Nothing New About Page 3

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Byline by M.J. Akbar : Nothing New About Page 3

The Gazette was launched by James Augustus Hickey.However, Hickey’s own publication did not survive much longer, but it was not "scurrilous" journalism that brought him down. He lost the battle of power with Hastings. On 14 November 1780 a diktat was issued from Fort William: "Public notice is hereby given that as a weekly newspaper called the Bengal Gazette or Calcutta General Advertiser, printed by J.A. Hicky, has lately been found to contain several improper paragraphs tending to vilify private characters and to disturb the peace of the Settlement, it is no longer permitted to be circulated through the channel of the General Post Office."

Nothing New About Page 3

Exactly 225 years ago this week, the first Indian newspaper, a weekly, was published from the capital of the rising (although still far from pre-eminent) power of the subcontinent, the British Raj.

It was in the language that would soon become the lingua franca of power, English. Its owner was egoistic enough to name the paper after himself, which made him suitable for media. The owner was also its editor, which makes him a contemporary spirit. And it might be of some comfort to present-day newspaper owners to realise that Hicky’s Bengal Gazette had a second name, the Calcutta General Advertiser.

It appeared on January 29, 1780, the year in which Writer’s Building was completed in Calcutta to serve as the office of the junior civil servants of the East India Company; Gwalior became a feudatory state of the British; Haidar Ali an ally of the French when they declared war on Britain; and governor general Warren Hastings fought a duel in Calcutta with the aspirant for his job, Sir Philip Francis (neither died, though Hastings had the better of the encounter).

No line has better summed up the nature of the media business than the Gazette’s motto: "A Weekly Political and Commercial Paper, Open to all Parties, but influenced by None." News must be political and commercial. A newspaper must be open to all interests but subject to none. It must offer due respect to advertising. When you consider that there was a spelling mistake in the title, and lots of Calcutta gossip on its pages, then all the components of a modern newspaper may be found in the path breaker. After all, what is a newspaper without a typo?

The Gazette was launched by James Augustus Hickey (I presume you’ve noticed the typo), one of the most exotic stars of a multicoloured era. We think of the British as staid Victorian gentlemen with stiff necks and stiffer upper lips. But they stiffened after the uprising of 1857, when India was incorporated formally into the British Empire. As long as the buccaneers of the East India Company, who created British rule, were in charge, life was not only more flexible but also more interactive with Indians. The officials of John Company were a different breed whose favourite toast after victory at Plassey (Palashi) was to hope for "a lass and a lakh a day". After the excesses of Robert Clive and the corruption charges against Hastings, a lakh a day became more difficult, but the former option flourished. Many of the Sahibs were delighted to turn "native" as they discovered the pleasures of not merely living in India, but living in India like Indians.

Job Charnock, who founded Calcutta, married Leela, a beautiful Brahmin girl he rescued from suttee. Francis Day chose the site of the Madras fort only because it was near his Indian mistress’ home. The first British resident after the capture of Delhi in 1803, David Ochterlony, popularly known as "Loony Akhtar", deserves all the legends attached to his name; he was accompanied by all 13 of his wives when he went out to "take the air" every evening in Delhi, each wife on a separate elephant. Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta between 1823 and 1826, could not take his eyes off Bengali beauties bathing in the river at five in the morning and confessed that "the deep bronze tint was more naturally agreeable to the human eyes than the fair skins of Europe".

Hickey, a good journalist, wrote a splendid account of his Indian Bibi, the superbly named Jemdanee who "lived with me, respected and admired by all friends for her extraordinary sprightliness and great humour. Unlike the women in Asia she never secluded herself from the sight of strangers; on the contrary she delighted in joining my male parties, cordially joining in the mirth which prevailed though never touching wine or spirits of any kind".

So it was an exercise in double standards (typical, did I hear?) when Hickey sent the circulation of his paper up by sensational reporting on the first adultery case to reach the Calcutta High Court. The principal accused were Madame Grand, a young Dutch-English woman of exceptional beauty, who was born near Pondicherry and blossomed in Chandernagore, and, astonishingly, went on to marry Napoleon’s brilliant foreign minister Prince Talleyrand; and Philip Francis, Hastings’ quarrelsome deputy, who was caught by unobliging servants while clambering over the wall of her compound while her husband was away at dinner. (The servants refused to accept a bribe for letting their prisoner get away.) The first sittings of the trial commenced on 8 February 1779, just in time for circulation growth. There is something to be said for the theory that Francis left India not because of his duel with Hastings, but because of the scandal.

If the laws of libel made it difficult to publish a story, Hickey happily switched to transparent pseudonyms like "Pompos" or "Turban Conquest" or "Hooka Turban" or "Chinsurah Belle". Here is an example of journalist double entendre: "March, 1781. Public Notice: Lost on the Course, last Monday evening, Buxey Clumsy’s heart, whilst he stood simpering at the footstep of Hooka Turban’s carriage: as it is supposed to be in her possession, she is desired to return it immediately, or to deliver up her own as a proper acknowledgment."

There is nothing new about Page 3.

As one commentator noted, Hickey "admitted contributions which, while hypocritically affecting to teach and uphold public and private morality, in reality pandered to the impulses of the prurient and the vicious". Anyone recognise anything familiar? The owner-editor, of course, never descended from his high pedestal, pompously noting, in one instance, "Lothario’s letter and poetry is received, but is not fit for insertion, nor will anything ever be inserted in the Bengal Gazette that can possibly give offence to the ladies".

He was always happy, though, to give offence to the men.

Success, but naturally, encouraged competition. Success was not necessarily financial success, but Hickey’s power became phenomenal. And so a salt agent called Peter Reed, in partnership with a theatre-person named B. Messink (I could not have made up a name like Messink for a fictional newspaper proprietor even if I had tried), started the India Gazette in 1781. Hastings, who hated Hickey’s guts, helped the new paper. It was "well-printed," with four pages of 16 inches long, divided into three columns. Hickey joyfully nicknamed his rivals "Peter Nimmuck" (as in salt, of course) and "Barnaby Grizzle" (for reasons I have not been able to discover, but perhaps Messink was fat and bearish). Hickey was in rapture when the India Gazette closed down because Grizzle cheated Nimmuck.

Hickey’s own publication did not survive much longer, but it was not "scurrilous" journalism that brought him down. He lost the battle of power with Hastings. On 14 November 1780 a diktat was issued from Fort William: "Public notice is hereby given that as a weekly newspaper called the Bengal Gazette or Calcutta General Advertiser, printed by J.A. Hicky, has lately been found to contain several improper paragraphs tending to vilify private characters and to disturb the peace of the Settlement, it is no longer permitted to be circulated through the channel of the General Post Office." In a private letter to a friend in England, Hastings explained why he had been emboldened to act against Hickey. Hastings wrote that since his formidable enemy, Philip Francis, announced he would leave India, "I shall have no competitor to oppose my designs, to encourage disobedience to my authority, to excite and foment popular odium against me. In a word, I shall have power, and I will employ it."

I shall have power, and I will employ it. How many rulers of India have thought the same since!

And how many journalists have responded in the manner Hickey did? Enough to ensure the honour of the profession. His paper was more noble in death than it had been in life.

Talking in the third person, Hickey responded: "Before he will bow, cringe, or fawn to any of his oppressors … he would compose ballads and sell them through the streets of Calcutta as Homer did. He has now but three things to lose: his honour in the support of his paper, his liberty, and his life; the two latter he will hazard in defence of the former, for he is determined to make it a scourge of all schemers and leading tyrants; should these illegally deprive him of his liberty and confine him in a jail, he is determined to print there with every becoming spirit suited to his care and the deserts of his oppressors… Shall I tamely submit to the yoke of slavery and wanton oppression? No!"

Enough said.

Fried Rice

Edited & Brought to You by ilaxi

Byline by M.J.Akbar:Fried Rice

Secretary Rice’s comments about Pakistan, accepted amicably by Republicans and Democrats, underscore the new American doctrine that sovereignty must be subordinate to America’s perceptions of its self-interest. That is why she was not probed on what she meant. All rules have been eliminated in the war against "Islamic fundamentalism" because such "fundamentalism" is seen as a challenge even more serious than Communism or fascism.

Fried Rice

A funny thing happened on the way to Condoleezza Rice’s nomination as the new secretary of state of the United States of America. She privatised the Pakistan government and placed it among the pile of her achievements. She told American Senators that the Bush administration has a "contingency plan" to prevent "Islamic fundamentalists" from getting access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons if something happened to President Pervez Musharraf and they succeeded in capturing power.

How? No one pursued the most obvious question, but of course you don’t want state secrets to be disclosed when millions of "Islamic fundamentalists" across the world might be glued to their television sets. The imagination boggles at possibilities. What happens if, as Ms Rice stated so coolly, "something happens" to President Musharraf?

I suppose the first requirement is to define an "Islamic fundamentalist" in Pakistan, since they are hardly likely to take the oath of office wearing a badge on their chests. Would that rule out anyone with a thick beard and a thin moustache, the approved hairstyle of some of the Jamaat-e-Islami brethren? But General Zia-ul Haq had a thick moustache and clean-shaven chin. How would Washington deal with that? Would General Zia be considered an "Islamic fundamentalist" today? It didn’t matter back in the Eighties of course because American officials and Senators were getting themselves photographed with "Islamic fundamentalists" when they were at war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The CIA’s motto was simple: the longer the beard, the greater the funding. But it is a serious question. How would Washington deal with a General Zia now?

General Zia did not advertise his ideology when he sent Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to jail first and the gallows later. A future General Zia is not going to take an advertisement in the New York Times either declaring jihad on America. So when does the contingency arise? On suspicion, before General X or Civilian Y is sworn in, based on the latest curriculum vitae nestling in CIA computers? On accumulated evidence over a spell of monitoring? That might be a little late, because X or Y already has his finger on the nuclear button by then with lots of alternative fingers in queue just in case his get broken in a sudden strike. It is fair to assume that the present group of Musharraf-appointed generals are "safe" by Washington’s septic standards, but who knows what time might bring. General Zia was made Army chief by Bhutto precisely because he was considered "safe".

Can we rule out a Civilian Y from the calculations? Has America decided that it is too risky to trust a nuclear Pakistan with civilians? Many of the candidates who won the last elections in Pakistan from the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan campaigned with the picture of Osama bin Laden on their placards. The articulate Maulana Fazlur Rahman, who certainly considers himself a candidate for the top job, has, to put it mildly, views slightly different from Condoleezza Rice on Osama. What happens if he ends up on top of a coalition pile after "something happens", to return to Ms Rice’s arsenic phrase? Does Secretary of State Rice trigger her action plan without further fuss?

And what could this "plan" be? A Senate committee hearing for confirmation is no place to be airy, and certainly not the environment to be fairy. Every word is on record, and every nominee held to the record. Ms Rice could not have made an off-the-cuff remark. It was a commitment made in utter seriousness. She could not have promised a plan if there was no plan. That does not justify it, or indeed guarantee its success in a crisis, but it does mean that something will happen if "something happens".

So what could this plan be? Crack teams of paratroopers that descend on Pakistan’s nuclear installations in the dead of night, and aided by on-the-ground forces, capture them and "sanitise" nuclear warheads? Does this plan assume that Pakistan’s armed forces will succumb meekly to such an invasion? Or has Secretary Rice suggested that the United States has assets within Pakistan’s nuclear community who will do Washington’s bidding at some pre-arranged signal? Very unlikely. If oil is synonymous with nationalism in the Arab world, then its nuclear capability is synonymous with nationalism in Pakistan. Even a quisling would tremble at the idea of betrayal. What else could the plan be? Another "shock and awe" operation? But regular wars, however brief, leave enough time for someone to press a nuclear trigger. Is America ready to risk a nuclear war in order to keep such weapons away from presumed "Islamic fundamentalists", such fundamentalists to be defined by the Rice Concise Conflict Dictionary?

That dictionary has clearly no term for sovereignty. Secretary Rice’s comments about Pakistan, accepted amicably by Republicans and Democrats, underscore the new American doctrine that sovereignty must be subordinate to America’s perceptions of its self-interest. That is why she was not probed on what she meant. All rules have been eliminated in the war against "Islamic fundamentalism" because such "fundamentalism" is seen as a challenge even more serious than Communism or fascism.

It is a view that travels across the Anglo-American world, and down the social hierarchy. This is why establishments are not unduly worried when reports emerge of brutal, dehumanising torture. The British have been caught this week with their own Abu Ghraib. What shocked me was not the pictures of torture. I did not expect some British troops to be any better or any worse than some of their compatriots from America. What shook me was it needed the conscience of a British girl at a photo shop to bring these atrocities to our attention. The torture was done fairly publicly. Enough officers must have been aware of what was going on, and, in the normal course of duty, reported it upwards. The Tony Blair government opted for silence, and remained silent even after the exposure. The British people still remember the concept of conscience. The Blair government does not. Its scepticism is probably justified. The Abu Ghraib scenes did not worry enough voters in America and the British atrocities will not worry enough voters in Britain. As long as Blair is cynical, he is safe. Doonesbury, the political comic strip by Gary Trudeau, was brilliant this week. The young recruit to the CIA is getting his first lessons in torture management. The only thing absolutely impermissible now, says the instructor, is a digital camera. The recruit wonders why America needs torture now when it lived within the law during the world war against Nazis. Because, sneers the instructor, the President at the time was spineless. Let me tell you what the "Islamic fundamentalist" is going to suggest: no torture was permitted in the Second World War because the Nazis were not Muslims.

His election victory has justified the occupation of Iraq, says George Bush, as if the only opinion that matters in the world is American opinion. After the exceptional journalist Seymour Hersh reports in New Yorker that Pentagon is far ahead in its preparations for the invasion of Iran, George Bush refuses to rule out the possibility. Now Secretary Rice has added Pakistan to the list of nations suitable for American intervention if the circumstances justified it — all justification to be by White House standards.

It would be immature on the part of Islamabad to send a questionnaire to the new secretary of state. It would be equally foolish to ignore what she said. President Musharraf has excellent personal rapport with President Bush. Perhaps he could find out, very quietly, what precise plans Bush has, not only for contingencies, but for the ordinary course of real life. Will America seek to find solutions to genuine problems like terrorism through shared decision-making, or through unilateral war?

We are still in the early stages of a phase of history that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Shift and flux, rise and fall have only begun. Would India have gone nuclear if still within the Soviet embrace? It would not have needed the United States to stop us; "friendly" Soviet Union would have done so. In that sense, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a moment of opportunity as the world began to redefine itself. Confrontation of some kind was inevitable, and it did not have to be what it has become. If the United States had co-opted Osama bin Laden into its war against Saddam Hussein for the liberation of Kuwait, as Osama offered, different equations would have emerged. Who could have visualised what the last ten years have been? Who can predict what the next ten years will be?

Why am I in Power?

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Byline by M.J. Akbar : Why Am I in Power?

The question that Dr Singh will have to answer this year, and the sooner the better, is simple, basic and vital. Why is he in power? He may have come to power by accident but he cannot remain in power by accident. Power can be sustained only by a defined purpose. What is that purpose?

Last year Dr Manmohan Singh was fortunate. This year will determine whether he will be successful. All successful men require a degree of good fortune. But all fortunate men are not necessarily successful. Fortune opens at least one door through which you can depart from the predictable trajectory of life and enter the realm of the memorable. Success comes when you can sustain the memorable.

Dr Manmohan Singh has used his first two hundred days in office to sustain his personal reputation. This is good news. He has not changed from the person we discovered when P.V. Narasimha Rao made him finance minister. His central virtue remains integrity. The country has responded warmly and his stock has been rising at a very Manmohan pace: steadily. He must of course be aware of the inherent dangers. The biggest is that of high expectations, for integrity is much more than financial honesty. It extends to intellectual and moral integrity. The disappointment therefore will be far higher if he is ever seen to succumb to the traditional political demands of obsequiousness or compromise beyond a common sense-level.

The common sense-level can be identified by an application of common sense. No one expects him to risk his government by measuring Lalu Yadav or Shibu Soren by the yardsticks of the Prophet Moses ("Thou shalt not steal" etc). And yet, it will hurt his image, and do so soon, if he gives the impression of being impotent. He may not be the moral arbiter of past sins, but there must be no sin under his watch.

The question that Dr Singh will have to answer this year, and the sooner the better, is simple, basic and vital. Why is he in power? He may have come to power by accident but he cannot remain in power by accident. Power can be sustained only by a defined purpose. What is that purpose?

It cannot be yesterday’s purpose. He cannot become Prime Minister in order to become better finance minister. The story of economic reforms is not over. Much remains to be done, and doubtless will be done in either micro or macro leaps, depending on opportunity, ability and the vagaries of coalition politics. But the fact is that economic reform is yesterday’s story, begun by Rao and given a bipartisan dimension by Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Dr Manmohan Singh cannot be in power as a holding operation while the Congress rearranges its leadership options. That, apart from being the waste of opportunity, would reduce him to being in office rather than being in power. The difference is obvious. Gulzarilal Nanda, Charan Singh, I.K. Gujral and Deve Gowda were in office. Each was removed, in a matter of days or months, before he could come to power. Others found their own route maps to legitimacy. Rajiv Gandhi inherited the office through a national tragedy. He acquired credibility through a general election. A quirk of politics and the inflexibility of Morarji Desai made Indira Gandhi Prime Minister. Her road to credibility was perhaps the most difficult of all. She took time to define her purpose, and when she did so had to fight exceptional battles within her own party, within Parliament and then at the hustings. Vajpayee was merely in office until a paradoxical defeat on the floor of the Lok Sabha opened the door of victory in the general elections of 1999. You can also begin by being in power and end up being in office, as Morarji Desai did between 1977 and 1979. This is the potential nightmare that Dr Singh must beware of.

If Dr Singh wants to lead India, rather than merely govern the country for whatever period God has placed in his destiny, then he must address the theme question: "Why am I Prime Minister?" He needs to formulate an answer with depth and sufficient length to stretch for five years. When he has formulated it, he needs to let us know what it is.

For in that answer will lie the hinge of his credibility. Power is a curious animal. It comes to life only when it has been injected with credibility. Power is not the ability to give orders, whether you are sergeant major or Prime Minister. Any fool can give orders, and lots of fools do. Power is the ability to get those orders obeyed. That is why power is best sustained by wisdom and dissipates so easily with arrogance. Dr Manmohan Singh can never be accused of arrogance. His modesty is one of his fundamental assets. But he might want to check out the humility levels of some of those who speak in his name.

Neither is power static. If it does not sweep forward like a tide, it ebbs. The pace in either direction is slow and often invisible when you are surrounded by the protective screens of office, making the obvious invisible. You can take it as a law: when there is no progress, there is definitely regress. The forward momentum of power is propelled by the search of a new horizon. Which is the horizon towards which Dr Singh wants to take his country? What are the new realities that will be his legacy, his memorial, his raison d’être for having been Prime Minister of India?

Dr Manmohan Singh is a good man, but being good is not good enough. Nor is it necessary to be a missionary in order to have a mission. As I noted, the laws of Moses can be left to the domain of Moses. And yet every Prime Minister needs to define the Promised Land towards which he is leading his people.

In an interesting departure from image, Dr Singh opened the new year with a significant political ploy. He was in Bengal, the fortress of his principal ally, the Marxists. Bengal is the true power base of the Left, not Kerala, and the stakes in any election in Bengal cannot be higher for the Marxists. Using a remarkable blend, as delicate as the finest Darjeeling tea, in a tone not quite casual and not quite definitive, the Prime Minister invited Mamata Banerjee, the Left’s greatest adversary, not only back into the Congress but also back into the Union Cabinet. The second part of the perfectly nuanced offer was even more significant than the first, and gave the lie to those who believe that our economics-driven Prime Minister does not understand politics or political manoeuvre. It was a signal from a lighthouse that did a 360 degree turn, throwing beams in every direction.

Mamata Banerjee does not have MPs, so Dr Singh was not adding to his Parliamentary score. His sharpest signal was aimed twelve months into the future, at the Bengal elections of early 2006. It was an assertion that the Congress was not ready to live in the margins of Bengal in order to appease the Marxists. The party in Bengal, in other words, would not be hostage to the coalition in Delhi. This is a legitimate horizon. The danger of coalition politics as it has emerged with the formation of the present government is that it threatens to reduce the Congress to a tattered and sporadic force in Indian politics, picking up seats where it can, rather than a cogent national party. There are serious implications for India’s polity if the Congress remains a marginal player, unable to consolidate or grow, for if the next general elections are held, as due, in 2009, the party could be further weakened by the lash of anti-incumbency. That would mean that of the two national political formations, the Congress and the BJP, neither is expanding and both are conceding space to regional forces. Today the two coalitions have a centre around which they can circulate. If that centre weakens beyond a point, the nature of coalition politics will change. When power fractures, will the polity hold? I don’t know the answer, and maybe our constitutional structure has the strength to heal such concerns, but do not rule out the possibility of new temptations — perhaps in the office of the President of India, for starters. The seeds of the future are always sown in a complacent present.

As Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh must use power to chart a road map for his party. But that is only part of his mission. His substantive contribution has to be to create an agenda for every Indian. It cannot be a multipolar agenda that stinks of unachievability and is therefore dismissed as familiar political hypocrisy. Dr Singh is still believed, because he is believed to be honest. He must not dilute that confidence by promising all things to all people, which of course ends up by meaning nothing to anyone.

What could be his core mission? I could of course name a few of the great unfinished tasks of the Indian nation state: the abolition of poverty and illiteracy, or the creation of peace with Pakistan, and there would be nothing new in them for we still have not had a Prime Minister who promised to increase poverty or to incite war with Pakistan (do not rule the second out, though, for hysteria has many lovers). Such noble intentions as the creation of national wealth have been ill-served by lip service. If one expected the same from Dr Manmohan Singh, I would not have wasted time asking the core question. It is not where we want to go that is the question, but how we will reach there, and how soon. The time has come for an answer. The answer can only come from the Prime Minister of India. As far as we are concerned: well, we also serve who only stand and wait.

Conscience Management

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Byline by M.J.AKBAR: Conscience-Management

The United States started by offering some twenty million dollars, or some such equally stupid figure. It now wants to save the world by raising that to 350 million dollars. How much is the United States spending on the military occupation of Iraq every day? Check out a relevant website; these figures are now posted on the net by the watchful. Let me offer a ballpark figure; even if it is an overestimate, it will not be by much. Would a figure of one billion dollars a day surprise, perhaps shock you? That is one thousand million dollars a day. This may even be an underestimate, because which accountant has the courage to evaluate what the Pentagon really costs?

Holy Quran mentions charity (as in Verse 162 of Al Nisa or Verse 55 of Al Maidah) it always adds a qualification — it asks for "regular" charity, not occasional charity, not mere tsunami charity. It says, "If you disclose charity, it is well. But if you conceal it, it is better."

Why do we need a disaster to provoke generosity? Why is generosity accompanied by PR pictures? It is entirely commendable that the victims of tsunami (now, incidentally, a Hindi word) are being nursed by the rich and the powerful. But do we need an earthquake under the ocean to bring clean water to the children of the coast? Have the owners of this world and spenders of its wealth ever checked the shoreline to find out what kind of water is drunk by the poor when there is no tsunami?

Pardon my cynicism, but is free bottled water another seed being planted in the vast forest of forward marketing? The rich are already being made to pay for what was once considered a natural gift of nature. The poor will pay for water only after the rich have made it standard practice, because imitation is the best form of profitability.

Governments of course have formally abdicated from any intervention into profitability, so there is no reason to suppose that those who have sold water mixed with sugar and carbon as a health drink will not sell plain water as medicine. (If it’s good for pesticide, it can’t be bad for human beings, can it?)

The morality of donors who refuse to give a cheque without a clutch of photographers at their side is only one side of the story. But why do Prime Ministers and destiny-dispensers queue up to accept cheques that are cashing in on publicity? Is it because governments have converted disaster into another instance of taxation? The condom over this tax is that it is "voluntary". It takes a great deal to make this "voluntary", most of all media hype. I wonder whether governments actually need this money. What happens to the cash that goes into the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund? Does it fund help or does it fund only disaster-management? Rajiv Gandhi became deeply unpopular with powerful sections of the country when he spoke the truth and said that 85% of development spending went into that curse called the government rather than to the poor. Since then the situation has changed, but by how much? It was at least partly due to Rajiv Gandhi’s honest rhetoric that the climate was created for privatisation. The model is equally valid for disaster-management. What the government can do — send out navies for instance — the private sector cannot, and there is no donors’ budget that can pay for navies. What the private sector can do the government should not. The PM’s relief fund has an average balance of about Rs 300 crores. Compare this with what the government spends on itself each year. Rs 477829 crores. Put the commas into that number wherever you want because I have lost count of commas.

Extend the analogy. The United States started by offering some twenty million dollars, or some such equally stupid figure. It now wants to save the world by raising that to 350 million dollars. How much is the United States spending on the military occupation of Iraq every day? Check out a relevant website; these figures are now posted on the net by the watchful. Let me offer a ballpark figure; even if it is an overestimate, it will not be by much. Would a figure of one billion dollars a day surprise, perhaps shock you? That is one thousand million dollars a day. This may even be an underestimate, because which accountant has the courage to evaluate what the Pentagon really costs? I am not making value judgements. I am merely drawing attention to the pitiful fact that Kofi Annan has to appeal for a billion dollars and then add that he wants the money in cash because he does not trust commitments that are made for public consumption in the heat of publicity, and then never honoured. This is not an underground anarchist making the accusation. It is the most respected and I daresay respectful man in the system doing so. And he is asking for money for what is visibly the worst disaster in memory, a disaster that has set off unease among seaside property developers from Dubai to New York. Appalling? Don’t be appalled so easily. The European Union, more practical, has announced that it will suspend debt repayments from the affected countries for a year. Suspend the debt, not cancel it, just in case you misunderstood. This gesture alone will save the affected countries some five billion dollars in interest and repayment. You can calculate, if inclined, what the total debt must be. Now to the really bad news. What do you think the governments of countries like Sri Lanka and Indonesia will do with the money saved? Spend it on the victims? What makes me doubt that? Trust me, most of the money will disappear into that curse called government gluttony.

Now to the real question. Why doesn’t the world mobilise on a much larger scale, every day of the year, to tackle a much bigger tragedy than the tsunami, that tragedy called poverty? There are at least three hundred million people in India alone who live below the poverty line. Does any reader of a newspaper know what that means? Why is hunger — hunger as a permanent reality, day after day, night after night, with gnawing, restless, tired sleep as the only relief from hunger — less of a tragedy than a tsunami? Why doesn’t President George Bush send his brother Jeb (clearly his preferred successor in the White House) to slums so that he can mobilise the overfed to fight the world war against hunger? Is it because hunger isn’t as glamorous as a thirty-foot wave chasing you like a beast from some horror movie? Is it because there are no tourists enjoying the sun outside hotels, and therefore have no stories to tell their local newspapers in London and New York and Berlin? Is it because the poor don’t rise up to kill the well-fed? When will that great multinational which controls cricket organise special one-dayers to fund food for children who cannot get one meal a day, for girls who succumb to prostitution as their only hope, for parents who cannot convert their only asset, sweat, into minimum subsistence levels of a few calories a day?

Have you noticed any difference in the pictures emanating from the disaster areas in the last couple of days? The initial images of shock, at the horror, and grief, at the loss of relative, have given way to smiles and even the occasional laugh. I am looking at a picture distributed by Associated Press of women sitting in a group awaiting rations, one of them being prodded by a police baton to chuckles all around as all of them wait for the wheel of charity to grind in their direction. Why shouldn’t they laugh? Suddenly there is food available without the pressure of unending effort. Suddenly the children of Aceh and Sri Lanka can try on a dress and choose a colour they prefer. Have you ever thought about this? About the luxury of choice? Do the poor ever have a choice? They wear what they get. The only choice they have is to find something cheaper. Does anyone below the poverty line know what it means to prefer even one vegetable to another?

Disaster then becomes a luxury to the poor. The rich discover that the poor are also alive. Tomorrow — tomorrow, not the day after, for I am in the news business and know how ephemeral is the nature of news — the tsunami will ebb from the headlines. The poor will remain with us. The privileged will return to their indifference. That is why the poor are chuckling today. They are not cynical. They are simple and practical. They are enjoying the brief luxury of disaster while it lasts. The privileged, in the meanwhile, are wallowing in conscience-management. Every so often the rich need a tsunami after another glut of Christmas shopping, or Id wastage, or Puja excess. What on earth would we do if we could not find a tsunami to be sombre about?

Why are we indifferent to poverty? First, since the poor are not one of us, why bother. But I suspect there is more. We also have a politically incorrect and therefore publicly inadmissible contempt for the poor, as if they deserve their poverty because they are lazy, or worthless, or stupid. This is the theory of the caste system, by which the untouchables are condemned to be where they are because they are considered too stupid to be of any other use to society except the disposal of waste.

One of the five pillars of Islam is charity, or zakat. It means purification and is, therefore, a form of the Great Jihad, the struggle for self-purification, to cleanse oneself from within. But when the Holy Quran mentions charity (as in Verse 162 of Al Nisa or Verse 55 of Al Maidah) it always adds a qualification — it asks for "regular" charity, not occasional charity, not mere tsunami charity. It insists on charity as a way of life, not as a balm for death. There is another very real and very realistic instruction from the Holy Book. It says, "If you disclose charity, it is well. But if you conceal it, it is better."

If only the Muslims of this world understood at least this much.

A judging Experience

When I set out for San Francisco in April last year, there was only one thing I was certain about: my friendship with Andy and Andy’s deep, and deeply held, humanism. I had met Andy over more than two years, in varying circumstances, from time spent together waiting for a meeting to an accidental encounter on a flight. Enquiry led to conversation, conversation to knowledge, and knowledge to decision. Andy was an exceptional human being. That was sufficient to justify a journey across three continents and two oceans to see a few pictures.

I knew from the moment I stepped through the doors of the FiftyCrows Gallery that I could not take my responsibilities lightly. The air of commitment was too strong; the gallery was space galvanized by belief and conviction. The wonderful thing was that this came without any pompous baggage. Commitment so often wears a long face. When you see it wearing a smile, you know that it comes from the heart, as much as from the mind. A judge can only be as good as the case before him. I dare say if the work placed before us was routine, our involvement would also have been routine. But even a first look at the work submitted for competition was evidence that Lillian and Andy have created a strong international equity in the organization that they created together. It was not the spread of entries, from across the world, that impressed me as the depth and the homogeneity. It is clear that photographers all over now know that a Fifty Crows award is identified with the unspoken truths of the contemporary human condition. It was a particular privilege to experience images of the underprivileged leap into one's consciousness. It is ironic that I found a word that was symbolic of a different context very useful to describe what was happening to me over the two days I spent with the pictures: so many visions of truth were getting embedded into my inner life. They would become dormant over time, but they would never leave. It was as if each photographer had seared me with the power of his or her pictures. I was particularly impressed by the dimensions that women brought to their work. They probed with a fierce gentleness, and there was nothing paradoxical about it. The best of them had a world view that married spirit to image, micro to macro, heart to universe and made them indistinguishable.

- M.J.Akbar

The Future is Bright

Edited & Brought to you by ilaxi

Byline by M.J.Akbar:The Future is Bright

The military forces of George Nero Bush will not leave Iraq, despite casualty levels at least as high as they were in 2004. A conflagration never frightens Nero, but acts as an aphrodisiac. The Bush expectation is that an elected government in Baghdad will administer the country, or those parts of it that are willing to accept the rule of Baghdad, while American troops, living in modern Crusader fortresses, protect the oil and retain the right to swoop where they want in search of prey that is considered hostile to American interests.

Terrorism? All enemies become terrorists when they declare war.

It’s natural: in the first week of January every right-thinking Indian wants to know what will happen in the coming year.

The problem is not uncertain vision, or the inability to predict. The worry is that truth outstrips the wildest imagination or the bravest astrologer. Take a test. Stand on the edge of a date and let the options in your mind scream on the brink of impossibility. Truth, you will discover, has been stranger than any fantasy. Who could have stared at the horizons of Eurasia in 1990 and seen the implosion of the Soviet Union? Who, in the confident America of 2000, could have seen the twin towers of the World Trade Center being blown out of the sky? You can start at the top and run down a pretty long list of impossibles that have become contemporary realities.

So it may be a much safer call to check out what will not happen this year. Will not? Sorry, amendment needed. May not. For the one thing you can be certain about in life is uncertainty.

1: The wise in Delhi appreciate that power is both transient and limited, but only the very foolish surrender power senselessly. The coalition in power in Delhi has problems, but folly is not one of them. Contradictions will spurt through, but they will also be managed. The operating principle will be: a Cabinet position in hand is worth two in the bush. Moreover, Dr Manmohan Singh is not vulnerable to the traditional Delhi disease, flattery. So he is not going to slip on the grease with which every politician is massaged every morning. It will therefore be a year of status quo, at the Centre and in most of the states (most, because February will see the departure of Om Prakash Chautala in Haryana and the BJP in Jharkhand). This is good news for the ruling coalition, but worrying for the Congress because its aspirations are, justifiably, far above its present status. A squeeze in Bihar and a squash in Uttar Pradesh cannot be comfortable, status-wise. But to change things would risk the status in the coalition, so status quo.

2: The military forces of George Nero Bush will not leave Iraq, despite casualty levels at least as high as they were in 2004. A conflagration never frightens Nero, but acts as an aphrodisiac. The Bush expectation is that an elected government in Baghdad will administer the country, or those parts of it that are willing to accept the rule of Baghdad, while American troops, living in modern Crusader fortresses, protect the oil and retain the right to swoop where they want in search of prey that is considered hostile to American interests. The Pentagon, in the meantime, will plan for the impossible by stretching the scenario through awkward questions. What happens to the Sunni insurgency in case the Shias form a government in Baghdad? Does it reach an accommodation and spread its net into Saudi Arabia? What are the implications for the House of Saud in that case? What will be the Iranian response to an American-Israeli threat to its nuclear capabilities? Nuclear power has become synonymous with nationalism in Iran and Pakistan: can America afford to provoke Iranian nationalism? Was, forgive the heresy, the wrong country invaded in 2003? If the shock and awe had to be turned on somewhere for reasons of re-election, should that country have been Iran? Nuclear installations would have been found, there would have been tacit support from Arab governments and Washington could have appointed a Viceroy for the Afghan-Iran region. And now to the most bizarre thought of all: could Osama bin Laden be legitimised and his support base in the Arab world turned into an asset for the West? He was once an ally, after all. Terrorism? All enemies become terrorists when they declare war. The labels can be taken off if the deal demands it. Mao Zedong was worse than a terrorist; he was a Communist. Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta was a Mau-Mau terrorist, the ogre of a million children’s nightmares. Yasser Arafat was a poster-boy terrorist. Think.

3: India’s biggest private sector industry, cricket, will head in only one direction: the bank. The faded, jaded Sourav Ganguly will remain captain till he is 50 years old and Jagmohan Dalmiya 75, whichever comes first. The dispute between Sharad Pawar and Dalmiya over the elections to the BCCI will remain in the courts till after Pawar’s elected term is over, which means Dalmiya wins even if he doesn’t. Doordarshan will telecast the Indo-Pak cricket series since Subhash Chandra’s offer for telecast rights will be substantially dented by his legal bills. Lawyers will also be the principal beneficiaries of the war between the Birlas and Lodha for an alleged

Rs 5,000-crore bequest. Alleged, because no one has counted. Sachin Tendulkar will make three more centuries until he crosses the SPE (Saturation Point of Exposure) Index: that is, consumers begin to reject products that he advertises. Zahir Khan and Irfan Pathan will alternate in the team due to injury problems. Harbhajan Singh will go straight and join the Zee cricket commentary team.

4: The fourth anniversary of India’s biggest private sector dispute will be celebrated with prayers at Tirupati, Hardwar and Mathura by Anil Ambani, and six board room resolutions by Mukesh Ambani giving him plenipotentiary powers over all interior design decisions in any Ambani office worldwide, including the international headquarters of Crocodile Investments. On the advice of astrologers and haute couture consultants from Paris, Anil Ambani will stop wearing black, the colour of Rahu and so yesterday in any case. Special yagnas will be organised to eliminate the impact of Rahu, currently in occupation of Aries, Anil’s presiding star. Simultaneously, other yagnas will be done, on behalf of Mukesh, to persuade Rahu to carry on what he is doing, and not be in such a tearing hurry to move away from Aries. Both brothers will laugh whenever seen in public, either singly or together.

5: The BJP will not accept defeat at a national conclave of the party in the last week of 2005. In a special resolution drafted by Pramod Mahajan and seconded by rising star Satpal Malik the weather will be given its due share of the blame; if it had rained earlier in the summer of 2004 the base vote would have come out and tilted the balance in 36 Lok Sabha constituencies, including Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. Uma Bharti will not become chief minister of Madhya Pradesh after seven more attempts, but will check out how she looks with the mantle of prospective prime ministership resting easily on her tender shoulders. Narendra Modi will continue to ignore her. Atal Behari Vajpayee will bring the House down four times in the Budget session, twice with quips on Lalu Yadav and twice with speeches on the future of the nation if the Bihar pattern of voting is repeated nationally.

6: Lalu Yadav and Rabri Devi will not settle outstanding tax claims on income from the milk of their private herd of 270 cows which will, by the end of 2005, cross Rs 5 crores. Lalu Yadav will explain that the results of the Assembly elections have vindicated his stand on income tax. Lalu Yadav will announce the creation of 200,000 more jobs in the railway budget of 2005, for young persons between the age of 32 and 42, bearing the surname Yadav from the districts of Barh, Chapra, Nalanda and Madhepura, trained in special martial capabilities in order to end crime and terrorism in Indian Railways. Dr Manmohan Singh will be sorely tempted to change Lalu’s portfolio from railways to fishing but will be restrained by the taciturn hand of Sonia Gandhi.

7: The state of Telangana will not come into existence by 1 November 2005, one year after the deadline for mayhem on the streets and pillage in the villages. However, a subcommittee to examine regional demands in the light of socio-economic conditions in 1954 and agricultural-industrial prospects in 2032 will start gathering evidence on the feasibility of smaller states in the Indian archipelago/subcontinent within the parameters of overall development in the IT sector. The chairman of the subcommittee will be an economist of the World Bank with visiting rights to Hyderabad.