Outlook Opinion

Heard That Kannadiga Joke?

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

It is impossible to miss the large, floor-to-ceiling close-up shots of coy Indian brides and grooms on the restroom corridor walls at the Delhi international airport. Couples in Bengali, Kashmiri, Maharashtrian, Malayali, Punjabi and Tamil wedding finery are paired across the wall shared by the restrooms. It made me realise, yet again, that Kannadigas (and no doubt many other language communities in India) do not find a place in the cute and lazy visual schemes of national unity. In the national imagination, there are few images, sounds or smells that help create a recognisable presence of the Kannadigas.

Another instance was the national unity song, Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, telecast ad infinitum on DD in the late ’80s. The video strove to bring an authentic fit between the landscape, dress and personalities and the various Indian languages in the song’s lyrics. Decked in a Gujarati-style sari, Mallika Sarabhai sings a line in Gujarati, actress Revathi is draped in Kanjeevaram while being all ears to Balamuralikrishna singing a Tamil devotional song.

A couple in traditional Coorgi attire give visual support to the Kannada line in the song. In the absence of a ‘nationally recognisable’ Kannada dress, the video director settled for Coorgi since it’s unique to Karnataka. (The irony is Coorgis have their own language, some of them don’t even see themselves as Kannadigas.) While locally specific dresses exist across Karnataka, no single attire has come to be ethnicised as uniquely Kannadiga outside the state. The same goes for food. Udupi and Kamat restaurants will serve vegetarian food from southern Karnataka, places like Swagath in Delhi non-veg fare from coastal Mangalore. But what one might call Karnataka cuisine does not exist the way it does for Bengali, Kerala or Punjabi cuisine.

The unavailability of a codified image of how a Kannadiga speaks or acts will pose difficulties for any intrepid film director hoping to use a Kannadiga as the stock south Indian figure. How does one show a Kannadiga in Hindi or even Tamil and Telugu films? The missing resources for generic self-expression find positive summation in the Karnataka state tourism department’s motto: ‘One State, Many Worlds’.

Durable associations with Karnataka do exist outside: the pleasant climate and the hip IT sector of Bangalore, the mammoth corruption of the mining lobby, cricket stars like B.S. Chandrashekar and G.R. Vishwanath, music legends like Kumar Gandharva, Bhimsen Joshi and Mallikarjun Mansur and, in highbrow circles, intellectual figures like M.N. Srinivas, U.R. Ananthamurthy and Girish Karnad. Standard views about what Kannadigas are like as a people however do not exist. For instance, there is no sense of a Kannadiga student on campuses at JNU, IITs, and IIMs.

Consider a few images: the enterprising Malayali with the great survival instinct; the Bengali who is tenacious about his language; the fun-loving, ostentatious Punjabi. Needless to add, these views are gross caricatures and will run up against exceptions all the time. But the stereotypes exist and their absence in the case of Kannadigas (and other communities as well) should be a source for intrigue. Community stereotypes thrive through jokes, gossip and anecdotes. Colloquial descriptive labels give them anchor: Mallus, Gultis, Gujjus and Bongs, to name a few, all evoking confident certitudes about those communities. These communities score high on migration rates within the country and abroad. Stereotypes of communities emerge when their styles of being and doing get noticed and talked about in ways that build and cohere in the minds of others. While these encounters can be social, or even simply textual, where people have views of others without ever having met them, what is clear is a community has to invite enough attention towards itself to generate standard impressions.

Historically, the Kannada speakers have not moved out much; the ones who did have not aided in the creation of generic impressions about themselves. (Communities from different parts of Karnataka, though, have robust stereotypes of each other!) When the Udupi restaurants in Bombay faced violent attacks from a nascent Shiv Sena in the 1960s, the latter thought they were striking at South Indians and Madrasis, and not Kannadigas.

While stereotypes justly set off alarm for their potential for stoking wicked fun, harm and even death, the lack of it presents a peculiar predicament. Being a vague, inchoate presence in a system of federated stereotypes can summon unease and a sense of failure. While anonymity can be a source of pleasure and freedom, invisibility conveys a lack of power for those who wish to mark their presence in India’s repertoire of sub-regional images. The non-arrival of a generic Kannada identity is also a triumph of its heterogeneous nature. None of Karnataka’s chief cultural zones, i.e. the old Mysore region, coastal Karnataka, Coorg, Mumbai-Karnataka, and Hyderabad-Karnataka, has been able to stand in for the Kannada community image. Amidst the unpredictable twists in a fast transforming India, a Kannadiga stereotype might yet emerge. At the moment, though, being an amorphous presence in the national imagination means a delicious freedom to me.

(The author is professor of sociology, Azim Premji University)

Grilled Salman, Peking Style

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Union external affairs minister Salman Khurshid was so impressed with Beijing that, after his recent visit, he gushed to reporters, “I’d love to live in Beijing.” Beijing is a world-class city, and maybe he was only complimenting his hosts. But what would happen if he really had to live in Beijing? Assume that Khurshid, who is 60, manages to land a job. His Indian and Oxford qualifactions would be useless, and as he doesn’t know Mandarin, he may only get unskilled work. The statutory minimum wage in Beijing is 1,400 renminbis. If his wife also worked, they’d earn 2,800 renminbis. What could they do?

They wouldn’t be able to live in the city centre, paying 4,455 renminbis (the average figure) in monthly rent. Living in the outskirts, paying 2,650 renminbis in rent, they’d be left with 150 renminbis for everything else. This won’t pay even their utility bills, at some 400 renminbis per month for an 85 square metre flat.

For eating out, they’ll have to explore the cheap restaurants flanking Beijing Central railway station. Even that would leave them poorer by 30 renminbis each. A three-course meal in a mid-range restaurant would be 150 renminbis per person and, therefore, out of bounds. A combo meal at McDonald’s, however, would be 25 renminbis. Domestic beer at 10 renminbis a pint or a cappuccino at 25 renminbis would be best avoided.

Should they cook at home, they’d have to pay 13 renminbis for a loaf of bread, seven renminbis for a kilo of rice, 10 renminbis for a dozen eggs, 30 renminbis for a kilo of chicken breast, 5 renminbis for a head of lettuce, nine renminbis per kilo for tomatoes and eight for potatoes. They’d find it difficult to buy fruit—apples are 12 renminbis a kilo, oranges 14. They can forget about wine—a bottle of mid-range local wine is 100 renminbis. Alas, a car—a Volkswagen Golf or equivalent—would be outside their reach at 1,52,500 renminbis. They couldn’t take taxis—the meter starts at 11 renminbis and then it is two per kilometre.

A bus or the metro to work would be two renminbis per trip. A monthly pass costs 120 renminbis. They wouldn’t be able to join a health club (500 renminbis per month) or play tennis (120 renminbis for an hour on weekends). They wouldn’t be able to watch any international films released in Beijing at 80 renminbis per seat.

The Khurshids would have a very basic wardrobe with a pair of jeans (Levi’s 501 or something similar) at 800 renminbis and a woman’s summer dress at a chain store like Zara and H&M at about 485 renminbis. A pair of leather shoes for Salman would be 750 renminbis, sports shoes at 800. His pocket would prevent him from even haggling for fake branded clothes with the Silk Street sharpsters.

They wouldn’t be able to subscribe to internet services at 120 renminbis per month. They could barely afford a pre-paid mobile at 0.3 renminbis per minute for local calls. If they managed net access somehow, they’d find social media sites blocked and would have to use heavily monitored Chinese equivalents Weibo, Renren or YouKu—if they manage to teach themselves some Mandarin.

If the Khurshids wanted to be promoted at work, party membership would help—although it is a bit late in the day for them to join the Communist Party. Unhappy with their lives, they wouldn’t be able to protest publicly—the last time the Chinese protested was in Tiananmen Square and they were massacred.

On the other hand, in India, Khurshid’s family has been part of the ruling classes for three generations now. As a cabinet minister, he earns Rs 50,000 per month as basic salary, a daily allowance of Rs 2,000; a constituency allowance of Rs 45,000 per month and a sumptuary allowance of Rs 1,000 per month—along with a free spacious bungalow with free electricity, water and telephones (but metered gas); a fully furnished residential office on which he can spend Rs 3 lakh for furnishing; unlimited official travel by air and train; 48 personal air tickets a year and free security. When he is out of power, his income shoots up as a practising lawyer. While Chinese television won’t even bother with him, in India, he’s always on TV. If all else fails, there’s Farrukhabad. Why then, to borrow a phrase, choose to be the bread crumb of Beijing when you can be the toast of India?

(The writer was recently in Beijing. He enjoyed being in the city, but certainly does not want to live there.)

Two Mud-Wrestlers In Noora Kushti?

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Punjabi Grill

The five challenges before Nawaz Sharif

With PPP winning Sindh and PTI the tribal areas, Sharif’s PML(N) will have to strive to avoid the charge of ‘Punjabi’ domination he has always faced
Has to deftly choose a new chief justice after Ifthikar Chaudhry to avoid a run-in with a newly assertive judiciary
Army chief Gen Kayani’s tenure ends this year. Who gets to be his successor will decide ties with the army.
Other than Kashmir, India’s role in Afghanistan after the US pullout in 2014 has been added to the menu of Indo-Pak relations
Attracting foreign aid to tide over Pakistan’s economic challenges means cosying up to the US.

***

“Believe me, I want peace with India. Let’s forget the history of wars and tensions and bitterness. Let’s have talks to sort out the issues and create an atmosphere of trust,” Nawaz Sharif told me when I interviewed him as editor of the Hindustan Times at the Government House in Lahore in December 1991. “I mean it,” he added, while seeing me off at the door. The interview created some interest in New Delhi. Foreign secretary J.N. Dixit did not reject the idea of talks, but said the offer had come only through an interview with a newspaper editor and not through diplomatic channels.

This was not the first time Sharif had spoken about his desire for peace with India. A year earlier, he and the then prime minister Chandra Shekhar had met in the Maldives on the sidelines of a SAARC conference. Both agreed to make efforts to break the logjam over India-Pakistan relations and make a new beginning. They couldn’t go far, as both were living on borrowed time. Chandra Shekhar lost office within months as he did not have the required numbers in Parliament, and Sharif too eventually fell victim to the games the Pakistan army plays through obliging politicians.

Sharif’s next opportunity came in his second stint as PM, when Atal Behari Vajpayee went to Lahore by bus in search of peace in 1999. He was there in person at the Wagah border to receive Vajpayee. That the three service chiefs were angry at Sharif’s talks with Vajpayee in Lahore was loudly made known to him by their choosing to boycott what was otherwise a momentous and eventful engagement between the two estranged nations. How could the civilian PM display ‘autonomy’ and welcome an Indian PM on Pakistani soil without the armed forces’ consent and make a bid for peace?

Who is supreme—the civilian rulers or the army—is a question that has pockmarked Pakistan’s history; in a fragile democracy, the army has over the years acquired quite a decisive share in executive authority to decide policies about India, Afghanistan, nuclear weapons, and relations with the US and China. As tensions between the army and Nawaz Sharif grew, General Pervez Musharraf upstaged Sharif in a coup, threw him out of power and sent him to prison. The Saudis saved Sharif from worse by providing him sanctuary. The irony now is that Sharif is savouring his victory and Musharraf is cooling his heels under house arrest near Islamabad, unsure of his fate.

While Pakistan was celebrating its occasional tryst with democracy, Manmohan Singh did not lose time in sending his congratulatory message, inviting Sharif to Delhi for a meeting. The PM-elect too was equally warm when he told Indian journalists in Lahore that he was keen to pick up the threads of peace from where he and Vajpayee had left them. Manmohan and Sharif were seizing the moment to create an atmosphere for setting out on another exploration for peace. Atmospherics, after all, do play a role in the arcane world of international diplomacy.

There are, however, imponderables for both. The Indian PM is in his last year before elections and he is on the backfoot over many domestic issues. Even his simple message to Sharif has come under criticism from cynics, sceptics, and the opposition BJP, which seems to have given up the Vajpayee legacy thoughtlessly. Better relations with India is not just an emotional desire for Sharif; perhaps he feels it would help him concentrate on the enormous challenges he has to negotiate during the next five years.

Nawaz Sharif’s party has won a pretty impressive victory and come into government on its own, free from coalitional compulsions, but the results have sharpened the territorial divides in Pakistan’s political landscape. PML(N) has won the allegiance of Punjab, Asif Zardari’s PPP has won in Sindh and Imran Khan’s PTI in Pakhtoonkhwa. Sharif is looking like the prime minister of Punjab in a country where relations between the federal government and the provinces have always been edgy ever since Pakistan came into being. The perennial charge of Punjabi domination is going to be heard often during the next few years.

The increasingly assertive judiciary has, during the last four years, shown considerable independence. It gained power after the lawyers’ agitation and took on the executive and forced the restoration of chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who had been removed by Musharraf in an extra-constitutional exercise of power. After Musharraf’s ouster, chief justice Chaudhry in his zeal tried to clean up the political system and forced the exit of many a PPP leader from positions of power. The CJ is retiring in a few months; the selection of his successor could be a tricky proposition for Sharif. A wrong move by the new PM could lead to a clash with the judiciary he cannot afford.

The most crucial question facing Sharif will be his relationship with the army, which has long held the reins. Even during occasional spells of civilian rule, the army has not surrendered its control over crucial promotions and appointments in the service, and policy towards India and Afghanistan. The army is said to have kept aloof from the polls, but it is unthinkable that the men in khaki will easily give up control of policy areas they, by habit, believe to be their turf. Gen Ashfaq Kayani’s term is coming to an end later this year: who will choose his successor will be the first test of the relationship between Sharif and the army. The general who called on the incoming PM after the election has reportedly cautioned him against going too fast on mending fences with India in view of the emerging strategic scenario in the region, particularly Afghanistan.

The situation in Afghanistan that may arise after the US troops have pulled out in 2014 is going to be a dodgy one. The army will not allow Sharif to opt for a different policy than is being followed—that is, to end the influence India has gained during the last decade in Afghanistan. Even if Kashmir was not an electoral issue, it remains a priority for the army. Afghanistan has now been added to its India-Pakistan menu.

Sharif has to attend to the economic situation in Pakistan at once. The state treasury is empty, prices are high and the generous international donations Pakistan is used to are no longer flowing in to help it tide over the crisis. The IMF may have to ultimately bail Pakistan out, but there is no free lunch. To get ready cash from the IMF, Sharif will have to finetune ties with the US, which has never been too fond of him, believing him to be essentially on the right.

Friends or foes, the jehadi elements in Pakistan pose a threat to democracy and political stability. These groups hate improved relations with the US on one hand and India on the other. Already, jehadi ideologue Hafeez Saeed has come out with a statement questioning Nawaz Sharif’s intention to extend a hand of friendship to India. Needless to say, the jehadi groups are not going to change their ways easily. That Sharif has returned to power with big numbers is creditable. But with this, he obviously has only earned the right to do battle on other fronts. For that, he would require skill and leadership qualities which he has—and some luck which he would need.

(Former editor of the Hindustan Times, Indian Express, Times of India and Tribune, H.K. Dua is now an MP.)

A History Lesson

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

The death of Khalid Mujahid in the custody of Uttar Pradesh police has once again reinforced the perception that the Akhilesh Yadav led-Samajwadi Party has failed to provide security to Muslims in UP. Mujahid was one of the accused of the 2007 serial bomb blasts in UP. His death triggered a knee-jerk response by the Yadav government, which suspended the nine cops escorting him from Faizabad to Lucknow Jail; a total of 42 police officers, including former DGP Vikram Singh, ADG Brijlal and others who were on duty during the time of Khalid's arrest, have been booked. The UP government has also requested the central government to institute a CBI inquiry about the incident. Within days of that, Mohd Saleem, a lawyer associated with the legal defence of Mujahid was brutally attacked in the Faizabad court premises by fellow lawyers who had earlier passed a writ against defending those accused of terrorism.

Yadav's decision to suspend police officers clearly indicates that his Samajwadi Party government is desperately trying to halt a downward swing in its popularity amongst Muslims, whose votes will be crucial in the 2014 general elections. What would be bothering Yadav most is the near unanimous criticism of his government by representatives of the Muslim clergy, all from the leading seminaries of UP. These include the Darul Uloom Deoband, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and the All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat in UP. Even the Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid has been critical. These seminaries and the various clerics associated with them have till now had a cosy relationship with the Samajwadi Party. They have often extended official and unofficial support to the SP and they, in turn, have received state-government patronage from various SP-led governments in UP.

UP has been a bitter battle ground for differing political paradigms claiming to be representative of Mandir-Mandal-Bahujan. UP has also been the home to the Babri Masjid conflict and the epicentre of the communalism versus secularism debate. In all this ideological churning, the Muslim vote has played a decisive role in selecting which party would rule UP. Since the days of the Ramjanambhoomi movement, it has become political common sense that Muslims will vote for the candidate who will ensure the defeat of the BJP candidate. In other words, for them, it’s not the ideology of the SP or the BSP or, for that matter, the Congress, that inspires them to vote for a particular candidate. For the Muslims of UP, keeping the BJP out of power is essential and a motivating factor for reclaiming their lost sense of dignity, security and justice.

With the 2014 Lok Sabha elections round the corner, the question is, can administrative correctives like the suspending of police officers and ordering a CBI inquiry halt the growing alienation and anger amongst Muslims against the Samajwadi Party? Unfortunately for Akhilesh, the answer is the negative, unless he takes some urgent political steps. It is important to analyse how, in less than 14 months, the Akhilesh-Yadav led SP is being perceived as one of the most hostile administrations vis-à-vis the Muslims as far as their physical security and issues related to justice and dignity are concerned.

By voting for the SP in large numbers in 2012 assembly elections and ensuring that it got a simple majority, the Muslims of UP reasserted their faith in Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son and hoped that the promises he had made would be fulfilled. One of their major promises, seen as both radical and controversial, was that when they came to power, they would withdraw cases against some 400 Muslims youth who were wrongly arrested on charges of terror. This was welcomed by all democratic and civil rights groups, but, more so, by Muslims. They had been feeling anxious and insecure during Mayawati’s rule, when there were a series of raids against and arrests of Muslims youth for their alleged involvement in terror activities. Overnight, towns with large Muslims population, such as Azamgarh, became associated with madrasas where, it was claimed, Muslim youth were being trained and recruited for terror activities. Even the trail of the now infamous Batla House encounter in Delhi led to Azamgarh. All these incidents, including the arrest of Mujahid, had happened under the chief ministership of Mayawati.

When Akhilesh came to power, he didn’t take any legal steps that would fulfil the promises he made related to the release of Muslim youth. Nor did he launch any policy-related schemes that would address the social and economic backwardness of the Muslim community. What he did, instead, was to nominate several Muslim political figures from conservative backgrounds as spokespersons of the party and give them posts in his government. Many of these individuals, like Kamal Farooqui, T Rehmani and the old Mulayam loyalist Azam Khan have a history of taking positions on Muslim identity that are highly sectarian in nature. Akhilesh has even tried to appease the Imam of Jama Masjid by giving one of his close relatives a position in UP government. These acts are mostly symbolic in nature and by no means have a positive impact on the everyday life of ordinary Muslims.

However, the biggest failure of the Akhilesh Yadav government, one that may cost him dearly in the next Lok Sabha election, is the series of incidents of communal violence and the partisan role played by the UP police during these incidents. To add to this has been the obvious complicity of one his senior ministers, the dreaded mafia don Raghuraj Pratap Singh “Raja Bhaiya” —who is considered to by a close associate of Mulayam-Akhilesh— in the murder of Deputy Superintendent of Police Zia-ul-Haq. Besides the killing of Mujahid and Haq, between June-September 2012, there have been at least six major incidents of communal violence where the police have been accused of acting in a partisan manner against Muslims. Two Muslim youth were burnt alive in Mathura in June and, in the same month, large-scale burning and looting of Muslim houses took place in Raja Bhaiya's constituency Partapgarh. In July, communal clashes occurred in Bareilly over the use of loudspeakers during the Janamasthami processions, two Muslims were killed and there was massive looting and arson. To make matters worse, intermittent clashes continued over several weeks and various Muslims localities remained under curfew for nearly a month creating immense hardships for its residents. In September, six people, including three teenagers, were killed in Ghaziabad during violence over the burning of the Quran. Four of the people killed were reported to have been shot from a distance ranging four to ten feet, once again indicating the high-handedness of the police.

This short history of the Akhilesh-led SP government reminds one of the Indra-Rajiv Gandhi governments of the 1980s when there were large-scale communal violence in UP and the police were accused of indulging in targeted killings of Muslims. The brutality of the police during the Maliana-Meerut and Moradabad violence is still fresh in the memory of people. Instead of making the police accountable and punishing the guilty, the then governments tried to create a sense of balance by appeasing the conservative Muslim clergy. The best example of that was the overturning the Supreme Court judgement by Parliament in the Shah Bano case. This eventually resulted in not only the downfall and complete destruction of Congress in UP, but also gave rise to right wing Hindutva forces, eventually leading up to the tragic demolition of the Babri Masjid.

One of the major reasons for the emergence of Mulayam Singh Yadav and his Samajwadi Party, besides the Mandal Commission, was the support he got from Muslims, who had felt a deep sense of injustice and insecurity during the Congress rule of the 1980s. If Akhilesh wants to survive in UP, he should learn from history and not repeat the mistakes of the Congress. Otherwise, not only will he lose the next election but he and his party might become totally irrelevant in Indian politics. Because, unlike the Congress, his party does not have a presence in any other state of India and relies completely on Uttar Pradesh. But more importantly, Muslims who are the biggest minority of India and a significant proportion of UP's population, will be alienated further, which will be a disaster for India's secular polity and democracy.

Jamal Kidwai is the Director of AMAN Trust

Thoda Hard, Thoda Soft

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

The activities of Indian and Chinese troops along the line of actual control, the undemarcated border between the two nations known as LAC, may recall memories of 1962. That year marked a border conflict between the two Asian giants that remains etched in the Indian psyche—reinforced by the 1964 film Haqeeqat, written and directed by Chetan Anand. The same dispute goes unmentioned in China’s history books.

Indian films continue to explore the nuances of India’s relations with China—from friend to foe, and more recently, suggesting the potential for stronger ties between the two nations based on a long history of friendly interactions.

Prior to the 1962 border conflict, relations were not adversarial. The two countries thrived peaceably on either side of the Himalayas for centuries, bound by ties of trade and ideas—first with the philosophy of Buddhism and by the early 20th century through anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles.

In 1938, an Indian doctor went to China on a medical mission at age 27. Fired by the call of Indian nationalist leaders to help China in the fight against Japan, Dwarkanath Kotnis volunteered to care for the sick and wounded in China and ended up with the Eighth Route Red Army, led by Mao Zedong , where he met his future wife and later died at the age of 32. Venerated as a hero of the Chinese Revolution, a statue of him was erected in Shijiazhuang, Hebei. His tomb in the Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery faces that of Norman Bethune, physician and member of the Canadian Communist Party, who also joined the Eighth Route Red Army, and died en route in 1939.

Dr Kotnis ki Amar Kahani, 1946

This story is the basis for V. Shantaram’s 1946 film, Dr Kotnis ki Amar Kahani, or The Immortal Story of Dr Kotnis. The film reflects not only prevailing nationalist sentiment, but also communist and revolutionary struggles across the globe. It refers to the 1937 plea by the Chinese Communist Party to Jawaharlal Nehru and the Indian National Congress to assist in its struggle against Japan. Kotnis responded to this plea and, on the Long March, he tended to the sick and wounded of the Red Army. The scenes that show him wooing Qing Lan, his future wife, reveal nuances of the relations between the two countries. He tells her that there is no need for chini, “sugar” in Hindi, in Chinese tea, suggesting the Chinese body is filled with sweetness. They are married by official command, and their union is explained to the villagers in terms of underlining the closeness of India and China. The military commander, General Nie Rongzhen, names their son Yin Hua, for India and China.

This period, when India and China were at the brink of attaining nationhood free of the imperial yoke, was a time of mutual sympathy and friendship. There were shared values across the globe propagated by the international communist organization Comintern, and correspondence among leaders of the Chinese Communist Party and the Indian nationalist struggle, identifying the struggles of common people and giving each other mutual strength.

Helen in Howrah Bridge, 1958

Neel Akasher Niche, 1959

Prem Pujari, 1970

Political disagreements arose between India and China by the late 1950s, largely based on border disputes and the question of Tibet. Friendship with China was less easy, and the filmic landscape shifted. Films of the late 1950s showed Chinese involved in smuggling, gangsterism (Howrah Bridge, 1958) and spying (Prem Pujari, or Worshipper of Love 1970). China was deemed a national security risk and positive portrayals of people-to-people interactions were temporarily banned, as in the case of Neel Akasher Niche, or Under the Blue Sky, 1959.

After the border war of 1962, the rhetoric was driven up a notch. Haqeeqat, or Reality, opened in 1964 with a dedication to Nehru and paid homage to the soldiers who gave their lives in Ladakh, defending India's national borders against Chinese intrusions in 1962. Panoramic shots capture the beauty of the Ladakh landscape, showing the majesty of India’s northeast.

Haqeeqat, 1964

The film contrasts the force of the Chinese military, its immensity and purpose, with that of the unprepared Indian army, ill-equipped and outnumbered, lacking in strategy. The Ladakhi people are shown befriending the soldiers and assisting them against the Chinese. As Indian soldiers reach their mountain posts in the treacherous high reaches of the Himalayas, they are subjected to nonstop blaring on loudspeakers by the Chinese soldiers, repeatedly invoking the old slogan: Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai, Indians and Chinese are brothers.

But the chant rings hollow, followed by the Chinese soldiers asking them to retreat or face “slaughter… like sheep and goats.” Despite a readiness to fight, the Indian Army adheres to orders not to fire first.

The film shows footage of women donating gold ornaments to the war effort and newsreel footage of Prime Minister Nehru saluting the armed forces on Republic Day. Valorising the men in uniform while portraying the Chinese as a ruthless twofaced friend/foe, Haqeeqat contributed to uniting Indians, while reminding people of different political persuasions of the external threat to India.

Haqeeqat highlights the propaganda of the Chinese and suggests that China’s intention was expansionism and destabilization of Asia. Indian soldiers eyeing the Chinese army amassed in Ladakh, joke that their opponents are living up to the spirit of their ancestor Genghiz Khan, claiming all lands he had walked on as their territory.

From Chandni Chowk to China, 2009

Almost four decades later, a comedy from Bollywood offers a 21st-century view of China—a spoof featuring a bumbling, unsophisticated Indian hero amid the lyrical quality of Chinese martial arts. From Chandni Chowk to China, or CC2C, in 2009 was the first Bollywood film shot on location in China. The film opens with a long shot of the Great Wall, and zooms into a sequence of traditional Chinese sword-fighting. At the start, Genghiz Khan is mentioned with reverence as China's most accomplished warrior.

The Chinese villains are sophisticated, albeit cruel and ruthless; there is racial stereotyping of both sides, yet the characters in the film are not racially or politically biased against one another. Both sides have dubious, less-than-noble characters, a departure from previous Indian films.

While the scars of the 1962 Chinese betrayal remain, the national psyche has recovered sufficiently to portray Chinese in a fuller manner. Some are evil, some are good and some are simple folk just trying to get on with day-to-day lives. The Indian hero is portrayed as a buffoon against the sophisticated Chinese villain, yet sincerity wins out in the end. At the same time, the film displays appreciation of the martial arts of China, the country's refinements in traditional medicine, and friendship between the two peoples, embodied in twins Sakhi and Suzy, born of an Indian mother and a Chinese father. The ability of Bollywood to project beautiful aspects of Chinese culture onscreen reflects the confidence of India as a nation in the 21st century.

Should the soft power of Bollywood continue, as stated in 2012 by the Chinese ambassador to India, and the attitudes portrayed in CC2C prevail, there is hope that the latest disputes can be resolved in a spirit of friendship and mutual respect rather than hostility.

Coonoor Kripalani is honorary institute fellow at the Hong Kong Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Inc., the Centre of Asian Studies, The University of Hong Kong, and author of numerous articles on Hindi film, including “Reading China in Hindi Film—Three Points in Time: 1946, 1964 and 2009,” in Asian Cinema, 2012, and “In Remembrance: Yash Chopra (1932-2012), ” in Asian Cinema, 2013. Coonoor also writes bilingual books in Hindi and English for preschool children. Rights:Copyright © 2013 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. YaleGlobal Online

A Handshake Across The Himalayas

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

We live in an age of change, but there are always certain things that are enduring, forever refreshing and attractive. India is such a nation, at once old and young. I will be leading a Chinese government delegation to India, the first country I will visit as the Premier of China. I am very much looking forward to it and hope to make some concrete contribution to deepening the friendship and promoting cooperation in various areas between China and India.

Both China and India have a long and great history that goes back thousands of years. The Chinese and Indian civilizations are among the oldest of human civilization. They represent the two pillars of the civilization of the East. The towering Himalayas have not prevented them from mutual attraction and illumination. Fahien and Huen Tsang, two eminent Chinese monks of the Jin and Tang dynasties respectively and Bodhidharma of ancient India all made outstanding contribution to religious and cultural exchanges between China and India. In my student days, I already had a strong interest in India. I was impressed by the memorable poetic lines and the deep philosophical insights of Rabindranath Tagore, the famed "sage poet," and moved by his profound friendship with the leading Chinese authors of his day. There was a Chinese Indologist at my alma mater, Peking University, with whom I was well acquainted. He spent his whole life studying and teaching ancient Indian culture and in recognition of his contribution, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan. Indeed, from generation to generation, our two cultures have learned and benefited from each other through exchanges and as a result, they have both flourished with the passage of time.

When I first visited India 27 years ago, I was struck by her warm sunshine, brilliant colors, beautiful arts, hard-working and talented people and amazing splendor and diversity. As far as I know, the India of the 21st century is taking a fast track of innovation-driven development. Bangalore, the "Silicon Valley of South Asia," is home to about 1/3 of IT talents in India; it is not only the ICT center of India, but also a hub of software services in Asia. India's manufacturing sector has also moved forward. Tata Motors ranks among the world's top five manufacturers of commercial vehicles, and Tata Global Beverages is the world's second-largest producer of tea. I have read that Steve Jobs, the late CEO of Apple, had traveled to India with no other purpose than to learn yoga and meditation. It is believed that this gave him many inspirations and resolve for innovation. Now, a growing number of Chinese youth are backpacking across your country, intent on discovering and appreciating India's magnificent culture and retracing the footsteps of history.

China and India, two big Asian countries living next door to each other, are destined to be together.

Since modern times, our destinies have been more closely tied than ever. Our peoples sympathized with, supported and helped each other in their quest for national independence and liberation, leaving behind a trail of touching stories. Afterwards, our two countries jointly initiated the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which have become the important basic norms underpinning the new type of international relations that we both seek. Our two countries have worked shoulder to shoulder to uphold the rights and interests of developing countries, giving lasting traction to South-South cooperation.

Today, the handshake across the Himalayas is even stronger. Facing the same task of boosting the economy, improving people's living standards and reviving the nation, both countries need a peaceful and tranquil neighborhood and external environment and wish to achieve win-win results through dialogue and cooperation. India, a strong Asian nation and a major country with global influence, is playing an increasingly important role in international affairs. India, a BRICS member with robust economic growth, is playing a significant role for peace and prosperity in South Asia and in the Asia Pacific in general. China is happy to see the growth momentum of India and ready to expand and upgrade Sino-Indian cooperation to the benefit of all-round economic and social development in both countries.

There is no denying that China and India still have between them some difficult issues left over from history. But the rich historical experience and the broad vision, which are common qualities of big countries, serve as the basis for China and India to take a long-term view and live in amity with each other. With joint efforts in the past few years, the two sides have gradually found a way to maintain peace and tranquility in the disputed border areas, and have learned to deal with the situation in a reasonable and mature manner. Both agree that the common interests between China and India far outweigh their differences and that the two countries should enhance mutual trust rather than increasing mutual suspicion. I believe that as long as we draw on wisdom and strength on our way forward, there will be no obstacle that we cannot overcome. As long as we face the problems squarely and talk to each other with sincerity, we will eventually find proper solutions.

China is a big country that is growing and peace-loving. What we Chinese value most are "Do not do onto others what you do not want others to do onto you" and the philosophy that stresses the importance of good faith and making friends with neighbors. China is more developed than before, but it remains a developing country. Even if China becomes strong one day, it will never embark on the doomed path of seeking hegemony. We suffered immensely from foreign bullying, wars and chaos and know so well that the same tragedy should not be allowed to happen to anyone ever again. China has a long way to go to achieve modernization. To successfully manage a populous big country like China, the top priority is to ensure the supply of seven daily necessities, namely firewood, rice, cooking oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar and tea. In other words, we have to address the most immediate concern of our people in everyday life. The Chinese people want better education, more stable employment, more reliable social security, more comfortable housing, more colorful cultural life and national stability and prosperity. It is not easy to deliver all those to our people and modernize the country. We must focus on self-development and that calls for a peaceful international environment. We need to live with our neighbours in harmony and make friends in the world. To pursue a path of peaceful development is the unwavering commitment and firm action of the Chinese people.

China owes its rapid growth to continuous reform as well as external cooperation. Interdependence is a defining feature in state-to-state relations in this era of globalization. China is a beneficiary and a defender of the existing international order and system and stands ready to work with India and other countries to advance reform of the system. China will undertake international obligations commensurate with its national strength. We stand ready to embrace the world with a more open mind and hope that the world will view China with a calm frame of mind.

Both China and India are big countries in size and in population. Together, the populations of our two countries exceed 2.5 billion and account for nearly 40 percent of the world's total. We are viewed as the two most important emerging markets. However, our bilateral trade volume was less than 70 billion U.S. dollars last year. This is incompatible with the strength and status of our two countries, but it also points to the huge potential for expanding and upgrading our bilateral trade and business cooperation. This is an issue that the two sides must work to resolve together.

The world looks to Asia to be the engine driving the global economy. This would be impossible without the two powerhouses of China and India. Our two countries need to work hand in hand if Asia is to become the anchor of world peace. An Asian century that people expect would not come if China and India, the two most populous countries in the world, failed to live in harmony and achieve common development. Asia's future hinges on China and India. If China and India live in harmony and prosper together, and if our two markets converge, it will be a true blessing for Asia and the world at large. China's development promises opportunities for India, and India's development promises opportunities for China. Our common development will benefit people of the two countries and offer the world more and better opportunities

'Two Civilizational Neighbours'

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Media Statement by Prime Minister during the State Visit of Chinese Premier H.E. Li Keqiang to India

May 20, 2013

Your Excellency Premier Li,

Ladies and Gentlemen of the media,

It is an honour for me to welcome Premier Li on his first official visit to India. It has been an immense pleasure to get to know him personally. I sincerely appreciate his reaching out to me on his first day in office and his choosing India as his first foreign destination as Premier.

Starting yesterday evening, Premier Li and I have had wide-ranging and candid discussions covering all matters of mutual interest and concern. I am delighted that there are so many areas of convergence between us and on which there is a great deal of meeting of minds. Most importantly, we agreed that the relationship between our two countries is of growing significance and essential for our peaceful development and sustained economic growth, as well as for stability and prosperity in our region and the world.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

India and China are two civilizational neighbours and have lived in peace through the ages. We have had our differences in more recent times, but over the last 25 years, we have steadily built a mutually beneficial relationship. The basis for continued growth and expansion of our ties is peace and tranquillity on our borders. While seeking an early resolution of the boundary question, Premier Li and I agreed that this must continue to be preserved.

We also took stock of lessons learnt from the recent incident in the Western Sector, when existing mechanisms proved their worth. We tasked our Special Representatives to consider further measures that may be needed to maintain peace and tranquillity along the border. We agreed that our Special Representatives will meet soon to continue discussions, seeking early agreement on a framework for a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable boundary settlement.

I also reiterated to Premier Li India’s concerns about the effects on lower riparians of activities in the upper reaches of our shared rivers. It would be useful for the mandate of our Expert Level Mechanism to be expanded to include information sharing on upstream development projects on these rivers. I am glad that we have agreed to expand cooperation on trans-border rivers. It would also be useful for India and China to collaborate on a better understanding of the stresses on our shared Himalayan ecosystem.

I shared with Premier Li my view that the rise of China and India is good for the world and that the world has enough space to accommodate the growth aspirations of both our peoples. To make this a reality, it is important to build understanding between our two peoples. We agreed that both sides must work to strengthen greater trust and confidence, which, in turn, will permit much larger co-operation.

Economic cooperation constitutes a very important part of our relationship and the growth potential of our two economies can provide the engine for greater cooperation. There are many ongoing areas of co-operation that we will carry forward as outlined in the Joint Statement.I conveyed to Premier Li our concerns about the trade deficit and sought increased market access to China for our exports and investments. I also invited increased Chinese involvement in the vast opportunities in our infrastructure and manufacturing sectors.

The rapid development of our economies has opened up new opportunities for economic cooperation bilaterally, in our region and globally, which our Strategic Economic Dialogue will identify and explore. We have also discussed the possibility of infrastructure development to link India’s North Eastern region with Bangladesh, Myanmar, China and other countries in the South East Asian region.

Premier Li and I also used the opportunity to review the rapidly evolving global political and economic situation and resolved to strengthen our strategic communication and dialogue on these issues. We also agreed that we have a shared interest in an open multilateral trading system and in combating protectionism.

Before I conclude, let me say again what a pleasure it has been to welcome Premier Li amongst us. I am sure that his leadership will go a long way in strengthening the relationship between our two countries and extending it to new frontiers. I look forward to seeing him again very soon and I have also accepted his gracious invitation to visit China at the earliest opportunity.

Thank you.

New Delhi

May 20, 2013

Puppets In Gumshoes

Mon, 27 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

The Hon’ble Supreme Court was recently compelled to sketch an apt metaphor: the CBI, it said, is a caged parrot. Then, a Bangalore court called the Intelligence Bureau (IB) a pigeon. Surely no compliments intended, for the name-calling was directed at two federal policing agencies. How, then, would the garden variety police forces (state-level police forces and some of the smaller paramilitaries) fare on the Supreme Court’s scale of wretchedness? Would they be equated with amoebae, bacteria or viruses? Or with serous, pre-biotic fluid?

Biology tells us evolution is unidirectional. Morality, perhaps, is not governed by the laws of evolution. Indeed, the history of the CBI is one of regression and progressive diminution. Till the other day, the CBI cut such a heroic figure. The entry of an ID card-flashing CBI officer has electrified many a film scene. How and when did the transformation from hero to joker take place? In a crony-capitalistic order in which the state is captive, “society naturally divides itself into the very few and the many”, according to its constituents’ “unequal faculties of acquiring property”. Such layering is most likely to put together in politicians, civil servants, power brokers and pimps. Public spending has increased several-fold and this has dramatically enlarged the corrupting interface between the consenting public servant and the obliging client. Dozens of new laws have brought more and more areas of our private and public concern under bureaucratic gaze and control, creating enormous opportunities for rent-seeking. Corruption naturally comes to occupy the centrestage of public concern. Overwhelmed, governments all over resort to the strategy of what Leo Strauss calls a “necessary lie”, in which rulers, to distract people from problems closer at hand, feed them fables to keep them peaceful and pacified. Zero tolerance to corruption is the avowed goal of this government. It is also the supreme exemplar of the idea of “necessary lie”.

The neo-liberal discourse, however, tends to treat corruption as a purely economic issue—a market transaction in informal services in a bureaucracy-infested, over-regulated state. Bribery is purged of its moral connotations and made respectable as a facilitation fee for services in a transaction between socially anonymous partners. In a society on a roller-coaster ride to the abyss of consumerism, the distance between the ideological mask and the social reality is bridged by an evermore strident cry for hygiene in public life. Such a society dupes itself with foolish expectations and sets extravagant goals for its investigative agencies. Pining for an independent CBI is one such nostrum.

The CBI is no longer required to handle crimes in the ordinary sense of the term; more often than not it is the criminality of governments—their involvement in bribery and payoffs, their efforts to subvert parliamentarians, their involvement in fake encounters and engineering systemic pogroms, you name it—that keeps the CBI’s hands full. If it is not the government, it is its more formidable patrons, the super-rich, in whose gigantic shadow the government casts its miserable tent.

But, as in times when crimes and perpetrators were painted on scales less grand, it is still the sole prerogative of the government (I include the leader of the opposition as a representative of government in exile, and thus an interested party) to appoint the CBI director, and equip, outfit and determine the working of the organisation.

For the last several decades, ambitious leaders have sought to create loyal battalions of bureaucratic palace guards who, if they pass the loyalty test, are exempted from every other. The changed environment has led to a proliferation of officers with a natural tendency to voluntary servitude. Blind obedience confers a massive selective advantage over other officers and bureaucrats; the courage to stand up renders them incapable of finding a foothold in the fragile ecology of power and they invariably fall by the wayside. So the parrot cannot but speak in his masters’ voices, because he is wired like that, protein-coded for blind obedience.

Hegel proclaimed long ago that “self-interested egotism” is the very ideology of such crony-capitalist societies. The inhabitants of Hegel’s “spiritual kingdom of animals” find it less than useful to invest their time and effort in institutions of integrity and fair play. Given the time and a favourable environment, regression is but natural. As long as an environment conducive to the evolution of autonomous, rational, conscious morality is not created, caged parrots and pigeons will abound.

(The writer is a former home guards DGP of Bihar.)

No Justice For Insaf

Mon, 27 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

On April 30, 2013, the Union ministry of home froze the bank account of a coalition known as INSAF (Indian Social Action Forum) and suspended its registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act or FCRA. INSAF is a network of 700 NGOs, people’s movements against acquisition of lands and forests and other resistances from Koodankulam to Kashmir. It has been a sort of facilitator, a clearing house for donations and support to various struggles. The home ministry believes its actions to “be prejudicial to public interest”.

On May 13, less than two weeks after the attempt to stifle INSAF, news agency Reuters filed this report: “Foreign institutional investors’ (FIIs) ownership of the BSE Sensex stocks touched its highest in eight years as of the January-March quarter, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a research report. During the Jan-March quarter, FIIs were net buyers of Indian equities, while domestic mutual fund companies and state-owned insurer lic were sellers, it said. According to regulatory data, FIIs have been net buyers for 15 consecutive sessions, bringing their total investment for the year to $12.70 billion.”

The contrast is quite remarkable. We celebrate those who come to set up business, invest in the stockmarket, mine our natural resources, build nuclear plants and run them. These investors in smart suits and sharp shoes are to be feted and waited upon. They are the good people with the big bucks who fit into the idea of India as an economic powerhouse, the winners in this game of globalisation.

Then there are the wretched of the earth who stand in the way of this wonderful progress. These little people inconvenience the big plans, be it the POSCO project in Orissa, SEZs across the country or the nuclear plant in Tamil Nadu. There seems to be no ambiguity on the issue for those who run the country, frame its laws and implement them: those who resist are a danger to public order.

Given the recent action on INSAF, one can only presume this is the Orwellian standard that will now be applied in a future India. Without getting into the complexity of FCRA, there is something seriously wrong with the spirit of the law. Basically, it can be countered not by legalese but by a very simple argument: if a government can get billions of dollars worth of foreign investment for a specific project that is cleared on paper, why can’t a meagre amount of foreign funds reach activists who wish to help those who actually live on the land where these projects are planned? And we are talking small change here, a few thousands to a few lakhs compared to the billions on the other side.

How did we end up creating a world where those who make the blueprints are celebrated while those who sweat it out with people are seen as dangerous?

The attempt to crack down on INSAF has been made possible because of the amendments to FCRA in 2010. Rule 3 of the law now says that the activity of any organisation that “employs common methods like bandh or hartal, rasta roko or jail bharo” will be deemed political in nature although it is not a political party. The government, of course, has the right to define such organisations.

The point here is not to argue against a scrutiny of funds that come for political activity. The rules, in fact, began to be tightened in 1984 when several Sikh organisations using violent methods were getting funds from abroad. The VHP likewise raises money outside India for activities that are certainly political. But how can legitimate struggles against specific policies, the leitmotif of a healthy democracy, be seen in the same light as advocacy of separatism, violence or communal hatred? The UN Human Rights Council resolution adopted on March 21 this year actually called upon states to ensure that “restrictions are not discriminatorily imposed on potential sources of funding aimed at supporting the work of human rights defenders”.

And if we are so suspicious of foreign funds coming for those who influence public opinion, why leave out the media? According to a FICCI report, FDI inflows to the information & broadcasting sector, including the print media, was $2.17 billion in India in Apr 2010-Mar 2011. The same report says that “India has one of the most liberal investment regimes and the media and entertainment industry has significantly benefited from this.” But we see no grand conspiracy about the “foreign hand” if the news channel we watch or the newspaper we read is partly owned by foreign groups when in fact there is evidence that the media now accepts certain agendas unquestioningly.

The INSAF story is at its core an action against the idea of legitimate protest on which this country was built. In an age of corruption at every level, it’s an obvious attempt to intimidate those who challenge certain notions of “progress” and care about things other than profit margins.

When There’s A Towel In The Trousers

Mon, 27 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

New phrases are set to enter the English language. ‘Towel in the trousers’, as euphemism for ‘thanks for your money, I am happy to betray my sport’, for example. Or ‘stretching exercise’ which means ‘giving someone time to organise nefarious activities.’ New signals, new codes to indicate to the bookies that the con is on. How did we come to this? How does a player earning in millions turn a criminal for a few dollars more?

Perhaps we are all to blame. We got complacent. We decided that such things happen only in Pakistan. We ignored the whispers around the IPL. And when we did land some criminals a decade ago, we let them get away with the odd ban when they should have been sent to jail. We didn’t think it was important to push for laws that would make our sport clean, or at least cleaner. The Delhi Police needs to be commended on two counts. First for its investigation into spot-fixing, and then for booking the players under criminal laws. The mistake in the earlier cases—after former skipper Mohammed Azharuddin confessed, “Maine match banaya (I fixed matches)”—was that no criminal cases were filed.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India showed then that it was a spineless body when it came to the big issues of the game. It had no stand on match-fixing, drugs and chucking beyond that of self-interest and a strange desire to protect the transgressors. And nothing since has inspired confidence that it had changed. Fixing as an evil was talked about, quotable quotes were flung around; more recently the cliche ‘zero tolerance’ has been heard over and over again. But corruption was never rooted out. There was a lack of will, as if the act might reveal too many uncomfortable truths. It has taken the police to do the job that might just be the beginning of a cleansing process.

It is a process that might involve team owners and others too, for surely it is naive to believe that the kingpin of the operation zeroed in on just three players when the IPL is a treasure house of has-beens and never-will-bes who make more money in two months than others in the same age and weight category make in a lifetime? If they are being paid ridiculous amounts to play well, there is a certain logic in paying even more for playing badly. Every team is bound to have at least a couple of frustrated players or those on the make who are not even forced to choose between country and self. Especially if the employers too are on the make too. The lack of context in an IPL game makes it especially vulnerable to fixers. The ‘quick buck’ concept which seems to be its underlying philosophy encourages those who want to make an even quicker buck. If the reward for bowling one bad over is 60 lakh rupees—doubtless, bookies have a rate card—why bother with comebacks and the hard work involved?

But it’s not that simple, of course. Whatever the vulnerability of the sport, all cheating is down to the vulnerability of the sportsman. Unexpectedness is at the root of competition. Once that is taken out of the equation, sport loses the right to exist. If even one event in a series of discrete, independent events that is a cricket match is controlled by an outside source, then the whole match is tainted. That is why morally there is no difference between match-fixing and spot-fixing, although some see the latter as a lesser evil. But a simple example will suffice. In the Mumbai-Rajasthan IPL game, the former won by 14 runs. It was in this game that Sreesanth gave away 14 runs for 60 lakh. You do the math.

Neither Ankit Chavan, 27, nor Ajit Chandila, 29, had a realistic chance of playing for India and earning through cricket legally the amounts they could make illegally. Sreesanth’s case is more complex. At 30, a combination of injury and erratic behaviour had ensured that the initial promise would remain unfulfilled. Still, it was not the end. Recently, Greg Chappell had suggested that he might make a difference to India on the tour of South Africa, where his bowling earned the country a Test win in 2010. He was earning two crore as a Rajasthan Royals player, was guaranteed iconic status for life in his home state of Kerala, and had a few career options post-cricket: as an actor, a singer, a hotelier and so on.

Why such a man would dip into the poisoned chalice is a study for psychologists. If sport, art and literature, some of the highest levels man can attain physically, emotionally and intellectually, become hostage to the basest that is in our nature, what hope do lesser activities have? If exemplary punishment is at one end of the scale, we must explore the possibility of mentoring or psychological help at the other. Sport is a high-stress job and at the highest level it is sometimes difficult to find solace even among colleagues. Perhaps this is where a mentor or a Board-appointed counsellor might be useful, advising players. Such a person (or group of persons) might have been the responsibility of a Players’ Association, but the BCCI has always viewed such a move as the creation of a trade union and, even on the few occasions when an association has been formed, seen it as an adversary.

Yet, peers understand the problems of players, the weaknesses that motivate their actions; counselling might make a difference. Still, one has to be practical. Like diabetes, spot-fixing cannot be cured. Every generation has its share of weak, insecure players of flexible moral fibre who will be drawn to the rewards of criminality. On the field of play, sport tends to deify the cheat who doesn’t get caught, and it is easy to expect the same in real life too. Sport and morality have a special relationship. The very artificiality of sport gives us the right to inject it with a greater moral purpose than, say, business or politics. Sport, as one commentator pointed out, is not real life, but a moral preparation for real life.

If too much money is a root cause of the problem, it might even lead to a solution. Sponsors can lean on cricket boards to clean up their act. No sponsor would like to be associated with a tainted sport, so that is a marketing rather than a moral decision. Whatever the springs of motivation, it will help clean up the sport and restore the fan’s faith. Let us not make the same mistake we made at the turn of this century.

(Suresh Menon is editor, Wisden India Almanack)

Jack, Fruit Of All Trades

Mon, 27 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

And it’s the time of the year when our tropical country produces one ‘fattening’ fruit after another—mango and then jackfruit. Fattening only according to someone’s wild imagination though, as both these are zero in fat and cholesterol, they get a bad name simply because they are sweet.

Anyways, this column is a tribute to my favouritest fruit, the magical, delicious jackfruit. First things first, a fruit is supposed to be sweet in taste, and sweetness is its virtue, so don’t let the weight loss industry prejudice you against it. It’s through this sweetness that it entices the cells of our body to absorb and assimilate the many phytonutrients it carries.

The humble jackfruit has therapeutic nutrients called isoflavones, lignans, and saponins, and all have known anti-cancer properties and an ability to fight ‘free radicals’ that cause ageing. It’s also rich in the micro-mineral copper, which plays a role in thyroid metabolism and thus weight loss. Ha! Now I have your attention! There’s more. It’s rich in Vit B6, so if you have overeaten at dinner, eating this fruit for breakfast will help you beat the gas and acidity that follows. And if you are a protein junkie, then the seeds of jackfruit are roasted or turned into curries to be eaten with rice and make for the complete amino acid profile.

Jackfruit’s ability to reverse ageing, lower body fat, keep thyroid healthy and the stomach clear, are not well known but its sweetness is. So go ahead, savour the fruit for its sweetness, its magical and curative process will be at work silently.

This Way To Chindia

Mon, 27 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Chinese prime minister Li Keqiang’s visit to India is significant for three unique and outstanding reasons. First, it takes place soon after the recent 20-day faceoff in the western sections of the disputed border between the two sides. The fact that the visit is on shows that the top leaders of both countries are determined not to allow any dispute or difference to come in the way of their attempts to build a strategic partnership. It also demonstrates that Sino-Indian ties are of strategic and global significance and go far beyond a bilateral relationship.

Given the lack of mutual acceptance or unified recognition of each other’s Line of Actual Control, there are scores of overlapping and grey areas with the potential for such faceoffs. It is also reasonable to assume, given the ground situation, that this kind of “incursion” must be occurring on both sides. The only difference could be that the Chinese media does not have easy access to reporting such “incursions” by the Indian forces, whereas the Indian media is very vocal on the issue. But till the lac is finally identified and is mutually accepted by both parties, such instances will remain all too frequent.

In the interim, however, there are several existing mechanisms which can help the two countries establish ‘guiding principles’ to settle border disputes. The manner in which they were used recently are a measure of the maturity the Sino-Indian ties have achieved.

Second, if it’s any encouragement, only once before have the heads of the Indian and Chinese governments visited each other’s country in the same year. (Manmohan Singh is scheduled to visit China later this year.) This was in 1954 when Chinese premier Zhou Enlai came to India in June and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru returned the visit in October. Yet again, in the context of changing power equations in the global and regional arena, there is a strong demand from both sides to further upgrade the top-level interaction between the two countries.

The simultaneous rise of India and China, the global financial crisis and the economic recession as well as America’s ‘Asia-Rebalance’ strategy have infused a new dynamic into the Asia-Pacific region—where both China and India are located—and engendered uncertainty not only in the economic but also in the security domain.

It’s a scenario in which India and China can work jointly and constructively towards a much brighter future rather than wait for others to create a favourable external environment. In fact, the faster their rise, the greater the strategic squeeze and restrictions they are likely to face from the neighbourhood and developed economies. Both countries have the resources and the capacity to build a more inclusive, open, balanced and diversified framework in the Asia-Pacific region, both in terms of security and development, ensuring a win-win situation for both.

Leaders of China and India have often reiterated that there is enough space for the development of their countries. Both have had a long and rich civilisation to derive wisdom and philosophy from. The two nations also have a number of areas they can collaborate in. But without strategic cooperation, such development and space could become restricted and congested. It could also lead to the competition becoming more vicious, and the more vicious it becomes, the less room there will be to develop. A collaborative approach, on the other hand, will help both countries grow.

Moreover, only by expanding their areas of cooperation and cultivating more common ground can the two countries reduce their differences—if not in absolute terms, then in relative terms. It could provide the constructive atmosphere in which both countries can step out of their straitjacketed thinking and come up with fresh solutions to disputes.

Third, his trip to India will be Premier Li’s maiden foreign visit after he became prime minister in March. Given that President Xi Jinping’s first visit was to Russia—another big neighbour—it’s clear that the new leadership in China is giving neighbourhood diplomacy top priority. Or at least that it regards relations with the neighbours to be as important as those with the US, for China’s peaceful development, especially as it faces troubled waters in the West Pacific region. Building a cooperative and harmonious neighbourhood is a must for China to be accepted as a benign rising global power. The Chinese dream cannot materialise if both the country and its neighbours spend sleepless nights. In fact, China needs to take initiative to promote relations not just between China and its neighbours but among the neighbours themselves. It can only bode well for Sino-Indian ties.

(The author is director, South Asia and Southeast Asian Studies, Chinese Institute for Contemporary International Relations, Beijing.)

Dress For Disaster

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

ANN ARBOR

Globalisation has turned every shopping trip into an encounter fraught with moral dilemmas. In April, more than 1,100 Bangladeshi garment workers lost their lives in a building collapse, reminding global consumers that low-priced t-shirts can come at a great human cost. Most consumers do not see the direct connection, assuming that distance eliminates any moral stains by the time goods reach the store shelves. But the information technologies that have allowed supply chains to extend around the globe also enable consumers to better understand the consequences of their choices— if they choose to do so. The prospects for workplace reform aimed at avoiding tragedies like the one in Dhaka hinge on this choice.

Garment manufacturing is traditionally the first step toward industrialization, and the garment industry has long been a vanguard of globalization. Successful global firms typically resemble Nike, which concentrates on the design and marketing of its sneakers and clothing while contracting out production to vendors in Asia and elsewhere.

In the past generation, "Nikefication" has spread to nearly every industry, particularly in the US. From consumer electronics to pet food to pharmaceuticals, the companies that manage consumer brands are often merely the central node in a global production and distribution network. Products are routinely produced, distributed and sold having never been touched by an employee of the company named on the label. Due to pervasive Nikefication, corporations are often many steps removed from objectionable practices such as the fatal sweatshop conditions in Dhaka.

In its effort to root out so-called conflict minerals in its products, Hewlett-Packard found that the critical point of leverage was the smelters processing minerals whose sales have helped finance the seemingly interminable armed conflicts in the Congo. The smelters were four steps back in the supply chain, among the suppliers to suppliers of HP's suppliers. HP did make extra effort to locate these smelters so that suppliers could pressure them to eliminate unverified Congolese suppliers, but this is the exception, not the rule.

Nikefication is made possible by information technologies, particularly the internet. Anyone with a product design, web connection and credit card can put Chinese assembly lines in motion using Alibaba.com. Some of the bestselling products in the United States are made by tiny enterprises that contract out essentially every aspect of physical labour and production. These firms, often producing short-lived products like the Flip camera, are the next stage of Nikefication.

The same technologies that birthed Nikefication and associated moral dilemmas may offer a solution. Technologies exist now to tag products with a "chain of custody," allowing consumers to track the provenance of their purchases. In the art world this is routine: Those spending millions on precious objects demand to know the path of ownership. But the costs of such transparency are dropping by the minute. Anyone who’s tracked FedEx shipments on their phone can envision the possibilities. Smartphone apps are already available that allow consumers to scan product barcodes to check ratings on sustainability or ethical production— for example, GoodGuide— the same technology that allows consumers to check competitors’ prices on Amazon before buying.

These third-party ratings provide proof of concept. It’s not so difficult to imagine a forward-looking brand posting QR codes— the matrix barcodes that can be scanned by cellphones— on its labels allowing potential purchasers to view a video of the factory, locate it on Google maps or check the carbon footprint of shipping methods. Imagine the slogan: "Our clothes are not transparent, but our production process is." This technology, possible now, soon will be affordable enough to be feasible. If consumer sentiment comes to favour ethically-produced goods, then brands will compete on provenance, not just style and quality.

Consider the Prius, which for a hefty premium conveys an owner’s environmental street cred. Notably, every major car company now offers a hybrid to compete with the Prius. It’s inevitable that sustainable clothing brands will emerge, distinguished by transparent supply chains.

Changing the behaviour of brands is not enough, however. Just as brands compete on the store shelves, countries compete to attract manufacturers and jobs. In the garment industry, competition is fierce, including a who's who of low-income countries such as Cambodia, Honduras, Pakistan and Indonesia. Historically, the nature of this competition did not favour scrupulous enforcement of labour standards or the right to organize. Bangladesh is not alone. As long as price competition favours a race to the bottom, producer countries are unlikely to distinguish themselves by labour friendliness.

On the other hand, if brands compete on provenance, then space would open for country of origin to be a distinguishing feature. Cambodia sought to follow such a sweatshop-free strategy, with factories monitored by the International Labour Organization and minimum wages generous by admittedly miserable industry standards. No evidence suggests that consumers flocked to the "Made in Cambodia" label, and Cambodia's approach may not have been widely known to consumers. The country is not without problems, with reports of a ceiling collapse in mid May at a small shoe factory near Phnom Penh. The spotlight is on emerging-economy factories after the Bangladesh tragedy.

There is a surprising precedent in the financial markets for reversing the race to the bottom. Equity investment by foreigners in so-called emerging markets was effectively nonexistent in the early 1980s. After the Mexican debt crisis of 1982, bank loans dried up and low-income countries were forced to seek other sources of capital. Prodded in part by the International Monetary Fund, a large number of these countries pursued reforms aimed at persuading rich-world investors to provide capital to local companies by opening stock markets, reducing capital controls and enacting investor protections.

The challenge was not trivial: Why would US investors buy shares of companies in distant countries? Unlike a polo shirt, the quality of which can be readily evaluated by consumers without knowing a backstory, shares of stock require vetting— in other words, some trust in their provenance. But the potential returns were large, provided that the markets had built-in safeguards and local economic policies adapted. By the late 1990s, emerging-market funds were a staple in the portfolio of most sophisticated investors, and after a generation of reforms these markets are at least as transparent as American stock markets and investor-friendly corporate governance practices are standard.

For consumer products, provenance does not yet matter. For brands and countries to avoid a race to the bottom, a significant proportion of consumers must care. Lack of consumer awareness is perhaps the greatest barrier to reform. Brands and countries might enforce higher labour standards if consumers routinely prefer fair-trade goods or Cambodian-made shirts to those from Bangladesh. There’s certainly reason for scepticism here. Customers shopping at stores selling clothing brands traced to the Bangladesh factory collapse seemed both unaware and largely indifferent when the connection was brought to their attention.

A cultural shift is needed to make consumers cognizant of the impact of their choices. Perhaps as our information environment becomes richer and the provenance of goods becomes as essential to consumers as the corporate governance behind equities is to investors, this will encourage beneficial races to the top.

Gerald F. Davis is the Wilbur K. Pierpont Professor of Management at the Ross School of Business and Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. He has published widely in management, sociology, and finance. His most recent book is Managed by the Markets: How Finance Reshaped America (Oxford U Press 2009), which won the Terry Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Advancement of Management Knowledge in 2010. Rights:Copyright © 2013 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. YaleGlobal Online

'Conspiring To Indulge In Spot Fixing'

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

In April 2013, a secret information was received by Special Cell, Lodhi Colony, Delhi that some members of the Mumbai underworld are involved in match fixing in the ongoing Indian Premier League matches with the active participation of some unidentified conduits / bookies/ players some of who are based in Delhi/NCR. The suspects were kept under watch, during which it was revealed that match fixers and bookies from Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab etc and some players participating in IPL were conspiring to indulge in spot fixing. Accordingly, case FIR No. 20/2013 dated 09.05.2013 U/s 420/120B IPC PS Special Cell, Delhi was registered on 09.05.2013 and investigation taken up.

During investigation it was found that a group of bookies was in touch with various groups of match fixers who were involved in spot fixing in connivance with some team members of Rajasthan Royals namely Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila and Ankit Chavan.

The modus operandi adopted to spot-fix during the progress of matches included asking the bowlers to give pre-decided signals with the help of their accessories like wrist watches, wrist bands, neck chains, towels etc. at the time of starting the over. The bowlers were asked to concede at least a given number of runs in a pre-determined and mutually decided over. After receipt of the signal from the bowler, the bookies would bet heavily and make huge profits.

Some instances of such spot/ over fixings are as follow:

Jaipur:– Pune Warriors v/s Rajasthan Royals (5.5.13): In this match, as already agreed upon, Ajit Chandila gave 14 runs in the second over of his spell. However, he forgot to give the pre-determined signal as a result of which bookies could not bet in this match. This led to a lot of arguments and demand for return of money advanced to the player (Ajit Chandila).
Mohali – Rajasthan Royals v/s King’s XI Punjab (9.5.13): In this match, it was decided that Sreesanth will put a towel on his trousers before bowling the second over of his spell and also give enough time to bookies to indulge in heavy betting. As decided Sreesanth bowled the first over without wearing the towel. In the second over, he put a towel on his trouser and then in order to give bookies time to indulge in betting, he did some warming-up / stretching exercises. In this over he gave 13 runs.
In the Mumbai match on 15/05/2013 between Rajasthan Royals and Mumbai Indians, Ajit Chandila motivated Ankit Chavan to take Rs. 60 lacs for one over and perform as per the direction of bookies. He was asked to give 13 or more runs in the second over of his spell. He gave 2 runs in his first over and in his second over, he was hit for a six on the first ball, two runs on the second ball and another six on the third ball (6+2+6=14), after which he controlled his bowling and gave one more run in the remaining three balls. In all he gave 15 runs in his second over.

A Delhi Police team was camping in Mumbai for making arrests of the players and bookies who were indulging in spot/over fixing. Sreesanth, Ajit Chandila, Ankit Chavan (all players of Rajasthan Royals), Chandresh Patel r/o Andheri East, Mumbai, Amit Kumar r/o Ahmedabad, Manan r/o Ambavati, Ahmedabad, Jiju Janardhan @ Biju r/o Karnnur, Kerala were arrested from Mumbai. The players were staying in Hotel Intercontinental and Trident.

Meanwhile, another team of Special Cell, Delhi Police carried out arrest of bookies stationed in Delhi. Those arrested are- Deepak Kumar s/o Shri Dhani Ram r/o Patiala, Punjab and Rakesh @ Rocky s/o Shri Mohinder Pal Oberoi r/o Rohini, New Delhi and few others whose identities are withheld in the interest of further investigations.

In all 14-persons have been arrested which include four, who were working in the bookie exchange of one of the bookies. Preliminary searches were carried out in Mumbai, Delhi and Gurgaon. Among the items found during the search include 51-mobile phones, 5-laptops, 1-recording machine etc. which have been seized. More arrests of bookies are likely.

Also See: News Updates

A New Chapter

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

The Pakistan Muslim League(N)’s emergence as the single largest party in the just-concluded National Assembly elections in Pakistan, and its leader Nawaz Sharif’s likely return as the country’s new Prime Minister, should be good news for India. But it also comes with some serious concerns.

Sharif has been Pakistan’s Prime Minister twice before and during his campaign for this election; he had been talking about building strong and friendly relations with India. His likely emergence as Pakistan’s new Prime Minister should be comforting news for India. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already congratulated him and invited him to come to India. But the PML (N) does not have a simple majority on its own and, therefore, will have to bring in other parties in a coalition to form the government. This means that on key policies, particularly those pertaining to India, Sharif will have to build a consensus, at least among his coalition partners, before he can pursue them in any meaningful manner.

During his last stint as Pakistan’s Prime Minister, there was a serious attempt at building peace between the two sides. Atal Behari Vajpayee’s “peace bus” initiative to Lahore in February 1999 was matched by Sharif’s enthusiasm. The upbeat mood of the two sides to build strong, friendly ties was reflected in the Lahore Declaration that Sharif and Vajpayee signed. But within a few months the peace initiative was derailed by the Pakistani army’s intrusion in Kargil and soon after Sharif himself was ousted from power in a military coup.

The mastermind of both Kargil and the coup, General Pervez Musharraf, is now facing trial for a couple of murder charges, including the assassination of the country’s former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. It may be too soon to predict how the trial will end. But putting a former military dictator on trial in itself is a significant development in Pakistan. There have been some other significant developments in the country as well. Most notably, it was the previous PPP-led coalition government’s historical achievement of completing a full five-year term in office. Sharif, who was thrown out of the Prime Minister’s chair twice before he could complete his term, would be hopeful that this time around he might get the chance to enjoy being the Prime Minister of his country for five years.

But Sharif’s main electoral plank has been his promise to build a “New Pakistan.” As he assumes the Prime Ministership and heads the new government in Pakistan, he faces a serious challenge in realizing that electoral promise. The country’s economy has been static at 2 per cent or thereabouts for some years now. With a crippling power crisis that shows no signs of improving, Pakistani industry is in a moribund condition. Many Pakistani factory owners have been forced to either shut down their factories or relocate them in other neighbouring countries. This has led to a serious unemployment problem, compounded by the fact that Pakistan also has a huge “youth bulge” with over 65 per cent of its population below the age of 25 years. Many of these youth who join the labour pool each year, have little or no education, are frustrated and often fall easy prey to several religious extremist groups and terrorist organizations that have flourished in the country over the past years.

Sharif is widely seen as a pro-business leader and there are high expectations of him to rejuvenate the country’s economy and its moribund industry. For this, he needs huge doses of investments from outside into Pakistan. But most foreign investors have put their money on hold given the political and terrorist violence that Pakistan has been going through for the past few years.

India can be a natural partner as a source of foreign investment into Pakistan and also as a ready market for Pakistani goods. It can also play a significant role in mitigating the power problem in Pakistan. In the last few years, trade between the two sides had improved significantly. But the numbers are far below their potential because a lot of trade barriers still exist and more importantly, the strains in Indo-Pak relations stand in the way of improving trade and economic ties between the two sides.

Sharif will naturally look at India and would like to give trade and economic ties a fillip to help rejuvenate the Pakistani economy. But for this, his coalition partners will have to be on the same page with him. There could be some among them who might support him enthusiastically in this. However, there could be others, particularly those who have links with religious extremist outfits, who might stand in the way of improving ties with India. More importantly, Pakistan’s policy towards India falls within the domain of security where the Pakistani army establishment has a veto power. A coalition government leaves enough room for the army establishment to use the junior partners to undermine the Prime Minister’s authority and scuttle those policies which do not meet their approval.

Sharif’s relations with the army, particularly when Musharraf was in charge, was testy, which finally led to the coup that toppled his government. A lot would depend, therefore, on how he manages his relations with the GHQ in Rawalpindi in future. The army top brass might not have mediated so far on Musharraf’s behalf. But they would certainly not like to see a former army chief being humiliated by either the Supreme Court or the civilian government. In addition, a lot would depend on how Sharif and the army generals cooperate with each other in dealing with terrorist outfits within the country. A lot would also depend on their cooperation to deal with the emerging scenario in Pakistan’s western front, particularly the Af-Pak border, in view of the 2014 drawdown of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan.

In Sharif’s third term as Pakistan’s Prime Minister, India could play a key role not only becoming a major trade and economic partner for Pakistan. But also to try and use that to bring in the trust deficit that has plagued their bilateral relations. For that to happen all the other players, particularly the Pak army, will have to give Sharif a free hand. Going by Pakistan’s past history that seems like wishful thinking. However, its current trend, also gives room for hope. Pakistan has embarked on a lot of firsts—putting a former military dictator on trial, allowing a democratically elected government to complete its full term in office, opening up more space for an independent judiciary and vibrant media to flourish—things that were unthinkable till a few years back. It could well be that the time has also come for opening a new chapter in Pakistan’s relations with India.

The Agent Of Change?

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Ranjit Sinha finds himself at the helm of the Central Bureau of Investigation in its Golden Jubilee Year. While he is in the news and seems to be enjoying the attention, he also appears conscious of the public image. He could have a few more surprises up his sleeves, sensed Uttam Sengupta following a brief meeting with the man.

The plush office of the Director, CBI, on the 11th floor of the CBI’s headquarters in New Delhi’s CGO complex, is as large as a tennis court. And one had to walk almost the entire distance before approaching the Director’s desk. Ranjit Sinha, a Science graduate from Patna University, sat slumped on his chair, fidgeting with a file that contained the official order of the Supreme Court given the day before.

“Have you seen the order ?” he asked even before one could shake his hand and sit down, before adding, “ We are delighted with it. At last, something good will come of it..” A draft proposal to give more autonomy to the CBI, he informs, had been gathering dust in the Department of Personnel & Training in the PMO since 2010. “ It has now been taken out and a Group of Ministers will hopefully consider it.”

He waves his hand expansively in the air. “ The mind-set is changing. Earlier the government felt we needed only a desk, a chair and a pen-stand; and now you can see all this for yourself.” He had just constituted a team of officers to prepare a memorandum of suggestions that the agency had been asked to submit to the GOM. This is another “ Vineet Narain moment”, he feels, and hopes the Supreme Court would take the Vineet Narain judgment delivered in 1997 forward and ensure more autonomy for the investigating agency.

“ I don’t mind being abused by the court, provided it does some good to the CBI,” he adds. But the court’s order does not censure the investigation, he points out and waves the copy of the order.

I ask him about the controversy surrounding his appointment. BJP leaders Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj had vehemently opposed his appointment and the Delhi Police Commissioner, Neeraj Kumar, had filed a petition to the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) asking why he had been left out of the panel. “ What can I say ? Neeraj is also from Bihar…” He was pained at the vilification campaign at the time, he admits.

“ They even took out the Patna High Court’s orders in the fodder scam,” he says with a wry smile, “ but could not find a single stricture against me.” There were, of course, adverse observations but nothing by way of a stricture by the court, he points out. “ It was all due to a misunderstanding with the then CBI Joint Director, U.N. Biswas,” he suggests and goes on to say, “ But in all fairness, Dr Biswas never wrote any adverse comment in my ACRs ( Annual Confidence Reports) either,” he informs.

Does the CBI regularly consult the Law Minister and the Attorney General ? The agency, the CBI director informs, takes cases to them only when there is a difference or conflict of opinion between the Director, CBI and the Director (Prosecution). So, why did he take the status reports to be filed to the apex court to the law minister in the first place ? He had no choice in the matter , he explained, after both the minister and the Attorney General wanted to see the reports.

Did the agency leak details of the meeting ? Sinha denies the possibility and points out that he had gone to see the minister after 10 am with escort cars, hooters and security. It was certainly not a hush-hush affair and everyone had seen him arrive and leave, he says. But surely the changes made in the reports could have been leaked only by insiders ? Sinha shrugs, suggesting anyone could have done it.

He calls for masala chai for himself while this correspondent settles for green tea. What is the public perception about him, he asks out of the blue. Taken aback, this correspondent blurts out that there are mixed opinions about him. His detractors point out his alleged links with businessmen, even businessmen who are in the business of coal, while his friends and colleagues credit him for being rooted to the ground, being a ‘sound officer’ and upright.

He had clearly heard the criticism before. He smiles, shrugs and says, “ Some of them have been my friends for three decades and none of them is involved in the coal allocation scam, I can tell you,” he volunteers.

The man on the hot seat seems calm and composed and , more importantly, prepared for the unexpected. His eyes, however, give away the restlessness. They keep darting back to the large LCD TV screen on a pillar. He was clearly expecting news. The penny, however, dropped when late on Friday evening, the law minister Ashwani Kumar and the railway minister Pawan Bansal resigned. If the glint in the CBI director’s eyes is any indication, the investigating agency under him could well have a few more surprises up its sleeves.

Soot In The Soul

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

After 25 years, the Sangh parivar’s so-called ‘gateway to the south’ stands firmly shut. Considering the scale of debacle, this isn’t a temporary setback. The BJP has lost two-thirds of the assembly segments from what it won in 2008 and its voteshare has fallen by almost 40 per cent. A facile explanation for the defeat might blame persistent dissidence in the BJP in the past five years, and the two splits last year that led to the formation of B.S. Yediyurappa’s Karnataka Janata Party (KJP) and B. Sriramulu’s Badava Shramika Raitha (BSR) Congress. That explanation has some truth: figures show that between the two of them, the KJP and BSR Congress received more than 12 per cent votes, which is close to BJP’s 14 per cent loss.

However, these numbers alone do not explain the BJP’s troubles. Even before the elections, the party couldn’t find credible candidates in nearly one-fourth of the constituencies. Many candidates lost their deposits. And not one-third of the winners are core Sangh parivar activists. Does this defeat then signify the failure of the grand Sangh parivar experiment in Karnataka?

Please note: Despite the BJP’s intentions, the great Karnataka experiment was anything but a Hindutva one. True, the BJP depended on its core urban Hindu support, but its success from 2004 onward was the result of a social coalition of Lingayats, several neglected OBC groups and some Dalit groups. However, the social coalition acquired potency only in association with the money power from mining. Gali Janardhana Reddy and his Bellary associates injected huge amounts of money in the Bellary area during the 2004 assembly elections. By 2008, the practice was widespread, with real estate and mining money influencing election outcomes. Sriramulu was an example of the new BJP leader’s profile: caste appeal plus money power. In fact, it was new leaders like him who dominated the BJP governments in Karnataka, much to the chagrin of core Sangh types. Even when practised, the Sangh parivar’s aggressive stance against the minorities and women backfired spectacularly, as the evidence from coastal Karnataka amply demonstrates.

In 2012, the BJP’s social coalition fell apart and the mining lobby found itself severely constrained through Supreme Court interventions. As splits occurred, the BJP continued to offer delusional arguments claiming that the corrupt elements have left, and the newly cleansed party would now follow Modi’s Gujarat model. However, with a five years’ governance record to examine, the people of Karnataka haven’t bought that claim. Despite some achievements like the Bangalore Metro and Sakala (right to guaranteed services), the BJP in Karnataka didn’t have a development narrative like Modi did. Its governance seemed limited to welfare programmes (mostly distributing cash and subsidies to caste groups and mathas) and politically symbolic measures like having a separate agricultural budget. Far more damaging was the behaviour of its leaders. The corruption cases that came to light were trouble enough. But facing accusations of favouring their own family members, BJP leaders, including Yediyurappa, asked if the children of politicians shouldn’t run business. Some BJP members were embroiled in sex scandals; some others were caught watching porn clips in the assembly. The voters were not amused.

Now, the challenge for the BJP is to build a new social coalition. That will still revolve around Lingayats, and a combination of backward castes in addition to its core urban Hindu base. However, the BJP will have to ensure that such an expansion is grounded in some political morality. It will also have to ensure that the cohesiveness of the party doesn’t come from only money and the desire for power. This will become evident if they pay attention to one aspect of the Congress victory: the drama over ticket distribution may have dominated the media narrative, but in the end, the winners have turned out to be veteran administrators with relatively clean images. The BJP list sorely lacked such figures.

Another point: the party’s rebuilding plans will have to take on a local flavour. Even for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the BJP cannot simply hope to adopt a national strategy, especially one that depends on Hindutva or on Modi’s Gujarat model. Even Modi will admit the importance of the social coalition he has built for his success. In any case, a political argument based on good governance is effective only after people have experienced such governance. Polarising figures like Modi can only hope to raise the enthusiasm of the party core. If the BJP wants to expand its social base, it will have to make a political argument—one that is a combination of local and national factors.

(The writer teaches history at the Karnataka State Open University.)

Power To The People

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

'Safety first and power later' is a fact that has been reinforced by the Supreme Court when giving a green signal to the continuation of the controversial Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu where two Russian-made 1000 MW nuclear reactors are under construction that are already delayed by over 5 years. The verdict means more power for the people of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Puducherry where power cuts are common.

This also comes as big morale booster for the Indian nuclear establishment which was off-late undoubtedly very jittery, worried that the apex court may put a moratorium on the Kudankulam start-up.

But some of that got dented when last month the Indian nuclear watchdog, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, for the first-time admitted that it had found four valves that were 'deficient' at Kudankulam; these have since been replaced. The anti-nuclear protestors have already rejected the SC judgement suggesting it is 'unjust' and say they will continue the fight in the people's court.

The verdict by the apex court comes as a 'great relief' to Ratan Kumar Sinha Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission who said: 'I humbly welcome the judgement of the court, it should lay to rest all perceived doubts about the Kudankulam atomic reactor. The reactor is at an advanced stage of commissioning and criticality or the start of the nuclear chain reaction in the plant should happen soon.' Today, 99.66 per cent of all physical work at the first unit of the 1000 MW Russian technology is complete and could be operationalised in weeks and the second unit could come online before the end of the year, where 93% work is complete. According to the Department of Atomic Energy, 15 of the 17 additional safety steps that the court was deliberating upon have already been complied with.

India has big plans for nuclear energy. There are both opportunities for countries to sell nuclear technology and material to India and for smaller countries to buy reactor technology from India. India, being a founding member of the global nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, has had a 'spotless proliferation' record, so doing business with India is opportune in the 21st century.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has always strongly batted for use of nuclear energy, speaking at the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kolkata, West Bengal, Singh had said: 'I am convinced that nuclear energy will play an important role in our quest for a clean and environmentally friendly energy mix as a major locomotive to fuel our development processes.'

So after this verdict, and in a global landmark, probably the world's safest nuclear reactor at Kudankulam, that Indian experts say can never face a Fukushima type of disaster, since it can be cooled simply by air flow and gravity in times of emergency, will finally be commissioned. The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited asserts that Kudankulam will be the world's first 'generation 3 plus' nuclear reactor, suggesting it is today the safest in the world.

India today has 20 operating nuclear power plants, all owned by the government, which generate about 4780 MW of power and in addition runs about half a dozen research reactors. The country has accumulated, according to the government, about 360 reactor years of experience and has an 'impeccable [safety] record.' Singh, a known votary of nuclear power, had staked the future of his own government in 2008 in favour of the landmark Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement that brought India back into the fold of global nuclear commerce. India now wants to ramp up its nuclear capacity to 63,000 MW by 2032, by importing reactors from France, Russia and USA.

India's nuclear energy program has been unique as it relies mostly on home grown technology and today the Department of Atomic Energy makes its own 700 MW Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors, while a smaller 220 MW reactor is being offered for export to countries who may seek the technology.

Nature unfortunately has been unkind to India as it is not well endowed with uranium and if all the resources are used a 10,000 MW nuclear program can be sustained only for 40 years. But on the other hand, since the Indian soils are rich in thorium, a globally unique nuclear energy development pathway called the three-stage nuclear grand plan has been put in place by the country.

The idea is to install small reactors that use natural uranium to generate power, the waste that emerges from this can then be used as fuel in so called 'fast breeder reactors.' And, finally, a completely new kind of reactor, the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor, a plant that feeds on the abundant thorium reserves, could generate enough electricity to power the nation for 250 years, fulfilling India's quest for energy independence.

India had been under international sanctions ever since it exploded a nuclear device in 1974, which became stifling in 1998 after India tested nuclear weapons at Pokharan, in the deserts of Rajasthan. The sanctions were formally lifted in 2008, when the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the International Atomic Energy Agency, suitably amended their rules to accommodate India into the nuclear commerce club in spite of the fact that India has still not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Impeccable behaviour was applauded and an exception made for India so that India's desire to provide clean carbon free energy to its vast 1.2 billion population could be satiated.

Today, India is ready to import 40,000 MW of installed capacity of nuclear reactors of which 20,000 MW may come from two American suppliers, General Electric and Westinghouse; another 10,000 MW may come from Russians and the rest 10,000 MW may be supplied by the French. Negotiations are at an advanced stage, efforts are on to find suitable solutions on how to accommodate the requirements of a people-centric nuclear liability regime that the Indian Parliament enacted recently.

In the last 2-3 years, India has been facing a new wave of protests, almost unheard off against the nuclear reactors. Take Jaitapur in western India, where imported French reactors are to be placed or the most consistent protests as seen at Kudankulam on the southern tip of India, where Russian made light water reactors are almost ready to be commissioned. 'Not in my back yard' was an issue that was almost unheard of in India, but in the 21st century, as people become more and more aware, questions will be asked, as they indeed are being asked, on the relevance and need for nuclear energy and they will have to be answered as there is a new groundswell of people's opinion certainly not charitable to the nuclear industry.

Nuclear power is no longer a 'holy cow' that the Indian prime minister's office protected under its fold. Such was the ignorance and arrogance of the plant engineers at the 1000 MW Kudankulam nuclear plant, that within weeks of the Fukushima disaster they tested the main pressure relief valve at the plant, in the middle of the night, without having had the basic courtesy of informing the locals of the test. The steam released from the plant made such a noise that it could be heard tens of kilometres away, not surprisingly the locals panicked and then rallied around to form a robust but small anti-nuclear movement. Later the then Indian nuclear chief Dr Srikumar Banerjee confessed and apologized to the people, but the seed of suspicion was sown. The only Indian nuclear utility the government owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited also acknowledged that they had failed in the out-reach program. Wining hearts and minds is critical if nuclear power has to play a big role in India's quest for energy independence.

If all goes as per plans, the world's single largest nuclear power park may come up at Jaitapur, a coastal site south of Mumbai where AREVA the French nuclear giant is getting ready to install 9900 MW of atomic reactors.

India is one of the few of a handful of countries that has end to end capabilities from mining of uranium, enrichment, using it in atomic power plants and then also has the capability to re-process the waste so that every drop of energy is squeezed out from the scarce uranium resource. Since the country believes that plutonium the so called 'long lived dirty by-product' of a nuclear program is also a rich source of energy, suitable highly modern reactors are being indigenously designed to harness all the energy. The world's only 500 MW Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor is at an advanced stage of construction at Kalpakkam south of Chennai, a plant that will generate more fuel than it consumes.

Ratan Kumar Sinha, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Mumbai, India's highest decision making body on matters nuclear, says: 'India is deeply committed to increasing the role of nuclear energy while ensuring full safety of its citizens'.

Nuclear energy is like having a tiger by its tail, it is easy to get into and once countries install reactors, these facilities need to be nurtured for the working lives of at least 40-60 years, but beyond that once the plants have been decommissioned they need to be maintained and hence the challenge of constructive, effective, truthful communication would span many generations.

Pallava Bagla is Science Editor for New Delhi Television and Correspondent for SCIENCE magazine. Views expressed are personal. He can be reached at Pallava.bagla AT gmail DOT com

The Frenzy Mongers

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Ajmal Kasab was hanged in November last year, and Afzal Guru in February this year. Identifying Kasab as a Pakistani national, India offered his remains to Pakistan. Kasab’s family might have been inclined to accept them for funerary rites. But Pakistan turned down what was definitely a civilised gesture on part of India. In dealing with Guru’s family, however, India hasn’t behaved in as civilised a manner as it did after Kasab’s execution. His family members wanted to have the body, but it turns out they didn’t get to hear of his execution before it was over. He was buried right in Tihar jail, where he had been hanged. Have you wondered what the reasons might be?

Incidentally, although both the hangings were related to Pakistan in one way or the other, they did not attract much attention in Pakistan, whether at the government or at the public level. (Even the attack on Sanaullah, a Pakistani prisoner in a Jammu jail, did not attract much notice, although the Foreign Office, of course, was forced to comment on it.) Newspapers only single-columned the hangings on their back pages. But the response to the hangings in India was in complete contrast: leaders and workers of some political parties cheered on hearing of the executions; some TV clips showed them thrusting sweets into each other’s mouths in celebration. Another event which is resulting in much hyperventilation in India is the death of Sarabjit Singh in a Pakistani prison: he was done to death by fellow inmates on death row, hardly the sort to worry about being brought to justice, as the Indian prime minister has demanded. Of course, there’s no excuse for any prisoner being killed by fellow prisoners. Sarabjit’s jailors are as responsible for his death as are Sanaullah’s for the attack on him. But such laxity is part of life in both India and Pakistan, which cannot and should not go to war over such slackness. I can also understand and appreciate the reactions of Sarabjit’s family, for his wife lived virtually like a widow for more than two decades and his daughters hardly saw him. And it’s the Indian government’s job to protest, as an Indian inmate has been killed in cold blood in a Pakistani jail. But what’s the Indian media getting so much into a tizzy about? For Sarabjit was convicted for being involved in terrorism, just like Kasab. His case was reviewed twice by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The brave lawyer who was following his case wept like a child when he met Sarabjit’s sister, who was allowed into Pakistan when he was critical. I wonder if any Indian lawyer would have been so bold in Kasab’s defence. Leave alone Kasab’s case, even Guru was convicted chiefly due to bad legal representation.

People regarding Sarabjit as a hero fail to consider certain essential points. Sarabjit was an Indian, but involved in terrorism in Pakistan. I thus do not see any difference between him and Kasab. The similarity ends in that one was killed unofficially and the other officially.

I can understand that India is angry about the 26/11 attack on Mumbai. It goes to the UPA government’s credit that it acted in a mature fashion, unlike the NDA government, which, following the 2001 Parliament attack, piled troops upon the border. I cannot say relations have progressed a great deal since then, but at least we communicate with each other and the borders remain open.

In February 2007, the Samjauta Express was bombed by Hindu fundamentalists near Panipat and 68 Pakistanis were killed. There are still no convictions. Pakistan did not line up troops on the border despite having a general at the helm of affairs in the country and the media and the public did not go berserk talking about teaching India a lesson.

Terrorism is a universal problem today; Pakistan is one of the worst sufferers. The terrorists who bombed the underground trains in London were Pakistanis. The UK government did not hold Pakistan responsible. The terrorists of 9/11 were Saudi nationals. The US did not behave with Saudi Arabia the way some Indians would like India to behave with Pakistan.

We are neighbours and there’s no reason we shouldn’t also communicate about these issues. Not in five star hotels, where retired bureaucrats are deployed in largely meaningless ‘Track II’ diplomacy but between officials with the power to make decisions. As for the Indian media, particularly the electronic media, it’s useless to request it to refrain from fanning hatred. However, I’m glad there are sane voices—like that of Arundhati Roy—to courageously see sanity and balance in the face of this tsunami of hatred. The itch to “teach Pakistan a lesson” may get some TRPs, but won’t take the two nations anywhere ahead.

(Jillani is an advocate in the Pakistan Supreme Court)

Brazen Impunity

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Nearly three decades after India saw one of its worst communal pogroms in 1984, where more than 3000 Sikhs were killed in Delhi alone, questions of accountability for the alleged rioters have surfaced again. The infamous words of Rajiv Gandhi, “When a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little”, were proof enough of the complicity of the state institutions in carrying out the pogrom. A Sessions Court in Delhi has refused to accept the closure report filed by the CBI in a case of killing three persons at North Delhi Gurudwara Pulbangash on November 1, 1984 in which Congress leader Jagdish Tytler had been implicated as an accused. This reopening of the trial against Tytler and thus a subsequent re-examination of witnesses may well result in a conviction for his participation in the anti-Sikh riots and thus bring some sense of justice. But in a disappointing turn of events, another court in Delhi has acquitted the Congress leader Sajjan Kumar in the 1984 pogrom while holding the other five accused to be responsible for murder and rioting. The anger of the survivors who have been pursuing the cases courageously against Kumar was visible in their interviews to the TV channels when they said that with the acquittal of Sajjan Kumar they had lost faith in the Indian judiciary.

The survivors may not be satisfied by this delayed and little movement towards closure but if the law is finally able to catch up with these two senior Congress leaders, it would certainly be a good beginning. The acquittal of Sajjan Kumar, however, points to the lack of accountability for even serious cases of communal violence, and the unacknowledged struggle of the victim families for justice. Over the years, if accountability for communal " riots" is examined, it becomes evident that punishment for perpetrators of communal violence has been rare. The communal “riots” have always been conducted with a nefarious political agenda where the trigger pullers always enjoy a certain amount of patronage and thus act without the fear of law. In the few cases where perpetrators have been punished, it has mostly been because of the tireless struggle of the victims and their families sometimes supported by public-spirited lawyers and individuals. The fixing of responsibility on the officials and their political managers and holding them accountable for allowing a communal “riot” would alone help prevent a recurrence of such gruesome acts.

During the decade of 1980s, India saw a resurgence of communal and right wing forces, and witnessed several “riots” against the minorities. In fact, there were three major notorious communal carnages perpetuated during that decade: 1983 Nellie massacre, 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom and the 1989 massacre against the Muslims in Bhagalpur, Bihar. Many years later, these sites of communal carnage have seen only a handful of accused being punished. Stories of survivor families of the 1984 anti- Sikh pogrom, and 1989 Bhagalpur massacre highlight the generational impact of the communal violence, as families continue to struggle in various ways even today.

In 1989, over 1000 Muslims were killed in Bhagalpur in Bihar and cabbage grown over their mass grave in order to hide it. The three member Commission of Inquiry that was formed by the then Bihar government to investigate the Bhagalpur riots indicted the then SP of Bhagalpur, K.S. Dwivedi. This official Commission didn’t mince any words and its conclusion was unambiguous. “We would hold Dwivedi, the then superintendent of police, Bhagalpur, wholly responsible for whatever happened before 24 October 1989, on 24th itself and [after the] 24th. His communal bias was fully demonstrated not only by his manner of arresting the Muslims and by not extending them adequate help to protect them,” the report submitted by the Commission of Inquiry said. Yet, Dwivedi has faced no punishment for his actions and remains above the law. Not only has he been recently promoted to the rank of Additional Director General of Police in Bihar but also received the President’s medal for distinguished services in August 2012. What sense of justice would the survivors of communal riots perceive? And more importantly, the impunity enjoyed by Dwivedi comes as a dangerous message to his younger colleagues in the law enforcement agencies.

In fact, this lack of accountability for previous episodes of communal massacres has contributed greatly to repeated instances of severe communal violence. Unless persons and public officials responsible for rioting and killing are punished, it is naïve to assume that there will ever be peace or reconciliation between these communities. Peace is based on the concept of justice, and for most part in India, persons responsible for communal violence are never brought to justice. Also, the issue of institutional reform of the police, which again has been suggested by successive Commissions of Inquiry has not received any attention, and these forces remain unreformed and often communal.

These theories are neither new nor groundbreaking but there is simply no political will to confront the issue of communal violence. More recently, Assam typifies this impunity that fuels cycles of ethnic and communal violence. This is not the first time that districts of Assam have witnessed such serious communal violence. In Nellie, more than 3000 Muslims were massacred in communal violence in 1983. At the time, when all attempts of the then Assam government to cover up the massacre had failed, they were forced to form the Tewary Commission in July 1983 to investigate the communal "riots". Though Tewary Commission submitted its report, it was never tabled before the Assembly or made officially public. Rather than implementing the recommendations of this Commission, successive governments in Guwahati didn’t even place the findings in public domain for a debate. Although the Assam Accord did not pardon heinous crimes, the district courts and administrative machinery interpreted it as a blanket amnesty for all crimes committed during the Assam Agitation, and consequently individuals responsible for the gruesome Nellie massacre were also released. If the perpetrators of the Nellie massacre of 1983 had not received the defacto amnesty, in the garb of the Assam Accord in 1985, and instead were punished for their crimes, it would definitely have been a deterrent for any future violence.

Likewise, the difficult struggle to bring the perpetrators of 2002 communal carnage in Gujarat to justice is still underway and unless the perpetrators, including those at the highest levels, are tried, justice will be elusive for the survivors. The alleged role and responsibility of the Chief Minister Narendra Modi has been documented in various reports and affidavits submitted but until now he has escaped any legal liability for his actions.

Why is it that despite irrefutable evidence that these communal riots continue to tear apart the fabric of the Indian society, measures are not taken to contain these situations of violence and punish perpetrators of this violence? Why hasn’t a Communal Violence Bill that would prevent acts of communal violence, as well as hold to account public officials and others who failed to stop these massacres, been yet legislated? The Communal Violence Bill, it is hoped, would provide a framework for preventing and prosecuting mass crimes when they happen. What investigations have shown is that if the perpetrators are influential political leaders then the natural tendency has been to subvert any process of justice. Unless we provide justice and reparations for communal violence in India, it would continue unabated, as we saw in Assam last year.

Until influential individuals like Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar, Narendra Modi and K.S. Dwivedi are brought to justice, we will remain a society that fails to consistently uphold the rule of law for serious crimes and these episodes of violence will continue to recur. The only way the communal " riots" can be prevented is to make them both legally and politically untenable. This is only possible if these cases are taken to their logical conclusion. There are no shortcuts. The wounds of the survivors may heal with time but forgetting and moving on without justice would never help, it would only encourage a recurrence.

Warisha Farasat, a lawyer, is with the Centre for Equity Studies working on issues of mass crimes and accountability