrated their silent resilience to this. The other model is growth with distribution, — job guarantee, food in schools and RTI. This is inclusion not just of the poor, but also of the middle classes. That is the idea of the aam aadmi.”

Social inclusion is only one of the many things that has seen Manmohan Singh rise in stature. Verdict 2009 proves that he is not just the Gandhis’ or the Congress’ aam aadmi.˚

Mrs Gandhi And Her Extra God

2009-05-25T03:24:00.000-07:00

An Open letter to Mrs Sonia Gandhi, President of Indian National Congress

TARUN J TEJPAL, Editor

DEAR MRS SONIA GANDHI,
We all know the cliché that India moves on faith. We love our gods, and it is at their feet that we place all our successes and failures. It is in this department that those who oppose you — and perhaps even some of those who support you — will assert that you have an unfair advantage. Through marriage and masquerade you have acquired all the gods Indian politicians have, while also possessing one you brought along from your faraway home all those aeons ago.

Since we do not oppose you, we are happy that you have an extra god. As you know, India has so many gods only because it has so many problems. (Yes, there are men on the far left and far right who think god is the problem, to be banished or to be rescued — but let these men not detain us, since they’ve failed to detain the electorate.) So we are glad that you have an extra god. One more is always handy. Our gods are playful, multi-faced, philosophical. Often their moralities are slippery to grasp, sheathed as they are in the complexities of karma and dharma, moksha and maya. The one you bring along, the extra one, is more cut and dried. Quite clear about right and wrong, good and bad, sin and virtue, charity and compassion. We — who do not oppose you — welcome that. Amid the material excesses born of our religious abstractions, a little bit of clarity is not a bad thing.

Since we are agreed that you have one god more than the rest of us, it necessarily follows that your responsibilities must be more. It is an easy catechism: privilege and obligation. Of course it is not easily followed. Our playful gods tend to often muddle it up. But your extra one is quite clear on how this must run. In this case, we’d be quite grateful if you heed him, not for your own sake, but that of a few hundred million others.

To begin with, this means that you must banish the thought that your labours are done. Without a doubt you have been stellar in marshalling an army whose officers did not even know which way the battle broke, and whose chief skill lay in swiftly putting the knife into each other. For long years you did this in the face of great personal abuse (inspired perhaps by your extra god). It is not pleasant for a General to be told she does not know how to hold a gun or speak the language of the troops. But you understood, intuitively, that cheap insults can so easily keep the good and the great from the good and the great tasks. You understood that wars, finally, are won not by the size of bullet and the decibel of bugle but by the strength of heart. By simply staying the course, over 13 years, you have unexpectedly changed the battle-lines.

So your toil has been worthy. Your ragged army of 1996 is a renewed one in 2009. In the process you have so cleverly — and beautifully — played out two key precepts of your extra god. Thou shalt not covet, the last of the ten commandments, so artfully spun as an act of renunciation that it sucked out the wind from the sails of your opponents. And Mathew 5:5, which is also Manmohan Singh 2004: blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. And both have been cleansing of the public in unanticipated ways.

Yet let me assert it without any ambiguity. Manmohan 2009 needs you as much as Manmohan 2004. He may be the scythe that clears the weeds, but you are still the arm that wields the scythe. To slice cleanly, the arm and scythe must swing in tandem.

Since I am convinced that your work is far from over, and since I am on Mathew, let me remind you of the exhortation in 10:7. “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.” As one must always do with divine scripture, I could spell out the contemporary burden of every phrase. But that would be fatuous. More than those of us who write of these things, you know best what it is in this calamitous nation to heal the sick and to cast out devils.

Even so — as humble epistle writers must — let me say my piece. Power brings with it a surrounding mist; great power a billowing fog. You may not be blinded by it since you have always lived with great power, but all around you, your partymen will now be tempted to explode in arrogance. They may tend to forget they have merely won a battle. The war, or may I say wars, still rage around us. The bigots — who would divide us — are still at the gates, nursing their wounds, renewing their munitions. They are far from a spent force. They have taken a fourth of our dominions. Be in no doubt that they will storm the walls again, and again. What will serve your legions well then is not hauteur, but what brought them here in the first place — humility, and the steel that is born of it. Across the land we cast our vote against swagger: let it be known, we will bear our ordained abjections but refuse to be hit by misplaced arrogance.

AS I said, the wars are many. Of civilisational ideas, of inhuman deprivations, of lack and want and misery and dying children. In my city — which is also yours, which is the supercilious capital of this limitless nation — at every traffic light, six and seven and eight-year-olds, their skins lacerated, their limbs twisted, rub our car windows for a throwaway rupee. Shining India, booming India, superpower India — these epithets are not just jokes, they are obscenities, when we cannot feed our children, or clothe them, or send them to school. I know you know this: as of now 46 percent of our children below five years of age suffer from malnutrition, with all the physical, mental and emotional impairment that comes from it. A man far greater than you, far greater than any we have known, gave us a talisman which you would do well to thrust down the throat of every person you are now anointing with power. “Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you have seen, and ask yourself if this step you contemplate is going to be any use to him.”

It is a curiosity of the hour that while the beacon is the future, the guiding light is still firmly the past. There is nothing that can better unveil to us the path that we must tread than the humane luminosity of the founding fathers.

In this regard, if I may say so, you are well rid of the vanity and bluster of the Left, but you might do well to hold on to some of their concerns. As you should also of the dalit queen and the Yadav overlords. They stand at the head of hapless peoples, even if they do nothing to represent them. The causes are great but the leaders are little. Reject the men; embrace the mission. The task of the reparation of centuries must proceed apace.

Inevitably then, ma’am, all this brings me to the rich. Money is a good thing. And it is no secret that we all love the rich — yes, all your partymen too. But will you please ensure that they do not make of their love a public thing. In India, all elected leaders must speak only for the poor. The rich have their money — and the media — to talk for them. Those who have the opportunity to create wealth — much or more — leave them alone to do so, and place no obstacle in their path. But instruct your worthies to focus on those who have no hope, and bring unto them a sliver.

I must stop. It is ungracious of me to deign to sermonise. That, too, at a moment of your high triumph. Let me then offer some praise. No doubt with the help of your extra god, you have done a fine job of bringing up your son. He has humility, decorum, diligence, and he takes the long and inclusive view. We do not like the idea of dynasty, but we abhor the idea of divisiveness more. In an ideal world we would do away with everything feudal and undemocratic, but for the moment let us concentrate on getting rid of the engines of hatred.

Mercifully, your boy seems more in touch with the soul of India than those who try and barter deities for votes. A man from your party once told me, disparagingly, “Sure, he is wellmeaning. He wants to help old ladies cross the street. It’s no good.” I wonder what he thinks now. Young men who help old ladies cross the street can also grow up to steer nations across rocky roads.

Can I leave you with one last quote (though it’s likely you already know it)? A man far greater than you, far greater than any we have known, once said, “To be in good moral condition requires at least as much training as to be in good physical condition.” This man was called Jawahar, the jewel. His books line your room. As freely as ye have received, freely should you give them on to your newly exuberant flock, and that of your son. The jewel’s words will make their morality robust. After all, it is still on this man’s plinth that we build our dreams.

And yes, as I bid you speed and strength, with the extra god by your side, may I make a final plea. You have given us of yourself, and of your son. Now will you kindly also give unto us your luminous daughter.

YOURS EXPECTANTLY,
TARUN

Pre-Launch Jitters and Then... Liftoff

2009-05-08T00:18:00.000-07:00

Contributing astronaut blogger Leroy Chiao continues to enlighten us about space travel, backtracking to the pre-launch period of nervous tension—and steak and eggs—then on to that unforgettable moment of explosive truth.

Today, I was going to write about how to do something else in space. But, I changed my mind. Let's back up to the beginning of a mission. What's it like to go through a launch? How does it feel? Are you able to sleep the night before? Do you get scared? What do you eat before?

Steak and eggs. Medium rare and over easy. This is what the first astronauts ate before launch and why not? I remember during one of my launch counts, the ladies were taking our pre-launch breakfast orders, going around the table. I was hearing things like, dry toast. A little yogurt. Cereal. You gotta be kidding me, what kind of pantywaists am I flying with? They got to me and I replied firmly and evenly, "Steak and eggs, medium rare and over easy." Everyone looked at me funny. I stated the obvious. "Hey, we might go out tomorrow and get blown up. I'm going to have steak and eggs!" Immediately, three guys changed their orders to steak and eggs. I was doing all of us a favor, really. You need a hearty breakfast before launch, you're going to be really busy. Yogurt? Come on.

Sleep wasn't really a problem either, although I tended to wake up a few times at night in anticipation, just like when I have other important morning appointments. We usually wake up about four hours before launch, and hit the ground running.

After breakfast and cleanup, it's time to get suited up. Walk down the hall and meet up with the suit technicians. Seasoned professionals, your suit tech has been with you all through training. He or she makes sure that everything is just right, and after the pressure checks are complete, sends you on your way.

From that point, it's a bit of a blur, as you walk out of the Operations and Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center, to the applause of the employees who have gathered at the entrance. You climb onto the Astrovan, which is a converted Airstream RV from the Apollo days. Crews typically joke and banter a bit, the atmosphere is lighthearted, during the short drive to the launch pad. Everyone falls silent as the bird comes into view. She is beautiful. She is ready, as are we.

At the pad, we climb out and ride the elevator to the 195-foot level, where we are greeted by the ingress crew. Time for one more quick pee. Maybe for good luck, but more, so that I won't have to use the adult diaper that I'm wearing! After all, we strap into the Space Shuttle about two and a half hours before launch.

Is this when the jitters hit? Actually, no. This is kind of a time to relax a bit. The environment is totally familiar, thanks to the hours upon hours spent in the simulators. For once, nobody is talking to you. Nobody is asking you for something. It's not unusual to doze off.

As the launch count proceeds, there is a point at which things get serious. Certainly as we come out of the T-20 minute hold. After we come out of the T-9 minute hold, the cockpit is sterile. No unnecessary chatter on the intercom. Is this when it becomes real? Not just yet. For me, it is not until the T-90 second point, when the Launch Director says something like, "Columbia, close and lock your visors, initiate O2 flow, have a good flight." Then it very suddenly becomes very real.

What did I feel at T-Zero? The answer might surprise you. I felt relief.

Certainly, I was keyed up. After all, we were sitting on top of a bomb, being accelerated to orbital velocity of 17,500 mph in less than nine minutes. Pretty heady stuff! But the thing of which astronauts are most afraid is not getting the chance to launch into space. What if I get hit by a car? What if the doctors find something wrong with me at the last minute? What happens if…? All of those worries go away the instant the boosters light!

First stage on the Space Shuttle is shaky. You can't really read the instruments and screens very well. At T-Zero it feels like someone kicks the back of your seat really hard, the Shuttle seems to leap off of the pad. You hear the wind noise build into a high-pitched whine. You see the blue sky start to get dark, fairly quickly. You don't so much hear the rumble of the engines as feel them. Everything is oddly orderly, even quiet. That's because we are accustomed to the simulators, when all the warning and emergency lights and klaxons are going off, as we deal with the failure scenario presented to us by the training team. On launch day, pretty much everything usually works!

On my first flight, I was up on the flight deck for launch. I had a small mirror, through which I could look out of the overhead windows, which were pointed more or less towards the Earth. (The Shuttle rolls into launch azimuth and heels over as the ascent proceeds.) I saw the ground rushing away, through the flames of the engines.

After about two minutes, the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) tail off as the last bits of fuel in them are consumed. You feel the deceleration, and then see the flash of bright light as the separation motors fire, peeling them away from the stack. It is suddenly very smooth and quiet. My heart leapt into my throat when this happened to me the first time. My first thought was that the main engines had also stopped and we were about to go down! But, that was not the case, I just hadn't expected second stage to be so smooth.

During the last few minutes of launch, the vehicle accelerates to orbital velocity. You are under three Gs of loading, so it feels like a small gorilla is sitting on your chest. It takes a little effort to breath, but it's OK.

Suddenly, right on cue (you're always watching the clock), the main engines cut off, and you are instantly weightless! As I looked out the windows and for the first time beheld the awesome beauty of the Earth from space, I was almost overcome with emotion. I had made it, I had realized my childhood dream. I allowed myself to revel in this moment for just a few seconds. Yes, I was in space, but it was also time to get to work!

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The view from the other side

2009-04-29T17:38:00.000-07:00

This is an open letter written by a retired Indian Col Harish Puri to General Ashfaq Kayani and was published in a Pakistani newspaper.The aftermath was a huge furore from the Pakistani elite which led to the newspaper apologizing for publishing the letter.

Col (r) Harish Puri Published in The News: Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Dear Gen Kayani,

Sir, let me begin by recounting that old army quip that did the rounds in the immediate aftermath of World war II: To guarantee victory, an army should ideally have German generals, British officers, Indian soldiers, American equipment and Italian enemies.

A Pakistani soldier that I met in Iraq in 2004 lamented the fact that the Pakistani soldier in Kargil had been badly let down firstly by Nawaz Sharif and then by the Pakistani officers’ cadre. Pakistani soldiers led by Indian officers, , he believed, would be the most fearsome combination possible. Pakistani officers, he went on to say, were more into real estate, defence housing colonies and the like.

As I look at two photographs of surrender that lie before me, I can’t help recalling his words. The first is the celebrated event at Dhaka on Dec 16, 1971, which now adorns most Army messes in Delhi and Calcutta. The second, sir, is the video of a teenage girl being flogged by the Taliban in Swat — not far, I am sure, from one of your Army check posts.

The surrender by any Army is always a sad and humiliating event. Gen Niazi surrendered in Dhaka to a professional army that had outnumbered and outfought him. No Pakistani has been able to get over that humiliation, and 16th December is remembered as a black day by the Pakistani Army and the Pakistani state. But battles are won and lost – armies know this, and having learnt their lessons, they move on. But much more sadly, the video of the teenager being flogged represents an even more abject surrender by the Pakistani Army. The surrender in 1971, though humiliating, was not disgraceful.

This time around, sir, what happened on your watch was something no Army commander should have to live through. The girl could have been your own daughter, or mine. I have always maintained that the Pakistani Army, like its Indian counterpart, is a thoroughly professional outfit. It has fought valiantly in the three wars against India, and also accredited itself well in its UN missions abroad. It is, therefore, by no means a pushover. The instance of an Infantry unit, led by a lieutenant colonel, meekly laying down arms before 20-odd militants should have been an aberration. But this capitulation in Swat, that too so soon after your own visit to the area, is an assault on the sensibilities of any soldier.

What did you tell your soldiers? What great inspirational speech did you make that made your troops back off without a murmur? Sir, I have fought insurgency in Kashmir as well as the North-East, but despite the occasional losses suffered (as is bound to be the case in counter-insurgency operations), such total surrender is unthinkable.

I have been a signaller, and it beats me how my counterparts in your Signal Corps could not locate or even jam a normal FM radio station broadcasting on a fixed frequency at fixed timings. Is there more than meets the eye? I am told that it is difficult for your troops to “fight their own people.” But you never had that problem in East Pakistan in 1971, where the atrocities committed by your own troops are well documented in the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report. Or is it that the Bengalis were never considered “your own” people, influenced as they were by the Hindus across the border? Or is that your troops are terrified by the ruthless barbarians of the Taliban?

Sir, it is imperative that we recognise our enemy without any delay. I use the word “our” advisedly – for the Taliban threat is not far from India’s borders. And the only force that can stop them from dragging Pakistan back into the Stone Age is the force that you command. In this historic moment, providence has placed a tremendous responsibility in your hands. Indeed, the fate of your nation, the future of humankind in the subcontinent rests with you. It doesn’t matter if it is “my war” or “your war” – it is a war that has to be won. A desperate Swati citizen’s desperate lament says it all – “Please drop an atom bomb on us and put us out of our misery!” Do not fail him, sir.

But in the gloom and the ignominy, the average Pakistani citizen has shown us that there is hope yet. The lawyers, the media, have all refused to buckle even under direct threats. It took the Taliban no less than 32 bullets to still the voice of a brave journalist. Yes, there is hope – but why don’t we hear the same language from you? Look to these brave hearts, sir – and maybe we shall see the tide turn. Our prayers are with you, and the hapless people of Swat.

The New York Times predicts that Pakistan will collapse in six months. Do you want to go down in history as the man who allowed that to happen?

Jim Carrey

2009-04-22T22:48:00.000-07:00

My favorite Jim quote is: "It is better to risk starving to death then surrender. If you give up on your dreams, what's left?"-Jim Carrey

LIFE
I don't think anybody should go through life without a team of psychologists. I have been through times when I'm literally squatting in the living room, having one of those open-throated cries, where you're crying all the way to your butthole. I always believed I would come out of it, though.

I don't make it in regular channels, and that's okay for me.

My life is not unlike Truman's. I can't go anywhere.

Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn't trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.

I don't think anybody is interesting until they've had the shit kicked out of them. The pain is there for a reason. A lot of times when I was in those depressions, I also had the thing going through my head that this is what I've asked for. I've prayed to God that I would have depth as an artist and have things to say. I've said, No matter what, keep me sane but give me what I need.

RELATIONSHIPS
I'm so wrapped up in my work that it's often impossible to consider other things in my life. My marriage ended in divorce because of this, my relationship with Holly has suffered by this. It's hard for anybody who's been with me not to feel starved for affection when I'm making love to my ideas. Maybe it's not meant for me to settle down and be married.

Creative people don't behave very well generally. If you're looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you're gonna be depressed real fast. I don't have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She's my first priority.

MEDICATION
I was on Prozac for a long time. It may have helped me out of a jam for a little bit, but people stay on it forever. I had to get off at a certain point because I realized that, you know, everything's just OK," says Carrey. "There are peaks, there are valleys. But they're all kind of carved and smoothed out, and it feels like a low level of despair you live in. Where you're not getting any answers, but you're living OK. And you can smile at the office. You know? But it's a low level of despair. You know? I rarely drink coffee. I'm very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful.

You know, I live a monastic lifestyle. No, I do. I do live in extremes, basically. I go back and forth. Once every six months, I'll have a day where I eat more chocolate than has ever been consumed by a human being.

I've tried everything. I've done therapy, I've done colonics. I went to a psychic who had me running around town buying pieces of ribbon to fill the colors in my aura. Did the Prozac thing.

ACTING
Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.

I just want to be killer funny. You know kick ass piss in your pants run out of the theatre and rip you dick off and throw yourself into traffic funny!

I try to do something the audience might not have seen before. Like if I'm gonna kiss a girl I wanna kiss her like a girl has never been kissed. Like maybe I would kick her legs out from under her and catch her right before she hits the ground and then kiss her.

My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn't been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that 's really worthwhile.

My performing started out as a mixture of things. It's really not all angst and I-gotta-go-onstage-or-I'm-gonna-kill- somebody kind of thing. Some of it is the anger, but it was born from really, truly, just wanting to be special and to be noticed and wanting to make people laugh. It was really born from that, so it comes from a good place. It's just - the tools are your anger, the tools are your sadness, the tools are your joy, the tools are voices, faces - the tools are all those things.

The comedian's who inspired me are, like, Dick Van Dyke. Loved Dick Van Dyke. Jimmy Stewart. Well, he wasn't a comedian, but he was a character that I really, really liked. I learned how to say 'F***', by listening to Richard Pryor. No. But there's guys like that who opened doors to realms for me. Like Richard Pryor and guys like Sam Kinison. You watch them and then you go, well maybe your gotta give up a little more to, you know, push the buttons these days.

CAREER
It's nice to finally get scripts offered to me that aren't the ones Tom Hanks wipes his butt with.

There was a time when people said, 'Jim, if you keep on making faces, your face will freeze like that.' Now they just say, 'Pay him!'

I don't care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

If I had never ventured beyond being a stand-up comic, then I would be sitting in my house today working on my Leonardo DiCaprio impression.

I absolutely want to have a career where you make'em laugh and make'em cry. It's all theater.

One thing I hope I'll never be is drunk with my own power. And anybody who says I am will never work in this town again.

Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them. I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

It was such a leap in my career when 'Truman Show' came along. It's always been a long process for me insofar as recognition goes, but that's OK because you appreciate it when it comes.

I'm afraid, I guess, that I won't be able to watch anymore. Everything I do comes from watching and observing, and I'm concerned that I won't be able to be the watcher because I'm the watched. I've already had so much success, I could quit now and say, 'Thanks very much, you guys have been more than nice to me,' but I really would like to keep working and, hopefully, growing and challenging myself. HIMSELF

I tend to stay up late, not because I'm partying but because it's the only time of the day when I'm alone and don't have to be performing.

I'm a hard guy to live with. I'm like a caged animal. I'm up all night walking around the living room. It's hard for me to come down from what I do.

I need privacy. I would think that because what I do makes a lot of people happy that I might deserve a little bit of respect in return. Instead, the papers try to drag me off my pedestal.

Most of the time I live with my pain. I have pain but I won't show it around. I think that's the nobility of the character. There's something noble in not spewing on people all the time about your problems. I'm the light guy, so I identified.

I enjoy fame except when I'm with my daughter. Kids stop me all the time and I don't want her to be jealous of the attention. Also, sometimes I just want to be left alone and I refuse to make rubber faces. That's when they start asking, 'What's the matter, man, don't you like your job?' I say, 'Yeah, I like my job. But I also like having sex, and I'm not going to do that in front of you either.

Ya know what I do almost every day? I wash. Personal hygiene is part of the package with me.

What I have in common with the character in ‘Truman’ is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

CHILDHOOD
I used to draw a lot. If my mother would ask me to do something else, I'd have a hairy conniption. I'd just go crazy.

I praticed making faces in the mirror and it would drive my mother crazy. She used to scare me by saying that I was going to see the devil if I kept looking in the mirror. That fascinated me even more, of course.

SCHOOL
I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy. The turning point was freshman year, when I was the biggest geek alive. No one, I mean no one, even talked to me. I was that weird Jim Boy - you know, ' Stay away from him.' Then I suddenly realized that all the shtick I pulled at home could also work at school. I recall the first day that I stood in front of the school and fell up the stairs. People started self-combusting with laughter. I went from 'Jim's a geek' to 'Jim really is a moron, but we like it!' From then on, there was no stopping me - I was relentless. Every class became The Jim Carrey Show. I was like a disease in the class. I remember being sent out of the room a lot. The hall became my domain.

My report card always said, 'Jim finishes first and then disrupts the other students'.

For some reason I did something where I realized I could get a reaction. That was when I broke out of my shell at school, because I really didn't have any friends or anything like that and I just kind of was going along, and then finally I did this zany thing, and all of a sudden I had tons of friends

My teacher in the seventh grade told me that if I didn't fool around during class, I could have 15 minutes at the end of the day to do a comedy routine. Instead of bugging everybody, I'd figure out my routine. And at the end of the day, I'd get to perform in front of my entire class. I thought it was really smart of her. It's amazing how important that was.

My first experience on stage started in second grade. I was in music class and we were practicing for the Christmas assembly. One day I started fooling around by mocking the musicians on a record. The teacher thought she'd embarrass me by making me get up and do what I was doing in front of the whole class. So I went up and did it. She laughed, and the whole class went nuts. My teacher asked me to do my routine for the Christmas assembly, and I did. That was the beginning of the end.

MONEY
When the first big paycheque with Dumb And Dumber hit, I went: 'Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?' But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

The money can be a hindrance to someone like me because the danger is that you start thinking, 'Is that a $20 million take?' That kind of thing, and being self-critical.

I'm the first to admit this whole salary thing is getting out of control. In the final analysis, it's still about the work. The whole time I was filming The Cable Guy, I kept reminding myself that if a scene didn't work, the $20 million would bite me in the butt.

I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin' wealthy.

I haven't been as wild with my money as somebody like me might have been. I've been very safe, very conservative with investments. I don't blow money. I don't have a ton of houses. I know things can go away. I've already had that experience.

FAMILY
My mother was a professional sick person; she took a lot of pain pills. There are many people like that. It's just how they are used to getting attention. I always remember she's the daughter of alcoholics who'd leave her alone at Christmas time.

My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

I got a lot of support from my parents. That's the one thing I always appreciated. They didn't tell me I was being stupid; they told me I was being funny.

The Big Bang Theory:Part3

2009-04-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

Season 1, Episode 10 (The Loobenfeld Decay)
Leonard: How long is [Toby/Leo] going to stay here?
Sheldon: He's a homeless drug addict, Leonard. Where's he going to go? Boy, you have a lot to learn about lying.

Sheldon: (Knocking on Penny's door early in the morning). Penny, Penny, Penny!
(Penny opens the door).
Sheldon: Good morning.
Penny: Do you have any idea what time it is?
Sheldon: Of course I do, my watch is linked to the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. It's accurate to one-tenth of a second, but as I'm saying this it
occurs to me once again your question may have been rhetorical.

Sheldon: Artificial intelligences do not have teen fetishes.

Season 1, Episode 11 (The Pancake Batter Anomaly)
Sheldon: We have no idea what pathogen Typhoid Penny’s introduced into our environment. And having never been to Nebraska I’m relatively certain that I
have no Corn Husking antibodies.

Sheldon: Obviously you're not well-suited for three-dimensional chess. Perhaps three-dimensional Candyland would be your speed.

Season 1, Episode 12 (The Jerusalem Duality)
Sheldon: Engineering. Where the noble semiskilled laborers execute the vision of those who think and dream. Hello, Oompa-Loompas of science.

Dr. Gablehauser: Okay, well, speaking of spreads, we're having a small welcoming party this afternoon for Mr. Kim who's agreed to join us here at the
university.
Sheldon: Of course he has. The Oracle told us little Neo was the one. You can see the matrix, can't you?

Sheldon: Today, I went from being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, to... You know, that other guy.
Howard: Antonio Salieri?
Sheldon: Oh God, now even you are smarter than me.

Sheldon: While Mr. Kim, by virtue of youth and naiveté, has fallen prey to the inexplicable need for human contact, let me step in and assure you that my
research will go on uninterrupted, and that social relationships will continue to baffle and repulse me.

Season 1, Episode 13 (The Bat Jar Conjecture)
Sheldon: What rat have you recruited to the SS sinking ship?
Leslie: Hello Sheldon.
Sheldon: Leslie Winkle.
Leslie: Yeah Leslie Winkle. The answer to the question, who made Sheldon Cooper cry like a little girl?
Sheldon: Yes well I am polymerised tree saps and you are an inorganic adhesive so whatever verbal projectile you launch in my direction is reflected off of
me, returns on its original trajectory and adheres to you.
Leslie: Oh, ouch.

Sheldon: Oh, and one more thing, it's on bitch.

Sheldon: Would you ask Picasso to play Pictionary? Would you ask Noah Webster to play Boggle? Would you ask Jacques Cousteau to play Go Fish?

Sheldon: At this point I should inform you that I intend to form my own team and destroy the molecular bonds that bind your very matter together and reduce
the resulting particular chaos to tears.

Season 1, Episode 14 (The Nerdvana Annihilation)
Sheldon: Are you upset about something?
Leonard: What was your first clue?
Sheldon: Well there was a number of things. First the late hour, then you demeanors seems very low energy plus your irritability...
Leonard: Yes I'm upset!
Sheldon: Oh... I don't usually pick up on those things. Good for me.
Leonard: Yeah good for you.
Sheldon: (walks away and then turns back) Oh, wait. Did you want to talk about what's bothering you?
Leonard: I don't know... maybe.
Sheldon: Wow! I'm on fire tonight.

Sheldon: Dibs does not apply in a bidding war.

Sheldon: In a Venn diagram, that would be an individual located at the intersection of the sets “no longer want my Time Machine” and “need 800 dollars”.

Sheldon: It only moves in time. It would be worse than useless in a swamp.

Sheldon: I disagree. Your inability to successfully woo Penny long predates your acquisition of the time machine. That failure clearly stands on its own.

Season 1, Episode 15 (The Shiksa Indeterminacy)
Sheldon: They were not “friends”. They were imaginary colleagues.

Season 1, Episode 16 (The Peanut Reaction)
Sheldon: 1234 is not a secure password.

Sheldon: What twelve year old boy wants a motorized dirt bike?

Sheldon: What computer do you have? And please don't say "a white one."

Store Clerk: You don't work here.
Sheldon: Well aparently no one does.

Season 1, Episode 17 (The Tangerine Factor)
Sheldon: Actually, I thought the first two renditions were far more compelling. Previously, I felt sympathy for the Leonard character. Now I just find him to
be whiny and annoying.

Sheldon: Oxen are in my bed! Many, many oxen!

The Big Bang Theory:Part2

2009-04-15T22:48:00.000-07:00

Season 1, Episode 3 (The Fuzzy Boots Corollary)
Sheldon: (to Leonard, who has decided to give up on Penny) Well, at least now you can retrieve the black box from the twisted, smoldering wreckage that was
once your fantasy of dating her and analyze the data so you don%u2019t crash into Geek Mountain again.

Sheldon: I think that you [Leonard] have as much of a chance of having a sexual relationship with Penny as the Hubble telescope does of discovering at the
center of every black hole is a little man with a flashlight searching for a circuit breaker.

Sheldon: There's always a chance that alcohol and poor judgment on her part may lead to a wonderful evening.

Sheldon: I don't come over to your house changing things on your boards.
Leslie: That's because I don't have mistakes on my boards.
Sheldon: That's...That's...
Leslie: When you think up an adjective text me.

Sheldon: You have about as much chance with her as the Hubble Telescope does of finding in the middle of each black hole a small man looking for the light
switch.

Season 1, Episode 4 (The Luminous Fish Effect)
Sheldon: I'm taking a sabbatical because I won't kowtow to mediocre minds.
Penny: So you got canned, huh? Sheldon: Theoretical physicists do not get 'canned'. But yeah.

Penny: I always say that when one door closes, another one opens.
Sheldon: No it doesn't. Not unless the two doors are connected by relays or there are motion sensors involved. Or if the first door closing creates a change
of air pressure that acts upon the second door.
Penny: (gives Sheldon a long look) Never mind.

Sheldon: I can't believe he fired me.
Leonard: Well, you did call him a "glorified high school science teacher whose last successful experiment was lighting his own farts."
Sheldon: In my defense, I prefaced that with, "with all due respect."

Sheldon: There wouldn't have been any ass kickings if that stupid death ray had worked.

Sheldon: Oh, I'm sorry. Did I insult you? Is your body mass somehow tied into your self worth?

Season 1, Episode 5 (The Hamburger Postulate)
Sheldon: Can't we just go to Big Boy? They only have one burger: the Big Boy.
Penny: The Barbecue Burger is like the Big Boy.
Sheldon: Excuse me, in a world that already includes a Big Boy, why would I settle for something that's like a Big Boy?

Sheldon: Do you realize I may have to share a Nobel Prize with your booty call?

Sheldon: Of course I'm listening. Blah blah, hopeless Penny delusion, blah blah blah.

Season 1, Episode 7 (The Dumpling Paradox)
Sheldon: I don't know how, but she is cheating! Nobody can be that attractive and this skilled at a videogame.

Sheldon: I'll watch the last 24 minutes of Doctor Who, although at this point it's more like Doctor Why Bother.

Sheldon: No, I’m going to ask him to choose between sex and Halo 3. As far as I know, sex has not been upgraded to include high-def graphics and enhanced
weapon systems.

Season 1, Episode 8 (The Grasshopper Experiment)
Sheldon: I'll have a diet Coke.
Penny: Can you please order a cocktail? I need to practice mixing drinks.
Sheldon: Fine... I'll have a virgin Cuba Libre.
Penny: That's... rum and Coke without the rum.
Sheldon: Yes, and would you make it diet?

Leonard: Do you really need the Honorary Justice League of America Membership card?
Sheldon: It's been in every wallet I owned since I was five.
Leonard: Why?
Sheldon: It says keep this on your person at all times. It's right here under Batman's signature.

Sheldon: How often does one see a beloved fictional character come to life?
Wolowitz: Every year at ComiCon. Every day at Disneyland. You can hire Snow White to come to your house. Of course they prefer if you have a kid.

Sheldon: I understand, but it was between you and the Museum of Natural History, and frankly, you don't have dinosaurs.

Season 1, Episode 9 (The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization)
Leonard: You are not Isaac Newton.
Sheldon: No, no, that's true. Gravity would have been apparent to me without the apple.

Leonard: Are there any other honors that I've gotten that I don't know about? Did UPS drop off a Nobel Prize with my name on it?
Sheldon: Leonard, please don't take this the wrong way, but the day you win a Nobel Prize is the day I begin my research on the drag co-efficient of tassles
on flying carpets.

Leonard: Sheldon, why is this letter in the trash?
Sheldon: Well, there's always the possibility that a trash can spontaneously formed around the letter, but Occam's Razor would suggest that someone threw it
out.

Leonard: (Watching their fight on YouTube) Oh, geez, does this suit really look that bad?
Sheldon: Forget your suit. Look at my arms flailing. I'm like a flamingo on Ritalin.

The Big Bang Theory:Part1

2009-04-15T22:32:00.000-07:00

The Big Bang Theory is an American situation comedy created and executive produced by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, which premiered on CBS on September 24, 2007.

It concerns two male Caltech prodigies in their twenties, one an experimental physicist (Leonard) and the other a theoretical physicist (Sheldon), who live across the hall from an attractive blonde waitress with show-biz aspirations (Penny).

Leonard and Sheldon's geekiness and intellect are contrasted with Penny's social skills and common sense for comedic effect. Two equally geeky friends of theirs, Howard and Rajesh, are also main characters.

Season 1, Episode 1 (Pilot)
Sheldon: I don't know what your odds are in the world as a whole but as far as the population of this car goes you're a veritable mack daddy.

Penny: I’m a Sagittarius, which probably tells you way more than you need to know.
Sheldon: Yes, it tells us that you participate in the mass cultural delusion that the sun’s apparent position relative to arbitrarily defined constellations

at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality.
Penny: (puzzled) Participate in the what?

Leonard: We need to widen our circle.
Sheldon: I have a very wide circle. I have 212 friends on myspace.
Leonard: Yes, and you’ve never met one of them.
Sheldon: That’s the beauty of it.

Sheldon: What if she ends up with a toddler who doesn't know if he should use an integral or a differential to solve for the area under a curve?
Leonard: I'm sure she'll still love him.
Sheldon: I wouldn't.

Penny: (after seeing Leonard and Sheldon pantsed) I'm so sorry. I really thought if you guys went instead of me, he wouldn't be such an ass.
Leonard: No, it was a valid hypothesis.
Sheldon: "Was a valid hypo" - what is happening to you?

Penny: So, what do you guys do for fun around here?
Sheldon:Well, today we tried masturbating for money.

Sheldon:You did not "break up" with Joyce Kim. She defected to North Korea.

Season 1, Episode 2 (The Big Bran Hypothesis)
Sheldon: Ah, gravity - thou art a heartless bitch.

Leonard: For God's sake, Sheldon, do I have to hold up a sarcasm sign every time I open my mouth?
Sheldon (intrigued): You have a sarcasm sign?

Penny: Yes, I know men can't fly.
Sheldon: No, no let's assume that they can. Lois Lane is falling, accelerating at an initial rate of 32ft per second, per second. Superman swoops down to
save her by reaching out two arms of steel. Ms. Lane, who is now traveling at approximately 120 miles per hour, hits them, and is immediately sliced into
three. equal pieces.

Leonard (trying to get Sheldon to leave Penny's apartment in the middle of the night): Sheldon, this is not your home!
Sheldon: This isn't anyone's 'home'. This is a swirling vortex of entropy.

Leonard: I guess we'll just take [a TV cabinet] up [the stairs] ourselves.
Sheldon: We don't have a dolly, or lifting belts, or any measurable upper-body strength.
Leonard: We don't need strength. We're physicists. We are the intellectual descendants of Archimedes. Give me a fulcrum and a lever, and I can move the
Earth. (Trying to move the box) It's just a matter of... I don't have this. I don't have this. I don't have it!
Sheldon: Archimedes would be so proud.

Leonard: If you don't have any other plans, do you want to join us for Thai food and a Superman movie marathon?
Penny: A marathon? Wow, how many Superman movies are there?
Sheldon: You're kidding, right?

Leonard: Most people don't sort their breakfast cereal numerically by fiber content.
Sheldon: Excuse me, but I think we've both found that helpful at times.

Sheldon: Explain to me an organizational system where a tray of flatware on a couch is valid.

Sheldon: I am truly sorry for what happened last night. I take full responsibility and I hope it won’t color your opinion of Leonard, who is not only a
wonderful guy but also, I hear, a gentle and thorough lover.

The Kranz Dictum

2009-04-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

Response to Apollo I Launch Pad Fire

Eugene F. Kranz called a meeting of his branch and flight control team on the Monday morning following the Apollo 1 disaster that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Kranz made the following address to the gathering (The Kranz Dictum), in which his expression of values and admonishments for future spaceflight are his legacy to NASA:

"Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, 'Dammit, stop!' I don't know what Thompson's committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did. From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough' and 'Competent.' Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write 'Tough and Competent' on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control."

For the greater good of God

2009-04-09T18:37:00.000-07:00

With elections around the corner in India
Its painful to see how shamelessly politicians are playing a religion based card and how the majority of the educated people are falling for it.Reminds me of Iron Maiden's 'For the greater good of God' song.Here are the lyrics:

Are you a man of peace
Or man of holy war
Too many sides to you
Don't know which anymore
So many full of life
But also filled with pain
Don't know just how many
Will live to breathe again

A life that's made to breath
destruction or defense
A mind that's vain corruption
bad or good intent
A wolf in sheep's clothing
Or saintly or sinner
Or some that would believe
A holy war winner

They fire off many shots
and many parting blows
Their actions beyond a reasoning
only god would know
And as he lies in heaven
or it could be in hell
I feel he's somewhere here
or looking from below
But I don't know, I don't know

Please tell me now what life is
Please tell me now what love is
Well tell me now what war is
Again tell me what life is

More pain and misery in the history of mankind
Sometimes it seems more like
the blind leading the blind
It brings upon us more of famine,death and war
You know religion has a lot to answer for

Please tell me now what life is
Please tell me now what love is
Well tell me now what war is
Again tell me what life is

And as they search to find the bodies in the sand
They find it's ashes that are
scattered across the land
And as their spirits seem to whistle on the wind
A shot is fired somewhere another war begins

And all because of it you'd think
that we would learn
But still the body count the city fires burn
Somewhere there's someone dying
in a foreign land
Meanwhile the world is crying stupidity of man
Tell me why, tell me why

Please tell me now what life is
Please tell me now what love is
Well tell me now what war is
Again tell me what life is

Please tell me now what life is
Please tell me now what love is
Well tell me now what war is
Again tell me what life is

For the greater good of God

Please tell me now what life is
Please tell me now what love is
Well tell me now what war is
Again tell me what life is

Please tell me now what life is
Please tell me now what love is
Well tell me now what war is
Again tell me what life is

For the greater good of God

He gave his life for us he fell upon the cross
To die for all of those who never mourn his loss
It wasn't meant for us to feel the pain again
Tell me why, tell me why

If the US is bad, its rivals are worse

2009-03-18T06:33:00.000-07:00

SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR

As the world sinks into the worst recession since the 1930s, leaders of the top 20 countries are meeting in Britain to discuss major reforms of the world economic system. There is a consensus that the existing system has failed massively, especially in the US.
The five biggest investment banks in the world (Lehman Brothers et al) have vanished in the financial carnage. The two biggest mortgage companies in the world, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, are under government overlordship. The biggest insurance company in the world, AIG, is on government life support. The biggest bank in the world, Citibank, has survived only with massive government help. General Motors, the biggest auto company in the world, is also on life support. The greatest icons of US capitalism are on crutches.
But hold the dirges. The most vocal critics of US capitalism are sinking too. Look at Latin American socialist regimes (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador), Russia and Iran. For all their socialist rhetoric — President Chavez of Venezuela has long sworn to spearhead a socialist Bolivarian revolution in Latin America — their rival economic models look bankrupt too.
The IMF estimates that Venezuela and Iran needed an oil price of $90-95/barrel to balance their budgets. When the price rose to a peak of $147/barrel, these countries were awash in petrodollars, and made grandiose plans. Chavez offered half his oil to Latin American friends at concessional rates. But now, he is running down his forex reserves to survive.
President Ahmedinajad in Iran planned fancy welfare plans with oil revenue, and switched Iran’s foreign reserves from dollars to euros to teach the Yankees a lesson. His spending plans have come unstuck after oil revenue plunged by two-thirds. Inflation is running at 26%. Ahmedinajad now looks like losing the coming Iranian election to his moderate rival Mohammad Khatami.
The Russian economy soared along with oil prices, is now crashing in tandem. In the Russian model, Putin and his friends own large chunks of natural-resource companies, some of which are nominally state controlled. They allow other oligarchs to flourish on condition that they toe the party line. The Russian stock market has fallen more than any other (almost 80%). Russia has spent one-third of its forex reserves to defend the ruble, which is nevertheless down from 25 to 35 to the dollar.
It is no accident that so many critics of western capitalism are petrostates. A market economy succeeds by providing incentives for raising productivity and incomes. A statecontrolled system is lousy at providing the right incentives, and so is bad for productivity. But a petro-state thrives simply on the geographical accident of mineral wealth, not great enterprise or efficiency.
Socialists bemoan the capitalist emphasis on profit and growth, and focus on distributing wealth instead. This would be fine if money dropped from heaven, and the only task of governments was to distribute it. But if you have to produce the wealth in the first place, markets do it much better.
However, in the petro-state oil revenue is manna from heaven, so the ruler can (for some time) focus on distributing wealth rather than creating it. Under Chavez, Venezuela’s oil production has dropped from 3.2 million barrels/day in 1998 to just 2.4 million barrels/day. His system is manifestly inefficient. Yet, this inefficiency has long been cloaked by the bonanza arising from high oil prices. Ditto for Ahmedinajad’s Iran.
Seen in this light, the biggest critics of the US model are in fact pathetically dependent on it. When capitalist economies decline, so do the supposedly rival models. Clearly, they are not rival models at all but parasites of the capitalist model.
In April 2008, Iran started pricing its oil in euros and yen rather than dollars, anticipating gains from exiting what it regarded as a fundamentally weak currency. Iran switched the bulk of its forex reserves out of dollars into euros and yen. Alas, it weakened only itself, not the US. The dollar has strengthened hugely in the last year — the euro is down from a peak of $1.60 to just $1.26. Countries that switched their reserves to euros and yen have lost heavily.
The true strength of a system is revealed in times of adversity. Today, despite US economic travails, the world views the dollar as a safe haven. The US system has a thousand flaws, but others are no better, and sometimes worse. Certainly the world economic system urgently needs major reform, and the G-20 meeting in Britain needs to kick-start the process. But the reforms must aim at a safer, gentler capitalism, not Bolivarian socialism.

Truth, Taxes And Midnight Knocks

2009-02-21T08:16:00.000-08:00

First the JPC and an RTI proved their innocence. Now there is an authoritative book. Veteran journalist MADHU TREHAN tracks the brutal victimisation of Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra. This extract is just a fraction of what happened to them

SHANKAR SHARMA and Devina Mehra made a pilot’s error when they invested in TEHELKA. One small step of an investment led to a giant leap into a downward spiral of police raids, interrogations, endless litigation, courts, and yes, even jail. This was no moonwalk. Shankar Sharma’s and Devina Mehra’s lives turned on them. All their branch offices closed down, their properties were attached, their home and offices were raided 26 times, their computer hard disks and servers were seized. They were banned from trading on the stock exchange, which was their livelihood, their bank accounts were frozen. They were physically detained three times, Shankar went to jail for nine weeks without bail under a law that had been repealed a year and a half earlier by Parliament, and within the year, they received over 300 summons for personal appearances from various departments and agencies of the government. The Income Tax Department, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Excise Department, the Department of Company Affairs, and the Reserve Bank of India all investigated Shankar and Devina. The Income Tax Department raided them 15 times. Twenty-two cases were filed against them under the Companies Act, plus one FERA case and five FERA civil proceedings. Shankar’s passport was confiscated and it took him a year to retrieve it. Devina got a stay order against her passport being impounded, which required yet more appearances in court.

Who then are Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra? Not exactly household names, even after the TEHELKA exposé. Shankar and Devina both come from what would be termed ‘humble backgrounds’ in Hinglish. They graduated from institutes of management and incorporated First Global Stockbroking Pvt Ltd in 1994. They are both directors of the company. Shankar looks at trading research and Devina into fundamental research. In the course of seven years, First Global became one of the largest securities companies in India. They work sitting next to each other and say they experience separation anxiety if they are not with each other all the time. They bounce ideas off each other, and when Shankar was in jail, being out of touch was the most difficult aspect. Both say they can guess what the other will say and function in complete tandem. Before the TEHELKA chapter, they had 18 branches and employed over 300 people. They have offices in London and New York that trade internationally. The First Global Group is the first Indian company admitted to membership of the London Stock Exchange. It was rated among the three top brokerage houses in India by Asia Money magazine. In January 2001, the Securities and Exchange Board of India granted First Global the status of a deemed Foreign Institutional Investor. This enabled First Global to raise money from overseas. The trading turnover of the First Global Group in the year 1999- 2000 was Rs 7,432 crore. Devina Mehra and Shankar Sharma were individually among the top taxpayers in India. During their 10 years of doing business, they had never been hauled up for any tax or legal infringement.

Their success story crashed when First Global was forced to close down in April 2001. Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra are a couple that in many ways exemplify the new, emerging India, but now, if anything, their story also exemplifies what is wrong with India. Their Rashomon of what happened to them after TEHELKA, exposes the perdition that simmers under the sanitised, orderly veneer of an investigation. There’s no inherited money here. No special contacts or godfather politicians. Their families are solidly middleclass who believed that education was the best they could give them. Devina won eight gold medals during college and broke a 60-year record for the highest aggregate marks in her undergraduate course at Lucknow University. At the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, Devina was a gold medallist and had scholarships for both years. Shankar received an MBA from the Asian Institute of Management in Manila, where he made it to the Dean’s list. Devina worked with Citibank after she graduated, but her interests lay more in research. She said the biggest kick she got in life was learning new things in her field. She had got admission in 1990 to the University of California, Los Angeles, for a PhD but realised there was not much she could do with a PhD in finance. When the markets in India opened up to foreign investments in 1993, research into industries and companies became relevant to the stockmarket. That is when Devina joined Shankar’s business…

DESPITE THE fortune they made, the two have lived a low-key, simple life with no garish cars or opulent homes and offices, and have stayed away from the vacuous party scene. Shankar switched from cigars to bidis in jail and continued smoking them for a while. Devina is a surprise. She has a shock of thick, wavy unruly air, no make-up apart from lipstick occasionally, and clothes that show a complete oblivion of style. She tends towards plumpness but is working it off. She is not beautiful in a conventional sense, but after you’ve spent time with her and listened to her, you understand why Shankar, unashamedly, unequivocally adores her. They work together, live together, built their company together, were virtually destroyed together, and are now fighting for their survival together. Often they answer together, using the same words and just as often complete each other’s sentences. Yet, both are very different from each other. Shankar is tall, good looking in the boynext- door mode, and at first glance they seem an odd couple. Shankar’s language is more impulsive and macho, peppered with ‘yaar’, ‘f**king’, and ‘boss’. Devina has yet to use any such words in my presence. She is more aware of who she is talking to and the consequences her words will have, particularly in print.

Perhaps because Shankar so uninhibitedly praises her worth, she has an inner confidence that precludes the need to prove herself. She is unquestionably strong, yet is not above breaking down and crying. Her pain when she recalls the time Shankar spent cold winter nights in Delhi’s freezing jails is obvious. But that does not stop her from laughing uncontrollably when recalling that his sisters broke down after visiting Shankar in jail, crying: “he doesn’t even know how to fold his clothes.” Devina and Shankar both come across as financial and business intellectuals. Testimony to this is to be found in their many articles published internationally. Even more so it lies in their perspective of the cauldron of problems created by the TEHELKA connection. The clearest example, of course, is Devina’s Kafkaesque statement in one of their long conversations with me.

Devina Mehra: Now you realise that anybody out there is only there because nobody wants you inside. Any time somebody wants you inside [jail], you can be inside.

It is so much easier to identify and write about overtly totalitarian regimes. In India, as is our culture, cruelty is rarely practised openly. It is insidious, carefully orchestrated so as to appear that whatever is happening is a matter of course and the law is being impeccably observed. Much like the stereotypical venom filled mother-in-law, who spends her days in prayer, while being covertly mean when not observed by men. When the Secret Auto Destruct System (SADS) is activated, no instructions are given in writing. Often, not even over the phone. Just come and see me. The drift of the destruction is given face to face with no witnesses. It is far worse than in any openly totalitarian regime…

WHEN SHANKAR first spoke to Tarun Tejpal on the morning of March 13, 2001, his only concern was that Tarun was going to blow his financing away and forestall his forthcoming exit plans out of TEHELKA. Though he believed at that time that Tarun could have waited until Subhash Chandra invested in TEHELKA, in hindsight, knowing what the government was capable of, Tarun had no choice.

Shankar Sharma: When you’ve done a sting operation, probably your cover getting blown by these goons would mean that you would end up behind bars for spying, some s**t like that. Imagine, if this had not become public and these guys had caught hold of Mathew Samuel or somebody, they would have just thrown him away, called him an ISI spy or some Mujahideen guy smuggling...

Madhu Trehan: When was the first time that you felt the repercussions of investing in TEHELKA?

SS: That happened when the planted stories started coming in The Economic Times in Delhi. From March 15, weird tales started coming out. The reporters were Sanjeev Sharma and PR Ramesh. That sort of told us that something is brewing. Then Jana Krishnamurti [the new BJP president, who succeeded Bangaru Laxman when the latter resigned] comes out and says it’s a conspiracy. Somebody else comes out with that it’s a Congress conspiracy.

DM: BJP takes out a morcha in Bangalore saying we have to find out who is behind TEHELKA.

SS: Questions were being raised about the source of the financing of TEHELKA. We started getting more than a little scared. We held a press conference on March 16, 2001, in Mumbai. We gave all the records of our transactions. We said, go and chew over this, guys. And even if it’s me saying so, in our 10 years in business we had built a sterling reputation...

On the night [of the press conference] they flew to New York for their NASDAQ accreditation interviews… On the flight they talked about possible harassment they could expect and were quite calm about it. Shankar said, “We thought the worst the government can do is income tax raid ho sakta hai, woh sab ho sakta ha [income tax raid is possible, all that is possible], but if they don’t find anything, what are they going to do? Every business house in India lives with this thing that sooner or later these guys will land up. It’s not the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination.”

Shankar and Devina planned to stay in the United States till the first week of April, but a call from their Mumbai office jettisoned their schedule. Income tax officer AA Shankar spoke from First Global’s office phone and abruptly told them that the Income Tax Department had sealed the Sharma/Mehra home. AA Shankar curtly asked them to return immediately and open the apartment, as they had the keys. Shankar and Devina caught the next flight out and were received by a friend at 4 am. They went straight to their apartment in Colaba, but had to check into a hotel close by. SS: I remember it was a very, very weird feeling. You’re outside your home. You’re not allowed to sleep in your own home. It made me very angry. I can’t enter my own home, yaar.

DM: The irony of it was that in the previous year we had paid over Rs 20 crore in tax. Then what’s the point, if you do not even buy immunity from this kind of stuff after paying so much tax?

They called up the Income Tax Department the following morning and about a dozen officers arrived at noon to open their home. The officers then began to pull the place apart, going through their clothes, examining underwear, reading letters, rifling through cupboards. Shankar and Devina were shocked when they turned on Star News and watched a story that reported they had been arrested at the airport. Devina said,

“Of course it was planted. All kinds of wild stuff was getting printed. We were thinking, suppose somebody in the family sees it, they will panic.” Shankar added, “It’s also about your repute, yaar. Getting arrested, getting raided is not something … You get used to all this shit later when nothing fazes you any more. But then, it was like a big thing.” They called their families to tell them they were at home. Shankar then called Raj Roy at Star News and demanded, “What the hell are you running? I am sitting at home.” Roy told Shankar that this report must have come from Delhi and it was corrected in the 9 o’clock bulletin.The income tax raid continued until midnight.

SS: They ordered food. You get angrier and angrier. You feel violated. Very, very violated. Somebody comes into your home and goes through all your stuff.

DM: Of course, on an individual level, they were all saying this is all because of TEHELKA.

SS: They were saying, [what can we do, we’ve got orders from Delhi. We are forced to do it. It’s nothing personal but we have to do it. I said, okay, bastards, let them do it].

DM: Very soon they knew there was nothing to be found at home. Our office guys were laughing, what will they find in the raid? They know precisely how much jewellery she will have. [They both laughed easily.] Obviously, there was nothing. There are mostly books at home, nothing else.

SS: The only thing we are proud of is our library; that’s about it.

SHANKAR AND Devina were interrogated for nine days for up to 12 hours at a time. The income tax officer told them unofficially that the raids were in connection with the TEHELKA issue and not to uncover any undeclared income. He said that a case relating to TEHELKA had to be built up. He also said that the Finance Ministry was “looking for a Taj Mahal in Delhi, while it is actually in Agra”. SEBI officers assured them that they had nothing to worry about as they were net buyers on the day and so could not be connected to the stockmarket crash of March 2, 2001, the ostensible purpose of the investigation…

Following that, a series of summons, about 230, were sent to them to appear at the Income Tax Department office to answer questions. On some days, they were summoned to appear at 11 am at three different places…

Their life became cocooned in a dense smog of fear. For three nights a white Maruti van was parked outside their home, observing every move. Shankar and Devina laughed as they said that the first thing they did was to go out and buy books on ‘Search and Seizure’. They studied enough to be aware of an Indian citizen’s rights…

During the income tax raid at their office, they confined a 25-year-old staff member in a room for 24 hours without food and water and continually threatened him. Neeraj Khanna, who worked as a consultant for First Global, was interrogated through the night, not allowed to sleep, while various officers took turns snoozing and interrogating him. Khanna was threatened that his licence would be cancelled if he did not sign a statement against Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra. They kept other staff there for 36 hours at a stretch. When Shankar and Devina started quoting sections from the Search and Seizure Act, the officers got even more upset with them. The first questions they asked were all related to TEHELKA. When Shankar informed them that the statute says that a citizen has only to answer questions relating to assessment of income, the officers were furious. They threatened to file criminal prosecution against them under Section 179 of the Indian Penal Code. Shankar still refused to answer questions that did not fall within the purview of the income tax laws. From April 3, 2001, right up to April 17, 2001, Shankar and Devina were questioned, principally about TEHELKA. The only correspondence that was seized related to TEHELKA. No questions were asked about any other First Global investments, while in the context of their entire business, TEHELKA was probably their smallest investment. Harassment also began from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), an institution one would tend to believe is above such pettiness. RBI asked on April 9, 2001 for the Annual Performance Report (APR) of First Global’s subsidiary in London, which was not due until July 31, 2001. The RBI threatened to refer the matter to the ED if the APR was not filed. The APR was filed in time. On April 17, Shankar received a call from an income tax officer saying he should appear before them the following morning. When Shankar protested that he had organised meetings, the officer insisted that he show up. When they arrived in Deputy Director R. Laxman’s office at 11 am next morning, there was a man sitting with a note pad and pen in the room. Laxman told Shankar they were going to start recording his statement. Shankar asked him how could he start recording a statement if he hadn’t given him a summons? Laxman said they didn’t need a summons, to which Shankar replied that he had read the law and knew it was essential. This argument continued for an hour and a half and at 12.30 pm, Laxman served Shankar a perfunctory summons. Shankar then demanded to know who was the man sitting in the corner and asked that he identify himself. The man did not move and did not say a word. Laxman said he did not have to identify anybody in the room, while Shankar insisted that he would not record his statement in front of someone he did not know. In an amazing coincidence, in the 17th sentence of The Trial by Franz Kafka, the ‘hero’, Joseph K. utters virtually the same sentence in uncannily similar circumstances. Joseph K. says, “I will neither stay here or be talked to by you unless you tell me who you are.”

SS: I said, fine, we’ll sit here all day long and waste time but you are not getting anything out of me. He would not disclose the identity of that person. Finally, that guy had to leave. I think he was from the IB or something. He looked like a weird, weird, spook…

After the unidentified man left, Laxman began to record the statement.

DM: What used to happen in our normal statement also was, we’d record one page, this guy would go out, go to his boss, proudly fax the page to his boss, who would then call back and say, these are the questions you must ask. So it was actually, each page was going all the way to Delhi and back…

At 9.30 pm on April 18, Shankar got a call from the office that there was a fax without a letterhead but it appeared to be from SEBI. They left their dinner and rushed to the office. Shankar said the fax looked weird, it had no letterhead, no signature, and looked incomplete. They thought it could be a hoax. It was an order to First Global offices to stop their business pending an investigation, under Section 11B of the SEBI Act. No board has to consider and approve this decision. A single man has the licence to stop a listed company’s business. It was SEBI Chairman DR Mehta who took the decision under Section 11B of the SEBI Act that enables the SEBI chairman to debar a broker pending an investigation. This Act is supposed to be used in an emergency situation, so the SEBI chairman stretched the Act to its extreme. Shankar and Devina then dashed to SEBI’s office where a guard told them that all the officers had just left. Shankar got the home phone number of an officer they had met earlier. Shankar said, “He was really nice. He asked, ‘Order mil gayah aap ko [have you received the order]?’ I asked him, ‘Why has this been done?’” He answered, ‘If there was a reason, I would tell you.’ We asked to meet him. He said, “I feel so ashamed, I can’t meet you. It is the worse thing I have done in my career. As it is an interim order, it cannot be challenged and it is impossible to get immediate relief to run your business.”’ Shankar and Devina began to discuss the inevitability of firing 300 employees and shutting down their branches….

COINCIDENTALLY, ALL this happened when First Global was going through the process of getting their NASDAQ membership. The NASDAQ team from the US was visiting India and they questioned First Global about their own regulator shutting them down. The NASDAQ team examined all the First Global papers with a fine toothcomb and concluded that Shankar and Devina were being railroaded for no reason based on their trading. They did mention that if NASDAQ had done this kind of thing in the US, they would have been sued and taken to the cleaners. Shankar and Devina were in a panic that morning, frantically talking to lawyers, figuring out what they should do next. At 3 pm, three police sub-inspectors in civilian clothes arrived in Shankar’s cabin. They asked whether he had fought with someone in the Income Tax Department the day before. When Shankar answered in the negative, they insisted that that is what they had heard. The cops then told Shankar that an income tax officer had filed a First Information Report (FIR) against him and asked Shankar to accompany them to the Tardeo police station to record his statement. Shankar agreed to go with them as he felt the whole thing was so far-fetched that there shouldn’t be any problems. In the car, one of the cops sitting with Shankar informed him that he was being arrested and charged with threatening to kill an income tax officer. Shankar couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Devina, who had met lawyers for the first time in her professional life that morning, had no idea which criminal lawyer to call. The ‘couldonly- happen-in-India’ part of the story is: the cops did not come in their own car. The car they were being driven to the police station belonged to Shankar’s friend Jai. Near Kala Ghoda, a man on a motorcycle was run over by a water-tank truck. Jai decided to give chase and stopped the car in front of the truck and forced the driver out. The driver started running and the cops jumped out to chase him. What were Shankar and Devina doing when all this was happening? Sitting in the car and waiting for the cops to return. The cops then called officers in the Colaba police station. Constables then arrived and arrested the driver. Shankar was taken to Tardeo police station and Devina called up (following the suggestions of friends) Girish Kulkarni, a criminal lawyer, begging him to do something. The cops in the car had already told Shankar and Devina that the income tax commissioner had called the police commissioner and said that Shankar Sharma must be arrested that day under any circumstance. Shankar said that the cops were really good with him and assured them that there was no reason for him not to get night bail. They told Devina, he would have dinner with her at home that night. The police took him to the magistrate’s house to apply for night bail. The police did not oppose it but the magistrate rejected it and insisted that Shankar would have to remain in jail.

MT: What did you feel when you walked in?

SS: Scared. Bizarre. Depressing. They took me behind, up the stairs, into the lock-up area. Straggly bunch of guys there. Junkies, pimps, I don’t know. Three or four of them. The light was very dim. I didn’t go to the loo. The floor was stone, all broken. Three walls and the bars and mesh on one side. There was a window very high. You couldn’t look out. In all jails the ceilings are very, very high. The walls were dirty; quite pathetic. There was no fan. Then they just lock you in. I sat down on the floor.

MT: What were your first thoughts?

SS: I was just saying to myself, where does this thing end? Or where is this thing leading to? How did this happen? It must be some bad dream. It can’t be happening. Then I came out in about an hour’s time. They basically locked me in, as having been there, and then they took me out and took me back to the police station…

On 25 September 2001, Shankar and Devina were at Chennai airport to catch a flight to London. After checking in, they proceeded to the immigration counter. The immigration officer looked at Shankar’s passport and stopped them. He took them into the immigration office and called someone, speaking in Tamil or Telugu. He returned and asked, “Are you the same Shankar Sharma who has invested in TEHELKA?” They asked what that had to do with immigration clearance. He informed them they would have to wait until he received instructions from the Ministry of Finance in Delhi. The officer made them wait for hours and refused to explain anything to them. Finally, he had their luggage off-loaded. There were 15 officers staring at them, whispering in a language neither of them understood and pointing at their luggage. The last international flight had left and the airport was virtually empty as they sat there for four hours. With their passports impounded, not allowed to make phone calls, waiting for instructions from the capital, Shankar and Devina said it was like being in a foreign country. They were also apprehensive of drugs or anything else being planted in their suitcases. Chennai was an alien city to them. Aside from the five staff members in their Chennai office, they knew no one. They had gone to Chennai only to meet their staff. Shankar said they were both so scared that had they had been 15 years older, they would have suffered heart attacks. When Sharma said that they could not wait forever, the officer said they were not going anywhere until he received instructions from the Ministry of Finance. Sharma retorted that he had a valid passport, a valid visa, and an airline ticket so he should be travelling. The officer was impervious. At 3.30 am the senior officer arrived and informed Devina and Shankar that a look-out circular had been issued against Shankar Sharma to prevent him leaving. Such a circular is usually issued to all airports and exit points out of the country to prevent fugitives from absconding from the law. Shankar informed him that he was living in his home in Mumbai leading a normal life, so what was the necessity and high drama to look for him in airports? When Shankar asked the officer to show him the circular, the man refused. At 5 am two income tax officers arrived. They took out their notepads and told them that they were going to question them. When Shankar asked them under what section of the law they were proceeding, they replied that they were from the Income Tax Department and could ask any questions. The income tax officers began their questions by asking them their names.

SHANKAR TOLD them: “If you have to ask my name and then you search me, then there is a disconnect somewhere. You had better know my name before you search me.” When Shankar quoted from the Income Tax Act and demanded to know why he had to answer their questions, they gave up and said they would wait for their boss to arrive. Their boss showed up shortly with a search warrant that said they had information that Shankar and Devina had valuables in their luggage. Shankar asked how they had discovered this when nobody knew they were in Chennai and wondered how they had come to such a conclusion. The officers then searched the baggage, opening out every single garment, turning the bags upside down and even looked under the lining. They found nothing. They searched his laptop computer and again found nothing. At 11 am they signed the panchnama and finally decided to let them go. As they were forced to spend the night in Chennai, in front of the officers Shankar called up the hotel nearest to the airport, which happens to be Trident. They got to the hotel after being awake for over 30 hours. They brushed their teeth, showered, and prepared to sleep, planning to catch the evening flight to Mumbai.

DM: And then this phone rings.

SS: Devina picked up the phone.

DM: Haan, so, may I speak to Shankar Sharma?

SS: In Chennai nobody knows that we had just checked into Trident Hotel. That’s like 10 minutes. Not even our own guys know this.

DM: He said some Pradeep Saxena. I said, who? I had never got the name. So I said, who are you? I am an old friend of his. Sounded very shady. I said, old friend meaning what? How do you know him? No, I know him from college. I said, which college? So it went nowhere. He wanted the room number, because the hotel would not give out the room number. So then finally I put down the phone. After five minutes these 12 people land up at the door saying that we have a search warrant to search the hotel room.

SS: Same people plus some more people. I told this guy that you son of a bitch, you searched me at the airport. I made this bloody booking in front of you and I come here and I am supposed to suddenly sprout valuables in a hotel room I have never ever stayed in before in my whole life. It was…

DM: Bizarre.

The officers searched the hotel room and their luggage all over again. This time they had brought a computer expert who examined Shankar’s laptop. Shankar asked them why, since the same laptop had been examined by income tax officers in Mumbai, then again at the airport, it was necessary to repeat the exercise? Shankar said he had little in his laptop since he isn’t really into it. The expert announced there was nothing in the laptop. SS: I had said there was absolutely nothing in it. He was shocked because in their image I am like James Bond. [Laughing] I am carrying my suitcase, my cigarette lighter. Keeping a laptop and nothing is there in the bloody laptop. They said that is not possible.

I said that is how it is…

They still took the laptop…

When they arrived in Mumbai on September 26, 2001, they found an order waiting for them that accused them of unaccounted income of Rs 149.35 crore, the tax liability for which was Rs 89 crore. Shankar and Devina pointed out that the allegation was baseless and no demand had been made or notice given in that context. However, the order did impose a requirement to obtain a clearance to travel. The reason was that, according to the order, Shankar had not filed block returns, although that assessment procedure did not come into effect till October 12, 2001. The order also accused Shankar and Devina of attempting to leave Chennai on September 25, 2001 without clearance, although the order to obtain clearance was only issued on September 26, 2001...

On 17 December 2001, which happened to be a holiday for Eid, Enforcement Directorate (ED) officers arrived at their Delhi home at 6 am A sleepy Shankar opened the door to them. The officers then told him they needed to take him in for interrogation. They took him to their Lok Nayak Bhavan office. Shankar’s lawyer, Rani Jethmalani, waited outside since the ED did not allow any lawyers to be present. They proceeded to ask strange questions: “What is the stock market?” “How does it work?” Shankar was kept inside the whole day. The law says that within 24 hours of an arrest, the person has to be produced before a magistrate. In order to prolong the harassment, the ploy is to detain the person without arresting him, and then issue the arrest warrant much later. The officers had tried to send Devina home at 8.00 pm, who was waiting outside the ED office, saying that because of her, the female police officer had to stay and she had children at home. Devina was adamant and was not interested in anybody else’s sob story. They told Devina that they were not allowed to arrest anyone after sunset, so she could go home. Shankar’s arrest warrant was issued at 12.40 am. An arrest memo was handed over that said there was prima facie violation of Section 19 of FERA. This section does not require evidence that gives reasons for suspicion of wrongdoing. The ED officers then decided to hold Shankar for two days, without producing him in court. At that point, Devina lost her cool:

“I really screamed at the whole bunch of them. I said your whole hierarchy is here and not one of you has the guts to say, I will not do a wrong thing. Not one of you has the guts to say I will not put my signature on something I don’t believe in. I told them, you talk about being God-fearing and this is what you do.”

The officers looked sheepish and shifted their eyes away…

SHANKAR WAS then sent to the Tughlak Road police station lockup for the night. The Tughlak Road lock-up is outdoors with just bars. The temperature recorded in New Delhi that night, on December 17, 2001, was 10°C and the wind speed 9mph. He was not given any blanket or quilt, nor allowed any food between the time he was arrested and produced in court. The police said that Shankar was in the custody of the Enforcement Directorate and he would not be allowed food unless permission was granted by the ED. No ED official could be found. Shankar was taken to Patiala House at 3 pm Meanwhile, Devina gave some television interviews, emphasising that he had not been allowed anything to eat. Devina got in touch with lawyer Kapil Sibal and asked him for suggestions. Sibal told her it didn’t matter which lawyer she chose, Shankar would be remanded anyway….

The ED lawyers said they wanted to take Shankar to Mumbai so they could open up his home in his presence. While Shankar was in custody, Devina went underground because friends warned her that she too would be arrested. Shankar’s sister Rita took food for him. One evening when Rita arrived at Lok Nayak Bhavan, the guard informed her that Shankar had already been taken to Mumbai. She saw his clothes lying around and cried uncontrollably, just unable to leave. Rita said it was the worst night of her life. The following morning she caught the first flight to Mumbai. Shankar said there was no question of taking his clothes. They just picked him up, bundled him into a car, and took him to the airport. He arrived in Mumbai at 11 pm and was taken to the lock-up in Azad Maidan Police Station. When Rita arrived at the police station with food for Shankar, they said he would not be allowed home food because the order permitting him home food was a Delhi order and it had no validity in Mumbai… On December 27, while Shankar was in the lock-up and Devina was in hiding, the ED officers opened and raided their Mumbai home again. A couple of staff members from the First Global office were there. No lawyer was permitted. There is no bed or mattress in the lock-up. Shankar spread a few newspapers on the floor to sleep on. On December 31, the ED brought him back to Delhi and Rita tried to see Shankar that evening. They kept her waiting for three hours and then finally told her that no meeting would be allowed that day. Although Shankar had landed in Delhi at 5.00 p.m., they decided to transfer him at 10.30 pm to the Tughlak Road outdoor lock-up. Temperature recorded in New Delhi that night was 8°C and the wind speed 8mph. Devina got word that Shankar was being moved to the freezing lock-up, so she called up her brother and asked him to take some warm clothes for him. He took what he could rustle up.

WHEN DEVINA went to see him the next morning, it was so cold that the fog had a visibility of only two feet. That was the first time Devina saw Shankar since his arrest. He had high temperature and was feeling ill. Shankar was then produced before a magistrate and since the 14 days of remand were over, he was sent off to Tihar Jail. Shankar was in the general barracks for the first four nights. It is one large hall, meant to accommodate about 50 people. There were about 300 prisoners there with only one toilet. Finding space on the floor to sleep was a challenge. Yet Shankar was surprised at the affection and care he received from other inmates. They would console him when he missed Devina and assured him that there was no way they would not be reunited. They had no idea how many years he could be incarcerated…

For the first four days in jail, Shankar was in shock and depression. He had never seen anything like it. He kept his spirits up for the first 14 days of his custody but actually being thrown into a regular jail for criminals shook him.

After a couple of days, he came out of it and began to find it interesting. There was a time when prisoners were differentiated by their class. There used to be a separate section for taxpayers called AClass prisoners. Now, Shankar was with pimps, rapists, drug addicts, murderers, and terrorists. After a couple of days he began to figure out the system in jail. For a couple of hundred rupees he could take a hot bath in the deputy superintendent’s bathroom. To increase meeting time with a lawyer or a relative, Shankar would pay off the guard, otherwise the man in charge would look at his watch and shuttle Shankar away. The guard had to be paid if a legal document was handed over. Devina was in a dilemma about whether she should go to jail to meet Shankar. Various lawyers had advised her not to do so because she could be arrested.

ON THE first day, Devina’s brother and Rita went to see him. When they returned they told Devina that Shankar really wanted to see her. The meeting hall is divided by netting two feet apart. There are plastic glass sheets covering the netting. The visitor and inmate are supposed to communicate using telephones lying next to each chair, behind the plastic sheets. But often the phones don’t work. Soon Devina realised that the glass sheet is only up to waist level. Below the waist, there is nothing. When the phones are dead, everybody squats on the floor beneath the tables and shout across to each other. When they met, the first time since his arrest, they both broke down. Shankar told her that she had to get him out of there somehow. Devina was traumatised. Devina was told that the court that had heard them for 60 days had no jurisdiction over the case and therefore could not grant bail. They stated that Shankar had to be produced in a Mumbai court. Shankar’s lawyers argued for transit bail. Again, the additional solicitor general, argued against Shankar’s bail. Bail was denied and he was not released but taken in custody to Bombay (Mumbai). Sidharth Luthra, who was arguing for Shankar’s bail said, “This was a shocking game they played on the sixty-first day, when they filed a complaint in Mumbai while Shankar was still in jail in Delhi. That day Shankar broke down for the first time in court.” Luthra recalled sadly, “Their story is tragic but shockingly true. I was part of what happened in Delhi and trying to get him bail. I witnessed them breaking down. We were afraid Devina would be arrested. I remember Devina having lunch at my place and then we smuggled her out of there through a back alley.” Shankar recalled that the court dates were quite traumatic. It took the whole day. Prisoners are stuffed into over-crowded buses and the court lock-ups have no water and the toilets are stomach-churning filthy. Prisoners sit on stone slabs all day until their case is called. They are brought back to jail at around 7.30 p.m., by which time Shankar said, “You actually look forward to returning to jail. Your jail cell is your home.” Travelling in the police buses was dangerous. Even if a riot broke out in the bus, it would not stop until it reached the jail. Stabbings are not rare. Shankar figured out a safer way to come to court. He got himself shifted to the high security zone and would travel in a less crowded bus with accused terrorists. There he met all the notorious names he had till then only read about in the newspapers. Devina was with her lawyer when she heard that Shankar had been taken to the lock-up in Vikaspuri. As the jail does not open before sunrise, prisoners are taken to the Vikaspuri lock-up for the night to catch early morning trains. Devina dashed to Vikaspuri but they allowed her to meet Shankar for only five minutes. She was shattered. Shankar was then transported to Mumbai by train, in keeping with the jail budget for travel. He was handcuffed through the night, while the police constables slept. In Mumbai, Shankar was taken to Arthur Road Jail, which he said made Tihar Jail look like the Emirates Palace. He shared a tiny cell with five other prisoners, who were in for smuggling. The food was meagre and disgusting. Prisoners were given a bowl of daal for breakfast and various versions of the same thing for other meals. No outside food was allowed. Whereas in Tihar, visitors could hand over food and clothes, none of that was allowed in Arthur Road. There was an eight feet long room to meet visitors. Netting and plastic glass separated the visitors from the inmates, and there were no phones, so everyone screamed at each other. Visitors were allowed only five minutes, and this could be accomplished only after some bribing. On the 68th day of his incarceration, Shankar was produced in the Bombay sessions court. The prosecution continued to play for time…

As in everything in India, the opposite parallel always runs concurrently. For all the unscrupulous, sabh chalta hai [anything goes] lawyers working the system for their own benefit, there are others who are conscientious to the law and the Constitution. Goolam Vahanvati, was witness to the government churning out the SADS on Shankar and Devina. Vahanvati happened to be advocate general of Maharashtra in 2001 when the market crashed after the budget was announced… In February- March 2004 (when the BJP-led NDA alliance was still in power), SEBI tried to revive the cases against Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra, after dropping them earlier. Vahanvati spoke about that case when he was called upon by SEBI to represent them.

Goolam Vahanvati: Hmmm. I was briefed. I wouldn’t like to really say this. I am saying this off the record …

MT: Then don’t say anything off the record. Say what you can place on record.

GV: Okay, let’s say for some time I wasn’t appearing for SEBI in between.

MT: Did you refuse to appear?

GV: When this case came I thought it was a continuation of the earlier proceedings. I appeared on the first occasion because obviously I wanted to understand how SEBI was justifying its action and I couldn’t. In the meantime, I made a statement in the court that no action will be taken on the notices. Then I read the papers. My conscience didn’t allow me to continue. So I just said I am not available.

MT: Did you think at any time, when you obviously found that they were being railroaded and the facts that were being presented, were wrong?

GV: No, on the legal principle I thought what they were doing was all wrong.

MT: Did you at any point at that time think that it would be good to say that what you are doing is wrong?

GV: No, I can’t as a lawyer. I can’t do that. As a lawyer I can’t do that. The only option I have, Madhu, is to return the brief… The only thing is that you have to quietly walk away. This is what I did. What happened was, I just made an excuse. I said I am not available and I returned the papers. You must understand that I was holding an office as advocate general of Maharashtra. It is a responsible position. I don’t want to do anything which will appear to be a political thing. I am a non-political person. If I had started making statements and there was a different government over here, it would have looked very bad. So I did what I thought was the only correct thing to do. And incidentally I was walking home and (voice breaks with emotion) — and I feel very strongly about what’s happened to these people. Really, it tears me apart. [speaking in a choked voice] I think, it’s … the entire government goes after some people. I met them [Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra] on the street. They said, “Are you okay?” I said, “No. I returned the papers. That’s all I could do.” [Trying to control emotion and tears.]

MT: Basically you saw on the inside how they were organising the destruction of First Global?

GV: Yes. I saw it. Please give me a moment to pull myself together. [Turns his face away and tries to control his emotions for a few minutes.] It was clear to me and I was afraid it wasn’t put across the way it should have been. I consider this to be the grossest abuse of powers on entire … how the power of the state was used. You feel so helpless. You can’t do anything. [Tears in his eyes; very upset.]

MT: That must have been very discouraging for somebody in your position.

GV: I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree, I couldn’t. What else could I do? The only thing, having appeared in the case once, the only honourable thing for me to do was to say, “No I won’t appear again”. I met them then and I told them that I am not appearing, because I couldn’t bring myself around to agree to a situation where in law, I am just putting it in law. I didn’t think that I had the power to reopen the cases. So I just quietly said, “No, I am sorry”. I am saying this even though I know the matter will be sub judice today or whatever it is. I am not appearing.

MT: What do you think needs to be changed in the system to prevent this kind of thing?

GV: When the system breaks down then the people who are in charge let it. That’s the problem in our country. We have so many systemic failures.

MT: Invisible orders are given where there is no proof.

GV: There are so many other cases one finds. Footprints. It’s a question of footprints, Madhu. There are never any footprints in a file. I’ve seen that in various cases.

MT: In your memory, has anyone been harassed in the way Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra were?

GV: I hope not…

MT: Now that you are the Solicitor General, what do you see your job as in the TEHELKA Commission? Earlier, the attorney general and solicitor general took an extraordinary interest in the Commission.

GV: I won’t. I will not take it up. I will not participate in the TEHELKA Commission in any way. Again as a professional I have very strong views in the matter. As I have already explained … I will not get involved in the TEHELKA Commission in any way.

MT: You will not go there?

GV: No, I will not go there, unless I have instructions to the contrary. I will not go to justify anything of this kind. I don’t have to. I am not a political person.

MT: But do you think it is correct? Do you think the Solicitor General should be involved in such proceedings, according to the Constitution?

GV: The Solicitor General position is not a Constitutional post. Each individual has to make what he wants at the office. I would like to set my own standards. I have no right to sit in judgement over anybody, whatever constraints they had. I wouldn’t really like to know. I don’t even know what games they played. I am not interested in knowing.

MT: The previous ones played a very active role.

GV: Yes, I am not interested in knowing. Whether it’s the Gujarat case or whether it’s all the cases which I am inheriting now. I am taking my own view, regardless of what happened before. I think it is not proper and wrong on my part to try and say this was wrong, that was wrong. Because then I am trying to promote myself saying what these people have done, which I don’t think I will ever do. But TEHELKA I will never touch. I will not go to that Commission.

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 7, Dated Feb 21, 2009

Ode to the Nice Guys

2009-01-27T00:50:00.000-08:00

This rant was written for the Wharton Undergraduate Journal

This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining and bitching about what assholes guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute/beautiful/smart/funny/sexy their female friends are at the appropriate moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with laid-back attitudes, with honest concern. This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl’s every facet, from her privacy to her theology to her clothing style.

This is for the guys who escort their drunk, bewildered female friends back from parties and never take advantage once they’re at her door, for the guys who accompany girls to bars as buffers against the rest of the creepy male population, for the guys who know a girl is fishing for compliments but give them out anyway, for the guys who always play by the rules in a game where the rules favor cheaters, for the guys who are accredited as boyfriend material but somehow don’t end up being boyfriends, for all the nice guys who are overlooked, underestimated, and unappreciated, for all the nice guys who are manipulated, misled, and unjustly abandoned, this is for you.

This is for that time she left 40 urgent messages on your cell phone, and when you called her back, she spent three hours painstakingly dissecting two sentences her boyfriend said to her over dinner. And even though you thought her boyfriend was a chump and a jerk, you assured her that it was all ok and she shouldn’t worry about it. This is for that time she interrupted the best killing spree you’d ever orchestrated in GTA3 to rant about a rumor that romantically linked her and the guy she thinks is the most repulsive person in the world. And even though you thought it was immature and you had nothing against the guy, you paused the game for two hours and helped her concoct a counter-rumor to spread around the floor. This is also for that time she didn’t have a date, so after numerous vows that there was nothing “serious” between the two of you, she dragged you to a party where you knew nobody, the beer was awful, and she flirted shamelessly with you, justifying each fit of reckless teasing by announcing to everyone: “oh, but we’re just friends!” And even though you were invited purely as a symbolic warm body for her ego, you went anyways. Because you’re nice like that.

The nice guys don’t often get credit where credit is due. And perhaps more disturbing, the nice guys don’t seem to get laid as often as they should. And I wish I could logically explain this trend, but I can’t. From what I have observed on campus and what I have learned from talking to friends at other schools and in the workplace, the only conclusion I can form is that many girls are just illogical, manipulative bitches. Many of them claim they just want to date a nice guy, but when presented with such a specimen, they say irrational, confusing things such as “oh, he’s too nice to date” or “he would be a good boyfriend but he’s not for me” or “he already puts up with so much from me, I couldn’t possibly ask him out!” or the most frustrating of all: “no, it would ruin our friendship.” Yet, they continue to lament the lack of datable men in the world, and they expect their too-nice-to-date male friends to sympathize and apologize for the men that are jerks. Sorry, guys, girls like that are beyond my ability to fathom. I can’t figure out why the connection breaks down between what they say (I want a nice guy!) and what they do (I’m going to sleep with this complete ass now!). But one thing I can do, is say that the nice-guy-finishes-last phenomenon doesn’t last forever. There are definitely many girls who grow out of that train of thought and realize they should be dating the nice guys, not taking them for granted. The tricky part is finding those girls, and even trickier, finding the ones that are single.

So, until those girls are found, I propose a toast to all the nice guys. You know who you are, and I know you’re sick of hearing yourself described as ubiquitously nice. But the truth of the matter is, the world needs your patience in the department store, your holding open of doors, your party escorting services, your propensity to be a sucker for a pretty smile. For all the crazy, inane, absurd things you tolerate, for all the situations where you are the faceless, nameless hero, my accolades, my acknowledgement, and my gratitude go out to you. You do have credibility in this society, and your well deserved vindication is coming.

Fu-zu Jen, SEAS/WH, 2003

Of thank you and sorry

2009-01-26T20:16:00.000-08:00

Gratitude and apology are emotional yardsticks of human character. We must not strip them of sincerity, says Harsh Kabra

Thank you and sorry are perhaps the first words we learn. And they stay with us right through our lives as yardsticks of our civility. But when was the last time we said “thank you” or “sorry” without meaning to simply offload our burden of obligation or guilt? Indeed, these words no longer express what they are supposed to. Instead, they are used flippantly, thrown around without care, often reduced to an easy way of getting off the hook and evading meaningful action. They may well be the most used words in times of political correctness. But they are clearly the most abused as well. The emotions of gratitude and apology are vital to the chain of human reciprocity. But in stripping them of sincerity, we also seem to be closing the doors on their benefits for us.
In almost all religious traditions, gratitude is a manifestation of virtuous character. “Gratitude, as it were, is the moral memory of mankind,” wrote sociologist Georg Simmel. Scottish philosopher Thomas Brown defined gratitude as “that delightful emotion of love to him who has conferred kindness on us, the very feeling of which is itself no small part of the benefit conferred”. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “In ordinary life, we hardly realise that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.”
The quality of being thankful implies the disposition to turn goodwill into action and the inclination to return kindness. A “thank you” denotes the attitude of positive acceptance, a determination to employ the kindness or blessing imaginatively and inventively. It connotes the humility of considering oneself the recipient of undeserved merit. “He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first instalment on his debt,” observed Roman statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
Gratitude comes endowed with the power to help us create the life we want and can be therapeutic. Gratefulness emanates from looking at what someone or something has done for us. It is, therefore, about positivity of outlook, which, in turn, generates optimism and energy. Conversely, the lack of gratefulness breeds negativity and despair. In fact, proponents of positive psychology, a recent branch of psychology that studies the strengths and virtues enabling individuals and communities to thrive, consider gratitude to be a pleasant emotional state like happiness, joy, love, curiosity and hope.
The lack of gratefulness is largely because we take things for granted, brashly presuming that they are either our rightful due or are far less than what we deserve. What holds us back from being grateful is such lack of contentment and an endless craving for more. Often, we insist on waiting for the results of an action or a blessing to show up before expressing gratitude. This indicates a dearth of trust and faith, which pays us back in our own coin.
In a way, gratitude helps us realise the benefits of mindful meditation, which is all about acknowledging and feeling connected with every breath and blessing of life. Invariably, a life with gratefulness as its pivot is also a solution to the ills spawned by insatiable human yearnings.
We might wonder where the need for gratitude is if we pay for goods and services in money. Gratitude doesn’t even fetch us discounts. In fact, there is a subtle line of distinction between gratitude and ingratiation. So much so that when someone thanks us too many times, we start doubting his intention. However, as philosopher Adam Smith averred, gratitude is a vital civic virtue, essential for the healthy functioning of societies. He called gratitude a part of the moral capital required for human societies to flourish.
The act of offering and accepting an apology is as profound and healing a human interaction as that of expressing gratitude. But while the offhand “sorry about that” keeps flying around, our ego prevents us from realising its full potential. The word loses its impact when we refrain from acknowledging our offence (“Sorry for whatever I may have done”) or throw in a self-serving conditionality (“I am sorry if you were hurt”). If the purpose of an apology is only to say, “While I don’t think I was wrong, I will apologise because you say so”, it is best not to offer one, for, the worst we can do is to insult someone’s sensitivity or intelligence by such treatment.
Bestowed with the power to effect reconciliation and mend strained relationships, an apology must involve acknowledging the offense adequately, expressing genuine remorse and offering appropriate reparations, including a commitment to make changes. “A stiff apology is a second insult,” said novelist and poet G K Chesterton. “The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.”
The rewards of an apology can only be earned, not embezzled. With everybody from convicts to public figures seeking its refuge, “sorry” is not a quickfix for things gone awry, but the starting point of restoring order. The use of this word must be backed by sincerity of intention. “Never ruin an apology with an excuse,” advises American poet Kimberly Johnson. Seldom does an apology sensitise us to the responsibility of not repeating the same mistake.
A sincere apology helps both parties achieve greater harmony: While the individual making an apology is disencumbered of guilt, shame and fear of retaliation, the one who accepts an apology heals his own humiliations and grudges, rids his mind of the painful preoccupations of revenge and generates forgiveness to bring about greater peace in his own life and in the lives of others around him.
Expressing gratitude and apology without necessarily being grateful or remorseful people is an exercise in futility. Shallow expressions of gratitude and apology are not emotionally evocative and end up producing the contrary result. Often, they are so disengaged and superficial that they fail to motivate altruistic action and positivity. What matter most here is honesty, generosity, humility, commitment, courage and sacrifice, for these qualities define our true dignity.
(Harsh Kabra is an alternative therapist and a writer based in Pune)

Done In By Hype

2009-01-22T19:48:00.000-08:00

Unqualified adulation of corporate leaders is dangerous
Vikram Singh Mehta

Flashback to the early 1980s and some people may recollect the name Agha Hassan Abedi. He was the founder of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) which in those days was the fastest growing financial institution in the world. It later emerged that BCCI’s success was built around a web of deceit and fraud. Abedi’s collapse into ignominy was as rapid as his rise to fortune. Fast forward to the 1990s and there is Ken Lay. He took Enron from revenues to the tune of $4.6 billion in 1990 to $101 billion in 2000, and then to bankruptcy by 2001.
While the company’s fortunes were on the rise Lay was the darling of the corporate community. He was showered with awards and those who asked troublesome questions about the company’s performance were dismissed as awkward Cassandras. And now there is Ramalinga Raju, the man who built Satyam into India’s fourth largest IT company, and who only last year was conferred the Golden Peacock Award for corporate governance. These are just three names out of the many that at one stage bestrode their professional domains like a colossus but then collapsed into a heap of public opprobrium, legal suits and personal shame.
Why did such people who had been hailed as iconic trailblazers and whose entrepreneurial and innovative initiatives were held up as models of inspired leadership for a competitive and connected world feel compelled to wilfully defraud?
There is no simple answer but of all the possible explanations there is one that calls for a psychologist’s comment — the subtly corrosive impact of public accolades and media hype. Abedi, Lay, Raju and their like were once the cynosure of shareholders, peers, financial journalists and industry federations. Their every initiative was given broad coverage. Their companies were the envy of the corporate community. But then hubris and overconfidence stepped in. They began to believe the hype. They began to behave as if they did have the Midas touch — that they could indeed convert dross into gold.
They got so taken in by the spin and hyperbole of third-party analysts and a superficially knowledgeable media that instead of focusing on business fundamentals like managing cash flows, they expended disproportionate effort on sustaining the stories of their success. Matters had to eventually come to a head. Whether it was because of a mistimed bet or a shift in market conditions their companies started to falter. The rot set in when against this backdrop of deluded grandeur and
fear of failure they crossed the line that divides the bending of rules from the breaking of them.
How did the board of directors — in particular the independent directors — allow such a situation to come to pass? What were the external auditors doing? The answer to the latter is clear. The auditors were asleep at the wheel. They were negligent and in breach of their responsibilities. The answer to the former is, however, more complex. The independent directors must of course share the blame. But to what extent? Are there extenuating circumstances?
Independent directors are expected to have the knowledge to help the company meet its corporate objectives of profitability, growth and social responsibility and also to ensure adherence to legal and financial propriety. They are better able to do the latter than the former. This is because most directors do not have the time to get a grip of the details of a company’s operations, its business strategy, its people and its organisational complexities. They are either preoccupied with a full-time responsibility elsewhere or, if retired, with multiple boards and consultancies. Management is also all too often economical with information. The board’s papers contain no more than the bare bones of important proposals and they arrive but a few days before the meeting. This may be a prudent precaution against leaks but it does not facilitate a meaningful dialogue.
The Satyam board, for instance, could not have had a more distinguished pedigree and yet it approved a proposal that was clearly in transgression of the spirit, if not the letter, of corporate governance norms related to conflict of interest. Why did the board approve the proposal? The charitable explanation would be that the information presented was sparse and possibly misleading, and that the board’s agenda did not allow for a rigorous and structured discussion. But the more likely explanation would be that the directors did not have the detailed knowledge needed to penetrate the veil that covers operational and financial numbers. The fact is that a management bent on fraud would under such circumstances have little difficulty in pulling wool over the eyes of its directors.
The Satyam saga must not lead to the assumption that every CEO is a potential Lay or Raju, or that in the absence of a further tightening of rules there will be a run of corporate scandals. But it does offer a useful lesson. Independent directors should have a more formal involvement in the setting of corporate strategy. The creation of a subcommittee on strategy would not only play better to the strength of the directors but it would also help check the ‘strategic’ forays of ambitious, and possibly greedy, owner-managers.
The writer is chairman of a multinational corporation in India.

Acclaimed, Afflicted

2009-01-15T21:46:00.000-08:00

The life and times of former Patna DM Gautam Goswami, who passed away recently

ANAND ST DAS

When Gulabi Ghat, the popular cremation ground on the banks of the Ganga in the Bihar capital, received a distinguished guest on a frugal bier on his final journey on Tuesday, January 6, the ambience betrayed a tragic irony. The cremation of Dr Gautam Goswami, the bureaucrat who was at once hailed for his many acts of exemplary uprightness and assailed for one alleged involvement in corruption, was marked by the sheer absence of any of the usual signs of public emotion befitting his rare status as the recipient of Time magazine's Asian Hero award just four years back.

Goswami, known as much for the international award as his alleged involvement in the multi-crore Bihar Flood Relief Scam of 2004, died of aggravated pancreatic cancer following a cardiac arrest at a Patna private nursing home at age 41. Widely respected by his colleagues in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) as a bureaucrat with proven courage and creativity, he had been facing charges of embezzling Rs 17.8 crore meant for flood relief when he was the district magistrate (DM) of Patna for the second time. In a vigilance probe ordered in April 2005, he was charged with deliberately diverting this amount to a fictitious organisation run by a contractor close to a top RJD leader and was rigorously hounded by the police till his surrender in July that year.

After his release from jail and the subsequent revocation of his suspension order by the Nitish Kumar government in December last year, an ailing Goswami was very hopeful of proving his innocence in the trial of the case that had just begun. But he lost the battle against cancer and died at his prime with the unbearable, unproven taint of a scamster. Only a handful of people, mostly his colleagues in the IAS and IPS, accompanied his body along with his family members and the air along the Ganga was heavy with an unusual stillness.

The taint had left Goswami almost untouchable for most politicians, members of his bureaucratic fraternity and the public. The people of Patna, where he displayed his excellence in duty during his two stints as DM, in 1999 and 2003, were once highly respectful of him, but now they were apparently too opinionated and hesitant to escort the fallen hero's funeral procession to the Ganga's banks.

The untimely, almost lonely death of this bureaucrat with so much proven excellence in public service has now thrown open the difficult question whether Goswami had sinned more than he was sinned against. Many of his colleagues in the IAS believe the man, with his unflinching zeal for service and habit of securing a solution to every problem regardless of the red tapes, was very unlikely to have succumbed to the lure of money.

"It was his growing popularity among the people and the media that made an influential section of Bihar's IAS officials too jealous of

The jinx with Goswami's 1991 batch of IAS

Gautam Goswami's death now makes many in the IAS wonder if the 1991 batch of the service was indeed jinxed. In the past only 17 years, Goswami is the fifth officer of the batch to have died. All these deaths of the young administrative officers have the uncanny similarity of having been rather freak incidents.

While Bala Vikram, a Punjab-cadre IAS officer of the 1991 batch, died all of a sudden minutes after he had gaily joined his wife after a tennis match, his batch-mate Veer Abhimanyu Raghav of the Sikkim cadre, who had secured the 18th all-India rank in the UPSC examination, died during a train accident by falling from his upper berth. He was the only passenger in his coach to die. A road accident claimed the life of Manipur-cadre IAS officer of the same batch, Viraj Verma, who hailed from Bihar. But it all started with the bizarre death of a young Rajasthani man who had secured the fourth rank in the UPSC examinations of 1991. He was murdered a day after the examination's results were announced.

"It now certainly looks like my 1991 batch of IAS is jinxed. Gautam's sudden demise at just 41 years of age now makes me believe even more so," said a visibly depressed Pratyay Amrit, chairman of the Bihar State Bridge Construction Corporation, who is also of the 1991 batch of the IAS.

him and angered quite a few politicians. He was clearly framed in the scam as a consequence," said a close relative of Goswami's to TEHELKA shortly before the fallen bureaucrat's cremation. A senior IAS colleague of Goswami's said with request for anonymity: "When, in the desperate, anxiety-ridden times of managing a huge relief operation in 2004, he was misled by his subordinates to divert a part of the relief money to a fake firm, he was merely made to conform to Bihar's pervasive culture of corruption at that time. But what he did for saving the flood-affected people's lives would remain a milestone in public service".

Goswami, a medical doctor by training before joining the IAS – he acquired his MD degree after receiving a gold medal for topping the MBBS exam from Benaras Hindu University (BHU) – had displayed his undiminished zeal for public service when he was released on bail in November 2006 after spending 18 months in jail. He had declared his wish to devote himself fulltime in the absolutely free treatment of AIDS patients. "His illness deteriorated mostly due to his feeling of demoralisation. The Nitish government revoked his suspension on December 2008. He could have lived longer if the government had done it earlier," said his lawyer Tuhin Shankar.

His widow, Dr Anuradha Goswami, was too inconsolable to speak, but his grieving father, Dr Utpalendu Goswami, suggested that his son was put on a political and social trial long before the real trial in a court could begin. A sobbing Utpalendu Goswami told TEHELKA: "He himself knew, and all of us in the family and his close friends in the bureaucracy knew, that he was innocent. He was waiting for the time to prove it. But the entire atmosphere of stigma and animosity created around him caused him constant mental torture all these years and this worsened his sickness. The hero of Time died before his time".

Goswami's continuous rise in fame and his steep moral and physical fall bear ironies and drama quite befitting the life of a Shakespearean tragic hero. It was the management of flood relief operations in 2004, where his earnestness and skills earned him the Time magazine award. Yet it was the allegations of financial fraudulence in the same flood relief operations the same year that led to Goswami's arrest and his imprisonment for 17 months before he was granted get bail. It was Aravind Adiga, the then India correspondent of Time magazine, who had written a glowing piece extolling Goswami's work. Goswami, who received the honour in Seoul, soon got embroiled in allegations of corruption and got sick rapidly while Adiga rose to turn a novelist and win the Booker Prize for his first novel, The White Tiger, based on a poor man from Bihar.

Goswami's 17 years in the IAS – he was an all-India rank-holder in the civil services main examinations of 1991 – were marked by his nearly meteoric rise in popularity. According to people who knew him from close quarters, it was this childlike sensitivity, creativity and sincerity about his duties as an officer that set him apart from most others in the civil services in Bihar. The Time magazine honour in 2004, where he shared space with such icons as Bollywood heartthrob Shahrukh Khan and musician Anouska Shankar, was the icing on the cake of recognition Goswami had attracted for his achievements as a bureaucrat.

He had a persistent proclivity for treating the sick even when he was posted in administrative jobs. In Rosera, in Bihar's Samastipur district, where he got his first posting as the SDO after joining the IAS, he would devote a day every week treating patients free. "That was something amazing to come from an IAS officer and very fortunate for the poor. Goswami had that tenderness of heart, which he retained throughout," said Subhomoorthy, a Rosera-based social activist and associate of Jaiprakash Narayan, to TEHELKA.

The bureaucrat, born in Bihar's Rohtas district and educated in Ranchi and Benaras, shot to limelight and became a darling of the media first in 1999, when the general elections were conducted peacefully in trouble-prone Patna district under his close observation as the DM. Then, during the campaigning in April 2004 for the general elections, he became the darling of the masses and the idol for many aspirants of the IAS for his courage to physically stop the then Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani from continuing with his campaign speech to a rally at Gandhi Maidan in Patna beyond the stipulated time limit of 10 pm. "Mr Advani, your time is up," is what Goswami reportedly told Advani after climbing onto the podium and putting his hand on the microphone.

But, according to Goswami's family sources, he was too frustrated with the political interferences in a bureaucrat's work in Bihar and therefore decided to quit the IAS to join the Sahara India Pariwar as a vice president. He joined the company while his resignation was yet to be accepted by the state government, but soon his name cropped up in the relief scam along with RJD MP and Railway Minister Lalu Prasad's brother-in-law Sadhu Yadav and Santosh Jha, a contractor close to Sadhu. With a non-bailable warrant and a cash award of Rs 1lakh for his arrest chasing him and his new employer sacking him, he spent over a month on the run. When an anticipatory bail proved elusive, he surrendered in the vigilance court in July 2005 in his usual dramatic style, putting on a turban and sporting a lavish moustache to hide his identity and reaching the court in a Hero Honda motorcycle.

Goswami's doctor wife would now rear her two children – son Vishal, 11, and daughter Bipasha, 8 – without the love of a father but, more importantly, with the ever palpable air of the kids having had a father who became spectacularly famous but died incredibly infamous. Maybe the trial in the flood relief scam would one day exonerate him of the charges. But that day Goswami would not be there to say what he was saying was right.

Gaza:Worse than a crime

2009-01-13T21:19:00.000-08:00

By GWYNNE DYER
"Israel is not going to show restraint," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the Washington Post on Jan. 10, after the United States abstained on Friday's U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. All last week the speculation grew that Washington was going to defy its Israeli ally for once and vote for the resolution, but literally as the delegates sat down in the Council chamber the phone call came from U.S. President George W. Bush ordering Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to abstain.

So nothing will stop Israel from hammering the Gaza Strip as hard as it likes — and the situation is unlikely to change with the inauguration of Barack Obama later this month, because he has no intention of squandering his abundant but finite political capital on a quixotic attempt to bring peace to the Middle East. He will spend it instead on goals that have some chance of being achieved, and he will be right to do so.

Yet the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip will almost certainly end within the next two weeks. International revulsion at the carnage among Palestinian civilians will play a certain role. Any big loss of life among Israeli soldiers, or the capture of even one or two soldiers, would turn Israeli public opinion against the war overnight. And the clincher is that the Israeli election is on Feb. 10.

The war is being fought now largely to shift the opinion polls in favor of the ruling parties before the election. However, it must be over, and somehow look like a success, before Israelis actually vote. Good luck.

The war against Hamas in Gaza looks more and more like the three-week Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, which could hardly be called a success. It will last about as long. It will kill about as many Arabs, probably a thousand or so. And it will end with Hamas, like Hezbollah, still able to fire rockets at Israel.

This means that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader who was already leading in the opinion polls, is almost certain to form the next Israeli government. He is the ultimate rejectionist, the man who successfully sabotaged the Oslo Accords and effectively killed the "peace process" during his last term as prime minister in 1996-99. He rejects the very idea of a "two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Netanyahu is a glib ideologue who does not understand strategy and sees no reason for Israel to seek peace with its neighbors if the price is giving the Palestinians back their pre-1967 borders. In the long run, therefore, the war is more of a disaster for the Israelis than it is for the Palestinians.

Israel currently enjoys three huge strategic advantages. It has the strongest army in the region by far, backed by the only modern economy and the only technologically competent population. It has an absolute monopoly on nuclear weapons within the region. And it has the unstinting, unquestioning support of the world's only superpower. But none of these advantages is forever, and Israel needs to make peace with its neighbors while it still possesses them.

The existing Arab regimes are willing to make peace with Israel on the basis of the 1967 borders, mainly because they fear the further radicalization of their own populations, and perhaps even violent revolution, if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to fester.

But the Arabs as a whole have all the time in the world: Sooner or later the wheel will turn and Israel will become vulnerable. If it has not integrated into the region by then, it will be in mortal peril.

It is pointless to make moral judgments about this war, and foolish to use the body count as an indicator of virtue or blame. About 70 Palestinians have been killed for every Israeli who has died during the current Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, but that does not mean that Israelis are in the wrong.

"The only reason there are more victims in Gaza than in Sderot is because Hamas is not good at shooting rockets," Zalli Jaffe, an Israeli civilian living in Jerusalem, told a BBC reporter last week. "To conclude that Israel is at fault would be like saying the U.S. was wrong in World War II because many more Germans died than did Americans."

That is quite true: Hamas would do exactly the same to Israelis if it could. The prospect of a 70-to-one kill ratio makes Israel much readier to use military force than if it had to sacrifice one Israeli life for every Palestinian it killed, but the kill ratio tells us nothing about either the morality or the utility of the war.

It is the usefulness of this war, not its morality, that Israel should be questioning. Unless Israel reoccupies the Gaza Strip permanently — which nobody wants to do, because it would mean a constant stream of Israeli military casualties — then once the army pulls back Hamas will re-emerge, stronger than ever. The Arab regimes that might make peace with Israel will be further undermined, and Israel gets Netanyahu as prime minister.

As was said after the execution of the Duc d'Enghien on Napoleon's orders, the Gaza operation "is worse than a crime. It is a mistake."

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist.

Will national anti-terror outfit be just another agency?

2009-01-12T20:21:00.000-08:00

What India Needs Is A Unit That Converges All-Source Intel Collection & Its Dissemination
AJIT DOVAL

Establishing a national counter terrorism agency is a positive idea whose time had come quite some time back but got registered only when it came riding on the tragedy of Mumbai. It was heartening that the lawmakers seized the opportunity to constitute a national agency to counter terrorism. However, the way in which it is being conceived and designed, it may belie the high expectations.
Demand for an effective National Counter Terrorism Agency emanated from national dismay that when reasonably good intelligence was available, when the country had instrumentalities to counter terrorists, when there was a coordination mechanism in place, why did 26/11 happen? When it did, why was the response so flat-footed?
It required no genius to discover that the fault lay in the system itself where multiplicity of agencies prevented any one agency to have the total picture; disabling any single agency or individual to be in total command to act decisively and leaving coordination to degenerate into a bureaucratic ritual. It was a case where every agency or individual had all the material to defend itself, but collectively little to defend the nation. The system was designed to fail as those with knowledge had no legal empowerment or fire power, while those with fire power were not in the knowledge loop and those with legal empowerment were resource constrained. On top of this, there was multiplicity of agencies even in each category without standardized operating procedures, governing rules and doctrines, training and equipment, and commonly shared objectives and priorities. This had to be corrected divergence substituted by convergence, turf wars replaced by synergy and concerted action taking over confusion. For this, they thought a unified national agency was the answer.
However, the envisaged NIA does not bring us anywhere closer to this objective. On the contrary, it adds one more platform with no structural integration or operational unification. As a post-event investigation agency, it might marginally increase conviction rates or get enhanced punishment to a few jihadis who, working at suicidal level of motivation, may only find it amusing.
Had this agency existed before the Mumbai carnage, none of the shortcomings that came to light would have been minimized. It would not have ensured improved intelligence integration or action-oriented dissemination, better preventive response. There would have been one more player playing it. They might be interrogating Ajmal Kasab little better but the real brains would have still remained beyond their reach. Legal actions are important but, at the end of the day, war against terror would neither be won nor lost in the court of law.
What India needed was a counter-terrorism outfit that converges all-source intelligence collection and its dissemination, real time and decisive physical response to meet the threat both in defensive and offensive-defense modes and efficient investigations to punish the wrong doers. And, all this under a common umbrella with unambiguous responsibility, authority and accountability.
While the intelligence function should have aimed at collection, integration of inputs and their refinement to operational grade intelligence, the action component should have focused on terrorist specific tactics, field craft, equipment and skills for speed, surprise and dominance. Investigators as part of the composite team should have been selected for their special skills and attitude, including knowledge of terrorist groups, modus operandi, collaborative linkages, channels of procuring funds and weapons.
To be effective, the new outfit should develop a secure Enetwork connecting the apex agency to all district headquarters and police stations. It should be linked to the agency’s data mining centre where terrorist information from police station to the highest in the agency is inputed according to availability and retrieved according to needs; with adequate safety features like firewalls. The agency should have stateof-the-art infrastructure to collect technical and cyber intelligence, break codes, analyze terror documents, carry out surveillance and jam terrorist communications. Specialized counter-terrorist force, like the NSG, should be brought under the control of the agency for undertaking intelligence-driven operations. Commandos should be constantly updated on emerging trends, techniques, weapons and modus operandi of terrorists. They are not robots and their mental tuning is a must for optimal results.
The ideal arrangement would be to have a director general, counter terrorism, who is ex-officio special director of the Intelligence Bureau with all counter-terrorist work, multi agency centre and joint task force on intelligence centralized under his control. Being part of the IB, the outfit will overnight acquire communication linkage, intelligence reach, logistic and technical support, connectivity with local police and administration not only in every district but remotest border areas. This will bring the whole country under a unified counter terrorist grid with no extra cost or time involved.Due to various sensitivities involved, no intelligence agency can transfer its entire data to a non-intelligence agency. If the director general of counter terrorism is made part of the IB, he can have total access to the intelligence data, will also be able to leverage vast technical capabilities of national intelligence agencies both for intelligence and to keep the counter-terrorist force at its technical best.
The director general should enjoy total autonomy and should be the only person empowered to undertake counter terrorist actions. To enable him to control, train, equip and motivate men for special counterterrorist actions, the NSG should be brought under his command. The DG should also be empowered to maintain liaison with friendly security and counter-terrorist agencies, as when handled by those who know little about terrorism, the loss in content and time is unaffordable. This will also help the DG to keep abreast of latest techniques, technologies, equipment and weapons that have proved effective against terrorists, and take initiatives to keep his armed wing best trained and equipped. Fourth generation warfare needs people who can change fast, think fast and act fast in this battle. It’s not the bravest but the smartest that takes the trophy.
None of the steps suggested encroaches on the power of states. It also does not require any amendments to laws and can be achieved within executive powers of the government.
With what is happening in Pakistan, Afghanistan and within our country, we may be in for much greater shocks than the Mumbai strike and we are not prepared for it. We think the latest was the last but the worst is probably yet to come. Today, there is mood for change in the nation but it may have a short shelf life. The consensus on response to terrorism is an opportunity to be seized.

Satyam's lie

2009-01-08T19:51:00.001-08:00

Companies ride on market perception and cooking the books can burnish that perception to breathtaking highs. Until someone cries foul. Enron was once billed America’s most innovative company. Then a massive accounting fraud, exposed in 2001, blew up on the US energy giant. In 2009, the script has been revisited in India. Boasting Fortune 500 firms among its clients, Satyam Computers won a top award for corporate governance in 2002 and 2008. Its fall began with chairman B Ramalinga Raju’s aborted buyout of two Maytas firms founded by his sons. Angry shareholders swiftly punished this brazen display of nepotism in India’s fourth largest IT firm. The sequel to Maytas is more sordid. Confessing to a Rs 7,136 crore fraud, Raju said Satyam’s books had been cooked for years to inflate profit and revenue figures. In September 2008, they showed a non-existent cash and bank balance of Rs 5,040 crore and hundreds of crores of fictitious accrued interest and debtors’ position. Liabilities worth Rs 1,230 crore were kept hidden.
These disclosures had a punishing aftermath. The software giant’s stocks crashed 91 per cent, the Sensex tumbled and the rupee fell. The New York Stock Exchange put a trading bar on the firm. Satyam’s clients are exiting, shareholder wealth has been wiped out and 53,000 employees are staring down the precipice. Two class action suits have been filed in the US against the company. All of this couldn’t have come at a worse time. India has been hit by global economic turmoil. The Mumbai terror strike has raised its risk profile for tourists and business. And now there’s the clear and present danger of domestic and overseas investors seeing India as a place where corporate governance is suspect. The resignation of Satyam’s self-confessed figure-fudger is, therefore, small consolation. The credibility of the entire Indian market is at stake. Going by global reactions, mud sticking on Satyam has tainted the corporate big league by association, at least for now. The IT-BPO sector, in particular, is under a cloud.
Admittedly, the world has had its share of corporate con-jobs. Enron apart, WorldCom, Xerox and Tyco were only some headline-grabbers. A 2007 study on fraud’s impact on international business by Kroll, the world’s leading risk consulting company, found that four of five global firms faced in-house malpractice and increased misuse of the very instruments deployed for overseas expansion. Kroll Global Fraud Report 2008 warned of “supply chain” shenanigans as companies globalised, outsourced and reworked business processes. But we can’t relativise Satyam’s criminal breach of trust by placing it in a global context. Corporate credibility is a foundational must for any emerging market economy pursuing high growth.
When fictitious cash balances get certified, it shows the need for investigators to go beyond the letter of the corporate conduct rule book. The Satyam scam isn’t about one individual’s machinations, though Raju deserves exemplary punishment. A fraud of this scale mandates collective responsibility. It is unlikely Satyam can redeem itself under the current management. Any probe must scan the role of the board of directors and of the Pricewaterhouse auditors who gave Satyam clean bills of financial and moral health whether through negligence or connivance. Recall that the A-grade accounting firm Arthur Andersen shared Enron’s disgrace. In Satyam’s case too, institutional checks and balances failed. To restore investor confidence, damage control must involve rapid-fire action against all involved.
A supporting cast enabled Raju’s rise to prominence. His closeness to powerful Andhra Pradesh politicians helped him gain legitimacy in business circles and even among policymakers. Former chief minister Chandrababu Naidu paraded Raju as the poster boy of Hyderabad’s IT business before visiting state heads including Bill Clinton. Naidu’s successor, Y Rajasekhara Reddy, backed Raju even after Satyam’s Maytas foray generated controversy. Did these leaders support Satyam for parochial reasons or is there more to it? They owe an explanation to citizens.
Financial mismanagement at Satyam reportedly began after its promoters began diverting funds from IT to real estate in Hyderabad. In July 2008, Maytas won the bid to construct the Hyderabad metro rail. The AP government backed it even after E Sreedharan of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), consultant to the Hyderabad metro, described the project as a real estate deal. It threatened to sue DMRC, which then walked out of the consultancy. In light of Raju’s confession, the project needs revisiting. The Satyam scam suggests a possible nexus between the political class and business groups, especially in land-related matters. Promise of high returns may have lured Satyam to shift from its core competence in IT to land deals. But it is unlikely Raju was the sole beneficiary. A detailed investigation into Maytas’s activities is necessary to expose the web of deceit that Satyam promoters and their political patrons spun around unsuspecting shareholders and clients.
When the full story comes to light, the lessons drawn must be learnt by corporate India. There is a general perception that government and the public sector have a structural tendency towards rent-seeking and venality. After Satyam, it appears the private sector may be tarred with the same brush. That can have a devastating impact on India’s future. India Inc needs to search its soul.

Satyam fiasco has tarnished the image of corporate India

2009-01-08T19:48:00.000-08:00

Omkar Goswami

For the last 48 hours, everything about an inappropriately named company called Satyam involves incredulity, indignation and schadenfreude. Incredulity by all: How could the promoter B Ramalinga Raju cook the books by a staggering Rs 7,000 crore without the management and the statutory auditors being in the know? Indignation by corporate India and the press: the former for Satyam having tarnished its name, and the latter against those who were sleeping on the bridge. And schadenfreude (malicious enjoyment of another’s misfortune) is from the press: glee at a fat cat drowning, a big-four accounting firm running for cover, and exalted independent directors caught en flagrante.
I empathise with all three emotions, though the schadenfreude is a bit over the top. Satyam’s fudging of accounts is not something to be gleeful about. It has tarnished the image of corporate India at an especially difficult time. Also, none can claim, “I told you so”. Until Satyam tried to purchase Maytas, nobody criticised the performance and corporate governance of the company. Raju was a voice of the new India. Let’s humbly admit that we were all duped by the man — hugely and comprehensively so.
The size of Raju’s scam is humongous. Focusing on the major swindle is enough to understand what he was trying to do. That has to do with Satyam’s cash and bank balance which was inflated by Rs 5,040 crore as on September 30, 2008. In Satyam’s September 30 balance sheet, the cash and bank balance was Rs 5,361 crore. Subtract the Rs 5,040 crore fudge, and you get just Rs 321 crore. Recall that Satyam had proposed to buy Maytas for $1.6 billion (or Rs 7,700 crore), financed out of its cash. But it didn’t have the money. So, what was the play? Get the Maytas assets into Satyam, delay paying cash to Maytas and, in the meanwhile, shore up Satyam’s balance sheet with valuable infrastructure assets. In Raju’s pathetic confession, “The aborted Maytas acquisition deal was the last attempt to fill the fictitious assets with real ones.”
The game was up once the institutional investors thumbed down the acquisition. Raju desperately needed suitors to purchase Satyam to fill the gap between real and fictitious money which had “attained unmanageable proportions”. It appointed DSP Merrill Lynch to do match-making. And Merrill’s team found these discrepancies, forcing Raju to confess.
Raju couldn’t have rigged the books on his own. You can’t overstate cash and bank balance by Rs 5,040 crore, or quarterly revenues by Rs 588 crore without participation of the CFO and, at the very least, negligence of the CEO. If you were the CEO of a company whose revenues
shot up by an unanticipated Rs 588 crore, wouldn’t you ask, “Where did that come from?” And if you didn’t, what should one infer?
The most amazing aspect of the case is PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the dog that didn’t bark. Like Andersen in Enron, PwC failed as a statutory auditor whose task is to certify that the accounts are ‘true and fair’. The cash and bank balance scam is damning. From the articleship days, auditors swear by the need to verify a company’s cash and bank balance. How could this be inflated by Rs 5,040 crore leaving PwC clueless? When DSP Merrill Lynch figured it out in a trice? Clearly, either the CFO fabricated documents on banks’ letterheads, or rigged the company’s enterprise reporting software, or PwC didn’t dig deep enough. PwC’s apparent errors in omission are too glaring to be countenanced.
Here’s my initial take on the post-debacle scenario. First, Satyam as we know it is history. It will be well-nigh impossible for Ram Mynampati, who has taken over, to steer the company to a safe harbour. And it will be a while before anyone shows an active interest in buying a company riddled with falsified accounts. That’s a shame for which Raju is entirely to blame. His hubris made him the terrible destroyer of all that he created and grew. To think of the fate of 53,000 lost souls who struggled day and night for a company whose promoter cheated them so outrageously brings rage and tears in equal measure.
Second, PwC’s goose is cooked. US shareholders will slam class action suits, and the Securities and Exchange Commission will pitch in. If it is very lucky, PwC will be severely fined, lose many clients, have its Satyam audit partners punished, and become a shadow of its former self. Otherwise, it may fold like Andersen. Not by actions in India, but in the US.
Third, like the post-Enron era, this could prompt a rash of new directives and rules from the SEBI and the ministry of company affairs (MCA). I hope not. India’s problem is not of inadequate laws; it is of grossly inadequate enforcement. Let’s not have more over-regulation and underenforcement. Fourth, one hopes that SEBI and the MCA will collaborate to take swift action and confer exemplary punishment on the guilty. India needs to show the world that it can punish the high and mighty, and do so quickly.
Finally, while one recognises that independent external directors can’t do much if the internal or statutory auditors don’t blow the whistle, the Satyam episode is a wake-up call to all of us who serve on boards. Independent directors must focus more on their companies — be more diligent, deeply question proposals, speak their mind and take outside counsel. Understand the management’s perspective, by all means. But never forget that you are a fiduciary of the shareholders.

Things done right in 2008

2008-12-31T23:08:00.000-08:00

Year 2008 was rough. It was a year where past excesses and lack of foresight led to perhaps the greatest recession in history; a year of reorganisation of world powers; and a year that ended in terrorist attacks on India that called into question the effectiveness and adequacy of our government, media, police and intelligence forces. The question stands--did we do anything right?

A fiscal cushion

The lack of foresight across the board--among economics experts down to the common man—is perhaps one of the most startling aspects of the global financial crisis. But taking a closer look at the Indian economy and the fiscal policies of the past year, it seems not everything was done in error or without prescience.

Ajit Ranade, Chief Economist with the Aditya Birla group, says the expansionary budget unveiled by then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in February was a measure that helped stave off some of the crisis.

When Chidambaram announced the budget, it was called ‘populist’ and the BJP said it was a ‘recipe for long term economic disaster’. The budget increased expenditure targets on rural development and education, cancelled loans made to farmers, and offered tax relief to low-income groups.

But Ranade says the criticisms were off-target. “The expansionary fiscal spending had impact on rural purchasing power. No one anticipated what was coming, but in hindsight this looks like it helped us with the slowdown,” he says.

Chidambaram’s budget increased banks’ target loan disbursals to the agricultural sector by Rs. 2.8 trillion ($70.52 billion), and Rs. 160 billion were allocated for employment in rural areas. The health sector allowance increased by 15 percent to Rs. 165.34 billion.

The budget also raised taxes on short-term investments and brought the mutual fund industry under the tax service net. At the time, this hurt market sentiment.

However, looking back, the budget provided a fiscal cushion, says Ranade. “While there was a slowdown in global markets, domestic markets kept up some momentum. We have seen our second quarter GDP show 7.6 percent growth, which was higher than expected. The budget might have mitigated some of the effects and allowed for this growth.”

The realty bubble predicted

While much of the world seems caught by surprise by the popping of the real estate bubble, Ranade says the monetary policy and stance of the RBI proved to be in the right direction in terms of the real estate market.

In December 2007, RBI Deputy Governor, Rakesh Mohan, warned against the real estate bubble in his address at Yale University on India’s financial sector reforms. Mohan said that the elevated realty prices along with non-transparency in the real estate sector might lead to an “asset bubble” and pose risks to the banking system.

He also said that the backlog in housing, growing income, and more urbanisation meant a continued demand for housing and pressure on real estate prices over the next year. “Such developments can easily generate bubbles in the real estate market because of problems in the elasticity of supply and information asymmetries,” he warned.

Mohan didn’t just talk; the RBI did something about it.

Ranade says that the RBI started tightening their policies much earlier than other parts of the world. “The RBI warned against the real estate bubble two years by starting to increase the risk rate on commercial real estate loans. They also put a cap on excessive lending to real estate.”

The policies of the RBI may have also prevented the subprime crisis in India, says Ranade, which is a minimal category in this country compared to the US.

Shift towards a multi-polar world

At a time when the global community is critical of US’ excesses in Wall Street and there is talk of the dollar ceasing to be the dominant world currency, a radical reorganising of world power seems more likely.

This unexpected result of the meltdown may be something else 2008 did right. The G-20 summit in Washington in November to discuss the global financial crisis put India and China centre stage and gave the BRIC countries more of a say as the world powers recognised the need for a global coordinated response to the crisis. The multi-polar world America has dreaded since the end of the Cold War (Vice President Dick Cheney and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz have repeatedly sworn to prevent it at all costs) seems to be in the not-too-distant future.

The United States National Intelligence Community survey of the world of 2025 in its report, “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World”, confirms this. The survey found that the US was losing dominance, and China and India were lining up to fill its shoes.

In addition to the G-20 summit and other achievements such as the nuclear deal, India has proved itself in 2008 by breaking records. In April India sent 10 satellites into orbit in a single launch, setting the new world record. And at the Olympics in Beijing it received its first gold medal.

With the collapse of established financial systems and the approaching departure of President Bush, records may not be India’s primary expression of clout. As the inflexibility and egotism of larger countries like the US tempers, India’s global role may continue to expand rapidly as it did at the G-20.

Yes, we can

The election of Barack Obama may be crucial to the way world powers reorganise themselves. Countries the world over are not unhappy about it. In an Economist magazine survey of an imaginary global electoral ballot, Obama got the world vote 9115 to 203.

While President Bush may have been more pro-India than any president in US history, most notably with the passage of the nuclear deal and his policies on outsourcing, Obama may prove just as favourable. While there were initial concerns about his views on outsourcing and his promise to intervene in Jammu and Kashmir, he has since toned down those pledges.

Shanthie Mariet D’Souza, Associate Fellow at the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, acknowledges that there have been problem areas, but says that with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, there will be better understanding of these issues.

D’Souza also thinks there will not be a drastic change from the previous administration. “We feel that the new Obama administration will understand the strategic issue in South Asia well because Obama is interested in balance of power. He talks of change from a unilateral policy to a multilateral one, including the stand on Iran and negotiation in Afghanistan, and we think he will work to achieve that.”

Obama’s foreign policy advisor, Wendy Sherman, has stressed the future president’s plans for an overhaul in the interface between the US and the rest of the world. “He is going to engage with the world…with smart diplomacy, strong alliances and really bring America’s moral authority back into the world,” she says.

D’Souza says that despite Bush’s pro-India policies, the Obama administration is a welcome change because of a badly-managed Bush administration. “Because Obama is open to different opinions, with intellectual curiosity to absorb different things, we think he can make real change. It’s both his team and vision he has.”

2009 will show whether Obama’s policies will be beneficial to India, and whether his pledges are bonafide. But judging the overwhelming global consensus in his favour, Obama’s victory may prove to be something America did right this year.

A mature reaction to cross-border terror

More than the election of a new American president, or the reports from intelligence agencies indicating a reorganization of global power, the recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai have shaken up the world. The attacks, which battered Indian nationals and Western visitors, have forced the West to take more than a cursory look at India.

Visits by Condoleeza Rice, and officials from the CIA, FBI and NYPD in response to the attacks illustrate the US’ understanding that a closer relationship with Pakistan than India may need to change.

But what has the Indian government done right in light of these attacks? Ashok K. Behuria, Research Fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, says the policy-makers have reacted in the best way they could.

While many Mumbaikars are angry about the government’s inaction thus far, Behuria says they have been right in advocating restraint. “The government is not doing nothing. They are discussing a lot of options right now: more coordination among security forces, and the possibility of a homeland security agency. Paranoia has set in, but the people at the policy making level have their heads in the right place.”

Devyani Srivastava, Research Officer at the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), agrees. “The diplomatic reaction of the government displays a sort of maturity. They have been able to separate the terrorism issue with other aspects of the relationship of Pakistan and India, which is difficult.”

Many would take issue with this notion, but the next few weeks will prove if the government can present a coherent, effective response to the situation.

The nuclear deal: New-found power

However the policy-makers react to the attacks, one thing they have already achieved in 2008 is the passage of the US-India nuclear deal.

The bilateral agreement for nuclear cooperation between the two countries, exchanging the separation of civil and nuclear facilities in India for full civil nuclear cooperation from the US, was a landmark accord for India after years of being ostracized for not having signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The waiver by the Nuclear Supplier’s Group that followed, allowing India to access civilian nuclear technology, was crucial.

Dr. S. Chandrasekharan, Director of the South Asia Analysis Group, says, “We had hardly done 3,000 megawatts and now by 2020 we may achieve the 20,000 megawatts goal. As our economy grows at 8 or 9 percent, this added power is essential. We had the money and expertise, all we needed was the power from countries willing to give it to us, and now we have it.”

The benefits of the deal extend to newly shared facilities of commercial aircraft manufacture, ship building, factories for power plants, steel making plants, mining and drilling hardware, petroleum and petrochemical plant building facilities. The deal also means availability of the latest technology for nuclear power generation, as well as offshoot benefits for markets which are related to nuclear commerce. New business worth $100 billion for companies at home and abroad over the next decade has been estimated as a result of the deal.

Srivastava of the IPCS says the geopolitical effects of the deal have also been big. She cites the greatest benefit to be the confidence the deal generated about Indian diplomacy and its ability for negotiation.

Chandrasekharan says India has joined the international mainstream as a result of the deal. Experts say India will be less isolated, with a new voice in forums like the UN, WTO, and world monetary lending institutions. India may become a member of G-8. And there will be more frequent inter-government exchanges on matters of mutual interest.

But Chandrasekharan warns against being too optimistic. “It’s too early to say how this will change things. Nuclear power doesn’t come in a day. Of course the general economy will improve because it will sustain economic development. Now we are getting some of the energy needed but this doesn’t completely fill the need. We have to look into other sources of energy.”

The actions of the finance minister and the RBI, the G-20 summit and the election of a new American president, the response of the Indian government to terrorist attacks and the passage of an agreement for nuclear power—2008 may not have been all pandemonium and crisis. We may have done some things right, as a country, and as a world. But like the nuclear deal, it may be too early to tell.

(Elizabeth Flock is an associate reporter with the new business magazine to be launched by Network 18 in association with Forbes, USA. )

FWD: FWD: FWD: The e-war on terror

2008-12-14T16:28:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai, many citizens are feeling the need for community, and to do something. The December 3 rally at the Gateway was rife with slogans against politicians and calls for India to attack its enemies.
“Do we really believe that terrorist attacks can be prevented by citizens’ actions?’’ asks Shailesh Gandhi, who went from being a Mumbaibased RTI (right to information) activist to Central Information Commissioner in Delhi. Gandhi is convinced there’s no quick solution and that a citizen’s role is to improve the quality of governance. He says, “Every citizen has a stake in society. Normally we don’t recognise it, except for immediate concerns at maybe neighbourhood level, if that. We don’t bother whom the nation belongs to, except when there’s a cricket match.’’
Most Indians identify with a community in ethnic or religious terms, which is passive membership. Communities of choice, drawn together by a shared cause, are less common in urban middle-class culture.
Many are now seeking communities in the easiest place?online. Facebook groups have popped up like mushrooms in the monsoon. Some are discussing possible action, but others contain only news updates and opinions. Outraged emails are choking inboxes of those who haven’t set filters to delete anything with “FWD: Fwd: fw:’’ in the subject line. SMSes have been urging people to display symbols of mourning or forward a sarcastic joke until it reaches a certain politician.
Will all this frantic virtual activity amount to anything? Or is it just ‘slacktivism’, which lets people feel as though they’re making a difference without putting in much effort? Perhaps the most comforting thing about slacktivism is the heady illusion of effectiveness, as if thousands of mouse-clicks could clean up corruption, vanquish the enemy, feed starving families, or save polar bears from drowning in melting ice-caps. It does not require one to significantly alter a lifestyle that contributes to these problems, nor to take on the tedious task of making one’s government do specific things.
One volunteer notes with concern that his organisation’s website has 38 e-petitions on its campaigns page?a testimony to slacktivism’s growing popularity. However, e-petitions are ineffective, according to Barbara Mikkelson, who runs Snopes, one of the internet’s most trusted resources for debunking popular myths. Petitions usually fail as instruments of social change, she argues, because few even guarantee that anyone is collating the signatures and will deliver them to someone in a position to influence matters.
Nishank, a volunteer with the Association for India’s Development (AID), feels
e-petitions are at best a subset of public opinion, especially in India, where only about 5 per cent of people have internet access. He describes AID’s campaign to improve public transport in Gurgaon. The original plan was to get as many e-signatures as possible
and submit them to Haryana’s transport minister. But then, he says, volunteers decided to distribute pamphlets in different parts of Gurgaon and collect ink-on-paper signatures from people with no internet access who depended heavily on public transport. Mikkelson notes that paper petitions are more credible than virtual ones, because faking e-signatures is easy.
Mikkelson cautions that the more complex an issue, the more likely a petition will fail. Nishank underscores the need to be realistic. “Terrorism is a sensitive issue, whose solution requires expertise,’’ he points out. “When we talk of changing the system, we need to see where we stand, and how we can be instrumental at a pan-India level.’’
Gandhi emphasises that the problem is not just corrupt politicians, but also us and our inability to see the larger picture. “Why doesn’t it bother us that BMC schools are closing down? Why doesn’t it bother us that our government has downsized in the last 20 years, and a significant proportion of it is contract labour? What does it do to the quality of governance? Our political class is bad because we do not keep on questioning it.’’
The real work of improving one’s country is not exciting, but dull, Gandhi points out.
-Times News Network

‘How long are we expected to remain silent and watch the government mess up?’

2008-12-09T20:14:00.000-08:00

In a thoughtful analysis actor RAHUL BOSE discusses his response to the Mumbai terror attack

I have been affected by this attack on Mumbai personally – there is no doubt about it. When they cordoned off that area in Colaba, something broke inside me. That area has been part of my childhood and my life for many years now. There are a lot of memories - going for a run on Marine Drive, rugby and breakfast sessions at Bombay Gym, cracking open my first bottle of beer at Café Leopold, buying audio tapes and then CDs at Rhythm House, practicing and then performing at NCPA, watching the shows at NGMA, celebrating the Kala Ghoda festival, my first premier at Regal Cinema as an actor and then as a director – too many to list. I have been to the dome of the Taj, have seen that room and now to have seen it burning... a part of me has died – there is no denying that.

But in terms of response to the attack, my first response is that it has been an unprecedented psychological blow to a city and the psyche of its people. For 60 hours we were flooded with images of the attack every single second bringing the terror closer home. We watched and followed the drama of it all - there was a clear beginning, middle and end. We watched as the indiscriminate firing began, as blood was being spilled, as army commandos moved in, the ensuing gun battle, the destruction of iconic buildings – all of this was brought to us live for 60 hours. We have to live with those images now.

Compare this with the 1992 clashes, the 1993 riots, the 2006 blasts and the psychological impact of these was not as bad as the 2008 attack. The practical effect of the earlier attacks was people asking themselves if they can fish again in Mazgaon, if they can work at the stock exchange, or if they can re-open their shop in Zaveri Bazaar. But now, even though a smaller percentage of people are likely to frequent hotels like the Taj and the Oberoi, the terror feels more real. And that is no doubt thanks to the live streaming of images.

Second, let’s take a look at the political impact of these attacks. As a city, and I have lived here for 40 years, we have grown used to dealing with issues of health, no drinking water, no proper sanitation facilities, housing problems. We have lived through the floods and the pollution and the traffic very patiently. We are ready to make do with the government apathy, the tokenism of a handful of flyovers in 40 years. But the very least the government can do is to stop people who land in boats at Colaba carrying huge bags loaded with guns and grenades. They landed in Colaba, the heart of the city, not a deserted stretch of the coastline! And yet the government could do nothing to intercept them. To borrow a phrase from a television channel, enough is enough. How long are we expected to remain silent and watch the government mess up?

If this were not bad enough, some of the Hindu right wing organizations have been demanding the enactment of a more stringent law. What kind of a new law do we need to stop people who land up in boats carrying bags full of ammunition? Can we honestly say that we have explored the full extent and saturated the might of the existing laws to ask for more policing?

Already we queue up outside cinema halls, airports, star hotels and subject ourselves to scrutiny. We wait until they have checked us and our cars. We wait in long queues outside the cricket stadium and agree to leave our water bottles outside since they call it a security threat. We have been extremely patient and cooperative right through. And now when they want to increase the policing, increase surveillance by subjecting us to a new security act. We will be making the same mistakes that the American State made after the 9/11 attacks. Their knee jerk response has resulted in Guantanamo Bay, legalized torture, Patriot Act – all of which contributed to making it the most hated nation in the world. I believe that if we do decide that we need a new law, we need to move very slowly and with careful consideration of what the implications of such laws are for the people of this country.

My third response would be to recognize the bravery of the Mumbai Police, MARCOS, National Security Guard commandos. They have been lauded by ordinary people, by people trapped in the situation, the media – and they deserve every bit of the recognition. I have heard at least three accounts from people, who found themselves trapped inside the hotels, of how the commandos assured them complete protection; that as NSG commandos, they would take the bullets if the situation came to that. For two and a half days, they did not sleep – just went about their job as professionally as the situation demanded. I was following the coverage of the attacks very closely and I remember when the operation ended, the boys came out smiling, huddled around a flask of tea and drank from tiny plastic cups. They were happy with that – people who had risked their lives satisfied with those tiny cups of tea. For me, that moment and their smiling faces captured India and its generosity for me. It was heartbreaking.

There is another dimension that will manifest itself in the days that follow. The response to terror strikes dictates whether they have been successful or not. If the response is violent, irrational and uncontrolled, the strikes have been successful. If the response is calm, focused, patient, passionate and insistent, we have been successful. To that end there are a set of things we must not do. As a nation, we must remember that Pakistanis are not Pakistan state. The ordinary people on the street have nothing to do with decisions that the government takes. Let us not label and vilify the entire country and its people. If the cause for this attack is traced back to the Pakistani state, by all means we should demand compliance as dictated by international law.

But more importantly as a nation, we must make certain demands of our government. We could ask them to show us an anti-terror plan in 90 days and the ways in which they are going to implement that plan. This should be a preemptive measure that can be carefully considered if it is made open and available to public scrutiny.

We must demand police reforms – no government till date has had the spine to even consider or do anything about the police force in this country. And I believe we can force the hand of the government. If 1 million people assemble in Mantralaya in Mumbai, which government can ignore their demands? If 1 million people assemble in front of the Prime Minister’s Office and refuse to move till such a time when the anti-terror plan is announced publicly, how can the government ignore us? We have forgotten the culture of visible peaceful public protest and I believe now is the time to reclaim that culture.

While there is no running away from the fact that there is an instinctive bias to these attacks, there is no need to beat ourselves just because our social radars do not prioritize violence faced by a Dalit family in Khairlanji as easily as we might prioritize the violence faced by a loved one. I struggle hard to rectify the bias inherent in me, but I understand that people pick and choose battles to fight. There is no time or emotional energy to waste by decrying this selection of battles. We should instead engage in whatever battles people choose to be concerned about. We have no time to lose. We have to fight against the infringement of our rights even if that means we will be labeled unpatriotic by a few. And the fight has to be vocal, active, unflagging. No longer can we assume the silence of the past – we only have bloodied faces and bodies to show for that silence. If we want the government to act, there is no other alternative beyond citizens demanding action.

Death Of A Salesman And Other Elite Ironies

2008-12-08T20:16:00.001-08:00

TARUN J TEJPAL

ROHINTON MALOO was shot doing two things he enjoyed immensely. Eating good food and tossing new ideas. He was among the 13 diners at the Kandahar, Trident-Oberoi, who were marched out onto the service staircase, ostensibly as hostages. But the killers had nothing to bargain for. The answers to the big questions — Babri Masjid, Gujarat, Muslim persecution — were beyond the power of anyone to deliver neatly to the hotel lobby. The small ones — of money and materialism — their crazed indoctrination had already taken them well beyond. With the final banality of all fanaticism, flaunting the paradox of modern technology and medieval fervour — AK-47 in one hand; mobile phone in the other — the killers asked their minders, “Udan dein?” The minder, probably a maintainer of cold statistics, said, “Uda do.”

Rohinton caught seven bullets, and by the time his body was recovered, it could only be identified by the ring on his finger. Rohinton was just 48, with two teenage children, and a hundred plans. A few of these had to do with TEHELKA, where he was a strategic advisor for the last two years. As Indians, we seldom have a good word to say about the living, but in the dead we discover virtues that strain the imagination. Perhaps it has to do with a strange mix of driving envy and blinding piety. Let me just say Rohinton was charismatic, ambitious, and a man of his time, and place. The time was always now, and in his outstanding career in media marketing, he was ever at the cutting edge of the new — in the creation of Star Networks, and a score of ventures on the web. The place was always Mumbai, the city he grew up in and lived in, and he exemplified its attitudes: the hedonism, the get-go, the easy pluralism.

For me there is a deep irony in his death. He was killed by what he set very little store by. In his every meeting with us, he was bemused and baffled by TEHELKA’s obsessive engagement with politics. He was quite sure no one of his class — our class — was interested in the subject. Politics happened elsewhere, a regrettable business carried out by unsavoury characters. Mostly, it had nothing to do with our lives. Eventually, sitting through our political ranting, he came to grudgingly accept we may have some kind of a case. But he remained unconvinced of its commercial viability. Our kind of readers were interested in other things, which were germane to their lives — food, films, cricket, fashion, gizmos, television, health and the strategies of seduction. Politics, at best, was something they endured.

In the end, politics killed Rohinton, and a few hundred other innocents. In the final count, politics, every single day, is killing, impoverishing, starving, denigrating, millions of Indians all across the country. If the backdrop were not so heartbreaking, the spectacle of the nation’s elite — the keepers of most of our wealth and privilege — frothing on television screens and screaming through mobile phones would be amusing. They have been outraged because the enduring tragedy of India has suddenly arrived in their marbled precincts. The Taj, the Oberoi. We dine here. We sleep here. Is nothing sacrosanct in this country any more?

What the Indian elite is discovering today on the debris of fancy eateries is an acidic truth large numbers of ordinary Indians are forced to swallow every day. Children who die of malnutrition, farmers who commit suicide, dalits who are raped and massacred, tribals who are turfed out of centuryold habitats, peasants whose lands are taken over for car factories, minorities who are bludgeoned into paranoia — these, and many others, know that something is grossly wrong. The system does not work, the system is cruel, the system is unjust, the system exists to only serve those who run it. Crucially, what we, the elite, need to understand is that most of us are complicit in the system. In fact, chances are the more we have — of privilege and money — the more invested we are in the shoring up of an unfair state.

IT IS time each one of us understood that at the heart of every society is its politics. If the politics is third-rate, the condition of the society will be no better. For too many decades now, the elite of India has washed its hands off the country’s politics. Entire generations have grown up viewing it as a distasteful activity. In an astonishing perversion, the finest imaginative act of the last thousand years on the subcontinent, the creation and flowering of the idea of modern India through mass politics, has for the last 40 years been rendered infra dig, déclassé, uncool. Let us blame our parents, and let our children blame us, for not bequeathing onwards the sheer beauty of a collective vision, collective will, and collective action. In a word, politics: which, at its best, created the wonder of a liberal and democratic idea, and at its worst threatens to tear it down.

We stand faulted then in two ways. For turning our back on the collective endeavour; and for our passive embrace of the status quo. This is in equal parts due to selfish instinct and to shallow thinking. Since shining India is basically only about us getting an even greater share of the pie, we have been happy to buy its half-truths, and look away from the rest of the sordid story. Like all elites, historically, that have presided over the decline of their societies, we focus too much of our energy on acquiring and consuming, and too little on thinking and decoding. Egged on by a helium media, we exhaust ourselves through paroxysms over vacant celebrities and trivia, quite happy not to see what might cause us discomfort.

For years, it has been evident that we are a society being systematically hollowed out by inequality, corruption, bigotry and lack of justice. The planks of public discourse have increasingly been divisive, widening the faultlines of caste, language, religion, class, community and region. As the elite of the most complex society in the world, we have failed to see that we are ratcheted into an intricate framework, full of causal links, where one wrong word begets another, one horrific event leads to another. Where one man’s misery will eventually trigger another’s.

Let’s track one causal chain. The Congress creates Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale to neutralise the Akalis; Bhindranwale creates terrorism; Indira Gandhi moves against terrorism; terrorism assassinates Indira Gandhi; blameless Sikhs are slaughtered in Delhi; in the course of a decade, numberless innocents, militants, and securitymen die. Let’s track another. The BJP takes out an inflammatory rath yatra; inflamed kar sewaks pull down the Babri Masjid; riots ensue; vengeful Muslims trigger Mumbai blasts; 10 years later a bogey of kar sewaks is burnt in Gujarat; in the next week 2,000 Muslims are slaughtered; six years later retaliatory violence continues. Let’s track one more. In the early 1940s, in the midst of the freedom movement, patrician Muslims demand a separate homeland; Mahatma Gandhi opposes it; the British support it; Partition ensues; a million people are slaughtered; four wars follow; two countries drain each other through rhetoric and poison; nuclear arsenals are built; hotels in Mumbai are attacked.

IN EACH of these rough causal chains, there is one thing in common. Their origin in the decisions of the elite. Interlaced with numberless lines of potential divisiveness, the India framework is highly delicate and complicated. It is critical for the elite to understand the framework, and its role in it. The elite has its hands on the levers of capital, influence and privilege. It can fix the framework. It has much to give, and it must give generously. The mass, with nothing in its hands, nothing to give, can out of frustration and anger, only pull it all down. And when the volcano blows, rich and poor burn alike.

And so what should we be doing? Well, screaming at politicians is certainly not political engagement. And airy socialites demanding the carpet-bombing of Pakistan and the boycott of taxes are plain absurd, just another neon sign advertising shallow thought. It’s the kind of dumb public theatre the media ought to deftly side-step rather than showcase. The world is already over-shrill with animus: we need to tone it down, not add to it. Pakistan is itself badly damaged by the flawed politics at its heart. It needs help, not bombing. Just remember, when hardboiled bureaucrats clench their teeth, little children die.

Most of the shouting of the last few days is little more than personal catharsis through public venting. The fact is the politician has been doing what we have been doing, and as an über Indian he has been doing it much better. Watching out for himself, cornering maximum resource, and turning away from the challenge of the greater good.

The first thing we need to do is to square up to the truth. Acknowledge the fact that we have made a fair shambles of the project of nation-building. Fifty million Indians doing well does not for a great India make, given that 500 million are grovelling to survive. Sixty years after independence, it can safely be said that India’s political leadership — and the nation’s elite — have badly let down the country’s dispossessed and wretched. If you care to look, India today is heartbreak hotel, where infants die like flies, and equal opportunity is a cruel mirage.

Let’s be clear we are not in a crisis because the Taj hotel was gutted. We are in a crisis because six years after 2,000 Muslims were slaughtered in Gujarat there is still no sign of justice. This is the second thing the elite need to understand — after the obscenity of gross inequality. The plinth of every society — since the beginning of Man — has been set on the notion of justice. You cannot light candles for just those of your class and creed. You have to strike a blow for every wronged citizen.

And let no one tell us we need more laws. We need men to implement those that we have. Today all our institutions and processes are failing us. We have compromised each of them on their values, their robustness, their vision and their sense of fairplay. Now, at every crucial juncture we depend on random acts of individual excellence and courage to save the day. Great systems, triumphant societies, are veined with ladders of inspiration. Electrified by those above them, men strive to do their very best. Look around. How many constables, head constables, sub-inspectors would risk their lives for the dishonest, weak men they serve, who in turn serve even more compromised masters?

I wish Rohinton had survived the lottery of death in Mumbai last week. In an instant, he would have understood what we always went on about. India’s crying need is not economic tinkering or social engineering. It is a political overhaul, a political cleansing. As it once did to create a free nation, India’s elite should start getting its hands dirty so they can get a clean country.

Letter by Rajdeep Sardesai

2008-12-08T20:02:00.000-08:00

Dear Reader, forgive my self-indulgence, but I write this as an angry and anguished Indian citizen and south Mumbaikar as much as a professional journalist. Over the last few days, as I have watched the city of my youth being ravaged by mindless terror, I must confess to feeling helpless, almost violated, as if someone had defiled the shrine of an old unhurried, SAFE Bombay.

Each terror site ignites a flash of memories, the roll call of the dead consist of names I grew up with. In the geography of terror, the horror has come precariously close to home: my mother lives just a block away from Nariman House in Colaba, an area that has been traditionally the most secure in the metropolis.

Its almost as if in the space of 72 bloody hours, an entire universe of memories has been shaken, perhaps irretrievably. Leopolds Café where I had my first beer in celebration of clearing the high school exam; Colaba market, where in the congested bylanes you got the best chicken rolls and patties in the city; Metro junction where you slipped out of college to catch the latest matinee; VT station which you passed every morning to work, the Oberoi hotel which left you awe-struck, one of the first high rises that dotted the Nariman Point landscape; and, of course, the Taj.

Mumbai without the Taj is a bit like a Queen without the crown. The Taj experience isn't just about the rich and famous, it's a symbol of Mumbai's urbane, cosmopolitan identity, undoubtedly elitist, but reflecting the civility that is so precious to the city. As a south Mumbai collegian, a monthly visit to the Shamiana, the coffee shop at the Taj was part of the growing up years. You saved up for it because being in that ambience made you feel just a little adult and sophisticated. Just the thought of maybe, just maybe, rubbing shoulders with a cricketer or a film star at the next table was enough to spend hours over a cappuccino.

In that sense, 26/11 has blown apart a certain way of life, each grenade exploding the innocence of another era. Not to forget the friends one has lost. Ashok Kamte, Xavierite from the batch of 85, a police officer with the muscle of a Schwarznegger and the heart of a giant teddy bear. For Ashok, being a police officer was not just a professional option, it was a family tradition: his grandfather had been Maharashtra's first inspector general of police.

Sunil Parekh, a successful businessman, two years senior in school, shot alongwith his wife, even as they dined at the Oberoi. The ever-smiling Sabina Sehgal Saikia, a colleague from the glorious Times of India days when there were no 24 hour news channels to shatter the idyll of an extended editorial meeting. Ashok Kapur, ex-president of the Bombay Gymkhana club, whose colonial environs still provide an old school refuge from the cut and thrust competitiveness of new India.

I am not alone. Most people in this old Mumbai world have been touched directly by the terrorist. 26-11 has given a face to terror to a community which until now was happily insulated from it. While buses were blasted in distant suburbs, train commuters were targeted and the crowded bazaars of central Mumbai were hit, south Mumbai was somehow a sanctuary where you felt protected, where the tryst with terror for a majority was limited to watching it unfold on television in some distant corner.

Now, sitting in your home verandah and watching NSG commandos being airdropped and gunshots being fired, there was no escaping the reality: terror had entered your neighbourhood.

Which is also why 26-11 is very different from Mumbai's original date with terror on March 12th 1993. Then, the serial blasts across the city left us dazed and fearful. Then, we thought the terror had sprung from the ghettoes, from the grimy underbelly of the city. We knew of Dawood, although we didn't quite know what RDX was. We saw the blasts as a continuum of the riots, a cycle of violence and vengeance that we hoped would soon end.

Fifteen years later, after repeated assaults, the perpetrator of the bomb blast has transformed himself into a far more terrifying phantom than in the early 90s. In the 21st century, this lethal and evil force has just demonstrated that it can strike at will whenever and wherever it wants and so called Rising India can't do a damn thing. Which is why the fear this time is matched by rage. Its an anger felt by a citizenry which feels betrayed by their leadership. When in 1993, RDX landed on the coastal coast it was felt that this was an unfortunate breach of security. Now we know that this was no aberration: a combination of callous politicians, bumbling bureaucrats and an emasculated police force have created a feeble and corrupted system that is simply incapable of taking on trained and highly motivated terrorists.

This is not a partisan issue either: the fact is that bomb blasts have taken place across the country, from Narendra Modi's Gujarat to Vilasrao Deshmukh's Maharashtra. Intelligence failure is not the prerogative of any one political party or government, its reflective of an antiquated bureaucracy that is totally out of its depth when dealing with the international jihadist. Why, for example, does it take a formal request from the state government to the home ministry for the NSG commandos to be flown in several hours after terror has struck?

Where is the crisis management committee that needs to spring into action right away? And why should an officer investigating a terror case also be expected to be out on the street engaging in a gunfight with AK 47 wielding terrorists?

Today, every citizen is asking these questions. The candlelight vigils and sms campaigns may seem ineffectual, but lets not underestimate the power of an enlightened citizenry in the media age. There is a new vote bank out there, a vote bank of furious and articulate people, many of whom are directly responsible for driving the Indian dream forward. It is impossible for any politician to ignore this urban voter and rely on the rural masses alone. 26-11 has ensured that the Indian upper middle class emerge from its cocoon of privilege. The voices being heard at the Gateway of India are a slowly gathering momentum. Over the debris of the Taj, the Indian elite may finally be coming of age.

The Saint, The Criminal And The Terrorist

2008-12-03T21:10:00.000-08:00

SN BALGANGADHARA argues that to fight terrorism and the ideology of crime, politics needs to retain its ethical moorings

Increasingly, the phenomenon of terrorism has begun to occupy the media, politics, and the lives of people in different parts of the world. The more the attention, however, the less the clarity: what kind of a phenomenon is terrorism? What generates it, what sustains it, and what allows it to expand on an ever-increasing scale?

This lack of clarity has to do with the fact that our ideas about terrorism appear as an incoherent set. First, terrorism horrifies most of us; the acts of terrorists are seen as monstrous in scope and size. But the number of deaths or the human suffering, even if we look at an event as momentous as 9/11, is dwarfed by what traffic accidents and smoking do in any given year.
Second, despite its relatively small impact (relative, that is, to the impact of smoking, traffic accidents, etc.) and the lower probability of its occurrence (compared again to such phenomena), terrorism induces massive changes in our societies that are incommensurate with the act itself.

Third, most of us think that terrorists are monsters, lunatics, crazy and evil: they appear as pathological human beings. At the same time, we read in the newspapers that the terrorists not only increasingly draw recruits from the ordinary population, but also that they use ethical considerations like the perceived injustice in the world or attacks on their family, for instance, in their defense. Here, they reason pretty much the same way most of us do.

Fourth, we seem to think that some religion (Islamic fundamentalism) or political doctrine (Marxism) provides the foundation for terrorism. Such political and religious motives are even taken to differentiate it from ordinary crime. Yet, we see terrorism implanting itself in any and every kind of soil: Zionism, deep ecology, Islam, fascism, animal liberation, ethnic self-determination, Christianity, communism, nationalism,… This suggests that no specific religious or political beliefs are required for it to take root and flourish.

Fifth, the only things we see are the acts of crime that terrorists either plan or actually commit. Yet, it is extremely difficult to call them ‘ordinary criminals’, because they seem to do something ‘more’ than just plan or commit criminal acts: they appear more monstrous than thieves or serial killers and the impact of their acts goes far beyond that of other crimes. In short, we entertain what appear as prima facie inconsistent ideas about terrorism.

A hypothesis about terrorism must provide a solution to the above problems without discounting any of them. We propose that terrorism is a unitary phenomenon (despite internal differentiations) and formulate a single hypothesis that illumines these and other known facts about terrorism. Hopefully, the essay thereby functions as an incentive and a heuristic to develop a better hypothesis.
We would like to suggest that terrorism is a particular form taken by crime. In that case, the puzzle is why and how crime takes the form of terrorism. Attempts to characterize terrorism as “(violent) acts that intend to terrorize people for socio-political ends” do not answer this question. They do point out some of its features. However, there are many violent acts that intentionally instill fear in a population and that also have socio-political ends, but which could hardly be terrorism. The difference between murder (even if it is mass murder) and an act of terrorism that also murders (think of 9/11 in this context), we suggest, does not lie in the motives of the actor, the action, the means used, the nature of the victims, the intended goals or its realized effects. Instead, it is located in how the crime is transformed into “something else.” What makes crime into terrorism is this act of transformation.

Actually, the act goes beyond transformation: terrorism is trans-substantiated crime. “Trans-substantiation” refers to the miraculous transformation of some particular substance into another one. (During the Mass, for instance, Roman-Catholics believe that bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ.) This happens in the case of terrorism as well: crime becomes morally praiseworthy. It does not concern so much a particular crime, but rather the transformation of the entire domain of crime. This trans-substantiation results in the re-presentation of crime as morally praiseworthy. We suggest that what brings about this “miracle” is an ideology, which we would like to call “the ideology of crime.” It is our hypothesis that such an ideology exists today and that acts of crime can become acts of terrorism because of what this ideology does and how it does so.

We propose to expand on this idea in the following way: first, we explicate what the trans-substantiation consists of; second, we show how this “miracle” is possible; third, we analyze the presuppositions and implications of such a process; fourth, we dwell on its relation to the self-description of terrorism; finally, we identify some of the illumined facts and spell out the policy implications of our hypothesis.

The ideology of crime
While terrorism is not itself an ideology, it exists by virtue of an ideology. By presenting criminal actions as morally praiseworthy, this ideology performs the central function of any ideology: it enables one to lend legitimacy to actions that are otherwise considered illegitimate. The ideology itself does not provide the required justification; if it could, it would be an ethical, political, social or economic theory or even a religion. Instead, the ideology of crime merely enables such a justification, where and when necessary.
What does it mean to say that an act of crime is presented as morally praiseworthy? It means that such an act now has the force of a moral exemplar. But some action can have the force of a moral exemplar to an individual, if and only if that person is a member of a moral community and intends to live as a moral subject. Otherwise it cannot. Therefore, a terrorist to whom a crime becomes a moral exemplar must see himself (and must also be seen by others) as an ethical agent, who is a member of a particular moral community sharing its ideas of good and bad, right and wrong, permitted and forbidden and so on.
In so far as an action can have the force of a moral exemplar only to an ethical agent, the ideology of crime makes no further empirical presuppositions about the nature of such an agent. That means to say, the ideology of crime re-describes a criminal act in such a way that such a re-description is indifferent with respect to specific religious and political beliefs that an individual might adhere to. In this sense, it is indifferent to distinctions between cultures, peoples, languages, skin colors, etc. In short, if this ideology of crime has to succeed in presenting some act as a moral exemplar, it has to make the same presuppositions as all our ethical theories. Indeed it does. The ideology of crime is deeply and indissolubly rooted in the ethical domain that all human beings share.
Even though all human beings share the same ethical domain, we are initiated into this domain through the empirical communities we are born into. These empirical communities are many and differentiated: different religions, cultures, languages, philosophies, traditions, etc. mediate us to the ethical domain and mark our distinctions and differences from each other. In this process, each of us acquires notions of crime as well. Mostly, these are associated with moral infringements, even if, depending upon our differential acquaintance with law, further refinement occurs in the course of our lives. For its success, the ideology of crime not only requires that recruits belong to empirical moral communities, but also that they always remain members of some empirical moral community or the other. That means to say, the ideology of crime (a) presupposes of its recruits that they too have notions of crime that their moral communities have and (b) requires that they continue to retain them as well. Why?
The first condition has already been dwelt upon: a morally exemplary action has an ethical force only to a moral subject. As an empirical, moral subject, a person brings with him the notions of right, wrong, good, bad, criminal, legal,... that prevail in his community. The ideology of crime presupposes this fact. It also requires that the recruit continues to be a member of an empirical moral community because this membership enables an access to the reservoir of human actions. Such a reservoir is continuously replenished with new and original actions, undertaken by human beings in their widely differing circumstances. In having access to such a treasure house, the terrorist ideology has access to novelty as well. That is why new terrorist actions are possible.
It is often suggested that terrorists have “other” moral values than those held by the rest of us. Even though we shall suggest later why this appears to be the case, let us state here where we think this view is profoundly wrong: if the terrorist was not a member of the ethical domain we all share, there would be no terrorism to speak of. The very possibility of terrorism depends upon the fact that the terrorists too make distinctions between good, bad, right, wrong, criminal, legal and so on in exactly the same way we do. That is to say, much like most of us in the world, he too would find some actions (like murder, theft, rape, arson, looting, etc) immoral and criminal the way we do.
The evidence is overwhelming that terrorists possess the moral notions we have, and consider the same set of actions which we could call “crimes” also as crimes. When a terrorist confronts the rape of his mother or sister, or the assassination of his beloved leader; or the fact of his pregnant wife blown to pieces and his child maimed for life by a blast; he too reacts with the same moral judgment and moral emotions his victims have. That is to say, he reacts to these immoral acts as a moral subject: with horror and abhorrence.
The terrorist is not a pathological person lacking a moral sense or an alien with utterly strange norms (finding morally good what most of us would find morally abhorrent). He is and has to be similar to us. If he was not, terrorism would not be able to find recruits at all. If there is one thing we have learnt, it is this: the recruiting ground for terrorism is fertile, continually expanding and consists of ordinary people much like us. Unless we assume that the number of pathological people continues to increase because of some evolutionary quirk, which is very improbable, then we have to make sense of how moral subjects very much like us could become terrorists at all.
In this sense, and because of this reason, we do not define what ‘crime’ is, in order to speak about the ideology of crime. The terrorists already possess this notion (furthermore, it does not vary all that much with our day-to-day intuitions). They know what crime is, but the ideology of crime metamorphoses the actions that the terrorists consider as crimes into morally exemplary actions. If this is the case, how does he reconcile his actions with his own moral judgment and emotions? And how does the ideology transform crime into a moral exemplar? We will begin with the second question first.

The mechanism of a miracle
To answer this question and understand what terrorism is, we must take the hypothesis of the transformation, metamorphosis and trans-substantiation of crime utterly seriously. Because the terrorist is a moral subject too, the ideology of crime can make a criminal act appear ethical to him only if it re-describes and re-presents that act. What kind of change is involved in this process?
In the first place, this representation cannot transform a criminal act into an ethical one by making it morally obligatory. If it did, then the terrorist would either be inconsistent (because one and the same act would continue to be both forbidden and obligatory, since the act would both be a crime and moral at the same time), or would not have the notion of crime (because no act would be forbidden), or he would have another set of moral values than the rest of us (our “crimes” would appear moral to him). We suggest that none of these is the case.
In the second place, this transformation must somehow succeed in doubling: it must leave the domain of crime of the terrorist intact and yet re-describe these acts in such a way that they do not appear to belong to the criminal domain. That is, it must appear as though two descriptions of an act actually describe two different acts – the criminal and the ethical.
In the third place, such a re-description must place the act beyond both the “obligatory” and the “forbidden,” while retaining the distinction between these two sets of actions at the same time. Such must be the transformation that the act appears almost unique (sui generis, one of a kind). This ideology should make his act so unique that the terrorist can neither see nor comprehend it under any other description than the one provided by that ideology. It must trans-substantiate an act, which is neither unique because it belongs to a category of actions, nor moral because it is criminal too in the eyes of the terrorist, into a unique act. That is, the ideology of crime must transform crime by making each criminal action into a unique act, one of a kind. Thereafter, as far as the terrorist is concerned, this act does not have any other description than the one provided by the ideology and he cannot recognize his act under any other description.
Exactly that happens. The ideology trans-substantiates crime into supererogation and, in doing so, meets all the above conditions. “Supererogation” names the sets of actions that have the force of moral exemplars without being obligatory. Heroism, bravery, kindness, love for one’s neighbor, saintly actions, etc. are all examples of supererogation. They are not obligatory, since a failure to perform these actions does not make someone immoral. They have the force of moral exemplars without being obligatory. These actions are “over and beyond the call of duty” and as such are beyond the realm of moral obligation. That is, they are outside the domain of “moral laws,” but yet within the ethical domain.
The domain of crime and the domain of supererogation share this formal property: they are both “beyond the scope of moral laws.” In doubling the description of crime, this is what the ideology of crime does: while leaving the description of a criminal act intact, it also provides a re-description of the act as supererogation. This is possible because of the formal property that both crime and supererogation possess. Consequently, these actions appear both sui generis and ethical at the same time.
However, because such actions belong to the ethical domain, there is a need for moral justification. The ideology of crime, which, as we have said, makes the action neutral (or indifferent) with respect to religious and political beliefs, allows for any kind of defense: one could appeal to injustice in society or to God’s commandments or to oppression and exploitation or to the doctrines of national sovereignty and national interests… The list is both varied and endless. The point to note here is the following: neither religious nor secular doctrines form the intellectual basis of terrorism. They are used in morally justifying an act that has already achieved the status of a supererogatory action. The trans-substantiation of crime into supererogation is not something that these doctrines and beliefs accomplish. The ideology of crime has already done that before either religion or political beliefs are pressed into service. If we fail to see this, we end up conducting sterile and unending debates: such as whether Islam is peace-loving or whether it is antithetical to modern values.
These debates are not merely sterile and interminable. They are pernicious as well because, by conducting such debates, we countenance the self-description of terrorism and accept the legitimacy of the transformation of crime into supererogation. To see why this is so, we need to understand the sense in which the ideology of crime is truly subversive.

Presuppositions and implications
Consider what the ideology of crime does. It appeals to a moral community, to its ethical and moral notions, and presupposes its distinctions between good and bad, right and wrong, moral and immoral, and so on. On the basis of this distinction, it systematically pulls out immoral acts in order to re-present them as supererogatory to the very same community. The community is asked to judge as ‘moral’ precisely that act which is immoral and criminal in its eyes. That is to say, the community should consider one and the same act as both immoral and supererogatory at the same time and on the same intellectual and moral grounds. The ideology of crime trans-substantiates some individual into both a moral criminal and a moral saint (at the same time and on the same grounds) to that very community of which he is a part.
This is impossible: on one and the same substantive grounds, an act cannot be both immoral and supererogatory at the same time and for the same person. While one could (conceivably) think of two rival moral theories making different ethical pronouncements about some particular act, that is not the case here: a moral community is continually forced to judge actions as criminal and supererogatory at the same time and on the same grounds. Should a moral community ever allow for this to happen, it would disintegrate as a moral community and cease to exist. In that sense, while the ideology of crime undercuts its own foundation, it is also truly subversive: that which turns against and destroys the very community of which it is a part. It necessarily bites the hand that feeds it.
How does this situation translate itself in the cognitive world of the terrorist? How does he solve this tension between himself and his moral community? Here is where we see the dynamic nature of the ideology of crime. This ideology allows him to identify differing empirical communities at different times as his “relevant” moral community of the moment. Consider the Taliban in Afghanistan. At one time, both the US administration and the Pakistani government supported the Taliban fighters militarily, financially and morally. In doing so, both nations became a part of the relevant moral community of the Taliban. However, in the post 9/11 world, neither Pakistan nor the US belongs to the relevant moral community of the Taliban. Instead, they are now its enemies.
The internal problem of inconsistency between what the ideology of crime does and the moral foundation on which it rests is transformed into an external opposition between the empirical community that the terrorist momentarily attaches himself to (that community then becomes the “relevant” moral community for him) and the “rest” of the world: the opposition between the “moral us” and the “immoral they.”
The problem does not lie in the “us” and “they” distinction: all of us make such distinctions, which are based on the real differences that exist between different groups of people. Instead, it has to do with how the distinction is made and what it consists of. The “us” and the “they” are ethically hostile forces, each others’ enemies and two polar opposites locked in struggle, from which only one can emerge as the victor. The internal opposition between a moral community and what the ideology of crime does is expressed as an external battle-to-death between two communities: the “moral” community that the terrorist momentarily attaches himself to and the “others.”
The identity of these communities is of no cognitive or moral significance in this battle: it could be the Americans today, Iraqis tomorrow and the Pakistanis the day after. Each was an ally at some stage or another; each was thus once a part of the moral community of the terrorist. The ideology of crime has to necessarily turn against its own foundation; the terrorist does the same too by splitting the world into “us” and “they” in this particular manner.

The self-description of terrorism
Consequently, to say that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” does not entail subscribing to ethical relativism. It is worse than that: it is to endorse the self-description of the terrorist and to underwrite the ideology of crime. The same consideration applies to discussions about whether or not some religion or political theory is a harbinger of terrorism. This also covers the case of those who look at terrorists as “lunatics,” and as “deranged” and “pathological” persons. In all these cases, we endorse the description that the ideology of crime provides us with.
If there is something tragic about the current intellectual and political scene, it is this: both the friends and foes of terrorism have accepted the self-description of terrorism. We treat the terrorists as “exceptional” persons, who cannot be understood as “normal” human beings. We go beyond our ethical and legal limits in our opposition to terrorism and, in doing so, endorse their self-description in that we treat them as more than “mere” criminals by according them a special status.
We allow the subversion of terrorism by subverting our own legal and moral codes, and justify such subversions in the name of national security. We accept the legitimacy of the terrorist argument by endlessly debating the issue of whether or not some religion or political theory encourages terrorism or not. We endorse their self-description by identifying some terrorists as “religious” or “fundamentalists,” which is exactly what they claim they are. We act as though one “ought not to be” a fundamentalist forgetting, in the process, that should we give up the fundamental distinction between good and bad, right and wrong, we would only end up all the worse for it. We give up our notions of human rights by making or reinforcing discriminations against people from “other” religions and regions.
We endorse and reproduce the distinction the terrorist makes between the “moral us” and the “immoral they” by speaking about the terrorist as though he is not a member of the ethical domain that all human beings share, or as though he has an alien set of “moral values” when compared to the rest of the human beings. Finally, we succumb to the illusion of the terrorist: he believes that he performs a set of “special actions”; we agree with him and speak about “terrorist acts” all the time. In all these ways and more, we allow terrorism to feed on the success and legitimacy it enjoys by our acceptance of its self-description.

Conclusions
This, then, is our hypothesis: terrorism is the transformation of crime into supererogation. The ideology of crime enables such a trans-substantiation. Let us see how this accounts for some of the facts we already know about terrorism.
1. Terrorism spreads, because it appears imitable. We have seen why terrorism can recruit ordinary moral subjects; that is why it is imitable. Anyone can become a terrorist. It can spread because the ideology of crime is neutral or indifferent with respect to religious, political and other beliefs.
2. Terrorism appears to target its victims both indiscriminately and in a focused manner. As examples of the latter, consider the sustained attempts at assassinating various political dignitaries, heads of states, prominent politicians, UN personnel, etc. during the last decade. It is indifferent as to whom it targets because the “relevant” moral community of the terrorist undergoes changes over time. However, it is also focused because the terrorist is a member of a specific “relevant” moral community confronting a specific ‘other’ at any one time.
3. Terrorism inevitably bites the hand that feeds it, whether the hand that feeds it is a state (Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example) or a movement (the Palestinian Liberation Organization). Terrorism has to turn against its own foundation because of the dictates of the ideology of crime.
4. Terrorism inevitably disrupts civil society in multiple ways that are incommensurate with the act itself. For instance, 9/11 changed both the US and the world so much that it is difficult to speak of commensurate effects of the act itself. Terrorism disrupts society (and sows fear) in such disproportionate ways, because its ideology and its mechanism threaten the very existence of a moral community.
5. Terrorism is surrounded by some kind of an ideology, which appears to provide a moral justification for the act. We have seen that the requirement of moral justification arises from the fact that the ideology of crime makes crime supererogatory.
6. Terrorism generates two diametrically opposed ethical reactions. In some circles, the terrorists of today are the embodiments of the highest virtues and, as such, exemplars to imitate. In other circles, they generate moral horror and ethical abhorrence. That is, both make an appeal to ethical considerations. However, it appears as though these considerations are not merely different, but also opposed to each other. Consequently, terrorism and those others who feel moral aversion to it are mutually recognized as enemies-to-death. Each wants to eliminate the other. We explained why ethical responses are enticed by the ideology of crime and why the “moral us” and the “the immoral they” appear as enemies-to-death.
Does this set of considerations generate policy conclusions? Yes, it does. Let us simply list a few of them.
1. Crime cannot be abolished in a society by exterminating the criminal population at any given moment. We have to strike at what generates and sustains crime in a society. Overcoming terrorism, besides requiring a whole series of social, political and economic remedies, needs something extra as well: both public intellectuals and academics must begin dismantling the ideology of crime. This is not the same as identifying some “other” political or religious doctrines and discoursing about them.
2. If we continue to hold “religion,” or even “religious fundamentalism” and “Islamofascism” as the cause of terrorism, not only do we fail in addressing the real issues, but we end up feeding the ideology of crime by accepting the self-description of terrorism. The current craze in the American academy and public debate about Islam reflects how successful the ideology has been here.
3. We need expert jurists, magistrates, and politicians to work on setting up provisions in criminal law that allow us to tackle the nature of this particular form of crime. However, such statutes, like all other legal statutes, should be tested for their admissibility within the moral and constitutional limits that we work under.
4. The “war on terrorism” is sensible only to the extent we can speak about “war on crime.” In the same way criminals are a danger to civil society, terrorists are dangerous as well. But, as commentators have noted, the US government has vacillated between approaching terrorism as a violation of criminal law and as an issue of war. The first approach acknowledges that terrorism is but a form of crime and thus negates its ideology, while the second confirms the ideology and views the terrorists as warriors for a cause. This leads to conflicting policies that fail to respect both criminal law and the law of war.
5. We feed the ideology of crime and terrorism when we treat the terrorists as “exceptional” individuals and, therefore, stray outside the established framework of law to bring them to justice. By setting up special military tribunals, by denying them their status as moral subjects, one concedes to the claims that the ideology of crime makes. One needs the framework of law and justice (why set up courts otherwise?) and, at the same time, denies both the requirements of law and justice (because they appear as “kangaroo courts” to the outside world). This is exactly what the ideology of crime does. In this sense, in bringing both the Guantanamo Bay and subsequent developments into existence, the ideology of crime has already begun to acquire moral legitimacy.
6. Ethical considerations, which should provide the foundations for any kind of politics, have become subordinated to petty political and party considerations in the US. To stray away from ethical foundations, in pursuit of the requirements of “national interests” or “geo-political situations,” feeds the ideology of crime. Surely, Ronald Reagan’s statement that the Taliban are “freedom fighters” rather than terrorists, has come back to haunt us today. Any institution, community, organization, or movement that feeds or nurtures terrorism (directly or indirectly) will become its victim sooner or later. That is so, because such a bond allows the ideology of crime to become dynamic by transforming many different empirical communities into possible moral communities for the terrorists. If it is to fight terrorism and the ideology of crime, politics cannot afford to lose its moorings from an ethical foundation.

Prof. S. N. Balagangadhara is director of the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap (Comparative Science of Cultures) in Ghent University, Belgium. He has authored many pieces, including a book titled, "The Heathen in His Blindness" on the nature of religion.

Will India Declare War On Terrorism?

2008-12-03T21:04:00.001-08:00

The Americans were prompt on declaring a war on terrorists and those who harbour them after 9/11, posits SUJAY SOOD

In the time since 9/11 and 11/26 happened, I've gone from becoming an Indian national to an American national. When 9/11 took place, I was surprised at the intense and single-minded mobilization of American resources—much more military than diplomatic—to hit back at a terrorist network that proclaimed itself powerful by virtue of dastardly and inhuman action.

I was Indian then, and therefore more than a little surprised and much awed by the events that followed to result in the deployment of American and allied NATO forces in Afghanistan to destroy the self-serving, destructive and inimical terrorist organization called Al-Qaeda. It's a war that is being waged even today.

My surprise stemmed from the fact that, as an Indian, I was aware that terrorists operated out of Afghanistan. I was aware that Osama Bin Laden had made it his mandate to strike out against capitalism and democracy all across the world in the name of a very misguided interpretation of his religion, Islam. I was aware that India had been victimized more than once before 9/11 by the operatives of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, who were trained and abetted by the all-powerful wing of the Pakistan military—the Inter Services Intelligence agency. I was aware that the ISI had been funded by USA to siphon money to Afghanistan during its war in the 1980's against the Soviet Union. I was aware, also, that Osama Bin Laden was a monster that had benefited from the ISI training, funding and arms.

On 9/11 and in the days that followed, what surprised me as an Indian—who had become used to the Indian government never taking necessary action to prevent future terrorist attacks, to never mobilizing its armed forces in any specific type of retaliation against the enemies of the nation, to using the massacre of its citizens as an excuse to dawdle and manipulate vote banks for the next elections—was the swift and decisive actions taken by the United States government .

Here's an immediate timeline of the day that the terrorists made the cardinal mistake of testing American resolve to stand firm in her mandate to root out terrorism from the face of the earth: 8:45 am American airlines jet strikes the North tower. 9:03 a.m. United Airlines flight crashes into the south tower. 9:08 a.m. the airspace in the immediate proximity of New York State is sealed against any takeoffs. F-15's being non-stop sorties to survey the skies. 9:28 a.m. President Bush makes first public statement regarding the tragedy. 9:37 a.m. Flight 77 crashes into the east wing of the Pentagon. 9:45 am the entire US airpspace is shut down against civilian flights.

Two more flights crashed, and the American nation took toll of the tragedy. I was in Boston, holding a vigil with my colleagues and students, shocked and uncertain as to what happened, and as to what was to happen.

At 8:30 p.m. uncertainty about what was going to happen were put to rest by president Bush's declaration of war: "...we will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

In less than 12 hours since the first plane had struck the first tower and wreaked terror upon America and the world, the president's proclamation was uncompromising. It put not only the terrorist organizations across the world on alert, but it also put all those countries that harbored, trained, and armed those terrorist groups on alert.

When 9/11 happened, I was a national of India. I was shocked not only by the tone of the American president's response but at its unabashed declaration of war against terrorists and terrorist states.

India had already suffered countless attacks by terrorists—aided, trained, and equipped by agencies in Pakistan—and the Indian government had never quite reached the point of resolving to do anything that would seem pro-active in terms of protecting the innocent civilians of India from future bloodshed. I wasn't the only Indian who had become inured to tragedy through endless and self-serving political dawdle-talk.

When 11/26 happened in Bombay, I was an American national. I watched in horror, with utmost sadness and dismay, the images of bloodshed in the wake of the brazen terror attack in Mumbai. But feelings of despair were very quickly replaced by anger against a corrupt and inefficient government that failed to establish a centralized intelligence network to combat terrorism in the last thirty years, that failed to stop coordinated terror strikes that had victimized 6 major cities in the last two years, that refused to heed warnings from the local coast guard against a marine infiltration of the country.

But as the events unfolded, as the hundreds of innocent civilians got injured and lost their lives, as the brave military and commando units suffered casualties in their efforts to eradicate the inhuman killers without harming potential survivors, what angered me the most was the vacillating, apologetic tone of the Indian government.

There is no doubt in the world arena about from where the terrorists embarked, and where they procured their sophisticated weaponry and training. If ever there was a time for the Indian government to emulate a precedent set by the United States and promise to its terrorized Indian population that India "will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them," then that time is now.

But that time seems to have come and have more or less gone. Instead, the Indian government has had the resolve to invite the chief of the ISI to come and have a discussion in Delhi.

Which invitation was curtly refused.

In the aftermath of watching its population get massacred, the Indian government only managed to get snubbed. Talk about inviting salt in the wounds.

Instead of protecting the people of India against future bloodshed, the Indian government is happy to hold discussions—over tea and finger-foods—with those who harbor, train, fund terrorists.

Today, I am an American citizen with the utmost respect for the people of India, a people who cherish their secular and constitutional way of life, and I and proud to belong to a country that shares Indians' hatred of terrorism in all its forms.

As an American, I also share their dismay and anger at a self-serving government, which continues to bask in inaction and politicking even the face of mounting civilian casualties in the last two years.

India has battled terror for decades, but now terrorism has declared war on India. Will India declare war on terrorism?

They have failed us

2008-12-03T20:16:00.000-08:00

Rajiv Desai

The political class is like the public sector, which seeks to run a modern enterprise in a bureaucratic fashion. Politicians and bureaucrats and their cohorts try to operate a modern nation state with command and control techniques more suited to the colonial era.
This contradiction was outlined in stark relief by the terrorist strikes in Mumbai. Not even the most modern nation state could have anticipated the strikes. However, the key is the response. Right or wrong, governments in the United States and Western Europe responded swiftly to similar attacks on their cities. Certainly in the US there has been not even a minor incident of terror since 9/11. Now compare that to the dithering, uncoordinated response of the Indian authorities. A cogent approach might, at the very least, have contained the number of casualties.
It took nearly 10 hours for commandos to show up. Plus the police proved once again unable to do the simplest job of sanitising the area. Instead, you had crowds of curious onlookers and the inevitable television crews and reporters. What’s more, television reporters, in their eagerness for ‘breaking news’, were oblivious of the negative impact that their coverage could have, especially in keeping the terrorists informed about the commandos’ tactics.
Various spokesmen fed the media with information about police plans, government strategy and commando tactics in a random manner. It was clear that no one was in charge: not the Union home minister, not the state chief minister, not the state home minister, not the NSG chief, not the police commissioner, not the state and central information ministries. It was a comprehensive failure of governance.
The question arises: Could politicians and bureaucrats have done any better? Of course, they could have. So why didn’t they? Why did it take the state chief minister so long to grasp the true nature of the attacks? Why did his deputy, who also serves as home minister, downplay the magnitude of the problem? Why did the Centre take so long to wake up? What was the national security adviser doing? What was the home minister doing? A National Disaster Management Authority office was established recently. Was this not a disaster included in its terms of reference?
Nevertheless, let’s not play the blame game. Instead, let us analyse why things went so terribly awry. One, the position of a politician in any party is vicarious. Except for the supreme leader, no one is secure. This puts a premium on sycophancy that cascades through the ranks and explains why politicians wear
several rings, undergo elaborate religious rituals and are deeply superstitious. Their survival is not on the basis of performance or leadership. If he should in some way displease the leadership, it’s curtains.
Neither chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh nor any of the Patils (former central and state home ministers) was capable of getting anything done except ceremonial posturing, which in their minds would please their overlords. In such a culture, politics becomes process rather than goal-oriented. Meaningless gestures and flatulent rhetoric are all you get. Hence Deshmukh’s “terror tourism” trip to the Taj with Bollywood celebrities or Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s gift of money to the family of a slain security officer. Compare that to 9/11, when the New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani took charge and directed the response.
National priorities are much lower in the politician’s hierarchy of values. Every situation he faces is judged on the basis of whether it strengthens or weakens his position. In addition to sycophancy, the political culture celebrates opportunism. This explains why the chief minister of a neighbouring state rushed to the Oberoi hotel, where he swaggered before the assembled media, charging the Maharashtra government with failure and calling for new laws and what have you. If ever Modi was stripped of his recent image-building sheen, this was it. He was shown up for what he is: a small-time opportunist with an agenda that is clearly too large for him. Meanwhile opposition leader L K Advani, with his refusal to support the government,wrote his own obituary as a possible prime minister. Contrast that to solidarity shown by American and European politicians in the face of similar terror attacks.
Innovation and ideology are an intrinsic part of modern political cultures. Barack Obama steamrollered his way to the presidency of the US with a high-tech campaign and a message of change. In India, Mayawati is feted for her ability to rally the impoverished and oppressed Dalit castes, flaunting diamond jewellery and disclosing mind-boggling assets. The BJP, with its pursuit of a communal anti-Muslim agenda, offers no real message other than hate and deceit. The failure of the party to emerge as a centre-right alternative is unforgivable and speaks of a lack of vision.
On the other hand, the Congress is hopelessly paralysed by various competing factions including a socialist left that seeks to return to the days of Indira Gandhi, feudal groups based on caste and religious affiliation, and a ruling progressive section that is held in check by the various factions. The result is reform by stealth, a hesitant foreign policy and mindless populism. Sapped by such a debilitating culture, the political class was simply incapable of responding to the terrorist assault on Mumbai.

Calling all Pakistanis

2008-12-03T20:05:00.000-08:00

Thomas L Friedman

New York: On February 6, 2006, three Pakistanis died in Peshawar and Lahore during violent street protests against Danish cartoons that had satirised the Prophet Mohammad. More such mass protests followed weeks later. When Pakistanis and other Muslims are willing to take to the streets, even suffer death, to protest an insulting cartoon published in Denmark, is it fair to ask: Who in the Muslim world, who in Pakistan, is ready to take to the streets to protest the mass murders of real people, not cartoon characters, right next door in Mumbai?
After all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party travelled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure, murdered the imam and his wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their two-year-old son — purely because they were Sunni Muslims — where would we be today? The entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets.
So what can we expect from Pakistan and the wider Muslim world after Mumbai? India says its interrogation of the surviving terrorist indicates that all 10 men came from Karachi, and at least one, if not all 10, were Pakistani nationals.
It seems to me that the Pakistani government, which is extremely weak to begin with, has been taking this mass murder very seriously, and, for now, no official connection between the terrorists and elements of the Pakistani security services has been uncovered.
At the same time, any reading of the Pakistani English-language press reveals Pakistani voices expressing real anguish and horror over this incident. But while the Pakistani government’s sober response is important, and the sincere expressions of outrage by individual Pakistanis are critical, one is still hoping for more. I am still hoping — just once — for that mass demonstration of “ordinary people” against the Mumbai bombers, not for my sake, not for India’s sake, but for Pakistan’s sake.
Why? Because it takes a village. The best defence against this kind of murderous violence is to limit the pool of recruits, and the only way to do that is for the home society to isolate, condemn and denounce publicly and repeatedly the murderers — and not amplify, ignore, glorify, justify or “explain” their activities.
Sure, better intelligence is important. But at the end of the day, terrorists often are just acting on what they sense the majority really wants but doesn’t dare do or say. That is why the most powerful deterrent to their behaviour is when the community as a whole says:“No more.What you have done in murdering defenceless men, women and children has brought shame on us and on you.”
Why should Pakistanis do that? Because you can’t have a healthy society that tolerates in any way its own sons going into a modern city, anywhere, and just murdering everyone in sight — including some 40 other Muslims — in a suicide-murder operation, without even bothering to leave a note. Because the act was their note, and destroying just to destroy was their goal. If you do that with enemies abroad, you will do that with enemies at home and destroy your own society in the process.
“I often make the comparison to Catholics during the paedophile priest scandal,” a Muslim woman friend wrote me. “Those Catholics that left the church or spoke out against the church were not trying to prove to anyone that they are anti-paedophile... They wanted to fix a terrible problem” in their own religious community.
We know from the Danish cartoons affair that Pakistanis and other Muslims know how to mobilise quickly to express their heartfelt feelings, not just as individuals, but as a powerful collective. That is what is needed here.
Because this kind of murderous violence only stops when the village — all the good people in Pakistan, including the community elders and spiritual leaders who want a decent future for their country — declares, as a collective, that those who carry out such murders are shameful unbelievers who will not dance with virgins in heaven but burn in hell. —

Why It Won’t Happen in India

2008-11-18T19:39:00.001-08:00

Ashutosh Varshney

On January 20, when Barack Obama is formally inaugurated as president, the US will have a tryst with destiny. As famously defined by Jawaharlal Nehru, a national tryst with destiny is “a moment...when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance”.
Scholars of nationalism agree that the US was founded upon an ideology, not ethnicity or race. The ideology was contained in the Declaration of Independence of 1776. “We hold these truths to be self-evident”, it said, “that all men are created equal”. Europe, the Old World, was horribly tied up in feudal hierarchies.The New World would have political and social equality at its core. As a corollary, rising from below became the socalled American dream. In reality, however, the US has not fully lived up to this ideal. Indeed, the creed of political equality came entwined with a founding ambiguity. The founders did not abolish slavery, an institution diametrically opposed to equality.
This original ambiguity has haunted the US. The election of Obama as president liberates America from its basic contradiction. It is a shining moment in the historical journey of American nationhood and a landmark moment for world history. No society has yet elected someone from its deepest subaltern trenches to the highest office of the nation. Obama is not a slave’s descendant, but he is African-American. It should be no surprise that an international debate about whether other nations can produce an Obama has begun. The debate in India, too, has been vigorous. Can Mayawati become India’s Obama? Can a Muslim be elected India’s prime minister?
A Muslim PM would, indeed, be a celebratory landmark for Indian secularism, but that is not an exact comparison. No community of India has suffered more than the nation’s Dalits. Muslims have historically had a dualistic structure: a ruling class and an aristocracy on one side and a vast mass of poor on the other side. In significant ways, that dualism continues to this day: the Azim Premjis and Shah Rukh Khans on the one hand, and the teeming millions on the other. In contrast, no film and sports stars or business leaders have come from the Dalit community. Though not enslaved, at least in modern times, Dalits, much like the African-Americans, have been segregated, stamped upon, and treated shabbily. India also has a founding ambiguity. Our Constitution abolished untouchability, but it is still widely practised. A Dalit PM would constitute a true parallel to the election of Obama.
Can India produce an Obama? Three great differences between India and the US make it unlikely. First, party establishments cannot easily be challenged until there are open
intra-party elections for the leadership of political parties. American elections start with the primaries, allowing anyone in a political party to stake a claim to leadership. Lacking internal elections, India’s parties today are on the whole family properties. The partial exceptions are the BJP and CPM. But the BJP cannot easily have a leader not approved by the RSS. And the CPM is ruled by an unelected politburo.
The Congress was historically based on internal elections, but with the exception of a feeble attempt in the 1990s, internal elections, suspended by Indira Gandhi in 1973, have not been restored. The institutional decay of India’s political parties means that rank outsiders, like Mayawati, tend to create new political parties, but it is well known that it is much harder to create a new nationwide political organisation than use an existing one. The competition between political parties in India is remarkably vigorous, but competition inside is its exact opposite.
Second, the US has a presidential system, India a parliamentary one. Since a US president is elected by the whole nation, a presidential system creates a national political arena. Every presidential candidate has to think of how to lead the nation. In a parliamentary system, the electorate votes for an MP, but there is no national election for the PM. Only when a parliamentary system has two (or three) nationwide parties, as in the UK, do political leaders tend to compete the way American presidential candidates do. India does not have a two-party system.
Third, to mobilise citizens for vote, one has to speak in a language that the citizens can understand. Political campaigns take place in a linguistic register. Until India becomes more or less fully literate and also bilingual, India’s primary political arenas will be linguistically diverse provincial units. As a result, state-level Obamas will emerge, but national-level Obamas will be extremely hard to come by. Mayawati is at best a provincial Obama, with one major difference. Obama never ran a campaign of bitterness and anger; he subscribed to post-racial politics. In contrast, before the current Brahmin-Dalit brotherhood phase began, Mayawati conflated the politics of dignity with the politics of revenge.
Only movement politics, aimed at putting the various communities together, can tear down India’s institutional constraints. The freedom movement was the last great movement that built unity in India. It produced impressive national political leaders. The JP movement in the 1970s presented an alternative version of national unity, but it could not really take off. The Advani-led rath yatra was also one of the biggest movements of 20th century India. But it did not unite; it only divided. Until such time as India’s political parties become more internally democratic, a national level two-party system emerges, or strong movements of national unity come to the scene, India’s national leaders will continue to come from party establishments, not from the lower reaches of society.
The writer, a professor of political science, will shortly join Brown University.

Desperately seeking our own Obama

2008-11-14T02:36:00.000-08:00

With the White House set to receive its first black president, the temptation to seek parallels at home is alluring. There is, for one, the question of when India will get its“Obama moment”: A Dalit assuming the country’s highest political office. But there is also the broader theme of whether India will get a young leader who can communicate with the felicity Obama has displayed.
A truth about the US elections is that Obama is a change not only from GOP poli- cies and leaders, but also from senior Democrats who seem just as jaded. Yet, it is remarkable that Obama came from nowhere in a matter of two years or so.
Placing charisma, change and new leadership in the Indian context can be a case of overreach. There are, however, strands common to most democracies and India is no stranger to charismatic leaders. The Gandhis have provided their share, with Rajiv’s stupendous win in 1984 standing out. His youth and ‘Mr Clean’ image took the nation by storm.
A few years later, Congress outcaste V P Singh mesmerised the middle classes and the Hindi belt as he swept Rajiv out of office. Around the same time, L K Advani, in a very different manner, held audiences spellbound by his advocacy of the Ram temple. In 1998, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the “man India awaits” as his charisma delivered a winning edge to the BJP.
In all cases, charisma did not obliterate caste calculations, but provided the X factor. It is equally true that charisma is not
permanent and even though leaders have embodied change, their spell does wear off. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton are a case in point. As general elections approach, possibly as early as February, the principal combatants are in their late 70s and early 80s. Most major political figures are battle-hardened and youth is at a premium. Does a fresh face and ideas require the prop of dynasty or does the system offer a break to one less blessed?
There are MPs, some from political families as well as others, who do reflect a certain dedication to their chosen profession. BJP’s Kiran Maheshwari, a first-time MP from Udaipur has demonstrated both perseverance and grit, while her colleague Kharabela Swain, a third-term MP from Balasore, has shown he has the smarts when taking on leading figures in the government such as finance minister P Chidambaram.
Shiv Sena’s Suresh Prabhu is not in his party’s core group, but despite his four terms, he is refreshingly uncynical in his approach to politics. He is not clueless when it comes to issues such as climate change, finance and security. Among other MPs who stand out are Asauddin Owaissi, who commands a one-seat party but can draw on his oratorial gifts and a foreign education.
Though she has a limited ouevre, PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti is both articulate and brimming with confidence — although being a woman politician from Kashmir can itself be a daunting task. Her rival, NC’s Omar Abdullah, has drawn both praise and flak for his speech during the July 22 trust vote. Though he must keep an eye on regional imperatives, he seems to have the leadership gene.
In the Congress, Rahul Gandhi has the obvious advantage of dynasty. But that’s not the only thing on his CV. He manfully withstood jeering and ribbing over his
“Kalavati” speech. Sachin Pilot hails from a political family, but doesn’t take this advantage for granted. He does his homework and gives thought to issues before taking a stand. Similarly, Selja, who is on her second stint as a junior minister, combines both the urban and rural experience like Pilot.
Though there is talent in the current Lok Sabha, the question whether it will fulfil its promise is not easy to answer. The structure of India’s political system and the nature of parties — dynasty often rules in both national and regional outfits — makes progress to the top unpredictable. Merit often requires an accident. In parties where dynasty does not rule, such as the BJP, running the factional maze can test the hardiest of nerves.
But politics defies predictions. No one gave Obama a fig of a chance. But when the opportunity arose he grasped it with both hands. India may yet surprise the world.

The celebration and the hangover

2008-11-14T02:09:00.000-08:00

SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR

The US has al ways had two very different faces, one inte rnal and one ex ternal. Inter nally, it has be en a global be acon of dem ocracy, empowerment, and equal rights for the powerful and pow erless. Externally, it has used its military and economic power to bully others into submission sometimes gently and sometimes bloodily. Its internal face is ad mired across the globe, while its external face is widely disliked.
Barack Obama’s victory bur nishes the US internal face as nev er before, and has rightly been cel ebrated across the world. How fan tastic that a country that enslaved black people for centuries, that did not even permit them to vote freely till 1964, should now elect a black president! The US has triumphed over its own history, making race and colour irrelevant in ways unimaginable even four years ago It is a triumph not only for Oba ma but for all Americans, and for the very idea of America.
Having celebrated the internal US triumph, we must now ask what Obama’s victory means for the external face of the US. The answers are sobering. Indeed, one cannot rule out a hangover.
Indian politicians and busi nessmen have hailed Obama’s vic tory, yet plainly have reservations Obama’s campaign slogan for change, chanted endlessly by his followers, was ‘‘Yes, we can’’ What exactly does that portend on specific issues?
Now that the US is slumping into the worst recession since 1979 can Obama take measures to re duce the outsourcing of software and business services to India, and reduce visas to Indian software engineers? Yes, he can.
Can he take measures to reduce the flow of direct and portfolio in vestment to India? Yes he can. He wants to raise the capital gains tax from 15% to 20%. That worsens the risk-reward ratio for US in vestors, and will make them more reluctant to invest in emerging markets like India, which are con sidered riskier than the US.
Can Obama devise tax and oth er measures that will penalise US companies that invest abroad, in countries like India, rather than in the US? Yes, he can.
Can Obama come out with pro tectionist measures to shift jobs from poor countries to the US? He not only can, he has promised to do so.
Can he increase subsidies for and compulsory use of corn-based ethanol, measures that have caused a big spike in world food and fertiliser crisis? Yes, he can.
Can he kill the Doha Round of the World Trade Organisation by taking a much tougher line than Bush on keeping US farm subsi dies high? Yes, he can.
Can he act against India for building up its forex reserves, and hence keeping the rupee weaker than it would otherwise have been? Yes, he can. He has in the past voted to penalise China for doing just this. In the current fi nancial crisis it is wise for Third World countries to keep high forex reserves, but this is not recognised by protectionists in the US.
Now, we must not exaggerate the risks. Politicians are typical ly more populist during an elec tion campaign than when they as sume office. Obama’s most pro tectionist rhetoric has been aimed against China and NAFTA rather than India. But a major recession has begun, and US unemployment could rise to 8-9%. There is talk of Obama engineering another New Deal. Warning: the New Deal was the most disastrously protection ist era in US history.
What about foreign policy? There are some positives here Obama voted against the invasion of Iraq. Bravo! He has pledged to bring US troops back from Iraq quickly, and favours negotiations with Iran. Yet, the Bush adminis tration has already moved in these directions in the last 12 months reversing its earlier muscularity Obama plans to bring some Re publicans into his cabinet, in search of political unity. This sug gests that foreign policy may not change all that much.
To the extent it does, it may not be comfortable for India. Can Obama put pressure on India on Kashmir? Yes, he can. He has said that if only the Kashmir issue is settled, Pakistan can bet ter concentrate on al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The Indo-US nuclear deal is through. But can Obama come up with hurdles on details, like licences for dual-purpose technology? We hope not, but yes, he can. His sup porters include non-proliferators who still want to punish India.
Can he insist that India should enact a law limiting the liability of US nuclear suppliers in the event of an accident at an Indian nuclear power plant? Can he urge India to sign an international con vention shifting liability from equipment suppliers to the com pany running a nuclear plant? Yes, he can.
Here again, we must not exag gerate the risks. In practice, US policy may not change much. But history shows that Indo-US rela tions have usually been better un der Republican than Democratic presidents. Democrats are more protectionist, and tougher on nu clear non-proliferation.
Bill Clinton was personally popular in India, but never did anything for us except impose sanctions after Pokharan II. Bush was personally unpopular in In dia, yet did us yeoman service by pushing through the nuclear deal Can Obama do anything to match that? Yes, he can, but i rather doubt that he will.

Wisdom of Nehru's middle path

2008-11-14T02:04:00.000-08:00

November 14, 2008
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.'

This is how Nehru, the builder of modern India addressed the nation on the eve of Independence in 1947. Six decades later it is good to look back and see whether these dreams have been on the right track.

One cannot help remembering these prophetic words when Chandrayaan I took off on October 22. It is a tribute to Nehru on his birth anniversary today that we pay homage to this great Indian.

After centuries of invasions and internal turmoil, the last occupation of undivided India was by the British. It lasted for nearly a century before the non violent struggle of Gandhi brought it to an end, though with great pain of the partition of the country.

However the British left a legacy in terms of a well connected railway system, the English language in a country of 17 different languages and encouraged the study of science, however limited it was.

It is notable that the country's only Nobel Prize winner in Science (Physics) was C V Raman in 1930 for his work in light scattering which forms the basis of lasers; and Rabindranath Tagore in Literature in 1913 -- both in pre-independent India.

In post independent India, Amartya Sen was awarded for Economics in 1998.

Jawaharlal Nehru trained in Oxford but was influenced by the then Soviet model of industrial development. He was an active participant in the freedom struggle. Prior to achieving Independence, he already had formed a vision for the country's development and passionately believed that science was the only way to eliminate poverty in India.

Thus soon after the now famous 'Tryst with Destiny' speech in 1947, he embarked on an economic policy which many economists now believe laid the firm foundation for liberalisation in the 1990s.

It was socialistic in name but left enough space for the private sector. The commanding heights of the economy like the railways, steel and heavy machine building industry, and the power industry were all in the public sector with meaningful technical collaborations with the West and also the then Soviet Union.

The conditions of collaboration were that there must be a transfer of technology and not just turn key operations as were implemented in some other developing countries. The latter model would have left the country in a big mess since the country did not have the requisite science and technology manpower at that time.

It is important to keep this in mind as we conduct our science and technology ventures after the nuclear deal.

The planned investments in science and technology that the country made through the establishment of a chain of research laboratories as well as the starting of IITs with foreign help including the US took nearly two, three decades to have some effect in generating scientific and technical manpower of a critical size.

Thus, when IBM and Coca-Cola had to leave the country in the late 1970s, the Indian management and technical skill set quickly filled the gap. The country adopted a pro- business approach to development in 1980 under Indira Gandhi and then Rajiv Gandhi.

This is an essential prerequisite for any country to prosper as an economic power. Visionaries like Homi Bhabha and his successors helped shape the atomic energy programme and laid the seeds of the electronic revolution. Vikram Sarabhai laid the foundation of the space industry.

In education, the influence of President John F Kennedy and Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith left a lasting legacy in terms of unleashing the computer revolution in India through the then advanced IBM 1620 at IIT Kanpur in 1963.

The IT manpower generated through this had a large multiplier effect which is now there for all to see.

Much as she is criticised for other things, Indira Gandhi in the late 1960s and 1970s left her own imprint on modern India. The nationalisation of banks and the insurance sector resulted in making those services available in rural India.

In the context of the current global crisis and the choices before the US, one can see the wisdom of a Nehru who chose the middle path in 1947. The fruits of the Green, Milk and Telecom revolution are there for all to see.

If properly harnessed, the fruits of both the Internet and space revolution can change the rural landscape. These activities would not have happened if the country had embarked on liberalisation in the first four decades after Independence. Computerisation in all sectors of the economy had fierce opposition from the labour unions and being a democracy it took time for it to be accepted by all.

The 21st century saw the maturing of India in terms of developing world class managerial skill set through the schools of management which paved the way for a smooth transition to globalisation.

A sustained 7 to 9 per cent growth was now possible and for many, a college education with exposure to IT is now a passport for a good job. This has never happened in India since 1947.

India now has a great demographic advantage in having half the population in the 25+ age bracket. The so-called brain drain of the 1960s and 1970s is now reversing. The economic fundamentals that were laid out in the first four decades which many dub as the period of 'Hindu' rate of growth paid off ultimately and the country is now well poised to being an economic power in its own right.

Hence, it is easy to understand why there is a 300 million strong middle class with disposable income. The almost exponential growth in cell phones and mobile technology is set to change the face of rural India. IT is now poised for the next phase of growth in terms of innovation, thus climbing the value chain. The country needs to move beyond IT in the realm of mathematics and computer science and nurture future Ramanujans.

In some sense India offers a text book case of development for a poor country. India had the good fortune of a secular and democratic Constitution similar to the US and with those attributes progress at times, seems slow. In the long run it is worth the effort. Gender equality as well as inclusiveness of low income people is aggressively pursued.

There are, however, many sectors particularly the infrastructure like water, health, electricity, roads and education which are in a sorry state of affairs.

These are the areas where the country needs committed leadership and vision to implement. The private sector must be involved in a major way. For example in the power sector it is time to examine whether the state electricity boards in spite of the reforms are doing an adequate job.

It is time to privatise the government-managed power sector. Institutions like the Bharat Heavy Electricals [Get Quote] etc have proved equal to the task. For a country which is one third the size of US and has 1 billion people, there is no place to grow except vertically for which we need reliable electric power to operate elevators, pumps etc.

Renewable technologies have a place, but not to the exclusion of grid power with efficient power plants with a minimum of theft and electrical losses. The nuclear deal is not a solution for the next 10 to 15 years.

The state of education is in disarray. At the primary level privately managed schools with a secular outlook must be encouraged and perhaps supported by the government. At the higher education level the quota crisis has distorted the picture greatly. The poorer sections of the society are still left out.

The whole range of infrastructure issues needs attention by competent people as in the days after Independence. There in lies the challenge of today and tomorrow.

M A Pai is Professor Emeritus, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Is it the epilogue or the prologue.

2008-11-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

LIKE MANY OF THE recent ones that have gone before it, 2008 has been a year of fearfully ugly conversations. Sixty years on, as the pieties of a hardwon freedom have faded from view, the idea of India has come to be fought over in increasingly violent terms. Majority versus minority. Hindutva versus Soft Hindutva. Right versus Left. Left versus Far Left. Caste versus Scheduled Caste. Shining India versus Simmering India. Liberals versus Neo-liberals. State versus State. The Centre versus the Rest. And Jihad against it all. Right action has long been forfeited in India. Now, in an increasingly fractured polity, as power becomes ever more difficult to come by, most public figures have dropped even the fig-leaf of temperate speech. Shoot them, burn them, pay them back in the same coin, our leaders urge us. And maddened by their calling, maddened by the absence of the rational voice, like insane flocks behind insane shepherds, we rush to bloody our meadows.
What is this sense of rage and hate and injury driving us all? Are there embryonic seeds of genuine grouse beneath all the aggravated rhetoric? Are there real issues to be picked out of the violence swirling around us and examined in calmer, more neutral light? Fixed positions and an unbending sense of righteousness make one dangerously opaque. What makes extreme
views most dangerous is that they are only the amplified face of a vast middle ground that thinks it feels the same injuries. It is a suicidal vanity, then, to label others and stop listening. Provocations, a series of interviews with stakeholders in the ideas of India, speaks to people across trench-lines. Airing our prejudice, triggering conversation. And, with luck, introspection.

Stop the politics of division

2008-10-13T21:12:00.000-07:00

Last week, in responding to some of the hundreds of reactions i received to my September 28 column on the anti-Christian violence in Orissa and Karnataka, i tackled the vexed question of conversions to Christianity, which many readers argued constituted a provocation for the violence. But the conversion issue is not purely a religious one: behind it lies a profoundly political question, one which goes to the heart of the nature of the Indian state, and indeed to the very idea of India itself.
In my original piece i argued that violence is part of a contemptible political project whose closest equivalent can in fact be found in the ‘Indian Mujahideen’ bomb blasts. Both actions are anti-national; both aim to divide the country by polarising people along their religious identities; and both hope to profit politically from such polarisation. In this context, the issue of conversion becomes a diversion. Because to say that conversions are somehow inherently wrong would accord legitimacy to the rhetoric of the Bajrang Dal and its cohorts — who declare openly that conversions from Hinduism to any other faith are anti-national. Implicit is the idea that to be Hindu is somehow more natural, more authentically Indian, than to be anything else, and that to lapse from Hinduism is to dilute one’s identification with the motherland.
As a Hindu, i reject that notion utterly. I reject the presumption that the purveyors of hatred speak for all or even most Hindus. Hinduism, we are repeatedly told, is a tolerant faith. The central tenet of tolerance is that the tolerant society accepts that which it does not understand and even that which it does not like, so long as it is not sought to be imposed upon the unwilling. One cannot simultaneously extol the tolerance of Hinduism and attack Christian homes and places of worship.
And as an Indian, i would argue that the whole point about India is the rejection of the idea that religion should be a determinant of nationhood. Our nationalist leaders never fell into the insidious trap of agreeing that, since Partition had established a state for Muslims, what remained was a state for Hindus. To accept the idea of India you have to spurn the logic that divided the country in 1947. Your Indianness has nothing to do with which God you choose to worship, or not.
To suggest that an Indian Hindu becoming Christian is an antinational act not only insults the millions of patriotic Indians who trace their Christianity to more distant forebears, including the Kerala Christians whose families converted to the faith of Saint Thomas centuries before the ancestors of many of today’s Hindu chauvinists even learned to think of themselves as Hindu. It is an insult, too, to the national leaders, freedom fighters, educationists, scientists, military men, journalists and sportsmen of the Christian faith who have brought so much glory to the country through their actions and sacrifices. It is, indeed, an insult to the very idea of India. Nothing could be more anti-national than that.
One reader, Raju Rajagopal, writing ‘‘as a fellow Hindu’’, expressed himself trenchantly in describing ‘terrorism’ and ‘communal riots’ as ‘‘two sides of the same coin, which systematically feed on each other.’’ The only difference, he added, is ‘‘that the first kind of terrorism is being unleashed by a fanatical few who swear no allegiance to the idea of India, whereas the second kind of terror is being unleashed by those who claim to love India more dearly than you and i, who are part of the electoral politics of India, and who know the exact consequences of their actions: creating deep fissures between communities, whose horrific consequences the world has witnessed once too often in recent decades.’’
That is the real problem here. Nehru had warned that the communalism of the majority was especially dangerous because it could present itself as nationalist. Yet, Hindu nationalism is not Indian nationalism. And it has nothing to do with genuine Hinduism either. A reader bearing a Christian name wrote to tell me that when his brother was getting married to a Hindu girl, the Hindu priest made a point of saying to him before the ceremony words to the effect of: ‘‘When i say God, i don’t mean a particular God.’’ As this reader commented: ‘‘It’s at moments like that that i can’t help but feel proud to be Indian and to be moved by its religiosity — even though i’m an atheist.’’
As a Hindu, i relish pointing out that i belong to the only major religion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion. Hinduism asserts that all ways of belief are equally valid, and Hindus readily venerate the saints, and the sacred objects, of other faiths. Hinduism is a civilisation, not a dogma. There is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. If a Hindu decides he wishes to be a Christian, how does it matter that he has found a different way of stretching his hands out towards God? Truth is one, Vivekananda reminded all Hindus, but there are many ways of attaining it.
So, the rejection of other forms of worship, other ways of seeking the Truth, is profoundly un-Hindu, as well as being un-Indian. The really important debate is not about conversions, but between the unifiers and the dividers — between those who think all Indians are ‘‘us’’, whichever God they choose to worship, and those who think that Indians can be divided into ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them’’. The reduction of non-Hindus to second-class status in their own homeland is unthinkable. It would be a second Partition: this time a partition not just in the Indian soil, but in the Indian soul.
It is time for all of us to say: stop the politics of division. We are all Indians.
-Shashi Tharoor

Anatomy of crisis

2008-10-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

If your palms start to sweat whenever you see the business headlines or flip to a business channel, you might draw solace from the fact you share these symptoms with millions. Investors across the world are in a state of absolute panic. As they dump risky assets like shares and rush to safe havens like gold and government bonds, stock markets and currencies across the world keep falling.
The origins of today’s crisis can be traced back to mid-2007 when three things became clear. One, low income or sub-prime US households that had borrowed heavily from banks and finance companies to buy homes were defaulting heavily on their debt obligations. Two, the size of this sub-prime housing loan market was huge at about $1.4 trillion. Three, Wall Street’s financial engineers had packaged these loans into really complicated financial instruments called CDOs (collateralized debt obligations). American and European banks had invested heavily in these products. However, no amount of financial engineering could protect investors from one simple and irrefutable principle—if these housing loans turned ‘bad’, the instruments that were based on these loans would lose value. CDO prices started plummeting as defaults on US home loans rose. Falling prices dented banks’ investment portfolios and these losses destroyed banks’ capital. The complexity of these instruments meant that no one was too sure either about how big these losses were or which banks had been hit the hardest.
Banks usually never hold the exact amount of cash that they need to disburse as credit. The ‘inter-bank’ market performs this critical role of bringing cash-surplus and cash-deficit banks together and lubricates the process of credit delivery to companies (for working capital and capacity creation) and consumers (for buying cars, white goods etc). As the housing loan crisis intensified, banks grew increasingly suspicious about each other’s solvency and ability to honour commitments. The inter-bank market shrank as a result and this began to hurt the flow of funds to the ‘real’ economy.
To cut a long story short, today’s financial crisis is the culmination of these problems in the global banking system. Inter-bank markets across the world have frozen over. Indian banks are in the middle of a severe cash crunch. Wall Street blue-chips like Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch have been acquired by other more ‘solvent’ banks at bargain-basement prices. Lehman Brothers, which had survived every major upheaval for the past 158 years, went bust. Panic begets panic and as the loan market went into a tailspin, it sucked other markets into its centrifuge. The meltdown in stock markets across the world is a victim of this contagion.
Some questions need answers at this stage. Why are the sensex and the rupee getting hurt so badly by the woes of the American and European banks? Their presence in India is minuscule compared to the nationalized banks or the bigger private banks. A glance at Indian banks’ balance sheets will show that their exposure to complex instruments like CDOs is almost nil.
A word, ‘globalization’, and a phrase, ‘risk aversion’, should explain why India has not been spared the contagion of the US and European banking crisis. Global investors are seriously concerned about the prospect of a great upheaval, if not a complete collapse in the banking system in the developed world. This, they fear, would affect all financial transactions in the near term. Going forward, this disruption could trigger a global recession (that is about 3% growth in 2009 for all economies put together). Agencies like the International Monetary Fund have endorsed this view.
The upshot is that the global investment community has become extremely riskaverse. They are pulling out of assets that are even remotely considered risky and buying things traditionally considered safe—gold, government bonds and bank deposits (in banks that are still considered solvent). Emerging markets like India have over the last few years offered spectacular returns but have always been considered ‘risky’. It is not surprising that they have got the short shrift in the flight to safe haven.
Does India deserve to be treated differently? Are we the victim of irrational ‘herd’ behaviour where differences across economies are getting blurred in this mad rush to safety? Yes and no. It is true that our economy depends more on domestic rather than external drivers, a fact that we keep touting endlessly. However, it is also true that we have embraced ‘globalization’ fairly enthusiastically over the past decade-and-a-half.
This, from an economic perspective, means two things. For one, we depend more on external markets to sell our goods and services. In 1995-96, for instance, we sold 9.1% of our goods abroad. In 2007-08, we sold 13.5% of our goods to foreign buyers. It also means that we depend more on external funds to support our growth. 7% growth target realistic
In the last fiscal year alone, we borrowed $29 billion from foreign lenders and got $34 billion of foreign direct investment. A global recession would hurt external demand. ‘Risk-aversion’ among international lenders could limit access to international capital. Both India’s financial markets and the real economy will be hurt in the process. The 9% growth target doesn’t seem that ‘doable’ any more; we should be happy to clock 7% this fiscal year and the next.
The sell-off in the stock markets is not entirely the effect of global contagion. To a degree, it reflects anxieties about our prospects of future growth. The blood-letting in the financial markets is unlikely to stop soon. Governments and central banks (the RBI’s counterparts) are trying every trick in the book to stabilize the markets. They have pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into their money markets to try and unfreeze their interbank and credit markets. Large financial entities have been nationalized. The US government has set aside $700 billion to buy the ‘toxic’ assets like CDOs that sparked off the crisis. Central banks have got together to co-ordinate cuts in interest rates. None of this has stabilized the global markets. Thus, it is impossible to predict when the haemorrhage will stop and what will stem it. That said, history tells us that financial crises end as suddenly as they start. I would not be surprised if by early next year, the worst of the mayhem is over. The wounds that it leaves behind could take longer to heal.

In Truth, Dark Times

2008-10-06T21:10:00.000-07:00

Tarun Tejpal

DICTATORSHIP WALKS in through the front door, often without a preamble, one sunlit morning. Fascism almost never rings the bell. It slips in through the backdoor, climbs in over window-sills, pads up the basement, locates a rotten rafter to make its covert entry. Dictatorship is showy. It lodges itself in the living room, confident it commands the house. Fascism is sneaky. It quietly settles into every room, knowing it runs the house. Dictatorships can be overthrown by the people. Fascism is the people.

Of course we must not be alarmist. We are a great democracy. Look at our Constitution. Look at our Parliament. Look at our free and fair elections — well, okay, prolific elections. Look at our free and fair media — well, okay, prolific media. Look at our free and fair judiciary — well, okay, our judiciary. Let us not try and list the police and the bureaucracy: we have a consensus of unhappiness about them. In a great democracy — well, okay, a great democracy in the making — these are minor flaws. No doubt, evolution will make us perfect.

This catalogue of virtues is only enumerated by those of us who live inside India’s charmed circle. To whose privileged lives the soaring idea of democracy can provide a glittering embroidery. It’s the banquet hall view of the state — cosy with good food and fine conversation. And it is articulated only by those of us who have somehow managed to grab a seat at the table, even if it is a low one. It’s useful to remember, every ruling class from Caesar to Stalin has believed it was doing right by its people.

Today to read the Indian state through the banquet hall is to read a crocodile through a handbag. Only those who confront the beast know its true nature. A thousand handbags cannot tell you how mercilessly the jaws of a crocodile clamp. But all around the country there are numberless Christians, Muslims, displaced tribals, turfed-out farmers, brutalised dalits, disputing citizens, who can give you a clear idea of its brutal force. Each of their accounts tears the heart out of the idea of India.

Experience is a gift for anyone. Especially for journalists. Seven years ago some of us at TEHELKA were accorded a special opportunity by the Indian state. For blowing a sharp whistle we were dragged into the entrails of the beast. How fearsome its innards were — with not a hint of the beauty of the handbag! Among the many intimate journeys we were taken on was a special starring role in a commission of inquiry. This is a special trick of the beast — an invite to a lengthy palaver at the end of which, when no one is looking, the guest is eaten. For 19 months we participated, along with more than 15 lawyers including some of India’s finest, in a burlesque of lies and immorality against us. It was a rare education. We were forever cured of the banquet hall view of the state

IN GUJARAT last week, a commission of inquiry has just eaten up its guests. Justice Nanavati, mandated to inquire into the Godhra tragedy and its violent aftermath, has delivered an astonishing verdict. Flying in the face of all evidence, he has perilously declared that the bogey burning was the result of a local Muslim conspiracy. At the best of times such a conclusion would have called for caution. To do so in a time of ratcheting communal tensions, with all the facts suggesting otherwise, is nothing short of disastrous.

The truth of Godhra is awful, but it’s not a conspiracy. All the evidence indicates that neither the state nor the local Muslims played any premeditated role in the horrific assault on the train. Once the dastardly event was over, a sinister attempt began to give it a political colour. In the pages that follow, a six-month-long TEHELKA investigation reveals how the establishment and the police broke every rule in the book to manufacture a conspiracy theory. Nanavati was meant to snooker the state’s unlawful conduct. Instead he has endorsed it!

The chances are he will get away with it. As it is universally, India’s secure classes have a charitable view of the system they run. Breathless with carving out the pie, they have little time for distant niceties. In a country of a billion people, a few hundred Muslims mouldering in jail can arouse only so much concern. Citizens move on slogans not on details. Politicians and policemen bank on that.Terrorism is a headline; individual innocence is a nuance. And anyway all those Muslim names sound the same after a while. As do the tribal. And the dalit.

Fascism keeps padding in into our rooms on animal feet. We know the answers. Enforce the law. Ensure justice. Follow the Constitution. The beast knows them too. Only too well. It knows these are the very leash by which it should be bound. But the stake anchoring the leash — public will: as represented by media, intelligentsia, civil society — has come loose. It has badly splintered, lost its sense of anchorage, and it believes the beast will maraud elsewhere and never round on it. The fables of the world are full of such foolishness.

Once, a few good men had a good idea. The idea of India. It resulted in the most magical political experiment of the 20th century. It allowed a complex, ancient, trampled civilisation an enviable entry into modernity. The experiment is still on. In truth, there are dark days — increasingly too many — when it seems to be sliding towards failure. In their roster of virtues, the original visionaries had a gift that made their grand experiments possible. Like the finest literary writers they had the gift of empathy. The ability to intimately imagine the life of another. It took them to a place beyond caste, community, and religion. It made the idea of India possible. It is a gift we need to rediscover again, at every level. To imagine once again the life of one man, one woman. One people.

Pains of a slowing economy

2008-10-06T21:08:00.000-07:00

SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR

I am not usually a pessimist. But i predict that India will suffer a lot of pain in the next 18 months, as the economy slows down along with the current global slowdown.
The US, Europe and Japan are sinking into recession together. Forget claims that India has decoupled from the US and can keep growing fast regardless. India and most developing countries are indeed much less dependent on the US economy than in the past. So, Indian growth will be dented rather than smashed. GDP growth will slide from 9 % last year to 7% this financial year, and to maybe 6% next year.
Now, 7% is a miracle growth rate by historical standards. You might think that declining from super-miraculous to merely miraculous growth cannot be particularly painful. You would be dead wrong. The direction of change matters more than the absolute level. Rising from 5% to 7% is blissful, but falling from 9% to 7% is painful. And a subsequent tumble to 6% will be more painful still.
To appreciate why the direction of change matters so much, recall the 1990s. India went bust in 1991, reformed by globalising, and reaped the reward of fast growth. GDP growth averaged 7.5% in the three-year period 1994-97. India’s growing integration with the world economy enabled it to share in the global economic boom of those years. Foreign institutional investors flooded into all emerging markets, including India, sending stock market prices spiralling.
Indian optimists thought that miraculous growth was here to stay. But along came the Asian financial crisis in 1997, and the Indian economy slumped along with the global economy. Indian GDP growth averaged just 5.5% in the next five years.
Now, 5.5 % may not sound too bad, just a modest deceleration from the 7.5% of the preceding boom. Indeed, India’s 5.5% at the time was one of the fastest growth rates in the world. Yet, the change in direction, from acceleration to deceleration, caused enormous pain.
Industrial growth crashed in 1997-98, and barely limped forward for years. Many industries had borrowed massively during the mid-1990s boom to invest in world-class new plants, for which there was suddenly no demand. Huge projects were abandoned unfinished, with companies defaulting on mega loans. These financial defaults brought the lending institutions also to the verge of bankruptcy, from which they were saved mainly by creative accounting and a friendly RBI. Medium and small companies crashed along with their larger brethren. Employment went into a tailspin. Stock markets crashed and companies stopped repaying fixed deposits, so household investors suffered trauma.
The budgets of the central and state governments assumed steady growth of revenue year after year. But the 1997 slowdown hit tax collections. Meanwhile, a bumper Pay Commission award hugely inflated the wage bills of central and state governments. So, governments, corporations, employees and household investors were all sucked downward into a whirlpool of distress. The only saving grace was the IT boom, sparked by the global Y2K scare. But that turned out to be a bubble, and it burst in 2001.
Difficult though these years were, they did not witness economic collapse. India did not revert to the old Hindu rate of growth of 3.5%, witnessed in the three decades after independence. GDP growth in 1997-2002 averaged a solid 5.5%. But the direction of change was downward, not upward, and that was enough to cause widespread distress.
I fear we are about to see a repetition of that process. As in the 1990s, a booming world economy first lifted Indian growth (and stock markets) to new heights for several years, giving rise to the illusion of permanency. As in the 1990s, the subsequent global slump is going to cause an Indian slump too. As in the 1990s, the fiscal problems of the government are going to be exacerbated by a Pay Commission award.
However, we are much better prepared for this downturn than we were in the 1990s. Our foreign exchange reserves are almost $300 billion, cushioning our balance of payments. Corporations have not gone on a borrowing spree paying 20% interest, as they did in the 1990s — they have large cash reserves, modest debt-equity ratios, and interest rates are much lower today. The banking system is in relatively good shape. The latest Pay Commission award this time is less onerous than the 1997 one. Our savings rate has crossed 30%, and can keep financing a healthy rate of investment. Infrastructural sectors like telecom, power, roads, and ports will be only minimally affected by a recession.
Nevertheless, pain will be widespread and sometimes deep. Income and job opportunities will slacken, sometimes dramatically. Many companies will suffer shrinkage or bankruptcy, especially small ones. Boom sectors like transport, restaurants, trade, real estate and exports will go into reverse gear. Credit will tighten, for consumers as well as companies. Corporate profits will slump. The revenues of central and state governments will fall, curbing their ability to alleviate distress. The stock markets will fall further, and the Sensex may fall below 10,000. Tighten your seat belts: we are running into rough weather.

The perils of inclusive loans

2008-09-28T21:32:00.000-07:00

SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR

Inclusive finance — giving loans to everybody, including the poor — is desired by politicians in India, and in all democracies. Yet, the current US financial crisis shows the perils of taking this goal too far.
The crisis arose from the bursting of a housing bubble. That bubble was created, fundamentally, by government policies and institutions seeking home ownership for all Americans, including low-income ones. Politicians rooted for such inclusive finance. But this ‘inclusion’ extended finance to ever more borrowers with fragile and low incomes, causing disaster. This holds lessons for India.
Wall Street investment banks like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch have been pilloried, rightly, for magnifying the bubble. Yet, they did not create it — that job was done by politicians and government-backed institutions.
The biggest Wall Street firms were pygmies compared with two quasi-government entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These two held mortgages and other assets totaling $5 trillion, five times India’s GDP. Fannie Mae was created by Roosevelt to shore up the housing market in the Great Depression. Freddie Mac was created later to compete with Fannie Mae.
Although they had private shareholders, these firms carried an implicit government guarantee. So, they could borrow much more and more cheaply than rivals. This implicit subsidy was justified as reducing the cost of home loans for all. These institutions bought and underwrote mortgages originated by the whole banking system. This reduced risks for banks, enabling them to spread home loans far and wide.
Now, as mortgagers of last resort, Fannie and Freddie should have kept a watchful eye on the housing market. If a bubble grew and burst, they would be left with many worthless mortgages. But instead of being watchdogs, the mortgage twins became active participants in inflating the bubble. Many experts warned that the bubble would burst. These warnings were ignored by politicians, who refused to rein in the bubblemakers. Legislators cheered the housing finance boom for making housing available to all.
Politicians had long created special incentives for home-owning, starting with the creation of Fannie and Freddie. They mandated tax-free interest on all first mortgages, and on the first $100,000 of second mortgages. This encouraged Americans to own houses (and get tax breaks for monthly interest payments) rather than rent accommodation (rent payments were not tax deductible). Capital gains tax was waived for the first $500,000 of profits from home sales. If a buyer provided 20% of the cost of a house, the balance of 80% from banks was insured by a federal agency, lowering the interest rate.
Next came a financial innovation — securitisation. Instead of keeping mortgages on their books, banks sold these to Wall Street firms that chopped them into bits, bundled top-grade mortgages with dubious ones, and sold the bundles as mortgage-backed securities to investors. These securities gave relatively high returns, yet appeared safe because they were backed (and bought) by Fannie and Freddie.
As securitisation grew explosively, banks lowered lending standards to shovel out ever more subprime loans to poor borrowers, without verifying their income, assets or ability to repay. By 2006 they were giving NINJA (No Income, No Job or Assets) loans. Many banks offered teaser loans with low interest for a short period followed by soaring rates, attracting poor borrowers who didn’t realise what they were getting into.
Why did banks take such risks? Because the risk was transferred to investors who bought the loans and mortgage-backed securities, including Fannie and Freddie. The buying spree of the supposed watchdogs yielded them high profits when home prices rose, but made them bankrupt when home prices started falling. The government had to take them over.
Experts like Alan Greenspan had warned over the years of the risks of concentrating such huge financial power with such light regulation on Fannie and Freddie. Breaking them into smaller entities, subject to stricter regulation, was urged by many reformers. But Fannie and Freddie hired lobbyists to resist reform. Major recipients of campaign finance from employees and political action committees of Fannie and Freddie included Barak Obama ($125,000), Hilary Clinton ($75,000) and Senate Banking Committee chairman Dodd (over $165,000).
The strategy worked: the mortgage twins remained unfettered even when, in full public view, they bought subprime mortgages and inflated the bubble. Many politicians supported subprime mortgages as worthy loans to the needy, not realising the consequences. Subprime mortgages are only 6.8% of all mortgages, yet add up to a massive $1.3 trillion.
In sum, financial inclusiveness is fine in small doses, but leads to disaster on a really large scale. India is just at the start of financial inclusion. But as it prospers, political pressures for cheap loans to the poor will grow. The lesson from the US is that inclusive loans on a sufficiently large scale can sink the whole financial system.
So, the poor and needy should be given grants, not loans that they cannot repay, or may be encouraged by politicians not to repay. We have already received warning of this from the fiasco of IRDP, India’s first inclusive loan programme in the 1980s. The US crisis drives home a similar lesson.

A Farewell to Blood, Race, and Everything Else

2008-09-26T01:38:00.000-07:00

Speech: A Farewell to Blood, Race, and Everything Else
Before I say anything else, first let me say, I am (partly) Chinese. Not that I'm proud of it. In
fact, I'm ashamed to admit it. Although the Chinese are an ancient race with an interesting history, what
was the purpose? You can't call it the "Chinese History," because the wars fought by the Chinese were
mostly against each other. Take the Romance of Three Kingdoms. Three kingdoms fighting amongst
each other. And they are Chinese. One Chinese kingdom wages war on his brethren, and for the
purpose of expansion of territory. It's more acceptable and understandable to wage war on another
country for the purpose of expansion.
Take modern China and compare it to the state of the United States during the Civil War.
If the Tibetans throw a fit and want to become their own country, China drops in and says "Hell
no, you belong to us you damned idiots. We won't abide your disregard for our rule. Time to teach you
a lesson." Then the protesters and their fellow Tibetans are rounded up and slammed into detention
centers and the like. Most of these people were then used in the "BODIES... The Exhibition" exhibit at
museums. And you, my fellow Chinese, you call yourselves a great race? You're sickening. You're
almost as bad as Nazi Germany. The only difference is you're doing this to your own countrymen. Can
you remember Tianamen Square? The blood, the gunfire, the screams. Civilians, cut down in swaths,
and they were there demonstrating a basic right, one that is guaranteed by nature, for if nature did not
provide the tongue, mouth, and throat, and you had not a voice, then you would not be able to speak.
But since nature has provided it, it is guaranteed, no, intended that you should have freedom of
speech.
During the American Civil War, the South first chose to secede. They formed the Confederate
States of America. Yes, the Union (North) chose to attack in order to maintain a united America, but the
reason was later determined to be to end slavery. I do not think my fellow Chinese would approve of
slavery unless it was of all races but the Chinese. Therein lies their fault, for I have seen it in China.
They enslave their own people. And so they do in Myanmar. Vietnam. North Korea. But not so, not in
Japan or South Korea, and I have not seen it in Taiwan either. (Please refrain from calling Taiwan a part
of China, for it is its own nation, the Republic of China.)
And there is another blow that the Chinese government strikes to its own people. Communist
China calls itself the "People's Republic of China." Taiwan is called the "Republic of China." If
Communist China were truly the People's Republic of China, the people would be guaranteed their
rights, the elections would not be rigged. Also, the people would not be oppressed.
Take a look at this now. This is a political/social joke, done in Adobe Photoshop.
Among the dictators are listed George W. Bush (Yes, we hate our president for the Iraq mess), Osama
bin Laden (Well, he did bomb the U.S.), Apple (Everyone has to have an iPod), Hu Jintao (Current
"President" of China), and Mao Zedong (The "Chairman" that started it all).
So who really is civilized? What is the meaning of race? Is any one government better than the
rest? Is your own race really something to be proud of? I speak not as a Chinese, Russian, Japanese,
German, Italian, nor any other of my blood. I speak as a human being.
And now the answers to those questions.
The civilized peoples would be all as equal as possible. No one person would be better than the
other, and they would hold each other in the same view as they would themselves.
Worst Dictators In History
Race is a complicated thing. But there really should be no racial division, not even for reasons
of pride. All people should regard themselves as humans, not Chinese, not African, not British, not
Japanese, not any race. We are all human beings, and all of us are made equal. Even if there was no
God, we can still say that all people are created equal. No, not "All men are created equal," for there are
also women in this world. Remember, you are a human, regardless of race, and you should treat all
others as humans as well.
There is no one government that is ultimately best. Communism, if it had not been corrupted,
would have had its benefits. However, the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party twisted it so
much that it had become incapable of any significantly good changes. Democratic governments, such
as the one in the United States are usually more capable than others, but sometimes corrupted officials
must be impeached and on some occasions, the people make the wrong choices. It would be best if
there was a government that evenly balanced power, wealth, and everything else.
Race... It's not really something to be proud of or ashamed of. It's just a term. Race means
nothing. Humanity is the most important.
In conclusion, I must say that China, should be invaded by the rest of the world, and control of
the country handed over to the Western Powers. The United Nations should maintain an internationally
controlled government in Manchuria, and habitation of Western China should be initiated.
Thank you for listening.

What China did at NSG

2008-09-24T19:46:00.000-07:00

Disputing official Chinese accounts of Beijing [Images] having played a "constructive" role in last week's Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting on India, diplomats from several NSG States say China stood by the handful of countries resisting approval of the India waiver and only backed off when it saw the opposition melt away on the morning of September 6.

At the same time, some diplomats questioned the suggestion that China was out to block the deal, with one European envoy who took part in the three day meeting describing the Chinese interventions in the plenary as "careful and moderate".

In multiple interviews conducted by this reporter with a number of diplomats who took part in the NSG's deliberations, the picture which emerges is one of a cautious Chinese strategy of remaining in the shadows going awry and eventually running aground on the second day of the three-day plenary meeting of the nuclear cartel. If China overestimated the capacity of the six-likeminded countries and Japan [Images] -- described pejoratively by one European country as the 'seven dwarfs' -- to resist the juggernaut of US pressure in the eleventh hour, Beijing, say the diplomats, also erred in underestimating India's ability to hold firm to its demand for an unconditional waiver.

The accounts given by the participants provide a fascinating, if sometimes contradictory, ringside view of Chinese attitudes and actions at the NSG that the diplomats said were driven as much by a desire to condition or even block the India waiver as by resentment at Washington's attempt to change the rules of the international system without due consultation with Beijing.

In the early hours of September 6, India issued a demarche -- diplomatese for a formal representation -- asking China to back the consensus. The message was delivered by telephone to the Chinese ambassador to India. And after the waiver came through, the Indian government made its displeasure at Beijing's role publicly known as well.

In remarks at a public function in New Delhi [Images] on Tuesday, China's foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, said he was "shocked" at reports that his country had stood in the way of the NSG's decision. "Our policy was set from a long time," he said. "I can tell you that we conveyed to India in a certain way our support for the decision, period, before consensus was reached within the NSG."

Yang's statement was factually correct, in that consensus was established at 11:56 am, Central European Time, and China had already informed India that it was going to approve the waiver as finally tabled at the NSG plenary. But the Chinese decision only came at 1 pm China Standard Time, barely four hours before the final bell was sounded on the 45-nation supplier group's extraordinary proceedings.

Earlier on Friday, the unity of the Group of Six spearheading the opposition to the American proposal to allow nuclear commerce with India crumbled when Netherlands and Norway backed off following the incorporation of a reference to the Indian foreign minister's statement on nonproliferation in the waiver text. Switzerland [Images], too, conveyed its assent to the US by 1 am on Saturday.

But when the NSG adjourned for the night soon after, Austria, China, Ireland, Japan and New Zealand [Images] were still holding out. Tokyo was the first to come on board, followed by Beijing, and then the last three. The fact that the Chinese decision was so late coming is at variance with the idea that its policy had been set "from a long time". Unless, say diplomats, its policy itself was to play for time in the hope that the seven countries would do the heavy lifting. And face the maximum flak, in case the waiver was successfully blocked.

"It is my view that China was hoping the exemption would be delayed to such an extent that India might walk away," a diplomat from one of the G-6 countries told me in an email message. "They did not wish China to be blamed for doing this but hoped the group of six would do it for them. Ultimately, when it became clear that [we] would not block consensus on the exemption, they also made sure that they would not be blamed in any way for holding up progress." The diplomat, who represented his country in last week's NSG meeting, added: "Our group was always wary of China's role, knowing that their interests were very different to ours."

But if the G-6 was "wary" of China, diplomats from other countries say the group actively sought Beijing's help when it became clear on September 4 that the mood within the NSG was largely in favour of granting India the waiver. "The six approached a number of bigger countries," said one diplomat. And though Australia [Images], Canada [Images] and Germany [Images] refused to be dragged in, China did step forward.

According to the diplomats, China acted in two distinct ways, though at least one of this reporter's sources admitted it was "hard to say what exactly China's strategy was". "The Chinese did manoeuvres in a procedural way in order to support the six. But they didn't want to come out in the open. They wanted to remain in the bushes rather than come on to the battlefield," said one diplomat from a European country that backed the waiver with reservations.

A G-6 diplomat described this phase as one where the Chinese "offered quiet but clear support for a number of proposals put forward by the like-minded group of six." This support, he said, continued "right up to the last moment." But when it seemed to China that the G-6 was standing resolute, the Chinese delegates also began putting forward amendments and sentences of their own. "They suggested a lot of minor changes to the text during last Friday, seemingly with the intention of delaying progress," the diplomat said.

Though these changes were more often than not unacceptable to India, the diplomats said the Chinese suggestion to include language which might open a door for "other States" (ie, Pakistan) to seek a similar waiver met with stiff resistance by virtually all NSG members, including the G-6. This idea was a complete non-starter, said one diplomat. Another described it as part of a tactic of "procedural procrastination".

As the evening wore on Friday, the Chinese, by all accounts, grew increasingly impatient. The US was running multiple consultations in parallel steering groups, which were yielding incremental changes in the draft language. After going through an Indian filter, these changes were then taken to the plenary and incorporated into the main text. Either irritated by the slow pace or by the fact that the redrafting process was making serious headway, the Chinese delegation began calling for an adjournment. "During the day, everyone's assessment was that we were going to be deadlocked," said an East European diplomat. "By the time it was apparent that there would be no deadlock, the Chinese started saying they had to wait for instructions from Beijing."

It was at this point, said many diplomats, that the US started paying attention to the Chinese stand. The two countries went into consultation and remained closeted for a long time. One European diplomat recalled a conversation he had with another colleague that night when he was wondering whether he had time to slip outside for dinner. "Oh yes, he said, you have plenty of time. The Chinese are meeting with the Americans, mad that they were not consulted by them earlier and determined to let the US pay the price -- it will take at least two hours. We went down to eat, and he was right that several hours passed." It was this diplomat's assessment that the reason China held out for so long was because the US had not bothered consulting with it earlier in the day. And that the reason the US delayed doing so was precisely because the Chinese had struck a more moderate tone throughout the day compared to the G-6.

Though the Chinese eventually yielded on the drafting language, they continued to hold out for more time. Most delegates did not find the Chinese plea for an adjournment to be credible. "When we broke at 2 am, it was already 8 in the morning in Beijing. There would have been no problem getting the requisite authorization," said a diplomat. Matters were further complicated by a semi-'walk-out' by the Chinese at midnight on September 5. Though some Chinese officials remained in the small consultations run by the US till 1:30 am, its two senior diplomats in the plenary left the main room leaving behind only "a rather junior" official "presumably to pick up the final draft".

"Many delegates felt there was a certain gesture," a west European diplomat said. "It was not clear that it was a walkout, for that would have meant the NSG might have adopted the waiver without their presence. But it was more of a signal that we can't take this for much longer."

Days later, participants remain divided about what exactly China was trying to achieve. If the G-6 diplomats were clear the Chinese were firing from their shoulders, others without a dog in the fight tended not to see China as a country that was blocking consensus. "My sense is that they were balanced, and not in the limelight," said a diplomat from the former Soviet bloc.

"We believe China did not try to block the deal and never wanted to block it alone, although the opposition from the six and others may have suited them well� Certainly it would have been very late in the day for them to block the deal at the last minute given their earlier moderate posture," said a European diplomat who undertook to discuss this reporter's questions with his colleagues in order to get a more accurate assessment. "But that is speculation. We are pretty certain, though, that the Chinese were dissatisfied with the way the issue was handled at the meeting and made it clear in their own way to the US� Perhaps they just cooked the US a little to teach them not to neglect China."

Asked whether he agreed with this assessment, one of the G-6 diplomats said no. "It is hard to decipher China's attitude at times, but I would be very certain that their behaviour was based on more than simply a desire to teach the US a lesson not to neglect them," he said.

Either way, Indian officials feel it is significant that when China eventually came on board, it communicated its decision not to the United States but directly to India. The Manmohan Singh [Images] government's handling of an awkward situation was correct but firm. But having issued a demarche and secured the NSG waiver, it is important for the country to move on. Beijing -- and New Delhi -- are sure to have come away from this entire episode the wiser, and in diplomacy that is ultimately what counts.

(The author is Associate Editor of The Hindu and was in Vienna [Images] to cover the NSG meetings of August 21-22 and September 4-6)

Meditate, And Act

2008-09-21T22:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, we need to draw firm lines. But India is a complex country, and we must do so with due thought
Mr. Tarun J Tejpal, Editor-in-Chief

BOMBS KILL individuals. Bigotry kills societies. Of course the equation is not so simple. Bombs are also the effect of bigotry, and often its cause. As India enters a new cycle of terrorism, it would do well to draw out some waters of wisdom from the forgotten wells of Punjab of the 1980s. As a state, as a people, we did so many things wrong in the first few years of that watershed decade that preliminary testings of separatist violence soon ratcheted up into a maelstrom of anger that consumed thousands of lives including those of a prime minister, a chief minister, a general, and scores of police officers, officials, artists and other luminaries. Briefly, the very unity of India came into question.
Meditate

This time the test is more severe. Failing it can bring into question the very idea of India. The challenge — if we cut through niceties and political postures — is rather straightforward. How do you with ruthless efficiency combat those who practice terror, without bringing into play a widespread prejudice against a single community? On this count, in Punjab, the state had a very poor report card. For many dangerous years an ugly schism was allowed to take root between Hindus and Sikhs — two communities intimately bound by ties of history, culture, religion and matrimony. The schism gave the cult of terror cyclical lifelines; the schism made the 1984 Sikh carnage possible. It led to the desecration and destruction — by militant and state alike — of the Golden temple. It led some of the most eminent, liberal Sikhs — including Khushwant Singh — to round on the state for its dishonorable intent.

This time in the crosshair is the Muslim. If Sikh militancy was a ten-piece puzzle, then Muslim extremism is a thousand-piece one. Just in terms of scale: 14 million Sikhs then, 160 million Muslims now. But more pertinently, in the last twenty years there has been a growing narrative in India that has been trying to focus the Muslim as the “other”. It has done this using a mix of sentiment, rhetoric, myth, economics and history — both real and false. Its intent has been divisive; its intent has been oppositions. Tragically, in a country quick to cling to tribal identities — caste, community, language, region — the narrative has gained ominous purchase. Helping it along has been a global conversation brimming with apprehensions about Islam.

At such a time in history comes a story of violent young Muslim men planting bombs and creating mindless misery. For the state and the Indian people, the moment seems tailor-made to do everything wrong. To unleash a counter-attack that feeds into the crisis rather than contains it. To buy accusations and nail blame even before the charge-sheets have been filed and the evidence brought in.

We are in the moment of meditation before action. It must be given its full play. What the state must not do is strike out with grand alacrity — no matter the shrill exhortations of critics and media. What the state must do is calmly disentangle the pieces — understand clearly where it must apply force and where fraternity. What we are facing is partly a law and order problem and partly a political one. Neither piece will succeed if the other fails. Good law and order enforcement nabs the killer; good politics cleans up the terror nursery.

It can safely be said that the well-oiled acts of terrorism we are beginning to see arise from a counter-narrative being adopted — and propagated — by the “other”. Of victimisation at the hands of a state run by majority Hindus, of societal prejudice, of unjust security forces. It is played to the theme of the 2002 Gujarat killings, Babri Masjid, false encounters, Mumbai blasts cases, SIMI, all of it counterpoised with the excesses of the Bajrang Dal and VHP — with its chief orchestral instrument being the purity and pre-eminence of one’s own religion.

You would have to be an idiot to imagine that law and order alone can clean up this flaming soup. What law and order can do is to isolate the soup-stirrers, the bomb-makers, the killers. This it must do with determination and evidence. To make this happen the union government must provide men and materials, resources and federal structures. But for it all to work there must be leadership, inspiration, clarity. Anyone who has dealt with Indian intelligence and security agencies knows that the Indian political order has ensured that all these traits are out of supply.

What we don’t need is more draconian laws. This frenzy of demand is coming from India’s secure classes — who seldom have to contend with the excesses of the men in khaki. There is absurd talk of making confessions to police admissible as evidence. Even the white colonial did not go so far. In the twilight zone of a police station a man can be made to confess to anything. As a police friend once said, give me any man for 24 hours and I’ll get him to confess to 9/11 and the killing of JFK. There are enough laws in existence to do the job. Let’s put in place the vision and the will.

Also let’s not buy our own rhetoric about soft state and hard state. The truth is we are pathetically soft when it comes to the necessary virtues: health, education, infrastructure. (For perspective: more than 2 million children under five die every year because of malnutrition.) We have no will to make these happen. And we are hard when it comes to human rights, to dealing with dissidence — Kashmir, northeast, endless delays in courts, the abject condition of under-trials. Those who read upmarket English magazines should fall foul of the police to know how hard the Indian state can be.

Yes, we need to draw firm lines in the sand. But India is the most complex country in the world and we must draw these lines with due thought. Not only the state, even the Indian elite must not succumb to easy formulations. A refined, sophisticated elite questions and calculates the fall-out of all its words and actions. It understands that the framework of social compliance and decency is upheld by a few inviolate principles. In the case of the idea of India, these are liberalism, tolerance, equality, justice, individual liberty. A wise elite understands if the pillars crumble the roof comes down on everyone’s head. It understands when bombs explode they rip through the air indiscriminately.

As never before, India’s elite has a huge stake in pushing for the right thing. All around our shining enclaves a dangerous discontent is bubbling. Where the terror question is concerned, perhaps the right thing is to debate and pass stringent hate laws. To make prosecutable the fomenting of any kind of hatred in spoken or written word, or in actions. These laws must then be enforced without bias against every grouping that practises any form of bigotry, from SIMI to the Bajrang Dal to Christain extremists. In any society there will always be violence and resentment, but its catchment area must be shrunk, not continually expanded. All this requires a national consensus across political hues, a shedding of partisan planks. That may prove a greater challenge than catching a few fanatic bomb-makers.

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 38, Dated Sept 27, 2008

Let them EAT CAKE

2008-09-21T21:28:00.001-07:00

Anirban Bose, a Have, who lives in a gated complex with a pool, wonders if the guillotine blade is being sharpened

Although, as it turns out, Marie Antoinette’s famous saying was actually a rumour perpetuated by the revolutionaries, these four words best epitomise the callous indifference of those in any position of wealth or power (the haves) towards those who cannot afford bread, let alone cake (the have-nots).
And, when people ask me about my impressions of India after returning from the US after 12 years, although generally positive, time and again I am reminded of these four words. Presumably, being able to afford a nice apartment in a gated complex with a gym and a swimming pool, I’m a ‘have’ and a chill runs down my spine imagining if some day my head will roll off the sharp blade of a guillotine.
But India is prospering, they tell me. Double-digit growth. Low-cost tech capital of the world. Largest democracy. Superb banking and financial institutions. Special Economic Zones...The list is endless, they reassure me.
Recently, we bought a washing machine and refrigerator from a swanky store in a beautiful mall. When I had left India, I didn’t know what a mall was. Now, standing in the middle of an architectural marvel of glass and steel, I felt confident. India was on the rise. My wife and I were treated like royalty by a flock of smart men and women serving us tea and coffee and reassuring us that delivery would be free and within 48 hours. And lo and behold, within 48 hours there was a telephone call from the security gate to inform me that the men had come to deliver our washing machine and 260-litre refrigerator.
I opened the front door slightly and waited. And waited. Five minutes rolled into ten and then 20. I peeked outside a couple of times to ensure that the elevators were working. They were. When no one had showed up after 45 minutes, a vein of irritation began to throb in my head.
Then there was a light knock on the door and a man younger and thinner than me stood outside, panting, won dering if he had the right ad dress. On that hot, humid af ternoon, he stood sweating as if he had just stepped out of a
shower. His perspiration made his clothes stick to his body as though they were painted on him. He asked if he could have a glass of water for himself and his friend, still struggling up the stairs, lugging the washing machine on his back.
I was shocked. Why hadn’t he used the elevator, I asked. The security guards downstairs wouldn’t allow it, he replied matter-of-factly, as if the error was in the unreasonable request not in the guard’s denial. I was flabbergasted. Using the elevator to ferry a couple of heavy objects up six floors was a privilege, not a right? What if we had lived on the thirteenth floor or bought a 300-litre refrigerator?
Anger welled up inside me and I felt tears of outrage sting my eyes. I marched down to the security office. The guard informed me that he had simply followed the estate manager’s rules. Rules? There was a rule saying that people couldn’t transport heavy appliances on elevators? Yes, the guard informed me with a serious face, there were rules. He justified his concern saying that appliances tend to have sharp edges that could scratch the paint or dent the elevator walls.
What if the man had twisted his ankle or what if the refrigerator had fallen on him and crushed him, I asked the big, burly estate manager who had shown up. The manager missed my point completely and informed me that the company would surely replace the damaged goods free of cost. This is the new India where customer is king. The delivery man, damn it! Don’t worry, he reassured me, the company would find ten more people like him to do the job.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I argued, trying to educate him on the basics of humanity, humility and human rights. After a few moments of dodging my pointed questions he said that other tenants of this upscale complex might not want to share elevators with sweaty delivery boys and smelly milkmen. And that’s when visions of murderous crowds with hatchets and spears baying for bourgeois blood begin to fill my head.
Upstairs, my wife was feeling equally sorry for the delivery men. I found them sitting in a corner of our living room, muching on something. The men were hungry, my wife informed me, and, since we didn’t have any bread, she had given them some leftover cake.
dr.anirbanbose@gmail.com

Is America becoming socialist?

2008-09-21T21:01:00.000-07:00

SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR

Socialists, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or Indira Gandhi in India, are famous for nationalising the biggest corporations. But the US government has taken over three of its biggest corporations within two weeks. Has the US turned socialist?
American right-wingers moan that this is indeed the case. Meanwhile, Indian leftists are stunned at nationalisation in a country they view as pitilessly capitalist.
Two of the nationalised corporations, Fannie May and Freddie Mac, are by far the biggest mortgage lenders in the world, with $5 trillion of mortgages and loans on their books. That’s five times India’s GDP, to put their size in perspective. The third corporation, AIG, is the biggest insurance company in the world. No nationalisation in professedly socialist countries were ever so big.
Leftists suspect the US takeovers aim to rescue rich shareholders. Not so. The government will acquire 79.9% of the shares of these companies at virtually zero cost, pushing down the share price close to zero. So, rich shareholders have been wiped out, and the bosses of all three corporations have been sacked.
This is not a rescue of the rich. It is a rescue of ordinary people who need mortgages and a functioning housing market, which would have collapsed had Fannie May and Freddie Mac gone bust. The takeover of AIG will save millions of insurance policy holders from losing their coverage and annuities. The takeovers aim to prevent financial panic from spreading and dragging down the whole economy, as happened in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The usual procedure in a capitalist welfare state is to let mismanaged companies go bust, penalising the shareholders and managers, and then provide safety nets to those adversely affected. But when corporations are so large that their collapse would endanger the entire financial system, it’s sensible even from a capitalist viewpoint to have a government takeover before they collapse. This is a sort of pre-emptive safety net. Moreover, preventing distress wins votes (or at least doesn’t lose them), and that’s vital in a democracy.
Does this mean the US is becoming socialist? Let’s distinguish between two meanings of the word. For many people, socialism means state ownership of the means of production, as in the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, and the US is not going in that direction. But socialism can also mean an activist state that provides basic needs for all, and creates safety nets for those hit by misfortune, old age and sickness. The US has long been socialist in this second sense, and is getting more so.
Modern capitalist states are all welfare states. Enormous bureaucracies have been created to tax the rich, regulate business, provide subsidies and special schemes to the needy, thwart environmental harm and health hazards, and so on. The list is long and keeps growing.
It could not be otherwise in democracies. Contrary to Marx’s assumptions, legislators get elected by catering to the masses, even while taking money from corporations. Legislators constantly create new rules and regulations to protect consumers, retirees, and other vote banks. Hence, the US has become a land of rising red tape.
Between 1970 and 2006, the number of pages in the Federal Register (which lists all regulations) shot up from 20,036 to 78,000. The number of regulators in the service of the federal government rose from 90,000 to 241,000. In the first six years of the George W Bush era (2000-2006), the number of pages of regulations increased by over 10,000, and regulators by over 65,000.
This is galloping socialism, often criticised as bureaucracy run amok. The US is less welfarist than European countries, but is not too far behind. The US legislators have expanded entitlements for the aged and sick so greatly that state spending on social security, Medicare and Medicaid is projected to rise from 7% of GDP today to almost 20% by 2020. So much for the myth that the US is a heartless capitalist ogre. In fact, it combines capitalism with welfarism, and often tilts toward the latter when the two conflict.
Since US politicians get elected by constantly promising to save citizens from pain, they have now saved citizens from corporate bankruptcies that would threaten the whole economy and throw millions of lives into disarray. This is no more than an extension of the safety net principle.
This is very different from Indira Gandhi socialism. Her nationalisation aimed to give the state a stranglehold on industrial production, and seize the commanding heights of the economy. These measures did not benefit ordinary folk at all, and were soon exposed as ‘‘amiri hatao’’ rather than ‘‘garibi hatao’’ measures.
The US takeovers, by contrast, are temporary affairs, to be followed by re-privatisation once the crisis is resolved. The corporations will be obliged to sell chunks of their assets to pay off debts and attain stability. They will then be re-privatised. They will emerge greatly shrunken, and perhaps broken into smaller units.
Nationalisation is a misleading word for this process. It is better called forced restructuring by the government, as a pre-emptive safety net. It aims to save citizens from pain, but within a market economy framework.

Misawa Air Base/Misawa Air Festival 2008

2008-09-10T22:00:00.000-07:00