Fight or Flight

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 sa...

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 ur...

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, a...

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. Thi...

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 n...

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 en...

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 tea...

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 Econom...

In 1971, Baba Amte took his young son Prakash Amte to a fierce, isolated jungle to work with the Madia Gonds: 37 years later, as the Magsaysay honours the family a second time, SHOMA CHAUDHURY unlocks their inspirational journey. In concert: Dr Prakash and Mandakini Amte step out into the rain for dinner Photos: Shailendra Pandey EVEN IF you saturate yourself in the Amtes, day and night, you cannot entirely look their work in the eye: you turn away from the full experience of it because if you didn’t, you would be forced to confront and change your deepest self. You would need to re-examine your entire life. But let us start at the beginning. If you drive deep into the forested heart of India, 360 kilometres away from Nagpur, you will find nothing but giant mosquitoes and thoughts for...

Any allegation of corruption or a scandal finds a ready buyer in us but if any virtue is attributed to anyone, the sceptic within us has doubts. Can we invoke our sensitivity for a change and give it a chance over sensations? Our lives, public and private, are driven by sensations all around. Without killing sensitivity sensations cannot survive. Our growing appetite for sensations has therefore, if not killed, blunt our sensitivity. Media, print and electronic, has played major role in sensationalisation of everything for their commercial compulsions. Murder, in itself, is news. But these days, mere murder does not give us the kick. It is not worthy of reporting, at least prominently. Murder must have other unusual ingredients, like parents killing child or some angle of illicit relationship or sex as the motive and so on and so for, for occupying prime time slot or headlines. It would be unfair to singularly blame the media for this state of affairs. We, the viewers and readers want ...