Byline by M J Akbar: Licence to drive, everywhere
An Opposition talks [when it is not dumb]. Government acts [when it is not indolent]. A Government is measured by what it does. The Government of Maharashtra says that Mumbai belongs to every Indian, but decides that its 24,000 taxi licences belong only to a language-specific group. There is the usual fudge around the decision, typical of a Government which wants to hunt with the Shiv Sena and run with the Bihari vote.
One wonders if each licensee will actually be driving the cab himself. Here is a much more likely scenario: mid-level businessmen ready to deal with the rough and ready side of Mumbai, in cahoots with politicians on both sides of the fence, will pick up the licences and then hire cab drivers at competitive wages. Since eager Biharis — that term includes people from Uttar Pradesh, signalling the cultural power of Bihar — will be ready to work for lower wages than Mumbaikars, they will be eventually hired. It is a cheaper route to the status quo for both the politician and the businessmen; the first gets cheap votes and the second gets cheap labour.
There is something odd about the controversy. Common sense suggests that it is in any taxi driver’s interest to pick up the local language: why would he want to lose business by ignorance of the passenger’s language? A taxi driver does not need to be literature doctorate; just know enough language to be cordial and communicative. The whip-up is more about politics than jobs, which is why it is riddled with inconsistency. Nationalism always falters against chauvinism, unless nationalism becomes chauvinist. Thus, the Shiv Sena or its antagonist offshoot headed by Raj Thackeray, will demand the return of an Akhand Bharat from the Khyber Pass to the Chittagong Hill Tracts, but deny an impoverished fellow-Indian marginal space in Mumbai.
The sharpest tweak to the Sena froth came not from its foes but from its friend, the BJP, which raised an interesting contradiction. How could the Sena, which opposed Article 370 for Jammu and Kashmir, demand protective restrictions for Mumbai? There was no answer, of course, because there isn’t one. My regret is that the question has not been asked more often. But it was a relief to witness all national parties taking on the Senas not only on Mumbai but also on their menacing and communal threats to Shah Rukh Khan. The BJP’s support to Shah Rukh was important not only for the actor but also for the party. It was an opportunity for the BJP to move a step or two away from its image, and it did so. Is it compulsory to hate Pakistan and Pakistanis in order to live in Mumbai? Is that the new oath you have to take before Bal Thackeray? Will the Senas send squads to drive the Prime Minister out of Delhi because he has agreed to restart talks with Pakistan?
There was a time when investment in conflict offered regular returns. The Senas have not understood a basic message from a series of humiliating electoral defeats: significant sections of the Indian electorate, and increasing numbers of the urban young, have decided that this is arid yield from a low-return idea. They understand something that seems to have escaped politicians at the apex: economic growth cannot co-exist with a culture of intimidation and violence. Indians have not fallen in love with their neighbour. Emotion, in any case, is unnecessary baggage. But war has never raised the living standards of men, unless you have notions of becoming an imperial ruling class, and that doesn’t work anymore, thank heaven.
A taxi driver has an iconic status, a signature presence, in any great city — and Mumbai is one of the great urban centres of the modern world. It must sustain both aspects: it must belong to the world, and remain modern as well. A city either grows or decays; it cannot stay stagnant. Mumbai cannot grow by becoming isolationist, nor can Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore or Chennai. Kolkata gave shelter and nourishment to the Sikh taxi driver without demanding he learn Bengali; but he did learn Bengali, and today his children have passed out from schools and got jobs. That is what a great city does; it welcomes the forlorn and lifts them. Mumbai’s extraordinary film industry is the most exciting meeting place of India; its skyscrapers were built with steel from Jamshedpur; its markets are full of food and goods from India and the globe. Mumbai does belong to Maharashtra, but it is also the present and future of India.
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
We need private firms in defence
We need private firms in defence
By M J Akbar
In theory the Republic Day parade is an exposition of our military strength. In practice it might have become an exposure of military fragility. If it were merely a question of poor display, it would not have mattered. The crisis lies in the degradation of our armed capability, arising from years of political indifference, bureaucratic ego and military frustration.
Defence, appropriately, is a word with a double-edge. Its obverse, offense, is a complementary necessity. An army does not have to be offensive in order to maintain the capacity to offend. A purely defensive force will always be in psychological retreat during peacetime, and physical retreat in war. You don’t have to be Clausewitz to understand that; common sense should be sufficient. A few years ago a Chinese general famously told the world that his country had the capability to put a nuclear missile into California. This did not lead to a collapse of Sino-American relations; China’s ambassador to Washington was not summoned for a dressing down. Nor was the general cashiered by Beijing. It is useful to remind even friends of the strength of the arm at the other end of a handshake. And it is essential to tell an actual or potential enemy the weight of the iron beneath the glove.
The dilemma is compounded by the fact that the concept of peacetime has been blurred beyond recognition by terrorism. The formality of conflict – official declaration, set-piece battles on fields, truce, peace treaty – has been overtaken by continual, sudden havoc. The unpredictability of violence has become a crucial nerve-test for defence services, which include, obviously, the police. If terrorists realize that the paramount armed institution of a nation is a guard dog that has lost its teeth, then it will increase levels of infiltration and assault.
The state of night-vision devices, essential to border-watch, is, to stretch a pun into irony, illuminating. We have 3,000 tanks, enough to overwhelm the western front. The trouble is that 75% of the tanks are daytime warriors; they go blind at night, while Pakistan has just received the latest, third generation devices from the US as an ally in the “war on terror”. Night sights on infantry light machine guns have batteries that drain in two hours. Everyone knows what to do, but not how to get it done. Government wants the Army to buy India-made devices from a particular public sector undertaking. This undertaking cannot find a foreign supplier that will transfer technology. Foreign companies are reluctant to part with knowledge that could affect their business; and if they had to collaborate, they would prefer to do so with private companies. Indian private sector companies are not allowed to manufacture weapons.
This is inexplicable and unforgivable, but, paradoxically, comprehensible. The official reason is that defence is “sensitive”. In other words, India’s government does not trust Indian businessmen. The same government trusts Russians, Europeans, Israelis and is eager to trust Americans to supply the most critical weapons, but finds Indians untrustworthy. This is the inexplicable part. Why is this comprehensible? An interlocked system of demand-supply-lubrication has been set up in defence. The international arms industry supplies quality goods, but at hugely inflated prices. It is loathe to permit any domestic competitor in one of the world’s largest markets, and the Indian political-bureaucrat class listens to this lobby because a safe system of percentages and lifestyle protection keeps it satisfied.
In 1947 India had a defence production capability, inherited from the British, that was infinitely superior to China’s. It would take many pages, rather than a mere column, to report the pinnacles that China has scaled in six decades while we cannot even produce enough Ichapur rifles. Where necessary, China adapted foreign technology to create superior products, including warplanes. The difference is not in human ability, but in commitment to a term that was a hallmark of the Nehru era but has been abandoned in the last two decades: self-sufficiency. Nehru, alas, is a poor example for self-sufficiency in defence, because his minister, V Krishna Menon, thought politics could protect the nation. But this Nehruvian principle would have served us best in the sector he and his successors ignored.
Our model was a mixed economy, but we refused to mix the economics of defence production. If Indian entrepreneurs had been permitted space in weaponry they would have been supplying the world by now, enriching themselves and the nation in the process. China believed in, and delivered, self-sufficiency. We chose the easy, and buttered, road to a dead-end.
If it is any consolation, Pakistan is an even worse situation. Maybe that is why doves are cooing in Delhi and Islamabad, while terrorists check their options and opportunities in both countries.
We need Private firms in Defence
By M J Akbar
In theory the Republic Day parade is an exposition of our military strength. In practice it might have become an exposure of military fragility. If it were merely a question of poor display, it would not have mattered. The crisis lies in the degradation of our armed capability, arising from years of political indifference, bureaucratic ego and military frustration.
Defence, appropriately, is a word with a double-edge. Its obverse, offense, is a complementary necessity. An army does not have to be offensive in order to maintain the capacity to offend. A purely defensive force will always be in psychological retreat during peacetime, and physical retreat in war. You don’t have to be Clausewitz to understand that; common sense should be sufficient. A few years ago a Chinese general famously told the world that his country had the capability to put a nuclear missile into California. This did not lead to a collapse of Sino-American relations; China’s ambassador to Washington was not summoned for a dressing down. Nor was the general cashiered by Beijing. It is useful to remind even friends of the strength of the arm at the other end of a handshake. And it is essential to tell an actual or potential enemy the weight of the iron beneath the glove.
The dilemma is compounded by the fact that the concept of peacetime has been blurred beyond recognition by terrorism. The formality of conflict – official declaration, set-piece battles on fields, truce, peace treaty – has been overtaken by continual, sudden havoc. The unpredictability of violence has become a crucial nerve-test for defence services, which include, obviously, the police. If terrorists realize that the paramount armed institution of a nation is a guard dog that has lost its teeth, then it will increase levels of infiltration and assault.
The state of night-vision devices, essential to border-watch, is, to stretch a pun into irony, illuminating. We have 3,000 tanks, enough to overwhelm the western front. The trouble is that 75% of the tanks are daytime warriors; they go blind at night, while Pakistan has just received the latest, third generation devices from the US as an ally in the “war on terror”. Night sights on infantry light machine guns have batteries that drain in two hours. Everyone knows what to do, but not how to get it done. Government wants the Army to buy India-made devices from a particular public sector undertaking. This undertaking cannot find a foreign supplier that will transfer technology. Foreign companies are reluctant to part with knowledge that could affect their business; and if they had to collaborate, they would prefer to do so with private companies. Indian private sector companies are not allowed to manufacture weapons.
This is inexplicable and unforgivable, but, paradoxically, comprehensible. The official reason is that defence is “sensitive”. In other words, India’s government does not trust Indian businessmen. The same government trusts Russians, Europeans, Israelis and is eager to trust Americans to supply the most critical weapons, but finds Indians untrustworthy. This is the inexplicable part. Why is this comprehensible? An interlocked system of demand-supply-lubrication has been set up in defence. The international arms industry supplies quality goods, but at hugely inflated prices. It is loathe to permit any domestic competitor in one of the world’s largest markets, and the Indian political-bureaucrat class listens to this lobby because a safe system of percentages and lifestyle protection keeps it satisfied.
In 1947 India had a defence production capability, inherited from the British, that was infinitely superior to China’s. It would take many pages, rather than a mere column, to report the pinnacles that China has scaled in six decades while we cannot even produce enough Ichapur rifles. Where necessary, China adapted foreign technology to create superior products, including warplanes. The difference is not in human ability, but in commitment to a term that was a hallmark of the Nehru era but has been abandoned in the last two decades: self-sufficiency. Nehru, alas, is a poor example for self-sufficiency in defence, because his minister, V Krishna Menon, thought politics could protect the nation. But this Nehruvian principle would have served us best in the sector he and his successors ignored.
Our model was a mixed economy, but we refused to mix the economics of defence production. If Indian entrepreneurs had been permitted space in weaponry they would have been supplying the world by now, enriching themselves and the nation in the process. China believed in, and delivered, self-sufficiency. We chose the easy, and buttered, road to a dead-end.
If it is any consolation, Pakistan is an even worse situation. Maybe that is why doves are cooing in Delhi and Islamabad, while terrorists check their options and opportunities in both countries.
We need Private firms in Defence
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Peace means the summer of 1965
Byline by M J Akbar: Peace means the summer of 1965
There is a duality but not a contradiction running through the complexities of the India-Pakistan relationship. Friday’s newspapers, for instance, reported a confrontation between Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani: the former is convinced that Islamabad is protecting the widely-acknowledged principal architect of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Hafiz Saeed, chief of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. Gilani thinks India has not supplied sufficient evidence against Saeed. Chidambaram counters this with, “What can I do if a Government closes its eyes to the evidence?”
Outside the squat offices of power, a virtual festival of Indo-Pak peace is being celebrated in major Indian cities, with full participation by Pakistani writers, musicians and its cultural elite. Why isn’t this a contradiction?
There has always been a peace constituency in both India and Pakistan, but it consisted of idealists, regional-romantics and do-gooders. It used to be drowned out by a coalition of viewpoints and ideologies ranging from indifference to hostility to blood-thirst. Change has come in most categories of opinion, on both sides of the border, though not on a mirror-track. The bloodthirsty lobby in India began to lose its appetite after Bangladesh, an outcome beyond its imagination. For a while it compensated by continuing to target Indian Muslims as a surrogate enemy, but that too has waned since there is no longer any electoral reward in domestic conflict, an important consideration in a democracy.
Pakistan’s fanatics flourish because they have lifted elements of their multi-level agenda above the compulsions of domestic power. We should not waste newsprint on their fantasies, except to note that their terrorism remains the single greatest provocation for a fourth, and potentially devastating, war between India and Pakistan.
Perhaps it is just such a prospect that has driven the most useful lobby on the subcontinent, that of realists, towards peace. Realists have clearly strengthened Pakistan’s variable and possibly fragile peace constituency immeasurably. You don’t have to fall in love to be a good neighbour; in fact romance can have harmful side-effects. But good neighbours do not pelt each other with stones [through media] or test nerves with sniper fire during their waking hours.
Peace has to be defined, or it will remain elusive. It has to be a specific, objective, negotiated condition, neither too ambitious nor too insignificant. If it is mere absence of formal war, then we have found it already. The search continues because we know that the present uncertainty is inherently volatile, prone to exploitation by anarchists and terrorists. If we want a mutually fruitful peace, we need to diagnose the causes of war.
There are two defining dates in the Indo-Pak relationship, only one of which is recognised for its spawn of consequences. There have been, in effect, two partitions of India: the one in 1947 is in every child’s history book; the one in 1965 has not been adequately understood. 1947 divided the land; 1965 divided the people. Till Pakistan launched, in 1965, its second effort to seize our part of Jammu and Kashmir through a formal military offensive, people travelled freely on easily-available documents, the rail border at Wagah bustled with business even if the occasional customs officer bristled with pompousness in an effort to disguise harassment and petty corruption, the border on both wings was so porous that humans and goods were easily smuggled in both directions, businessmen retained cross-border investments, media was freely available and conflict was the prerogative of politicians and military brass. In 1965, we built a wall between neighbours that the Cold War architects of the Berlin rampart could have envied.
Those who want to reverse the reality of 1947 are either fanatics or fools. [Terrible as they are, the former could be less troublesome than the latter.] India and Pakistan are separate nations, and may they retain their present borders for eternity. Those Pakistanis dreaming of breaking India should be sent to a mental asylum, where they can befriend those Indians who want to capture Islamabad.
Sanity demands a return to the summer of 1965 [war began in September] and not a return to the summer of 1947 [partition came in August]. This objective has the merit of being possible. If we link Indo-Pak harmony to a solution of the Kashmir problem, we will remain frozen in a subcontinent-wide Siachen. Harmony will induce steps towards a solution; not the other way around, because there are impenetrable barriers on the way around.
A road with dual carriageways is logical; a road with contradictions is an invitation to deathly accidents.
There is a duality but not a contradiction running through the complexities of the India-Pakistan relationship. Friday’s newspapers, for instance, reported a confrontation between Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani: the former is convinced that Islamabad is protecting the widely-acknowledged principal architect of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Hafiz Saeed, chief of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. Gilani thinks India has not supplied sufficient evidence against Saeed. Chidambaram counters this with, “What can I do if a Government closes its eyes to the evidence?”
Outside the squat offices of power, a virtual festival of Indo-Pak peace is being celebrated in major Indian cities, with full participation by Pakistani writers, musicians and its cultural elite. Why isn’t this a contradiction?
There has always been a peace constituency in both India and Pakistan, but it consisted of idealists, regional-romantics and do-gooders. It used to be drowned out by a coalition of viewpoints and ideologies ranging from indifference to hostility to blood-thirst. Change has come in most categories of opinion, on both sides of the border, though not on a mirror-track. The bloodthirsty lobby in India began to lose its appetite after Bangladesh, an outcome beyond its imagination. For a while it compensated by continuing to target Indian Muslims as a surrogate enemy, but that too has waned since there is no longer any electoral reward in domestic conflict, an important consideration in a democracy.
Pakistan’s fanatics flourish because they have lifted elements of their multi-level agenda above the compulsions of domestic power. We should not waste newsprint on their fantasies, except to note that their terrorism remains the single greatest provocation for a fourth, and potentially devastating, war between India and Pakistan.
Perhaps it is just such a prospect that has driven the most useful lobby on the subcontinent, that of realists, towards peace. Realists have clearly strengthened Pakistan’s variable and possibly fragile peace constituency immeasurably. You don’t have to fall in love to be a good neighbour; in fact romance can have harmful side-effects. But good neighbours do not pelt each other with stones [through media] or test nerves with sniper fire during their waking hours.
Peace has to be defined, or it will remain elusive. It has to be a specific, objective, negotiated condition, neither too ambitious nor too insignificant. If it is mere absence of formal war, then we have found it already. The search continues because we know that the present uncertainty is inherently volatile, prone to exploitation by anarchists and terrorists. If we want a mutually fruitful peace, we need to diagnose the causes of war.
There are two defining dates in the Indo-Pak relationship, only one of which is recognised for its spawn of consequences. There have been, in effect, two partitions of India: the one in 1947 is in every child’s history book; the one in 1965 has not been adequately understood. 1947 divided the land; 1965 divided the people. Till Pakistan launched, in 1965, its second effort to seize our part of Jammu and Kashmir through a formal military offensive, people travelled freely on easily-available documents, the rail border at Wagah bustled with business even if the occasional customs officer bristled with pompousness in an effort to disguise harassment and petty corruption, the border on both wings was so porous that humans and goods were easily smuggled in both directions, businessmen retained cross-border investments, media was freely available and conflict was the prerogative of politicians and military brass. In 1965, we built a wall between neighbours that the Cold War architects of the Berlin rampart could have envied.
Those who want to reverse the reality of 1947 are either fanatics or fools. [Terrible as they are, the former could be less troublesome than the latter.] India and Pakistan are separate nations, and may they retain their present borders for eternity. Those Pakistanis dreaming of breaking India should be sent to a mental asylum, where they can befriend those Indians who want to capture Islamabad.
Sanity demands a return to the summer of 1965 [war began in September] and not a return to the summer of 1947 [partition came in August]. This objective has the merit of being possible. If we link Indo-Pak harmony to a solution of the Kashmir problem, we will remain frozen in a subcontinent-wide Siachen. Harmony will induce steps towards a solution; not the other way around, because there are impenetrable barriers on the way around.
A road with dual carriageways is logical; a road with contradictions is an invitation to deathly accidents.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Save earth from human nature
Save earth from human nature
By M J Akbar
The ever evolving definition of hell needs a Delhi update. Hell is being trapped in a steel tube ensnared in the evil fog of an airport tarmac. Hell is helplessness as deceptive nature winks through the seeming window in a darkness flecked by swirling waves of heavy, oppressive air and then shuts it with an impenetrable, dense, grey screen as your aeroplane begins to taxi optimistically towards opportunity. Where the hell has global warming gone?
Should it be considered entirely appropriate, or wickedly fortuitous, that the world has witnessed its coldest winter in a long while just after the much-vaunted gathering of the high, low, mighty and weak at the Copenhagen conference on global warming? The conference itself produced a molehill of unimplementable phrases out of a mountain of hype; the charter could not tie China to Togo or America to Tonga despite the presence of an extraordinary collection of worthies who tried their level best to disguise their failure behind the fanfare of promotion. The dramatics started much before the meet: the Maldives held a Cabinet meeting on its ocean-bed and Nepal on Mount Everest.
Not to be outdone, our own acrobatic and hirsute minister for environment, Jairam Ramesh, flipped a breathtaking triple somersault. But no resolution was actually adopted by the 192 nations present and five countries would not even deign to pretend they agreed. No one gave any commitment on reduction of carbon emissions that could be held to account because it was not required. Big boys sniffed at the kids, who hollered for more pocket money. China would not even permit nations like Germany, who had come with commitments, to record their percentages lest it become a precedent that it would be compelled to follow. In the classic manner of those who have little to offer, it sought, and got, agreement to talk another time, as if a conference in Delhi was going to ever be the success that Copenhagen had been unable to deliver. The reason was never stated, but is now becoming apparent: there is a growing suspicion that climate theology has been constructed out of shaky testament.
Hypocrisy might be the least of our travails by the time details fully unravel. We might be staring at a PR process over the last few years during which bombast and academic fraud with multiple epicentres, one of them Delhi, has been richly rewarded with grants, respectability and what used to be the highest of accolades, the Nobel Prize for Peace.
What is the difference between a band and a bandwagon? The first turns into the second when the trumpets begin to play false notes, and the world applauds it as revolutionary music.
The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was won jointly by Al Gore, father of climate change, and a United Nations body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The latter created a worldwide brouhaha by announcing that it was ‘most likely’ that Himalayan glaciers were in retreat and would disappear by 2035. It was the perfect horizon: too far for anyone making the prediction to be alive in that year, and close enough to frighten the wits out of alarmists. ‘Most likely’ means, in such parlance, a 95% probability. The evidence for such a dramatic conclusion came, it now transpires, from a single interview given by an Indian glacier specialist (a former vice chancellor of universities now working for the government of Sikkim) 10 years ago to the New Scientist. TERI gave him a reasonably comfortable retirement benefit at its comfortable Delhi premises and its director, now in his avatar as Cardinal Green of Pope Gore, went on to share the limelight in Oslo. The scientist was comforted by a Padma Shri — not bad, but not quite a Nobel Prize. The New York Times has now reported that this scientist (let us leave him nameless) claims he was ‘misquoted’ in that original interview. As misquotes go, this must surely be the most glistening jewel in the baggage train of a bandwagon.
No one stops a roll on its way to reward, so we should not be too surprised that this particular scientist did not notice he had been misquoted while the Nobel was being doled out. What is astonishing is the absence of any due diligence by the Nobel committee. Sceptics have suggested that the Peace award to US President Barack Obama was egg on Oslo’s face; well, this was a whole hatchery. Maybe Nobel has simply run out of candidates for the Peace Prize. Peace is not the favourite pastime of our times, and is too relative. Nobel should rename the award: Sanctimonious Prize? Brand Value Prize? Holy Cow Prize?
The dark fog of nature can never compete with the oily smog of human nature.
- Save Earth from human nature
By M J Akbar
The ever evolving definition of hell needs a Delhi update. Hell is being trapped in a steel tube ensnared in the evil fog of an airport tarmac. Hell is helplessness as deceptive nature winks through the seeming window in a darkness flecked by swirling waves of heavy, oppressive air and then shuts it with an impenetrable, dense, grey screen as your aeroplane begins to taxi optimistically towards opportunity. Where the hell has global warming gone?
Should it be considered entirely appropriate, or wickedly fortuitous, that the world has witnessed its coldest winter in a long while just after the much-vaunted gathering of the high, low, mighty and weak at the Copenhagen conference on global warming? The conference itself produced a molehill of unimplementable phrases out of a mountain of hype; the charter could not tie China to Togo or America to Tonga despite the presence of an extraordinary collection of worthies who tried their level best to disguise their failure behind the fanfare of promotion. The dramatics started much before the meet: the Maldives held a Cabinet meeting on its ocean-bed and Nepal on Mount Everest.
Not to be outdone, our own acrobatic and hirsute minister for environment, Jairam Ramesh, flipped a breathtaking triple somersault. But no resolution was actually adopted by the 192 nations present and five countries would not even deign to pretend they agreed. No one gave any commitment on reduction of carbon emissions that could be held to account because it was not required. Big boys sniffed at the kids, who hollered for more pocket money. China would not even permit nations like Germany, who had come with commitments, to record their percentages lest it become a precedent that it would be compelled to follow. In the classic manner of those who have little to offer, it sought, and got, agreement to talk another time, as if a conference in Delhi was going to ever be the success that Copenhagen had been unable to deliver. The reason was never stated, but is now becoming apparent: there is a growing suspicion that climate theology has been constructed out of shaky testament.
Hypocrisy might be the least of our travails by the time details fully unravel. We might be staring at a PR process over the last few years during which bombast and academic fraud with multiple epicentres, one of them Delhi, has been richly rewarded with grants, respectability and what used to be the highest of accolades, the Nobel Prize for Peace.
What is the difference between a band and a bandwagon? The first turns into the second when the trumpets begin to play false notes, and the world applauds it as revolutionary music.
The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was won jointly by Al Gore, father of climate change, and a United Nations body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The latter created a worldwide brouhaha by announcing that it was ‘most likely’ that Himalayan glaciers were in retreat and would disappear by 2035. It was the perfect horizon: too far for anyone making the prediction to be alive in that year, and close enough to frighten the wits out of alarmists. ‘Most likely’ means, in such parlance, a 95% probability. The evidence for such a dramatic conclusion came, it now transpires, from a single interview given by an Indian glacier specialist (a former vice chancellor of universities now working for the government of Sikkim) 10 years ago to the New Scientist. TERI gave him a reasonably comfortable retirement benefit at its comfortable Delhi premises and its director, now in his avatar as Cardinal Green of Pope Gore, went on to share the limelight in Oslo. The scientist was comforted by a Padma Shri — not bad, but not quite a Nobel Prize. The New York Times has now reported that this scientist (let us leave him nameless) claims he was ‘misquoted’ in that original interview. As misquotes go, this must surely be the most glistening jewel in the baggage train of a bandwagon.
No one stops a roll on its way to reward, so we should not be too surprised that this particular scientist did not notice he had been misquoted while the Nobel was being doled out. What is astonishing is the absence of any due diligence by the Nobel committee. Sceptics have suggested that the Peace award to US President Barack Obama was egg on Oslo’s face; well, this was a whole hatchery. Maybe Nobel has simply run out of candidates for the Peace Prize. Peace is not the favourite pastime of our times, and is too relative. Nobel should rename the award: Sanctimonious Prize? Brand Value Prize? Holy Cow Prize?
The dark fog of nature can never compete with the oily smog of human nature.
- Save Earth from human nature
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Price of Power
Byline by M J Akbar: Price of Power
As they say, it’s a no-brainer. Trust and loyalty rank much higher on Delhi’s power graph than integrity. The working definition of loyalty is discretion. The system works on silence. This holds true for both politician and bureaucrat, although the public image of the former is synonymous with a gabfest and the bureaucrat is increasingly becoming prey to the siren call of the camera. In any case, it is extremely rare when a veteran with a career stretching across five decades achieves an indisputable reputation for discretion and integrity.
M.K. Narayanan did not set out to win any popularity contest when he joined the Intelligence Bureau in 1961, although his understated sense of humour won him more friends than you might imagine. From virtually the start he occupied a room in the sanctum sanctorum of India’s power pyramid, the South Block on Delhi’s Raisina Hill.
MK’s career coincides, almost exactly, with the maturing of the Indian state through a series of existential crises. Till 1961, the worst problem was communal riots, interspersed with troubles over state formation: difficult, certainly, but hardly formidable. Within a year of joining IB, MK was working with his legendary boss B.N. Mullick to find out how the Chinese had blown massive holes in our security across the Himalayas. Communists were part of his brief and he sent the topmost leaders to jail because their ideology took precedence over their nationalism. It is ironic that he should now be sent as governor to a state run by Marxists.
He might equally easily have been sent as governor of Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, it would have been more relevant to do so, for this state began to blip loudly on his professional radar in 1963, with the disappearance of the Mo-e-Muqaddas, the holy hair from the Prophet’s beard preserved in Srinagar. Mullick was the first IB chief to write a memoir, so we know that the recovery of the holy relic was an IB triumph. But we have not been told how precisely this happened. MK knows. And he has kept quiet.
Move from 1963 to 1965: The war launched by Pakistan to seize the Kashmir valley was a major challenge to IB. Kashmir, Punjab, Bluestar, Mrs Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the conflagration in the Northeast, the Lanka catastrophe, Rajiv Gandhi’s tragic death: MK’s experiences constitute what might be called a covert history of India. He was extremely close to Rajiv Gandhi and maintained the relationship with the family. Every Prime Minister after Rajiv sought and got his advice. His appointment to PMO on the return of Congress was inevitable.
What was certainly not inevitable was his sudden departure from PMO to the senior citizens’ rest home, a Raj Bhavan. No one has offered an explanation. A year ago there was a reason. There was a demand for his resignation after the terrorist onslaught on Mumbai. But neither Mrs Sonia Gandhi nor Dr Manmohan Singh would even consider this. MK had, more than anyone else, shepherded the nuclear deal through domestic and international minefields. There was visible harmony between the PM and him. How and why has this harmony been suddenly ruptured?
Home Minister Chidambaram’s discomfort with him is not an explanation. Power equations are not a love affair. A high table always needs different voices, and MK would always add high value to any discourse. In any case, this was a Prime Minister’s decision, not a Home Minister’s. Nor do seasoned Prime Ministers suffer from mercurial likes and dislikes.
The last five years have shown a pattern. While Dr Singh keeps an eye on the wide spectrum of governance, to the extent that is humanly possible, he reserves his core energy for a single policy focus. In his first term this was the nuclear deal. MK was an eminently suitable partner in that enterprise. The second term is clearly going to survive on a separate heartbeat. The PM seems to have put peace with Pakistan at the heart of his new agenda. The nuclear deal will seem a picnic compared to a Pakistan and it requires courage to even attempt it. MK has spent five decades protecting his nation from the intricacies and duplicity of an often-hostile neighbour. Perhaps the PM wants someone with less memory. That is a mistake. Vision without a reality check is an incomplete construct.
As they say, it’s a no-brainer. Trust and loyalty rank much higher on Delhi’s power graph than integrity. The working definition of loyalty is discretion. The system works on silence. This holds true for both politician and bureaucrat, although the public image of the former is synonymous with a gabfest and the bureaucrat is increasingly becoming prey to the siren call of the camera. In any case, it is extremely rare when a veteran with a career stretching across five decades achieves an indisputable reputation for discretion and integrity.
M.K. Narayanan did not set out to win any popularity contest when he joined the Intelligence Bureau in 1961, although his understated sense of humour won him more friends than you might imagine. From virtually the start he occupied a room in the sanctum sanctorum of India’s power pyramid, the South Block on Delhi’s Raisina Hill.
MK’s career coincides, almost exactly, with the maturing of the Indian state through a series of existential crises. Till 1961, the worst problem was communal riots, interspersed with troubles over state formation: difficult, certainly, but hardly formidable. Within a year of joining IB, MK was working with his legendary boss B.N. Mullick to find out how the Chinese had blown massive holes in our security across the Himalayas. Communists were part of his brief and he sent the topmost leaders to jail because their ideology took precedence over their nationalism. It is ironic that he should now be sent as governor to a state run by Marxists.
He might equally easily have been sent as governor of Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, it would have been more relevant to do so, for this state began to blip loudly on his professional radar in 1963, with the disappearance of the Mo-e-Muqaddas, the holy hair from the Prophet’s beard preserved in Srinagar. Mullick was the first IB chief to write a memoir, so we know that the recovery of the holy relic was an IB triumph. But we have not been told how precisely this happened. MK knows. And he has kept quiet.
Move from 1963 to 1965: The war launched by Pakistan to seize the Kashmir valley was a major challenge to IB. Kashmir, Punjab, Bluestar, Mrs Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the conflagration in the Northeast, the Lanka catastrophe, Rajiv Gandhi’s tragic death: MK’s experiences constitute what might be called a covert history of India. He was extremely close to Rajiv Gandhi and maintained the relationship with the family. Every Prime Minister after Rajiv sought and got his advice. His appointment to PMO on the return of Congress was inevitable.
What was certainly not inevitable was his sudden departure from PMO to the senior citizens’ rest home, a Raj Bhavan. No one has offered an explanation. A year ago there was a reason. There was a demand for his resignation after the terrorist onslaught on Mumbai. But neither Mrs Sonia Gandhi nor Dr Manmohan Singh would even consider this. MK had, more than anyone else, shepherded the nuclear deal through domestic and international minefields. There was visible harmony between the PM and him. How and why has this harmony been suddenly ruptured?
Home Minister Chidambaram’s discomfort with him is not an explanation. Power equations are not a love affair. A high table always needs different voices, and MK would always add high value to any discourse. In any case, this was a Prime Minister’s decision, not a Home Minister’s. Nor do seasoned Prime Ministers suffer from mercurial likes and dislikes.
The last five years have shown a pattern. While Dr Singh keeps an eye on the wide spectrum of governance, to the extent that is humanly possible, he reserves his core energy for a single policy focus. In his first term this was the nuclear deal. MK was an eminently suitable partner in that enterprise. The second term is clearly going to survive on a separate heartbeat. The PM seems to have put peace with Pakistan at the heart of his new agenda. The nuclear deal will seem a picnic compared to a Pakistan and it requires courage to even attempt it. MK has spent five decades protecting his nation from the intricacies and duplicity of an often-hostile neighbour. Perhaps the PM wants someone with less memory. That is a mistake. Vision without a reality check is an incomplete construct.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
What if Pakistanis land at our border?
What if Pakistanis land at our border?
By M J Akbar
A good friend from Lahore, an activist deeply committed to people's rights and the integrity of Pakistan's legal structures, asked me a question so startling that it took a while to sink in. What would India do if a million Pakistanis reached the Wagah border, demanding safety in India from the Taliban and its ancilliary ideological warriors?
The prospect is only as unthinkable as an analyst suggesting, over coffee on College Street in Calcutta in 1969, that three million refugees from East Pakistan would descend on the city's maidan within two years, forcing a war that would lead to an independent Bangladesh. Pakistan lost the trust of half its population within a quarter century of its birth. Within another four decades, half of what was left is in mortal fear of the other half.
Just as 1971 could not be contained within the geography of Pakistan, a second existential upheaval will also spill over into India. It cannot seep westwards into Afghanistan, because this is, in a sense, another east-west confrontation: the east is under siege from the frontier west, and the east can only move further east for asylum.
How would India, and, more important, Indians, react? In various ways, surely: shock, smugness, gloating, concern — both for those trying to stream in and for the volatile consequences of their arrival. But at some point, sooner rather than later, this range would have to coalesce into one broad sentiment that could then be translated into official policy. Would that be sympathy or cynicism? Would the human heart prevail as children, women and the young sought the comfort of India, or would antipathy make us dismiss them with a sneer: "You made your bed in 1947, now sleep on its thorns."
Punjab would have the decisive voice. I believe that most of Punjab, though not all, would speak from its heart, perhaps with tears in its eyes, even if a colder Delhi thought it a good idea to consign the refugees to thorns. Is this being sentimental? Perhaps, but it would be a cold life without sentiment. In 1971, West Bengal did not check the religion of refugees. Most of them were Muslims, but that was less important than the fact they were three million frightened and hungry Bengalis.
But there are also significant differences, both in time and space. India had never felt threatened by East Pakistan. Bengali Muslims did not forsake their language or script although there was pressure from Karachi "nationalists", in the early years, to write Bengali in the Urdu alphabet (just as, for instance, Kemal Ataturk made Turks abandon the Arabic script and switch to Roman). The reaction was so severe that such ideas were quickly forgotten. There were riots in Bengal, as bitter if not as widespread as those in Punjab, but links were more firmly maintained. There were riots, and there was discrimination against Bengali Hindus; but East Pakistan was not emptied of Hindus, as happened to Hindus in Pakistani Punjab and Sind. Any anger against Indian "repression" was soon overtaken by the reality of West Pakistani oppression against Bengalis for reasons that can only be described as racist.
Time offers its own angularities. In 1971 Indians were angry at the aggression of 1965. War is a tragedy, but one which is acceptable as part of human experience; there is no lifetime in history that can claim it has not undergone the tension and cleavage of war. The dominant experience of the last four decades has been of terrorism. Terrorism is a sly, surreptitious, contemptible evil that makes no distinction between innocent and enemy. How much will the horror of remembered terrorism faze eyes and ice up veins if, God forbid, there is clamour at the gates of Wagah? War will inevitably follow refugees into India; it is possible that a fifth column might camouflage itself in the misery of a human exodus. When citizens have made borders irrelevant why should armies, state or non-state, uniformed or shadowy, respect lines drawn on water? Who will be where in that war? Will the Pakistani armed forces be as divided as the country, split by ideology? Will half the Pakistanis fight alongside Indian forces? The imponderables chase the unthinkable.
One of the defining images of Pakistan's sense of itself is etched on the walls of its side of Wagah: a depiction of wrecked refugees streaming into the new country after Partition. The calamity was not one-sided; there were traumatized millions entering India as well. But India has not frozen that moment in stone, to remind everyone that this was once the brutal battlefield of a civil war. Perhaps Lahoris will erase that image, wherever it is, before they reach the gates of Wagah.
Appeared in Times of India - December 17, 2010
By M J Akbar
A good friend from Lahore, an activist deeply committed to people's rights and the integrity of Pakistan's legal structures, asked me a question so startling that it took a while to sink in. What would India do if a million Pakistanis reached the Wagah border, demanding safety in India from the Taliban and its ancilliary ideological warriors?
The prospect is only as unthinkable as an analyst suggesting, over coffee on College Street in Calcutta in 1969, that three million refugees from East Pakistan would descend on the city's maidan within two years, forcing a war that would lead to an independent Bangladesh. Pakistan lost the trust of half its population within a quarter century of its birth. Within another four decades, half of what was left is in mortal fear of the other half.
Just as 1971 could not be contained within the geography of Pakistan, a second existential upheaval will also spill over into India. It cannot seep westwards into Afghanistan, because this is, in a sense, another east-west confrontation: the east is under siege from the frontier west, and the east can only move further east for asylum.
How would India, and, more important, Indians, react? In various ways, surely: shock, smugness, gloating, concern — both for those trying to stream in and for the volatile consequences of their arrival. But at some point, sooner rather than later, this range would have to coalesce into one broad sentiment that could then be translated into official policy. Would that be sympathy or cynicism? Would the human heart prevail as children, women and the young sought the comfort of India, or would antipathy make us dismiss them with a sneer: "You made your bed in 1947, now sleep on its thorns."
Punjab would have the decisive voice. I believe that most of Punjab, though not all, would speak from its heart, perhaps with tears in its eyes, even if a colder Delhi thought it a good idea to consign the refugees to thorns. Is this being sentimental? Perhaps, but it would be a cold life without sentiment. In 1971, West Bengal did not check the religion of refugees. Most of them were Muslims, but that was less important than the fact they were three million frightened and hungry Bengalis.
But there are also significant differences, both in time and space. India had never felt threatened by East Pakistan. Bengali Muslims did not forsake their language or script although there was pressure from Karachi "nationalists", in the early years, to write Bengali in the Urdu alphabet (just as, for instance, Kemal Ataturk made Turks abandon the Arabic script and switch to Roman). The reaction was so severe that such ideas were quickly forgotten. There were riots in Bengal, as bitter if not as widespread as those in Punjab, but links were more firmly maintained. There were riots, and there was discrimination against Bengali Hindus; but East Pakistan was not emptied of Hindus, as happened to Hindus in Pakistani Punjab and Sind. Any anger against Indian "repression" was soon overtaken by the reality of West Pakistani oppression against Bengalis for reasons that can only be described as racist.
Time offers its own angularities. In 1971 Indians were angry at the aggression of 1965. War is a tragedy, but one which is acceptable as part of human experience; there is no lifetime in history that can claim it has not undergone the tension and cleavage of war. The dominant experience of the last four decades has been of terrorism. Terrorism is a sly, surreptitious, contemptible evil that makes no distinction between innocent and enemy. How much will the horror of remembered terrorism faze eyes and ice up veins if, God forbid, there is clamour at the gates of Wagah? War will inevitably follow refugees into India; it is possible that a fifth column might camouflage itself in the misery of a human exodus. When citizens have made borders irrelevant why should armies, state or non-state, uniformed or shadowy, respect lines drawn on water? Who will be where in that war? Will the Pakistani armed forces be as divided as the country, split by ideology? Will half the Pakistanis fight alongside Indian forces? The imponderables chase the unthinkable.
One of the defining images of Pakistan's sense of itself is etched on the walls of its side of Wagah: a depiction of wrecked refugees streaming into the new country after Partition. The calamity was not one-sided; there were traumatized millions entering India as well. But India has not frozen that moment in stone, to remind everyone that this was once the brutal battlefield of a civil war. Perhaps Lahoris will erase that image, wherever it is, before they reach the gates of Wagah.
Appeared in Times of India - December 17, 2010
Smoke and Smokescreens
Byline by M J Akbar: Smoke and Smokescreens
One of the more curious episodes in recent weeks is the indignation with which Indian Army chief General Deepak Kapoor’s statement that India’s forces were ready to face war on two fronts simultaneously, against China and Pakistan, was received. The Islamabad establishment has treated this as a virtual declaration of war. It is possible that the politicians of Pakistan have begun to confuse Islamabad with Delhi.
Generals in Delhi do not declare war. The Prime Minister and his Cabinet do that. Generals have only one duty. They have to reassure the government and the nation that they will be able to protect the country even in the worst possible circumstances, and deliver on the assurance. The nightmare scenario for India is a concerted, coordinated offensive by China across the main Himalayas, and by Pakistan on its Kashmir wedge. This is, conversely, the dream scenario of General Headquarters in Pakistan. General Kapoor was doing his job when he made that statement.
There was a time when, to put it in the language of the Fifties, war-war was the business of generals and jaw-jaw was the responsibility of politicians. The taciturn warrior began to disappear with the British Empire and Soviet Union; and as American military power began to fill the strategic vacuum the greater individual freedoms of America began to permeate the Pentagon and its equivalents. American officers took their final orders from the White House, but they had plenty to say in-between. The most recent case was last year’s debate on a troop surge in Afghanistan. The Pentagon not only told the White House, which was dithering, what it wanted, but made sure the American voter and the citizens of Pakistan and Afghanistan got the message as well. The infection has reached the stiff upper lips of Britain: generals there make demands for equipment through the media. Discipline cannot completely sanitize the military brass from the influences of the democratic spirit, and its institutions.
China did not react sharply to General Kapoor’s comment, although it can hold its own in any sparring match. It may be argued that it did not need to do anything but laugh. A little after General Kapoor’s claim, the Government of India admitted, formally, that China had eaten away vast amounts of [presumably unpatrolled, or sparsely visited] border territory. Even more interesting than the government’s admission was the fact that Indians seemed beyond caring. The Opposition parties shrugged and concentrated on screaming at one another; television, which gets hysterical when a leaf flutters, had other things to do. Clearly, media reserves its visceral reactions only for its western rather than its northern border. This is maybe because the occupation of distant, barren land cannot compare, in televisual terms, with the throbbing drama of the heights and valleys of Kashmir.
Islamabad’s reaction has nothing to do with any threat from India, because there is no threat from India. India does not desire an inch of land beyond the Ceasefire Line or the international border. Equally, it will not surrender an inch of what is under its control. Pakistan, however, has built a layered case before America which boils down to this: it cannot fight all of America’s enemies on the Frontier, or those who treat the Frontier as sanctuary for the conflict in Afghanistan, as long as Indian guns are pointed at its back. It needs relief in the east to fight in the west. Washington has bought this argument, and Delhi has obliged as unobtrusively as possible. Our two-front General Kapoor has quietly presided over the withdrawal of over 40,000 troops from the Kashmir valley, and their transfer to the eastern Himalayas under the cover of rising worry about China. It’s very neat actually: we use China, possibly with Beijing’s knowledge, to help out America in its Pakistan war.
As long as there is no change in ground realities, this game can be played to triangular, or even quadrangular, satisfaction. Alas, everyone is not playing the same game. The spurt in terrorist violence in Srinagar during the last fortnight could be aimed at disturbing this dainty strategic daisy chain. Specialists are warning of an impending attack on the Indian mainland.
The delicate diplomatic balance could crumble if Pakistan and America push too hard, and believe that they can manoeuvre Delhi into a final settlement on Kashmir. There is very little space for negotiations on Kashmir itself, given that Pakistan is searching a major dilution of the status quo and India, at least at the moment, will agree on only the Ceasefire Line as the solution. Is the sudden talk of National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan being shifted to a powerless Governor’s bungalow indicative of a major change in Delhi’s Kashmir policy? He was a status quoist. Dr Manmohan Singh thinks, perhaps, that he can remobilize the constituency that cheered the nuclear deal with the United States. That may be easier in theory than practice. Pakistan, after all, is far more explosive than any number of nuclear plants.
Was General Deepak Kapoor’s two-front statement part of the smoke or the smokescreen?
One of the more curious episodes in recent weeks is the indignation with which Indian Army chief General Deepak Kapoor’s statement that India’s forces were ready to face war on two fronts simultaneously, against China and Pakistan, was received. The Islamabad establishment has treated this as a virtual declaration of war. It is possible that the politicians of Pakistan have begun to confuse Islamabad with Delhi.
Generals in Delhi do not declare war. The Prime Minister and his Cabinet do that. Generals have only one duty. They have to reassure the government and the nation that they will be able to protect the country even in the worst possible circumstances, and deliver on the assurance. The nightmare scenario for India is a concerted, coordinated offensive by China across the main Himalayas, and by Pakistan on its Kashmir wedge. This is, conversely, the dream scenario of General Headquarters in Pakistan. General Kapoor was doing his job when he made that statement.
There was a time when, to put it in the language of the Fifties, war-war was the business of generals and jaw-jaw was the responsibility of politicians. The taciturn warrior began to disappear with the British Empire and Soviet Union; and as American military power began to fill the strategic vacuum the greater individual freedoms of America began to permeate the Pentagon and its equivalents. American officers took their final orders from the White House, but they had plenty to say in-between. The most recent case was last year’s debate on a troop surge in Afghanistan. The Pentagon not only told the White House, which was dithering, what it wanted, but made sure the American voter and the citizens of Pakistan and Afghanistan got the message as well. The infection has reached the stiff upper lips of Britain: generals there make demands for equipment through the media. Discipline cannot completely sanitize the military brass from the influences of the democratic spirit, and its institutions.
China did not react sharply to General Kapoor’s comment, although it can hold its own in any sparring match. It may be argued that it did not need to do anything but laugh. A little after General Kapoor’s claim, the Government of India admitted, formally, that China had eaten away vast amounts of [presumably unpatrolled, or sparsely visited] border territory. Even more interesting than the government’s admission was the fact that Indians seemed beyond caring. The Opposition parties shrugged and concentrated on screaming at one another; television, which gets hysterical when a leaf flutters, had other things to do. Clearly, media reserves its visceral reactions only for its western rather than its northern border. This is maybe because the occupation of distant, barren land cannot compare, in televisual terms, with the throbbing drama of the heights and valleys of Kashmir.
Islamabad’s reaction has nothing to do with any threat from India, because there is no threat from India. India does not desire an inch of land beyond the Ceasefire Line or the international border. Equally, it will not surrender an inch of what is under its control. Pakistan, however, has built a layered case before America which boils down to this: it cannot fight all of America’s enemies on the Frontier, or those who treat the Frontier as sanctuary for the conflict in Afghanistan, as long as Indian guns are pointed at its back. It needs relief in the east to fight in the west. Washington has bought this argument, and Delhi has obliged as unobtrusively as possible. Our two-front General Kapoor has quietly presided over the withdrawal of over 40,000 troops from the Kashmir valley, and their transfer to the eastern Himalayas under the cover of rising worry about China. It’s very neat actually: we use China, possibly with Beijing’s knowledge, to help out America in its Pakistan war.
As long as there is no change in ground realities, this game can be played to triangular, or even quadrangular, satisfaction. Alas, everyone is not playing the same game. The spurt in terrorist violence in Srinagar during the last fortnight could be aimed at disturbing this dainty strategic daisy chain. Specialists are warning of an impending attack on the Indian mainland.
The delicate diplomatic balance could crumble if Pakistan and America push too hard, and believe that they can manoeuvre Delhi into a final settlement on Kashmir. There is very little space for negotiations on Kashmir itself, given that Pakistan is searching a major dilution of the status quo and India, at least at the moment, will agree on only the Ceasefire Line as the solution. Is the sudden talk of National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan being shifted to a powerless Governor’s bungalow indicative of a major change in Delhi’s Kashmir policy? He was a status quoist. Dr Manmohan Singh thinks, perhaps, that he can remobilize the constituency that cheered the nuclear deal with the United States. That may be easier in theory than practice. Pakistan, after all, is far more explosive than any number of nuclear plants.
Was General Deepak Kapoor’s two-front statement part of the smoke or the smokescreen?
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Why Jyoti Basu could not be PM
Why Jyoti Basu could not be PM
By M J Akbar
Why did Jyoti Basu describe the decision to deny him the prime minister’s office in 1997 as Indian Marxism’s “historic blunder”? He was not in love with status. He had more power in Bengal than most prime ministers have in India. He was content in Kolkata and capable of mounting an offensive from the Red Fortress that could shake the parameters of the Red Fort. V P Singh could never have become prime minister without his muscle. The decisive word in “historic blunder” is “historic”, not “blunder”. Basu realized that his party, CPI(M), had taken a wrong turn at a swivel moment in history.
A surface view might suggest that the most significant political change since 1997 has been the decline and fall of the Left, a process disguised by accidents of electoral mathematics until the slide became an avalanche three years ago. We are so hypnotized by party politics that we are unable to recognize the politics of people. The more startling fact is that the last decade has seen unprecedented growth of the Left, now a substantive presence in about 200 districts rather than in the 50-odd that used to deliver its MPs.
The difference is that Naxalites are not in the organized sector of Indian democracy. A look at their spread is to define what the CPI(M) could have been if it had not been blinded in Bengal and cockeyed in Kerala. Basu saw what his comrades did not. The Left needed a quantum leap from regional satrapies by offering leadership to the underprivileged and marginalized through the colossal power of a prime minister. A prime minister’s language, perhaps even more than his policies, sets the agenda of the nation. Basu had been weaned in the Nehru era and matured during the Indira Gandhi years. He was flexible enough to mix the high idealism of Nehru with the pragmatic diction of Indira Gandhi and the edge of Communist activism to establish a national constituency that the Left forsook in the 50s. Nor could Congress have withdrawn support to him on a flimsy excuse, as it did with Inder Gujral, without paying a heavy price in the ensuing general election. Basu had street-and-state credibility.
The CPI(M) was impelled into the “historic blunder” because of its hypocritical approach towards Delhi. It has always sought influence without responsibility. Its very junior brother, CPI, had no qualms about joining Deve Gowda’s coalition government. The CPI(M) forgets that heavy flirting does not beget babies; nor, logically, can atheists pray for immaculate conception. An analogy from the history of Marxism is irresistible: the Basu blunder was akin to Lenin telling Kerensky he had no time for the Kremlin, but pointing out that he be consulted each time Kerensky wanted to name a provisional governor. It is, perhaps, all too appropriate that the CPI(M) is Marxist and the CPI(M-L) is Marxist-Leninist.
The CPI(M) has never fully understood its own potential. When, after the split from the CPI in 1964 it rejected the Maoist-extremists of Naxalbari, and decided to work within the framework of nationalism, democracy and a bourgeoisie-capitalist economy, it became the first instance of what should be called the New Left.
The Old Left was already mired in stifling party dictatorships, and unable to recognize the temper of a world shifting towards the accountability of elections and the freedom of individual choice. As an increasingly stable democracy, but with enormous social and economic disparities, India provided the perfect environment for the creation of a New Left template. The CPI(M) was meant to use the system to whittle away its imbalances and shape a society that would never have been perfect but would certainly have been more egalitarian. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CPI(M) could have provided an example, if not leadership, to the Left in Africa, Latin America and Asia, filling a huge vacuum that is still empty.
The fall of the Left does not mean that the world does not need a leftist voice or agenda; perhaps it has rarely needed one more urgently. As a Communist prime minister of democratic India just half a decade after the implosion of the Soviet Union, Basu would have influenced not just his own country but the world. He would have conducted a foreign policy that understood independence without being a silly, ranting, anti-American caricature.
There are substantive reasons why the epic struggle between Right and Left seems to have tipped in favour of the former. The Right has displayed the ability to compromise, in theory and practice, on the rim in order to protect the core. The Left has surrendered to demands of its core constituencies, like trade unions, even when they had become unsustainable and counter-productive.
Basu was the Cromwell that the modern Left abandoned in a fog of uncertainty.
Appeared in Times of India - December 10, 2010
By M J Akbar
Why did Jyoti Basu describe the decision to deny him the prime minister’s office in 1997 as Indian Marxism’s “historic blunder”? He was not in love with status. He had more power in Bengal than most prime ministers have in India. He was content in Kolkata and capable of mounting an offensive from the Red Fortress that could shake the parameters of the Red Fort. V P Singh could never have become prime minister without his muscle. The decisive word in “historic blunder” is “historic”, not “blunder”. Basu realized that his party, CPI(M), had taken a wrong turn at a swivel moment in history.
A surface view might suggest that the most significant political change since 1997 has been the decline and fall of the Left, a process disguised by accidents of electoral mathematics until the slide became an avalanche three years ago. We are so hypnotized by party politics that we are unable to recognize the politics of people. The more startling fact is that the last decade has seen unprecedented growth of the Left, now a substantive presence in about 200 districts rather than in the 50-odd that used to deliver its MPs.
The difference is that Naxalites are not in the organized sector of Indian democracy. A look at their spread is to define what the CPI(M) could have been if it had not been blinded in Bengal and cockeyed in Kerala. Basu saw what his comrades did not. The Left needed a quantum leap from regional satrapies by offering leadership to the underprivileged and marginalized through the colossal power of a prime minister. A prime minister’s language, perhaps even more than his policies, sets the agenda of the nation. Basu had been weaned in the Nehru era and matured during the Indira Gandhi years. He was flexible enough to mix the high idealism of Nehru with the pragmatic diction of Indira Gandhi and the edge of Communist activism to establish a national constituency that the Left forsook in the 50s. Nor could Congress have withdrawn support to him on a flimsy excuse, as it did with Inder Gujral, without paying a heavy price in the ensuing general election. Basu had street-and-state credibility.
The CPI(M) was impelled into the “historic blunder” because of its hypocritical approach towards Delhi. It has always sought influence without responsibility. Its very junior brother, CPI, had no qualms about joining Deve Gowda’s coalition government. The CPI(M) forgets that heavy flirting does not beget babies; nor, logically, can atheists pray for immaculate conception. An analogy from the history of Marxism is irresistible: the Basu blunder was akin to Lenin telling Kerensky he had no time for the Kremlin, but pointing out that he be consulted each time Kerensky wanted to name a provisional governor. It is, perhaps, all too appropriate that the CPI(M) is Marxist and the CPI(M-L) is Marxist-Leninist.
The CPI(M) has never fully understood its own potential. When, after the split from the CPI in 1964 it rejected the Maoist-extremists of Naxalbari, and decided to work within the framework of nationalism, democracy and a bourgeoisie-capitalist economy, it became the first instance of what should be called the New Left.
The Old Left was already mired in stifling party dictatorships, and unable to recognize the temper of a world shifting towards the accountability of elections and the freedom of individual choice. As an increasingly stable democracy, but with enormous social and economic disparities, India provided the perfect environment for the creation of a New Left template. The CPI(M) was meant to use the system to whittle away its imbalances and shape a society that would never have been perfect but would certainly have been more egalitarian. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CPI(M) could have provided an example, if not leadership, to the Left in Africa, Latin America and Asia, filling a huge vacuum that is still empty.
The fall of the Left does not mean that the world does not need a leftist voice or agenda; perhaps it has rarely needed one more urgently. As a Communist prime minister of democratic India just half a decade after the implosion of the Soviet Union, Basu would have influenced not just his own country but the world. He would have conducted a foreign policy that understood independence without being a silly, ranting, anti-American caricature.
There are substantive reasons why the epic struggle between Right and Left seems to have tipped in favour of the former. The Right has displayed the ability to compromise, in theory and practice, on the rim in order to protect the core. The Left has surrendered to demands of its core constituencies, like trade unions, even when they had become unsustainable and counter-productive.
Basu was the Cromwell that the modern Left abandoned in a fog of uncertainty.
Appeared in Times of India - December 10, 2010
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Peace is where the media is
Byline by M J Akbar : Peace is where the media is
The advertising is smart enough to be effective, although how long its effect will last could well depend on what appears on the front page of the Times of India rather than the page carrying this ad. The campaign is unique: a joint public service venture by the Times, India’s most powerful media group by a distance, and Jang, Pakistan’s most influential newspaper. The theme is unquestionably laudable: Aman ki Asha [Hope for Peace]. No region could possibly want peace more urgently than a subcontinent addled with angst and saddled with two nuclear powers.
This could not have happened without a quiet nod from governments in Delhi and Islamabad; and possibly three, if you want to add Washington. The purpose is surely to soften up the street for a deal brewing somewhere within the innards of government. Citizens, so far addicted to conflict at any cost, must slowly be retuned to the wavelength of peace at any cost. It is axiomatic that both countries will have to compromise on some elements of deeply-held positions to create the “give” that will get the solution. The process of selling the “give” to their own publics has begun, albeit through indirect methods. The choice of Jang is relevant. The true equivalent of the Times would be the Dawn group, but readers of Dawn are probably already amenable to the idea of a rational rapport with India. It is the Jang reader who needs to be turned.
The first advertisement had the kind of headline that makes copywriters give each other awards: Occasionally, peace deserves a war. The amplification in body copy was neo-Buddhist: peace is passive, serene, good; war is active, violent, destructive. It is obvious that we would not appreciate the value of peace if we did not know the price of war — just, I suppose, as Adam and Eve did not understand the worth of Paradise before they were banished to earth. One wonders, however, if anyone caught the double entendre. Jang means war, unlike, say, the Times of India, which created a newspaper to report on the times of India.
The official explanation is that Jang was launched in 1944, when the world was at war. I doubt if anyone wanted to start an Urdu paper on the subcontinent in order to support the liberation of France from Nazi Germany. 1944 was also the year of a Muslim League slogan: “Ladh ke lenge Pakistan! [We will win Pakistan with war!]” But this is good news. If Jang can reinvent itself as a warrior for peace, then something important and beneficial is happening, or has already happened, among opinion-builders in Pakistan.
The problem is with the front page. On 8 January, while its inner pages were pushing peace, the Times carried a front page story saying “700 Jihadis” had been let loose to spread mayhem in Jammu and Kashmir. On the morning of 9 January all papers published taped extracts of conversations between two terrorists who had entered a hotel in Srinagar and their handlers in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. When one of the terrorists said they were surrounded and trapped by Indian police, the reply was “Shahadat se pehle zyada se zyada policewalon ko maro, zyada se zyada nuksaan pahunchao [Before martyrdom kill as many policemen as possible, destroy as much as possible]”. After one terrorist was killed, the other sent a desperate message, “Khel khatm hone wala hai [The game is about to be over]”. The reply he got was “Daro mat, tumhe jaldi Rab mil jaayega [Do not be afraid, you will soon find God]”.
I do not know how Jang reported the incident; in the old days the terrorists would have been extolled as “freedom-fighters” and “martyrs”. The incident underlines the enormous difficulties in building a peace constituency. But this much is certain, if peace has to come then it will emerge from page one and not from pages carrying advertisements. One is not suggesting the false equation used all too often by those who have no interest in peace, that a solution can only be crafted after violence ends. A terrorist organisation, or even a maverick individual, can always sabotage such a counter-productive condition. But we need news that the government is not a silent agent provocateur, that it has been able to identify and imprison the masterminds of terrorism operating from Pakistan. This is not a specific Indian demand; it is the basic minimum that the international community expects in the global fight against terrorism. Islamabad’s compliance is a must.
We should not succumb to hopelessness when terrorists get through our defenses and inflict violence, as they did in Srinagar this week. There may not be unanimity in the Pak establishment on peace, but, as noted, the participation of Jang represents an important reappraisal and it would be extremely foolish to ignore any glimmer. The initiative taken by media groups also means that they must create a new culture of reporting in which honesty is not undermined by hysteria. The street listens to media in the hope that it is more credible than governments, a hope that is often belied.
Peace, like charity, begins at home, and peace is where media is.
The advertising is smart enough to be effective, although how long its effect will last could well depend on what appears on the front page of the Times of India rather than the page carrying this ad. The campaign is unique: a joint public service venture by the Times, India’s most powerful media group by a distance, and Jang, Pakistan’s most influential newspaper. The theme is unquestionably laudable: Aman ki Asha [Hope for Peace]. No region could possibly want peace more urgently than a subcontinent addled with angst and saddled with two nuclear powers.
This could not have happened without a quiet nod from governments in Delhi and Islamabad; and possibly three, if you want to add Washington. The purpose is surely to soften up the street for a deal brewing somewhere within the innards of government. Citizens, so far addicted to conflict at any cost, must slowly be retuned to the wavelength of peace at any cost. It is axiomatic that both countries will have to compromise on some elements of deeply-held positions to create the “give” that will get the solution. The process of selling the “give” to their own publics has begun, albeit through indirect methods. The choice of Jang is relevant. The true equivalent of the Times would be the Dawn group, but readers of Dawn are probably already amenable to the idea of a rational rapport with India. It is the Jang reader who needs to be turned.
The first advertisement had the kind of headline that makes copywriters give each other awards: Occasionally, peace deserves a war. The amplification in body copy was neo-Buddhist: peace is passive, serene, good; war is active, violent, destructive. It is obvious that we would not appreciate the value of peace if we did not know the price of war — just, I suppose, as Adam and Eve did not understand the worth of Paradise before they were banished to earth. One wonders, however, if anyone caught the double entendre. Jang means war, unlike, say, the Times of India, which created a newspaper to report on the times of India.
The official explanation is that Jang was launched in 1944, when the world was at war. I doubt if anyone wanted to start an Urdu paper on the subcontinent in order to support the liberation of France from Nazi Germany. 1944 was also the year of a Muslim League slogan: “Ladh ke lenge Pakistan! [We will win Pakistan with war!]” But this is good news. If Jang can reinvent itself as a warrior for peace, then something important and beneficial is happening, or has already happened, among opinion-builders in Pakistan.
The problem is with the front page. On 8 January, while its inner pages were pushing peace, the Times carried a front page story saying “700 Jihadis” had been let loose to spread mayhem in Jammu and Kashmir. On the morning of 9 January all papers published taped extracts of conversations between two terrorists who had entered a hotel in Srinagar and their handlers in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. When one of the terrorists said they were surrounded and trapped by Indian police, the reply was “Shahadat se pehle zyada se zyada policewalon ko maro, zyada se zyada nuksaan pahunchao [Before martyrdom kill as many policemen as possible, destroy as much as possible]”. After one terrorist was killed, the other sent a desperate message, “Khel khatm hone wala hai [The game is about to be over]”. The reply he got was “Daro mat, tumhe jaldi Rab mil jaayega [Do not be afraid, you will soon find God]”.
I do not know how Jang reported the incident; in the old days the terrorists would have been extolled as “freedom-fighters” and “martyrs”. The incident underlines the enormous difficulties in building a peace constituency. But this much is certain, if peace has to come then it will emerge from page one and not from pages carrying advertisements. One is not suggesting the false equation used all too often by those who have no interest in peace, that a solution can only be crafted after violence ends. A terrorist organisation, or even a maverick individual, can always sabotage such a counter-productive condition. But we need news that the government is not a silent agent provocateur, that it has been able to identify and imprison the masterminds of terrorism operating from Pakistan. This is not a specific Indian demand; it is the basic minimum that the international community expects in the global fight against terrorism. Islamabad’s compliance is a must.
We should not succumb to hopelessness when terrorists get through our defenses and inflict violence, as they did in Srinagar this week. There may not be unanimity in the Pak establishment on peace, but, as noted, the participation of Jang represents an important reappraisal and it would be extremely foolish to ignore any glimmer. The initiative taken by media groups also means that they must create a new culture of reporting in which honesty is not undermined by hysteria. The street listens to media in the hope that it is more credible than governments, a hope that is often belied.
Peace, like charity, begins at home, and peace is where media is.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Path to peace runs through Kashmir
Path to peace runs through Kashmir
By M J Akbar
When was the last time you read the front of a Christmas card? This seasonal benevolence begs an intriguing question: Which comes first? Peace on earth or goodwill towards men?
Any Indian visitor to Pakistan will vouch for the genuine goodwill he finds. We are an emotional people; cricket is the perfect pitch for hostility since all its crises can be sorted out over a sumptuous dinner afterwards. But all the warmth between Indians and Pakistanis has not translated into peace between India and Pakistan. The relationship began with war over Kashmir within six weeks of birth because the two nations are founded on antagonistic concepts of nationalism.
Pakistan is a child of the two-nation theory. This is not a matter of geography. Its premise is that Hindus and Muslims belong to separate nations. Jinnah reiterated a million times that living with Hindus was submission to Hindu tyranny and sneered at Maulana Azad when the latter insisted that a secular multi-faith state was not only possible, but desirable. This is the basis for every Pakistani’s conviction that the Kashmir valley is rightfully a part of Pakistan, and Indian rule in Srinagar is ruthless colonization.
India has accepted the fact of Pakistan. It supported Pakistan’s membership of the United Nations even when Afghanistan opposed it. But India’s ideology cannot accept that there should be two nations because there are two faiths. Its Constitution and six decades of democratic experience say so. India’s ideology makes Kashmir as inviolable a part of India as Pakistan’s ideology makes it a part of Pakistan. Pakistan would not want Hindu-majority Jammu even if anyone offered it, since Pakistan is a Muslims-only state. Its Constitution forbids non-Muslims from becoming president or prime minister.
Kashmiris have added a singular twist to this existential dilemma, with a three-nation theory. The progenitor of the concept of Kashmiri independence was not a Muslim: in 1947 Maharaja Hari Singh delayed accession to either state in the hope of acquiring a unique and separate status. Over time, and particularly after the marginalization of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley, independence has become a Kashmiri Muslim, rather than a Kashmiri, demand.
Where is the median point at which such conflicting aspirations meet or merge? The difficulty should be apparent to even the most optimistic goodwill-salesman. One of the three has to abandon a fiercely-held ideology, with attendant consequences.
Delhi seems to believe that the easiest negotiating space lies in the three-nation theory. It has set in motion, through the familiar ruse of committees, a virtual-nation option for Kashmir in the guise of autonomy. Islamabad would match Delhi’s rearrangement after a pre-arranged signal, and Kashmiris would be offered the substance of independence without the reality. Such a solution would be illusory without legal and Constitutional permanence. It would be vulnerable on disparate counts. Many Pakistanis would not see it as a solution, only as partial victory in the long haul to the full acquisition of Kashmir.
This is certainly the declared objective of terrorist networks and their allies in government, who would be tempted towards greater violence. The Lashkar-e-Taiba and its friends are unlikely to sign any peace-on-earth deal with India. There could also be a change of mood, or change of government, in Delhi. Nehru withdrew many of the commitments made in the Delhi Agreement with Sheikh Abdullah because they were incompatible with the federal structure and a potential threat to Indian unity. Fudge is inedible.
The idea of Pakistan is being battered each day on the streets by guns and suicide bombers. A common faith could not prevent a revolution in Bangladesh, a revolt in Baluchistan, or, last week, the massacre of Shias. It would be interesting to find out through a poll whether Shias today feel more secure in Lucknow or Karachi. Pakistan’s Muslims created a separate country because they could not live with Hindus and Sikhs; today they are discovering that they cannot live with one another. The evidence is in front of us; the inference is too inflammatory to be uttered.
The solution to Kashmir cannot lie in a failed theory. And Kashmiris surely appreciate that independence is not possible. Perhaps this subcontinent needs one last touch of surgery. The price of Partition in Punjab and Bengal was horrific, but it brought peace. Six decades later, West Bengal has the highest density of Muslims among all states in India, and the strength of secularism has persuaded Bihari Muslims to migrate to Punjab. Kashmir was divided along the ceasefire line because Pakistan, in 1947, chose war over talks. If Pakistan insists on an ideological claim over the valley, there will be no peace. If it can find space for pragmatism, Islamabad and Delhi can shake hands on a Happy New Year without needing to count their fingers afterwards.
Times of India Column
By M J Akbar
When was the last time you read the front of a Christmas card? This seasonal benevolence begs an intriguing question: Which comes first? Peace on earth or goodwill towards men?
Any Indian visitor to Pakistan will vouch for the genuine goodwill he finds. We are an emotional people; cricket is the perfect pitch for hostility since all its crises can be sorted out over a sumptuous dinner afterwards. But all the warmth between Indians and Pakistanis has not translated into peace between India and Pakistan. The relationship began with war over Kashmir within six weeks of birth because the two nations are founded on antagonistic concepts of nationalism.
Pakistan is a child of the two-nation theory. This is not a matter of geography. Its premise is that Hindus and Muslims belong to separate nations. Jinnah reiterated a million times that living with Hindus was submission to Hindu tyranny and sneered at Maulana Azad when the latter insisted that a secular multi-faith state was not only possible, but desirable. This is the basis for every Pakistani’s conviction that the Kashmir valley is rightfully a part of Pakistan, and Indian rule in Srinagar is ruthless colonization.
India has accepted the fact of Pakistan. It supported Pakistan’s membership of the United Nations even when Afghanistan opposed it. But India’s ideology cannot accept that there should be two nations because there are two faiths. Its Constitution and six decades of democratic experience say so. India’s ideology makes Kashmir as inviolable a part of India as Pakistan’s ideology makes it a part of Pakistan. Pakistan would not want Hindu-majority Jammu even if anyone offered it, since Pakistan is a Muslims-only state. Its Constitution forbids non-Muslims from becoming president or prime minister.
Kashmiris have added a singular twist to this existential dilemma, with a three-nation theory. The progenitor of the concept of Kashmiri independence was not a Muslim: in 1947 Maharaja Hari Singh delayed accession to either state in the hope of acquiring a unique and separate status. Over time, and particularly after the marginalization of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley, independence has become a Kashmiri Muslim, rather than a Kashmiri, demand.
Where is the median point at which such conflicting aspirations meet or merge? The difficulty should be apparent to even the most optimistic goodwill-salesman. One of the three has to abandon a fiercely-held ideology, with attendant consequences.
Delhi seems to believe that the easiest negotiating space lies in the three-nation theory. It has set in motion, through the familiar ruse of committees, a virtual-nation option for Kashmir in the guise of autonomy. Islamabad would match Delhi’s rearrangement after a pre-arranged signal, and Kashmiris would be offered the substance of independence without the reality. Such a solution would be illusory without legal and Constitutional permanence. It would be vulnerable on disparate counts. Many Pakistanis would not see it as a solution, only as partial victory in the long haul to the full acquisition of Kashmir.
This is certainly the declared objective of terrorist networks and their allies in government, who would be tempted towards greater violence. The Lashkar-e-Taiba and its friends are unlikely to sign any peace-on-earth deal with India. There could also be a change of mood, or change of government, in Delhi. Nehru withdrew many of the commitments made in the Delhi Agreement with Sheikh Abdullah because they were incompatible with the federal structure and a potential threat to Indian unity. Fudge is inedible.
The idea of Pakistan is being battered each day on the streets by guns and suicide bombers. A common faith could not prevent a revolution in Bangladesh, a revolt in Baluchistan, or, last week, the massacre of Shias. It would be interesting to find out through a poll whether Shias today feel more secure in Lucknow or Karachi. Pakistan’s Muslims created a separate country because they could not live with Hindus and Sikhs; today they are discovering that they cannot live with one another. The evidence is in front of us; the inference is too inflammatory to be uttered.
The solution to Kashmir cannot lie in a failed theory. And Kashmiris surely appreciate that independence is not possible. Perhaps this subcontinent needs one last touch of surgery. The price of Partition in Punjab and Bengal was horrific, but it brought peace. Six decades later, West Bengal has the highest density of Muslims among all states in India, and the strength of secularism has persuaded Bihari Muslims to migrate to Punjab. Kashmir was divided along the ceasefire line because Pakistan, in 1947, chose war over talks. If Pakistan insists on an ideological claim over the valley, there will be no peace. If it can find space for pragmatism, Islamabad and Delhi can shake hands on a Happy New Year without needing to count their fingers afterwards.
Times of India Column
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Sense and absence
Byline by M J Akbar: Sense and absence
Does it matter that there was no tribal or Muslim on the dais when the Congress celebrated its 125th anniversary? Or that the history of the party has now been co-opted into the history of the Nehru-Gandhi family, with token homage to Mahatma Gandhi and throwaway references to titans of the first two decades of our nation-building process?
The second has become, in truth, an irritation to commentators rather than voters. Those who support the Congress have already conflated the party with the family, a process that began during Mrs Indira Gandhi’s time and has matured during Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s leadership. So has the party structure. The Congress voter believes that the two Mrs Gandhis do the best that they can for the poor, which is at least better than the rest. And the party identifies the family with something other leaders have not been able to provide: electoral success. Lal Bahadur Shastri did not live long enough to translate his sturdy promise into Lok Sabha seats. And while Narasimha Rao may have, in his own estimation, saved the nation from economic ruin he could not save the Congress from political ruin. The family is safe anchor for those Congressmen who want to be in power for twenty years or the end of their lives, whichever comes quicker.
But the first has to be a problem. There is of course always an element of tokenism in any high-table seating arrangement, but those tokens have value, which is why they are preserved. Sonia Gandhi, Dr Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, Mrs Sheila Dikshit and Motilal Vora were natural claimants, although it did not go without notice that there are three Brahmins in the group. The presence of A.K. Antony had nothing to do with either Kerala or his Christian faith; it was proof that Mrs Gandhi holds him in high esteem. J.P. Aggarwal sat there as host, but Mukul Wasnik was given space because of his community, marking this pleasant and decent person as the Dalit face of the future. Rahul Gandhi did not sit on the dais, presumably because he was away on holiday. It was a politically sensible holiday, for he still has a slightly nebulous status, party-wise: he is certainly not a member of the audience, but not quite the equal of Manmohan-Pranab-Dikshit-Antony group. Absence can have its uses.
But not every time. The absence of a tribal or a Muslim was not out of choice. The ranking Muslim Cabinet minister is Ghulam Nabi Azad, a Kashmiri. Muslims of the Gangetic belt, from Hardwar and Saharanpur to Kolkata via Patna do not identify with him; and this is where the bulk of the faithful live. The absence of tribals is an even bigger problem, for one of the main reasons for the growth of Naxalites in the tribal belt is their conviction that they have been marginalized by the larger political formations. Unable to offer a face of its own, the Congress was forced to co-opt Babulal Marandi in the Jharkhand elections. It did well, but would have done better if it had built its indigenous tribal leadership.
While the home ministry might launch its armed offensive against Naxalites, sensible politics demands a parallel dialogue with the communities that constitute the strength of this opposition. There are no Congress leaders who can play this role. Muslims are quiet now, but if passions do rise over job quotas Congress will face the same difficulty with its strongest vote base.
Complacency is never a good idea, and the BJP has sent a signal that it just might be getting its act together. Its new leader Nitin Gadkari has sent two interesting signals. He invoked Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s concern for the last man in the queue, a reversal of the impression that the party could not look beyond the first man in the queue. The second is a collage: he served chicken at a reception at party headquarters; he used a line from a Hindi film song at a press conference; and, in his individual capacity, he is a bit overweight. While weight and temperament are not necessarily correlated, it is generally true that men who eat more than they should are also tolerant of human indulgence. Think the laughing Buddha. Think Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, who wanted men about him who were fat and was wary of yon Cassius with his lean and hungry look. A chap who can chow down with the best, and listens to film music is unlikely to be rigid, although the jury must remain out on this question till the end of this year.
There will be many battles in the decade ahead, some fierce, others lukewarm. But while we are engrossed in the high drama of the Naxalite revolt, economic upturn-downturn, minority-poverty definitions, watch out for the subliminal conflict between Rahul Gandhi’s fashionable stubble and Gadkari’s film song quotations. Chorhon kal ki baatein [forget yesterday], said Gadkari at the press conference, which was fine: but does he have a nai kahani [new story] for the naya daur [new age]?
Does it matter that there was no tribal or Muslim on the dais when the Congress celebrated its 125th anniversary? Or that the history of the party has now been co-opted into the history of the Nehru-Gandhi family, with token homage to Mahatma Gandhi and throwaway references to titans of the first two decades of our nation-building process?
The second has become, in truth, an irritation to commentators rather than voters. Those who support the Congress have already conflated the party with the family, a process that began during Mrs Indira Gandhi’s time and has matured during Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s leadership. So has the party structure. The Congress voter believes that the two Mrs Gandhis do the best that they can for the poor, which is at least better than the rest. And the party identifies the family with something other leaders have not been able to provide: electoral success. Lal Bahadur Shastri did not live long enough to translate his sturdy promise into Lok Sabha seats. And while Narasimha Rao may have, in his own estimation, saved the nation from economic ruin he could not save the Congress from political ruin. The family is safe anchor for those Congressmen who want to be in power for twenty years or the end of their lives, whichever comes quicker.
But the first has to be a problem. There is of course always an element of tokenism in any high-table seating arrangement, but those tokens have value, which is why they are preserved. Sonia Gandhi, Dr Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, Mrs Sheila Dikshit and Motilal Vora were natural claimants, although it did not go without notice that there are three Brahmins in the group. The presence of A.K. Antony had nothing to do with either Kerala or his Christian faith; it was proof that Mrs Gandhi holds him in high esteem. J.P. Aggarwal sat there as host, but Mukul Wasnik was given space because of his community, marking this pleasant and decent person as the Dalit face of the future. Rahul Gandhi did not sit on the dais, presumably because he was away on holiday. It was a politically sensible holiday, for he still has a slightly nebulous status, party-wise: he is certainly not a member of the audience, but not quite the equal of Manmohan-Pranab-Dikshit-Antony group. Absence can have its uses.
But not every time. The absence of a tribal or a Muslim was not out of choice. The ranking Muslim Cabinet minister is Ghulam Nabi Azad, a Kashmiri. Muslims of the Gangetic belt, from Hardwar and Saharanpur to Kolkata via Patna do not identify with him; and this is where the bulk of the faithful live. The absence of tribals is an even bigger problem, for one of the main reasons for the growth of Naxalites in the tribal belt is their conviction that they have been marginalized by the larger political formations. Unable to offer a face of its own, the Congress was forced to co-opt Babulal Marandi in the Jharkhand elections. It did well, but would have done better if it had built its indigenous tribal leadership.
While the home ministry might launch its armed offensive against Naxalites, sensible politics demands a parallel dialogue with the communities that constitute the strength of this opposition. There are no Congress leaders who can play this role. Muslims are quiet now, but if passions do rise over job quotas Congress will face the same difficulty with its strongest vote base.
Complacency is never a good idea, and the BJP has sent a signal that it just might be getting its act together. Its new leader Nitin Gadkari has sent two interesting signals. He invoked Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s concern for the last man in the queue, a reversal of the impression that the party could not look beyond the first man in the queue. The second is a collage: he served chicken at a reception at party headquarters; he used a line from a Hindi film song at a press conference; and, in his individual capacity, he is a bit overweight. While weight and temperament are not necessarily correlated, it is generally true that men who eat more than they should are also tolerant of human indulgence. Think the laughing Buddha. Think Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, who wanted men about him who were fat and was wary of yon Cassius with his lean and hungry look. A chap who can chow down with the best, and listens to film music is unlikely to be rigid, although the jury must remain out on this question till the end of this year.
There will be many battles in the decade ahead, some fierce, others lukewarm. But while we are engrossed in the high drama of the Naxalite revolt, economic upturn-downturn, minority-poverty definitions, watch out for the subliminal conflict between Rahul Gandhi’s fashionable stubble and Gadkari’s film song quotations. Chorhon kal ki baatein [forget yesterday], said Gadkari at the press conference, which was fine: but does he have a nai kahani [new story] for the naya daur [new age]?
Sunday, December 27, 2009
The 21st century began in 2002
The 21st century began in 2002
By M J Akbar
The 20th century ended in 2002, on the day the Godhra riots began. It was a turbulent age that ravaged society and broke the land as faith became the emotional spur of identity and the principal dialectic of politics. If Jinnah used the rhetoric of Islam to divide, then Gandhi used the metaphor of Ram rajya to unite. Both left an immediate legacy of incomplete dreams; it was up to history to decide which one had a better chance of success. Jinnah's Pakistan has crept towards theocracy, inciting blood-warm civil wars and cold-eyed terrorism. Gandhi's India, despite the able custody of Nehru, has had to struggle with the scourge of communalism, the one great impediment to its tryst with destiny.
The pivotal moments of faith-based passions were the narrative of the 1980s: the Shah Bano episode, and the Ram temple movement. Babri linked up to Ahmedabad through Godhra. But 2002 turned into a swivel point; the last of the lava spewed out, leaving those who had stoked the volcano a spent force. Hindsight confirms that after 2002, enough Indians turned away from fire to the forge of social and economic change. Congress understood this, instinctively rather than ideologically. The absence of ideology permitted tactical mobility between virtual laissez faire, a tilted partnership with America and state-financed handout programmes. Enough constituencies were onside, therefore, on polling day. The BJP flourished only where its regional leaders recognized the primacy of rice over anger. Narendra Modi, uniquely, has mined both seams, but he will find out in the next elections that one seam has run dry. Even the violence of the last eight years, spawned by Naxalites, has been motivated by hunger rather than faith.
The true business of the first decade of the 21st century has been business. It was both appropriate and unfortunate, therefore, that the last date on the legal calendar of this decade was occupied, in the Supreme Court, by the bitter gas case between the iconic businessmen of our time, the brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani. Their dispute has generated more headlines in six years than any political conflict.
Blood, we have been reliably informed, is thicker than water. Why does money become, all so often, thicker than blood?
There are two medieval models for inheritance. The Mughals opted for a life-and-death decision on the battlefield. The English graduated, possibly to preserve their nobility from self-inflicted wounds, to primogeniture, in which the eldest son got the estate and the younger son a book written by P G Wodehouse. Both models are unacceptable in more egalitarian times, but in our country the elder brother still has the edge. This is why Mukesh Ambani received nearly three-fourths of the Dhirubhai empire, and Anil accepted such an unequal settlement.
But it also becomes a duty on the part of the heirs to preserve this amity, for every empire, political or business, is a public responsibility. Businessmen are often called barons or the new 'Moghuls', but this is not a license to behave like a Mughal, consolidating power by eliminating kin.
There is a remarkable parallel between what might be justifiably called the two most powerful brother-heirs in the Indian private sector. Decorum prevents me from naming one pair of brothers. Both lost their patriarch in harness. The comparative bank balance is not the issue, since billions are beyond mathematics. But if the Ambanis possess the power of wealth; the others have the wealth of power. All four are brilliant, with the rare ability to nurture a seed into a plant and then transform it into a plantation. The Ambanis are an international phenomenon; no less remarkably, the other brothers lifted the dominant newspaper of a single city into a range of media products that made their brand an unparalleled sensation. Brothers inherit genes, not temperament; there were differences in both families. The contrast is that the unnamed heirs, prone as everyone else to human weakness, turned a kingdom into an empire in exemplary harmony, offering a template. Imagine the economic stratosphere in which both Ambanis would flourish without their epic war.
The difference between fortune and misfortune is not money, but the value of a family at peace with itself.
The Supreme Court has the task of Solomon, without the luxury of sentiment: it cannot suggest that the last word be left to the mother, since the Supreme Court is the final court of appeal, the supreme mother of Indian justice. It will be guided by merit, precedence, and the principles its judgment will establish for private and public sector. If India's destiny lies in its economy, if India is to soar above the neighbourhood towards a unique horizon, then the moral code of our faith in business will lie in the voice of the Supreme Court.
Appeared in Times of India - December 27, 2009
By M J Akbar
The 20th century ended in 2002, on the day the Godhra riots began. It was a turbulent age that ravaged society and broke the land as faith became the emotional spur of identity and the principal dialectic of politics. If Jinnah used the rhetoric of Islam to divide, then Gandhi used the metaphor of Ram rajya to unite. Both left an immediate legacy of incomplete dreams; it was up to history to decide which one had a better chance of success. Jinnah's Pakistan has crept towards theocracy, inciting blood-warm civil wars and cold-eyed terrorism. Gandhi's India, despite the able custody of Nehru, has had to struggle with the scourge of communalism, the one great impediment to its tryst with destiny.
The pivotal moments of faith-based passions were the narrative of the 1980s: the Shah Bano episode, and the Ram temple movement. Babri linked up to Ahmedabad through Godhra. But 2002 turned into a swivel point; the last of the lava spewed out, leaving those who had stoked the volcano a spent force. Hindsight confirms that after 2002, enough Indians turned away from fire to the forge of social and economic change. Congress understood this, instinctively rather than ideologically. The absence of ideology permitted tactical mobility between virtual laissez faire, a tilted partnership with America and state-financed handout programmes. Enough constituencies were onside, therefore, on polling day. The BJP flourished only where its regional leaders recognized the primacy of rice over anger. Narendra Modi, uniquely, has mined both seams, but he will find out in the next elections that one seam has run dry. Even the violence of the last eight years, spawned by Naxalites, has been motivated by hunger rather than faith.
The true business of the first decade of the 21st century has been business. It was both appropriate and unfortunate, therefore, that the last date on the legal calendar of this decade was occupied, in the Supreme Court, by the bitter gas case between the iconic businessmen of our time, the brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani. Their dispute has generated more headlines in six years than any political conflict.
Blood, we have been reliably informed, is thicker than water. Why does money become, all so often, thicker than blood?
There are two medieval models for inheritance. The Mughals opted for a life-and-death decision on the battlefield. The English graduated, possibly to preserve their nobility from self-inflicted wounds, to primogeniture, in which the eldest son got the estate and the younger son a book written by P G Wodehouse. Both models are unacceptable in more egalitarian times, but in our country the elder brother still has the edge. This is why Mukesh Ambani received nearly three-fourths of the Dhirubhai empire, and Anil accepted such an unequal settlement.
But it also becomes a duty on the part of the heirs to preserve this amity, for every empire, political or business, is a public responsibility. Businessmen are often called barons or the new 'Moghuls', but this is not a license to behave like a Mughal, consolidating power by eliminating kin.
There is a remarkable parallel between what might be justifiably called the two most powerful brother-heirs in the Indian private sector. Decorum prevents me from naming one pair of brothers. Both lost their patriarch in harness. The comparative bank balance is not the issue, since billions are beyond mathematics. But if the Ambanis possess the power of wealth; the others have the wealth of power. All four are brilliant, with the rare ability to nurture a seed into a plant and then transform it into a plantation. The Ambanis are an international phenomenon; no less remarkably, the other brothers lifted the dominant newspaper of a single city into a range of media products that made their brand an unparalleled sensation. Brothers inherit genes, not temperament; there were differences in both families. The contrast is that the unnamed heirs, prone as everyone else to human weakness, turned a kingdom into an empire in exemplary harmony, offering a template. Imagine the economic stratosphere in which both Ambanis would flourish without their epic war.
The difference between fortune and misfortune is not money, but the value of a family at peace with itself.
The Supreme Court has the task of Solomon, without the luxury of sentiment: it cannot suggest that the last word be left to the mother, since the Supreme Court is the final court of appeal, the supreme mother of Indian justice. It will be guided by merit, precedence, and the principles its judgment will establish for private and public sector. If India's destiny lies in its economy, if India is to soar above the neighbourhood towards a unique horizon, then the moral code of our faith in business will lie in the voice of the Supreme Court.
Appeared in Times of India - December 27, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Telengana lava melts Teflon
Byline by M J Akbar: Telengana lava melts Teflon
Teflon may be synthetic but it is not a negative: it is in great demand among both cooking utensils and politicians. It might even be called history’s finest non-violent armour, for it protects your reputation from stain. If everything greasy simply rolls off the skin, leaving neither scar nor wound, then you become impervious to criticism. For politicians it becomes a near-magical coat, since they need a double-defence mechanism: safety not only from the Opposition’s barbs but also from their own mistakes. Even when Teflon cracks it does so without a sound. The world gets to know of the breach long after it has occurred, leaving you time for repair.
Ronald Reagan used to delight in being called the Teflon politician. Even the Iran-contra scandal bypassed him, while frying half the White House that reported to him – or maybe he bypassed the scandal. The net result was the same. He kept on smiling till his last day in office, his only regret being that he could not get a better successor. But then, no American President has been overwhelmed by his Vice President, so that is not valid evidence in the evaluation of George Bush the Elder.
Two members of the present Union government have been blessed with Teflon: Dr Manmohan Singh and P. Chidambaram. Dr Singh was born with it; Chidambaram ordered it at wholesale rates for use in his public persona. As finance minister he concentrated on spreading the good news and left the bad news to lesser mortals like bureaucrats or even a permanent demi-god like Montek Singh Ahluwalia. He made all announcements about recovery and growth. It was brilliant political strategy.
Since the hone minister is the de facto chief policeman of the country, and the police are rarely blessed with good news, Chidambaram refashioned himself as the homeland security minister, raising his challenge to terrorism rather than mere crime. This clearly affected his mindset. He began to see every problem as an existential threat to the nation, treating Naxalites, for instance, as terrorists rather than a violent political movement born out of hunger and the state’s neglect of the poor. Even when he did not express say so, there always seemed to an “or else!” tagged to every statement he made. There was always an undercurrent suggestion in his demeanor that the home minister was not quite at home in his ministry, but Teflon was the great veneer that never let any uncomfortable thought emerge.
Telengana is the first crack in this Teflon, but of course we have not yet heard the sound of any crack since, as noted, the rupture is noiseless. The phrase “flip-flop” has been well imagined. The first flip may be necessary for purposes of either display or convenience, but a second flip is always a flop, leaving you open to ridicule. The home minister was handed his moment when he announced the formation of a separate Telengana state on 9 December. It was the kind of opportunity that Prime Ministers reserve for themselves, for new states are not born each day.
But Dr Manmohan Singh let his junior change the internal map of India. He might have been too busy: after all, he has been rushing from one country to another, with nary a day even for Parliament. Or, more likely, the Prime Minister might have been a better politician than others think he is. Dr Singh can measure the heat of a hot potato from a long distance, and Telengana was the hottest potato in a decade. He left this potato in the mouth of Chidambaram, and its heat melted the Teflon. Close observers of Delhi’s power plays might have noticed a press release that suggested that the statement on the reversal of the Telengana decision would be made jointly by Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Dr Singh. They did not do anything so rash. The hot potato went back to Chidambaram. All he could do, once again, was juggle it on his tongue. Justifications for the second tongue-twister fell flat. Some over-clever types in Delhi tried to make a scapegoat of the new Andhra Chief Minister Rosaiah, even though the latter had warned his high command not to divide the state. All they managed was to weaken yet another branch on which their authority rested.
The union government has sent a message to Andhra Pradesh: pile on the pressure, and Delhi will buckle. Chandrashekhar Rao went on a fast and got his wish in rather quick time; the rest of Andhra picked up the hint and tweaked its own pressure points, inducing a back-breaking somersault. It is Telengana’s turn once again to indulge in rampage-politics.
A question needs to be raised: why is coastal Andhra Pradesh so insistent on keeping a region that is so adamant on divorce? It cannot be a territorial matter since Telengana is not seceding from the Indian union, and there is no law which says that an Andhra businessman cannot own a Telengana company or, for that matter, property in Hyderabad. Language is clearly no longer the most important glue for states, and if people get convinced that there is imbalance in development they will demand a better option – and seek it in their own lifetimes. There is no point offering them gold in 2020 and coal today. It won’t work.
Chandrashekhar Rao surely believes that he is the father of Telengana, but this child would never have been born without the mismanagement of Delhi. This volcano could have smoldered for many more years without exploding, and perhaps this period could have been used to redress the economic imbalance. But Delhi fired the volcano, and it now has lava on its face.
Teflon may be synthetic but it is not a negative: it is in great demand among both cooking utensils and politicians. It might even be called history’s finest non-violent armour, for it protects your reputation from stain. If everything greasy simply rolls off the skin, leaving neither scar nor wound, then you become impervious to criticism. For politicians it becomes a near-magical coat, since they need a double-defence mechanism: safety not only from the Opposition’s barbs but also from their own mistakes. Even when Teflon cracks it does so without a sound. The world gets to know of the breach long after it has occurred, leaving you time for repair.
Ronald Reagan used to delight in being called the Teflon politician. Even the Iran-contra scandal bypassed him, while frying half the White House that reported to him – or maybe he bypassed the scandal. The net result was the same. He kept on smiling till his last day in office, his only regret being that he could not get a better successor. But then, no American President has been overwhelmed by his Vice President, so that is not valid evidence in the evaluation of George Bush the Elder.
Two members of the present Union government have been blessed with Teflon: Dr Manmohan Singh and P. Chidambaram. Dr Singh was born with it; Chidambaram ordered it at wholesale rates for use in his public persona. As finance minister he concentrated on spreading the good news and left the bad news to lesser mortals like bureaucrats or even a permanent demi-god like Montek Singh Ahluwalia. He made all announcements about recovery and growth. It was brilliant political strategy.
Since the hone minister is the de facto chief policeman of the country, and the police are rarely blessed with good news, Chidambaram refashioned himself as the homeland security minister, raising his challenge to terrorism rather than mere crime. This clearly affected his mindset. He began to see every problem as an existential threat to the nation, treating Naxalites, for instance, as terrorists rather than a violent political movement born out of hunger and the state’s neglect of the poor. Even when he did not express say so, there always seemed to an “or else!” tagged to every statement he made. There was always an undercurrent suggestion in his demeanor that the home minister was not quite at home in his ministry, but Teflon was the great veneer that never let any uncomfortable thought emerge.
Telengana is the first crack in this Teflon, but of course we have not yet heard the sound of any crack since, as noted, the rupture is noiseless. The phrase “flip-flop” has been well imagined. The first flip may be necessary for purposes of either display or convenience, but a second flip is always a flop, leaving you open to ridicule. The home minister was handed his moment when he announced the formation of a separate Telengana state on 9 December. It was the kind of opportunity that Prime Ministers reserve for themselves, for new states are not born each day.
But Dr Manmohan Singh let his junior change the internal map of India. He might have been too busy: after all, he has been rushing from one country to another, with nary a day even for Parliament. Or, more likely, the Prime Minister might have been a better politician than others think he is. Dr Singh can measure the heat of a hot potato from a long distance, and Telengana was the hottest potato in a decade. He left this potato in the mouth of Chidambaram, and its heat melted the Teflon. Close observers of Delhi’s power plays might have noticed a press release that suggested that the statement on the reversal of the Telengana decision would be made jointly by Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Dr Singh. They did not do anything so rash. The hot potato went back to Chidambaram. All he could do, once again, was juggle it on his tongue. Justifications for the second tongue-twister fell flat. Some over-clever types in Delhi tried to make a scapegoat of the new Andhra Chief Minister Rosaiah, even though the latter had warned his high command not to divide the state. All they managed was to weaken yet another branch on which their authority rested.
The union government has sent a message to Andhra Pradesh: pile on the pressure, and Delhi will buckle. Chandrashekhar Rao went on a fast and got his wish in rather quick time; the rest of Andhra picked up the hint and tweaked its own pressure points, inducing a back-breaking somersault. It is Telengana’s turn once again to indulge in rampage-politics.
A question needs to be raised: why is coastal Andhra Pradesh so insistent on keeping a region that is so adamant on divorce? It cannot be a territorial matter since Telengana is not seceding from the Indian union, and there is no law which says that an Andhra businessman cannot own a Telengana company or, for that matter, property in Hyderabad. Language is clearly no longer the most important glue for states, and if people get convinced that there is imbalance in development they will demand a better option – and seek it in their own lifetimes. There is no point offering them gold in 2020 and coal today. It won’t work.
Chandrashekhar Rao surely believes that he is the father of Telengana, but this child would never have been born without the mismanagement of Delhi. This volcano could have smoldered for many more years without exploding, and perhaps this period could have been used to redress the economic imbalance. But Delhi fired the volcano, and it now has lava on its face.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Getting used to a new world order
Getting used to a new world order
By M J Akbar
When end of year coincides with end of decade, the number of theme-questions for a columnist multiplies by 10. Most are as boring as an honest obituary. But one did hear an unusual question: Have you changed your mind about anything in the last 10 years?
I celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the consequent downward slither of the Soviet Union, in the 1990s for two non-sustainable reasons: Principle and self-interest. In retrospect, the second is more comprehensible than the first. As a journalist one had a vested interest in free expression, and the Soviet regime was its boring antithesis. But that is so last century. There is today a vacuum where once lay the brooding, looming Soviet shadow, a force which kept its own citizens under a form of house arrest and yet, inspired enough fear in Anglo-American hawks to restrain their imperial tendencies. Would the Bush-Blair partnership have invaded Iraq in 2003 with such impunity if Uncle Stalin, or even Cousin Brezhnev, had been living in the Kremlin?
My faith in principle was foolish. Principle is an impotent yardstick if it is used to measure Saddam Hussein but not Tony Blair. Few emperors have been as airily indifferent to their own deceptions as Blair has been on Iraq. The politician who sent Britain to war against the will of his own party, told British television some days ago that he would have invented another excuse if he had been caught out on the weapons-of-mass-destruction subterfuge. Blair now admits what we knew all along — that the Iraq war was never about its stated cause.
Coincidentally, President Obama chose to dwell on the complexities of a just war in his Nobel Peace prize speech, delivered around the time Blair was shrugging off any pretence to morality. If the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq was based on a lie, were those who resisted American troops fighting a just or an unjust war? How many more nations would Bush-Blair have sought to conquer had there been no resistance in Iraq?
Obama waded into uncharted territory when he stated a proposition with the confidence of conviction: That a holy war could not be a just war. He was, of course, taking a sideswipe at jihad, understandable in the context of his need to be closer to American opinion than Muslim dogma. In the process, he slashed at Hinduism. Its two great texts, Ramayana and Mahabharata, are war epics, and a Hindu would be aghast to hear that the holy wars of Lord Rama in Lanka and Lord Krishna at Kurukshetra were unjust. The moral code of most eastern faiths is deeply ingrained into popular belief, for we remain believers. Obama will probably be surprised to learn that the iconic holy warrior in the Holy Quran is David, king of the Jewish people.
The balance of power between the principal victors of the Second World War, the alliances led by the US and the Soviet Union, has given way to an imbalance in which the space for a legitimate counterweight has been handed over to shadow armies impelled by private agendas but mobilized in the name of nationalism. Patriotism gives theocratic movements strength that they might never have achieved by a more transparent declaration of intent. This was the story in Iraq; this is the shifting narrative in Afghanistan. In Iraq, most of the insurgents have been co-opted into the system, where they bide their time, waiting for local politicians to self-destruct and American forces to leave. They will shape Iraq to their will when they get the opportunity. In Afghanistan they have history and geography on their side.
A nebulous battle zone is perfect territory for shadow-warriors like the terrorist David Coleman. We must not confuse him with cannon fodder like Kasab; he is much higher in the Lashkar-e-Taiba hierarchy. His expertise in terrorist tradecraft is evident from the confusion: Was he double-crossing the Americans or triple-crossing them? (As for India, Coleman needed only to cross a line, for which we happily provided a visa.) Coleman wore a cover, which could have been stitched from a perfect spy story: He became an informer for the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI. He could now trawl, with American blessing, the drug-trade marts between Mumbai and Af-Pak. Maybe, we should call this region Maf-Pak.
In the best of all possible worlds, we would have had a quasi-Brezhnev as head of a muscular Union of Semi-Socialist Soviet Republics in which Pravda was as free as The Times of India. What we have is a single superpower, America, in offensive-defensive siege mode, focussed on its own security even if the collateral damage is visited upon an ally. That seems like a policy worth imitating.
Appeared in Times of India - December 20, 2009
By M J Akbar
When end of year coincides with end of decade, the number of theme-questions for a columnist multiplies by 10. Most are as boring as an honest obituary. But one did hear an unusual question: Have you changed your mind about anything in the last 10 years?
I celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the consequent downward slither of the Soviet Union, in the 1990s for two non-sustainable reasons: Principle and self-interest. In retrospect, the second is more comprehensible than the first. As a journalist one had a vested interest in free expression, and the Soviet regime was its boring antithesis. But that is so last century. There is today a vacuum where once lay the brooding, looming Soviet shadow, a force which kept its own citizens under a form of house arrest and yet, inspired enough fear in Anglo-American hawks to restrain their imperial tendencies. Would the Bush-Blair partnership have invaded Iraq in 2003 with such impunity if Uncle Stalin, or even Cousin Brezhnev, had been living in the Kremlin?
My faith in principle was foolish. Principle is an impotent yardstick if it is used to measure Saddam Hussein but not Tony Blair. Few emperors have been as airily indifferent to their own deceptions as Blair has been on Iraq. The politician who sent Britain to war against the will of his own party, told British television some days ago that he would have invented another excuse if he had been caught out on the weapons-of-mass-destruction subterfuge. Blair now admits what we knew all along — that the Iraq war was never about its stated cause.
Coincidentally, President Obama chose to dwell on the complexities of a just war in his Nobel Peace prize speech, delivered around the time Blair was shrugging off any pretence to morality. If the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq was based on a lie, were those who resisted American troops fighting a just or an unjust war? How many more nations would Bush-Blair have sought to conquer had there been no resistance in Iraq?
Obama waded into uncharted territory when he stated a proposition with the confidence of conviction: That a holy war could not be a just war. He was, of course, taking a sideswipe at jihad, understandable in the context of his need to be closer to American opinion than Muslim dogma. In the process, he slashed at Hinduism. Its two great texts, Ramayana and Mahabharata, are war epics, and a Hindu would be aghast to hear that the holy wars of Lord Rama in Lanka and Lord Krishna at Kurukshetra were unjust. The moral code of most eastern faiths is deeply ingrained into popular belief, for we remain believers. Obama will probably be surprised to learn that the iconic holy warrior in the Holy Quran is David, king of the Jewish people.
The balance of power between the principal victors of the Second World War, the alliances led by the US and the Soviet Union, has given way to an imbalance in which the space for a legitimate counterweight has been handed over to shadow armies impelled by private agendas but mobilized in the name of nationalism. Patriotism gives theocratic movements strength that they might never have achieved by a more transparent declaration of intent. This was the story in Iraq; this is the shifting narrative in Afghanistan. In Iraq, most of the insurgents have been co-opted into the system, where they bide their time, waiting for local politicians to self-destruct and American forces to leave. They will shape Iraq to their will when they get the opportunity. In Afghanistan they have history and geography on their side.
A nebulous battle zone is perfect territory for shadow-warriors like the terrorist David Coleman. We must not confuse him with cannon fodder like Kasab; he is much higher in the Lashkar-e-Taiba hierarchy. His expertise in terrorist tradecraft is evident from the confusion: Was he double-crossing the Americans or triple-crossing them? (As for India, Coleman needed only to cross a line, for which we happily provided a visa.) Coleman wore a cover, which could have been stitched from a perfect spy story: He became an informer for the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI. He could now trawl, with American blessing, the drug-trade marts between Mumbai and Af-Pak. Maybe, we should call this region Maf-Pak.
In the best of all possible worlds, we would have had a quasi-Brezhnev as head of a muscular Union of Semi-Socialist Soviet Republics in which Pravda was as free as The Times of India. What we have is a single superpower, America, in offensive-defensive siege mode, focussed on its own security even if the collateral damage is visited upon an ally. That seems like a policy worth imitating.
Appeared in Times of India - December 20, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Bird’s Eye View
Byline by M J Akbar: Bird’s Eye View
At long last there is a foreign minister on the international scene with ice- cold blood in his veins and an uncomplicated, unemotional comprehension of national interest. His name is Kieren Keke. He carries the flag for Nauru, an eight-square-mile island-nation of 11,000 inhabitants in the South Pacific famous on two counts. It is the smallest republic in the world, and its principal source of revenue was through the export of phosphates formed by bird droppings. That was undoubtedly the most valuable bird waste in history, but the republic killed the local version of the golden egg by selling more phosphate than the birds could drop.
When the money ran out, Nauru’s imagination blossomed. It invested millions of dollars from its national saving in a London musical. The musical flopped, wrecking the country’s bank balance. It then tried to solve Australia’s troublesome problem by providing a base for immigrants en route to the Pacific El Dorado, in return for suitable compensation. Regrettably, the refugees wanted refuge in Australia rather than amidst lost bird droppings.
But Nauru’s imagination remained fertile. In 2002 Nauru took $130 million from China to break relations with Taiwan. In 2006, presumably after this sweetener was exhausted, it reopened links with Taiwan. It is not known whether there was a financial angle to this decision, but the track record tells its own story. This year Nauru recognised Abkhazia [population: 215,000], one of two “nations” that Russia “liberated” from Georgia in 2008. The price: $50 million. Mr Keke has also paid a visit to the second region, South Ossetia, possibly with an accountant as travelling companion. The message has gone to every chancery: if the price is right, Nauru, a full member of the United Nations, will oblige.
There might even be a touch of High Marx about Nauru’s foreign policy: to Nauru according to its need, from China and Russia according to their ability.
Regrettably, international relations are rarely conducted with such Nauruvian clarity. Big powers tend to offer middle-class nations either a promissory note, if they have been good, or a demand notice, if they have strayed off the indicated path; there is never a clean transaction, let alone a gift voucher.
Transparency may indeed be harmful to bilateral relations, because governments may have to script one narrative for their domestic audience and quite another for the international one. This was Barack Obama’s dilemma in Copenhagen. He could not summon his predecessor’s less-than-sublime indifference to Kyoto, which played well with an electorate that has been trained to believe that the world owes it the luxury Americans have become accustomed to. Neither could he open himself up to a cavalry charge by his opposition. Republicans, led by Don Sarah Palin Quixote, might be racing towards every windmill in sight, but the careful politician knows that even an insane spear can draw blood from a weak spot. Clever Obama bought peace at home by a hard-line text, and deflected criticism abroad by creating a sort of B-Grade Security Council on climate change along with four well-behaved nations, China, India, Brazil and South Africa. This is one of those Christmas presents with packaging from Tiffany’s and a gift from the sale at Woolworth’s, but it does have the advantage of sparkling impressively at the Christmas party. It is only when you open the package in the silence of your room that you discover that this is just another off-the-peg necktie.
Pakistan’s gift from Washington is the usual: food coupons wrapped in a set of demands. Rarely has a wartime alliance been as fraught with tension as the US-Pak war against terror. Roosevelt and Stalin were more compatible. This had nothing to do with personality. They had no confusion about the identity or nature of the enemy. When last reports came in, America was sending Drones to kill Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani in their suspected hideouts in North Waziristan. The Pakistan establishment considers them past and future assets, and potential rulers of Afghanistan once American troops begin to depart in 18 months, leaving a crumbling Karzai regime in their wake. A second Drone target was Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who has a truce with the Pak army. The short-term Washington interest is now in open confrontation with the long-term Islamabad perspective. America is engaged in one battle from the air, Pakistan in a separate one on the ground.
Such divergence may be sustainable on the surface since it would be foolish to fracture the alliance, but there will be turmoil below surface calm. Pakistan is already placing curbs on the movement of American personnel, including civilians. One wonders if Richard Holbrooke, who has been placed in cloister for a while, will soon be brought back to show his customary heavy hand. Of course the left hand will never know, or seek to know, what Holbrooke’s right hand is doing.
Eighteen months takes us into the middle of 2011. There is, in the meantime, 2010 to get through. I don’t know what you make of the immediate future, but my depressing feeling is that 2010 is going to be The Year of the Bloody Mess.
At long last there is a foreign minister on the international scene with ice- cold blood in his veins and an uncomplicated, unemotional comprehension of national interest. His name is Kieren Keke. He carries the flag for Nauru, an eight-square-mile island-nation of 11,000 inhabitants in the South Pacific famous on two counts. It is the smallest republic in the world, and its principal source of revenue was through the export of phosphates formed by bird droppings. That was undoubtedly the most valuable bird waste in history, but the republic killed the local version of the golden egg by selling more phosphate than the birds could drop.
When the money ran out, Nauru’s imagination blossomed. It invested millions of dollars from its national saving in a London musical. The musical flopped, wrecking the country’s bank balance. It then tried to solve Australia’s troublesome problem by providing a base for immigrants en route to the Pacific El Dorado, in return for suitable compensation. Regrettably, the refugees wanted refuge in Australia rather than amidst lost bird droppings.
But Nauru’s imagination remained fertile. In 2002 Nauru took $130 million from China to break relations with Taiwan. In 2006, presumably after this sweetener was exhausted, it reopened links with Taiwan. It is not known whether there was a financial angle to this decision, but the track record tells its own story. This year Nauru recognised Abkhazia [population: 215,000], one of two “nations” that Russia “liberated” from Georgia in 2008. The price: $50 million. Mr Keke has also paid a visit to the second region, South Ossetia, possibly with an accountant as travelling companion. The message has gone to every chancery: if the price is right, Nauru, a full member of the United Nations, will oblige.
There might even be a touch of High Marx about Nauru’s foreign policy: to Nauru according to its need, from China and Russia according to their ability.
Regrettably, international relations are rarely conducted with such Nauruvian clarity. Big powers tend to offer middle-class nations either a promissory note, if they have been good, or a demand notice, if they have strayed off the indicated path; there is never a clean transaction, let alone a gift voucher.
Transparency may indeed be harmful to bilateral relations, because governments may have to script one narrative for their domestic audience and quite another for the international one. This was Barack Obama’s dilemma in Copenhagen. He could not summon his predecessor’s less-than-sublime indifference to Kyoto, which played well with an electorate that has been trained to believe that the world owes it the luxury Americans have become accustomed to. Neither could he open himself up to a cavalry charge by his opposition. Republicans, led by Don Sarah Palin Quixote, might be racing towards every windmill in sight, but the careful politician knows that even an insane spear can draw blood from a weak spot. Clever Obama bought peace at home by a hard-line text, and deflected criticism abroad by creating a sort of B-Grade Security Council on climate change along with four well-behaved nations, China, India, Brazil and South Africa. This is one of those Christmas presents with packaging from Tiffany’s and a gift from the sale at Woolworth’s, but it does have the advantage of sparkling impressively at the Christmas party. It is only when you open the package in the silence of your room that you discover that this is just another off-the-peg necktie.
Pakistan’s gift from Washington is the usual: food coupons wrapped in a set of demands. Rarely has a wartime alliance been as fraught with tension as the US-Pak war against terror. Roosevelt and Stalin were more compatible. This had nothing to do with personality. They had no confusion about the identity or nature of the enemy. When last reports came in, America was sending Drones to kill Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani in their suspected hideouts in North Waziristan. The Pakistan establishment considers them past and future assets, and potential rulers of Afghanistan once American troops begin to depart in 18 months, leaving a crumbling Karzai regime in their wake. A second Drone target was Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who has a truce with the Pak army. The short-term Washington interest is now in open confrontation with the long-term Islamabad perspective. America is engaged in one battle from the air, Pakistan in a separate one on the ground.
Such divergence may be sustainable on the surface since it would be foolish to fracture the alliance, but there will be turmoil below surface calm. Pakistan is already placing curbs on the movement of American personnel, including civilians. One wonders if Richard Holbrooke, who has been placed in cloister for a while, will soon be brought back to show his customary heavy hand. Of course the left hand will never know, or seek to know, what Holbrooke’s right hand is doing.
Eighteen months takes us into the middle of 2011. There is, in the meantime, 2010 to get through. I don’t know what you make of the immediate future, but my depressing feeling is that 2010 is going to be The Year of the Bloody Mess.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Andhra split opens up a Pandora's box
Andhra split opens up a Pandora's box
By M J Akbar
The public school of politics has only one subject in its tutorials: Events. The big boys of Delhi have been playing truant, lulled by an imposter's mantra. Two victories in five years convinced them that delay is a solution.
Do not underestimate the siren call of procrastination. Fudge always remains an option when you have to straddle irreconcilables like partition and unity demands. There could still be an effort to delay the process necessary for the creation of Telangana through simulated disputes, like over the status of Hyderabad, which, geographically and historically is the natural capital of Telangana.
If Delhi had been as worried over the climate change in Hyderabad as it was over climate change in Copenhagen, it would have foreseen the tsunami. But Union Home Minister P Chidambaram did not whisper the word 'Telangana' until he was compelled to talk of nothing else. The speed with which the government slipped from stonewall to capitulation was bound to trigger anger in those who felt they had lost out. The government had five years to manage reconciliation; it did nothing. The Congress made a deal with K Chandrashekhar Rao in 2004 in order to defeat Chandrababu Naidu, and forgot the boatman once it had crossed the river. Complacency is a criminal offence in public life. The verdict may be delayed, but will not be denied.
In 2009, two constituencies tipped Congress into the comfort zone where it was seemingly safe from the threat of foes and nagging of friends - Andhra Pradesh and the Muslim vote. Within six months both have sent a powerful message: Deliver or face the consequences.
Drift has boxed the government into a lose-lose situation. If Congress had accepted Telangana a day before Rao began his fast, Rao would have been history, rather than an historic figure. Delhi has also sent a dangerous signal to half a dozen disparate stakeholders in a new map of India: Mere crying won't help; in order to get milk you need to pick up the kitchen knife and threaten murder or suicide. As also, that milk comes in cartons rather than by the glass. The hills of Darjeeling have ears, as do the sugarcane stalks of western Uttar Pradesh.
Behind all the sound, fury, mistakes and exultation, the promise of Telangana marks a significant but largely unnoticed shift in the dynamics of federalism. Language was the basis on which the States Reorganization Commission, consisting of Sayyid Fazl Ali, H N Kunzru and K M Pannikar re-fashioned India's internal geography. The untidy parts were sorted out under public pressure - Maharashtra in 1960, Punjab in 1966 - but once again on the basis of language. Only hill regions and the North East were offered criteria that were at a slight variance.
The shift came, logically enough, when the nation's priorities changed. Once it was evident that no regional language, or culture, was under threat from unitary pressures, language melted as a focal point of identity. The new federal politics is determined by economics. Telangana and the rest of Andhra speak the same language, but have diametrically conflicting economic interests. Telangana, in fact, accuses coastal Andhra of exploiting its resources. This fundamental change was evident in 2000, when Uttaranchal, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh were created. Parent and newborn shared the same language. Indeed, the absence of fuss nine years ago is a template in consensus building, in the difference between negotiation and appeasement. Wounds were treated before gangrene could set in.
The seed of every demand lies in the perception of economic neglect, in the belief of a people that they have been left out of the story of rising India. Small then becomes sensible because big has proved to be bogus.
The ferment in the second decisive Congress constituency, Muslims, also has everything to do with economics. The dialectic is faith-based because Muslims have a nationwide presence rather than any specific space. Dr Manmohan Singh has sought to pre-empt a crisis by promising to table the Ranganath Mishra Commission report before the end of the current session of Parliament, but that will be only the beginning of his problems. The Commission has recommended 15% reservation in all government jobs, educational seats and resources for minorities, 10% of which is to be allotted for Muslims. Muslims will treat this as a benchmark and demand to know what action has been taken. None so far; since any action might fuel an equal and opposite reaction. Inaction has served Congress well, for Muslims did not raise the matter in the last elections since they understood the political fallout. But that alibi has been used and cannot be recycled.
The Congress dilemma is familiar to those who win elections: A promise that restores you, can always return to haunt you.
Appeared in Times of India - December 13, 2009
By M J Akbar
The public school of politics has only one subject in its tutorials: Events. The big boys of Delhi have been playing truant, lulled by an imposter's mantra. Two victories in five years convinced them that delay is a solution.
Do not underestimate the siren call of procrastination. Fudge always remains an option when you have to straddle irreconcilables like partition and unity demands. There could still be an effort to delay the process necessary for the creation of Telangana through simulated disputes, like over the status of Hyderabad, which, geographically and historically is the natural capital of Telangana.
If Delhi had been as worried over the climate change in Hyderabad as it was over climate change in Copenhagen, it would have foreseen the tsunami. But Union Home Minister P Chidambaram did not whisper the word 'Telangana' until he was compelled to talk of nothing else. The speed with which the government slipped from stonewall to capitulation was bound to trigger anger in those who felt they had lost out. The government had five years to manage reconciliation; it did nothing. The Congress made a deal with K Chandrashekhar Rao in 2004 in order to defeat Chandrababu Naidu, and forgot the boatman once it had crossed the river. Complacency is a criminal offence in public life. The verdict may be delayed, but will not be denied.
In 2009, two constituencies tipped Congress into the comfort zone where it was seemingly safe from the threat of foes and nagging of friends - Andhra Pradesh and the Muslim vote. Within six months both have sent a powerful message: Deliver or face the consequences.
Drift has boxed the government into a lose-lose situation. If Congress had accepted Telangana a day before Rao began his fast, Rao would have been history, rather than an historic figure. Delhi has also sent a dangerous signal to half a dozen disparate stakeholders in a new map of India: Mere crying won't help; in order to get milk you need to pick up the kitchen knife and threaten murder or suicide. As also, that milk comes in cartons rather than by the glass. The hills of Darjeeling have ears, as do the sugarcane stalks of western Uttar Pradesh.
Behind all the sound, fury, mistakes and exultation, the promise of Telangana marks a significant but largely unnoticed shift in the dynamics of federalism. Language was the basis on which the States Reorganization Commission, consisting of Sayyid Fazl Ali, H N Kunzru and K M Pannikar re-fashioned India's internal geography. The untidy parts were sorted out under public pressure - Maharashtra in 1960, Punjab in 1966 - but once again on the basis of language. Only hill regions and the North East were offered criteria that were at a slight variance.
The shift came, logically enough, when the nation's priorities changed. Once it was evident that no regional language, or culture, was under threat from unitary pressures, language melted as a focal point of identity. The new federal politics is determined by economics. Telangana and the rest of Andhra speak the same language, but have diametrically conflicting economic interests. Telangana, in fact, accuses coastal Andhra of exploiting its resources. This fundamental change was evident in 2000, when Uttaranchal, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh were created. Parent and newborn shared the same language. Indeed, the absence of fuss nine years ago is a template in consensus building, in the difference between negotiation and appeasement. Wounds were treated before gangrene could set in.
The seed of every demand lies in the perception of economic neglect, in the belief of a people that they have been left out of the story of rising India. Small then becomes sensible because big has proved to be bogus.
The ferment in the second decisive Congress constituency, Muslims, also has everything to do with economics. The dialectic is faith-based because Muslims have a nationwide presence rather than any specific space. Dr Manmohan Singh has sought to pre-empt a crisis by promising to table the Ranganath Mishra Commission report before the end of the current session of Parliament, but that will be only the beginning of his problems. The Commission has recommended 15% reservation in all government jobs, educational seats and resources for minorities, 10% of which is to be allotted for Muslims. Muslims will treat this as a benchmark and demand to know what action has been taken. None so far; since any action might fuel an equal and opposite reaction. Inaction has served Congress well, for Muslims did not raise the matter in the last elections since they understood the political fallout. But that alibi has been used and cannot be recycled.
The Congress dilemma is familiar to those who win elections: A promise that restores you, can always return to haunt you.
Appeared in Times of India - December 13, 2009
Muscular Instability
Byline by M J Akbar: Muscular Instability
Can a stable government be a weak government? Yes. There is no compulsory correlation. Strength comes from concern, purpose and commitment, while fragility is the first manifestation of complacence — and sometimes the popular mood kicks in, turning the first into the second. Defeat in the China war punctured the strongest government we have had, Jawaharlal Nehru’s.
Mrs Indira Gandhi’s tenure can be divided into three phases: January 1966 to the 1971 general elections; then up to the Emergency and the elections of 1977; and the final, tragic term between January 1980 and October 1984. She inherited a government with the lowest ever majority, and then proceeded to turn it into a minority by splitting the Congress. Bangladesh apart, the most decisive period was when she was in a minority. She reshaped the domestic agenda, breaking almost as many moulds as had been nurtured in the previous two decades. Ironically, it was when she became a near demi-god, after Bangladesh in December 1971, that she lost control of the tides of public opinion. By 1973 India was in ferment; by 1974, in revolt.
Opposition parties have rarely been the principal architects of challenge to government, even if they do end up the principal beneficiaries. In 1972, the Left was defeated and sulking in Bengal; the Socialists were bickering and split [that has not changed] and the Jan Sangh was a flickering lamp in pockets of Hindu-Muslim antagonism without much oil. Mrs Gandhi returned to power in January 1980 with an astonishing majority, but her government never got into second gear and finally stalled over Punjab and Assam. In this phase too, the traditional Opposition parties had little to do with the establishment’s disarray. Rajiv Gandhi led the most powerful majority in Parliament’s history but in three years his government was defensive, and by the fourth year, immobile. Each time, the people mobilized, in one way or the other, while the regular Opposition leaders spent time in self-important confabulations.
Narasimha Rao, in contrast, never had a majority, even after he purchased one. He stumbled from crisis to calamity, propelled largely by cynicism. But despite instability in both Parliament as well as on the street, he managed to navigate economic reforms through turbulence, leaving an important legacy.
An election victory does not necessarily breed complacency in the sinews of authority, but re-election almost certainly does. The high-five of a renewed mandate persuades politicians to believe that they are sitting on a peak from which they cannot be moved for twenty years. I have no idea why they believe they have been given twenty years of eternity; maybe the human imagination, restricted by the limitations of lifespans, cannot be self-delusional beyond that. But the moment you step into that self-satisfied zone, your descent begins.
The Andhra crisis is a self-inflicted wound. When Telangana leader K. Chandrashekhar Rao began his fast unto death, or at least unto partition, he was treated with such supreme indifference that no minister in Delhi even bothered to treat it as a problem. The earth was warming in Hyderabad, but the statements and newspaper headlines were only about climate change in Copenhagen. Rao was dismissed as an irritant without a cause. After all, the Congress had just triumphed for a second time in the state. I suspect that the complete disconnect with Delhi multiplied the anger and brought Osmania University’s students out. Youth provide critical mass to any momentum and, as we have seen in the past, there is enough volatility in the state to induce the ultimate sacrifice of suicide. Rao himself could no more have ended his fast than he could have abandoned his dream of a separate state; it would have been political suicide. Those with a memory know that the Telugu speaking areas of Madras Presidency were merged into the Nizam’s Telugu domain as a result of a fast, by a Gandhian called Potti Sriramulu. Nehru allowed him to die, by 15 December; but even the enormous credibility of Nehru and Congress in 1953 could not stop the realisation of the demand. Sriramulu achieved in death what he could not in life, and forced Nehru to accept the principle of linguistic states. Rao has achieved what he may never have obtained without a Russian roulette gamble. The Congress of 2009 had neither the wisdom to negotiate on the first day of the fast, nor the strength to let the fast continue. The high command succumbed with startling speed, signalling to Gorkhaland, Vidarbha, Harit Pradesh and Bundelkhand that if they keep their eyes open and focused the government will blink.
Is this the point at which the Manmohan Singh government begins to bleed from an Achilles heel? Much depends on how well the Prime Minister and Mrs Sonia Gandhi bandage the breach, but the Andhra story is going to be in play for a while and will expose the contradictions inherent in a unitary national party that was unable to manage an epochal change. If the Andhra Congress bleeds from a local civil war the stain will spread.
Tension is good for governance; taut nerves keep your body on its toes, and the mind alert. After this year’s general election, the tension fizzled out from government, and rushed directly into the Opposition. Tension, by the way, is not good for Opposition, as is pretty obvious, isn’t it? If the government does not recover its balance we could have a very curious dilemma: authority is in disarray, and the Opposition spread-eagled. But the Indian people will be in array.
Can a stable government be a weak government? Yes. There is no compulsory correlation. Strength comes from concern, purpose and commitment, while fragility is the first manifestation of complacence — and sometimes the popular mood kicks in, turning the first into the second. Defeat in the China war punctured the strongest government we have had, Jawaharlal Nehru’s.
Mrs Indira Gandhi’s tenure can be divided into three phases: January 1966 to the 1971 general elections; then up to the Emergency and the elections of 1977; and the final, tragic term between January 1980 and October 1984. She inherited a government with the lowest ever majority, and then proceeded to turn it into a minority by splitting the Congress. Bangladesh apart, the most decisive period was when she was in a minority. She reshaped the domestic agenda, breaking almost as many moulds as had been nurtured in the previous two decades. Ironically, it was when she became a near demi-god, after Bangladesh in December 1971, that she lost control of the tides of public opinion. By 1973 India was in ferment; by 1974, in revolt.
Opposition parties have rarely been the principal architects of challenge to government, even if they do end up the principal beneficiaries. In 1972, the Left was defeated and sulking in Bengal; the Socialists were bickering and split [that has not changed] and the Jan Sangh was a flickering lamp in pockets of Hindu-Muslim antagonism without much oil. Mrs Gandhi returned to power in January 1980 with an astonishing majority, but her government never got into second gear and finally stalled over Punjab and Assam. In this phase too, the traditional Opposition parties had little to do with the establishment’s disarray. Rajiv Gandhi led the most powerful majority in Parliament’s history but in three years his government was defensive, and by the fourth year, immobile. Each time, the people mobilized, in one way or the other, while the regular Opposition leaders spent time in self-important confabulations.
Narasimha Rao, in contrast, never had a majority, even after he purchased one. He stumbled from crisis to calamity, propelled largely by cynicism. But despite instability in both Parliament as well as on the street, he managed to navigate economic reforms through turbulence, leaving an important legacy.
An election victory does not necessarily breed complacency in the sinews of authority, but re-election almost certainly does. The high-five of a renewed mandate persuades politicians to believe that they are sitting on a peak from which they cannot be moved for twenty years. I have no idea why they believe they have been given twenty years of eternity; maybe the human imagination, restricted by the limitations of lifespans, cannot be self-delusional beyond that. But the moment you step into that self-satisfied zone, your descent begins.
The Andhra crisis is a self-inflicted wound. When Telangana leader K. Chandrashekhar Rao began his fast unto death, or at least unto partition, he was treated with such supreme indifference that no minister in Delhi even bothered to treat it as a problem. The earth was warming in Hyderabad, but the statements and newspaper headlines were only about climate change in Copenhagen. Rao was dismissed as an irritant without a cause. After all, the Congress had just triumphed for a second time in the state. I suspect that the complete disconnect with Delhi multiplied the anger and brought Osmania University’s students out. Youth provide critical mass to any momentum and, as we have seen in the past, there is enough volatility in the state to induce the ultimate sacrifice of suicide. Rao himself could no more have ended his fast than he could have abandoned his dream of a separate state; it would have been political suicide. Those with a memory know that the Telugu speaking areas of Madras Presidency were merged into the Nizam’s Telugu domain as a result of a fast, by a Gandhian called Potti Sriramulu. Nehru allowed him to die, by 15 December; but even the enormous credibility of Nehru and Congress in 1953 could not stop the realisation of the demand. Sriramulu achieved in death what he could not in life, and forced Nehru to accept the principle of linguistic states. Rao has achieved what he may never have obtained without a Russian roulette gamble. The Congress of 2009 had neither the wisdom to negotiate on the first day of the fast, nor the strength to let the fast continue. The high command succumbed with startling speed, signalling to Gorkhaland, Vidarbha, Harit Pradesh and Bundelkhand that if they keep their eyes open and focused the government will blink.
Is this the point at which the Manmohan Singh government begins to bleed from an Achilles heel? Much depends on how well the Prime Minister and Mrs Sonia Gandhi bandage the breach, but the Andhra story is going to be in play for a while and will expose the contradictions inherent in a unitary national party that was unable to manage an epochal change. If the Andhra Congress bleeds from a local civil war the stain will spread.
Tension is good for governance; taut nerves keep your body on its toes, and the mind alert. After this year’s general election, the tension fizzled out from government, and rushed directly into the Opposition. Tension, by the way, is not good for Opposition, as is pretty obvious, isn’t it? If the government does not recover its balance we could have a very curious dilemma: authority is in disarray, and the Opposition spread-eagled. But the Indian people will be in array.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
A Date with Theocracy
A Date with Theocracy
M.J. Akbar
Barack Obama is clearly a post-modernist Commander-in-Chief. He announced the date of defeat in the Afghan war on the day he sent more troops in the hope of victory. The day American forces begin to leave Afghanistan in 2011, as promised by President Obama, the Taliban will begin its countdown to Kabul.
It is now clear to the Taliban what has been obvious to many observers. Obama is not interested in an American victory in Afghanistan by 2011. He is interested in an Obama victory in America in 2012. He wants to campaign as the President who brought the boys home without giving the impression that he has been weak in the process. He inherited an Afghan war with some 10,000 American soldiers in combat. That figure has been short-tracked upwards to 100,000, partly because Obama purchased his way into the muscular pro-war segment of the American vote by criticising Iraq and upgrading Afghanistan into the war of necessity. He is paying his dues to that section of American opinion by fighting a cosmetic war. The Taliban have often said that while NATO has a clock, they have time. In 2011, irrespective of ground conditions, the NATO clock will go into reverse sweep.
The enigma of this Afghan war, the fifth against a Western power since 1840, is located exactly where it was in the other four. It lies in the meaning of victory and defeat. For the occupier, victory means subjugation of the ruling authority to its will. For the defenders, it means the departure of foreign troops from Afghan foreign soil. Afghan fighters in the 19th century did not want to shape the way the British Raj should be run, and they resented the idea that they should be told how Afghanistan should be run. In the 20th century, the jihadis did not want to destroy Communism in Moscow [that they played a great role in actually doing so is incidental]. They simply did not want Communist soldiers in Kabul and Kandahar and Mazaar-i-Sharif.
The Afghan war of the 21st century could have been, and should have been, different, because a terrorist group with sanctuary from Taliban provoked America. Eight years later, roles are getting reversed for the Taliban and its allies have, increasingly, in the Afghan mind, begun to occupy nationalist space. Washington made a basic error at the outset, when it confused Al Qaeda with the whole of Afghanistan, gradually shifting the focal point of the war. This was understandable in the heat of 2001, but less so with the passage of time. Privately, Pervez Musharraf would surely have suggested this but subtleties were lost on the Bush White House.
Obama may be erring in the other direction. He has announced the three pillars of his Afghan policy: a strategic partnership with Pakistan empowered by finance and weapons; the creation of a “military condition” within 18 months that will enable “transition”; and “a civilian surge that reinforces positive action”. The third is the kind of gobbledygook that bemuses friends and consoles office-bearers of the speechwriters’ union. Does Obama expect Hamid Karzai to surge towards Kandahar in 2011, wafting on doves of peace?
The biggest problem may lie in the first proposition. Pakistan does not have the good fortune of being 8,000 miles from Afghanistan. Islamabad’s ruling elite, including the armed forces, will display full commitment in the war against Al Qaeda, where and when it can be found, and against the Pak Taliban, because both are serious threats to the Pakistan state and system. But it will have unexpressed reservations about America’s war against the Afghan Taliban, since the latter have been and will continue to be Pakistan’s ally in the geopolitics of South Asia. Pakistan’s war within its own country has become, willy-nilly, America’s war, but America’s war in Afghanistan has not become Pakistan’s war. Washington, for reasons unknown and incomprehensible, does not get this.
In fact, America’s primary partner in the war against the Afghan Taliban should be India, not Pakistan, since both nations have an ideological commitment against the forces of theocracy, as well as a strategic interest in keeping Taliban out of Kabul. Pakistan has no such motivation. The best period in the troubled history of Pak-Afghan relations was when Taliban was in power, since the Taliban looked at foreign policy through the prism of Islamic brotherhood rather than just the compulsions of national interest.
The real war in Afghanistan is between modernity and theocracy, but the wrong side is winning that battle. In the last eight years, for many Afghans, modernity has become synonymous with corruption, cronyism and non-Pakhtun warlords — the three hallmarks of the Karzai regime — while the Taliban has revived its image as God-fearing, honest, clean and able to offer stability and security in the villages. It is an American tragedy that while it seeks friends across the world who reflect its own values, it makes friends with those who ruin its reputation.
M.J. Akbar
Barack Obama is clearly a post-modernist Commander-in-Chief. He announced the date of defeat in the Afghan war on the day he sent more troops in the hope of victory. The day American forces begin to leave Afghanistan in 2011, as promised by President Obama, the Taliban will begin its countdown to Kabul.
It is now clear to the Taliban what has been obvious to many observers. Obama is not interested in an American victory in Afghanistan by 2011. He is interested in an Obama victory in America in 2012. He wants to campaign as the President who brought the boys home without giving the impression that he has been weak in the process. He inherited an Afghan war with some 10,000 American soldiers in combat. That figure has been short-tracked upwards to 100,000, partly because Obama purchased his way into the muscular pro-war segment of the American vote by criticising Iraq and upgrading Afghanistan into the war of necessity. He is paying his dues to that section of American opinion by fighting a cosmetic war. The Taliban have often said that while NATO has a clock, they have time. In 2011, irrespective of ground conditions, the NATO clock will go into reverse sweep.
The enigma of this Afghan war, the fifth against a Western power since 1840, is located exactly where it was in the other four. It lies in the meaning of victory and defeat. For the occupier, victory means subjugation of the ruling authority to its will. For the defenders, it means the departure of foreign troops from Afghan foreign soil. Afghan fighters in the 19th century did not want to shape the way the British Raj should be run, and they resented the idea that they should be told how Afghanistan should be run. In the 20th century, the jihadis did not want to destroy Communism in Moscow [that they played a great role in actually doing so is incidental]. They simply did not want Communist soldiers in Kabul and Kandahar and Mazaar-i-Sharif.
The Afghan war of the 21st century could have been, and should have been, different, because a terrorist group with sanctuary from Taliban provoked America. Eight years later, roles are getting reversed for the Taliban and its allies have, increasingly, in the Afghan mind, begun to occupy nationalist space. Washington made a basic error at the outset, when it confused Al Qaeda with the whole of Afghanistan, gradually shifting the focal point of the war. This was understandable in the heat of 2001, but less so with the passage of time. Privately, Pervez Musharraf would surely have suggested this but subtleties were lost on the Bush White House.
Obama may be erring in the other direction. He has announced the three pillars of his Afghan policy: a strategic partnership with Pakistan empowered by finance and weapons; the creation of a “military condition” within 18 months that will enable “transition”; and “a civilian surge that reinforces positive action”. The third is the kind of gobbledygook that bemuses friends and consoles office-bearers of the speechwriters’ union. Does Obama expect Hamid Karzai to surge towards Kandahar in 2011, wafting on doves of peace?
The biggest problem may lie in the first proposition. Pakistan does not have the good fortune of being 8,000 miles from Afghanistan. Islamabad’s ruling elite, including the armed forces, will display full commitment in the war against Al Qaeda, where and when it can be found, and against the Pak Taliban, because both are serious threats to the Pakistan state and system. But it will have unexpressed reservations about America’s war against the Afghan Taliban, since the latter have been and will continue to be Pakistan’s ally in the geopolitics of South Asia. Pakistan’s war within its own country has become, willy-nilly, America’s war, but America’s war in Afghanistan has not become Pakistan’s war. Washington, for reasons unknown and incomprehensible, does not get this.
In fact, America’s primary partner in the war against the Afghan Taliban should be India, not Pakistan, since both nations have an ideological commitment against the forces of theocracy, as well as a strategic interest in keeping Taliban out of Kabul. Pakistan has no such motivation. The best period in the troubled history of Pak-Afghan relations was when Taliban was in power, since the Taliban looked at foreign policy through the prism of Islamic brotherhood rather than just the compulsions of national interest.
The real war in Afghanistan is between modernity and theocracy, but the wrong side is winning that battle. In the last eight years, for many Afghans, modernity has become synonymous with corruption, cronyism and non-Pakhtun warlords — the three hallmarks of the Karzai regime — while the Taliban has revived its image as God-fearing, honest, clean and able to offer stability and security in the villages. It is an American tragedy that while it seeks friends across the world who reflect its own values, it makes friends with those who ruin its reputation.
WHY MUMBAI WON’T WAIT TILL 2025
WHY MUMBAI WON’T WAIT TILL 2025
by M J Akbar (In Covert 1-15th)
Going by the dubious precedence set by Justice M.S. Liberhan, a half-truth about the catastrophic events of Mumbai 26/11 should become available to Parliament and the Indian public by 2025. Bad luck if you want the full truth, or you want it within your lifetime; you can never hurry a judge determined to be slow.
A fate worse than death awaits the judge whose conscience cannot be purchased at the going rate of a Government bungalow in Delhi. In Mumbai, Justice Srikrishna delivered his findings on the violent consequences of the Babri demolition, a far more difficult and sensitive assignment, well in time. His report has not been allowed formally into the public domain, since it tells the truth, and truth is injurious to the health of a Government that was complicit in the mismanagement of the riots.
The duty of an enquiry is not to restate the obvious, but to repair any faults in the system through a thorough diagnosis of the malady, to lay out the findings fearlessly, and hold the powerful accountable where there has been a violation of trust or a betrayal of the responsibilities of office. A judicial enquiry is much more than a police investigation into guilt. It invokes the highest sense of justice, which is far more than legality. We have become indifferent to the corruption at the lower levels of the criminal-justice system. Are we now being trained to accept partiality and collusion in a judicial enquiry? If nothing is sacrosanct, we will be subject to the dictatorship of the profane.
We did not need 17 years of casuistry to reveal something that was visibly evident within 17 minutes of the first assault on the dome and structure of the Babri mosque on 6 December 1992 – that the BJP, RSS and Shiv Sena were involved. They had led the emotional movement that climaxed on 6 December. BJP leaders like Vinay Katiyar, the alleged mastermind, wear it as a badge of pride. Justice Liberhan has done us no favours by “concluding” what was reported in every newspaper the next day. But he has done the nation and the people a huge disfavour by twisting and contorting elements of the truth in order to hide the conscious collusion of Prime P.V. Narasimha Rao, his home minister S.B. Chavan and eventually, through a conspiracy of silence, the whole Cabinet. It requires a tremendous backward leap of logic to find Rao innocent and hold those who were working to protect the Babri mosque, like leaders of the Babri Masjid Action Committee, guilty. It is true that a few Muslim leaders were shrill in some speeches, but so what? Emotions were high, and their tenor was nothing compared to the rhetoric of others. Incredible as it might seem, this is one of the findings of the Liberhan report.
WITH THE credibility of enquiry commissions in tatters, it is hardly surprising that the protagonists and victims of the barbarous terrorist invasion of Mumbai a year ago are not waiting for any Government-sponsored investigation to run its course. I presume they do not, for starters, want to wait for 17 years. Officers at the very top of the hierarchy, like former police commissioner Hassan Gafoor, have begun to tell their versions to a hungry media. This is not the whole of it. Leaking by police officers on an off-the-record basis has reached monsoon proportions in Mumbai. This constitutes, in theory, an astonishing collapse of discipline; in practice, the Government is utterly incapable of taking any action because anything it does will also expose its own sins of omission and commission.
Widows of martyred police officers have no faith in the Government’s ability or desire to establish a credible narrative of what actually transpired, and why. They are publishing their impression of events, backed up by their individual research, like Vinita Kamte, wife of Assistant Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte, who died doing his duty while others chose survival over challenge. They are filling a black hole into which the Government has sought to consign that terrible memory. In the process, allegations have been made against serving police officers that cannot be ignored; they must be investigated, and the officers either exonerated or punished.
The reluctance of the politician to pursue the past can be easily understood. Much drama surrounded the resignation of the then Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. Where is he now? Why, in the Union Cabinet, of course, a loyal colleague of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, responsible for managing the whole nation rather than just one State. The resignation drama of 2008 was highly effective, since it staved off any punishment at the polls in 2009. Politicians are certain of one thing if they are certain of anything at all: the voter has a short memory.
Ruling party politicians might find it useful to recall, however, a well-known rule of democracy. When Opposition parties fail to play their role, the people become the Opposition. This takes a long time, and people give their Government a very long rope. But every rope is finite. And a rope can so easily become a noose
by M J Akbar (In Covert 1-15th)
Going by the dubious precedence set by Justice M.S. Liberhan, a half-truth about the catastrophic events of Mumbai 26/11 should become available to Parliament and the Indian public by 2025. Bad luck if you want the full truth, or you want it within your lifetime; you can never hurry a judge determined to be slow.
A fate worse than death awaits the judge whose conscience cannot be purchased at the going rate of a Government bungalow in Delhi. In Mumbai, Justice Srikrishna delivered his findings on the violent consequences of the Babri demolition, a far more difficult and sensitive assignment, well in time. His report has not been allowed formally into the public domain, since it tells the truth, and truth is injurious to the health of a Government that was complicit in the mismanagement of the riots.
The duty of an enquiry is not to restate the obvious, but to repair any faults in the system through a thorough diagnosis of the malady, to lay out the findings fearlessly, and hold the powerful accountable where there has been a violation of trust or a betrayal of the responsibilities of office. A judicial enquiry is much more than a police investigation into guilt. It invokes the highest sense of justice, which is far more than legality. We have become indifferent to the corruption at the lower levels of the criminal-justice system. Are we now being trained to accept partiality and collusion in a judicial enquiry? If nothing is sacrosanct, we will be subject to the dictatorship of the profane.
We did not need 17 years of casuistry to reveal something that was visibly evident within 17 minutes of the first assault on the dome and structure of the Babri mosque on 6 December 1992 – that the BJP, RSS and Shiv Sena were involved. They had led the emotional movement that climaxed on 6 December. BJP leaders like Vinay Katiyar, the alleged mastermind, wear it as a badge of pride. Justice Liberhan has done us no favours by “concluding” what was reported in every newspaper the next day. But he has done the nation and the people a huge disfavour by twisting and contorting elements of the truth in order to hide the conscious collusion of Prime P.V. Narasimha Rao, his home minister S.B. Chavan and eventually, through a conspiracy of silence, the whole Cabinet. It requires a tremendous backward leap of logic to find Rao innocent and hold those who were working to protect the Babri mosque, like leaders of the Babri Masjid Action Committee, guilty. It is true that a few Muslim leaders were shrill in some speeches, but so what? Emotions were high, and their tenor was nothing compared to the rhetoric of others. Incredible as it might seem, this is one of the findings of the Liberhan report.
WITH THE credibility of enquiry commissions in tatters, it is hardly surprising that the protagonists and victims of the barbarous terrorist invasion of Mumbai a year ago are not waiting for any Government-sponsored investigation to run its course. I presume they do not, for starters, want to wait for 17 years. Officers at the very top of the hierarchy, like former police commissioner Hassan Gafoor, have begun to tell their versions to a hungry media. This is not the whole of it. Leaking by police officers on an off-the-record basis has reached monsoon proportions in Mumbai. This constitutes, in theory, an astonishing collapse of discipline; in practice, the Government is utterly incapable of taking any action because anything it does will also expose its own sins of omission and commission.
Widows of martyred police officers have no faith in the Government’s ability or desire to establish a credible narrative of what actually transpired, and why. They are publishing their impression of events, backed up by their individual research, like Vinita Kamte, wife of Assistant Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte, who died doing his duty while others chose survival over challenge. They are filling a black hole into which the Government has sought to consign that terrible memory. In the process, allegations have been made against serving police officers that cannot be ignored; they must be investigated, and the officers either exonerated or punished.
The reluctance of the politician to pursue the past can be easily understood. Much drama surrounded the resignation of the then Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. Where is he now? Why, in the Union Cabinet, of course, a loyal colleague of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, responsible for managing the whole nation rather than just one State. The resignation drama of 2008 was highly effective, since it staved off any punishment at the polls in 2009. Politicians are certain of one thing if they are certain of anything at all: the voter has a short memory.
Ruling party politicians might find it useful to recall, however, a well-known rule of democracy. When Opposition parties fail to play their role, the people become the Opposition. This takes a long time, and people give their Government a very long rope. But every rope is finite. And a rope can so easily become a noose
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Bhopal: 25 years of sheer apathy
Bhopal: 25 years of sheer apathy
By M J Akbar
Every anniversary of a trauma, whether Bhopal, Bhagalpur, Bluestar, Ahmedabad or the anti-Sikh riots on Delhi's streets, turns into a struggle between anger and amnesia. It is a no-contest. Amnesia wins every time.
Eyeless in Bhopal. Heartless in communal riots. Clueless in Ayodhya. Mindless in government. And, maybe, pointless in rage. Perhaps the determining fact is that everyone, apart from the victim, has a vested interest in silence since the guilt, active or passive, extends beyond the obviously culpable. Governments might inspire and abet riots, but they are never possible without participation of the people. Every political party has an inconvenient truth in its history.
What, however, explains the callous indifference to the perpetrators of the Bhopal tragedy, Union Carbide and Dow Chemical? Twenty-five years ago, Union Carbide's factory in Bhopal spat out 40 tons of aerial poison in the form of methyl isocyanate, killing nearly 4,000 immediately and some 15,000 since then. It was a crime of greed, since this gas was used because it was cheaper than safer alternatives. The cover-up was dubious, at the very least. Carbide attributed the accident to sabotage by a disgruntled employee who was never named. This evasion was prelude to escape. In 2001, Dow Chemical bought Carbide for $11.6 billion.
Dow priced the Indian dead at an average of $2,200 per corpse, or around Rs 1 lakh at today's exchange rates. The blinded and maimed were dismissed with a compensation of $550 on average. That, explained a Dow spokeswoman, was "plenty good for an Indian". When Dow Chemical sets the price for Indian lives, we natives had better accept with folded hands. How much, incidentally, do you think your infant's eyes are worth? Raghu Rai, who gave the world the iconic image of Bhopal, of a dead child's face, could have provided the answer, but which establishment, political or corporate, has time for a photographer's pain?
Our governments, whether led by Congress or BJP, made the usual thundery noise in public and, in private, cooperated with Carbide/Dow Jones, starting from the day Carbide chief Warren Anderson was airlifted out of Bhopal to escape local wrath. Over time, even the noise has become a passing perfunctory statement. We have never asked for Anderson's extradition, although there is an international arrest warrant against him. Is Anderson hiding in the Amazon forest? No. He is living in a luxurious American suburb. Why should American authorities worry about accountability if we don't? Our unstated reason has been that action against Anderson would frighten foreign investors. Why let a few thousand corpses interfere with the balance sheet?
In 2006, Dow wrote to America's then ambassador in India, thanking him for obtaining our government's assurance that Dow would not be held liable for the mass murder of Bhopalis. Dow should now send a letter to our present minister of state for environment, who went to Bhopal to jeer at those who are still protesting against continuing death from left-over toxic waste. According to critics, from 15 to 30 people are still dying every month.
Dow Chemicals dare not be as casual about Americans. In 2002, it set aside over two billion dollars to cover Carbide's asbestos contamination liabilities. An American cough is far, far more expensive than an Indian life. Why? Because America cares for Americans. The poor in America have won their right to justice, and every company knows that it cannot sweet-talk its way through sleepwalkers in power.
If there is any explanation for Delhi's fudge-and-fuss approach, it can only lie in the Indian elite's very real indifference to the poor. What, one wonders, would have been the reaction if Carbide had leaked its poison over Lutyens' Delhi rather than five kilometers from the old Bhopal city? Would Anderson have spent 25 years in Tihar rather than a villa in Hampton's? You can bet your last silver dollar that Dow would have been both poorer and more contrite.
Abdul Jabbar Khan, convenor of the Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sangathan, had much to say to the media as he led a rally from the homes of the dead to the death factory on the 25th anniversary. One sentence said as much as was needed: "We got no justice, no adequate compensation and not enough compassion." He was expecting justice from a meandering legal system, compensation from a caustic foreign company - and compassion from fellow-Indians. Of the three, the last hurts most.
Media has done what it could. The Times of India has done some moving reportage of the 25th anniversary in the last few days. It would be interesting to find out, possibly through market research, whether the readers of the nation's most powerful newspaper have been moved at all.
Appeared in Times of India - December 6, 2009
By M J Akbar
Every anniversary of a trauma, whether Bhopal, Bhagalpur, Bluestar, Ahmedabad or the anti-Sikh riots on Delhi's streets, turns into a struggle between anger and amnesia. It is a no-contest. Amnesia wins every time.
Eyeless in Bhopal. Heartless in communal riots. Clueless in Ayodhya. Mindless in government. And, maybe, pointless in rage. Perhaps the determining fact is that everyone, apart from the victim, has a vested interest in silence since the guilt, active or passive, extends beyond the obviously culpable. Governments might inspire and abet riots, but they are never possible without participation of the people. Every political party has an inconvenient truth in its history.
What, however, explains the callous indifference to the perpetrators of the Bhopal tragedy, Union Carbide and Dow Chemical? Twenty-five years ago, Union Carbide's factory in Bhopal spat out 40 tons of aerial poison in the form of methyl isocyanate, killing nearly 4,000 immediately and some 15,000 since then. It was a crime of greed, since this gas was used because it was cheaper than safer alternatives. The cover-up was dubious, at the very least. Carbide attributed the accident to sabotage by a disgruntled employee who was never named. This evasion was prelude to escape. In 2001, Dow Chemical bought Carbide for $11.6 billion.
Dow priced the Indian dead at an average of $2,200 per corpse, or around Rs 1 lakh at today's exchange rates. The blinded and maimed were dismissed with a compensation of $550 on average. That, explained a Dow spokeswoman, was "plenty good for an Indian". When Dow Chemical sets the price for Indian lives, we natives had better accept with folded hands. How much, incidentally, do you think your infant's eyes are worth? Raghu Rai, who gave the world the iconic image of Bhopal, of a dead child's face, could have provided the answer, but which establishment, political or corporate, has time for a photographer's pain?
Our governments, whether led by Congress or BJP, made the usual thundery noise in public and, in private, cooperated with Carbide/Dow Jones, starting from the day Carbide chief Warren Anderson was airlifted out of Bhopal to escape local wrath. Over time, even the noise has become a passing perfunctory statement. We have never asked for Anderson's extradition, although there is an international arrest warrant against him. Is Anderson hiding in the Amazon forest? No. He is living in a luxurious American suburb. Why should American authorities worry about accountability if we don't? Our unstated reason has been that action against Anderson would frighten foreign investors. Why let a few thousand corpses interfere with the balance sheet?
In 2006, Dow wrote to America's then ambassador in India, thanking him for obtaining our government's assurance that Dow would not be held liable for the mass murder of Bhopalis. Dow should now send a letter to our present minister of state for environment, who went to Bhopal to jeer at those who are still protesting against continuing death from left-over toxic waste. According to critics, from 15 to 30 people are still dying every month.
Dow Chemicals dare not be as casual about Americans. In 2002, it set aside over two billion dollars to cover Carbide's asbestos contamination liabilities. An American cough is far, far more expensive than an Indian life. Why? Because America cares for Americans. The poor in America have won their right to justice, and every company knows that it cannot sweet-talk its way through sleepwalkers in power.
If there is any explanation for Delhi's fudge-and-fuss approach, it can only lie in the Indian elite's very real indifference to the poor. What, one wonders, would have been the reaction if Carbide had leaked its poison over Lutyens' Delhi rather than five kilometers from the old Bhopal city? Would Anderson have spent 25 years in Tihar rather than a villa in Hampton's? You can bet your last silver dollar that Dow would have been both poorer and more contrite.
Abdul Jabbar Khan, convenor of the Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sangathan, had much to say to the media as he led a rally from the homes of the dead to the death factory on the 25th anniversary. One sentence said as much as was needed: "We got no justice, no adequate compensation and not enough compassion." He was expecting justice from a meandering legal system, compensation from a caustic foreign company - and compassion from fellow-Indians. Of the three, the last hurts most.
Media has done what it could. The Times of India has done some moving reportage of the 25th anniversary in the last few days. It would be interesting to find out, possibly through market research, whether the readers of the nation's most powerful newspaper have been moved at all.
Appeared in Times of India - December 6, 2009
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