Fiction is much more appealing than sordid facts
By M J Akbar
Charity, all too often, is a form of sycophancy. The rich give not because they feel for the poor but because they need something from God in an immediate transactional basis. They buy divine favour with donations. Sometimes such worship is less immaculate.
There was the odious case last year of fatcats queuing up to hand out dole to Kalawati, the widow of a Vidarbha farmer, because her poverty had been cited by Rahul Gandhi in a speech in the Lok Sabha. One hopes that Rahul Gandhi was as unimpressed as divinity for hypocrisy.
There is national schizophrenia and media dyslexia at the quixotic elevation of Indian poverty in Anglo-America. The Indian well-fed have perfected their formula: they exploit poverty when they can [witness how they generally behave towards domestic servants, mostly children] and keep a safe distance when they cannot. The English-speaking Mumbaikar finds it so much more pleasant to see Dharavi through Hobowood (what else would you call a partnership of Hollywood and Bollywood?) than stop at the great slum on the way to the airport. Fiction is so much more palatable than fact. It comes dressed in A R Rahman’s music.
Indifference is the respectable fact of contempt. The rich don’t quite understand why there is so much fuss about calling a child a ‘slumdog’, possibly because they treat their dogs better than they treat slum children. Is there a movie waiting to be made titled ‘The Capitalist Kutta of Malabar Hill’? One thinks not.
There was no antidote to the plague of puns on ‘dog’ that devastated the front pages of newspapers after the Oscars. You could see the agony on the face of the English language as it was tortured beyond reason, but that is minor price extracted by editorial creativity. The hype had only one explanation: we love the idea of winning even if it is through surrogates.
Mohammad Azharuddin, the ‘dogstar’, was welcomed on his return from Hollywood with a nation’s garlands at the airport and a candlelight dinner at home. The candles were a necessity, not a romantic affectation. This was life at the base camp: Edmund Hillary can’t live on the peak of Everest forever. The poor are very sensible. Fate is consistent, for them, not fickle; it does not promise fortune. Azharuddin’s parents clearly refused to invest the wages of passing glamour on upward mobility that might become unsustainable. Azharuddin ate with a satisfaction that he could not have felt for hamburgers.
The slum story of the year has appeared on the inside pages of the print medium. According to the Indian Statistical Institute’s survey of the country’s 575 districts, urban poverty was bleakest in Mumbai, the city that was being advertised as the future Shanghai. It added that the number of people living below the poverty line had risen — repeat, risen — by 20% in the last five years. Murshidabad, once capital of Nawab Siraj ud Daulah, described by an astonished Clive as richer than London when he saw it for the first time, is now the poorest district in the country, with 1.47% of people below the poverty line.
In a separate report, the United Nations World Food Programme says that the largest concentration of hunger in the world is in India: 230 million, or 27% of the world total. Fifty percent of child deaths are due to hunger. Nearly 43% of children under five are underweight, as compared to only 28% for sub-Saharan Africa. And, 70% of children under five are anaemic, a figure that has risen by six per cent in the last six years.
Television, that lightning rod of middle-class values, which screamed itself into a stupor over the Oscars, ignored these reports completely. They were not even awarded the courtesy of a crawler, the line of letters that trots by on news channels below the aggressive self-importance of the screen. No anchor had a question as to how numbers below the poverty line have risen by 20% in the last five years when every minister of the Union of India has proclaimed that the era of dross has given way to the age of gold.
But such facts are not televisual news. They don’t dance to the rhythm of music. Who shall dare tell the bloated that hunger is the ultimate siege within?
Appeared in Times of India - March 1, 2009
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Saturday, February 28, 2009
The Curious Vibrations of Sound and Silence
Byline by M.J. Akbar: The Curious Vibrations of Sound and Silence
The Congress has begun its campaign — for the general elections of 2012-13. All over Kolkata, to take a revealing instance, the party has put up hoardings with a single face, that of a smiling,heavily-dimpled Rahul Gandhi. The visual message is “cute”. The written message is unambiguous: this is the face of the future. He may be forced to share the limelight with his elders in 2009, but this is the last compromise.
The campaign accepts, without stressing the fact too much, that Dr Manmohan Singh is the Congress candidate for Prime Minister this year,but marks him as a transition figure, or in Arun Jaitley’s more ebullient phrase, as a “night-watchman”. Dr Singh sort of lurks around the edges of the campaign, visible occasionally, out of courtesy, but far from dominant. He may get a few extra hoardings in the city where he lives, Delhi, but the proportion sinks rapidly the moment you move out of the capital.
It is curious, given the need for clarity and discipline incommunication, that the party should announce a transfer of power before the shift has taken place, offering Dr Singh the dubious distinction of a lame duck, but passages of life are never easy to handle. In any case, it is evident that even if the Congress manages to retain power after the April-May poll, the office will go to Dr Singh but power will shift towards Rahul Gandhi. We have had a bipolar Government so far, divided between Dr Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi. This is being stretched into a triangle. But a second Manmohan Singh administration will serve at least one useful purpose: the Cabinet will include Rahul Gandhi, along with a dozen of his peer group. This will be the answer to the “experience” dilemma. A couple of years in office will be cited as proof of ability to deliver as Prime Minister.The Kolkata campaign is relevant for another reason. Rahul Gandhi’s hoardings are not restricted to constituencies where the Congress could contest if an alliance with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress became a reality. It has already flowed over into Mamata territory.
Once again, the meaning is utterly clear. The Congress strategy is focused on building up Rahul Gandhi as leader of the whole country,not merely of those parts of it that have been left to it by coalition politics. This is the last election that the Congress is going to fight with such a profusion of partners. If alliances happen in 2009, it will go along with them, whether in Bengal or Tamil Nadu. Even inStates where the Congress is ready for an alliance, it is using this campaign to establish the difference both with the Opposition as wel las with its poll partners. If talks over seat sharing fail anywhere,the Congress will not break out in a sweat. It is confident of retaining enough seats in the next Parliament to be a player at the roulette table that will open for business as soon as the election results are declared.
The logic is transparent. Two thirds of the country is below the age of 35. The young want someone young. QED.
There is of course a degree of naiveté in this equation. The young are not a category without distinctions. The child of a field labourer who joins the Naxalites at 20 is not as eager to inhale the fragrance of Fair and Lovely as the college student whose parents are spending acomparative fortune to get him or her through a private college.
It is interesting, therefore, that Rahul Gandhi is speaking like Mamata Banerjee in Gujarat, while the Congress is hammering Mamata in Bengal for being anti-development. Rahul Gandhi accuses Narendra Modi of precisely the same sins that Mamata Banerjee holds Buddhadeb Bhattacharya guilty of: of creating jobs for the rich at the expenseof the poor. Even the phrases are similar, as is the symbol, Tata’s Nano project. It is only a matter of time, I suppose, before Mamata Banerjee, citing none other than Rahul Gandhi as her inspiration, describes Buddhadeb Bhattacharya as the Narendra Modi of Bengal. That should make the CPI[M] cringe!
It is perhaps inevitable that a national party should be tripped up by contradictions when there is such divergence in regional realities.But this is a difficult one since it addresses a fundamental issue of the core constituency: jobs. Urban youth want Nano, and rural youth do not want to sacrifice their minimalist insurance policy, land.
Narendra Modi has provided jobs through industrialisation, and won the endorsement of his State, of the young and of industrialists. If you criticise his economic performance in order to reinforce your minority base, you sow doubt about your intentions. While politics is a flexible art, it is not so very easy to lambaste industrialisation in Gujarat and seek it in Rajasthan.
This election effectively shuts the door on the ambitions of Dr Singh’s peer group in the Congress. There is no space for anyone else to become Prime Minister. If Dr Singh relinquishes office on grounds of ill-health — his heart is not in the best condition — then there will be no dispute within the Congress as to who shall be the successor. If the allies do not accept Rahul Gandhi, they may beforced into an unwelcome early election. The track record of the lastfive years shows that no small party, or semi-small party, is willing to surrender the privileges of office until a Constitutional deadline puts an end to the fun.
What about the chances of claimants from outside the Congress or the BJP? That option will be in play only if the Congress gets less than 120 seats, and the UPA is punctured. This is not impossible to visualise. The anti-incumbency factor is far stronger in UPA States like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra than it is in NDA States like Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Askewered result would encourage ambition. Sharad Pawar has alreadymade his intentions evident. Others, like Chandrababu Naidu, prefer discretion.Silence travels a longer distance than noise in Delhi.
The Congress has begun its campaign — for the general elections of 2012-13. All over Kolkata, to take a revealing instance, the party has put up hoardings with a single face, that of a smiling,heavily-dimpled Rahul Gandhi. The visual message is “cute”. The written message is unambiguous: this is the face of the future. He may be forced to share the limelight with his elders in 2009, but this is the last compromise.
The campaign accepts, without stressing the fact too much, that Dr Manmohan Singh is the Congress candidate for Prime Minister this year,but marks him as a transition figure, or in Arun Jaitley’s more ebullient phrase, as a “night-watchman”. Dr Singh sort of lurks around the edges of the campaign, visible occasionally, out of courtesy, but far from dominant. He may get a few extra hoardings in the city where he lives, Delhi, but the proportion sinks rapidly the moment you move out of the capital.
It is curious, given the need for clarity and discipline incommunication, that the party should announce a transfer of power before the shift has taken place, offering Dr Singh the dubious distinction of a lame duck, but passages of life are never easy to handle. In any case, it is evident that even if the Congress manages to retain power after the April-May poll, the office will go to Dr Singh but power will shift towards Rahul Gandhi. We have had a bipolar Government so far, divided between Dr Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi. This is being stretched into a triangle. But a second Manmohan Singh administration will serve at least one useful purpose: the Cabinet will include Rahul Gandhi, along with a dozen of his peer group. This will be the answer to the “experience” dilemma. A couple of years in office will be cited as proof of ability to deliver as Prime Minister.The Kolkata campaign is relevant for another reason. Rahul Gandhi’s hoardings are not restricted to constituencies where the Congress could contest if an alliance with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress became a reality. It has already flowed over into Mamata territory.
Once again, the meaning is utterly clear. The Congress strategy is focused on building up Rahul Gandhi as leader of the whole country,not merely of those parts of it that have been left to it by coalition politics. This is the last election that the Congress is going to fight with such a profusion of partners. If alliances happen in 2009, it will go along with them, whether in Bengal or Tamil Nadu. Even inStates where the Congress is ready for an alliance, it is using this campaign to establish the difference both with the Opposition as wel las with its poll partners. If talks over seat sharing fail anywhere,the Congress will not break out in a sweat. It is confident of retaining enough seats in the next Parliament to be a player at the roulette table that will open for business as soon as the election results are declared.
The logic is transparent. Two thirds of the country is below the age of 35. The young want someone young. QED.
There is of course a degree of naiveté in this equation. The young are not a category without distinctions. The child of a field labourer who joins the Naxalites at 20 is not as eager to inhale the fragrance of Fair and Lovely as the college student whose parents are spending acomparative fortune to get him or her through a private college.
It is interesting, therefore, that Rahul Gandhi is speaking like Mamata Banerjee in Gujarat, while the Congress is hammering Mamata in Bengal for being anti-development. Rahul Gandhi accuses Narendra Modi of precisely the same sins that Mamata Banerjee holds Buddhadeb Bhattacharya guilty of: of creating jobs for the rich at the expenseof the poor. Even the phrases are similar, as is the symbol, Tata’s Nano project. It is only a matter of time, I suppose, before Mamata Banerjee, citing none other than Rahul Gandhi as her inspiration, describes Buddhadeb Bhattacharya as the Narendra Modi of Bengal. That should make the CPI[M] cringe!
It is perhaps inevitable that a national party should be tripped up by contradictions when there is such divergence in regional realities.But this is a difficult one since it addresses a fundamental issue of the core constituency: jobs. Urban youth want Nano, and rural youth do not want to sacrifice their minimalist insurance policy, land.
Narendra Modi has provided jobs through industrialisation, and won the endorsement of his State, of the young and of industrialists. If you criticise his economic performance in order to reinforce your minority base, you sow doubt about your intentions. While politics is a flexible art, it is not so very easy to lambaste industrialisation in Gujarat and seek it in Rajasthan.
This election effectively shuts the door on the ambitions of Dr Singh’s peer group in the Congress. There is no space for anyone else to become Prime Minister. If Dr Singh relinquishes office on grounds of ill-health — his heart is not in the best condition — then there will be no dispute within the Congress as to who shall be the successor. If the allies do not accept Rahul Gandhi, they may beforced into an unwelcome early election. The track record of the lastfive years shows that no small party, or semi-small party, is willing to surrender the privileges of office until a Constitutional deadline puts an end to the fun.
What about the chances of claimants from outside the Congress or the BJP? That option will be in play only if the Congress gets less than 120 seats, and the UPA is punctured. This is not impossible to visualise. The anti-incumbency factor is far stronger in UPA States like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra than it is in NDA States like Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Askewered result would encourage ambition. Sharad Pawar has alreadymade his intentions evident. Others, like Chandrababu Naidu, prefer discretion.Silence travels a longer distance than noise in Delhi.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Single-faith nation is an open invitation to Taliban
Single-faith nation is an open invitation to Taliban
By M J Akbar
Breast-beating has its dangers. You could lacerate yourself while the assassin laughs all the way to the graveyard. The international lamentation over the negotiated surrender of Swat in Pakistan to what might broadly be called the Taliban is high on moaning and low on illumination.
There is a symmetrical irony. Benazir Bhutto handed over Afghanistan to the Taliban. Her husband Asif Zardari might have laid the foundation stone of Talibanistan inside Pakistan by accepting Sufi Mohammad's Tehrik-e-Nifz-e-Shariat Mohammadi as the law for the former princely state of Swat. This demand was first heard in November 1994, the month in which Kandahar fell to the Taliban.
Many questions demand answers. The Pakistani army has an estimated strength of 12,000 in the region of Swat. Why was it unable, or unwilling, to subdue an insurgent force of some 3,000? The Pakistani army is not a pushover. Why was it pushed over in Swat? Is the Pakistani soldier increasingly unwilling to confront an ideology it implicitly sympathises with? How much of such sympathy is shared by the middle-ranking officer, who entered the force during the seminal leadership of General Zia ul Haq? To what extent has Ziaism become the secret doctrine of sections of the Pakistani forces?
What price will Pakistan's polity pay as the last civilian hope degenerates into a national heartbreak? The legacy of Benazir, the charismatic romantic, has been usurped by a semi-literate authoritarian who has seized executive power through a virtual coup against his own government. Zardari was elected to a ceremonial office, not an executive one. His principal achievement so far has been to make the era of Pervez Musharraf seem like a golden age. If she had been in charge, Benazir may have been able to mobilise her country's youth by lifting the economy and offering a liberal horizon. Zardari's ineffectual rule, wafting along compromise and mismanagement, can only create the space for a theocratic impulse that has been waiting to find its moment ever since Pakistan was born. Musharraf doubled the GDP of an insecure economy. Under Zardari, Pakistan is dwindling into a "basket case", a term Henry Kissinger coined for the eastern half of united Pakistan. While Bangladesh is leaving that stigma behind, Pakistan is entering the vortex of the begging bowl.
Military chaos opened the door for the Taliban in Kabul. Could economic chaos open the door in Islamabad? Has Pakistan begun to realise that faith-based nationalism is not synonymous with peace?
The Frontier and North Punjab, the principal catchment areas of the Taliban, have had a Muslim majority for perhaps a thousand years. It is not widely known that Mahmud of Ghazni's territories extended to what is roughly the line of the Indo-Pak border today. (This fact is not lost on terrorists who want to use Pakistan as a base from which to launch assaults on the heart of India.) But this area was never a single-faith entity. Hindus and later Sikhs created, along with Muslims, a dynamic shared culture that blossomed through partnership. The presence of the other also became an antidote to puritanism of any hue. The region was ruled successively by Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. No ruler, not even Ghazni, drove Hindus and Sikhs out. It was only after 1947 that the region became a single-faith hegemony, and from that point a breeding ground for theocratic militancy.
The power of a minority is rarely acknowledged by those who seek to turn it into an enemy. A minority is the yeast that enables the national flour to rise. Hindus and Sikhs were the yeast of the North West Frontier and Pakistani Punjab just as much as Indian Muslims are the yeast of Hindu-majority India. Their existence was a daily lesson in co-existence. Their absence has shifted the gears of social evolution and driven the people into rancid and arid territory.
Will the answers be more optimistic than the questions? That too remains a question.
Appeared in Times of India - February 22, 2009
By M J Akbar
Many questions demand answers. The Pakistani army has an estimated strength of 12,000 in the region of Swat. Why was it unable, or unwilling, to subdue an insurgent force of some 3,000? The Pakistani army is not a pushover. Why was it pushed over in Swat? Is the Pakistani soldier increasingly unwilling to confront an ideology it implicitly sympathises with? How much of such sympathy is shared by the middle-ranking officer, who entered the force during the seminal leadership of General Zia ul Haq? To what extent has Ziaism become the secret doctrine of sections of the Pakistani forces?
Breast-beating has its dangers. You could lacerate yourself while the assassin laughs all the way to the graveyard. The international lamentation over the negotiated surrender of Swat in Pakistan to what might broadly be called the Taliban is high on moaning and low on illumination.
There is a symmetrical irony. Benazir Bhutto handed over Afghanistan to the Taliban. Her husband Asif Zardari might have laid the foundation stone of Talibanistan inside Pakistan by accepting Sufi Mohammad's Tehrik-e-Nifz-e-Shariat Mohammadi as the law for the former princely state of Swat. This demand was first heard in November 1994, the month in which Kandahar fell to the Taliban.
Many questions demand answers. The Pakistani army has an estimated strength of 12,000 in the region of Swat. Why was it unable, or unwilling, to subdue an insurgent force of some 3,000? The Pakistani army is not a pushover. Why was it pushed over in Swat? Is the Pakistani soldier increasingly unwilling to confront an ideology it implicitly sympathises with? How much of such sympathy is shared by the middle-ranking officer, who entered the force during the seminal leadership of General Zia ul Haq? To what extent has Ziaism become the secret doctrine of sections of the Pakistani forces?
What price will Pakistan's polity pay as the last civilian hope degenerates into a national heartbreak? The legacy of Benazir, the charismatic romantic, has been usurped by a semi-literate authoritarian who has seized executive power through a virtual coup against his own government. Zardari was elected to a ceremonial office, not an executive one. His principal achievement so far has been to make the era of Pervez Musharraf seem like a golden age. If she had been in charge, Benazir may have been able to mobilise her country's youth by lifting the economy and offering a liberal horizon. Zardari's ineffectual rule, wafting along compromise and mismanagement, can only create the space for a theocratic impulse that has been waiting to find its moment ever since Pakistan was born. Musharraf doubled the GDP of an insecure economy. Under Zardari, Pakistan is dwindling into a "basket case", a term Henry Kissinger coined for the eastern half of united Pakistan. While Bangladesh is leaving that stigma behind, Pakistan is entering the vortex of the begging bowl.
Military chaos opened the door for the Taliban in Kabul. Could economic chaos open the door in Islamabad? Has Pakistan begun to realise that faith-based nationalism is not synonymous with peace?
The Frontier and North Punjab, the principal catchment areas of the Taliban, have had a Muslim majority for perhaps a thousand years. It is not widely known that Mahmud of Ghazni's territories extended to what is roughly the line of the Indo-Pak border today. (This fact is not lost on terrorists who want to use Pakistan as a base from which to launch assaults on the heart of India.) But this area was never a single-faith entity. Hindus and later Sikhs created, along with Muslims, a dynamic shared culture that blossomed through partnership. The presence of the other also became an antidote to puritanism of any hue. The region was ruled successively by Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. No ruler, not even Ghazni, drove Hindus and Sikhs out. It was only after 1947 that the region became a single-faith hegemony, and from that point a breeding ground for theocratic militancy.
The power of a minority is rarely acknowledged by those who seek to turn it into an enemy. A minority is the yeast that enables the national flour to rise. Hindus and Sikhs were the yeast of the North West Frontier and Pakistani Punjab just as much as Indian Muslims are the yeast of Hindu-majority India. Their existence was a daily lesson in co-existence. Their absence has shifted the gears of social evolution and driven the people into rancid and arid territory.
Will the answers be more optimistic than the questions? That too remains a question.
Appeared in Times of India - February 22, 2009
Dancing with a Bear
Byline by M J Akbar:Dancing with a Bear
Instead of banning opinion polls during election time, the government should ban subversive academic organisations like Kolkata's IndianStatistical Institute (ISI). Opinion polls and exit polls are way off the mark, so why bother? A ban only betrays the nervousness of a government anxious to come back to power, but uncertain about how this will happen.
It is true that the slightest shift in the electoral demographic could send a government from the heaven of office to the hell of irrelevance. But does the Cabinet of Dr Manmohan Singh and the partyof Sonia and Rahul Gandhi actually believe that the Indian voter sitsbiting his nails before a television set in order to make up his mind about how he will vote?
The really accurate psephologist is not a pseudo-scientist available on hire, but the social scientist whose name you do not know.The facts that are moulding the mood of the voter have been gathered by the ISI, based on data collated by the National Sample Survey Organisation from about 124,000 households across the country. Get ready for a sharp crack in your first illusion. The UPA government,through its economic spokesman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, has sold us the bait that poverty has gone down under its watch.
The economic map of India has shifted the axis of tension. The old notional north-south line that divided the country into broad politico-cultural halves is passé. There is a new poverty diagonal that separates the nation on a north-west to south-east arc. The India to the east is sinking towards Bangladesh and Burma; India to the west is rising, and becoming the stuff of popular aspiration and fantasy.If you want to know why Mamata Banerjee could undermine the rampartsof the red fortress in Bengal, pore over the ISI report. A stunning 14 out of Bengal's 18 districts are among the 100 poorest in India, after three decades of Marxist rule. The most indigent district in the country is not in Bihar, Orissa or Jharkhand, but in Bengal,Murshidabad, capital of a principality that once included the whole ofBengal, Orissa and a significant part of Bihar. When Robert Clivestepped into Murshidabad in 1757 after victory in the Battle of Plassey, he looked around in wonder and exclaimed that it was richer than London. Today he would look around and find women slaving away,making bid is at the rate of Rs 41 for a thousand, out of which the middleman keeps six rupees. In percentage terms, the rich pay far less to their middlemen.
Muslim-majority Murshidabad has a population density of 1,102 persquare km against a national average of 590. Among its constituencies is Jangipur. Its Member of Parliament is the present Finance Minister of India, Pranab Mukherjee. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Marxists were pushed back in Bengal but won Jangipur, as the law of accountabilitybegan to extract its price? The job losses that could cross over ahundred million by March are going to have significant impact on voter mood. January saw a fall of 24% in exports from last year. Realists consider the Reserve Bank of India's projection of 7% growth optimistic.
Rising India might be under a cloud for the last six months, but Stagnant India has been in gloom for years. There is little coverage of this gloom since media is driven by advertising; advertising is interested in consumption, and the hungry do not even consume food. It is extraordinary how political parties shy away from decisive facts, and chase ephemeral ones. The extended BJP family is sending vigilantes to check on what the young are doing in their leisure time,but displays little interest in what the young really want — someoneto worry about their workplace. It is understandable when a ruling party shies away from the economy because it has no answers. Whyshould an Opposition party be averse? All it has to do is ask questions.
The political discourse, on all sides, is consumed not by issues that are relevant to the voter, but by posturing and negotiations for partnerships of convenience. The parties do not even pretend to have any ideology in common, or even a purpose that is vaguely similar.Everyone knows that the negotiations for office after the results will have little to do with the manifestos that will be printed before the elections. There is only one weight that will be placed on the scales of judgment, the weight of numbers. [The scales of justice have noplace in politics.] One is often reminded, while watching the pantomime, that when you dance with a bear you don't stop. Those who stop get mauled before they can walk off.
A friend reminded me of an even more appropriate aphorism, and was kind enough to add that this had become relevant to the whole of SouthAsia. The quotation was from the Bible of South Asian democracy, Alice in Wonderland. If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.
Instead of banning opinion polls during election time, the government should ban subversive academic organisations like Kolkata's IndianStatistical Institute (ISI). Opinion polls and exit polls are way off the mark, so why bother? A ban only betrays the nervousness of a government anxious to come back to power, but uncertain about how this will happen.
It is true that the slightest shift in the electoral demographic could send a government from the heaven of office to the hell of irrelevance. But does the Cabinet of Dr Manmohan Singh and the partyof Sonia and Rahul Gandhi actually believe that the Indian voter sitsbiting his nails before a television set in order to make up his mind about how he will vote?
The really accurate psephologist is not a pseudo-scientist available on hire, but the social scientist whose name you do not know.The facts that are moulding the mood of the voter have been gathered by the ISI, based on data collated by the National Sample Survey Organisation from about 124,000 households across the country. Get ready for a sharp crack in your first illusion. The UPA government,through its economic spokesman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, has sold us the bait that poverty has gone down under its watch.
Fact: the number of people living below the poverty line has actually increased by a horrifying 20%. India had some 270 million people below the poverty line in 2004-5, when the present government took office. That number has gone up by 55 million, or 20%, after five years of policies named after the "aam aadmi" (common man) but shaped for the "khaas aadmi"(vested interests).
The economic map of India has shifted the axis of tension. The old notional north-south line that divided the country into broad politico-cultural halves is passé. There is a new poverty diagonal that separates the nation on a north-west to south-east arc. The India to the east is sinking towards Bangladesh and Burma; India to the west is rising, and becoming the stuff of popular aspiration and fantasy.If you want to know why Mamata Banerjee could undermine the rampartsof the red fortress in Bengal, pore over the ISI report. A stunning 14 out of Bengal's 18 districts are among the 100 poorest in India, after three decades of Marxist rule. The most indigent district in the country is not in Bihar, Orissa or Jharkhand, but in Bengal,Murshidabad, capital of a principality that once included the whole ofBengal, Orissa and a significant part of Bihar. When Robert Clivestepped into Murshidabad in 1757 after victory in the Battle of Plassey, he looked around in wonder and exclaimed that it was richer than London. Today he would look around and find women slaving away,making bid is at the rate of Rs 41 for a thousand, out of which the middleman keeps six rupees. In percentage terms, the rich pay far less to their middlemen.
Muslim-majority Murshidabad has a population density of 1,102 persquare km against a national average of 590. Among its constituencies is Jangipur. Its Member of Parliament is the present Finance Minister of India, Pranab Mukherjee. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Marxists were pushed back in Bengal but won Jangipur, as the law of accountabilitybegan to extract its price? The job losses that could cross over ahundred million by March are going to have significant impact on voter mood. January saw a fall of 24% in exports from last year. Realists consider the Reserve Bank of India's projection of 7% growth optimistic.
Rising India might be under a cloud for the last six months, but Stagnant India has been in gloom for years. There is little coverage of this gloom since media is driven by advertising; advertising is interested in consumption, and the hungry do not even consume food. It is extraordinary how political parties shy away from decisive facts, and chase ephemeral ones. The extended BJP family is sending vigilantes to check on what the young are doing in their leisure time,but displays little interest in what the young really want — someoneto worry about their workplace. It is understandable when a ruling party shies away from the economy because it has no answers. Whyshould an Opposition party be averse? All it has to do is ask questions.
The political discourse, on all sides, is consumed not by issues that are relevant to the voter, but by posturing and negotiations for partnerships of convenience. The parties do not even pretend to have any ideology in common, or even a purpose that is vaguely similar.Everyone knows that the negotiations for office after the results will have little to do with the manifestos that will be printed before the elections. There is only one weight that will be placed on the scales of judgment, the weight of numbers. [The scales of justice have noplace in politics.] One is often reminded, while watching the pantomime, that when you dance with a bear you don't stop. Those who stop get mauled before they can walk off.
A friend reminded me of an even more appropriate aphorism, and was kind enough to add that this had become relevant to the whole of SouthAsia. The quotation was from the Bible of South Asian democracy, Alice in Wonderland. If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
All Religions are not same, but Fundamentalists Are
All Religions are not same, but Fundamentalists Are
By M J Akbar
Given the staggering backlog of cases that clog the Indian judicial system, is it necessary to put Sri Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik through the full rigours of the wrench? Here is a suggestion for cruel and unusual punishment that can be administered immediately: he should be forced to see a collection of item numbers from Hindi movies.
Alternatively, he could be subjected to six hours of solitary confinement in front of MTV. A serious study of pole dancing to the strains of Kaal kaal mein hum tum kare dhamaal might open his eyes. When those eyes are open, he might recognise that popular culture in India has moved far beyond pubs. Every government in the past two decades has endorsed this advance: the once-beady eye of the censor board now winks merrily at the exploding screen. The censor cannot lag behind the audience, or the entertainment industry will become defunct.
All religions are not the same; but all fundamentalists are. They share an aversion for modernity and a hatred of gender equality. It is entirely logical that the Ram Sene should find an ally in the Jamaat-e-Islami; their ethos is not dissimilar, no matter how different the imagery their rhetoric might contain. The same mindset persuades some maulanas to issue a fatwa condoning divorce through triple talaaq even when the husband is drunk. The very clerics who will damn you to eternal hellfire for touching alcohol are ready to rationalise any diktat that amounts to subjugation of women. Eminent Islamic scholars have repeatedly proved that instant triple talaaq is bad in Islamic law, and such variations even worse. Islam institutionalised the rights of women; such distortions are at variance to its liberating spirit. But the issue is not law: this is conservative, male domination over women.
Sex, or an ugly offshoot, vulgarity, is not modernity. Since sex began with Adam, it must be as old as existence. The pub, or tavern, can claim a bit of antiquity as well. The four principles of a modern society, which is a necessary prerequisite of a modern state, are gender equality, political equality, religious equality and economic equity.
India is one nation among the many who emerged from the ruins of the British empire capable of claiming the mantle of modernity. This is not because Indians are superior to their neighbours, but because the idea of India is better. Democracy, secularism, equality and freedom are an Indian's non-negotiable birthright. There is only one serious weakness: poverty has to be reduced at a much faster rate than the growth in prosperity. As long as we are burdened with this wretched malaise called poverty, we cannot call ourselves a modern nation. Economic equality is a fantasy; but an equitable distribution of national wealth is a compulsion. A civilised nation cannot divide its people by a hunger line. Citizens must live in various categories of a comfort zone, and the most basic comfort is a full stomach. Freedom is incomplete without freedom from hunger.
The poor are never unreasonable. They do not believe that there is any magic wand that can suddenly make them wealthy. But they have every right to economic justice. When they find India rising, but they are not rising along with their country, there is envy and anger. The young men who become the club-wielders of socially regressive organisations are motivated by more than one reason, but a principal cause is denial of the liberties and pleasures that a disposable income brings. They may not realise it, but they want what they seek to destroy. It is a familiar paradox.
Social reform has not come to all Indian communities at the same pace. Groups like the self-appointed All India Muslim Personal Law Board have used evocative sentimentality and identity politics in order to block reform and gender equality among Muslims. They have received patronage from politicians with a vested interest in the status quo. But there is a new murmur among Muslim youth, who are ready to reject this false equation between identity and regression.
This is an age of information. If they cannot go out to the world then the world can come into their drawing rooms through the television set. They want to be a happy and creative part of a modern India: engineers, managers, technocrats, writers and sportsmen building the emerging nation around them. They will not be held back by the discrimination of others or the frozen minds within their own. For evidence, read the story of cricketer-brothers Yusuf and Irfan Pathan. They are the flavour of the present and the prescription of the future.
Appeared in Times of India - February 15, 2009
By M J Akbar
Given the staggering backlog of cases that clog the Indian judicial system, is it necessary to put Sri Ram Sene chief Pramod Muthalik through the full rigours of the wrench? Here is a suggestion for cruel and unusual punishment that can be administered immediately: he should be forced to see a collection of item numbers from Hindi movies.
Alternatively, he could be subjected to six hours of solitary confinement in front of MTV. A serious study of pole dancing to the strains of Kaal kaal mein hum tum kare dhamaal might open his eyes. When those eyes are open, he might recognise that popular culture in India has moved far beyond pubs. Every government in the past two decades has endorsed this advance: the once-beady eye of the censor board now winks merrily at the exploding screen. The censor cannot lag behind the audience, or the entertainment industry will become defunct.
All religions are not the same; but all fundamentalists are. They share an aversion for modernity and a hatred of gender equality. It is entirely logical that the Ram Sene should find an ally in the Jamaat-e-Islami; their ethos is not dissimilar, no matter how different the imagery their rhetoric might contain. The same mindset persuades some maulanas to issue a fatwa condoning divorce through triple talaaq even when the husband is drunk. The very clerics who will damn you to eternal hellfire for touching alcohol are ready to rationalise any diktat that amounts to subjugation of women. Eminent Islamic scholars have repeatedly proved that instant triple talaaq is bad in Islamic law, and such variations even worse. Islam institutionalised the rights of women; such distortions are at variance to its liberating spirit. But the issue is not law: this is conservative, male domination over women.
Sex, or an ugly offshoot, vulgarity, is not modernity. Since sex began with Adam, it must be as old as existence. The pub, or tavern, can claim a bit of antiquity as well. The four principles of a modern society, which is a necessary prerequisite of a modern state, are gender equality, political equality, religious equality and economic equity.
India is one nation among the many who emerged from the ruins of the British empire capable of claiming the mantle of modernity. This is not because Indians are superior to their neighbours, but because the idea of India is better. Democracy, secularism, equality and freedom are an Indian's non-negotiable birthright. There is only one serious weakness: poverty has to be reduced at a much faster rate than the growth in prosperity. As long as we are burdened with this wretched malaise called poverty, we cannot call ourselves a modern nation. Economic equality is a fantasy; but an equitable distribution of national wealth is a compulsion. A civilised nation cannot divide its people by a hunger line. Citizens must live in various categories of a comfort zone, and the most basic comfort is a full stomach. Freedom is incomplete without freedom from hunger.
The poor are never unreasonable. They do not believe that there is any magic wand that can suddenly make them wealthy. But they have every right to economic justice. When they find India rising, but they are not rising along with their country, there is envy and anger. The young men who become the club-wielders of socially regressive organisations are motivated by more than one reason, but a principal cause is denial of the liberties and pleasures that a disposable income brings. They may not realise it, but they want what they seek to destroy. It is a familiar paradox.
Social reform has not come to all Indian communities at the same pace. Groups like the self-appointed All India Muslim Personal Law Board have used evocative sentimentality and identity politics in order to block reform and gender equality among Muslims. They have received patronage from politicians with a vested interest in the status quo. But there is a new murmur among Muslim youth, who are ready to reject this false equation between identity and regression.
This is an age of information. If they cannot go out to the world then the world can come into their drawing rooms through the television set. They want to be a happy and creative part of a modern India: engineers, managers, technocrats, writers and sportsmen building the emerging nation around them. They will not be held back by the discrimination of others or the frozen minds within their own. For evidence, read the story of cricketer-brothers Yusuf and Irfan Pathan. They are the flavour of the present and the prescription of the future.
Appeared in Times of India - February 15, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
The High Fives of the Big Five are over
Byline by M J Akbar: The High Fives of the Big Five are over
The release of Pakistan's serial nuclear-offender A.Q. Khan, afterfive years of house arrest, is concrete evidence of the dual narrativethat all nuclear nations employ over proliferation. There may besolemn sermons about law and security in public but there is heroworship of scientists who have delivered in the national, and, in thecase of Khan international, interest.
The hypocrisy is not limited to new arrivals. The official andoft-declared objective of America since President Dwight Eisenhower,who succeeded Truman [the President who ordered the catastrophicbombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki], is a world free of nuclearweapons. But Britain and the United States are the originalproliferators, although you will be sent to Coventry if you daremention such subversive truths. They set up Israel's nuclear weaponsprogramme by supplying technology and reactors. But the three holycows of the nuclear game, America, Britain and Israel, will neverallow even a whisper to arise in the public discourse of eitherIsrael's nuclear status or the Anglo-American alliance's culpability.Dr Henry Kissinger has just written a persuasive essay on the vitaland immediate need to check the growth of nuclear weapons [distributedacross the world and printed in the International Herald Tribune of 7-8 February].
He argues, "Efforts to develop a more nuancedapplication [of nuclear power] have never succeeded, from the doctrineof a geographically limited nuclear war of the 1950s and 1960s to themutual assured destruction theory of general nuclear war of the1970s". Today's dividing lines of ideology and regional conflict,rogue states and non-state actors, he continues, constitute a veryreal possibility of a bomb being used by stealth. The possibility ofpreventing such a catastrophe "will prove increasingly remote unlessthe emerging nuclear weapons program in Iran and the existing one inNorth Korea are overcome".
But everything links back to the cause-and-effect chain. Iran'sprogramme is a consequence of Israel's weaponisation; India wascompelled by China; China was certain that it could not be recognisedas a superpower if it did not create a counteroffensive response tothe Soviet Union and America; and the Soviet Union would not have gonenuclear if America had not displayed the might of the bomb at the endof the Second World War. Pakistan may have passed on information toNorth Korea and Iran, but Pakistan itself received help from China.The chain began at the top and the unravelling, if there is to be any,must also start with the top.
The implicit justification for Israel was its "right to exist". Well,in case the policy wonks of the West may have missed the point,everyone has a right to exist. It is interesting that Dr Kissingermentions every nuclear power except one: Israel. It is a convenientsleight of mind. That apart, he is clear-headed about where theprocess needs to restart. America and Russia control 90% of theworld's weapons, with America having a clear advantage in the numbersgame. Dr Kissinger also implicitly admits that Japan, South Korea andAustralia are weapons-capable; certainly the first two are respondingto North Korea's arsenal.
There is a silent consensus among strategic-policywallahs in much ofthe post-colonial world that nuclear weapons are the only guarantee ofindependence in the age of neo-colonisation. This, as much as Israel,motivates Iran. Teheran has watched America invade nations to itsright and left, and threaten Iran on a regular basis. The pretext isIran's nuclear programme, but there is a double paradox operating. TheWest might argue that the nuclear programme makes Iran vulnerable;Teheran believes that it is safe only because it is in the process ofbecoming a nuclear power. There is no certainty about the radioactivefallout from the destruction of its plants in Natanz or Bushehr. Thisfallout might not be so kind as to restrict itself to Iranianairspace. Dubai, the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and Iraq would be in immediatereach. Contaminated oil, anyone?
Is the alternative a gradual escalation in the number ofnuclear-weapons states, all the new entrants beginning theirenterprise for, naturally, only the peaceful purposes of nuclearenergy?
Not necessarily, although if the present duplicity continues that isprecisely what will happen. The first requirement is to expand theclub of decision-makers on this subject to a realistic 15 or so. Thiswould include the five recognised nuclear powers, the fourunrecognised ones, and those waiting at the door with a polite smileon their face. The dismantling of weapons, if that is considered apriority, cannot be symmetrical. The smaller powers will not surrendertheir deterrent to suit someone's clever numbers game. But the key tode-escalation is some form of security guarantees in which the threatof invasion by a superpower is removed from the range of optionsavailable to it. Will this be acceptable to those who have thecapability of invasion? One thinks not. Some very good arguments canbe made for intervention, including provocation by irresponsiblestates. But unless nations feel that their national integrity can besafe by means other than nuclear weapons, the stockpile of weaponswill continue to grow. If this argument works for Israel then it worksfor Palestine as well. Gaza and the West Bank may not have their ownweapons, but there can always be a surrogate arsenal.
Sometimes, the most important problems need the artificial impetus ofa deadline to move. There is one such visible. America is preparingfor a review conference on the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty in thespring of 2010.
Both the treaty and the world have changed beyond recognition since itwas first envisaged.
The Big Five will have to take a deep breath and ask one questionbefore they pepper the rest of the world with their queries. Why arethey the Big Five of the international jungle? Was there some divinedispensation that made China a member of this Five, smug with nuclearweapons and a veto in the Security Council, and kept India outside?The Big Five were fortuitous in being official allies, although onecould argue that the Indian Army, which fought in Africa, played assignificant a part in the Allied victory as the armies of China andFrance. Moreover, India was a colony, and had no independent right ofchoice between the Allies and the Axis. Be that as it may, what isrelevant is the contemporary world and not that of Hitler andMussolini. To lock the world up in the power equations of 1945 is notthe best route to the solutions needed for 2009 and 2010.
Those who have institutionalised their power always find an excuse topostpone its surrender, if they can no longer justify its continuity.
The rationale heard most often for the veto-nuclear-United Nationsregime is that it has preserved world order for six decades. This istrue only to the point that we have not blown the earth tosmithereens, for the world has seen more conflict after the SecondWorld War than before it. The point should not be lost on the Big Boysthat a noose has emerged: these "minor" conflicts have become thesource of major danger because nuclear weapons could well slip out ofthe tight monopoly of Governments.
The simple fact that A.Q. Khan was never punished is a message thatwill be heard by those who seek to emulate him.
The release of Pakistan's serial nuclear-offender A.Q. Khan, afterfive years of house arrest, is concrete evidence of the dual narrativethat all nuclear nations employ over proliferation. There may besolemn sermons about law and security in public but there is heroworship of scientists who have delivered in the national, and, in thecase of Khan international, interest.
The hypocrisy is not limited to new arrivals. The official andoft-declared objective of America since President Dwight Eisenhower,who succeeded Truman [the President who ordered the catastrophicbombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki], is a world free of nuclearweapons. But Britain and the United States are the originalproliferators, although you will be sent to Coventry if you daremention such subversive truths. They set up Israel's nuclear weaponsprogramme by supplying technology and reactors. But the three holycows of the nuclear game, America, Britain and Israel, will neverallow even a whisper to arise in the public discourse of eitherIsrael's nuclear status or the Anglo-American alliance's culpability.Dr Henry Kissinger has just written a persuasive essay on the vitaland immediate need to check the growth of nuclear weapons [distributedacross the world and printed in the International Herald Tribune of 7-8 February].
He argues, "Efforts to develop a more nuancedapplication [of nuclear power] have never succeeded, from the doctrineof a geographically limited nuclear war of the 1950s and 1960s to themutual assured destruction theory of general nuclear war of the1970s". Today's dividing lines of ideology and regional conflict,rogue states and non-state actors, he continues, constitute a veryreal possibility of a bomb being used by stealth. The possibility ofpreventing such a catastrophe "will prove increasingly remote unlessthe emerging nuclear weapons program in Iran and the existing one inNorth Korea are overcome".
But everything links back to the cause-and-effect chain. Iran'sprogramme is a consequence of Israel's weaponisation; India wascompelled by China; China was certain that it could not be recognisedas a superpower if it did not create a counteroffensive response tothe Soviet Union and America; and the Soviet Union would not have gonenuclear if America had not displayed the might of the bomb at the endof the Second World War. Pakistan may have passed on information toNorth Korea and Iran, but Pakistan itself received help from China.The chain began at the top and the unravelling, if there is to be any,must also start with the top.
The implicit justification for Israel was its "right to exist". Well,in case the policy wonks of the West may have missed the point,everyone has a right to exist. It is interesting that Dr Kissingermentions every nuclear power except one: Israel. It is a convenientsleight of mind. That apart, he is clear-headed about where theprocess needs to restart. America and Russia control 90% of theworld's weapons, with America having a clear advantage in the numbersgame. Dr Kissinger also implicitly admits that Japan, South Korea andAustralia are weapons-capable; certainly the first two are respondingto North Korea's arsenal.
There is a silent consensus among strategic-policywallahs in much ofthe post-colonial world that nuclear weapons are the only guarantee ofindependence in the age of neo-colonisation. This, as much as Israel,motivates Iran. Teheran has watched America invade nations to itsright and left, and threaten Iran on a regular basis. The pretext isIran's nuclear programme, but there is a double paradox operating. TheWest might argue that the nuclear programme makes Iran vulnerable;Teheran believes that it is safe only because it is in the process ofbecoming a nuclear power. There is no certainty about the radioactivefallout from the destruction of its plants in Natanz or Bushehr. Thisfallout might not be so kind as to restrict itself to Iranianairspace. Dubai, the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and Iraq would be in immediatereach. Contaminated oil, anyone?
Is the alternative a gradual escalation in the number ofnuclear-weapons states, all the new entrants beginning theirenterprise for, naturally, only the peaceful purposes of nuclearenergy?
Not necessarily, although if the present duplicity continues that isprecisely what will happen. The first requirement is to expand theclub of decision-makers on this subject to a realistic 15 or so. Thiswould include the five recognised nuclear powers, the fourunrecognised ones, and those waiting at the door with a polite smileon their face. The dismantling of weapons, if that is considered apriority, cannot be symmetrical. The smaller powers will not surrendertheir deterrent to suit someone's clever numbers game. But the key tode-escalation is some form of security guarantees in which the threatof invasion by a superpower is removed from the range of optionsavailable to it. Will this be acceptable to those who have thecapability of invasion? One thinks not. Some very good arguments canbe made for intervention, including provocation by irresponsiblestates. But unless nations feel that their national integrity can besafe by means other than nuclear weapons, the stockpile of weaponswill continue to grow. If this argument works for Israel then it worksfor Palestine as well. Gaza and the West Bank may not have their ownweapons, but there can always be a surrogate arsenal.
Sometimes, the most important problems need the artificial impetus ofa deadline to move. There is one such visible. America is preparingfor a review conference on the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty in thespring of 2010.
Both the treaty and the world have changed beyond recognition since itwas first envisaged.
The Big Five will have to take a deep breath and ask one questionbefore they pepper the rest of the world with their queries. Why arethey the Big Five of the international jungle? Was there some divinedispensation that made China a member of this Five, smug with nuclearweapons and a veto in the Security Council, and kept India outside?The Big Five were fortuitous in being official allies, although onecould argue that the Indian Army, which fought in Africa, played assignificant a part in the Allied victory as the armies of China andFrance. Moreover, India was a colony, and had no independent right ofchoice between the Allies and the Axis. Be that as it may, what isrelevant is the contemporary world and not that of Hitler andMussolini. To lock the world up in the power equations of 1945 is notthe best route to the solutions needed for 2009 and 2010.
Those who have institutionalised their power always find an excuse topostpone its surrender, if they can no longer justify its continuity.
The rationale heard most often for the veto-nuclear-United Nationsregime is that it has preserved world order for six decades. This istrue only to the point that we have not blown the earth tosmithereens, for the world has seen more conflict after the SecondWorld War than before it. The point should not be lost on the Big Boysthat a noose has emerged: these "minor" conflicts have become thesource of major danger because nuclear weapons could well slip out ofthe tight monopoly of Governments.
The simple fact that A.Q. Khan was never punished is a message thatwill be heard by those who seek to emulate him.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Why blame Kalyan alone? He was foe, not hypocrite
Why blame Kalyan alone? He was foe, not hypocrite
By M J Akbar
Deathbed repentance is a charming philosophy. Is it designed to fool God, society or oneself? Since God can't be taken for a ride, and it is pointless making an ass of yourself, it must be society. Poets and seers (who cook up proverbs) have noticed. Hence: Aakhri waqt mein kya khaaq mussalman honge! (Become a Muslim in my last breath? Let me be the way I am...) And, more mundanely, Nau sau choohe kha ke billi Haj ko chali! (After eating 900 mice, the cat is going for Haj).
Apparently, plastic repentance still manages to generate a headline or two, as Kalyan Singh's sudden conversion to secularism indicates.
Kalyan Singh has not found God; he has only discovered a different denomination of voter. He has never asked UP Muslims for support, but thinks he knows how to: with emotionalism, not facts. He is titillating them with false humility.
The facts might serve Kalyan Singh better. He was never guilty of hypocrisy. The BJP had Ayodhya at the top of its agenda. As BJP chief minister he could not have stopped the kar sewaks. He accepted the dilemma between party and state and resigned.
The true guilt lies with those who promised to protect the mosque and then were deliberately complicit in the demolition. Hypocrite-in-chief was the prime minister, P V Narasimha Rao, closely followed by his home minister S B Chavan. A central force was in place to stop the destruction; it was kept on the sidelines. Rao, when asked later, explained that he had been asleep during the day. Rao slept, Chavan snoozed. It was such an effective snooze that his son has been rewarded today with the leadership of Maharashtra. The cabinet and Congress party acquiesced in the Rao deception: the cabinet was full of luminaries who would, doubtless, prefer their names to be omitted now from any column on the subject. Facts are injurious to votes.
Two politicians have the right to be critical of the Babri episode, despite later compromise: Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Mulayam Singh Yadav. The Congress may have been in power then, but Sonia Gandhi was not. She was deeply distressed by the demolition and did what she could to raise public awareness. The other is Mulayam Singh Yadav. As chief minister before Kalyan Singh, he was unequivocal in its defence. Mayawati was not in power during the years of the Babri agitation.
One fact, which would glare you in the face if you turned your face in the correct direction, is carefully ignored by the whole political class. The destruction of the mosque was only the beginning. The rest of a long story is the quiet construction of a temple at its site, although, in the courts, it is still disputed territory. In the last 17 years, every political party has been in power in either Delhi or Lucknow. Each one has sanctioned or condoned the use of state funds to strengthen the security of this functioning temple at Ayodhya.
It makes sense to argue that any attempt to take a technical and legal view, and to stop the functioning of the temple would cause serious ethnic violence, so such facts are best ignored. If that is correct, then every party, however 'secular' it may claim to be when standing at the loudspeaker, agrees, in practice, with the BJP that a temple should be permitted on the site of the mosque. The law can take its own course, or no course at all; popular sentiment will prevail. Why then blame Kalyan Singh alone?
If the Muslims of UP want to hold Kalyan Singh accountable, why are they being so lenient to those who became cabinet ministers under Rao as representatives of the Muslim community? Why have they forgiven A R Antulay or Jaffar Sharief, not to mention a host of dimmer lights, for not uttering a word of protest before Rao? One Muslim cabinet minister would, in less than the time it takes to whip out a green handkerchief, lace his face with woe, suck tears from his stomach to the brim of his eyes, and say that his resignation letter was in his pocket. It is possible that the resignation letter is still in his pocket; it certainly did not come out during the three years left of Rao's term.
Congress Muslims clambered over the dead stones of the Babri mosque in order to get promotions or places in the Rao cabinet. They sold Babri for a bowl of thin soup. If all is going to be forgotten, why should Kalyan Singh's sins be remembered? He was the opponent outside, not the enemy within.
Appeared in Times of India - February 8, 2009
By M J Akbar
Deathbed repentance is a charming philosophy. Is it designed to fool God, society or oneself? Since God can't be taken for a ride, and it is pointless making an ass of yourself, it must be society. Poets and seers (who cook up proverbs) have noticed. Hence: Aakhri waqt mein kya khaaq mussalman honge! (Become a Muslim in my last breath? Let me be the way I am...) And, more mundanely, Nau sau choohe kha ke billi Haj ko chali! (After eating 900 mice, the cat is going for Haj).
Apparently, plastic repentance still manages to generate a headline or two, as Kalyan Singh's sudden conversion to secularism indicates.
Kalyan Singh has not found God; he has only discovered a different denomination of voter. He has never asked UP Muslims for support, but thinks he knows how to: with emotionalism, not facts. He is titillating them with false humility.
The facts might serve Kalyan Singh better. He was never guilty of hypocrisy. The BJP had Ayodhya at the top of its agenda. As BJP chief minister he could not have stopped the kar sewaks. He accepted the dilemma between party and state and resigned.
The true guilt lies with those who promised to protect the mosque and then were deliberately complicit in the demolition. Hypocrite-in-chief was the prime minister, P V Narasimha Rao, closely followed by his home minister S B Chavan. A central force was in place to stop the destruction; it was kept on the sidelines. Rao, when asked later, explained that he had been asleep during the day. Rao slept, Chavan snoozed. It was such an effective snooze that his son has been rewarded today with the leadership of Maharashtra. The cabinet and Congress party acquiesced in the Rao deception: the cabinet was full of luminaries who would, doubtless, prefer their names to be omitted now from any column on the subject. Facts are injurious to votes.
Two politicians have the right to be critical of the Babri episode, despite later compromise: Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Mulayam Singh Yadav. The Congress may have been in power then, but Sonia Gandhi was not. She was deeply distressed by the demolition and did what she could to raise public awareness. The other is Mulayam Singh Yadav. As chief minister before Kalyan Singh, he was unequivocal in its defence. Mayawati was not in power during the years of the Babri agitation.
One fact, which would glare you in the face if you turned your face in the correct direction, is carefully ignored by the whole political class. The destruction of the mosque was only the beginning. The rest of a long story is the quiet construction of a temple at its site, although, in the courts, it is still disputed territory. In the last 17 years, every political party has been in power in either Delhi or Lucknow. Each one has sanctioned or condoned the use of state funds to strengthen the security of this functioning temple at Ayodhya.
It makes sense to argue that any attempt to take a technical and legal view, and to stop the functioning of the temple would cause serious ethnic violence, so such facts are best ignored. If that is correct, then every party, however 'secular' it may claim to be when standing at the loudspeaker, agrees, in practice, with the BJP that a temple should be permitted on the site of the mosque. The law can take its own course, or no course at all; popular sentiment will prevail. Why then blame Kalyan Singh alone?
If the Muslims of UP want to hold Kalyan Singh accountable, why are they being so lenient to those who became cabinet ministers under Rao as representatives of the Muslim community? Why have they forgiven A R Antulay or Jaffar Sharief, not to mention a host of dimmer lights, for not uttering a word of protest before Rao? One Muslim cabinet minister would, in less than the time it takes to whip out a green handkerchief, lace his face with woe, suck tears from his stomach to the brim of his eyes, and say that his resignation letter was in his pocket. It is possible that the resignation letter is still in his pocket; it certainly did not come out during the three years left of Rao's term.
Congress Muslims clambered over the dead stones of the Babri mosque in order to get promotions or places in the Rao cabinet. They sold Babri for a bowl of thin soup. If all is going to be forgotten, why should Kalyan Singh's sins be remembered? He was the opponent outside, not the enemy within.
Appeared in Times of India - February 8, 2009
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Riders to the Bank
Byline by M J Akbar: Riders to the Bank
J.M. Synge is not a name to send a modern aesthete into ecstasy, but in the days when English literature was taught in schools and colleges, rather than merely English, his plays were a standard text. Riders to the Sea, a moving depiction of the sorrows of fishermen who went out into the treacherous Irish Sea, was a personal favourite.
Like so many other perennially broke Irish writers in the first quarter of the 20th century, Synge preferred to live in Paris rather than Dublin. He had a good friend, Stephen MacKenna, equally penniless. When asked how they managed to survive, someone replied: "Oh, Synge lives on what MacKenna lends him and MacKenna lives on what Synge pays him back."
This story is the finest metaphor for the current state of capitalism and the equation between the world's most powerful governments and the world's most powerful capitalists. Capitalists are living on what the government hands out, and the government is living on what the capitalists pay back. The fact is that both are broke.
The obscene manner in which Western governments have gifted money to irresponsible banks and corporations, without demanding a hint of accountability in return, has finally begun to shock the taxpayer whose money is being misused by fatcats. Misuse is an underestimation. Some of the facts about the behaviour of American chief executives are enough to make anyone vindictive. I offer a sample:
* Wells Fargo, the huge American bank which got $25 billion in federal funds, planned to use some of it on "employee recognition outings" at luxury hotels in Las Vegas. I get it. You don't really begin to recognise an employee until you see him, or her, at a Las Vegas strip show or roulette table.
* Bank of America, which got $45 billion, sponsored a five-day carnival outside the stadium where the Super Bowl was played.
* Morgan Stanley, which received a mere $10 billion, parties at a three-day conference in Palm Beach, and was going to send senior employees to Monte Carlo and the Bahamas until the silly puritans called taxpayers stopped the dance. It is perfectly rational that senior bankers should hone up their expertise at gambling dens. They were gambling with their money, in any case.
* Citigroup, which was handed out $50 billion, flew out its former chief executive for a Christmas holiday in a company jet to a $10,000-a-night resort, just after it had sacked 53,000 employees worldwide. The jet was equipped with a full bar, fine wines, carpets, Baccarat crystal, Christofle silver and pillows made from Hermes scarves.
* John Thain, an auto executive, found himself in trouble for ordering a commode for the office that cost $35,000. Actually I have heard of an Indian fatcat who bought eight $20,000 commodes for his private use at home with office money, but then he may have got the same pot at Indian discount rates. So it is possible he is arguing before his board, if the board has the guts to question him, that he saved the company money.
In India, of course, we generally glorify and glossify, if one may be permitted to coin a word, anyone who steals shareholders' money, so commodes are small excreta.
But at long last, one can see the first glimmer of the common man's revolt against the arrogance, impunity and self-indulgence of the rich. Barack Obama, who is more populist than insurrectionist, would not have capped salaries of chief executives of funded firms at a pitiful half a million dollars, and delayed bonuses till funds had been returned, if he had not heard anger on the American street. One cannot accuse such executives of having lost their moral bearings, for they had no morals. What is probably far more dangerous is that they have lost their common sense. Wealth, individual and corporate, has removed them from the real world. They have been floating in a Paradise of bubbles and such has been their swoon of self-induced ecstasy that they did not hear bubbles burst even when their companies became beggars.
Feudal dynasts used to survive on the principle that they could never be mistaken, and if anything did go wrong it was someone else's fault. Their rights and lifestyle were impervious to change. Capitalism has produced its own non-hereditary royalty, financed just as the old rulers were, by public money. Elected officials have become the conduits through which a thin veneer of legality is accorded to the loot of public monies.
Since globalisation has turned the world into a village, it is entirely appropriate that we take an instance from Singapore, on the other side of the world geographically but very much part of the "West" economically. A high-ranking government officer, a permanent secretary, has enraged the country by boasting about having taken expensive private cooking lessons in France. Tan Yong Soon spent $46,000 (Singapore dollars, but still dollars) on his three-member family to become educated in the arts of high cuisine. This did not go down too well with his fellow-citizens, thousands of whom are losing jobs or taking pay-cuts to survive. The bureaucracy, among the highest-paid in the world, had no such worries.
The heat of popular anger is beginning to singe the wings of high-fliers. People want success without excess, and when Synge and MacKenna lend and return to each other they had better do it in cash that actually buys something, rather than IOUs.
J.M. Synge is not a name to send a modern aesthete into ecstasy, but in the days when English literature was taught in schools and colleges, rather than merely English, his plays were a standard text. Riders to the Sea, a moving depiction of the sorrows of fishermen who went out into the treacherous Irish Sea, was a personal favourite.
Like so many other perennially broke Irish writers in the first quarter of the 20th century, Synge preferred to live in Paris rather than Dublin. He had a good friend, Stephen MacKenna, equally penniless. When asked how they managed to survive, someone replied: "Oh, Synge lives on what MacKenna lends him and MacKenna lives on what Synge pays him back."
This story is the finest metaphor for the current state of capitalism and the equation between the world's most powerful governments and the world's most powerful capitalists. Capitalists are living on what the government hands out, and the government is living on what the capitalists pay back. The fact is that both are broke.
The obscene manner in which Western governments have gifted money to irresponsible banks and corporations, without demanding a hint of accountability in return, has finally begun to shock the taxpayer whose money is being misused by fatcats. Misuse is an underestimation. Some of the facts about the behaviour of American chief executives are enough to make anyone vindictive. I offer a sample:
* Wells Fargo, the huge American bank which got $25 billion in federal funds, planned to use some of it on "employee recognition outings" at luxury hotels in Las Vegas. I get it. You don't really begin to recognise an employee until you see him, or her, at a Las Vegas strip show or roulette table.
* Bank of America, which got $45 billion, sponsored a five-day carnival outside the stadium where the Super Bowl was played.
* Morgan Stanley, which received a mere $10 billion, parties at a three-day conference in Palm Beach, and was going to send senior employees to Monte Carlo and the Bahamas until the silly puritans called taxpayers stopped the dance. It is perfectly rational that senior bankers should hone up their expertise at gambling dens. They were gambling with their money, in any case.
* Citigroup, which was handed out $50 billion, flew out its former chief executive for a Christmas holiday in a company jet to a $10,000-a-night resort, just after it had sacked 53,000 employees worldwide. The jet was equipped with a full bar, fine wines, carpets, Baccarat crystal, Christofle silver and pillows made from Hermes scarves.
* John Thain, an auto executive, found himself in trouble for ordering a commode for the office that cost $35,000. Actually I have heard of an Indian fatcat who bought eight $20,000 commodes for his private use at home with office money, but then he may have got the same pot at Indian discount rates. So it is possible he is arguing before his board, if the board has the guts to question him, that he saved the company money.
In India, of course, we generally glorify and glossify, if one may be permitted to coin a word, anyone who steals shareholders' money, so commodes are small excreta.
But at long last, one can see the first glimmer of the common man's revolt against the arrogance, impunity and self-indulgence of the rich. Barack Obama, who is more populist than insurrectionist, would not have capped salaries of chief executives of funded firms at a pitiful half a million dollars, and delayed bonuses till funds had been returned, if he had not heard anger on the American street. One cannot accuse such executives of having lost their moral bearings, for they had no morals. What is probably far more dangerous is that they have lost their common sense. Wealth, individual and corporate, has removed them from the real world. They have been floating in a Paradise of bubbles and such has been their swoon of self-induced ecstasy that they did not hear bubbles burst even when their companies became beggars.
Feudal dynasts used to survive on the principle that they could never be mistaken, and if anything did go wrong it was someone else's fault. Their rights and lifestyle were impervious to change. Capitalism has produced its own non-hereditary royalty, financed just as the old rulers were, by public money. Elected officials have become the conduits through which a thin veneer of legality is accorded to the loot of public monies.
Since globalisation has turned the world into a village, it is entirely appropriate that we take an instance from Singapore, on the other side of the world geographically but very much part of the "West" economically. A high-ranking government officer, a permanent secretary, has enraged the country by boasting about having taken expensive private cooking lessons in France. Tan Yong Soon spent $46,000 (Singapore dollars, but still dollars) on his three-member family to become educated in the arts of high cuisine. This did not go down too well with his fellow-citizens, thousands of whom are losing jobs or taking pay-cuts to survive. The bureaucracy, among the highest-paid in the world, had no such worries.
The heat of popular anger is beginning to singe the wings of high-fliers. People want success without excess, and when Synge and MacKenna lend and return to each other they had better do it in cash that actually buys something, rather than IOUs.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Hatred can also become a need
Hatred can also become a need
By M J Akbar
There was no ambiguity in the press release welcoming Pranab Mukherjee to Colombo on January 27. "Minister Mukherjee's visit takes place at a time of repeated success in the security operations to free the civilian population from the terror of the LTTE, is in keeping with the tradition of regular, frank and constructive dialogue between India and Sri Lanka at the highest levels of political leadership, on important matters of mutual interest."
Translated into Bengali, this is what it meant:
- We know you are coming because your ally Karunanidhi has to play to his declining Tamil gallery, but don't expect us to provide any escape route to the LTTE. Delhi is neither Big Brother nor Sugar Daddy. Our knees do not wobble when you clear your throat.
- We used the word "terror" deliberately. It is a word that has appeared often in your recent pronouncements. Don't you wish you had the chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba where we've got Prabhakaran now? He may be hiding behind civilians now, but he will appear within our sights sooner rather than later. If Karunanidhi doesn't like that, tough luck.
- Don't even think of offering Prabhakaran sanctuary. Surely your hunger for power isn't so ravenous that you have forgotten the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi?
- If you want to play games, stick to cricket. That understood, welcome. There is a lot to discuss about saving civilians, offering a political structure to Tamils and rebuilding the war-shattered north.
Mukherjee, foreign minister of a party that had once trained, armed and financed the LTTE, placed India's interest above politics, ignored any potential anger-lament from the DMK, agreed that Prabhakaran was a terrorist, negotiated a commitment on civilians trapped by the war, and went home.
Paradoxically, Colombo has been able to succeed militarily and diplomatically precisely because it has overcome its obsession with India as an enemy. Hatred is also a form of dependence. Enmity becomes the sole definition of your identity. Colombo has reason for continued suspicion of Delhi. The UPA alliance is heavily dependent on the DMK, to begin with. But it has exchanged past bitterness for commonsense, refused to let animosity interfere with trade, benefited from the ensuing economic partnership and created a sustainable and equitable relationship with Delhi.
Contrast this with Pakistan, which continuously uses confrontation with India as the critical tool in the promotion of its self-interest. It sits at a poker table, using proxy war as playing chips and nuclear weapons as collateral. Instead of using the terrorist attack in Mumbai as an opportunity for cooperation, Zardari has formally upped the stakes with an article in the Washington Post. Its blunt message is, force India to surrender on Kashmir or terrorism will continue. India will not be permitted to use the Indus waters as leverage either, since water deprivation will fuel "the fires of discontent that lead to extremism and terrorism".
This is blackmail in correct English, for which Zardari's ghost-writer should be congratulated. Being blackmailed in good grammar causes less confusion. Zardari also linked Kashmir to Palestine, completing the loop thrown by Delhi's favourite foreign dignitary, British foreign minister David Miliband, who made a similar point on Indian soil and was then honoured with exclusive poverty tourism.
The end of the war against the LTTE has to become the beginning of a peace process with the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. Delhi can be credible partner in the management of peace, precisely because it has shown the respect for Sri Lanka's territorial integrity and independence that must be the foundation of any relationship. Lifting any siege needs partnership.
Conflict is a man's disease. For six decades men - and one woman who was often called the only man in her Cabinet - have believed that they can redraw frontiers with the nib of a gun. Mrs Indira Gandhi succeeded in 1971, but Bangladesh needed a unique combination of circumstances, including an amazing election and extraordinary stupidity on the part of the enemy. When she attempted a repeat in Sri Lanka with support for Prabhakaran, India, and her son Rajiv, paid a heartbreaking price. An age may be coming to an end with the defeat of Prabhakaran.
The transition to cooperation will be the principal challenge of inter-nation relations in South Asia. No victory can last if it leads to the humiliation of the defeated. The lines of tension overlap so easily; kinship, loyalty and revenge can acquire primeval ferocity. Indian Tamils have a legitimate affinity towards fellow Tamils across the straits, but no bond can become a noose to strangle a neighbour. Confrontation did not work. Peace could.
Nehru's moral code remains the only valid political philosophy. Non-interference in another country's internal affairs was a cardinal principle of panchashila. War needs courage. Peace needs both courage and clarity.
Appeared in Times of India - February 1, 2009
By M J Akbar
There was no ambiguity in the press release welcoming Pranab Mukherjee to Colombo on January 27. "Minister Mukherjee's visit takes place at a time of repeated success in the security operations to free the civilian population from the terror of the LTTE, is in keeping with the tradition of regular, frank and constructive dialogue between India and Sri Lanka at the highest levels of political leadership, on important matters of mutual interest."
Translated into Bengali, this is what it meant:
- We know you are coming because your ally Karunanidhi has to play to his declining Tamil gallery, but don't expect us to provide any escape route to the LTTE. Delhi is neither Big Brother nor Sugar Daddy. Our knees do not wobble when you clear your throat.
- We used the word "terror" deliberately. It is a word that has appeared often in your recent pronouncements. Don't you wish you had the chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba where we've got Prabhakaran now? He may be hiding behind civilians now, but he will appear within our sights sooner rather than later. If Karunanidhi doesn't like that, tough luck.
- Don't even think of offering Prabhakaran sanctuary. Surely your hunger for power isn't so ravenous that you have forgotten the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi?
- If you want to play games, stick to cricket. That understood, welcome. There is a lot to discuss about saving civilians, offering a political structure to Tamils and rebuilding the war-shattered north.
Mukherjee, foreign minister of a party that had once trained, armed and financed the LTTE, placed India's interest above politics, ignored any potential anger-lament from the DMK, agreed that Prabhakaran was a terrorist, negotiated a commitment on civilians trapped by the war, and went home.
Paradoxically, Colombo has been able to succeed militarily and diplomatically precisely because it has overcome its obsession with India as an enemy. Hatred is also a form of dependence. Enmity becomes the sole definition of your identity. Colombo has reason for continued suspicion of Delhi. The UPA alliance is heavily dependent on the DMK, to begin with. But it has exchanged past bitterness for commonsense, refused to let animosity interfere with trade, benefited from the ensuing economic partnership and created a sustainable and equitable relationship with Delhi.
Contrast this with Pakistan, which continuously uses confrontation with India as the critical tool in the promotion of its self-interest. It sits at a poker table, using proxy war as playing chips and nuclear weapons as collateral. Instead of using the terrorist attack in Mumbai as an opportunity for cooperation, Zardari has formally upped the stakes with an article in the Washington Post. Its blunt message is, force India to surrender on Kashmir or terrorism will continue. India will not be permitted to use the Indus waters as leverage either, since water deprivation will fuel "the fires of discontent that lead to extremism and terrorism".
This is blackmail in correct English, for which Zardari's ghost-writer should be congratulated. Being blackmailed in good grammar causes less confusion. Zardari also linked Kashmir to Palestine, completing the loop thrown by Delhi's favourite foreign dignitary, British foreign minister David Miliband, who made a similar point on Indian soil and was then honoured with exclusive poverty tourism.
The end of the war against the LTTE has to become the beginning of a peace process with the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. Delhi can be credible partner in the management of peace, precisely because it has shown the respect for Sri Lanka's territorial integrity and independence that must be the foundation of any relationship. Lifting any siege needs partnership.
Conflict is a man's disease. For six decades men - and one woman who was often called the only man in her Cabinet - have believed that they can redraw frontiers with the nib of a gun. Mrs Indira Gandhi succeeded in 1971, but Bangladesh needed a unique combination of circumstances, including an amazing election and extraordinary stupidity on the part of the enemy. When she attempted a repeat in Sri Lanka with support for Prabhakaran, India, and her son Rajiv, paid a heartbreaking price. An age may be coming to an end with the defeat of Prabhakaran.
The transition to cooperation will be the principal challenge of inter-nation relations in South Asia. No victory can last if it leads to the humiliation of the defeated. The lines of tension overlap so easily; kinship, loyalty and revenge can acquire primeval ferocity. Indian Tamils have a legitimate affinity towards fellow Tamils across the straits, but no bond can become a noose to strangle a neighbour. Confrontation did not work. Peace could.
Nehru's moral code remains the only valid political philosophy. Non-interference in another country's internal affairs was a cardinal principle of panchashila. War needs courage. Peace needs both courage and clarity.
Appeared in Times of India - February 1, 2009
The Public Faces of Power
Byline by M J Akbar: The Public Faces of Power
Dr Manmohan Singh is the Abdul Kalam of politics: both are admired among the middle classes for decency, integrity, education and achievement in their preferred discipline. Sometimes it takes a tragedy like ill health to evoke emotion, and the response in the urban areas to the Prime Minister's hospitalisation must have come as a bit of shock to the Congress Party, which had convinced itself that Sonia Gandhi was its only mass leader and Rahul Gandhi the only possible heir. Dr Manmohan Singh today is far more popular than the Congress president among the middle class.
But this popularity, in all cases, is hedged with a problem: there is what might be called insufficient ownership of their identity among voters. Christians do identify with Mrs Sonia Gandhi, but in demographic terms they are too small and too thinly spread. Dr Singh has never been a conventional politician from Punjab, while Muslims do not really think of Dr Kalam as one of their own. But Dr Singh and Dr Kalam are icons of an emerging, non-sectarian India that will come into its own, electorally, five or ten years later. Their support is largely among the young. It is a foolish notion that youth only wants youth. The young want someone who can offer a future, which is quite a different matter. Age is incidental, neither an asset nor a liability. Both Dr Singh and Dr Kalam are in their 70s. Ability, backed up by a successful track record, is essential. Tomorrow's electorate will vote on merit, not reservation.
That is going to be a problem for the Congress, which cannot think outside hereditary reservation when it comes to a post-Manmohan Prime Minister. On the eve of going to hospital for his heart treatment Dr Singh did what was proper, and nominated his senior-most colleague in the Cabinet, Pranab Mukherjee, as the person who would stand in for him during the crucial hours under anaesthesia and for the period of his convalescence. It seems that Mrs Sonia Gandhi was unable to live with the minimalist necessity of Mukherjee becoming the public face of Government at the Republic Day parade and functions. This would mean televisual presence, sending a signal that Mukherjee was the natural successor to Dr Singh. Instructions were amended and the public face of power was distributed into a Picasso duality. Defence Minister A.K. Antony was given the high-profile presence at the Republic Day parade. He had one specific virtue. He is not a declared player in the Prime Ministers' stakes, a race that will open the moment the results of this year's general elections are announced. Pranab Mukherjee, on the other hand, is going to be an enthusiastic participant.
Dr Singh was not playing favourites when he named Mukherjee to stand in for him. Pranab Mukherjee has carried this Government through some difficult challenges in the past four years. His reward has been rejection. The Left wanted him as President instead of the insipid Pratibha Patil. He wanted the job as well. But Mrs Sonia Gandhi rejected the proposal, arguing that he was too invaluable in Government. If she meant what she said, she should have publicly endorsed Dr Singh's decision instead of amending it.
Veerappa Moily attempted a specious explanation, that there could not be two Prime Ministers at one time. He got it completely wrong. The last thing that the nation can afford is confusion over Constitutional authority while a Prime Minister is under anaesthesia. India is a nuclear power, but this is probably less important than the fact that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. There is tension between the two nations. Dr Manmohan Singh understood that you couldn't play politics with security.
Dr Singh's medical condition is a clear setback for the Congress. His heart condition will prevent him from campaigning as vigorously as the party would want. This is not a provincial election. This is an election for his job. The Congress, and the UPA, might need to offer a number two even if the number one remains in place. Rahul Gandhi has not acquired the gravitas necessary for the job, and those with gravitas do not seem acceptable to Mrs Sonia Gandhi because they would be a threat to her son's ambitions. Sharad Pawar, for instance, has already indicated through a spokesman that there is no reason why he cannot lead the alliance.
If Dr Singh is the Kalam of politics, can Kalam become the Manmohan Singh of the future? The thought must have occurred to someone. There is already talk that if the verdict of this year's general election is fractured, then someone like Kalam could be offered leadership of a national Government. This is probably far-fetched, but stranger things have happened. Who expected Dr Singh to become Prime Minister?
On a more realistic note, the Kalam projection is an over-stretch. The NDA has the advantage of clarity on who would be Prime Minister if it got the numbers, which is L.K. Advani, but then it must get the numbers. There is an "if" hanging over every destiny, which is what makes Indian democracy the most fascinating exercise in international politics. No election is a mirror of the other. The mood needs to shift marginally to create new configurations in the kaleidoscope. Aspirations might solidify into ambition if a regional party does exceptionally well, and the BJP under-performs. In Bihar, Nitish Kumar might even woo the Muslim voter by implying that if he gets enough seats, he could be the NDA nominee for Prime Minister.
The field is open until the home stretch, when the numbers will tell us which horse is the winner.
Dr Manmohan Singh is the Abdul Kalam of politics: both are admired among the middle classes for decency, integrity, education and achievement in their preferred discipline. Sometimes it takes a tragedy like ill health to evoke emotion, and the response in the urban areas to the Prime Minister's hospitalisation must have come as a bit of shock to the Congress Party, which had convinced itself that Sonia Gandhi was its only mass leader and Rahul Gandhi the only possible heir. Dr Manmohan Singh today is far more popular than the Congress president among the middle class.But this popularity, in all cases, is hedged with a problem: there is what might be called insufficient ownership of their identity among voters. Christians do identify with Mrs Sonia Gandhi, but in demographic terms they are too small and too thinly spread. Dr Singh has never been a conventional politician from Punjab, while Muslims do not really think of Dr Kalam as one of their own. But Dr Singh and Dr Kalam are icons of an emerging, non-sectarian India that will come into its own, electorally, five or ten years later. Their support is largely among the young. It is a foolish notion that youth only wants youth. The young want someone who can offer a future, which is quite a different matter. Age is incidental, neither an asset nor a liability. Both Dr Singh and Dr Kalam are in their 70s. Ability, backed up by a successful track record, is essential. Tomorrow's electorate will vote on merit, not reservation.
That is going to be a problem for the Congress, which cannot think outside hereditary reservation when it comes to a post-Manmohan Prime Minister. On the eve of going to hospital for his heart treatment Dr Singh did what was proper, and nominated his senior-most colleague in the Cabinet, Pranab Mukherjee, as the person who would stand in for him during the crucial hours under anaesthesia and for the period of his convalescence. It seems that Mrs Sonia Gandhi was unable to live with the minimalist necessity of Mukherjee becoming the public face of Government at the Republic Day parade and functions. This would mean televisual presence, sending a signal that Mukherjee was the natural successor to Dr Singh. Instructions were amended and the public face of power was distributed into a Picasso duality. Defence Minister A.K. Antony was given the high-profile presence at the Republic Day parade. He had one specific virtue. He is not a declared player in the Prime Ministers' stakes, a race that will open the moment the results of this year's general elections are announced. Pranab Mukherjee, on the other hand, is going to be an enthusiastic participant.
Dr Singh was not playing favourites when he named Mukherjee to stand in for him. Pranab Mukherjee has carried this Government through some difficult challenges in the past four years. His reward has been rejection. The Left wanted him as President instead of the insipid Pratibha Patil. He wanted the job as well. But Mrs Sonia Gandhi rejected the proposal, arguing that he was too invaluable in Government. If she meant what she said, she should have publicly endorsed Dr Singh's decision instead of amending it.
Veerappa Moily attempted a specious explanation, that there could not be two Prime Ministers at one time. He got it completely wrong. The last thing that the nation can afford is confusion over Constitutional authority while a Prime Minister is under anaesthesia. India is a nuclear power, but this is probably less important than the fact that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. There is tension between the two nations. Dr Manmohan Singh understood that you couldn't play politics with security.
Dr Singh's medical condition is a clear setback for the Congress. His heart condition will prevent him from campaigning as vigorously as the party would want. This is not a provincial election. This is an election for his job. The Congress, and the UPA, might need to offer a number two even if the number one remains in place. Rahul Gandhi has not acquired the gravitas necessary for the job, and those with gravitas do not seem acceptable to Mrs Sonia Gandhi because they would be a threat to her son's ambitions. Sharad Pawar, for instance, has already indicated through a spokesman that there is no reason why he cannot lead the alliance.
If Dr Singh is the Kalam of politics, can Kalam become the Manmohan Singh of the future? The thought must have occurred to someone. There is already talk that if the verdict of this year's general election is fractured, then someone like Kalam could be offered leadership of a national Government. This is probably far-fetched, but stranger things have happened. Who expected Dr Singh to become Prime Minister?
On a more realistic note, the Kalam projection is an over-stretch. The NDA has the advantage of clarity on who would be Prime Minister if it got the numbers, which is L.K. Advani, but then it must get the numbers. There is an "if" hanging over every destiny, which is what makes Indian democracy the most fascinating exercise in international politics. No election is a mirror of the other. The mood needs to shift marginally to create new configurations in the kaleidoscope. Aspirations might solidify into ambition if a regional party does exceptionally well, and the BJP under-performs. In Bihar, Nitish Kumar might even woo the Muslim voter by implying that if he gets enough seats, he could be the NDA nominee for Prime Minister.
The field is open until the home stretch, when the numbers will tell us which horse is the winner.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
More Food, Less Fear will win the Future
More Food, Less Fear will win the Future
By M J Akbar
Can you win a general election without winning the argument? Curiously, both the ruling coalition and the principal opposing alliance seem to think so.
The government has a vested interest in fudge. After all, there can be no opposition if there is no position. Its best hope is to muddle through the April-May poll and return with roughly the same numbers through a strategy of least resistance. What is less comprehensible is the response of the BJP. It looks befuddled before fudge. Instead of raising issues, its spokespersons throw pebbles. If you cannot clear a haze, the haze has won the day. The Left has been more successful in creating the tension of a debate, but its resonance is limited to a couple of pockets, while the Third Front is too thin to be considered a net, let alone a magnet.
This is going to be a cold election. Neither candidate nor party will be able to waft on hot air. If the BJP wants to succeed, it has to remember a key fact: the Hindu voter is outgrowing communal rhetoric. He wants more food and less fear. At the moment he is getting the reverse.
The Congress has one advantage: Muslims, its main votebank, do not vote for something; they vote against someone. This suits the Congress perfectly. It feeds fear to Muslims, and offers development to other electorates.
Success breeds imitation, but change, the slogan which dazzled the US in autumn, will be insufficient in an Indian summer. Frustration has stripped the Indian voter of illusions. Offer him change, and he will demand to know to what. Promise him a job and he will ask where, when, how and to whom. Americans gave Obama a pass on delivery systems and destination. The relevant slogan is not the one that defeated Bush the Son, but the one that laid out Bush the Father 16 years ago: ‘‘It’s the economy, stupid!’’
Since no government in its senses would want to contest an election on the economy when jobs are disappearing in cities and farmers are committing suicide in village, the Congress seems poised to offer a virtuous trinity of vitality (Rahul Gandhi), morality (Manmohan Singh) and nobility (Sonia Gandhi). The voter will, however, check for substance behind the advertising. The chief minister of the biggest Congress state, Rajashekhar Reddy, has become synonymous with sleaze. He has lost the plot. Or, more accurately, he has sold the plot to Satyam.
The arithmetic of a cold election will be determined by the sum total of regional numbers. The formation of the next government could depend on how well the allies, rather than the principals, do. The BJP’s partners seem more confident than the Congress’ friends. But such is the perceived fluidity of options that Pranab Mukherjee, Nitish Kumar, Jayalalitha, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati, Chandra Babu Naidu and Sharad Pawar see themselves as possible occupants of 10 Janpath. They may not agree on anything else, but they believe that neither the Congress nor the BJP will cross the 150-seat mark necessary to become the plank on which a government can rest. The politics of the Nineties and the Noughties has seen the rise of flexible morality leading to an explosion of opportunity.
Will the politics of the Twentytens be different? Yes. There is likely to be fatigue in north and central India with the insular dynamics of small parties, trapped in concentric rings of family and state; and a yearning for political formations that offer more than stagnant regional horizons. The next government in Delhi, like this one, might be less than the sum of its parts, rather than more. There are no institutional methods of re-nourishment once the leaders of small parties become vulnerable to age or accident.
You might then, with good reason, consider 2009 the semi-final election. The finals will take place in the elections after this, probably in 2012 or 2013, when the Congress and the BJP will square off in most parts of the country, sufficient to give one or the other over 200 seats. They will have younger, if not newer leaders, creating the base for single-party majorities again.
The debate will not change, because the problem will not have been resolved. Whoever wins the argument on food and fear in 2012 will control the decade.
Appeared in Times of India - January 25, 2009
By M J Akbar
Can you win a general election without winning the argument? Curiously, both the ruling coalition and the principal opposing alliance seem to think so.
The government has a vested interest in fudge. After all, there can be no opposition if there is no position. Its best hope is to muddle through the April-May poll and return with roughly the same numbers through a strategy of least resistance. What is less comprehensible is the response of the BJP. It looks befuddled before fudge. Instead of raising issues, its spokespersons throw pebbles. If you cannot clear a haze, the haze has won the day. The Left has been more successful in creating the tension of a debate, but its resonance is limited to a couple of pockets, while the Third Front is too thin to be considered a net, let alone a magnet.
This is going to be a cold election. Neither candidate nor party will be able to waft on hot air. If the BJP wants to succeed, it has to remember a key fact: the Hindu voter is outgrowing communal rhetoric. He wants more food and less fear. At the moment he is getting the reverse.
The Congress has one advantage: Muslims, its main votebank, do not vote for something; they vote against someone. This suits the Congress perfectly. It feeds fear to Muslims, and offers development to other electorates.
Success breeds imitation, but change, the slogan which dazzled the US in autumn, will be insufficient in an Indian summer. Frustration has stripped the Indian voter of illusions. Offer him change, and he will demand to know to what. Promise him a job and he will ask where, when, how and to whom. Americans gave Obama a pass on delivery systems and destination. The relevant slogan is not the one that defeated Bush the Son, but the one that laid out Bush the Father 16 years ago: ‘‘It’s the economy, stupid!’’
Since no government in its senses would want to contest an election on the economy when jobs are disappearing in cities and farmers are committing suicide in village, the Congress seems poised to offer a virtuous trinity of vitality (Rahul Gandhi), morality (Manmohan Singh) and nobility (Sonia Gandhi). The voter will, however, check for substance behind the advertising. The chief minister of the biggest Congress state, Rajashekhar Reddy, has become synonymous with sleaze. He has lost the plot. Or, more accurately, he has sold the plot to Satyam.
The arithmetic of a cold election will be determined by the sum total of regional numbers. The formation of the next government could depend on how well the allies, rather than the principals, do. The BJP’s partners seem more confident than the Congress’ friends. But such is the perceived fluidity of options that Pranab Mukherjee, Nitish Kumar, Jayalalitha, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati, Chandra Babu Naidu and Sharad Pawar see themselves as possible occupants of 10 Janpath. They may not agree on anything else, but they believe that neither the Congress nor the BJP will cross the 150-seat mark necessary to become the plank on which a government can rest. The politics of the Nineties and the Noughties has seen the rise of flexible morality leading to an explosion of opportunity.
Will the politics of the Twentytens be different? Yes. There is likely to be fatigue in north and central India with the insular dynamics of small parties, trapped in concentric rings of family and state; and a yearning for political formations that offer more than stagnant regional horizons. The next government in Delhi, like this one, might be less than the sum of its parts, rather than more. There are no institutional methods of re-nourishment once the leaders of small parties become vulnerable to age or accident.
You might then, with good reason, consider 2009 the semi-final election. The finals will take place in the elections after this, probably in 2012 or 2013, when the Congress and the BJP will square off in most parts of the country, sufficient to give one or the other over 200 seats. They will have younger, if not newer leaders, creating the base for single-party majorities again.
The debate will not change, because the problem will not have been resolved. Whoever wins the argument on food and fear in 2012 will control the decade.
Appeared in Times of India - January 25, 2009
Hope, but Carefully
Byline by M J Akbar: Hope, but carefully
Foreign policy is not made in a day, much less on inauguration day. The smiles that broke out in Delhi when President Barack Obama cautioned Pakistan that non-military aid would be cut if it did not curb domestic terrorism were premature. In any case, it is military aid rather than civilian aid to Islamabad which should be of more concern to Delhi, but the government in Delhi has become so dependent on the United States that it gets pleased with very little. An inaugural speech can only be peppered with markers that will slowly be fleshed into policy. But amateurs in Delhi have rushed to judgment where professionals fear to tread.
There was an air of simulation in the bluster with which Pakistan reacted. The boys of Islamabad know a charade when they see it; they are experts in the game themselves, after all. They don't need spectacles to read between the lines of Obama's South Asia policy.
Obama, still brimming with the audacity of hope, has promised peace all over the world and war in one corner: Afghanistan. Pakistan is not very competent in the disbursement of peace. Its expertise lies in the dissemination of war, by declaration or proxy, on enemy territory or the land of friends. And now of course it is fighting more than one war on its own soil. Pakistan knows that America cannot fight in Afghanistan without force, intelligence and logistical support provided by Pakistan. As long as this material situation does not change, America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America. Pakistan has decided to not merely extract a financial price for this support, but also a political price.
London and Washington already know what the price is, and are getting ready to pay it in some abbreviated form. Pakistan has begun with a tremendous advantage over India in the Washington diplomatic game. It engaged with the Obama campaign and the transition team, while Indian diplomats, taking their cue from Dr Manmohan Singh's near-obsessive love for George Bush, concentrated totally on Bush and the Republicans. This has been a great failure of foreign policy for which we have already begun to suffer. Pakistan has persuaded key advisers of Obama that it cannot fight the Taliban with its full resources as long as it has to simultaneously defend its border with India. The Indian threat can only be lowered with a resolution of the Kashmir issue. Therefore, it is time America and Britain persuaded India to discuss and settle Kashmir.
In an extraordinary manoeuvre, Pakistan turned around the Mumbai terror attack, organised on its soil. From predator, it refashioned itself into a victim. It used the war rhetoric from the Indian government to warn the West that it would pull out of the war against the Taliban. Delhi's hot air proved doubly insipid. It did not frighten Pakistan one bit, but it scared the wits out of Washington and London, who rushed to Delhi and leaned on it. Delhi succumbed. India has lost twice over through Mumbai. It has become a laughing stock at security conferences. And it has allowed what could have been a diplomatic coup against Pakistan to become a diplomatic coup against India. This is incompetent governance, not just abysmal security.
The British foreign secretary David Miliband was audacious enough to contradict India's Prime Minister on Indian soil, by saying that the terrorist attack was not sponsored by the Pakistan government, and that India had better do something about the core cause, Kashmir. Instead of snubbing him, Rahul Gandhi, Congress' proxy Prime Minister, took Miliband for some private tourism of poverty. British correspondents in Delhi have applauded Miliband for telling it like it is, throwing in a sentence that this is going to be Obama's line as well.
Hillary Clinton, the incoming Secretary of State, has already enunciated the Obama doctrine at her confirmation hearings in the Senate. The 'hard power' of Bush will be replaced by 'smart power'. This has been defined as the application of a "full range of tools…diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal and cultural" in the pursuit of American interests. Pentagon awe will be accompanied by nudge and arm-twist. By the time the twisting is over, Delhi might need a heavy bandage on the elbow.
Obama's policy towards South Asia will be controlled by the compulsions of a war he wants to win in a hurry, before fatigue and a rising death toll turn it into another Iraq, or, worse, Vietnam. The battlefield will not be Afghanistan alone. American forces might soon have to fight in the western half of Pakistan, from Karachi to Swat, which is already being christened Talibanistan (the eastern half still remains Pakistan). Americans have reached that curious state of mind in which they want to win wars without losing soldiers. Their military research is concentrating on the robotisation of the armed forces where even the infantry could become mechanical instead of human. But that is a long way ahead. The war for Afghanistan will be won or lost long before that.
Muslims across the world are taking comfort in the semantics of Obama's initial remarks. After being misbespoken to, and misunderstandimated for eight years, it must be a relief to hear correct grammar. Some of them have taken partial ownership of his presidency because he used his middle name, Hussein, while taking the oath. But the issue is not what Obama says. It is what he does.
Will he be able to get a resolution to Palestine except on harsh Israeli terms? Even if we ignore his campaign rhetoric — he could hardly afford to alienate the most powerful lobby in the United States — there are powerful interests protecting the expansionist reach of Israel. At all events, it will not be easy. Neither will be a victory in Afghanistan. As pressure mounts on him, he will be tempted to mount pressure on India through Kashmir.
It is going to be a complicated game, which might drift endlessly to a point where every side looks like a loser. Hope needs to be handled very carefully if it wants to remain audacious.
Monday, January 19, 2009
India and Pakistan are not neighbours. They are worlds
India and Pakistan are not neighbours. They are worlds
By M J Akbar
1947 divided us, but did not separate us. We still met, through family and media. Separation came with war in 1965, instigated by fantasists like General Ayub Khan and Z A Bhutto. It extinguished the flickering embers of trust. Walls of regulations were raised to block knowledge, and then vision. If you do not see a neighbour he is not a neighbour. There are no neighbours in the huge apartment blocks of Mumbai, only adjacent numbers.
The middle class Indian's true neighbour is America, sharing culture, language, consumerism, celebrity-worship and an insatiable desire for upward mobility. He knows more about the intricate processes that make Obama president than it does about the hop, skip and jump that Zardari used to acquire the same title.
India and Pakistan share a past but not a present; the future is vulnerable to imagined realities. Those with goodwill sell notions of excessive, even emotional hospitality. Those with ill will, the preponderant majority, provoke images of demonic horror. The young Pakistani men sent to Mumbai on a killing spree were fed on lies salted with evil; they had no independent reality check.
For four decades an investment in ignorance has nurtured an incremental interest in hatred. Pakistan has become a breeding ground for permanent war against India. Indians have developed a deep aversion for Pakistan. If a poll were taken in India asking whether Pakistan should be relocated in Latin America, the answer would be an unanimous yes.
Neighbours do not need to be permanent friends. France and Germany fought each other with a deadly bitterness that was once synonymous with Europe, but there was always individual, social and intellectual discourse between the two. Neighbours do not need to be equals. The US and Britain have been the best of neighbours since 1918, dining and hunting together. They have replaced each other as Emperor of Most of the World Worth Ruling, and the relationship has survived the trauma of self-appraisal. Neighbours may not share the same language, but they must know how to communicate, to understand what the other is doing, and why. Peace is impossible without understanding. The fog of ignorance only induces conflict through the illusion of victory. Ironically, the real deception is that the deceiver never knows how much he has deceived himself.
Knowledge of the other is impossible without free flow of media.
Newspapers and television stations may be terrible, but they are not terrorists. They may occasionally bore you to death, but they do not actually kill anyone. Indians and Pakistanis can see CNN at the flick of a finger but not each other's channels. So what if media sometimes gets hysterical: it never takes too long for hysterics to make fools of themselves. Sadly, hysteria can also influence policy, so it is important to know what the other is ranting about. Moreover, information cannot really be kept in solitary confinement; it always dribbles out as misinformation. It makes sense to offer it as information.
I saw the January 10 issue of Pakistan's most important English newspaper, Dawn, purely by accident. Page 1 had a report from Lahore about five low-intensity explosions that ripped through five theatres. This was the work of the same fundamentalist minds that sent terrorists to India; their enemy was not just India, but any sign of modernity in Pakistan. No one accused these bombers of being RAW agents.
From Kohat came a story of heavily-armed Sunnis attacking a Shia procession with rockets. Five died. Communal riots do not necessarily need men of different faiths.
The edit page had a brilliant piece by Shandana Khan Mohmand. It asked Pakistan to get real, and acknowledge that terrorist organizations were sustained by popular funds. It also noted, calmly, that "Pakistan needs to accept a very harsh reality - it is not India's equal."
Far from being banned, Dawn should be made compulsory reading in India.
The United States and the Soviet Union also blocked information during their Cold War and paid good money to mislead. But distance reduced flashpoints to a minimum. India and Pakistan have become enemies cursed by a common frontier.
The ground has been frozen on the frontier into a glacier, but the air is still free, albeit polluted. If we want to clear the air - if - we have no option except to use that inconsistent broom called media.
Appeared in Times of India - January 19, 2009
By M J Akbar
1947 divided us, but did not separate us. We still met, through family and media. Separation came with war in 1965, instigated by fantasists like General Ayub Khan and Z A Bhutto. It extinguished the flickering embers of trust. Walls of regulations were raised to block knowledge, and then vision. If you do not see a neighbour he is not a neighbour. There are no neighbours in the huge apartment blocks of Mumbai, only adjacent numbers.
The middle class Indian's true neighbour is America, sharing culture, language, consumerism, celebrity-worship and an insatiable desire for upward mobility. He knows more about the intricate processes that make Obama president than it does about the hop, skip and jump that Zardari used to acquire the same title.
India and Pakistan share a past but not a present; the future is vulnerable to imagined realities. Those with goodwill sell notions of excessive, even emotional hospitality. Those with ill will, the preponderant majority, provoke images of demonic horror. The young Pakistani men sent to Mumbai on a killing spree were fed on lies salted with evil; they had no independent reality check.
For four decades an investment in ignorance has nurtured an incremental interest in hatred. Pakistan has become a breeding ground for permanent war against India. Indians have developed a deep aversion for Pakistan. If a poll were taken in India asking whether Pakistan should be relocated in Latin America, the answer would be an unanimous yes.
Neighbours do not need to be permanent friends. France and Germany fought each other with a deadly bitterness that was once synonymous with Europe, but there was always individual, social and intellectual discourse between the two. Neighbours do not need to be equals. The US and Britain have been the best of neighbours since 1918, dining and hunting together. They have replaced each other as Emperor of Most of the World Worth Ruling, and the relationship has survived the trauma of self-appraisal. Neighbours may not share the same language, but they must know how to communicate, to understand what the other is doing, and why. Peace is impossible without understanding. The fog of ignorance only induces conflict through the illusion of victory. Ironically, the real deception is that the deceiver never knows how much he has deceived himself.
Knowledge of the other is impossible without free flow of media.
Newspapers and television stations may be terrible, but they are not terrorists. They may occasionally bore you to death, but they do not actually kill anyone. Indians and Pakistanis can see CNN at the flick of a finger but not each other's channels. So what if media sometimes gets hysterical: it never takes too long for hysterics to make fools of themselves. Sadly, hysteria can also influence policy, so it is important to know what the other is ranting about. Moreover, information cannot really be kept in solitary confinement; it always dribbles out as misinformation. It makes sense to offer it as information.
I saw the January 10 issue of Pakistan's most important English newspaper, Dawn, purely by accident. Page 1 had a report from Lahore about five low-intensity explosions that ripped through five theatres. This was the work of the same fundamentalist minds that sent terrorists to India; their enemy was not just India, but any sign of modernity in Pakistan. No one accused these bombers of being RAW agents.
From Kohat came a story of heavily-armed Sunnis attacking a Shia procession with rockets. Five died. Communal riots do not necessarily need men of different faiths.
The edit page had a brilliant piece by Shandana Khan Mohmand. It asked Pakistan to get real, and acknowledge that terrorist organizations were sustained by popular funds. It also noted, calmly, that "Pakistan needs to accept a very harsh reality - it is not India's equal."
Far from being banned, Dawn should be made compulsory reading in India.
The United States and the Soviet Union also blocked information during their Cold War and paid good money to mislead. But distance reduced flashpoints to a minimum. India and Pakistan have become enemies cursed by a common frontier.
The ground has been frozen on the frontier into a glacier, but the air is still free, albeit polluted. If we want to clear the air - if - we have no option except to use that inconsistent broom called media.
Appeared in Times of India - January 19, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Flattery, please; who wants friends?
Byline by M.J. Akbar: Flattery, please; who wants friends?
One of the most instructive stories I have read about democracy comes from 1865. Just to place the date in context, America had just saved the Union from a civil war; Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated; Paris was in turmoil; the fabulous Ottoman Empire was rotting at the roots; and Delhi was still a ghost capital, being punished for the temerity of having risen against the British Raj. Only America, with partial franchise, and Britain, with limited franchise, could claim to have governments which were accountable to civilian audit in the form of elections.
John Stuart Mill, the British philosopher, was an independent parliamentary candidate for Westminster that year. He was campaigning to extend the franchise to the working class. He was making his pitch before an audience when someone entered the hall carrying a billboard. On it was a quotation from Mill's Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform: "The lower classes, though mostly habitual liars, are ashamed of lying."
The proverbial thunderbolt had interfered, and it could have left the candidate dead. He was asked, had he written those words? Mill paused, but for only a second. "I did," he said. There was another pause. And then audience erupted, applauding, clapping, whistling, and stamping their feet in approval. Their leader, George Odger, cheered Mill with a classic remark: "The working class had no desire not to be told of their faults; they wanted friends, not flatterers."
Friends, not flatterers. If you emptied Delhi of flatterers and limited the political-bureaucratic ruling class to friends, the city's population would come down by 99%. It is pertinent to note that Mill got elected. The point of the story is not the honesty of the intellectual, but that of the working class. The electorate would have punished a lie. Obviously, not everyone was blessed with such virtues, but you have to be blind not to recognise the value system that made Britain, a nation of shopkeepers [Napoleon's phrase], into the 19th century's pre-eminent superpower.
They had a word for it, character. Character was a moral asset that combined honesty and loyalty to a fellow citizen or comrade-soldier. It is a reflection of contemporary morality that we have changed the meaning of the word. Today a character is either a chap with a tic in his metabolism, or a role in fiction, film or television. From a truth, character has changed to artifice.
The front page of every newspaper in Delhi provides daily testimony to the fact that Indian power politics is about flattery, which is why loyalty has overlapped completely with obsequiousness. The sycophancy may be marked in Congress, but other parties are hardly immune. A new low was reached when two newly appointed ministers in Jammu and Kashmir showed their gratitude by prostrating themselves at the feet of the party president, Mrs Sonia Gandhi. They did not ask her permission, clearly embarrassing her. At least the sycophancy was secular: one minister was a Hindu and the other a Muslim. Mayawati routinely demands cringing obedience from those hapless enough to have taken a favour from her, and uses humiliation as a political tool. Stories from the South are worse.
Such political culture does not encourage honesty. The fraud at Satyam is not a mere economic offence. It is also a political offence. Satyam is a Hyderabad story. Crooks who steal shareholders blind cannot do so without political patronage. Bankers – some of whose hypocrisy is matched only by their pomposity – hand out huge amounts in the full knowledge that the money is going to be stolen by promoters they cozy up to. The kickbacks are substantial, because the first principle of dacoity is that there has to be equitable (if not equal) distribution of the spoils. The slicing order of the stolen cake is this: company promoter takes the biggest chunk, politician gets the second bite, and banker nibbles at the third.
Andhra Pradesh is rife with thuggery. There is one business group which claims a Rs 1,800 crore turnover in steel. It has only one small problem. It has no steel plant. A second company has got contracts for irrigation projects from the Andhra government worth Rs 15,000 crores, but has a working capital of only Rs 55 crores. Do the math, and you know that there are ghost projects hovering all over the state. Another company in the same racket (co-owned by a ruling politician's son) has Rs 12,000 crores worth of projects on its order books and a working capital limit of only Rs 50 crores from a nationalised bank.
You might ask, legitimately, why newspapers do not expose this odious stink. The price of independence is high. When the chairman of the Eenadu group, Ramoji Rao, refused to be Andhra chief minister Rajashekhar Reddy's lackey, the state government went after his businesses with vicious ferocity. Every instrument of coercion in the state government, the union finance ministry, the registrar of companies, the income tax department and even the Reserve Bank of India, was used against Ramoji Rao's Margadarsi Financiers. When this did not break Rao, bulldozers were sent to demolish permanent structures in his Ramoji Film City on the excuse that they were built on land assigned to weaker sections. Quite clever, that: not only does Rajashekhar Reddy bludgeon the media, but he tries and milks it for votes as well!
The currency of political discourse has also been devalued. Confronted with a billboard today, the politician would have issued a press statement claiming that he had been misquoted.
Misquoted in his own book? Yes, of course; the printer did it. What he had actually written was, "The lower classes, though mostly never liars, are always ashamed of lying." It was obvious that the printer was in the pay of the Opposition.
But there is some hope. Corruption is the most venal sin in the checklist of the voter. Politicians might think that they have hidden the evidence by muffling or strangling the media. But you can fool all the voters only some of the time. Word travels, if not through print and audiovisual, then through the air, borne by the tongue. There is some evidence that no politician can erase: when there is theft, something has to be stolen, and in the case of irrigation projects it is the fact that there is no water where there should have been water for the farmer. Equally, the message is going out that those chief ministers who are clean will get re-elected.
Our saving grace may be simply this: greed for power will trump greed for money.
Indian politics is full of characters without character. The voter with a billboard is checking them out.
One of the most instructive stories I have read about democracy comes from 1865. Just to place the date in context, America had just saved the Union from a civil war; Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated; Paris was in turmoil; the fabulous Ottoman Empire was rotting at the roots; and Delhi was still a ghost capital, being punished for the temerity of having risen against the British Raj. Only America, with partial franchise, and Britain, with limited franchise, could claim to have governments which were accountable to civilian audit in the form of elections.
John Stuart Mill, the British philosopher, was an independent parliamentary candidate for Westminster that year. He was campaigning to extend the franchise to the working class. He was making his pitch before an audience when someone entered the hall carrying a billboard. On it was a quotation from Mill's Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform: "The lower classes, though mostly habitual liars, are ashamed of lying."
The proverbial thunderbolt had interfered, and it could have left the candidate dead. He was asked, had he written those words? Mill paused, but for only a second. "I did," he said. There was another pause. And then audience erupted, applauding, clapping, whistling, and stamping their feet in approval. Their leader, George Odger, cheered Mill with a classic remark: "The working class had no desire not to be told of their faults; they wanted friends, not flatterers."
Friends, not flatterers. If you emptied Delhi of flatterers and limited the political-bureaucratic ruling class to friends, the city's population would come down by 99%. It is pertinent to note that Mill got elected. The point of the story is not the honesty of the intellectual, but that of the working class. The electorate would have punished a lie. Obviously, not everyone was blessed with such virtues, but you have to be blind not to recognise the value system that made Britain, a nation of shopkeepers [Napoleon's phrase], into the 19th century's pre-eminent superpower.
They had a word for it, character. Character was a moral asset that combined honesty and loyalty to a fellow citizen or comrade-soldier. It is a reflection of contemporary morality that we have changed the meaning of the word. Today a character is either a chap with a tic in his metabolism, or a role in fiction, film or television. From a truth, character has changed to artifice.
The front page of every newspaper in Delhi provides daily testimony to the fact that Indian power politics is about flattery, which is why loyalty has overlapped completely with obsequiousness. The sycophancy may be marked in Congress, but other parties are hardly immune. A new low was reached when two newly appointed ministers in Jammu and Kashmir showed their gratitude by prostrating themselves at the feet of the party president, Mrs Sonia Gandhi. They did not ask her permission, clearly embarrassing her. At least the sycophancy was secular: one minister was a Hindu and the other a Muslim. Mayawati routinely demands cringing obedience from those hapless enough to have taken a favour from her, and uses humiliation as a political tool. Stories from the South are worse.
Such political culture does not encourage honesty. The fraud at Satyam is not a mere economic offence. It is also a political offence. Satyam is a Hyderabad story. Crooks who steal shareholders blind cannot do so without political patronage. Bankers – some of whose hypocrisy is matched only by their pomposity – hand out huge amounts in the full knowledge that the money is going to be stolen by promoters they cozy up to. The kickbacks are substantial, because the first principle of dacoity is that there has to be equitable (if not equal) distribution of the spoils. The slicing order of the stolen cake is this: company promoter takes the biggest chunk, politician gets the second bite, and banker nibbles at the third.
Andhra Pradesh is rife with thuggery. There is one business group which claims a Rs 1,800 crore turnover in steel. It has only one small problem. It has no steel plant. A second company has got contracts for irrigation projects from the Andhra government worth Rs 15,000 crores, but has a working capital of only Rs 55 crores. Do the math, and you know that there are ghost projects hovering all over the state. Another company in the same racket (co-owned by a ruling politician's son) has Rs 12,000 crores worth of projects on its order books and a working capital limit of only Rs 50 crores from a nationalised bank.
You might ask, legitimately, why newspapers do not expose this odious stink. The price of independence is high. When the chairman of the Eenadu group, Ramoji Rao, refused to be Andhra chief minister Rajashekhar Reddy's lackey, the state government went after his businesses with vicious ferocity. Every instrument of coercion in the state government, the union finance ministry, the registrar of companies, the income tax department and even the Reserve Bank of India, was used against Ramoji Rao's Margadarsi Financiers. When this did not break Rao, bulldozers were sent to demolish permanent structures in his Ramoji Film City on the excuse that they were built on land assigned to weaker sections. Quite clever, that: not only does Rajashekhar Reddy bludgeon the media, but he tries and milks it for votes as well!
The currency of political discourse has also been devalued. Confronted with a billboard today, the politician would have issued a press statement claiming that he had been misquoted.
Misquoted in his own book? Yes, of course; the printer did it. What he had actually written was, "The lower classes, though mostly never liars, are always ashamed of lying." It was obvious that the printer was in the pay of the Opposition.
But there is some hope. Corruption is the most venal sin in the checklist of the voter. Politicians might think that they have hidden the evidence by muffling or strangling the media. But you can fool all the voters only some of the time. Word travels, if not through print and audiovisual, then through the air, borne by the tongue. There is some evidence that no politician can erase: when there is theft, something has to be stolen, and in the case of irrigation projects it is the fact that there is no water where there should have been water for the farmer. Equally, the message is going out that those chief ministers who are clean will get re-elected.
Our saving grace may be simply this: greed for power will trump greed for money.
Indian politics is full of characters without character. The voter with a billboard is checking them out.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Blood does not sleep, stays awake as nightmare
Blood does not sleep, stays awake as nightmare
By M J Akbar
Saladin, the greatest of Muslim warriors, died of fever and old age on the morning of March 4, 1124. He was the iconic believer. Malcolm Lyons and D E P Jackson write in Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War, ''The imam Abu Jafar and al-Fadil were with him on the morning of March 4. The imam was reciting from the Quran. 'It is said that when he reached the words — There is no god but God and in Him I put my trust — Saladin smiled; his face cleared and he surrendered his soul to God'.''
On his last visit to Jerusalem, the holy city he had restored to Arab rule, in September 1123, he gave his fourth son, Abu Mansur al-Zahir, some immortal advice. As his son was about to leave, on October 6, Saladin kissed him, rubbed his hair fondly and said: be chary of shedding blood, ''for blood does not sleep''. He added, addressing his attendant emirs, ''I have only reached my present position by conciliation''.
Nine centuries later, blood has still not slept in that land. It keeps awake as a nightmare. No region in modern times has refused conciliation and invested as heavily in a nightmare.
Blood neither sleeps nor ceases; most cruelly, it does not discriminate between child and man. There is nothing new about war. But there is something new about the war raging on the sands of Israel and Palestine. Once, blood was lost on a battlefield, with honour. Blood is now spilt on the street. Civilians are no longer exempt from the havoc of war. Both sides target them, relentlessly. The difference is this: the Qassam rockets fired by Palestinians are crackers, pinpricks, compared to the overwhelming, bellicose firepower of Israel. Of all the images shivering into our consciousness from Gaza, none is more searing than the faces of children who have lost their laughter. Israel is building the foundations for war in 2025: children who are five today will be adults then. Blood will not sleep.
Israel has every right to protect its citizens, but there are grave dangers in a disproportionate action that punishes a population for the actions of a government. It is only the insecure who over-react, but why would Israel, with its overwhelming military superiority, feel vulnerable? Perhaps, after throwing a chain around Gaza and delivering maximum punishment, time after time, it is unable to deal with the persistence of defiance.
Defiance is courage, and courage is admirable, but courage is not victory. Victory too needs a definition, and it cannot be imposition. It must be justice, and equity demands that Palestine and Israel accept that neither will disappear. Both are nations. Facts demand peace, but fear engineers an essentially unequal war, its story told in cold statistics of dead, dying and destruction.
There is more than one reason why Palestinians are still in refugee camps and Israel is a regional superpower.
Gaza is imprisoned in two concentric circles. Only one is the blockade by Israel. The larger circle is a noose placed by cynical Arab ruling cliques who feed off Palestine's despair to perpetuate their own survival, using the alibi of conflict. When there is rage on the Arab street, as now, there is silence and wordplay in the Arab secretariat. Organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah have filled a vacuum created by military incompetence and pathetic governance. That is their appeal to Muslims beyond their borders.
Poor governance has created a knowledge deficit; and knowledge is the key to strength. An Arab friend sent me some startling statistics; the email was captioned 'A time for introspection'. Here are just a few: there are only 500 odd universities in the Muslim world. The United States has 5,758 and India has nearly 8,500. Literacy in the developed world is 90% against 40% in the Muslim world. If you removed Turkey from the list, the comparison would look grimmer. High tech goods and services constitute only 0.9% of the exports from Pakistan, and 0.3% from Algeria. They add up to 68% of Singapore's exports.
Men die for two diametrically opposed reasons: when they value what they seek to defend, and when there is nothing worth living for. Israel has created a state worth defending. The Palestinians must be given something to live for.
Appeared in Times of India - January 11, 2009
By M J Akbar
Saladin, the greatest of Muslim warriors, died of fever and old age on the morning of March 4, 1124. He was the iconic believer. Malcolm Lyons and D E P Jackson write in Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War, ''The imam Abu Jafar and al-Fadil were with him on the morning of March 4. The imam was reciting from the Quran. 'It is said that when he reached the words — There is no god but God and in Him I put my trust — Saladin smiled; his face cleared and he surrendered his soul to God'.''
On his last visit to Jerusalem, the holy city he had restored to Arab rule, in September 1123, he gave his fourth son, Abu Mansur al-Zahir, some immortal advice. As his son was about to leave, on October 6, Saladin kissed him, rubbed his hair fondly and said: be chary of shedding blood, ''for blood does not sleep''. He added, addressing his attendant emirs, ''I have only reached my present position by conciliation''.
Nine centuries later, blood has still not slept in that land. It keeps awake as a nightmare. No region in modern times has refused conciliation and invested as heavily in a nightmare.
Blood neither sleeps nor ceases; most cruelly, it does not discriminate between child and man. There is nothing new about war. But there is something new about the war raging on the sands of Israel and Palestine. Once, blood was lost on a battlefield, with honour. Blood is now spilt on the street. Civilians are no longer exempt from the havoc of war. Both sides target them, relentlessly. The difference is this: the Qassam rockets fired by Palestinians are crackers, pinpricks, compared to the overwhelming, bellicose firepower of Israel. Of all the images shivering into our consciousness from Gaza, none is more searing than the faces of children who have lost their laughter. Israel is building the foundations for war in 2025: children who are five today will be adults then. Blood will not sleep.
Israel has every right to protect its citizens, but there are grave dangers in a disproportionate action that punishes a population for the actions of a government. It is only the insecure who over-react, but why would Israel, with its overwhelming military superiority, feel vulnerable? Perhaps, after throwing a chain around Gaza and delivering maximum punishment, time after time, it is unable to deal with the persistence of defiance.
Defiance is courage, and courage is admirable, but courage is not victory. Victory too needs a definition, and it cannot be imposition. It must be justice, and equity demands that Palestine and Israel accept that neither will disappear. Both are nations. Facts demand peace, but fear engineers an essentially unequal war, its story told in cold statistics of dead, dying and destruction.
There is more than one reason why Palestinians are still in refugee camps and Israel is a regional superpower.
Gaza is imprisoned in two concentric circles. Only one is the blockade by Israel. The larger circle is a noose placed by cynical Arab ruling cliques who feed off Palestine's despair to perpetuate their own survival, using the alibi of conflict. When there is rage on the Arab street, as now, there is silence and wordplay in the Arab secretariat. Organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah have filled a vacuum created by military incompetence and pathetic governance. That is their appeal to Muslims beyond their borders.
Poor governance has created a knowledge deficit; and knowledge is the key to strength. An Arab friend sent me some startling statistics; the email was captioned 'A time for introspection'. Here are just a few: there are only 500 odd universities in the Muslim world. The United States has 5,758 and India has nearly 8,500. Literacy in the developed world is 90% against 40% in the Muslim world. If you removed Turkey from the list, the comparison would look grimmer. High tech goods and services constitute only 0.9% of the exports from Pakistan, and 0.3% from Algeria. They add up to 68% of Singapore's exports.
Men die for two diametrically opposed reasons: when they value what they seek to defend, and when there is nothing worth living for. Israel has created a state worth defending. The Palestinians must be given something to live for.
Appeared in Times of India - January 11, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Old Trotsky had a point
Byline by M J Akbar: Old Trotsky had a point
The best thing to have happened to Home Minister P. Chidambaram's proposed trip to Washington, in the dying days of a disappearing administration, is that it has been postponed. We all know that Chidambaram is a good lawyer when not engaged in politics, but what precisely did he hope to achieve in the last week of George Bush's unlamented rule?
He was ostensibly going to present evidence on the role of Pakistanis in the terrorist attack on Mumbai. Is there any paper in his travelling files that is so secret that it could not have been handed over to the FBI in Delhi? Chidambaram was going to talk, and therein lay a minor opportunity and a major danger.
Chidambaram might be justified in believing he has a persuasive tongue, but he might have returned with a problem, instead of solving the one he went to pursue. To start with, Washington does not need to be convinced that there are terrorist outfits in Pakistan that have India in their gun sights. They know this already. They deal with these groups, and have the most extensive intelligence on them, information built up not just during the current war in Afghanistan-Pakistan, but over at least two decades. According to one American assessment, Osama bin Laden has placed India at the top of the list of the world's soft targets, now that America has hardened its security regime. Washington has already accepted Delhi's line as credible. So the only subject for real discussion is follow-up action. This is where the dangers lie.
Chidambaram would have been the last foreign politician to do business with the Bush administration. Was this fortuitous or deliberate? Deliberate, I reckon. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is still bathing in the glow of a special relationship he manufactured with George Bush, and believes that Bush will be as loyal to him as he has been loyal to Bush. After all, in that unique opinion poll taken by Dr Singh, every Indian loves Bush. But Bush has no real authority to take any serious decisions, apart from whom to invite for a picture opportunity. Every strategic matter now awaits the arrival of Barack Obama on 20 January. There is no foreign policy issue more important on Obama's table than the Afghan war. His views are known: a big stick in one hand, and lots of carrots in the other. The "surge" has already begun, and by the middle of this year America will have 63,000 troops in Afghanistan. While the Taliban is being "tamed" on the battlefield, bribes will be liberally distributed to tribal chiefs to wean them towards the side of American civilisation. Pakistan is an invaluable ally in both operations. Its forces will be asked to sanitise those regions in Pakistan, which are a base for Taliban, while its famous Directorate of Inter Services Intelligence (popularly known as ISI) will be invaluable in identifying the recipients of carrots. Obama will need Pakistan far more than Bush did.
No deal with Delhi, nuclear or strategic, can change a basic fact. As long as America is in Afghanistan, India is a friend and Pakistan is an ally.
This alliance has been integrated into firm institutional relationships, beginning with the Cold War when Pakistan bought into Pentagon goodwill by offering Peshawar as a base for spy reconnaissance missions across the Soviet Union on U2 planes. This was further honed during two Afghan wars, against the Soviet Union and now the Taliban, into an intimate interaction between intelligence services. The CIA and the ISI are sister agencies. The ISI first flourished when it became the major conduit for funds and arms to the Mujahideen against the Soviets. It now has some 10,000 regular employees on its payroll. Washington will not jettison this equation because of a terrorist attack in Mumbai. Organizations like the Lashkar-e-Toyeba have emerged from the murk in which a war with parallel, and occasionally shifting, loyalties is being fought.
The head of the ISI is clearly the second most powerful general in the Pak Army. Former ISI chief Ashfaq Kayani was fortunate enough to be in the right place when Pervez Musharraf first fell from grace and then fell from power. When the present chief General Ahmed Shuja gives an interview it is front-page news.
Washington gives the ISI and Pakistan a great deal of leeway in deference to ground realities. It understands that the political structure in Islamabad is wobbly at best, and it will do nothing to weaken it further by backing such Indian demands as may be unpopular in Pakistan. The FBI has already said that it is not interested in picking up suspects from the Lashkar-e-Toyeba, noting that Pakistan is quite capable of trying them in its own courts.
Washington could also place linkage on the table in any talks with Delhi on Pak-sourced terrorism. We have, with great difficulty and greater diplomatic consistency, finally managed to convince America and Europe to treat Kashmir as a bipartisan issue after the disastrous reference we made to the United Nations in the winter of 1947-1948.
Pakistan has responded to our diplomatic offensive after the Mumbai attack by seeking to once again internationalise Kashmir through the "root causes" argument. Islamabad's line is not very complicated: terrorism is fuelled by despair over Kashmir, so if you want to end terrorism, you have to solve the Kashmir dispute.
Washington would, in all likelihood, have raised this during talks with Chidambaram since it has accepted Pakistan's argument that if the war in Afghanistan deserves the full attention of Pak armed forces, then its security concerns on the eastern front must be neutralised by a settlement of the Kashmir problem. Ergo, settle.
There is a signature petition being circulated in the Kashmir valley at this moment seeking Obama's intervention, amid expectations that the new President will be receptive. He comes to office riding on a promise ("Yes we can"), but without that optimism pinned to any delivery system. It might take him 18 months or two years to realise that in Kashmir, "No we can't". It would be naïve to offer Washington an inroad into the Kashmir dispute before experience in office has taught Obama that intellect is not necessarily synonymous with wisdom.
The Soviet Union's first foreign minister and Marxist ideologue Leon Trotsky had a message that is still relevant to new leaders bubbling with hope and audacity: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." Israel and Palestine have already started a war that is interested in Obama. He would be wise to limit Afghanistan's battlefields to either side of the Durand Line. Even good intentions can engender a slip into the treacherous quicksands of South Asia that would send us all into a toxic swamp.
I never thought I would write this so soon, but one is already turning nostalgic for General Musharraf: he understood the healing powers of the status quo.
The best thing to have happened to Home Minister P. Chidambaram's proposed trip to Washington, in the dying days of a disappearing administration, is that it has been postponed. We all know that Chidambaram is a good lawyer when not engaged in politics, but what precisely did he hope to achieve in the last week of George Bush's unlamented rule?
He was ostensibly going to present evidence on the role of Pakistanis in the terrorist attack on Mumbai. Is there any paper in his travelling files that is so secret that it could not have been handed over to the FBI in Delhi? Chidambaram was going to talk, and therein lay a minor opportunity and a major danger.
Chidambaram might be justified in believing he has a persuasive tongue, but he might have returned with a problem, instead of solving the one he went to pursue. To start with, Washington does not need to be convinced that there are terrorist outfits in Pakistan that have India in their gun sights. They know this already. They deal with these groups, and have the most extensive intelligence on them, information built up not just during the current war in Afghanistan-Pakistan, but over at least two decades. According to one American assessment, Osama bin Laden has placed India at the top of the list of the world's soft targets, now that America has hardened its security regime. Washington has already accepted Delhi's line as credible. So the only subject for real discussion is follow-up action. This is where the dangers lie.
Chidambaram would have been the last foreign politician to do business with the Bush administration. Was this fortuitous or deliberate? Deliberate, I reckon. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is still bathing in the glow of a special relationship he manufactured with George Bush, and believes that Bush will be as loyal to him as he has been loyal to Bush. After all, in that unique opinion poll taken by Dr Singh, every Indian loves Bush. But Bush has no real authority to take any serious decisions, apart from whom to invite for a picture opportunity. Every strategic matter now awaits the arrival of Barack Obama on 20 January. There is no foreign policy issue more important on Obama's table than the Afghan war. His views are known: a big stick in one hand, and lots of carrots in the other. The "surge" has already begun, and by the middle of this year America will have 63,000 troops in Afghanistan. While the Taliban is being "tamed" on the battlefield, bribes will be liberally distributed to tribal chiefs to wean them towards the side of American civilisation. Pakistan is an invaluable ally in both operations. Its forces will be asked to sanitise those regions in Pakistan, which are a base for Taliban, while its famous Directorate of Inter Services Intelligence (popularly known as ISI) will be invaluable in identifying the recipients of carrots. Obama will need Pakistan far more than Bush did.
No deal with Delhi, nuclear or strategic, can change a basic fact. As long as America is in Afghanistan, India is a friend and Pakistan is an ally.
This alliance has been integrated into firm institutional relationships, beginning with the Cold War when Pakistan bought into Pentagon goodwill by offering Peshawar as a base for spy reconnaissance missions across the Soviet Union on U2 planes. This was further honed during two Afghan wars, against the Soviet Union and now the Taliban, into an intimate interaction between intelligence services. The CIA and the ISI are sister agencies. The ISI first flourished when it became the major conduit for funds and arms to the Mujahideen against the Soviets. It now has some 10,000 regular employees on its payroll. Washington will not jettison this equation because of a terrorist attack in Mumbai. Organizations like the Lashkar-e-Toyeba have emerged from the murk in which a war with parallel, and occasionally shifting, loyalties is being fought.
The head of the ISI is clearly the second most powerful general in the Pak Army. Former ISI chief Ashfaq Kayani was fortunate enough to be in the right place when Pervez Musharraf first fell from grace and then fell from power. When the present chief General Ahmed Shuja gives an interview it is front-page news.
Washington gives the ISI and Pakistan a great deal of leeway in deference to ground realities. It understands that the political structure in Islamabad is wobbly at best, and it will do nothing to weaken it further by backing such Indian demands as may be unpopular in Pakistan. The FBI has already said that it is not interested in picking up suspects from the Lashkar-e-Toyeba, noting that Pakistan is quite capable of trying them in its own courts.
Washington could also place linkage on the table in any talks with Delhi on Pak-sourced terrorism. We have, with great difficulty and greater diplomatic consistency, finally managed to convince America and Europe to treat Kashmir as a bipartisan issue after the disastrous reference we made to the United Nations in the winter of 1947-1948.
Pakistan has responded to our diplomatic offensive after the Mumbai attack by seeking to once again internationalise Kashmir through the "root causes" argument. Islamabad's line is not very complicated: terrorism is fuelled by despair over Kashmir, so if you want to end terrorism, you have to solve the Kashmir dispute.
Washington would, in all likelihood, have raised this during talks with Chidambaram since it has accepted Pakistan's argument that if the war in Afghanistan deserves the full attention of Pak armed forces, then its security concerns on the eastern front must be neutralised by a settlement of the Kashmir problem. Ergo, settle.
There is a signature petition being circulated in the Kashmir valley at this moment seeking Obama's intervention, amid expectations that the new President will be receptive. He comes to office riding on a promise ("Yes we can"), but without that optimism pinned to any delivery system. It might take him 18 months or two years to realise that in Kashmir, "No we can't". It would be naïve to offer Washington an inroad into the Kashmir dispute before experience in office has taught Obama that intellect is not necessarily synonymous with wisdom.
The Soviet Union's first foreign minister and Marxist ideologue Leon Trotsky had a message that is still relevant to new leaders bubbling with hope and audacity: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." Israel and Palestine have already started a war that is interested in Obama. He would be wise to limit Afghanistan's battlefields to either side of the Durand Line. Even good intentions can engender a slip into the treacherous quicksands of South Asia that would send us all into a toxic swamp.
I never thought I would write this so soon, but one is already turning nostalgic for General Musharraf: he understood the healing powers of the status quo.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Forget others, can we find peace with ourselves?
Forget others, can we find peace with ourselves?
By M J Akbar
The only good thing about 2008 is that it is over. What remains intriguing is the optimism with which we wish peace in a new year when there is none within view. We lost peace in the China war of 1962 and have not found it again. Since then blood has been shed in conventional war, domestic strife, communal bitterness, secessionist mayhem, Maoist insurrection and, worst of all, terrorism. If it was not the enemy without, battering at our integrity, it was the spoilt child within, ripping up stability with violent belligerence. Powerful politicians often nurtured this child in search of votes, and screamed like hypocrites when it turned into a monster.
In the fond hope that music is an antidote to depression, I have been searching for a theme song for 2008. How about this old Mukesh-Raj Kapoor number?
Aasman mein hai Khuda, aur zamin pe hum/ Aaj kal wo is taraf dekhta hai kum (God is in His Heaven, we're here on earth/ These days, alas, He gives us a wide berth).
The poet does not make facile accusations against the Almighty; he provides evidence: Chal rahi hain goliyan, phat rahe hain bomb.
If Raj Kapoor found the bullets and bombs of the Fifties troublesome, he might have given up singing in 2008. The first decade of free India was also the last decade of peace. We got so excited that we named Nehru the world's Messenger of Peace. Even Pakistan, after going to war in Kashmir within ten weeks of freedom, opted for the calm of the status quo.
It is axiomatic that the enemy will not attack unless he perceives vulnerability within us. China was encouraged by Nehru's complacent defence minister Krishna Menon, who thought oratory was a substitute for firepower. Gen Ayub Khan's hallucinations in 1965 were surely prompted by our military failure in 1962. Gen Zia ul Haq realized that India could no longer be defeated in conventional war, and so shifted his attention to the soft underbelly, the weak ring around a civilian India groping through complex socio-political challenges and aspirations. He exploited Punjab with malign dexterity; but it was our political class that let Punjab happen.
That is a quarter century ago. We have developed, since then, a fine military, become a nuclear power and, within the last decade, turned into a story for the business pages. Why does a terrorist organization sitting in Pakistan still consider us vulnerable enough to mount an audacious invasion, weaving its way through the corruption of our systems and the chaos of our cities?
Corruption and chaos are symptoms. The true fault lines lie elsewhere. In 60 years, we should have become a rich country with poor people. Instead we remain a poor country with rich people. Equality is a chimera; we recognize that. But a nation cannot abandon equity as the operative principle of economic growth.
Philip Larkin, the bitter-sweet English poet, once semi-joked that sex began in 1963. Ideology died in 1991. Britain discovered sex in social liberation. Ideology was killed when a laissez faire philosophy, fattened on the corpse of the Soviet Union, took over. I am no admirer of Soviet socialism; it was a dreary concept, fettered in bureaucratic aridity, and pumped up by pseudo-imperialism. But when the fetid bathwater was thrown away, some vital babies disappeared as well. Among them was the responsibility of government as arbitrator between wealth and justice. Delhi abandoned past policy with good reason, but forgot that the poor must be part of any rising story if that rise has to be sustained. Our upper world is the stuff of television, advertising and government claims, but there is a nether world of poverty, indifference and crime. It will not remain quiescent forever.
Time is not infinite. We measure history by the length of our lifetimes, even if our lives might merit no more than a sentence in future tomes. 2009 will be the last year of another decade. Can we look forward to a new decade of comparative peace? We may or may not find peace with our enemies. Can we find peace with ourselves?
Not until there is a political leadership as committed to India as it is committed to office.
Perhaps another line of poetry is needed: Nazaron mein lagi hai pabandi, deedar ki baatein karte hain! There is a blindfold across their eyes, and they talk of vision!
Appeared in Times of India - January 04, 2009
By M J Akbar
The only good thing about 2008 is that it is over. What remains intriguing is the optimism with which we wish peace in a new year when there is none within view. We lost peace in the China war of 1962 and have not found it again. Since then blood has been shed in conventional war, domestic strife, communal bitterness, secessionist mayhem, Maoist insurrection and, worst of all, terrorism. If it was not the enemy without, battering at our integrity, it was the spoilt child within, ripping up stability with violent belligerence. Powerful politicians often nurtured this child in search of votes, and screamed like hypocrites when it turned into a monster.
In the fond hope that music is an antidote to depression, I have been searching for a theme song for 2008. How about this old Mukesh-Raj Kapoor number?
Aasman mein hai Khuda, aur zamin pe hum/ Aaj kal wo is taraf dekhta hai kum (God is in His Heaven, we're here on earth/ These days, alas, He gives us a wide berth).
The poet does not make facile accusations against the Almighty; he provides evidence: Chal rahi hain goliyan, phat rahe hain bomb.
If Raj Kapoor found the bullets and bombs of the Fifties troublesome, he might have given up singing in 2008. The first decade of free India was also the last decade of peace. We got so excited that we named Nehru the world's Messenger of Peace. Even Pakistan, after going to war in Kashmir within ten weeks of freedom, opted for the calm of the status quo.
It is axiomatic that the enemy will not attack unless he perceives vulnerability within us. China was encouraged by Nehru's complacent defence minister Krishna Menon, who thought oratory was a substitute for firepower. Gen Ayub Khan's hallucinations in 1965 were surely prompted by our military failure in 1962. Gen Zia ul Haq realized that India could no longer be defeated in conventional war, and so shifted his attention to the soft underbelly, the weak ring around a civilian India groping through complex socio-political challenges and aspirations. He exploited Punjab with malign dexterity; but it was our political class that let Punjab happen.
That is a quarter century ago. We have developed, since then, a fine military, become a nuclear power and, within the last decade, turned into a story for the business pages. Why does a terrorist organization sitting in Pakistan still consider us vulnerable enough to mount an audacious invasion, weaving its way through the corruption of our systems and the chaos of our cities?
Corruption and chaos are symptoms. The true fault lines lie elsewhere. In 60 years, we should have become a rich country with poor people. Instead we remain a poor country with rich people. Equality is a chimera; we recognize that. But a nation cannot abandon equity as the operative principle of economic growth.
Philip Larkin, the bitter-sweet English poet, once semi-joked that sex began in 1963. Ideology died in 1991. Britain discovered sex in social liberation. Ideology was killed when a laissez faire philosophy, fattened on the corpse of the Soviet Union, took over. I am no admirer of Soviet socialism; it was a dreary concept, fettered in bureaucratic aridity, and pumped up by pseudo-imperialism. But when the fetid bathwater was thrown away, some vital babies disappeared as well. Among them was the responsibility of government as arbitrator between wealth and justice. Delhi abandoned past policy with good reason, but forgot that the poor must be part of any rising story if that rise has to be sustained. Our upper world is the stuff of television, advertising and government claims, but there is a nether world of poverty, indifference and crime. It will not remain quiescent forever.
Time is not infinite. We measure history by the length of our lifetimes, even if our lives might merit no more than a sentence in future tomes. 2009 will be the last year of another decade. Can we look forward to a new decade of comparative peace? We may or may not find peace with our enemies. Can we find peace with ourselves?
Not until there is a political leadership as committed to India as it is committed to office.
Perhaps another line of poetry is needed: Nazaron mein lagi hai pabandi, deedar ki baatein karte hain! There is a blindfold across their eyes, and they talk of vision!
Appeared in Times of India - January 04, 2009
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Small boys, big game
Byline by M J Akbar: Small boys, big game
There is only one relevant question in an election year: who will win? The pundits have begun to get themselves into the usual tangle, most of the tangle created by the spin of bias. The right thing to do would be to admit that no one really knows, but that would reduce a column to just one sentence. Since pundits get their money from columns rather than sentences, this is an inadequate solution to their dilemma.
If they must stretch their wisdom to a thousand words, may I offer a suggestion? They are making a mistake by looking at the big boys. The elections of 2009 might well be a game whose result is determined by the small boys.
Allies, rather than principals, could be the key to the formation of the next coalition in Delhi. It will also depend on how many seats the Third Front gets, and on which side its partners fall if they have to choose between the UPA and the NDA.
The three major allies of the Congress are Lalu Yadav in Bihar, M. Karunanidhi in Tamil Nadu and Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra. There is bad news for the Congress in all three states. The Chennai street is buzzing with talk about a triumphant return for Jayalalithaa. Between the pain of family feuds and the disgust of unprecedented corruption, the DMK seems to have lost it. It is often forgotten that the DMK has been in power in Delhi for two terms, first as an NDA partner and then in the UPA. That is a lot of temptation for DMK ministers in Delhi to handle, and they handled it by succumbing totally. They may have begun life from the usual humble origins, and they could be out of office soon, but trust me, they will never be poor again — for many generations.
In Maharashtra the Congress is facing a double-whammy. There is a dip in both voter-support as well as in the cadre. The voters have shifted to the Opposition after two nearly-full terms of a best-forgotten chief minister, who has had, uniquely, to be dropped twice. A good section of the Congress cadre has moved to Sharad Pawar, who has been building his party as a regional force for the state, on the lines of Telegu Desam and DMK/AIADMK. He has nominated an heir, his daughter, and the next general election may see her shift into the Lok Sabha from the Rajya Sabha. His best legacy is not a victory in 2009, but a strong party structure that can survive the ephemeral phases of democracy. Pawar is sharp enough to see the future clearly. For 2009 is a transition, not a horizon.
The UPA bastion in the east is crumbling. Nitish Kumar, with the simple offer of good governance, has made substantial inroads into Lalu territory. Muslims are moving towards him in substantial numbers, and Lalu Yadav's traditional vote-bank rhetoric about the BJP will not stop the drift, since the voter has made good governance his pre-eminent priority. The Congress has the difficult task of not only preventing erosion in its own numbers, but also compensating for the losses that will be suffered by its allies.
Since 1991, allies have gained far more from alliances with the Congress than the other way around. Lalu Yadav has boxed the Congress into just four seats out of 40 in Bihar. When a party does not contest seats, it withers at the roots, which is what has happened to the Congress. Mulayam Singh Yadav will not concede more than 15 seats out of 80 in UP; Mamata Banerjee will keep the Congress down to 10 out of 42 in Bengal. Congress will gain in states like Kerala and Punjab, and could improve its numbers slightly in Rajasthan, but that will not easily offset losses in big states like Maharashtra, Andhra and Tamil Nadu.
One assumes that Congress believes it can use the BJP bogey to bring in the Left and Third Front parties into its coalition after the results. This will not be easy. The Left believes it has been betrayed, and abused, by Dr Manmohan Singh, inside and outside Parliament, over the strategic alliance with the United States. It is not likely to hand over leadership of any alliance it supports to the Congress. Congress might offer to prop up a minority government from outside, but other parties will recall what happened to I.K. Gujral and Deve Gowda. They might prefer stability to a temporary triumph.
The balance will, in any case, swing towards the alliance with the larger numbers. To be in play, the BJP-led NDA must deliver over 220 seats. Will that happen?
Why don't we let the electorate tell us in April and May? The pundit pontificates. The citizen votes.
Before we bury another year (this one with great glee) it is only appropriate to write an epitaph for 2008.
A word coined by the growing tribe of wordsmiths, and an email doing the rounds (both gleaned from the special Christmas issue of the Spectator) seem to be the perfect epitaph for the dreadful year just behind us. The word is quite a good one, not the least because it resembles an expletive: "funt", meaning "financially untouchable". But the email is more fun:
Socialism: You have two cows. State nationalises one and gives it to your neighbour.
Communism: State takes both and gives you some milk.
Fascism: State takes both and sells you some milk.
Capitalism: You sell one of your cows and buy a bull; herd multiplies, economy grows. Sell them, and retire on income.
Lehman Brothers Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at Bear Stearns, execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with tax exemption for five. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights of all seven cows to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option for one more. You sell one cow to buy the President of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the press release. The public then buys your bull.
There is only one relevant question in an election year: who will win? The pundits have begun to get themselves into the usual tangle, most of the tangle created by the spin of bias. The right thing to do would be to admit that no one really knows, but that would reduce a column to just one sentence. Since pundits get their money from columns rather than sentences, this is an inadequate solution to their dilemma.
If they must stretch their wisdom to a thousand words, may I offer a suggestion? They are making a mistake by looking at the big boys. The elections of 2009 might well be a game whose result is determined by the small boys.
Allies, rather than principals, could be the key to the formation of the next coalition in Delhi. It will also depend on how many seats the Third Front gets, and on which side its partners fall if they have to choose between the UPA and the NDA.
The three major allies of the Congress are Lalu Yadav in Bihar, M. Karunanidhi in Tamil Nadu and Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra. There is bad news for the Congress in all three states. The Chennai street is buzzing with talk about a triumphant return for Jayalalithaa. Between the pain of family feuds and the disgust of unprecedented corruption, the DMK seems to have lost it. It is often forgotten that the DMK has been in power in Delhi for two terms, first as an NDA partner and then in the UPA. That is a lot of temptation for DMK ministers in Delhi to handle, and they handled it by succumbing totally. They may have begun life from the usual humble origins, and they could be out of office soon, but trust me, they will never be poor again — for many generations.
In Maharashtra the Congress is facing a double-whammy. There is a dip in both voter-support as well as in the cadre. The voters have shifted to the Opposition after two nearly-full terms of a best-forgotten chief minister, who has had, uniquely, to be dropped twice. A good section of the Congress cadre has moved to Sharad Pawar, who has been building his party as a regional force for the state, on the lines of Telegu Desam and DMK/AIADMK. He has nominated an heir, his daughter, and the next general election may see her shift into the Lok Sabha from the Rajya Sabha. His best legacy is not a victory in 2009, but a strong party structure that can survive the ephemeral phases of democracy. Pawar is sharp enough to see the future clearly. For 2009 is a transition, not a horizon.
The UPA bastion in the east is crumbling. Nitish Kumar, with the simple offer of good governance, has made substantial inroads into Lalu territory. Muslims are moving towards him in substantial numbers, and Lalu Yadav's traditional vote-bank rhetoric about the BJP will not stop the drift, since the voter has made good governance his pre-eminent priority. The Congress has the difficult task of not only preventing erosion in its own numbers, but also compensating for the losses that will be suffered by its allies.
Since 1991, allies have gained far more from alliances with the Congress than the other way around. Lalu Yadav has boxed the Congress into just four seats out of 40 in Bihar. When a party does not contest seats, it withers at the roots, which is what has happened to the Congress. Mulayam Singh Yadav will not concede more than 15 seats out of 80 in UP; Mamata Banerjee will keep the Congress down to 10 out of 42 in Bengal. Congress will gain in states like Kerala and Punjab, and could improve its numbers slightly in Rajasthan, but that will not easily offset losses in big states like Maharashtra, Andhra and Tamil Nadu.
One assumes that Congress believes it can use the BJP bogey to bring in the Left and Third Front parties into its coalition after the results. This will not be easy. The Left believes it has been betrayed, and abused, by Dr Manmohan Singh, inside and outside Parliament, over the strategic alliance with the United States. It is not likely to hand over leadership of any alliance it supports to the Congress. Congress might offer to prop up a minority government from outside, but other parties will recall what happened to I.K. Gujral and Deve Gowda. They might prefer stability to a temporary triumph.
The balance will, in any case, swing towards the alliance with the larger numbers. To be in play, the BJP-led NDA must deliver over 220 seats. Will that happen?
Why don't we let the electorate tell us in April and May? The pundit pontificates. The citizen votes.
Before we bury another year (this one with great glee) it is only appropriate to write an epitaph for 2008.
A word coined by the growing tribe of wordsmiths, and an email doing the rounds (both gleaned from the special Christmas issue of the Spectator) seem to be the perfect epitaph for the dreadful year just behind us. The word is quite a good one, not the least because it resembles an expletive: "funt", meaning "financially untouchable". But the email is more fun:
Socialism: You have two cows. State nationalises one and gives it to your neighbour.
Communism: State takes both and gives you some milk.
Fascism: State takes both and sells you some milk.
Capitalism: You sell one of your cows and buy a bull; herd multiplies, economy grows. Sell them, and retire on income.
Lehman Brothers Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at Bear Stearns, execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with tax exemption for five. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights of all seven cows to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option for one more. You sell one cow to buy the President of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the press release. The public then buys your bull.
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