Gamble or be damned
By M J Akbar
In India Today - Byword
Srinagar's Lal Chowk was a destination for the BJP's Republic Day agenda, but not an objective. The BJP was sending a message to India rather than Kashmir, which it did effectively enough thanks to the caravan of cameras that is in statutory attendance around any drama. Once the curious harmony of military drumbeat and popular-culture rhythm in the January 26 parade is over by noon, it becomes a slow news day. The BJP's tricolour wheeze got screen-to-screen coverage. Point made.
Parties in power often need the crutch of ambiguity; being forthright might be quite the wrong thing to do when you are trying to squeeze a negotiated calm out of ongoing confrontation. A Prime Minister like Dr Manmohan Singh has a natural tendency to rise above the normal play of interests. In fact, both Government and Opposition are acting out what is essentially a charade on Kashmir. Their play is tactical rather than strategic because, despite their differences, neither can see much beyond the present. The BJP is comfortable with a dead-end horizon, because it is fixed on the status quo as a solution, and will fight aggressively to project itself as guardian of this interest.
Dr Singh is uneasy about the inherent instability in irresolution, but is helpless for two reasons. There is no clarity about where to go, how to go and with whom to go forward. He is walking on a long, lonely road, with shifting and even shifty companions. He cannot afford to be certain about Pakistan, which must travel alongside, albeit at some distance, for anything to change for the better. With the best will, Pakistani leaders may be unable to cooperate on a route that has been waylaid by three wars, and is regularly invaded by pirates and terrorists.
Survival is the first duty of any politician, and this means that he cannot wander too far from the policy limits set by public opinion. But Dr Singh, like his predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee, also has to assess and factor in the variables of managing his own party. The Congress is not interested in winning the Nobel Prize for Peace. It would much prefer another term in Delhi to a place in history.
A bad agreement between India and Pakistan is immeasurably worse than no agreement; and so far there has been no pact that has been equally cheered by both sides. The surface may seem placid in the event of a non-event, but dormant passions spit out like lava when agreement is reached through compromise.
Field Marshal Ayub Khan, author of the 1965 war, could not survive the Tashkent Agreement of January 1966 because he had promised his people triumph and ended the game with a draw. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, chief theorist of that war, became a hero when he betrayed his mentor, Ayub. Lal Bahadur Shastri would not have received too warm a welcome back home either in 1966; but he died suddenly just after putting his signature to the Tashkent pact. Bhutto made it known to Mrs Indira Gandhi at Shimla in 1972 that he would not be able to return home if he accepted the Cease-Fire Line in Kashmir as the permanent boundary. She conceded the point, with consequences that engulf and enrage us today.
There seem two unhappy options. Nothing can change in Kashmir except atmospherics. Or there is a "settlement" that either dresses up the generational Pakistani demand for the "liberation" of Kashmiri Muslims from "Hindu rule" with fudge; or changes the existing map in Pakistan's favour: try selling the first in the Pakistani bazaar and the second in an Indian mall.
Those who do not learn from history, we have been advised, are condemned to repeat its follies. India and Pakistan may be suffering from too much history. Generations change quickly in power; at best they last a decade. Each new incumbent, glowing with good intentions, hallucinates about writing the future on a clean page, and then inlaid stains within the paper seep through and blot the message.
Pessimism is boring when you are young, but at least it is not fatal. Optimism can be heartbreaking. Equally, it is arid and pointless to live without hope. So what do we do about this trap that has become coated with poisonous rust? Doing nothing is not an answer.
Maybe what India and Pakistan need in Delhi and Islamabad are not two dynamic politicians but two compulsive and courageous gamblers.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
The many battles for Deoband
Byline by M J Akbar: The many battles for Deoband
One of the great follies of the contemporary world is the conversion of the priest, of any faith, into a cartoon character. And so the imam is caricatured with an elongated beard and twisted eye; the pandit has an exaggerated tuft, obese stomach and gloats; the Christian father wears a sanctimonious air barely disguising a leer. This nonsense is largely due to the decline of religion in the ebbing moral universe of modern man, and partly due to the existence of a radical extreme at the edge of every clerical class, which justifies violence in the name of a higher power.
Faith — mosque, temple or church — has been a traditional sanctuary of the people in their constant struggle against innumerable forms of autocracy and dictatorship that have been the tragedy of human history. The institutions of God provide a comfort zone to the individual persecuted by institutions of man, particularly during moments of distress. Faith is often a symbol of resistance, as autocratic Arab regimes are discovering today when the streets are finally alive with the thunder of long-overdue protest against smug dictatorships that confused their harsh intelligence services with intelligence.
Competent governments, whether of dictators or democrats, have understood the power of the clergy and chosen a dual response: repression of the radical extreme and a continuous attempt to co-opt the clergy into the establishment through a less than discreet combination of flattery and bribery. The real test for the clergy comes not during periods of relative calm, but during phases of social and political oppression.
If we want to understand the influence of the ulema in the life of the Indian Muslim, particularly in north India, then we must remember the sterling part they played in the age of decline, the 19th century, when every other of pillar of sustenance crumbled, either eaten by the worms of decay and decadence, or defeated by the rising force of British arms. It was the clergy that held the community together, even as its radical wing, led by the students, or taliban, of the seminary of Shah Waliullah launched a jihad for the restoration of political power. That war failed, but those who did not go to war provided a greater service through leadership at the micro level to a community that was under such economic and social pressure that it feared the loss not only of sustenance but also its most cherished elements of language and culture. Out of such traumatic conditions was an institution like the Dar-ul-Uloom at Deoband born nearly a century and a half ago.
Its founders refused to accept a single rupee as donation from the British; its small band of teachers and students ate what the local community offered. Mahatma Gandhi recognised not just the theological importance of this seminary but also the empirical influence of its grassroots connections. Deoband was the antithesis of the elitist, Nawab and landlord-dominated Muslim politics of the early 20th century.
Deoband is often demonised by a Western-influenced discourse. Yes, there is a fringe that has converted Deoband into a fatwa factory for regressive pronouncements; and some of its influences have been distorted to justify violence. But every great centre of education produces a few children who dishonour their intellectual parent. Deoband is a tremendous resource for those Muslims who do not have the advantage of birth or lineage. It is the hope and dream not only of those who want to serve Allah through the mosque, but also young men who see in its educational repository a chance for a better life. The place it commands in the affections of Muslims makes Deoband a power centre; and where there is power, there will be politics. What we are seeing at the moment is a political battle between factions, and the vested interests that feed off them, for the control of Deoband.
There are many reasons for the unrest generated by the appointment of Maulana Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi as mohtamim, or virtual vice chancellor. Vastanvi is a remarkable Maulana who started a school with just six students in a hut in a tribal region on the Gujarat-Maharashtra border in 1979, and built it into an institution with 200,000 students across the country. This is why he is the first person from outside the immediate UP region to be given this honour and responsibility. His presence promised the reform that students thirst for; but it also threatened to upset the cartel that has used Deoband to squeeze out personal benefits from Delhi and abroad. These deep-seated interests would have challenged Vastanvi on any pretext; they found an emotive one with the help of narcissistic, power-hungry journalists in their club.
Deoband is, as has happened before, at a crossroads. If Deoband has become the property of a clerical group that wants to exploit this great name for its own greed, then Vastanvi will be driven out. If Deoband remains honest to the ideals of its founding fathers, then it will lead the way to educational reform and open thought that can turn an underprivileged Indian Muslim child into a privileged adult.
One of the great follies of the contemporary world is the conversion of the priest, of any faith, into a cartoon character. And so the imam is caricatured with an elongated beard and twisted eye; the pandit has an exaggerated tuft, obese stomach and gloats; the Christian father wears a sanctimonious air barely disguising a leer. This nonsense is largely due to the decline of religion in the ebbing moral universe of modern man, and partly due to the existence of a radical extreme at the edge of every clerical class, which justifies violence in the name of a higher power.
Faith — mosque, temple or church — has been a traditional sanctuary of the people in their constant struggle against innumerable forms of autocracy and dictatorship that have been the tragedy of human history. The institutions of God provide a comfort zone to the individual persecuted by institutions of man, particularly during moments of distress. Faith is often a symbol of resistance, as autocratic Arab regimes are discovering today when the streets are finally alive with the thunder of long-overdue protest against smug dictatorships that confused their harsh intelligence services with intelligence.
Competent governments, whether of dictators or democrats, have understood the power of the clergy and chosen a dual response: repression of the radical extreme and a continuous attempt to co-opt the clergy into the establishment through a less than discreet combination of flattery and bribery. The real test for the clergy comes not during periods of relative calm, but during phases of social and political oppression.
If we want to understand the influence of the ulema in the life of the Indian Muslim, particularly in north India, then we must remember the sterling part they played in the age of decline, the 19th century, when every other of pillar of sustenance crumbled, either eaten by the worms of decay and decadence, or defeated by the rising force of British arms. It was the clergy that held the community together, even as its radical wing, led by the students, or taliban, of the seminary of Shah Waliullah launched a jihad for the restoration of political power. That war failed, but those who did not go to war provided a greater service through leadership at the micro level to a community that was under such economic and social pressure that it feared the loss not only of sustenance but also its most cherished elements of language and culture. Out of such traumatic conditions was an institution like the Dar-ul-Uloom at Deoband born nearly a century and a half ago.
Its founders refused to accept a single rupee as donation from the British; its small band of teachers and students ate what the local community offered. Mahatma Gandhi recognised not just the theological importance of this seminary but also the empirical influence of its grassroots connections. Deoband was the antithesis of the elitist, Nawab and landlord-dominated Muslim politics of the early 20th century.
Deoband is often demonised by a Western-influenced discourse. Yes, there is a fringe that has converted Deoband into a fatwa factory for regressive pronouncements; and some of its influences have been distorted to justify violence. But every great centre of education produces a few children who dishonour their intellectual parent. Deoband is a tremendous resource for those Muslims who do not have the advantage of birth or lineage. It is the hope and dream not only of those who want to serve Allah through the mosque, but also young men who see in its educational repository a chance for a better life. The place it commands in the affections of Muslims makes Deoband a power centre; and where there is power, there will be politics. What we are seeing at the moment is a political battle between factions, and the vested interests that feed off them, for the control of Deoband.
There are many reasons for the unrest generated by the appointment of Maulana Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi as mohtamim, or virtual vice chancellor. Vastanvi is a remarkable Maulana who started a school with just six students in a hut in a tribal region on the Gujarat-Maharashtra border in 1979, and built it into an institution with 200,000 students across the country. This is why he is the first person from outside the immediate UP region to be given this honour and responsibility. His presence promised the reform that students thirst for; but it also threatened to upset the cartel that has used Deoband to squeeze out personal benefits from Delhi and abroad. These deep-seated interests would have challenged Vastanvi on any pretext; they found an emotive one with the help of narcissistic, power-hungry journalists in their club.
Deoband is, as has happened before, at a crossroads. If Deoband has become the property of a clerical group that wants to exploit this great name for its own greed, then Vastanvi will be driven out. If Deoband remains honest to the ideals of its founding fathers, then it will lead the way to educational reform and open thought that can turn an underprivileged Indian Muslim child into a privileged adult.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Needed: A hawk who can sing
Byline by M J Akbar: Needed: A hawk who can sing
Salman Bashir, Pakistan's foreign secretary, became fleetingly famous in Delhi when, after the last round of talks with his counterpart Nirupama Rao, he curled a lip and dismissed India's carefully prepared case against the Lashkar e Tayyaba, mentor of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, as "mere literature". Press reports indicate that he will be the next Pak high commissioner in India. Is that good news or bad?
Normally, hawks are not the best occupants of an embassy designed to either sow or cultivate that elusive and sometimes hallucinatory crop called peace. But since abnormality is the normal state of relations between India and Pakistan it makes sense to take a less obvious look at this appointment.
There are some indications that there could soon be a mild thaw on the Indo-Pak iceberg as both nations realise the futility of behaving like schoolchildren who have lost their marbles. At the moment of writing former Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri is on an aggressive rapprochement mission in Delhi, in the fertile company of his friend and peace-activist Mani Shankar Aiyar. Kasuri has been repeating his claim that if the lawyers movement had not derailed Pervez Musharraf in March 2007, he would have invited Dr Manmohan Singh over to Islamabad for a long chat and a grand finale marked by a settlement on Kashmir, with an option for a review of the treaty after 15 years.
Foreign ministers tend to be far more optimistic after they leave office, but we should not discount such a confident assertion. A little buzz has risen that the next round of talks at Thimpu might produce the opening for larger initiatives. India's home secretary G.K. Pillai told an audience in Delhi last week that paramilitary forces should be reduced by 25% in the Kashmir valley. It is true that within 24 hours he was hopping on his other leg, claiming that Pakistan had not done anything to bring the perpetrators of terrorism to justice, and was in fact indulging Hafiz Saeed and his like. But this sort of dance is familiar in the subcontinent's rhetoric: one leg moves deliberately to a different beat from the other.
One reason for Khurshid Kasuri's confidence is the fact that he was foreign minister of an Army regime. It is axiomatic that the Army will be guardian of hawks, so if the Musharraf-Kasuri Kashmir plan had the approval of general headquarters, then there is a chance that, at least in theory, it might walk. Alas, time is the enemy of theory. Pakistan has changed since the high noon of Kasuri's political career. Its extremists have shifted the discourse, most notably and recently through the assassination of Salman Taseer. It is unnecessary to name names, but Pakistan's liberals are in obvious retreat, because the state's security structure can no longer be guaranteed to protect. This is not all. There is widespread popular support for crucial, if not all, aspects of the kind of Islamism propagated by the Jamaat e Islami. Some sane commentators are articulating the thought that the fringe has morphed into the majority. There may be some exaggeration in this assessment, but the base of the fringe has visibly broadened. This is evident not only in the hero-worship of a murderer, but on television talk shows where the middle class sits in the audience.
Will the merchants of peace be able to persuade this decisively influential segment of Pakistan's political class that the "Jihad" in Kashmir should be abandoned before that "final victory" when their fantasy of a Pakistani flag over Srinagar comes true? India-Pakistan relations cannot be structured through a blindfold, and even a marginal glimpse will reveal the interventionist power of this lobby. Governments cannot negotiate peace if their political class is not ready for it.
Any Indian or Pakistani envoy posted in Delhi or Islamabad must have the qualities of Janus, the Greek god whose two faces could look in different directions. He must have the capacity to calm tensions with his host, and the credibility to convince his own nation that he is not selling his people short. There is always the possibility of a slip betwixt cup and lip in such appointments, but if Salman Bashir does reach Delhi, he would be perfectly suited to do the more important of his two responsibilities: reassure his audience back home that Pakistan's interests are in capable hands. If there is going to be talk of peace, then Bashir needs a stronger shield protecting his back than the one protecting his front. This is an era in the India-Pak dialogue when we need that unusual bird, a hawk who can sing.
We know that Basheer can be a hawk when he wants to fly up. We will find out in Delhi whether he can sing as well.
Salman Bashir, Pakistan's foreign secretary, became fleetingly famous in Delhi when, after the last round of talks with his counterpart Nirupama Rao, he curled a lip and dismissed India's carefully prepared case against the Lashkar e Tayyaba, mentor of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, as "mere literature". Press reports indicate that he will be the next Pak high commissioner in India. Is that good news or bad?
Normally, hawks are not the best occupants of an embassy designed to either sow or cultivate that elusive and sometimes hallucinatory crop called peace. But since abnormality is the normal state of relations between India and Pakistan it makes sense to take a less obvious look at this appointment.
There are some indications that there could soon be a mild thaw on the Indo-Pak iceberg as both nations realise the futility of behaving like schoolchildren who have lost their marbles. At the moment of writing former Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri is on an aggressive rapprochement mission in Delhi, in the fertile company of his friend and peace-activist Mani Shankar Aiyar. Kasuri has been repeating his claim that if the lawyers movement had not derailed Pervez Musharraf in March 2007, he would have invited Dr Manmohan Singh over to Islamabad for a long chat and a grand finale marked by a settlement on Kashmir, with an option for a review of the treaty after 15 years.
Foreign ministers tend to be far more optimistic after they leave office, but we should not discount such a confident assertion. A little buzz has risen that the next round of talks at Thimpu might produce the opening for larger initiatives. India's home secretary G.K. Pillai told an audience in Delhi last week that paramilitary forces should be reduced by 25% in the Kashmir valley. It is true that within 24 hours he was hopping on his other leg, claiming that Pakistan had not done anything to bring the perpetrators of terrorism to justice, and was in fact indulging Hafiz Saeed and his like. But this sort of dance is familiar in the subcontinent's rhetoric: one leg moves deliberately to a different beat from the other.
One reason for Khurshid Kasuri's confidence is the fact that he was foreign minister of an Army regime. It is axiomatic that the Army will be guardian of hawks, so if the Musharraf-Kasuri Kashmir plan had the approval of general headquarters, then there is a chance that, at least in theory, it might walk. Alas, time is the enemy of theory. Pakistan has changed since the high noon of Kasuri's political career. Its extremists have shifted the discourse, most notably and recently through the assassination of Salman Taseer. It is unnecessary to name names, but Pakistan's liberals are in obvious retreat, because the state's security structure can no longer be guaranteed to protect. This is not all. There is widespread popular support for crucial, if not all, aspects of the kind of Islamism propagated by the Jamaat e Islami. Some sane commentators are articulating the thought that the fringe has morphed into the majority. There may be some exaggeration in this assessment, but the base of the fringe has visibly broadened. This is evident not only in the hero-worship of a murderer, but on television talk shows where the middle class sits in the audience.
Will the merchants of peace be able to persuade this decisively influential segment of Pakistan's political class that the "Jihad" in Kashmir should be abandoned before that "final victory" when their fantasy of a Pakistani flag over Srinagar comes true? India-Pakistan relations cannot be structured through a blindfold, and even a marginal glimpse will reveal the interventionist power of this lobby. Governments cannot negotiate peace if their political class is not ready for it.
Any Indian or Pakistani envoy posted in Delhi or Islamabad must have the qualities of Janus, the Greek god whose two faces could look in different directions. He must have the capacity to calm tensions with his host, and the credibility to convince his own nation that he is not selling his people short. There is always the possibility of a slip betwixt cup and lip in such appointments, but if Salman Bashir does reach Delhi, he would be perfectly suited to do the more important of his two responsibilities: reassure his audience back home that Pakistan's interests are in capable hands. If there is going to be talk of peace, then Bashir needs a stronger shield protecting his back than the one protecting his front. This is an era in the India-Pak dialogue when we need that unusual bird, a hawk who can sing.
We know that Basheer can be a hawk when he wants to fly up. We will find out in Delhi whether he can sing as well.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Fig Leaf
Fig leaf
By M J Akbar
Third Eye (Byword) - India Today
January 21, 2011
Government is instinctively equated with power; and we expect the powerful to fall with a thud like an oak tree that makes the earth quiver. The ambience of authority makes us oblivious to another possibility. A government can also fall like a leaf. The time between twig and turf can stretch beyond the laws of gravity as the leaf is tossed by gusts of wind, or even driven up by continual storms. The turmoil of movement creates the illusion of life, but the truth is that the leaf is dead the moment it drops from the tree. Descent may take time, and burial even longer, but the fact of death cannot be changed.
The life of a government is measured by the gauge of credibility. It would be altogether too dramatic to write an obituary of the Manmohan Singh Government so soon. It may not be dead, but it was getting discredited. A double squeeze, of inflation and corruption, is sucking the breath out of this coalition. These two angry constituencies are not necessarily the same, although there is of course overlap. But the poor who are comparatively indifferent to corruption, dismissing it as an exchange of wealth within a broadband to which they have no access, are in despair over the escalating price of their basic needs. And the better off, who are comparatively indifferent to inflation, describing it as the inevitable price that an economy must pay for growth, are livid at the blatant loot that seems to have become a way of authorised life in Delhi.
A government might be able to handle one monster, but a combination of two leaves little room to manoeuvre. The urban middle class, Dr Singh's strongest support base, cannot quite get the logic of a reality in which the price of food rises by 30 per cent and the number of troops in the Kashmir warzone is reduced by 25 per cent. The middle class would much prefer the reverse.
The voter cannot understand what is happening because no one in the ruling class bothers to explain any statement or decision. If a big wheel like Home Secretary G.K. Pillai had some private information about a matching and verifiable downscaling of Pak forces on the other side of the Line of Control before he announced a unilateral reduction as part of a larger peace deal, he did not let us know. Instead, within 24 hours Pillai was standing on his other leg, accusing Pakistan of soft-pedalling on anti-Indian terrorism.
The two don't add up, unless I have lost my ability to count. Anything can happen when you live in Delhi.
Our human tendency towards drama has stretched the meaning of anarchy into the realm of confusion, violence and mayhem. But the pristine meaning of the word is more relevant: "lack of organisation and control, especially in society because of an absence or failure of government". The prime minister obviously cannot admit this in public, but he was responding to a growing perception of "absence or failure" when he decided that a reshuffle was necessary. This is too early for a normal shuffle; a mid-term correction should take place in the middle of the five-year term, not after just 18 months. A climate of crisis, and the hope that Dr Singh would reassert control of the ship of state, created expectations that would have been always difficult to honour. In the event, it was a bland sideways shuffle, rather than slash and burn of the ineffective and corrupt. But hidden in the seeming nonevent was a sharp message written with a scalpel. This shuffle has separated cronies from capitalists. That is the meaning of Murli Deora's shift from petroleum to corporate affairs. This first step needs to be supplemented by a great leap forward.
Every deal in a coalition involves give and take. Has the prime minister given more than he has taken? No one has been dropped; upliftment was cosmetic. Praful Patel, for instance, may have risen in status but dipped in influence. The most optimistic pro-prime minister gloss on the exercise is that this is a lastchance saloon before the real cull begins. Well, some of the big boys in this UPA have shot their way to survival before, and they will not go down without putting some lead into their opponents.
The leaf is still trembling on the tree; and it is in Dr Manmohan Singh's ability to ensure that it gets new life or breaks off. But he does not have much time.
By M J Akbar
Third Eye (Byword) - India Today
January 21, 2011
Government is instinctively equated with power; and we expect the powerful to fall with a thud like an oak tree that makes the earth quiver. The ambience of authority makes us oblivious to another possibility. A government can also fall like a leaf. The time between twig and turf can stretch beyond the laws of gravity as the leaf is tossed by gusts of wind, or even driven up by continual storms. The turmoil of movement creates the illusion of life, but the truth is that the leaf is dead the moment it drops from the tree. Descent may take time, and burial even longer, but the fact of death cannot be changed.
The life of a government is measured by the gauge of credibility. It would be altogether too dramatic to write an obituary of the Manmohan Singh Government so soon. It may not be dead, but it was getting discredited. A double squeeze, of inflation and corruption, is sucking the breath out of this coalition. These two angry constituencies are not necessarily the same, although there is of course overlap. But the poor who are comparatively indifferent to corruption, dismissing it as an exchange of wealth within a broadband to which they have no access, are in despair over the escalating price of their basic needs. And the better off, who are comparatively indifferent to inflation, describing it as the inevitable price that an economy must pay for growth, are livid at the blatant loot that seems to have become a way of authorised life in Delhi.
A government might be able to handle one monster, but a combination of two leaves little room to manoeuvre. The urban middle class, Dr Singh's strongest support base, cannot quite get the logic of a reality in which the price of food rises by 30 per cent and the number of troops in the Kashmir warzone is reduced by 25 per cent. The middle class would much prefer the reverse.
The voter cannot understand what is happening because no one in the ruling class bothers to explain any statement or decision. If a big wheel like Home Secretary G.K. Pillai had some private information about a matching and verifiable downscaling of Pak forces on the other side of the Line of Control before he announced a unilateral reduction as part of a larger peace deal, he did not let us know. Instead, within 24 hours Pillai was standing on his other leg, accusing Pakistan of soft-pedalling on anti-Indian terrorism.
The two don't add up, unless I have lost my ability to count. Anything can happen when you live in Delhi.
Our human tendency towards drama has stretched the meaning of anarchy into the realm of confusion, violence and mayhem. But the pristine meaning of the word is more relevant: "lack of organisation and control, especially in society because of an absence or failure of government". The prime minister obviously cannot admit this in public, but he was responding to a growing perception of "absence or failure" when he decided that a reshuffle was necessary. This is too early for a normal shuffle; a mid-term correction should take place in the middle of the five-year term, not after just 18 months. A climate of crisis, and the hope that Dr Singh would reassert control of the ship of state, created expectations that would have been always difficult to honour. In the event, it was a bland sideways shuffle, rather than slash and burn of the ineffective and corrupt. But hidden in the seeming nonevent was a sharp message written with a scalpel. This shuffle has separated cronies from capitalists. That is the meaning of Murli Deora's shift from petroleum to corporate affairs. This first step needs to be supplemented by a great leap forward.
Every deal in a coalition involves give and take. Has the prime minister given more than he has taken? No one has been dropped; upliftment was cosmetic. Praful Patel, for instance, may have risen in status but dipped in influence. The most optimistic pro-prime minister gloss on the exercise is that this is a lastchance saloon before the real cull begins. Well, some of the big boys in this UPA have shot their way to survival before, and they will not go down without putting some lead into their opponents.
The leaf is still trembling on the tree; and it is in Dr Manmohan Singh's ability to ensure that it gets new life or breaks off. But he does not have much time.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
A sudden policy shift
Byline by M J Akbar: A sudden policy shift
The British Raj was the high noon of bureaucracy. The British sepoy armies might have won the day from Plassey to Seringapatnam and Alwaye, but it was the pre-1857 “writer” and post-1857 Indian Civil Service Sahib who converted a day into two centuries. No army can preserve victory; that is the responsibility of the civilian servant of the state.
Every empire becomes a fiefdom of the bureaucracy. The “qatibs”, or scribes [equivalent to the writers who are remembered in Calcutta’s seat of government, Writers’ Building], were so powerful that they successfully resisted the new technology called printing for fear that it would replace their work. The price was eventually paid by Ottoman society, for it could not benefit from the information revolution wrought by the printing press. Nearby Europe used printing to disseminate knowledge down the class stratifications, generating the industrial revolution that made Europe master of the world by the 19th century.
A bureaucracy prefers a single source of authority, and unfettered freedom to create and implement policy in the name of that authority. Bureaucrats constituted the Viceroy’s Council when the British Raj had unchallenged power. There are rules of course, and a good officer is scrupulous in adherence because confusion is anathema to his profession. This is where democracy becomes a bit of a problem.
Democracy devised a check: policy was the prerogative of the elected. The bureaucrat had responsibility without the power to offer or devise a solution. He could take his revenge through deviation, delay or prevarication but he could not supersede the minister. Nor could the minister behave like an autocrat. There is always accountability, internal and external. Policy in theory travels from minister to Cabinet; and Cabinet is a discordant chorus rather than an inspiring solo.
What do we make of, then, a bureaucrat being nominated to announce a major policy shift in one of the most sensitive problems facing the Indian state, Kashmir? On Friday it was Home Secretary G.K. Pillai who told a seminar, to which media had been invited, that government plans to cut paramilitary forces in the valley by 25% in one year, and offer unilaterally multiple-entry, six-month travel permits (not Indian passports, but specially designed permits that might leave the nationality question vague) to Kashmiris to cross the Line of Control into Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. This in effect allows anyone in Kashmir to go to Pakistan since there will be no restrictions by Pakistan on further movement. The Army chief, General V.K. Singh, who is the principal effective guarantor of security in Kashmir, was not informed that such a proposition was on the verge of implementation.
Normally, such an important swivel should have been announced by Home Minister P.C. Chidambaram, or even Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. There is only reason why they did not. They were using Pillai to test the waters of public and political opinion before the ship of state could be turned towards a different direction.
There is only question to ask, and it surely must be wandering through General Singh’s thoughts: have the twin threats of terrorism, much of it Pakistan-funded and inspired, and intrusions by elements of the Pak army reduced by 25%? Other questions emerge from this. What evidence do we have of any change in Pakistan’s covert policies towards India? Relations, bolstered by back-channel talks, between India and Pakistan were improving until the terrorist attack on Mumbai. Delhi demanded that the sponsors of this terrible carnage, sitting pretty in Lahore, be held to account. Pakistan snubbed the thought. It has done nothing. Should we conclude, therefore, that the UPA government has decided to forget Mumbai and resume the pre-Mumbai equation with Pakistan? The UPA may be entirely rational in conceding defeat in the stand-off against Islamabad, but confession and clarity before the Indian people would help.
Or is this the start of an effort to change the primary subject of national discourse from corruption and food-price inflation? Rising prices, particularly when coupled with unemployment, are the most serious danger that any government can face. Even Arab dictators and monarchs are discovering that the people might learn to live with autocracy but they will not tolerate a government that cannot guarantee price security of essential food. In our country, anger against corruption has been supplemented by rage against the tyranny of onion prices.
The bureaucratic British Raj began by provoking a terrible famine in Bengal, between 1765 and 1770, that is estimated to have taken the lives of one-third of the population. The British left in 1947 after another catastrophic Bengal famine which destroyed the fictions of good governance that colonisation had created. Democracy does not have much tolerance for fiction. If the new policy towards Pakistan is being floated on the fiction of possible peace, or even as a diversionary tactic, it will extract a terrible price on UPA if another Mumbai or Kargil happens.
Bureaucrats do not lose their jobs. Politicians do.
The British Raj was the high noon of bureaucracy. The British sepoy armies might have won the day from Plassey to Seringapatnam and Alwaye, but it was the pre-1857 “writer” and post-1857 Indian Civil Service Sahib who converted a day into two centuries. No army can preserve victory; that is the responsibility of the civilian servant of the state.
Every empire becomes a fiefdom of the bureaucracy. The “qatibs”, or scribes [equivalent to the writers who are remembered in Calcutta’s seat of government, Writers’ Building], were so powerful that they successfully resisted the new technology called printing for fear that it would replace their work. The price was eventually paid by Ottoman society, for it could not benefit from the information revolution wrought by the printing press. Nearby Europe used printing to disseminate knowledge down the class stratifications, generating the industrial revolution that made Europe master of the world by the 19th century.
A bureaucracy prefers a single source of authority, and unfettered freedom to create and implement policy in the name of that authority. Bureaucrats constituted the Viceroy’s Council when the British Raj had unchallenged power. There are rules of course, and a good officer is scrupulous in adherence because confusion is anathema to his profession. This is where democracy becomes a bit of a problem.
Democracy devised a check: policy was the prerogative of the elected. The bureaucrat had responsibility without the power to offer or devise a solution. He could take his revenge through deviation, delay or prevarication but he could not supersede the minister. Nor could the minister behave like an autocrat. There is always accountability, internal and external. Policy in theory travels from minister to Cabinet; and Cabinet is a discordant chorus rather than an inspiring solo.
What do we make of, then, a bureaucrat being nominated to announce a major policy shift in one of the most sensitive problems facing the Indian state, Kashmir? On Friday it was Home Secretary G.K. Pillai who told a seminar, to which media had been invited, that government plans to cut paramilitary forces in the valley by 25% in one year, and offer unilaterally multiple-entry, six-month travel permits (not Indian passports, but specially designed permits that might leave the nationality question vague) to Kashmiris to cross the Line of Control into Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. This in effect allows anyone in Kashmir to go to Pakistan since there will be no restrictions by Pakistan on further movement. The Army chief, General V.K. Singh, who is the principal effective guarantor of security in Kashmir, was not informed that such a proposition was on the verge of implementation.
Normally, such an important swivel should have been announced by Home Minister P.C. Chidambaram, or even Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. There is only reason why they did not. They were using Pillai to test the waters of public and political opinion before the ship of state could be turned towards a different direction.
There is only question to ask, and it surely must be wandering through General Singh’s thoughts: have the twin threats of terrorism, much of it Pakistan-funded and inspired, and intrusions by elements of the Pak army reduced by 25%? Other questions emerge from this. What evidence do we have of any change in Pakistan’s covert policies towards India? Relations, bolstered by back-channel talks, between India and Pakistan were improving until the terrorist attack on Mumbai. Delhi demanded that the sponsors of this terrible carnage, sitting pretty in Lahore, be held to account. Pakistan snubbed the thought. It has done nothing. Should we conclude, therefore, that the UPA government has decided to forget Mumbai and resume the pre-Mumbai equation with Pakistan? The UPA may be entirely rational in conceding defeat in the stand-off against Islamabad, but confession and clarity before the Indian people would help.
Or is this the start of an effort to change the primary subject of national discourse from corruption and food-price inflation? Rising prices, particularly when coupled with unemployment, are the most serious danger that any government can face. Even Arab dictators and monarchs are discovering that the people might learn to live with autocracy but they will not tolerate a government that cannot guarantee price security of essential food. In our country, anger against corruption has been supplemented by rage against the tyranny of onion prices.
The bureaucratic British Raj began by provoking a terrible famine in Bengal, between 1765 and 1770, that is estimated to have taken the lives of one-third of the population. The British left in 1947 after another catastrophic Bengal famine which destroyed the fictions of good governance that colonisation had created. Democracy does not have much tolerance for fiction. If the new policy towards Pakistan is being floated on the fiction of possible peace, or even as a diversionary tactic, it will extract a terrible price on UPA if another Mumbai or Kargil happens.
Bureaucrats do not lose their jobs. Politicians do.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
The Praetorian Guard has risen
The Praetorian Guard has risen
By M J Akbar
Third Eye - India Today
January 15, 2011
The fall of the Roman Empire can be attributed to the rise of the Praetorian Guard. The glory of Rome was rooted in democracy, a Greek idea which Rome converted into a variable political virtue which lasted precisely because it was variable in an age when arbitrary dictatorship demanded either obedience or subservience. Rome evolved from the control of the Senate to the grip of the palace, but its Caesars began to crumble once the mercury of human nature became more corrosive than the fragility of institutions.
The instruments of state might respect an Emperor who delivered stability and lucrative power, but once the ruler became counter-productive or unstable, a liability rather than an asset, respect turned to contempt. The army was in charge of the state's security, which was convenient for the Emperor, since that kept it out of Rome. The security of the Emperor was guaranteed by a local, professional force known as the Praetorian Guard. It was a matter of time, and not too much time either, before the Guard became the power behind and in front of the throne. The Ottomans had a similar force in the Janissaries, who were the guardians of the Turkish rulers: wisely, they were men picked from conquered lands rather than locals, so they could be loyal to just their ruler rather than clan, tribe or faith.
Empires are dead, or at least increasingly untenable; but even a modern polity needs a Praetorian Guard. In India we call it the Special Protection Group, created for a select band of ruling class VIPs rather than just a dynasty. Pakistan has its own and more appropriately named Elite Force. The job requires grit and courage, because implicit in its discipline is the compulsion to act as a human shield between the assassin and the leader. What happens when the shield becomes the killer?
What persuades a man to turn his gun upon his benefactor? In the case of Rome it was political power. There is a more troublesome reason now: ideology.
There have been two instances of ideological assassination in India, the death of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi died because he chose to challenge secession in another country; Indira Gandhi because she was determined to save her own nation's integrity. A desire for a theocratic Sikh state was compounded by anger against Mrs Gandhi's decision to clear the Golden Temple with the help of the Army. But India had diversity, space and a non-negotiable commitment to democracy that helped contain the Sikh insurrection.
The crisis in Pakistan is far more dangerous. Its nationalism is defined by religion rather than ethnicity. Its sovereignty lies in the will of Allah. Liberal Pakistanis often argue that the people do not vote for Islamist parties, but that is self-delusion; the majority believe that the country needs a theocratic law to protect its identity.
Perhaps those Pakistanis who do not want to see their nation slip into a descending spiral of extremist madness need to eliminate the more disturbing truth from the discourse. The danger to Pakistan lies not merely in the fact that a 21-year-old called Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri killed Salman Taseer with the calm demeanour of an executioner doing his duty to a higher law, but the fact that all his colleagues were complicit in the crime. It was collusive and collective. He had informed his fellow bodyguards of his intentions, and their response was admiration. He was neither stopped before the deed, nor brutalised after it. He went to prison like a bridegroom rather than a criminal.
Significant sections of influential Pakistanis threw rose petals in accolade. It is perhaps understandable, if not justifiable, that an imam could not be found to lead a funeral prayer, since the clergy believe Taseer was an apostate. But the political class, exceptions apart, did not have the guts to appear at his funeral. It is almost certain that Qadri will be treated as a hero in prison rather than a criminal, and that the judicial system will try and be as lenient to him as it can.
This is the crossroads moment for Pakistan. Evidence suggests that the traffic is increasing on the road towards a theocratic revolution that will eventually consume its children in sectarian civil wars. Courageous Pakistanis like the former PPP minister Sherry Rehman know that they have already run out of time, but they are being isolated by those who think compromise can buy them a few more years in power.
We are seeing, unless we are lucky, the future of Pakistan on the face of Malik Qadri. The Praetorian Guard has risen.
By M J Akbar
Third Eye - India Today
January 15, 2011
The fall of the Roman Empire can be attributed to the rise of the Praetorian Guard. The glory of Rome was rooted in democracy, a Greek idea which Rome converted into a variable political virtue which lasted precisely because it was variable in an age when arbitrary dictatorship demanded either obedience or subservience. Rome evolved from the control of the Senate to the grip of the palace, but its Caesars began to crumble once the mercury of human nature became more corrosive than the fragility of institutions.
The instruments of state might respect an Emperor who delivered stability and lucrative power, but once the ruler became counter-productive or unstable, a liability rather than an asset, respect turned to contempt. The army was in charge of the state's security, which was convenient for the Emperor, since that kept it out of Rome. The security of the Emperor was guaranteed by a local, professional force known as the Praetorian Guard. It was a matter of time, and not too much time either, before the Guard became the power behind and in front of the throne. The Ottomans had a similar force in the Janissaries, who were the guardians of the Turkish rulers: wisely, they were men picked from conquered lands rather than locals, so they could be loyal to just their ruler rather than clan, tribe or faith.
Empires are dead, or at least increasingly untenable; but even a modern polity needs a Praetorian Guard. In India we call it the Special Protection Group, created for a select band of ruling class VIPs rather than just a dynasty. Pakistan has its own and more appropriately named Elite Force. The job requires grit and courage, because implicit in its discipline is the compulsion to act as a human shield between the assassin and the leader. What happens when the shield becomes the killer?
What persuades a man to turn his gun upon his benefactor? In the case of Rome it was political power. There is a more troublesome reason now: ideology.
There have been two instances of ideological assassination in India, the death of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi died because he chose to challenge secession in another country; Indira Gandhi because she was determined to save her own nation's integrity. A desire for a theocratic Sikh state was compounded by anger against Mrs Gandhi's decision to clear the Golden Temple with the help of the Army. But India had diversity, space and a non-negotiable commitment to democracy that helped contain the Sikh insurrection.
The crisis in Pakistan is far more dangerous. Its nationalism is defined by religion rather than ethnicity. Its sovereignty lies in the will of Allah. Liberal Pakistanis often argue that the people do not vote for Islamist parties, but that is self-delusion; the majority believe that the country needs a theocratic law to protect its identity.
Perhaps those Pakistanis who do not want to see their nation slip into a descending spiral of extremist madness need to eliminate the more disturbing truth from the discourse. The danger to Pakistan lies not merely in the fact that a 21-year-old called Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri killed Salman Taseer with the calm demeanour of an executioner doing his duty to a higher law, but the fact that all his colleagues were complicit in the crime. It was collusive and collective. He had informed his fellow bodyguards of his intentions, and their response was admiration. He was neither stopped before the deed, nor brutalised after it. He went to prison like a bridegroom rather than a criminal.
Significant sections of influential Pakistanis threw rose petals in accolade. It is perhaps understandable, if not justifiable, that an imam could not be found to lead a funeral prayer, since the clergy believe Taseer was an apostate. But the political class, exceptions apart, did not have the guts to appear at his funeral. It is almost certain that Qadri will be treated as a hero in prison rather than a criminal, and that the judicial system will try and be as lenient to him as it can.
This is the crossroads moment for Pakistan. Evidence suggests that the traffic is increasing on the road towards a theocratic revolution that will eventually consume its children in sectarian civil wars. Courageous Pakistanis like the former PPP minister Sherry Rehman know that they have already run out of time, but they are being isolated by those who think compromise can buy them a few more years in power.
We are seeing, unless we are lucky, the future of Pakistan on the face of Malik Qadri. The Praetorian Guard has risen.
Saturday, January 08, 2011
Before the court of public opinion
Byline by M J Akbar: Before the court of public opinion
At some point, when the wound begins to hurt, the narrative in a scam story arcs towards the bizarre. You can be almost sure that the change in trajectory has been propelled by some lawyer trying to be a judge.
A lawyer’s training is conditioned by loyalty to the client; a judge must rise above his background and become a servant of the law instead of the cheque book. On Friday, Kapil Sibal gave a grand press conference to declare that his predecessor A. Raja was totally and indisputably innocent in the telecom scam that has disabled Parliament and rocked the country. On the same day, in the same city, Delhi, yet another judge said in open court that there was sufficient evidence to maintain a complaint against Raja. Special CBI judge Pradeep Chaddha, while admitting Subramanian Swamy’s petition seeking Raja’s prosecution, said, “I have gone through the complaint and the bunch of annexures ... and I am of the view that this complaint is maintainable and the proceedings will continue.” Courts, high, supreme and special, have seen the record and found a basis for prosecution. Sibal, being a modern Gandhian, can see no evil, hear no evil and will speak no evil unless it is about the Opposition, in which case he can be vituperative.
The only concession Sibal made over this prearranged handout of licences on a first-come-first-served basis, was that there might have been a “procedural lapse”. That is an elegantly discreet description of bribery which should find a place in a quotation book.
If Kapil Sibal believes what he says, he should send in his resignation immediately so that Raja can be reinstated. Why was Raja dropped from the Cabinet, at such political cost, personal anguish and Karunanidhi family heartbreak if he was innocent? At the very least Prime Minister Manmohan Singh owes Raja a grovelling apology. Raja should in fact sue Dr Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi for libel, since their decision to wrench him out of the office he coveted amounted to, by Sibal’s interpretation, defamation and humiliation on a national scale. Obviously, Sibal was either on holiday or so immersed in his public service duties that he was totally oblivious of media when the Radia tapes took complete control of airwaves and print. Or, perhaps, again like a good lawyer, he had no interest in any fact that would be relevant to the prosecution.
Since Sibal will still need a job after resignation, he can easily step into a vacant home ministry. P. Chidambaram will surely now have to resign. Chidambaram, after all, sent a letter to the Prime Minister accusing Raja of malpractice, not mere “procedural lapses”. A letter emerges from a conscious decision to place a view on record, so Chidambaram must have felt very strongly about what was happening. Nor is Chidambaram ignorant of the law; by any account he is as good a lawyer as Sibal, if not better. So the only conclusion is that Chidambaram was consciously misleading the Prime Minister, on a matter of such public significance, possibly for partisan reasons, and therefore must be held accountable. Indeed, there is a strong rumour doing the rounds in Delhi that Chidambaram could lose his portfolio in the next reshuffle; so maybe these little dots scattered across the capital’s landscape do connect after all.
Something clearly also needs to be done about this pesky Comptroller and Auditor General, Vinod Rai who refuses to keep quiet even when someone as self-important as Sibal delivers an obiter dicta. Rai insists, even after the Sibal intervention, that the treasury suffered a massive loss, and that a proportionate benefit went to private sector telecom players. And then there is the insufferable judiciary, which remains coolly indifferent to the pressure tactics of such majestically powerful ministers. Surely there must be a way in which judges like Chaddha can be transferred to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Sibal has eliminated the distance between the Congress and the DMK’s spectrum sale at highly discounted prices. For some reason, an impression had been growing that Mrs Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister wanted to increase this space. Clearly, that impression was inaccurate. It is inconceivable that Sibal would have gone public without clearance from both the PM and the party president. The DMK-Congress alliance can now march shoulder to shoulder towards electoral triumph in the next Tamil Nadu Assembly elections using the spectrum scandal as a mark of pride rather than a sack of defacing coal. There is no question, either, of government seeking any compromise with the Opposition during the Budget Session. If Raja did no wrong, why should there be an enquiry?
When a good lawyer gets a bad case his instinct tells him to shift the narrative. Political lawyers believe that they can manipulate the court of public opinion, but the people see all the evidence, not just some of it, before they reach a decision. The public is an excellent judge.
At some point, when the wound begins to hurt, the narrative in a scam story arcs towards the bizarre. You can be almost sure that the change in trajectory has been propelled by some lawyer trying to be a judge.
A lawyer’s training is conditioned by loyalty to the client; a judge must rise above his background and become a servant of the law instead of the cheque book. On Friday, Kapil Sibal gave a grand press conference to declare that his predecessor A. Raja was totally and indisputably innocent in the telecom scam that has disabled Parliament and rocked the country. On the same day, in the same city, Delhi, yet another judge said in open court that there was sufficient evidence to maintain a complaint against Raja. Special CBI judge Pradeep Chaddha, while admitting Subramanian Swamy’s petition seeking Raja’s prosecution, said, “I have gone through the complaint and the bunch of annexures ... and I am of the view that this complaint is maintainable and the proceedings will continue.” Courts, high, supreme and special, have seen the record and found a basis for prosecution. Sibal, being a modern Gandhian, can see no evil, hear no evil and will speak no evil unless it is about the Opposition, in which case he can be vituperative.
The only concession Sibal made over this prearranged handout of licences on a first-come-first-served basis, was that there might have been a “procedural lapse”. That is an elegantly discreet description of bribery which should find a place in a quotation book.
If Kapil Sibal believes what he says, he should send in his resignation immediately so that Raja can be reinstated. Why was Raja dropped from the Cabinet, at such political cost, personal anguish and Karunanidhi family heartbreak if he was innocent? At the very least Prime Minister Manmohan Singh owes Raja a grovelling apology. Raja should in fact sue Dr Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi for libel, since their decision to wrench him out of the office he coveted amounted to, by Sibal’s interpretation, defamation and humiliation on a national scale. Obviously, Sibal was either on holiday or so immersed in his public service duties that he was totally oblivious of media when the Radia tapes took complete control of airwaves and print. Or, perhaps, again like a good lawyer, he had no interest in any fact that would be relevant to the prosecution.
Since Sibal will still need a job after resignation, he can easily step into a vacant home ministry. P. Chidambaram will surely now have to resign. Chidambaram, after all, sent a letter to the Prime Minister accusing Raja of malpractice, not mere “procedural lapses”. A letter emerges from a conscious decision to place a view on record, so Chidambaram must have felt very strongly about what was happening. Nor is Chidambaram ignorant of the law; by any account he is as good a lawyer as Sibal, if not better. So the only conclusion is that Chidambaram was consciously misleading the Prime Minister, on a matter of such public significance, possibly for partisan reasons, and therefore must be held accountable. Indeed, there is a strong rumour doing the rounds in Delhi that Chidambaram could lose his portfolio in the next reshuffle; so maybe these little dots scattered across the capital’s landscape do connect after all.
Something clearly also needs to be done about this pesky Comptroller and Auditor General, Vinod Rai who refuses to keep quiet even when someone as self-important as Sibal delivers an obiter dicta. Rai insists, even after the Sibal intervention, that the treasury suffered a massive loss, and that a proportionate benefit went to private sector telecom players. And then there is the insufferable judiciary, which remains coolly indifferent to the pressure tactics of such majestically powerful ministers. Surely there must be a way in which judges like Chaddha can be transferred to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Sibal has eliminated the distance between the Congress and the DMK’s spectrum sale at highly discounted prices. For some reason, an impression had been growing that Mrs Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister wanted to increase this space. Clearly, that impression was inaccurate. It is inconceivable that Sibal would have gone public without clearance from both the PM and the party president. The DMK-Congress alliance can now march shoulder to shoulder towards electoral triumph in the next Tamil Nadu Assembly elections using the spectrum scandal as a mark of pride rather than a sack of defacing coal. There is no question, either, of government seeking any compromise with the Opposition during the Budget Session. If Raja did no wrong, why should there be an enquiry?
When a good lawyer gets a bad case his instinct tells him to shift the narrative. Political lawyers believe that they can manipulate the court of public opinion, but the people see all the evidence, not just some of it, before they reach a decision. The public is an excellent judge.
Ghosts do not die
Ghosts do not die
By M J Akbar
Third Eye - In India Today
7th January 2011
Ghosts do not die. That is the power of a phantom. You can bury the Bofors body to the chanting of the CBI's fraudulent funeral rites, but its restless spirit keeps rattling through the haunted house of the Congress Party's premier family. The latest rattle, in which the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) confirmed that illegal kickbacks amounting to Rs 41 crore were indeed paid to Italian middleman Ottavio Quattrocchi, and at least some of the money transferred to a Panama bank account, has numbed the Congress.
Dr Manmohan Singh, after wafting for six years as Mr Benefit of the Doubt, has slipped into a trap he unwittingly set for himself when he sought to rise above the more recent stink surrounding his Government. On December 31, his office publicised a new year resolution to "cleanse" the Government. The challenge came immediately, when the Bofors story broke. One thing is now very clear: the broom begins with Bofors. The prime minister can hardly roll his sleeves to scrub out the DMK corner but ignore the carcass under the Congress carpet.
Ghosts do not die
Ghosts do not die. That is the power of a phantom. You can bury the Bofors body to the chanting of the CBI's fraudulent funeral rites, but its restless spirit keeps rattling through the haunted house of the Congress Party's premier family. The latest rattle, in which the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) confirmed that illegal kickbacks amounting to Rs 41 crore were indeed paid to Italian middleman Ottavio Quattrocchi, and at least some of the money transferred to a Panama bank account, has numbed the Congress.
Dr Manmohan Singh, after wafting for six years as Mr Benefit of the Doubt, has slipped into a trap he unwittingly set for himself when he sought to rise above the more recent stink surrounding his Government. On December 31, his office publicised a new year resolution to "cleanse" the Government. The challenge came immediately, when the Bofors story broke. One thing is now very clear: the broom begins with Bofors. The prime minister can hardly roll his sleeves to scrub out the DMK corner but ignore the carcass under the Congress carpet.
The problem before Dr Singh is that he declared Quattrocchi innocent and has presided over the gradual dilution and elimination of the case against Quattrocchi.
Contortions can so easily lead to self-inflicted pains. The CBI has twisted itself into so many knots that it has no option except to take an utterly brazen approach as it continues to protect the Bofors guilty. On January 4, its lawyer P.P. Malhotra told a Delhi court that there was "nothing new" in the ITAT order. The CBI did not say that there was "nothing true"; it merely said there was "nothing new". "I am not disputing what the tribunal has said," asserted Malhotra, acting on his brief. If the CBI is not disputing the tribunal then it agrees that a crime was committed by middlemen with links of personal friendship to the powerful Gandhi family. Since when has time become an alibi for innocence?
The problem before cleansing-crusader Singh is that he personally declared Quattrocchi innocent and has presided over the gradual, step-by-step dilution and elimination of the case against Quattrocchi, to the point that in September 2009 his government told the Supreme Court that it had abandoned prosecution. In June 2003, Quattrocchi's bank accounts in London were frozen under pressure from Delhi. In January 2006, the UPA Government intervened to reactivate these accounts, permitting Quattrocchi to withdraw the Rs 21 crore stacked there. In October 2008, attorney general Milon Banerjee advised the CBI to withdraw the Red Corner Notice against Quattrocchi. Each of these decisions required Dr Singh's concurrence.
Is it any wonder that benefit has finally begun to delink from the doubt?
Since bad news always brings a couple of companions, we also learn that P. Chidambaram, then finance minister, wrote to the prime minister within a week of the A. Raja rip-off, pointing out that what the telecom minister was doing was blatantly wrong. The prime minister's response was silence.
Silence became the theme in the first week of 2011, interspersed by torrid cliché. Someone should tell Congress spokespersons that this is not a dead horse being flogged. This horse is alive. It can kick back.
There is a murmur building up in Delhi that the prime minister has discovered the determination to act; and that the Government will introduce legislation in the next session of Parliament to curb corruption. Curious. Is corruption legal under our current laws?
2G is a scandal because Raja twisted the rules to dispense his largesse. Bofors became a sensation because the law of India was broken to fatten middlemen. We do not need more laws. We need political courage. This has a practical meaning. The Government can start soaping the system by forcing Raja to put into the treasury what he made in backhanders from the 2G scam. There might be a few disputes over the quantum of bribes, but nothing that a friendly chat with DMK patriarch Karunanidhi can't settle. Plus, the prime minister can order his investigative agencies to tell us what they probably already know: the names of owners and beneficiaries of the Panama account and other Bofors accounts. That will calm the ghost a bit.
Dr Singh reads Urdu, so there is a fair chance that he is familiar with Urdu poetry. Two well-known lines about the marketplace of life bear repetition: Kaise bazaar ka dastoor tumhe samjhaaoon, Bik gaya jo woh kharidaar nahin ho sakta. (How shall I explain the law of this market? He who has been sold cannot become a buyer.)
Dr Manmohan Singh has the chance to go down in his nation's history as either a colossal waste of a promise, or as the exorcist who rid India of the ghost of Bofors.
By M J Akbar
Third Eye - In India Today
7th January 2011
Ghosts do not die. That is the power of a phantom. You can bury the Bofors body to the chanting of the CBI's fraudulent funeral rites, but its restless spirit keeps rattling through the haunted house of the Congress Party's premier family. The latest rattle, in which the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) confirmed that illegal kickbacks amounting to Rs 41 crore were indeed paid to Italian middleman Ottavio Quattrocchi, and at least some of the money transferred to a Panama bank account, has numbed the Congress.
Dr Manmohan Singh, after wafting for six years as Mr Benefit of the Doubt, has slipped into a trap he unwittingly set for himself when he sought to rise above the more recent stink surrounding his Government. On December 31, his office publicised a new year resolution to "cleanse" the Government. The challenge came immediately, when the Bofors story broke. One thing is now very clear: the broom begins with Bofors. The prime minister can hardly roll his sleeves to scrub out the DMK corner but ignore the carcass under the Congress carpet.
Ghosts do not die
Ghosts do not die. That is the power of a phantom. You can bury the Bofors body to the chanting of the CBI's fraudulent funeral rites, but its restless spirit keeps rattling through the haunted house of the Congress Party's premier family. The latest rattle, in which the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) confirmed that illegal kickbacks amounting to Rs 41 crore were indeed paid to Italian middleman Ottavio Quattrocchi, and at least some of the money transferred to a Panama bank account, has numbed the Congress.
Dr Manmohan Singh, after wafting for six years as Mr Benefit of the Doubt, has slipped into a trap he unwittingly set for himself when he sought to rise above the more recent stink surrounding his Government. On December 31, his office publicised a new year resolution to "cleanse" the Government. The challenge came immediately, when the Bofors story broke. One thing is now very clear: the broom begins with Bofors. The prime minister can hardly roll his sleeves to scrub out the DMK corner but ignore the carcass under the Congress carpet.
The problem before Dr Singh is that he declared Quattrocchi innocent and has presided over the gradual dilution and elimination of the case against Quattrocchi.
Contortions can so easily lead to self-inflicted pains. The CBI has twisted itself into so many knots that it has no option except to take an utterly brazen approach as it continues to protect the Bofors guilty. On January 4, its lawyer P.P. Malhotra told a Delhi court that there was "nothing new" in the ITAT order. The CBI did not say that there was "nothing true"; it merely said there was "nothing new". "I am not disputing what the tribunal has said," asserted Malhotra, acting on his brief. If the CBI is not disputing the tribunal then it agrees that a crime was committed by middlemen with links of personal friendship to the powerful Gandhi family. Since when has time become an alibi for innocence?
The problem before cleansing-crusader Singh is that he personally declared Quattrocchi innocent and has presided over the gradual, step-by-step dilution and elimination of the case against Quattrocchi, to the point that in September 2009 his government told the Supreme Court that it had abandoned prosecution. In June 2003, Quattrocchi's bank accounts in London were frozen under pressure from Delhi. In January 2006, the UPA Government intervened to reactivate these accounts, permitting Quattrocchi to withdraw the Rs 21 crore stacked there. In October 2008, attorney general Milon Banerjee advised the CBI to withdraw the Red Corner Notice against Quattrocchi. Each of these decisions required Dr Singh's concurrence.
Is it any wonder that benefit has finally begun to delink from the doubt?
Since bad news always brings a couple of companions, we also learn that P. Chidambaram, then finance minister, wrote to the prime minister within a week of the A. Raja rip-off, pointing out that what the telecom minister was doing was blatantly wrong. The prime minister's response was silence.
Silence became the theme in the first week of 2011, interspersed by torrid cliché. Someone should tell Congress spokespersons that this is not a dead horse being flogged. This horse is alive. It can kick back.
There is a murmur building up in Delhi that the prime minister has discovered the determination to act; and that the Government will introduce legislation in the next session of Parliament to curb corruption. Curious. Is corruption legal under our current laws?
2G is a scandal because Raja twisted the rules to dispense his largesse. Bofors became a sensation because the law of India was broken to fatten middlemen. We do not need more laws. We need political courage. This has a practical meaning. The Government can start soaping the system by forcing Raja to put into the treasury what he made in backhanders from the 2G scam. There might be a few disputes over the quantum of bribes, but nothing that a friendly chat with DMK patriarch Karunanidhi can't settle. Plus, the prime minister can order his investigative agencies to tell us what they probably already know: the names of owners and beneficiaries of the Panama account and other Bofors accounts. That will calm the ghost a bit.
Dr Singh reads Urdu, so there is a fair chance that he is familiar with Urdu poetry. Two well-known lines about the marketplace of life bear repetition: Kaise bazaar ka dastoor tumhe samjhaaoon, Bik gaya jo woh kharidaar nahin ho sakta. (How shall I explain the law of this market? He who has been sold cannot become a buyer.)
Dr Manmohan Singh has the chance to go down in his nation's history as either a colossal waste of a promise, or as the exorcist who rid India of the ghost of Bofors.
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Double Face Cream
Double Face Cream
By M J Akbar
Third Eye: India Today, December 31, 2010
Democracy is a structured, intensely competitive business that trades in the affection, apprehension and anger of its base commodity, the voter. Parties have to deliver a profit and loss account at least once every five years, and sometimes at midterms. If success is the ultimate elixir, then the punishment for failure is ego-numbing depression. (Despite being continuously in office in some of the most important states, the BJP has still not quite pulled out of the slump into which it disappeared after the defeat of 2004.)
A party needs a chairman/president, members of the board, chief executives for its various operations, a fertile breeding ground for ideas and plans, continuous management and occasionally reinvention of tested, traditional supply lines, functionaries and liquidity. The terminology may vary just a little (working committee instead of board of directors) but the responsibilities are similar. Without cash, the party machine shudders to a halt. Money, said the song, makes the world go round; and politics is a particularly thirsty world.
Even Mahatma Gandhi needed money for his brand, Congress. His prescription was market-driven. He organised liquidity during his first great insurrection, the Khilafat-Non-Cooperation Movement, from membership fees, famously four annas, or one-fourth of a rupee. Congress members were shareholders in his freedom enterprise. The four-anna member can, however, be notoriously demanding about how his four annas are spent. Gandhi's credibility kept Congress liquidity flowing. In the quarter century between Khilafat and his assassination, there was not a single charge of corruption against Congress, a privilege not shared by other parties. Of course, Congress has more than made up for lost opportunity after Independence, which brings us to the nub of the modern dilemma.
Today's politics cannot be sustained by shareholder subscriptions alone. The demands and costs of marketing have exploded. But while conventional industry can go to a bank for legitimate capital, political corporations have legislated themselves into the grey area of hypocrisy. They first sold the fiction that donations from the rich were impure, as if the impoverished had any surplus left. The great Indian middle class, unsurprisingly, is passionate about democracy, but wants someone else to pay for its pleasures. Black money rushed in where white money feared to tread. It has now become synonymous with the accounting system of democracy, elections.
The opposite of corruption in politics, therefore, is not honesty, but hypocrisy.
Let us take a look at two self-evidently honest contemporary politicians. Both are utterly indifferent to personal wealth. Both sit at the top of their pyramids, even if one of them presides over a largish 3-D triangle rather than Giza on the Nile. The two politicians are clearly Dr Manmohan Singh and Mamata Banerjee. Dr Singh revels in clean hands. That, however, begs a follow-up question that no one asks. If Dr Singh does not do so, then who collects money on behalf of the Congress? Party treasurers are fund-keepers; they are not fund-collectors. The pipeline may not go through Dr Singh's drawing room, but there are other transit junctions; and the power of government lubricates the process even if the prime minister is not a direct beneficiary. He knows that some of his Cabinet ministers, not all of them from DMK, rake it in by the sackful. Is a blindfold the new symbol of probity?
In Bengal, Mamata Banerjee has become the cat who has just been introduced to the cream. She has not rushed out to buy dozens of silk sarees and kilogrammes of Kolkata's famous golden jewellery. She treats such excesses of wealth as pockmarks, not beauty spots. At most she might have treated herself to an extra pair of tweezers. But she needs money to defeat the Left Front in the coming Assembly elections. Passion needs the momentum of cash. The surest sign of her return to power is the fact that Kolkata businessmen who have fed off Left Front largesse for three decades, turning public land into private wealth, are now queuing up to serve the Mamata cause. She is not so foolish as to spurn them. The Left Front is dealing with an unfamiliar quandary: when a moneybag tells you he only has a wallet, you know you are in electoral trouble.
The existentialist dilemma before Indian democracy is stark: it cannot co-exist with financial honesty. It does not matter if you are personally incorruptible; you have to be institutionally corrupt in order to engage in the business of democracy. The moral code of elections is uncomplicated: Don't ask. Don't tell. And for God's sake don't get caught.
By M J Akbar
Third Eye: India Today, December 31, 2010
Democracy is a structured, intensely competitive business that trades in the affection, apprehension and anger of its base commodity, the voter. Parties have to deliver a profit and loss account at least once every five years, and sometimes at midterms. If success is the ultimate elixir, then the punishment for failure is ego-numbing depression. (Despite being continuously in office in some of the most important states, the BJP has still not quite pulled out of the slump into which it disappeared after the defeat of 2004.)
A party needs a chairman/president, members of the board, chief executives for its various operations, a fertile breeding ground for ideas and plans, continuous management and occasionally reinvention of tested, traditional supply lines, functionaries and liquidity. The terminology may vary just a little (working committee instead of board of directors) but the responsibilities are similar. Without cash, the party machine shudders to a halt. Money, said the song, makes the world go round; and politics is a particularly thirsty world.
Even Mahatma Gandhi needed money for his brand, Congress. His prescription was market-driven. He organised liquidity during his first great insurrection, the Khilafat-Non-Cooperation Movement, from membership fees, famously four annas, or one-fourth of a rupee. Congress members were shareholders in his freedom enterprise. The four-anna member can, however, be notoriously demanding about how his four annas are spent. Gandhi's credibility kept Congress liquidity flowing. In the quarter century between Khilafat and his assassination, there was not a single charge of corruption against Congress, a privilege not shared by other parties. Of course, Congress has more than made up for lost opportunity after Independence, which brings us to the nub of the modern dilemma.
Today's politics cannot be sustained by shareholder subscriptions alone. The demands and costs of marketing have exploded. But while conventional industry can go to a bank for legitimate capital, political corporations have legislated themselves into the grey area of hypocrisy. They first sold the fiction that donations from the rich were impure, as if the impoverished had any surplus left. The great Indian middle class, unsurprisingly, is passionate about democracy, but wants someone else to pay for its pleasures. Black money rushed in where white money feared to tread. It has now become synonymous with the accounting system of democracy, elections.
The opposite of corruption in politics, therefore, is not honesty, but hypocrisy.
Let us take a look at two self-evidently honest contemporary politicians. Both are utterly indifferent to personal wealth. Both sit at the top of their pyramids, even if one of them presides over a largish 3-D triangle rather than Giza on the Nile. The two politicians are clearly Dr Manmohan Singh and Mamata Banerjee. Dr Singh revels in clean hands. That, however, begs a follow-up question that no one asks. If Dr Singh does not do so, then who collects money on behalf of the Congress? Party treasurers are fund-keepers; they are not fund-collectors. The pipeline may not go through Dr Singh's drawing room, but there are other transit junctions; and the power of government lubricates the process even if the prime minister is not a direct beneficiary. He knows that some of his Cabinet ministers, not all of them from DMK, rake it in by the sackful. Is a blindfold the new symbol of probity?
In Bengal, Mamata Banerjee has become the cat who has just been introduced to the cream. She has not rushed out to buy dozens of silk sarees and kilogrammes of Kolkata's famous golden jewellery. She treats such excesses of wealth as pockmarks, not beauty spots. At most she might have treated herself to an extra pair of tweezers. But she needs money to defeat the Left Front in the coming Assembly elections. Passion needs the momentum of cash. The surest sign of her return to power is the fact that Kolkata businessmen who have fed off Left Front largesse for three decades, turning public land into private wealth, are now queuing up to serve the Mamata cause. She is not so foolish as to spurn them. The Left Front is dealing with an unfamiliar quandary: when a moneybag tells you he only has a wallet, you know you are in electoral trouble.
The existentialist dilemma before Indian democracy is stark: it cannot co-exist with financial honesty. It does not matter if you are personally incorruptible; you have to be institutionally corrupt in order to engage in the business of democracy. The moral code of elections is uncomplicated: Don't ask. Don't tell. And for God's sake don't get caught.
Saturday, January 01, 2011
No year is an island
Byline by M J Akbar: No year is an island
No year is an island. A sequence of events will always demand its consequence, without respect for something as transitory as a calendar. Neither time nor logic pauses on 31 December and takes a holiday on 1 January. Sleaze was the theme of 2010; it has already oozed into the building drama of 2011. The link is Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s brief statement on the eve of 2011: to “cleanse” governance. New Year resolutions, traditionally, are known to have a short life. If the Prime Minister thinks that this too is a promise designed for amnesia, then his government will have an equally short life. Indians are angry. So far this anger has not turned destructive. Beware the day it does.
The cynic has a right to ask: what was the Prime Minister doing for six years? He talks of cleansing the government, but who has been in charge of this government? Surely Dr Singh was not referring only to Opposition governments and handing out good character certificates to his own coalition? A revealing aspect of “sleaze 2010” is that the bulk of theft has taken place in Delhi, compared to which Mumbai and Bangalore are really small potatoes. Why did Dr Singh permit wholesale loot by UPA ministers? He has been in power from 2004; bandits became billionaires under his watch.
Dr Singh’s statement is a sort of confessional, but the Indian voter is not a Catholic priest, who will forgive colossal sin just because the penitent has bared his heart in confession. The voter wants accountability in political life, and has seen nothing but tokenism. The much-vaunted raids against scam-scarred politicians were little short of another scam, since the culprits have been given more than sufficient time to destroy the evidence and fudge the clues. “Let us,” says the Prime Minister, “dispel the air of despondency and cynicism.” But who and what is the source of the Indian’s despair? It is the Government of India that has made the Indian cynical.
This cynicism inevitably also became the prevailing mood in government. We watched, in 2010, a deeply fractured system turning upon itself. Some people at the highest levels of authority leaked what are now famous as the Niira Radia tapes because they could not stomach, anymore, the smug satisfaction on the faces of highway robbers. The Opposition had very little to do with any of the revelations that have shaken the Singh administration to the edge of instability. It was a wing of government that provided details of the colossal and wide-ranging malfeasance in the Commonwealth Games to the media. How can you read about the various levels of loot, from construction deals to toilet paper, and not become cynical? It was the vocal Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh who halted the Lavasa township project despite the fact that Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar is closely connected to Lavasa. Sharad Pawar has said publicly that Lavasa is close to his heart. His critics believe that Lavasa is close to his wallet as well. Once again, it was not the BJP or the Shiv Sena that put Lavasa at the centre of public discourse, but a UPA minister.
Dr Singh is sincere in his intentions; but is he capable of delivery? The people have had enough of good intentions. They want accountability and insurance against further loot. The contradictions in the Prime Minister’s stance are evident. When he waves his big stick, he must first strike against his own colleagues. Can he do that and hope to survive? He is, of course, trapped. His personal image has raised expectations which he has not been able to fulfil, at least as far as corruption is concerned. If he does not act, the last chance to save his reputation is gone. If he acts, his government could be in serious peril. There is sudden momentum in the drawing rooms of Delhi, as politicians discuss new options in an uncertain Parliament. The government has, foolishly, gifted a disunited Opposition the opportunity to unite over the demand for a joint parliamentary committee investigation. The JPC is slowly becoming a symbol of government’s evasion. It is not widely known that Dr Singh would have happily agreed to a JPC. He has been prevented by his party. In the process, the Congress has weakened its own Prime Minister and strengthened the Opposition.
The government should consider itself lucky that the people are only cynical. They are increasingly linking exorbitant inflation, which the government has been unable to curb, to corruption as well. What is mere cynicism and anger today could become rage tomorrow. Democracy has inbuilt valves for the release of rage, but it is unwise to test the tensile strength of these valves too often. If government behaves like an immovable object, the people will, sooner rather than later, turn into an irresistible force.
No year is an island. A sequence of events will always demand its consequence, without respect for something as transitory as a calendar. Neither time nor logic pauses on 31 December and takes a holiday on 1 January. Sleaze was the theme of 2010; it has already oozed into the building drama of 2011. The link is Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s brief statement on the eve of 2011: to “cleanse” governance. New Year resolutions, traditionally, are known to have a short life. If the Prime Minister thinks that this too is a promise designed for amnesia, then his government will have an equally short life. Indians are angry. So far this anger has not turned destructive. Beware the day it does.
The cynic has a right to ask: what was the Prime Minister doing for six years? He talks of cleansing the government, but who has been in charge of this government? Surely Dr Singh was not referring only to Opposition governments and handing out good character certificates to his own coalition? A revealing aspect of “sleaze 2010” is that the bulk of theft has taken place in Delhi, compared to which Mumbai and Bangalore are really small potatoes. Why did Dr Singh permit wholesale loot by UPA ministers? He has been in power from 2004; bandits became billionaires under his watch.
Dr Singh’s statement is a sort of confessional, but the Indian voter is not a Catholic priest, who will forgive colossal sin just because the penitent has bared his heart in confession. The voter wants accountability in political life, and has seen nothing but tokenism. The much-vaunted raids against scam-scarred politicians were little short of another scam, since the culprits have been given more than sufficient time to destroy the evidence and fudge the clues. “Let us,” says the Prime Minister, “dispel the air of despondency and cynicism.” But who and what is the source of the Indian’s despair? It is the Government of India that has made the Indian cynical.
This cynicism inevitably also became the prevailing mood in government. We watched, in 2010, a deeply fractured system turning upon itself. Some people at the highest levels of authority leaked what are now famous as the Niira Radia tapes because they could not stomach, anymore, the smug satisfaction on the faces of highway robbers. The Opposition had very little to do with any of the revelations that have shaken the Singh administration to the edge of instability. It was a wing of government that provided details of the colossal and wide-ranging malfeasance in the Commonwealth Games to the media. How can you read about the various levels of loot, from construction deals to toilet paper, and not become cynical? It was the vocal Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh who halted the Lavasa township project despite the fact that Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar is closely connected to Lavasa. Sharad Pawar has said publicly that Lavasa is close to his heart. His critics believe that Lavasa is close to his wallet as well. Once again, it was not the BJP or the Shiv Sena that put Lavasa at the centre of public discourse, but a UPA minister.
Dr Singh is sincere in his intentions; but is he capable of delivery? The people have had enough of good intentions. They want accountability and insurance against further loot. The contradictions in the Prime Minister’s stance are evident. When he waves his big stick, he must first strike against his own colleagues. Can he do that and hope to survive? He is, of course, trapped. His personal image has raised expectations which he has not been able to fulfil, at least as far as corruption is concerned. If he does not act, the last chance to save his reputation is gone. If he acts, his government could be in serious peril. There is sudden momentum in the drawing rooms of Delhi, as politicians discuss new options in an uncertain Parliament. The government has, foolishly, gifted a disunited Opposition the opportunity to unite over the demand for a joint parliamentary committee investigation. The JPC is slowly becoming a symbol of government’s evasion. It is not widely known that Dr Singh would have happily agreed to a JPC. He has been prevented by his party. In the process, the Congress has weakened its own Prime Minister and strengthened the Opposition.
The government should consider itself lucky that the people are only cynical. They are increasingly linking exorbitant inflation, which the government has been unable to curb, to corruption as well. What is mere cynicism and anger today could become rage tomorrow. Democracy has inbuilt valves for the release of rage, but it is unwise to test the tensile strength of these valves too often. If government behaves like an immovable object, the people will, sooner rather than later, turn into an irresistible force.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
A strange democracy
Byline by M J Akbar: A Strange Democracy
India has become a strange democracy where Binayak Sen gets life in jail and dacoits get a life in luxury. It takes years of pressure for government to move against those looting the nation’s treasury; and when the majestic forces of enforcement do go on a “raid” they give their quarry enough time to remove every trace of evidence. You have to be exceptionally stupid to store evidence of your own culpability in a telecom scandal where deals were made and money paid three years before. Or, for that matter, even six months ago, as in some instances of the highly lubricated Commonwealth Games. By this time the money has either been spent, converted into assets, or sent to a convenient haven abroad. The political-industrial nexus is above the law, because it controls enforcement. But if the ruling class of India could have hanged Binayak Sen instead of merely trying to send him to jail for the rest of his life, it would have done so.
Binayak made a fundamental, mortal mistake. He was on the side of the poor. That is a non-negotiable error in our oligarchic democracy. Christmas must be truly merry in the homes of Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram and of course Raman Singh this year. The Congress and BJP dislike each other with a passion that only a thirst for power can generate; they disagree on just about anything and everything. But there is perfect harmony between them over Naxalite policy. End the Naxalite problem by elimination of the messenger; and the poor will not have the courage to ask for more than the trickle allotted to them by a gluttonous government.
Media is obedient doorman of this nexus, protecting its interests with a zeal that should surprise even the benefactors. The arrest of Binayak was converted into instant accusatory headlines. His trial was ignored by the press, which is why we do not know that there was virtually no substantive evidence. Suffice it to say that two of Binayak’s jailors, during his detention without bail, were declared hostile by the prosecution. Prosecuting lawyers are in the pay of government, as are the jailors. And yet two policemen refused to back the prosecution. A fabricated unsigned letter, apparently cooked up on a computer printout, seems to have been sufficient to convince the honourable guardians of our judicial system that Binayak Sen deserved a sentence reserved for only the most hardened murderer.
It is another matter that Binayak Sen, who was senior to me in school, was and remains the gentlest of people, distinguished only by a fierce commitment to his cause of choice. I do not agree with his political views or inclinations; nor does the political system. But it is only in a dictatorship that disagreement is sufficient reason for incarceration. India seems to be developing a two-tier democracy: generosity of the law for the privileged and vindictive, distorted application on the underprivileged.
It is ironic that the Binayak judgement appeared on the front pages of the Christmas day newspapers. We all know that Jesus was not born on 25 December; it was only in the fourth century that Pope Liberius declared this date to be a birthday because mystery and miracle has been associated with the winter solstice from time beyond memory. Christmas has become an international festival because it represents the most important values that give life some meaning and hold the complex social web together: peace, and goodwill towards all men, without which there cannot be peace.
This goodwill is not sectarian; it is easy to have goodwill towards some men, friends or benefactors. Christmas is the festival of the Other. It is the embrace of the dissident, or even the enemy. The most famous display of the Christmas spirit was the pause on the frontline in the First World War, when a few British and German soldiers announced an impromptu truce, played football, shared a drink and became human for a day before their superiors ordered them to return to the savagery of a terrible war that wrecked Europe.
If Binayak Sen is guilty of sedition on the basis of fictitious evidence, then, as was famously said during the great Gandhian movement against the British between 1919 and 1922, there are not enough jails in India to hold those equally guilty. The reference is not accidental. Governments have begun to opt for a colonial approach towards Naxalism and its myriad manifestations. The reason? Fear, perhaps terror. The corrupt can recognise their nemesis.
India has become a strange democracy where Binayak Sen gets life in jail and dacoits get a life in luxury. It takes years of pressure for government to move against those looting the nation’s treasury; and when the majestic forces of enforcement do go on a “raid” they give their quarry enough time to remove every trace of evidence. You have to be exceptionally stupid to store evidence of your own culpability in a telecom scandal where deals were made and money paid three years before. Or, for that matter, even six months ago, as in some instances of the highly lubricated Commonwealth Games. By this time the money has either been spent, converted into assets, or sent to a convenient haven abroad. The political-industrial nexus is above the law, because it controls enforcement. But if the ruling class of India could have hanged Binayak Sen instead of merely trying to send him to jail for the rest of his life, it would have done so.
Binayak made a fundamental, mortal mistake. He was on the side of the poor. That is a non-negotiable error in our oligarchic democracy. Christmas must be truly merry in the homes of Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram and of course Raman Singh this year. The Congress and BJP dislike each other with a passion that only a thirst for power can generate; they disagree on just about anything and everything. But there is perfect harmony between them over Naxalite policy. End the Naxalite problem by elimination of the messenger; and the poor will not have the courage to ask for more than the trickle allotted to them by a gluttonous government.
Media is obedient doorman of this nexus, protecting its interests with a zeal that should surprise even the benefactors. The arrest of Binayak was converted into instant accusatory headlines. His trial was ignored by the press, which is why we do not know that there was virtually no substantive evidence. Suffice it to say that two of Binayak’s jailors, during his detention without bail, were declared hostile by the prosecution. Prosecuting lawyers are in the pay of government, as are the jailors. And yet two policemen refused to back the prosecution. A fabricated unsigned letter, apparently cooked up on a computer printout, seems to have been sufficient to convince the honourable guardians of our judicial system that Binayak Sen deserved a sentence reserved for only the most hardened murderer.
It is another matter that Binayak Sen, who was senior to me in school, was and remains the gentlest of people, distinguished only by a fierce commitment to his cause of choice. I do not agree with his political views or inclinations; nor does the political system. But it is only in a dictatorship that disagreement is sufficient reason for incarceration. India seems to be developing a two-tier democracy: generosity of the law for the privileged and vindictive, distorted application on the underprivileged.
It is ironic that the Binayak judgement appeared on the front pages of the Christmas day newspapers. We all know that Jesus was not born on 25 December; it was only in the fourth century that Pope Liberius declared this date to be a birthday because mystery and miracle has been associated with the winter solstice from time beyond memory. Christmas has become an international festival because it represents the most important values that give life some meaning and hold the complex social web together: peace, and goodwill towards all men, without which there cannot be peace.
This goodwill is not sectarian; it is easy to have goodwill towards some men, friends or benefactors. Christmas is the festival of the Other. It is the embrace of the dissident, or even the enemy. The most famous display of the Christmas spirit was the pause on the frontline in the First World War, when a few British and German soldiers announced an impromptu truce, played football, shared a drink and became human for a day before their superiors ordered them to return to the savagery of a terrible war that wrecked Europe.
If Binayak Sen is guilty of sedition on the basis of fictitious evidence, then, as was famously said during the great Gandhian movement against the British between 1919 and 1922, there are not enough jails in India to hold those equally guilty. The reference is not accidental. Governments have begun to opt for a colonial approach towards Naxalism and its myriad manifestations. The reason? Fear, perhaps terror. The corrupt can recognise their nemesis.
The Radialogue Wound
The Radialogue Wound
By M.J. Akbar
Third Eye in India Today
3rd January 2011
New words are an annual media byproduct without a balance sheet. The profit is not immediately visible, and loss not worth the count. The New York Times has produced a thirty-plus list that seems more obligatory than essential. Most words show the strains of artifice. Fortunately, terms like “sofalize” [socializing from home, through the net] will die a natural death after their fifteen seconds of fame. The hideous “mansplainer” just might get fifteen minutes of life, since it denotes a compulsive male opinion-giver and is therefore perfectly suited for TV pundits, but it is really too weak to survive.
Some deserve the immediate sentence of capital punishment. Put “Porno scanner” [synonym for the full-body security search at American airports] down for quick execution. Others are so tortured they seem to have spent time at Guantanamo. “Poutrage” [false anger] has clearly been put through a sadistic lexicographer’s tweezer. The accidental genius of Sarah Palin, which gave us “refudiate”, will survive as a joke as long as Sarah Palin survives as a joke.
But I do hope two words acquire momentum. “Coffice” comes from South Korea, a busy little country where the diligent can turn an internet café into an office for the price of a cup of coffee. In India, of course, we would need to rearrange the word a bit, since our specialty is turning an office into a café. Ficecof, anyone? Perhaps not. Any word that sounds like an interrupted gurgle can’t be good for conversation.
“Halfalogue” also has the feel of a strangled academic’s last wish, so all optimism about its future must be guarded. It means half an overheard conversation; and that makes it interesting. It first appeared in a semi-obscure research paper, published in the journal Psychological Science, titled “Overheard Cell-Phone Conversations: When Less Speech is More Distracting”, which multiplies its interest level. What a natural for Delhi’s chatterati: “The Niira halfalogue was just too much, wasn’t it? Do you think Manmohan carries a mobile phone?”
In fact, the Prime Minister doesn’t. Niira Radia, apparently, had at least eight mobile phones, only one of which was tapped. If one phone could inflict so much havoc, we can only wonder, enrapt in awe, at the destruction that a tap on all eight mobiles would have caused. Once upon a time, not very long ago, a mobile phone was at best an instrument of need and at worst a symbol of self-importance. Niira Radia has turned it into an instrument of caution for the large majority whose imagination is restrained by limits, and a weapon of duplicity for the few blessed with Machiavellian wile. If you are confident that your phone is tapped, you can always plant any story you want about anyone you dislike.
Even the most extravagant astrologer could never have predicted that Dr Manmohan Singh would be fatally wounded by a mobile phone. He has withstood, with great calm and fortitude, six years of Opposition artillery without a scratch on his reputation. Suddenly, he has become victim of friendly fire. A remarkable aspect of a scandal that has weakened the government to the point of fragility is that conversations which revealed part of the truth were between politicians, lobbyists, businessmen and journalists on the same side. This is collusive detail, not accusatory condemnation, from lobbyists and journalists who were friends of those in power. An investigative arm of government exposed a Cabinet minister. The lethal icing came from the anonymous sources who leaked the Radia tapes. Their names may not be public knowledge, although they are privately known, but this much is certain: officers of this government were intent on the destruction of its credibility.
“An old Chinese saying” is a tautology, for all Chinese sayings are old. The new ones are trapped in artificial ideology; the old ones were nurtured in the crucible of observation. Do not judge a man, goes one, until the coffin is closed, for he still has time to make a mistake. The Prime Minister made one mistake. He did not stop the DMK loot when he should have and could have. He permitted daylight loot from the nation’s treasury in order to survive. The true tenor of the Congress-DMK equation is revealed in a letter written by former telecom minister A. Raja, in which he virtually orders the Prime Minister not to interfere on telecom pricing. The moment Dr Singh meekly conceded, his credibility cracked. The Radia tapes reveal the hemorrhage of a self-inflicted wound.
Dr Singh came to office in 2004, but took a while to come to power. He may remain in office, but his power has begun to ebb.
By M.J. Akbar
Third Eye in India Today
3rd January 2011
New words are an annual media byproduct without a balance sheet. The profit is not immediately visible, and loss not worth the count. The New York Times has produced a thirty-plus list that seems more obligatory than essential. Most words show the strains of artifice. Fortunately, terms like “sofalize” [socializing from home, through the net] will die a natural death after their fifteen seconds of fame. The hideous “mansplainer” just might get fifteen minutes of life, since it denotes a compulsive male opinion-giver and is therefore perfectly suited for TV pundits, but it is really too weak to survive.
Some deserve the immediate sentence of capital punishment. Put “Porno scanner” [synonym for the full-body security search at American airports] down for quick execution. Others are so tortured they seem to have spent time at Guantanamo. “Poutrage” [false anger] has clearly been put through a sadistic lexicographer’s tweezer. The accidental genius of Sarah Palin, which gave us “refudiate”, will survive as a joke as long as Sarah Palin survives as a joke.
But I do hope two words acquire momentum. “Coffice” comes from South Korea, a busy little country where the diligent can turn an internet café into an office for the price of a cup of coffee. In India, of course, we would need to rearrange the word a bit, since our specialty is turning an office into a café. Ficecof, anyone? Perhaps not. Any word that sounds like an interrupted gurgle can’t be good for conversation.
“Halfalogue” also has the feel of a strangled academic’s last wish, so all optimism about its future must be guarded. It means half an overheard conversation; and that makes it interesting. It first appeared in a semi-obscure research paper, published in the journal Psychological Science, titled “Overheard Cell-Phone Conversations: When Less Speech is More Distracting”, which multiplies its interest level. What a natural for Delhi’s chatterati: “The Niira halfalogue was just too much, wasn’t it? Do you think Manmohan carries a mobile phone?”
In fact, the Prime Minister doesn’t. Niira Radia, apparently, had at least eight mobile phones, only one of which was tapped. If one phone could inflict so much havoc, we can only wonder, enrapt in awe, at the destruction that a tap on all eight mobiles would have caused. Once upon a time, not very long ago, a mobile phone was at best an instrument of need and at worst a symbol of self-importance. Niira Radia has turned it into an instrument of caution for the large majority whose imagination is restrained by limits, and a weapon of duplicity for the few blessed with Machiavellian wile. If you are confident that your phone is tapped, you can always plant any story you want about anyone you dislike.
Even the most extravagant astrologer could never have predicted that Dr Manmohan Singh would be fatally wounded by a mobile phone. He has withstood, with great calm and fortitude, six years of Opposition artillery without a scratch on his reputation. Suddenly, he has become victim of friendly fire. A remarkable aspect of a scandal that has weakened the government to the point of fragility is that conversations which revealed part of the truth were between politicians, lobbyists, businessmen and journalists on the same side. This is collusive detail, not accusatory condemnation, from lobbyists and journalists who were friends of those in power. An investigative arm of government exposed a Cabinet minister. The lethal icing came from the anonymous sources who leaked the Radia tapes. Their names may not be public knowledge, although they are privately known, but this much is certain: officers of this government were intent on the destruction of its credibility.
“An old Chinese saying” is a tautology, for all Chinese sayings are old. The new ones are trapped in artificial ideology; the old ones were nurtured in the crucible of observation. Do not judge a man, goes one, until the coffin is closed, for he still has time to make a mistake. The Prime Minister made one mistake. He did not stop the DMK loot when he should have and could have. He permitted daylight loot from the nation’s treasury in order to survive. The true tenor of the Congress-DMK equation is revealed in a letter written by former telecom minister A. Raja, in which he virtually orders the Prime Minister not to interfere on telecom pricing. The moment Dr Singh meekly conceded, his credibility cracked. The Radia tapes reveal the hemorrhage of a self-inflicted wound.
Dr Singh came to office in 2004, but took a while to come to power. He may remain in office, but his power has begun to ebb.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Divide and Fool
Divide and Fool
By M J Akbar
In Third Eye: India Today
December 17, 2010
By M J Akbar
In Third Eye: India Today
December 17, 2010
It is a bit surprising that Digvijaya Singh proved to be too clever by half. Imitating Abdul Rehman Antulay is not the most intelligent option for anyone who wants to make Rahul Gandhi the next prime minister.
The quality of governance is recognised by the management of a crisis; the depth of a politician measured by his ability to convert a crisis into an opportunity. A good prime minister controls events; a poor one becomes their victim. Each event demands attention, for politics is a daily diet, but all facts are obviously not equal. It can take time for a headline to etch its way into the national memory; the spectrum scandal took two years to become a scar in the collective psyche.
Scars might fade but only if the wound is light; in any case, they never go away. It may sound like a paradox, but every politician knows that when corruption becomes a joke in the voters' discourse, it is no longer trivial. Each time an Indian pays some exorbitant price at the vegetable market, he is reminded, at some subconscious level, of the number of zeros in Rs 1.76 lakh crore. The figure has become a symbol of merciless greed in a culture of elitist loot.
A historic event is easily defined; it lives across the lifetime of at least one generation, and shifts perception and faith imperceptibly but irrevocably. Bofors is 25 years old, but still works as a metaphor. The attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008 has changed the attitude of Indians towards Pakistan; there is no longer space in their spirit for adjustment with a neighbour that breeds, feeds and protects callous mass murderers and then trots out self-serving theories to justify criminal abetment of terrorism.
A significant charm of democracy is that every political crisis is a public carnival, open to censure of a judge, reproof of the victim, anger of the preacher and buffoonery of the jester. Do not underestimate the joker; a politician may find it easier to survive rage than lethal, viral caricature. The current crisis in the Congress is too evident to bear repetition, except that context is always a useful companion for text. The party has self-destructed in its secure southern base, Andhra Pradesh, and fragmented a vital alliance in Tamil Nadu, states that catapulted it to power in two general elections. The compensation in Karnataka, where the BJP is taking a beating, is insufficient in electoral terms. But it is the situation in the north which is probably more worrisome. The returns from its only reliable northern vote bank, the Muslims, have suddenly depreciated. In Bihar, more Muslims voted for the Nitish Kumar-BJP alliance than for the Congress. A repetition in Uttar Pradesh, where Assembly elections are likely to be brought forward to November 2011, could deflate the party into corrosive depression.
Digvijaya Singh, the party general secretary for Uttar Pradesh, is a clever man. It is a bit surprising that he proved to be too clever by half. Imitating Abdul Rehman Antulay is not the most intelligent option for anyone who wants to make Rahul Gandhi the next prime minister of India. Like Antulay after 26/11, he sought to resurrect a conspiracy theory that had become passe even in the Urdu papers where it once flourished.
The sheer audacity of an event as astonishing as the Mumbai attacks encourages doubt, which is the first step towards conspiracy. But surely Digvijaya Singh has common sense, unless he sacrificed that virtue at the altar of power. The Urdu paper theory is, in brief, that 26/11 was organised to kill Hemant Karkare, a brave police officer, because he was on the verge of exposing Hindu zealots. This implies that Hindu zealots came to a deal with the Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose leader Hafiz Saeed was so delighted that, with the help of ISI, he armed and trained 10 young men, and sent them on Jihad to India so that Hindu zealots might be protected! I am not a votary of the exclamation mark, but rarely has it been more necessary. You have to be scarily bonkers to believe such utter nonsense. It is one thing when an editor desperate for circulation takes recourse to stupidity.When a man who has been chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and could be home minister of India promotes such rubbish, we have to worry about the health of our politics.
A historic event such as 26/11 creates a national narrative that might blur at the edges but is essentially consistent with the truth. Digvijaya Singh compromised the Indian narrative in order to flirt with rabid sentiment.
The irony is the Congress is losing the Muslim vote because it no longer understands the Muslim vote. Indian Muslims have seen through the deception of decades. They are, at long last, rejecting the politics of fear and demanding development. Check out Bihar.
Who has the last word?
Byline by M J Akbar: Who has the last word?
Do we remember what we have heard or what we wanted to hear? Famous last words are tricky. Even strangers can get infected with nerves at the bedside of a dying man, not least because evidence of mortality induces depressing thoughts of your own inevitable departure. Relatives and friends are too affected by sentiment. Assuming that the deathbed utterance, if there is one, is more likely to be a mumble rather than oratory, the opportunity for tweaking is high, either in the interest of clarity or to improve the quality. Did Groucho Marx really say, “Die, my dear? Why, that’s the last thing I’ll do!”? Or Conrad Hilton, founder of the eponymous hotel chain, depart on the less-than-grand note of “Leave the shower curtain on the inside of the tub”. The great Italian traveller sounds far more credible: “I have not told half of what I saw.” As does the brilliant Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, “I’ve had 18 straight whiskies. I think that’s the record.” Such pitch perfect sentences seem edited by a benefactor for an anthology, which is where I have picked them from.
But of course the words survive because they are in character. The billionaire Hilton must have been obsessing about his hotel guests mucking up the bathroom; Groucho could hardly have resisted one last crack, or Thomas one last idle boast about the addiction that destroyed his talent.
Did Richard Holbrooke, the peripatetic czar of America’s policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, really tell a Pakistani-origin doctor, as he went for the final surgery, “End that Afghanistan war”? Or did the Pakistani doctor, who has watched his country pay such a corrosive political, social and military price for conflicts imposed upon Afghanistan by the strategic interests of superpowers, hear what he wanted to hear?
Holbrooke was the sort of man who took no prisoners in his day job and dominated the room when off duty. His fascinating official career began in Vietnam, paused for a stint as editor of Foreign Affairs and would have ended as the peace-broker of Bosnia if his friend and mentor Hillary Clinton had not given him diplomatic charge of America’s latest war zone. He would have occupied her present office if Hillary had won the White House. While Holbrooke roamed the world, there was one indisputable theme in whatever he said or did: the American interest came first. He was a classical New York, liberal patriot.
Did he believe, therefore, that it was now in the American interest to stop the war? During the two years of his intensive engagement he had — much to the dismay of Delhi — bought into Pakistan’s version of events. He became an advocate of Islamabad’s “strategic depth” theory and put as much pressure as he could on Delhi to withdraw troops from the Line of Control so that Pakistan could shift its own forces towards its western front. He was the principal voice within the Obama administration urging the largesse that Pakistan has received in the last two years. George Bush was far more circumspect while signing cheques. Pakistanis fondly recall his role in the massive relief effort after this year’s floods, when he personally took charge of distribution. [If Holbrooke was present he was automatically in charge.] But he would not want an end to the war if peace was primarily for Pakistan’s well-being.
War is not a continuous activity; there are long fallow periods between battles, even in a guerrilla war. The Afghan is in one of its fallow periods but it cannot end until one side accepts defeat or both sides agree on a ceasefire. America and Vietnam, uniquely, began peace talks without a ceasefire, so there is more than one model for termination of hostilities. Holbrooke was aware that, in a completely unstructured manner, a similar attempt was underway. This unacknowledged process has thrown up absurdities like the “Taliban” leader who was flown into Kabul by British intelligence for talks, before they discovered that he was a fake, nothing more than a provincial shopkeeper. Someone in ISI is probably still dining out on the true story. It is the sort of episode that makes Groucho Marx’s last words relevant.
Somewhere in his ebbing consciousness, and perhaps rising conscience, Holbrooke knew that the Afghan war had begun as the right thing to do, but been driven into an abyss by mistakes. It was time for America to cut its losses, financial and political, and deal with the aftermath as best it could. I wonder if Holbrooke had time to tell his Pakistani friends that it would be a dangerous mistake if they rushed into space created by American withdrawal. Afghan nationalism is as hard as the Himalayan rock of its mountains.
It does make one wonder what George Bush’s last words might be. Perhaps: Continue that war!
Do we remember what we have heard or what we wanted to hear? Famous last words are tricky. Even strangers can get infected with nerves at the bedside of a dying man, not least because evidence of mortality induces depressing thoughts of your own inevitable departure. Relatives and friends are too affected by sentiment. Assuming that the deathbed utterance, if there is one, is more likely to be a mumble rather than oratory, the opportunity for tweaking is high, either in the interest of clarity or to improve the quality. Did Groucho Marx really say, “Die, my dear? Why, that’s the last thing I’ll do!”? Or Conrad Hilton, founder of the eponymous hotel chain, depart on the less-than-grand note of “Leave the shower curtain on the inside of the tub”. The great Italian traveller sounds far more credible: “I have not told half of what I saw.” As does the brilliant Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, “I’ve had 18 straight whiskies. I think that’s the record.” Such pitch perfect sentences seem edited by a benefactor for an anthology, which is where I have picked them from.
But of course the words survive because they are in character. The billionaire Hilton must have been obsessing about his hotel guests mucking up the bathroom; Groucho could hardly have resisted one last crack, or Thomas one last idle boast about the addiction that destroyed his talent.
Did Richard Holbrooke, the peripatetic czar of America’s policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, really tell a Pakistani-origin doctor, as he went for the final surgery, “End that Afghanistan war”? Or did the Pakistani doctor, who has watched his country pay such a corrosive political, social and military price for conflicts imposed upon Afghanistan by the strategic interests of superpowers, hear what he wanted to hear?
Holbrooke was the sort of man who took no prisoners in his day job and dominated the room when off duty. His fascinating official career began in Vietnam, paused for a stint as editor of Foreign Affairs and would have ended as the peace-broker of Bosnia if his friend and mentor Hillary Clinton had not given him diplomatic charge of America’s latest war zone. He would have occupied her present office if Hillary had won the White House. While Holbrooke roamed the world, there was one indisputable theme in whatever he said or did: the American interest came first. He was a classical New York, liberal patriot.
Did he believe, therefore, that it was now in the American interest to stop the war? During the two years of his intensive engagement he had — much to the dismay of Delhi — bought into Pakistan’s version of events. He became an advocate of Islamabad’s “strategic depth” theory and put as much pressure as he could on Delhi to withdraw troops from the Line of Control so that Pakistan could shift its own forces towards its western front. He was the principal voice within the Obama administration urging the largesse that Pakistan has received in the last two years. George Bush was far more circumspect while signing cheques. Pakistanis fondly recall his role in the massive relief effort after this year’s floods, when he personally took charge of distribution. [If Holbrooke was present he was automatically in charge.] But he would not want an end to the war if peace was primarily for Pakistan’s well-being.
War is not a continuous activity; there are long fallow periods between battles, even in a guerrilla war. The Afghan is in one of its fallow periods but it cannot end until one side accepts defeat or both sides agree on a ceasefire. America and Vietnam, uniquely, began peace talks without a ceasefire, so there is more than one model for termination of hostilities. Holbrooke was aware that, in a completely unstructured manner, a similar attempt was underway. This unacknowledged process has thrown up absurdities like the “Taliban” leader who was flown into Kabul by British intelligence for talks, before they discovered that he was a fake, nothing more than a provincial shopkeeper. Someone in ISI is probably still dining out on the true story. It is the sort of episode that makes Groucho Marx’s last words relevant.
Somewhere in his ebbing consciousness, and perhaps rising conscience, Holbrooke knew that the Afghan war had begun as the right thing to do, but been driven into an abyss by mistakes. It was time for America to cut its losses, financial and political, and deal with the aftermath as best it could. I wonder if Holbrooke had time to tell his Pakistani friends that it would be a dangerous mistake if they rushed into space created by American withdrawal. Afghan nationalism is as hard as the Himalayan rock of its mountains.
It does make one wonder what George Bush’s last words might be. Perhaps: Continue that war!
Sunday, December 12, 2010
The Chikileaks
The Chikileaks
By M J Akbar
The Third Eye: In India Today, December 9, 2010
Memo from G.K. Pillai, home secretary by special appointment to His Excellency P. Chidambaram:
To all hacks and their secondary lifestyle providers, with particular attention to peacocks and peahens: You ain't seen nothing yet, baby. You thought the icing was cool? Wait for the cake. If you believe the 150-odd conversations we floated your way was a bombshell, then the 6,000 in the storehouse will be an artillery barrage of World War I proportions. That was a tremor. This will be an earthquake. Trust me. I have read them.
I am not a journalist with half a head and three masters, or a greasy glad-hander with a coy accent strengthened by a bankroll. My decisions are permission-protected. When I gave the interview to Wall Street Journal promising that there was heavy, serious stuff in the still-secret transcripts, I knew what I was doing. And my boss knew what he was doing when he chose to publicly laugh - all right, make that sneer - at journalists who thought they were running the country. That wasn't an accident, or a slip. Grow up. He has read the file, examined those tapes and charted out his route map.
Can't blame him, or his fellow politicians. They have to take so much nonsense from this sanctimonious tribe of media balloons that the temptation to prick the swellheads must be irresistible. We will, of course, maximise the time taken in the process; must keep the lot trembling in the dread of anticipation for as long as possible. Moreover, nothing undermines a story so much as oversaturation of supply. The media could barely handle those 150 conversations. All these chaps who want to break news at the decibel levels of Babel never manage to find the silence for a bit of reading, even of essentials. Some of them have forgotten how to read, so we will forgive them. So many are simply too lazy. They would rather chatter than study detail.
My boss is a brilliant lawyer. We are going to be judicious. We will hand out stuff selectively, and spread it around. That's fair.
Dumping is not the home minister's style at all. He wants a few media ulcers to turn septic along the way, and that needs time. Remember, there is one lot of superstars which knows, or has a good idea of, what lies in the undisclosed transcripts: those who were phonemates of Niira Radia. You know some of the names from the teaser; they must be dreading the release of the full movie, wondering how much more indiscretion is hidden in the tapes. They escaped in the first round on the oily paths between silence, bluster, fudge and smarminess, but how far? They must be sleeping-pill addicts by now, wondering how much more of hug-and-help is frozen in our machines. Did even a casual line about satisfaction for services escape their lips? That's going to be the big one. Raja is passé. The future of the news wheel belongs to courtiers and paymasters.
India was an apple republic as long as the tapes were unknown. See how quickly it became a banana republic when ants began to crawl up corporate pants.
May I, an anonymous, faceless, gossip-abused bureaucrat, make a confession? What bliss!
Look, this is history in the making. History is forgotten unless it is branded. Watergate will survive in memory long after Richard Nixon has become oblivion. Who will recall Julian Assange, and who can forget Wikileaks?
Why should posterity remember our fling with phones as the Radiatapes? She is desperate to destroy the tapes, not preserve them. It is my boss who wants to prosecute, and maybe even persecute, on the basis of those tapes. The tapes should be named after Chidambaram.
Chikileaks.
Nice ring to it. Roll that over. Good on the tongue. Almost savoury. Works pretty well in a headline too. We must be kind to sub-editors who have to think of headlines; after all, Radia never phones any of them!
GK, Etc.
PS: I just can't understand why Americans are persecuting Wikileaks' Assange; they should give him a hero's medal. Wikileaks prove what some of us suspected but no one could confirm - that American diplomats are clear, concise, cogent and informed. Only the stupid and the prejudiced accuse them of being dumb. They know precisely what is going on in the world even if their government's policy is built within a maze of spiderwebs hung across Chinese walls. Their analysis of Pakistan is perfect; it has an unintelligent government run by the intelligence service. Why on earth don't they do anything about a nation which is going to obliterate itself and us as well? One of these days I must leak our tapes of American diplomats in Delhi to the Wall Street Journal.
By M J Akbar
The Third Eye: In India Today, December 9, 2010
Memo from G.K. Pillai, home secretary by special appointment to His Excellency P. Chidambaram:
To all hacks and their secondary lifestyle providers, with particular attention to peacocks and peahens: You ain't seen nothing yet, baby. You thought the icing was cool? Wait for the cake. If you believe the 150-odd conversations we floated your way was a bombshell, then the 6,000 in the storehouse will be an artillery barrage of World War I proportions. That was a tremor. This will be an earthquake. Trust me. I have read them.
I am not a journalist with half a head and three masters, or a greasy glad-hander with a coy accent strengthened by a bankroll. My decisions are permission-protected. When I gave the interview to Wall Street Journal promising that there was heavy, serious stuff in the still-secret transcripts, I knew what I was doing. And my boss knew what he was doing when he chose to publicly laugh - all right, make that sneer - at journalists who thought they were running the country. That wasn't an accident, or a slip. Grow up. He has read the file, examined those tapes and charted out his route map.
Can't blame him, or his fellow politicians. They have to take so much nonsense from this sanctimonious tribe of media balloons that the temptation to prick the swellheads must be irresistible. We will, of course, maximise the time taken in the process; must keep the lot trembling in the dread of anticipation for as long as possible. Moreover, nothing undermines a story so much as oversaturation of supply. The media could barely handle those 150 conversations. All these chaps who want to break news at the decibel levels of Babel never manage to find the silence for a bit of reading, even of essentials. Some of them have forgotten how to read, so we will forgive them. So many are simply too lazy. They would rather chatter than study detail.
My boss is a brilliant lawyer. We are going to be judicious. We will hand out stuff selectively, and spread it around. That's fair.
Dumping is not the home minister's style at all. He wants a few media ulcers to turn septic along the way, and that needs time. Remember, there is one lot of superstars which knows, or has a good idea of, what lies in the undisclosed transcripts: those who were phonemates of Niira Radia. You know some of the names from the teaser; they must be dreading the release of the full movie, wondering how much more indiscretion is hidden in the tapes. They escaped in the first round on the oily paths between silence, bluster, fudge and smarminess, but how far? They must be sleeping-pill addicts by now, wondering how much more of hug-and-help is frozen in our machines. Did even a casual line about satisfaction for services escape their lips? That's going to be the big one. Raja is passé. The future of the news wheel belongs to courtiers and paymasters.
India was an apple republic as long as the tapes were unknown. See how quickly it became a banana republic when ants began to crawl up corporate pants.
May I, an anonymous, faceless, gossip-abused bureaucrat, make a confession? What bliss!
Look, this is history in the making. History is forgotten unless it is branded. Watergate will survive in memory long after Richard Nixon has become oblivion. Who will recall Julian Assange, and who can forget Wikileaks?
Why should posterity remember our fling with phones as the Radiatapes? She is desperate to destroy the tapes, not preserve them. It is my boss who wants to prosecute, and maybe even persecute, on the basis of those tapes. The tapes should be named after Chidambaram.
Chikileaks.
Nice ring to it. Roll that over. Good on the tongue. Almost savoury. Works pretty well in a headline too. We must be kind to sub-editors who have to think of headlines; after all, Radia never phones any of them!
GK, Etc.
PS: I just can't understand why Americans are persecuting Wikileaks' Assange; they should give him a hero's medal. Wikileaks prove what some of us suspected but no one could confirm - that American diplomats are clear, concise, cogent and informed. Only the stupid and the prejudiced accuse them of being dumb. They know precisely what is going on in the world even if their government's policy is built within a maze of spiderwebs hung across Chinese walls. Their analysis of Pakistan is perfect; it has an unintelligent government run by the intelligence service. Why on earth don't they do anything about a nation which is going to obliterate itself and us as well? One of these days I must leak our tapes of American diplomats in Delhi to the Wall Street Journal.
The profit and loss of noise
Byline by M J Akbar: The profit and loss of noise
It is entirely appropriate that the man in charge of India's volume control, Pranab Mukherjee, should have uttered what is unarguably the comment of the year: our democracy has become too noisy. Through a long career stretching from the 1960s, Pranabda [as he is fondly known] has always preferred the brain to the lung. Noise has been neither in his temperament nor his bhadralok-Brahmin culture. His metier is ministerial; he is a fish out of water when his party is in Opposition. He knows that government has a tremendous advantage in the parliamentary form of government, even more so than in the presidential form, but only if it knows the mechanism of power. He would be the first to appreciate that Opposition very often has no option except to play its first and last card, noise.
Noise has become a pejorative term, which is unfair. Noise does not have to be necessarily loud. Oratory is beautiful noise. Music is noise touched by magic. Politics rarely rises to oratory, and never to music, but every Opposition knows that while it cannot survive if it is not heard, it must trade with the voter in intelligible noise. Rising decibel levels can be justified only if there is the logic of public interest at the core. The delicate twist that lifts Mukherjee's statement from the passe to the extraordinary is a descriptive qualification, 'a bit too'. Noise is essential to the system. Excess, however, grates. There is a clash of civilisations when the throat threatens to destroy the eardrum. Democracy works when all five sense are in harmony. Mukherjee's diagnosis was perfect, but his prescription was, shall we say, a bit ambiguous. He advised a bit of silence.
The virtues of silence can never be overstated. Silence breeds reflection and reflection encourages maturity. If that was Mukherjee's advice to Opposition, then it had some merit. But it is equally within the Opposition's rights to point out that government very often treats silence in precisely the same manner as an accused - as its first line of defence. In any criminal case, police have to give an accused the legal right of silence, so that he does not incriminate himself. Both Prakash Karat of the CPI(M) and Arun Jaitley of the BJP are asking Dr Manmohan Singh whether he reject the idea of a JPC because he fears that if he speaks he will incriminate his government in a scandal that continues to have the most astonishing reverberations as layer after surprising layer peels off. We now learn is that government tapped the middlewoman Niira Radia's phones because it believed that she was "indulging in anti-national activities". This takes the allegations against her beyond the edges of conventional corruption, and provides further justification to the Opposition demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee to probe the most sensational scandal in two decades.
It is ironic that government was forced to state this in the Supreme Court because of a petition filed by Radia's chief financial mentor and public guardian, Ratan Tata, the industrialist who has helped Radia's company grow from nothing to Rs 300 crores in just nine years. Acting on poor legal advice, Tata went to court to blanket out information, condemning India as a banana republic along the way. No weapon has ricocheted back faster than the Ratan boomerang.
It may be relevant, therefore, to consider where Pranab Mukherjee asked for a bit of silence. He was speaking to industrialists. While it is axiomatic that there cannot be bribery without money, and where there is money there will be businessmen, the 2G show is slowly turning into theatre where the lead role in the first act has faded before the aggressive emergence of businessmen on the stage. Ratan Tata has been dominating headlines with a persistence uncharacteristic of his class. He has been interventionist rather than reticent, often storming into the debate despite overwhelming evidence of sleaze on the part of his protege. It was only a matter of time before another businessman decided to label this as hypocrisy, which Rajeev Chandrashekhar did, albeit more politely. Tata's response was to claim personal virtue in the name of the Prime Minister, a double-edged tribute which Dr Singh might want to ignore; and accuse an Opposition party, BJP, of association in the exercise.
This might be the moment to point out that Niira Radia's telephones were tapped by the Manmohan Singh government, not the BJP. They were leaked by those today in power, not a BJP mole. If Ratan Tata finds his name in media stories on Indian scams, it is because the present government made the Radia tapes available to media. It is possible that the leaks had home minister P. Chidambaram's approval; after all, home secretary G.K. Pillai has, on record, promised much more.
Time to understand what Pranab Mukherjee implied: silence begins at home.
It is entirely appropriate that the man in charge of India's volume control, Pranab Mukherjee, should have uttered what is unarguably the comment of the year: our democracy has become too noisy. Through a long career stretching from the 1960s, Pranabda [as he is fondly known] has always preferred the brain to the lung. Noise has been neither in his temperament nor his bhadralok-Brahmin culture. His metier is ministerial; he is a fish out of water when his party is in Opposition. He knows that government has a tremendous advantage in the parliamentary form of government, even more so than in the presidential form, but only if it knows the mechanism of power. He would be the first to appreciate that Opposition very often has no option except to play its first and last card, noise.
Noise has become a pejorative term, which is unfair. Noise does not have to be necessarily loud. Oratory is beautiful noise. Music is noise touched by magic. Politics rarely rises to oratory, and never to music, but every Opposition knows that while it cannot survive if it is not heard, it must trade with the voter in intelligible noise. Rising decibel levels can be justified only if there is the logic of public interest at the core. The delicate twist that lifts Mukherjee's statement from the passe to the extraordinary is a descriptive qualification, 'a bit too'. Noise is essential to the system. Excess, however, grates. There is a clash of civilisations when the throat threatens to destroy the eardrum. Democracy works when all five sense are in harmony. Mukherjee's diagnosis was perfect, but his prescription was, shall we say, a bit ambiguous. He advised a bit of silence.
The virtues of silence can never be overstated. Silence breeds reflection and reflection encourages maturity. If that was Mukherjee's advice to Opposition, then it had some merit. But it is equally within the Opposition's rights to point out that government very often treats silence in precisely the same manner as an accused - as its first line of defence. In any criminal case, police have to give an accused the legal right of silence, so that he does not incriminate himself. Both Prakash Karat of the CPI(M) and Arun Jaitley of the BJP are asking Dr Manmohan Singh whether he reject the idea of a JPC because he fears that if he speaks he will incriminate his government in a scandal that continues to have the most astonishing reverberations as layer after surprising layer peels off. We now learn is that government tapped the middlewoman Niira Radia's phones because it believed that she was "indulging in anti-national activities". This takes the allegations against her beyond the edges of conventional corruption, and provides further justification to the Opposition demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee to probe the most sensational scandal in two decades.
It is ironic that government was forced to state this in the Supreme Court because of a petition filed by Radia's chief financial mentor and public guardian, Ratan Tata, the industrialist who has helped Radia's company grow from nothing to Rs 300 crores in just nine years. Acting on poor legal advice, Tata went to court to blanket out information, condemning India as a banana republic along the way. No weapon has ricocheted back faster than the Ratan boomerang.
It may be relevant, therefore, to consider where Pranab Mukherjee asked for a bit of silence. He was speaking to industrialists. While it is axiomatic that there cannot be bribery without money, and where there is money there will be businessmen, the 2G show is slowly turning into theatre where the lead role in the first act has faded before the aggressive emergence of businessmen on the stage. Ratan Tata has been dominating headlines with a persistence uncharacteristic of his class. He has been interventionist rather than reticent, often storming into the debate despite overwhelming evidence of sleaze on the part of his protege. It was only a matter of time before another businessman decided to label this as hypocrisy, which Rajeev Chandrashekhar did, albeit more politely. Tata's response was to claim personal virtue in the name of the Prime Minister, a double-edged tribute which Dr Singh might want to ignore; and accuse an Opposition party, BJP, of association in the exercise.
This might be the moment to point out that Niira Radia's telephones were tapped by the Manmohan Singh government, not the BJP. They were leaked by those today in power, not a BJP mole. If Ratan Tata finds his name in media stories on Indian scams, it is because the present government made the Radia tapes available to media. It is possible that the leaks had home minister P. Chidambaram's approval; after all, home secretary G.K. Pillai has, on record, promised much more.
Time to understand what Pranab Mukherjee implied: silence begins at home.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Scripture of deceit
Scripture of deceit
By M J Akbar
Third Eye : In India Today
The stench from the media cesspool has turned toxic, and there are still drama queens who believe that they can preen their way across the stage, noses delicately ensconced in a heroic lace handkerchief, till the troublesome citizens eventually tire of even the Radia drama. Since journalists always demand more fairness and balance in the reportage of their woes than they offer their victims, it will perhaps take some more time, and probably more tapes, before we can confirm whether prima donnas were also corrupt. But there is already sufficient evidence to indicate that they were stupid.
I am continuously amazed by how little journalists understand politicians. Perhaps it hurts their sensitive and inflated egos to get the simple fact that politicians treat most media with disdain, precisely because they understand how it works. And they have nothing but contempt for cozy collaborators who think they have arrived because they were invited to the parlour for cocktails, although they were never permitted into the dining room for dinner. A few of them indulged the hallucination that they were enjoying the intimacies of the residential bedroom. You could hear the sound of hearts being broken when the tapes revealed that it was only a transactional exchange rather than true love.
That purr in the ear isn't the music of your back being scratched, darling; it's the crackle of your slim wallet being emptied of ethics.
The politician's menu for media starts with the watery soup of flattery. Temptation is as old as the Garden of Eden, and the self important editor's worst weakness is actually a vigorous massage of the ego. Money may or may not come a close second, but ego is a genetic disease. Moreover, flattery costs nothing but a string of lies, and lies were never an accounting problem in Delhi. The journalist can even console himself, or herself, that it is an honest equation since the sin of money never stained hands.
The main course is harder stuff: pressure, sweet or sour. Obviously pressure is best coated in saccharine, and surrounded by the subtle fragrance of quality gifts which can range from mobile phone access and VIP friendly travel to the rather more serious business of corporate funding. If this does not work, and in many cases it does not (a cynic described half the editors as corrupt, which still leaves the other half all right), then the slow process of twisting your arm begins. Only medieval fools and Guantanamo honchos thought torture should be on public display; in Delhi they can twist your limbs without being in the same room. In the "worst case scenario", when you refuse to recognise "good sense", you lose your job for reasons that can never be attributed to the establishment. Don't make the mistake of protesting. The easiest way to make a grim room in government burst into cackles is the sight of a journalist being kicked downstairs.
By the time dessert is served the dinner party has become completely exclusive, for it is offered only to a chosen few. That is why Prime Ministers, of all parties, and super Prime Ministers like Mrs Sonia Gandhi, take a personal interest in selecting which journalists are given Padma awards and what is the pecking order of the deemed honour. These are personal grace-and-favour anointments.
The other great mystery is the naïveté of successful businessmen. They simply do not understand the labyrinths through which political power travels towards a decision, and hence their endless quest for either a presence or a guide through the maze. They are bewildered by the systems of Delhi's crime and punishment, reward and banishment, and frustrated by the numerous Chinese walls that block their approach. They deploy cash, but are uncertain about what they have purchased. A few think that the Rajya Sabha opens the door to Delhi, and discover that it was constituted for something quite outside their requirements. This is why the allure of a corporate lobbyist becomes irresistible.
Niira Radia was the perfect wheeler-dealer; she sold a mix of 20 per cent reality and 80 per cent illusion to her clients. Her hi-buy relationship with the ruling class included those journalists she believed were close to the powerful. There was nothing personal, just in case you got fooled by the ooziness of the recorded conversations. Ratan Tata would have been far better served if he had invested in media with a reputation for a value that his family used to cherish, independence. Jamsetji Tata held shares in The Statesman and no one ever questioned his integrity. Ratan Tata banked instead on Radia. The consequences of a poor investment have been heavy.
The script of the Niira Radia tapes is the scripture of today's political immorality.
By M J Akbar
Third Eye : In India Today
The stench from the media cesspool has turned toxic, and there are still drama queens who believe that they can preen their way across the stage, noses delicately ensconced in a heroic lace handkerchief, till the troublesome citizens eventually tire of even the Radia drama. Since journalists always demand more fairness and balance in the reportage of their woes than they offer their victims, it will perhaps take some more time, and probably more tapes, before we can confirm whether prima donnas were also corrupt. But there is already sufficient evidence to indicate that they were stupid.
I am continuously amazed by how little journalists understand politicians. Perhaps it hurts their sensitive and inflated egos to get the simple fact that politicians treat most media with disdain, precisely because they understand how it works. And they have nothing but contempt for cozy collaborators who think they have arrived because they were invited to the parlour for cocktails, although they were never permitted into the dining room for dinner. A few of them indulged the hallucination that they were enjoying the intimacies of the residential bedroom. You could hear the sound of hearts being broken when the tapes revealed that it was only a transactional exchange rather than true love.
That purr in the ear isn't the music of your back being scratched, darling; it's the crackle of your slim wallet being emptied of ethics.
The politician's menu for media starts with the watery soup of flattery. Temptation is as old as the Garden of Eden, and the self important editor's worst weakness is actually a vigorous massage of the ego. Money may or may not come a close second, but ego is a genetic disease. Moreover, flattery costs nothing but a string of lies, and lies were never an accounting problem in Delhi. The journalist can even console himself, or herself, that it is an honest equation since the sin of money never stained hands.
The main course is harder stuff: pressure, sweet or sour. Obviously pressure is best coated in saccharine, and surrounded by the subtle fragrance of quality gifts which can range from mobile phone access and VIP friendly travel to the rather more serious business of corporate funding. If this does not work, and in many cases it does not (a cynic described half the editors as corrupt, which still leaves the other half all right), then the slow process of twisting your arm begins. Only medieval fools and Guantanamo honchos thought torture should be on public display; in Delhi they can twist your limbs without being in the same room. In the "worst case scenario", when you refuse to recognise "good sense", you lose your job for reasons that can never be attributed to the establishment. Don't make the mistake of protesting. The easiest way to make a grim room in government burst into cackles is the sight of a journalist being kicked downstairs.
By the time dessert is served the dinner party has become completely exclusive, for it is offered only to a chosen few. That is why Prime Ministers, of all parties, and super Prime Ministers like Mrs Sonia Gandhi, take a personal interest in selecting which journalists are given Padma awards and what is the pecking order of the deemed honour. These are personal grace-and-favour anointments.
The other great mystery is the naïveté of successful businessmen. They simply do not understand the labyrinths through which political power travels towards a decision, and hence their endless quest for either a presence or a guide through the maze. They are bewildered by the systems of Delhi's crime and punishment, reward and banishment, and frustrated by the numerous Chinese walls that block their approach. They deploy cash, but are uncertain about what they have purchased. A few think that the Rajya Sabha opens the door to Delhi, and discover that it was constituted for something quite outside their requirements. This is why the allure of a corporate lobbyist becomes irresistible.
Niira Radia was the perfect wheeler-dealer; she sold a mix of 20 per cent reality and 80 per cent illusion to her clients. Her hi-buy relationship with the ruling class included those journalists she believed were close to the powerful. There was nothing personal, just in case you got fooled by the ooziness of the recorded conversations. Ratan Tata would have been far better served if he had invested in media with a reputation for a value that his family used to cherish, independence. Jamsetji Tata held shares in The Statesman and no one ever questioned his integrity. Ratan Tata banked instead on Radia. The consequences of a poor investment have been heavy.
The script of the Niira Radia tapes is the scripture of today's political immorality.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Under the weather in Milan
Musings by M J Akbar : Under the weather in Milan
Snow is a sheet on the ground, talcum on the trees, a patched overcoat on the Alps and an electric blue at Zurich airport. I have to catch a connection to Milan within 50 minutes but there is no hint of hurry when I check with ground staff. Swiss calm about process and punctuality is eerie. Clockwork is in the DNA. I go through unruffled immigration police, board a transit train, grab a vital necessity from duty free and still reach my next flight with time to dawdle. The train welcomes visitors with the music of the moo, while a yodel drifts in the background. Forget the infamous cuckoo; the cow is symbol, pride and sustenance of Switzerland. Milk is the national diet, chocolate the people’s pastime.
----------
The snow had turned Italian in Milan, intense and disorderly. The driver who welcomed me however was sunny in a puzzled sort of way. “Plane on time, eh?” he said in half-awe, half-regret. Swiss airline, I pointed out, not Italian. He beamed with great pride, switched the subject and wondered what snow was doing in Italy in November. Some of it had descended on me when the passenger bus stopped a little short of the terminal. Snow on a bald head can be a nuanced experience.
----------
The limbs of Milan are commerce; the heart of Milan is worship. The city was born for trade but grew up around a cathedral, the Duomo, a magnificent tribute to the soaring power of the Italian imagination when touched by the miracle of faith. Inside the cathedral the eye is sated by an excess of inspiration as it wanders from painting to sculpture to stained glass. The skeletal saint-scholar standing against a curve in the walls, lit by the rays of a sun deflected by brilliant glass panes, is an utter marvel. The house of God carries the weight of human genius lightly, but cannot quite eliminate the pride of the artist, determined to reinvent the divine in his own image. And so, in a scene from the crucifixion on the stained glass, Jesus Christ is white but the thieves on either side are brown.
----------
The Duomo is the perfect opening conversational gambit with a polite Milanese fellow-guest at our India-Italy conference in an 18th century palace. He surprised me with his readily-expressed irritation at the fact that Moroccan immigrants refused to visit the cathedral, calling it “haraam”. This gentleman was a Communist for 364 days and became right-wing at the ballot box thanks to illegal immigration, the great blight that dare not speak its name except in hushed whispers. I thought all he needed to do was wait out a generation. The children would integrate. The latest moll, after all, on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s endless list of “bunga bunga” partners in his swimming pool is a 19-year-old Libyan immigrant whose father probably thought she had gone to the big city to study physics. There is too much hypocrisy about illegal immigration. Immigrants brave the ardour of dispersal only because there are local jobs available. As Italy ages, there is great demand for young women who can nurse the old in their dotage. Demand will always fetch supply.
----------
The most fashionably dressed tourists are Chinese, instantly recognisable by their complete indifference to their host environment. They travel to enjoy their own company, which is good enough reason. You can never tell whether their designer bags are fake, but who cares if they don’t care? Lunch at a café with bad food and high prices can be an education in international relations. The Chinese man keeps patting his lips with a chapstick; his stoic partner has enough lispstick already. The British couple at the adjoining table is armed with multiple chips on both shoulders, and seem irritated by the fact that no one is interested in the peculiarities of their accent. A French family is lost in inter-generational disputes as parents look at the price and son concentrates on the food. Travel convinces me that waitresses smile mainly because they know they will never see you again.
----------
I am constantly told during my brief visit that I should never walk without headwear. But the only hat I have packed is a high, Kashmiri wool cap. The choice therefore is between looking like a Turkish immigrant who has not quite squared up the authorities, and dying of cold. No-brainer. Obviously I choose death over the police.
Snow is a sheet on the ground, talcum on the trees, a patched overcoat on the Alps and an electric blue at Zurich airport. I have to catch a connection to Milan within 50 minutes but there is no hint of hurry when I check with ground staff. Swiss calm about process and punctuality is eerie. Clockwork is in the DNA. I go through unruffled immigration police, board a transit train, grab a vital necessity from duty free and still reach my next flight with time to dawdle. The train welcomes visitors with the music of the moo, while a yodel drifts in the background. Forget the infamous cuckoo; the cow is symbol, pride and sustenance of Switzerland. Milk is the national diet, chocolate the people’s pastime.
----------
The snow had turned Italian in Milan, intense and disorderly. The driver who welcomed me however was sunny in a puzzled sort of way. “Plane on time, eh?” he said in half-awe, half-regret. Swiss airline, I pointed out, not Italian. He beamed with great pride, switched the subject and wondered what snow was doing in Italy in November. Some of it had descended on me when the passenger bus stopped a little short of the terminal. Snow on a bald head can be a nuanced experience.
----------
The limbs of Milan are commerce; the heart of Milan is worship. The city was born for trade but grew up around a cathedral, the Duomo, a magnificent tribute to the soaring power of the Italian imagination when touched by the miracle of faith. Inside the cathedral the eye is sated by an excess of inspiration as it wanders from painting to sculpture to stained glass. The skeletal saint-scholar standing against a curve in the walls, lit by the rays of a sun deflected by brilliant glass panes, is an utter marvel. The house of God carries the weight of human genius lightly, but cannot quite eliminate the pride of the artist, determined to reinvent the divine in his own image. And so, in a scene from the crucifixion on the stained glass, Jesus Christ is white but the thieves on either side are brown.
----------
The Duomo is the perfect opening conversational gambit with a polite Milanese fellow-guest at our India-Italy conference in an 18th century palace. He surprised me with his readily-expressed irritation at the fact that Moroccan immigrants refused to visit the cathedral, calling it “haraam”. This gentleman was a Communist for 364 days and became right-wing at the ballot box thanks to illegal immigration, the great blight that dare not speak its name except in hushed whispers. I thought all he needed to do was wait out a generation. The children would integrate. The latest moll, after all, on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s endless list of “bunga bunga” partners in his swimming pool is a 19-year-old Libyan immigrant whose father probably thought she had gone to the big city to study physics. There is too much hypocrisy about illegal immigration. Immigrants brave the ardour of dispersal only because there are local jobs available. As Italy ages, there is great demand for young women who can nurse the old in their dotage. Demand will always fetch supply.
----------
The most fashionably dressed tourists are Chinese, instantly recognisable by their complete indifference to their host environment. They travel to enjoy their own company, which is good enough reason. You can never tell whether their designer bags are fake, but who cares if they don’t care? Lunch at a café with bad food and high prices can be an education in international relations. The Chinese man keeps patting his lips with a chapstick; his stoic partner has enough lispstick already. The British couple at the adjoining table is armed with multiple chips on both shoulders, and seem irritated by the fact that no one is interested in the peculiarities of their accent. A French family is lost in inter-generational disputes as parents look at the price and son concentrates on the food. Travel convinces me that waitresses smile mainly because they know they will never see you again.
----------
I am constantly told during my brief visit that I should never walk without headwear. But the only hat I have packed is a high, Kashmiri wool cap. The choice therefore is between looking like a Turkish immigrant who has not quite squared up the authorities, and dying of cold. No-brainer. Obviously I choose death over the police.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
The Mao of Gujarat
Byline by M J Akbar : The Mao of Gujarat
The unnamed young students of Ahmedabad who had a question or two for Rahul Gandhi this week were pertinent, not pert. They also provided more evidence that students are doing the job that journalists either cannot, or will not, do; which is, ask relevant questions. In this case, media was prevented from reporting the event, so journalists can't be faulted, and we know what happened thanks only to an enterprising reporter from the Times of India who had a source inside the hall.
The essence was simple and the same: students wanted to know why they should vote for the Congress when Narendra Modi had developed Gujarat so much. One answer given by Rahul Gandhi was odd, to say the very least. Mao Zedong, said Rahul Gandhi, also developed China but "he caused destruction to the country, too". I am not too sure whether Narendra Modi would mind being compared to one of the great figures of the twentieth century, warts and all. Rahul Gandhi probably gets his views on history from some briefing by a young and fresh associate, but he could have checked with the Chinese. They have moved on from Mao, just as India and the Congress have moved on from Mahatma Gandhi, but China still reveres the leader of the Long March as the leader who laid the foundations of China's economic miracle. Mao's portrait dominates Tienmien Square as well as the nation's banknotes. If Modi can become the second Gujarati to have his picture on the Indian rupee, he will consider his life well spent. Chairman Modi has quite a nice ring to it as well, although Modi would be going too far if he published a little red book packed with his quotable quotes and asked millions of young people to wave it in unison during a cultural revolution.
A young girl was sharper in her question. She asked which Congress leaders could measure up to Modi on the development matrix. Rahul Gandhi had four names on the tip of his tongue: Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram, Jairam Ramesh and A.K. Antony. It is interesting that three of the four did not contest the Lok Sabha elections, and the voters in Chidambaram's own constituency had such a poor view of his development capabilities that he was declared defeated before he was declared elected in the 2009 general elections. It would be interesting if Jairam Ramesh could find a constituency from where he could get elected on a development platform, but his ministry does take its priority cues from Rahul Gandhi's travel plans. What is definitely interesting is that the finance minister of India, Pranab Mukherjee, does not figure in Rahul Gandhi's list of heroes, either in development or honesty. The two lists are, in fact, similar, because Rahul thought that the three most incorruptible ministers were also the PM, Antony and Chidambaram. He did not however consider Jairam Ramesh worthy of a position in the honest brigade. Poor Jairam. Or, one wonders, is it more appropriate to say, rich Jairam?
One doubts if the people will give too much credence to such certificates from the Prime Minister-in-waiting, but the large tribe of Rahul-watchers in Delhi must have already done an instant calculus, shifted positions on the pecking order and altered levels of homage. The big winners are obviously Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh; the first jumps to the top of seniors, and the second takes pole position on the second tier. The certificate slates them as stars of Rahul's first Cabinet, whenever or if ever that comes about, so now you know who to call if you want anything done.
The Ahmedabad students did not get into a critique of the heir's remarks, but they did press on about Modi. Why was Rahul denying Modi credit for Gujarat's development? He had caused "some issues" replied Rahul Gandhi. Did he mean riots? At this point the story takes a curious turn. This was where Rahul Gandhi could have departed from fudge and become forthright. Instead, says the report, "the Congress leader refused to engage further and walked out saying he was getting late". Perhaps he was only getting restive. Rahul Gandhi had found out what Barack Obama discovered when he met Mumbai students at St Xavier's College. It is easier to field questions from journalists than students. But that does not explain why he was evasive at the end. The students were more specific and forthright than him. It must be a recurrence of the old Congress disease, trying to play both sides against the middle.
Those who take the young for granted do not understand the young. They like cosmetics, but they never confuse make-up with the face.
The unnamed young students of Ahmedabad who had a question or two for Rahul Gandhi this week were pertinent, not pert. They also provided more evidence that students are doing the job that journalists either cannot, or will not, do; which is, ask relevant questions. In this case, media was prevented from reporting the event, so journalists can't be faulted, and we know what happened thanks only to an enterprising reporter from the Times of India who had a source inside the hall.
The essence was simple and the same: students wanted to know why they should vote for the Congress when Narendra Modi had developed Gujarat so much. One answer given by Rahul Gandhi was odd, to say the very least. Mao Zedong, said Rahul Gandhi, also developed China but "he caused destruction to the country, too". I am not too sure whether Narendra Modi would mind being compared to one of the great figures of the twentieth century, warts and all. Rahul Gandhi probably gets his views on history from some briefing by a young and fresh associate, but he could have checked with the Chinese. They have moved on from Mao, just as India and the Congress have moved on from Mahatma Gandhi, but China still reveres the leader of the Long March as the leader who laid the foundations of China's economic miracle. Mao's portrait dominates Tienmien Square as well as the nation's banknotes. If Modi can become the second Gujarati to have his picture on the Indian rupee, he will consider his life well spent. Chairman Modi has quite a nice ring to it as well, although Modi would be going too far if he published a little red book packed with his quotable quotes and asked millions of young people to wave it in unison during a cultural revolution.
A young girl was sharper in her question. She asked which Congress leaders could measure up to Modi on the development matrix. Rahul Gandhi had four names on the tip of his tongue: Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram, Jairam Ramesh and A.K. Antony. It is interesting that three of the four did not contest the Lok Sabha elections, and the voters in Chidambaram's own constituency had such a poor view of his development capabilities that he was declared defeated before he was declared elected in the 2009 general elections. It would be interesting if Jairam Ramesh could find a constituency from where he could get elected on a development platform, but his ministry does take its priority cues from Rahul Gandhi's travel plans. What is definitely interesting is that the finance minister of India, Pranab Mukherjee, does not figure in Rahul Gandhi's list of heroes, either in development or honesty. The two lists are, in fact, similar, because Rahul thought that the three most incorruptible ministers were also the PM, Antony and Chidambaram. He did not however consider Jairam Ramesh worthy of a position in the honest brigade. Poor Jairam. Or, one wonders, is it more appropriate to say, rich Jairam?
One doubts if the people will give too much credence to such certificates from the Prime Minister-in-waiting, but the large tribe of Rahul-watchers in Delhi must have already done an instant calculus, shifted positions on the pecking order and altered levels of homage. The big winners are obviously Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh; the first jumps to the top of seniors, and the second takes pole position on the second tier. The certificate slates them as stars of Rahul's first Cabinet, whenever or if ever that comes about, so now you know who to call if you want anything done.
The Ahmedabad students did not get into a critique of the heir's remarks, but they did press on about Modi. Why was Rahul denying Modi credit for Gujarat's development? He had caused "some issues" replied Rahul Gandhi. Did he mean riots? At this point the story takes a curious turn. This was where Rahul Gandhi could have departed from fudge and become forthright. Instead, says the report, "the Congress leader refused to engage further and walked out saying he was getting late". Perhaps he was only getting restive. Rahul Gandhi had found out what Barack Obama discovered when he met Mumbai students at St Xavier's College. It is easier to field questions from journalists than students. But that does not explain why he was evasive at the end. The students were more specific and forthright than him. It must be a recurrence of the old Congress disease, trying to play both sides against the middle.
Those who take the young for granted do not understand the young. They like cosmetics, but they never confuse make-up with the face.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Revenge of Hema's cheeks
Revenge of Hema's cheeks
by M J Akbar
Third Eye - India Today column
For 15 years BJP leader Hema Malini's filmstar cheeks have felt the laceration of Lalu Prasad Yadav's electoral sarcasm. On November 24, those patient cheeks took their revenge. Lalu has lost to Nitish Kumar before. This time he was demolished by the BJP as well. Within minutes of the start of the counting process Lalu looked so 19th century, a relic adrift of a Bihar weary of puerile jokes and self-loathing, eager to edge its way into the mainstream of the Indian dream.
Every election offers a surprise, or it would be a carbon copy of the previous poll. Flux is the essence of democracy just as static is the sting of autocracy. The re-election of NDA in Bihar hid a shock for those commentators who determine the contours of conventional wisdom from the safety of a potato couch. The BJP won 91 out of the 102 seats it contested, a strike rate that is so unique that it could unnerve friend as it easily as it might enrage a foe.
Neither rage nor bragging make for good politics, because the first is not a rational answer to a problem, and the second is puerile. The Congress is not going to collapse and disappear just because it has won only four seats this time. Lalu may be depressed but he is not dead. His vote has declined by 9 per cent from 2005, but it is still more than 25 per cent, sufficient as a foundation for restructuring. Politicians do not come to an end, until the end comes to them.
What should worry the Congress is a political displacement that just might overflow into adjacent territory. Rising prices and a repeated whirl of corruption charges have dented Congress support when the party expected that victory in 2009 would lead to rejuvenation in the Gangetic belt. In Bihar it expected an alliance of upper castes and Muslims to provide the boost. Upper castes went to the BJP and Muslims shifted to Lalu, Nitish and, to a small extent, the BJP. The third is clearly remarkable and could be called the Ayodhya dividend. The BJP's decision to accept the Allahabad High Court verdict, irrespective of its outcome, and its stricture to spokesmen against provocative comment or behaviour, sent a positive signal. BJP leaders are pleasantly surprised at the enthusiasm of the younger voter. They should not be. The young, of any faith, want peace and a route map to jobs.
Nitish Kumar's vote added up because he did his arithmetic soon after coming to power five years ago. When development is a word and an objective, its political benefits are not always apparent. In Bihar development had a face, and the face was that of a woman. There was a 10 per cent rise in the turnout of women, and all of it went as reward to a ruling alliance that had delivered by giving women security and empowerment. Bihar is the only state that has given women 50 per cent reservation in panchayats, which have a budget of Rs 8,000 crore. Do the math. Gender bias in public-or indeed private-life is a primary symptom of stupidity, and Lalu might have paid a price for his overly aggressive objections to women's reservations in parliamentary elections.
Will the Bihar results have any impact on Delhi? For starters, the NDA is back in business after an extended spell of bankruptcy. There is a sudden spell of nationwide instability that makes you wonder if all political columns should be left in the expert hands of astrologers. Chief ministers have been placed on rocking chairs; on the day Nitish Kumar returned to power, a Congress chief minister lost it in Andhra Pradesh and a BJP chief minister teetered at the edge in Karnataka. You might consider this pedantic, but on November 22 the Government of Dr Manmohan Singh lost the support of Mamata Banerjee and the DMK on the key issue of a Joint Parliamentary Committee on the 2G scam. Even the DMK, which is the target, thought a confrontation was not worth the effort. These parties have smelt the street and sniffed the odour of putrefaction around the carcass of old politics.
The old politics of caste and corruption has been buried in Patna as well by the Nitish avalanche. Its ghost might hover for a while, but if it is dead in Bihar it can't really survive anywhere else.
by M J Akbar
Third Eye - India Today column
For 15 years BJP leader Hema Malini's filmstar cheeks have felt the laceration of Lalu Prasad Yadav's electoral sarcasm. On November 24, those patient cheeks took their revenge. Lalu has lost to Nitish Kumar before. This time he was demolished by the BJP as well. Within minutes of the start of the counting process Lalu looked so 19th century, a relic adrift of a Bihar weary of puerile jokes and self-loathing, eager to edge its way into the mainstream of the Indian dream.
Every election offers a surprise, or it would be a carbon copy of the previous poll. Flux is the essence of democracy just as static is the sting of autocracy. The re-election of NDA in Bihar hid a shock for those commentators who determine the contours of conventional wisdom from the safety of a potato couch. The BJP won 91 out of the 102 seats it contested, a strike rate that is so unique that it could unnerve friend as it easily as it might enrage a foe.
Neither rage nor bragging make for good politics, because the first is not a rational answer to a problem, and the second is puerile. The Congress is not going to collapse and disappear just because it has won only four seats this time. Lalu may be depressed but he is not dead. His vote has declined by 9 per cent from 2005, but it is still more than 25 per cent, sufficient as a foundation for restructuring. Politicians do not come to an end, until the end comes to them.
What should worry the Congress is a political displacement that just might overflow into adjacent territory. Rising prices and a repeated whirl of corruption charges have dented Congress support when the party expected that victory in 2009 would lead to rejuvenation in the Gangetic belt. In Bihar it expected an alliance of upper castes and Muslims to provide the boost. Upper castes went to the BJP and Muslims shifted to Lalu, Nitish and, to a small extent, the BJP. The third is clearly remarkable and could be called the Ayodhya dividend. The BJP's decision to accept the Allahabad High Court verdict, irrespective of its outcome, and its stricture to spokesmen against provocative comment or behaviour, sent a positive signal. BJP leaders are pleasantly surprised at the enthusiasm of the younger voter. They should not be. The young, of any faith, want peace and a route map to jobs.
Nitish Kumar's vote added up because he did his arithmetic soon after coming to power five years ago. When development is a word and an objective, its political benefits are not always apparent. In Bihar development had a face, and the face was that of a woman. There was a 10 per cent rise in the turnout of women, and all of it went as reward to a ruling alliance that had delivered by giving women security and empowerment. Bihar is the only state that has given women 50 per cent reservation in panchayats, which have a budget of Rs 8,000 crore. Do the math. Gender bias in public-or indeed private-life is a primary symptom of stupidity, and Lalu might have paid a price for his overly aggressive objections to women's reservations in parliamentary elections.
Will the Bihar results have any impact on Delhi? For starters, the NDA is back in business after an extended spell of bankruptcy. There is a sudden spell of nationwide instability that makes you wonder if all political columns should be left in the expert hands of astrologers. Chief ministers have been placed on rocking chairs; on the day Nitish Kumar returned to power, a Congress chief minister lost it in Andhra Pradesh and a BJP chief minister teetered at the edge in Karnataka. You might consider this pedantic, but on November 22 the Government of Dr Manmohan Singh lost the support of Mamata Banerjee and the DMK on the key issue of a Joint Parliamentary Committee on the 2G scam. Even the DMK, which is the target, thought a confrontation was not worth the effort. These parties have smelt the street and sniffed the odour of putrefaction around the carcass of old politics.
The old politics of caste and corruption has been buried in Patna as well by the Nitish avalanche. Its ghost might hover for a while, but if it is dead in Bihar it can't really survive anywhere else.
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