I am stunned to see that several people in the Indian fashion industry have seemed to defend designer Anand Jon following his conviction on 1 count of rape and 15 counts of sexual assault by a US court. The difficulty of obtaining a conviction in rape cases--especially "acquaintance rape" such as these attacks--is notorious. There are huge gray areas where consent is concerned that trip up jurors, and a significant subconscious prejudice remains against women who file rape charges. For that reason, convictions generally require a massive preponderance of evidence and/or the testimony of more than one victim.
In some regards, this case was easier to prosecute because it included charges of statutory rape--i.e. having sex, whether consensual or not, with a girl or boy who has not yet reached age 18. Some quail at calling this child molestation--for what magic transformation occurs between 17 and 18--but the line must be drawn somewhere and in Jon's case one of the victims was just 14.
However, what is more striking than that is the dubious argument that this is some kind of conspiracy against Jon by models disgruntled because he did not use them in his shows after he slept with them. Filing a rape or sexual assault case in the US, as in India, is no picnic. The victims are subjected to unpleasant scrutiny of all kinds, the rumor mill begins circulating (as is clear by this conspiracy theory) and they are forced to divulge details about a traumatizing and humiliating experience. That seven different girls came forward to accuse Jon and testify against him is--if not completely damning for those of us who weren't in the courtroom to hear the evidence--certainly grounds for a strong assumption that justice has been served.
Several myths lie at the heart of the Indian disbelief in Jon's conviction--that a handsome man cannot be a rapist because he is capable of finding consenting sex partners; that nice, clean, wealthy men are not rapists; and that rape without violence is not rape.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
state elections...
An interesting interview with Mahesh Rangarajan, a Delhi University political analyst, on the upcoming state elections in Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Rajasthan:
JO: What do you think the BJP's chances are in the upcoming elections?
MR: At this moment I would say that they can bank on substantial dissatisfaction with the union government on the question of inflation, which is very important in the states going to polls. Most of these are states with very large numbers of poor people. Inflation also happens to bite the middle class in a significant way. Second, I do think they gain from the redistricting. The way the boundaries of the seats have been redrawn increases the weightage of the towns and urban seats, and in the most recent elections in most of these states were as long ago as 2004, and with the exception of Delhi in the northern states they did well—you know Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh. So I think they've got a bit of an edge.
JO: Assuming they do well, does that carry over into next year's general election?
I really don't think it does carry over, and I think the reason is very specific. Both in 2003 and 1998 the party which did well in precisely these elections triggered early general elections; in '98 the Congress did well in most of these states and it precipitated a crisis which led to the downfall of the Vajpayee government. In 2003, Vajpayee read the results in a certain way—at least the party read the results in a certain way; we have reason to believe he was not so clear—and you know in both of these cases we saw that the advantage in these states did not carry over into the general elections. There are two reasons. These states are fairly atypical of vast regions of India, because primarily both the two big parties are the contenders for power. This is not true in the entire Gangetic basin, which is where most Indians live, and it's not true in significant parts of South India, like Andhra and Tamil Nadu. The other thing is that up to now these states have not had a strong third force. Not in the last two decades at least. In the absence of a third force, a regional party, a strong lower caste or marginal caste party, the results are very skewed. So I'm not sure they are that typical of the country.
Having said that, a good performance in this election will definitely give an enormous morale boosting shot to whoever does win. They will be raring to go for the general election. In that sense it's very important. It's important for party morale and the mood in the leadership, perhaps less so as an indicator of where the country is going.
JO: So it kind of helps you keep your party members in line and maybe in forming alliances?
MR: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think to both these parties these are among the very few states – there are 6 to 8 states depending on how you count them – where the fight is between these two. In the rest of India, either neither is in contention or only one is in contention or a major regional force is in contention in a very important way. So of course it helps them in terms of their bargaining power and standing. I also think it's an important election because it's the first election since this economic crisis has struck—the slowdown, as opposed to food price inflation. We will have some sense, particularly in Rajasthan, which has a small but significant industrial base, so is the slowdown really biting, particularly in the towns, export-oriented units? Is globalization hurting? If you look at Madhya Pradesh, one of the major products of Madhya Pradesh is soybeans. Now soybean prices have crashed. I think – I don't recall the figure, you can check it – I think it went from 43 to 26 or something like that. It's a huge crash and it happened after the sowing. Now farmers are set to take a huge harvest in, and they're not sure what to do, because even if they sell all of it it will be at a very substantial loss. This of course takes us to the next question: Who are they going to blame for their plight? Will it be the state government or will it be the center?
JO: Or will they understand that the government has no control over that [issue]?
MR: Even if the government has no control, the government can definitely do something. Government has eased credit for a lot of big industries, and it has done it very fast. I guess in the current situation nobody can complain about that. But there are other sections [of society] that are going to say, 'Why him and not me?'
JO: Right.
MR: Of course, of these states Delhi is also very important. It's a small state, and it's a very pampered Union Territory with lots of federal funds and so forth. But I still think it's important. The Congress has ruled Delhi for 10 years, which believe me none of us ever thought was possible. This is a natural BJP city – at least the city of the '60s and '70s, which was the time that Advani and Vajpayee really rose to their present stature. So I think for the BJP taking Delhi back is very, very important. It is not to be measured in terms of numbers. It's symbolically of enormous significance to them, and they've put a lot into the battle for Delhi.
JO: So that would again be sort of a moral victory, or would it have any other....
MR: ...Definitely! No, it has. You see, people don't realize it, but Delhi's per capita income over the last decade has outstripped Mumbai's for the first time in history. It's got a huge middle class, it's got an incredibly large consumer base. It's incidentally also got a very large number of poor people in the unorganized sector. So it might give you a sign of where urban India is going. And because it is 14 million people, and there are people in Delhi drawn from virutally all the parts of India—I'm a South Indian; people don't know this but there are 2 million Southerners in Delhi; it's a huge number—so I wouldn't say it's a microcosm but it is a city of some significance to them. Also, whoever takes Delhi will preside over the Commonwealth Games, and you know, for politicians those things do matter. I think it's a very important election also because it's the first after these recent bomb blasts.
JO: Apart from the bomb blasts – there have been bomb blasts all over – but also this linking of Hindu extremists to terrorism. What impact do you think that will have?
MR: Who knows? It could go either way. One way it could be is that there's a deep abhorrence of these groups, and these are fringe groups but some of them have affiliations with elements within the BJP. And some elements of the BJP—particularly their party president who's gone out of his way to defend these people.
JO: So in one way it may turn into a sort of referendum on that issue [of Hindu extremism]...
MR: They're trying very hard to make it that. I think the battle plan from the BJP point of view is that they're going to argue that these people are being framed. And they're being framed only because they're Hindu. And I think that is already servicing as a very important plank. We have to see what the people think. AT this point it's very difficult to gage whether that argument is finding resonance with the people or not.
JO: What do you think it would mean if it does find resonance with the people?
MR: Look, I think that this politics of Hindu pride or Hindu hurt—these are their terms, not mine—will never go away. It will always be there. But you know, it ebbs and flows, and we've been through a period in which it was ebbing, so maybe the ebb is over and it's started flowing. I think one of their problems – and this is something that they're all willing to admit – is that they've not been able to find a symbol with the enormous potential that the Ram symbol had in the '90s, or the Kargil war had at the end of the '90s. In the beginning of the '90s they had Ram, which of course symbolizes their ideology and politics very clearly, and there happens to be a very important disputed spot as well. And in the late '90s with Kargil it was of course a defense of national territory, so it became a sort of nationalism, war, and all that. Now, look at the picture almost 10 years on. Where is the symbol? They tried Ram Sethu. It didn't work. Or it doesn't seem to have worked. They tried the Jammu issue, and the government gave way. They're a movement in search of a rallying point and a symbol. Will the Sadhvi who has been subject to interrogation by the police, or the serving officer in the army, or the former [head of] the Bhonsla Military School—will these people become the rallying symbol? Frankly, I don't know. But I'm not so sure. It will help rally their own people, that it will definitely do. The various wings of the parivar—and it's a vast organization—will rally together. They rally together when they feel they are being attacked.
The problem for this government – I'm talking about the Congress – is that it doesn't have anyone who does the political part of it. Let me assume that there is something against these people, the sadhvi, whatever. Whether there is or not the courts will decide. But politically, I would have expected the Congress to go on a huge offensive, and say, you know, that that party [the BJP] created the atmosphere, the climate, where this could happen. I'm very struck because ten years ago, in her first election meeting in Ram Lila Maidan, Ms. Sonia Gandhi actually began by saying that the BJP is a party which espouses the same ideas which inspired the man who was the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. She was very careful. She didn't say he was a member of the RSS—he was not at the time—but she said that he believed in the same school of thought. That sends a signal that the Congress is willing to take the battle into their camp. The minute you say that, they will react and say he was not one of us. He was not a member, he left the RSS, he was in the Mahasaba, and he left the Mahasaba. We have nothing to do with him... You know, they go on the defensive. But that's not happening.
The Congress's core issue is very, very serious. I see these six elections – if you include Jammu & Kashmir and Mizoram.... If you ask me, see, the Congress is facing a score of 0-8. They have lost eight state elections in a row. Lost means they didn't come to power. IN some cases they were in power, in some cases they hoped to come to power, in some cases they couldn't have come to power but they could have bettered their record, let's say in UP, but they didn't. It's a deep crisis within the party. The Congress is a party that likes to win. They rally around the members of the Gandhi-Nehru family because those people know how to win. They're not born to rule. They rule because they rally the people and the rank and file of the party are convinced that they can reach out to the people, that they have their finger on the pulse, that they understand the mood of the times and they set the agenda. You have to give Sonia Gandhi the credit that it 2004, she stuck it out and kept saying that India Shining won't work. You know, if you read Ed Luce's book, she told Ed Luce in a very understated way, “I don't know about the papers but when I go out into the countryside and talk to people, they don't think things are that good, and my party's assessment is that we're going to do much better than all of you think.” She was right.
But now, five years on, is this a party – her, the PM – have they actually lost touch with the popular mood? Have they lost the ability to reach out? It often happens. Being in power always carries that risk. And more particularly, the person who is supposed to take charge, because we all know who he is [I.e. Rahul Gandhi] what has he actually done to energize this party? You know, our state elections are like national elections if you look at the numbers. They're so immense! It's organizationally a great challenge. And I would have expected him by this time to be out [campaigning]. Not in St. Stephen's College—it was like a walkabout by a rock star, which was great. But is he reaching out beyond that circle? I don't know. I would expect Rahul Gandhi to take the battle into the RSS camp on the bombs, saying you know my grandmother died, my father died, I'm opposed to the cult of violence, whatever. He's not doing that. Why? I'd expect him to go out and say we're facing a major economic crisis, but you know we're going to have the second-fastest growing economy in the world because of the outstanding leadership of our economist prime minister, and I am standing with him. He is going to run the government but my mother and I are going to give him all the support he wants. Will you help me? He's not saying that. What is he saying? What's the message? There's none.
JO: Yes, there's a kind of silence, or a kind of reactive stance....
MR: No, no. There's something much more serious going on. I think their machine is in tatters. I think it's worse today than it was five years ago, strange as it may sound. You look at each of the states—this state [Delhi] is different, because Sheila Dikshit is an incredibly capable leader; I think she's going to lose the elections, but that's a completely different matter. After ten years, we expect anybody to lose the election. But look at the other states. There's no clarity of leadership. There's very little clarity of the social profile [I.e. the different castes and communities that the party will woo]. The party is being run by remote control by general secretaries in Delhi. Obvious natural leaders who emerged from these states have not been put back in charge – Digvijay Singh, Ashok Gehlot-- I don't know. I actually think this party.... Somewhere in their heart of hearts the fight has gone out of them, which is bizarre, because the Congress normally fights incredibly hard.
JO: In the Gujarat election, there was that question about do we want to go down that road of criticizing the BJP for the riots because in a way it serves up the ball for them to bring back Hindutva. So they avoided mentioning that with Modi until the end, when after being criticized by the press Sonia Gandhi brought it up....
MR: ...and the way that she brought it up actually played right into his hands.
JO: Do you think that something like that is going on now?
MR: I don't know. My reading of Gujarat was that they were never in the race. He [Modi] fought the election in a completely new way. He marginalized his own party. He marginalized all the front organizations. He rendered them toothless. He fought effectively. He was the candidate in all the 182 constituencies, which is something that is very new for the BJP. The BJP is essentially a cadre driven party with an ideology—like the old Commie parties or the Nazi party or whatever. But he didn't fight it like that. He fought it as The Leader. And the way he did it, you have to give him credit organizationally. He used two groups very interestingly. One was the elected leaders of the panchayats. The other was the cooperatives. Nobody has realized this out here [in Delhi]. The key organizers were the leaders of the panchayats and the cooperatives—all out of personal loyalty to him. And he fought the elections – Gujarati asmita pride was there, and Gujarati asmita has a Hindu color to it, no doubt. But the other dimension is in the economy. It's not the big projects – it's not the petrochemical factories and fertilizers or IT—it was hard economic achievements. Jobs in terms of industrialization of the small towns. The huge transformation of agriculture, particularly cotton, but also groundnut. SO it's a very unusual state where agricultural growth and the growth of the manufacturing sector played to the advantage of the government. Hindu society is multi layered – at the top there is the Brahmins and then there are the dominant landed classes in Gujarat, the Patels – he reached out below both of these. IF you look at the BJP in Gujarat, he has brought in the backwards and the tribals in a big way. And, it has to be very clear that he has done this completely unrepentant about his past [association with the 2002 Ahmedabad riots]. That was not the central point this time, because I've traveled a little in rural Gujarat, and it was a little disconcerting how matter of fact people were about what happened, but that was not the main driving force this time.
I don't think the Congress was ever in the fight in Gujarat. At times they looked like a pale copy of the BJP. I'm forgetting the name [but] in Surat, the person who fought for the Congress—Rahul Gandhi campaigned in his constituency—was one of the major perpetrators and accused in the Surat riots of 1993. Horrific riots. They're were among the most horrific riots in this country's history. There were at least 8 people who were RSS / BJP people who went over to the Congress and were given tickets. This may not be known to you, but Muslims knew it. And I'll give you a statistic. Gujarat is around 9 percent Muslim and they're 182 seats, so you should have around 16 Muslim candidates. The last time Congress won the elections it was 1985. It had 26 Muslim candidates of whom 18 won. This time it had six. It had eight people who had been accused in riots who were from the BJP / RSS. They were far more communal than Narendra Modi had been in public. So I think the Congress doesn't know what to do. On the one hand it's willing to do anything to get elected, including being a pale copy of the BJP and Modi. On the reverse, as you rightly say, they suddenly say Oh we're very secular and we're going to attack them. People have seen through this. And I think it's a very serious issue for the Congress. IF you look at the mood of the minorities today—not only Muslims but also Christians—the feeling is that this union government is incapable of protecting us. That is very serious.
JO: So they're getting it from both sides, being accused by the BJP of being soft on terror, and by the minorities of failing to protect them?
MR: They're getting it on both sides. Yes, yes, yes. It's very interesting. I'll give you an example. In '47-'48 when the riots were very bad in this city, Jawaharlal Nehru was fighting for control. I'm forgetting the name of his officer but I think it was Kanungo who was in the police; he told him “Look, I want the Walled City quiet.” Kanungo drove to Jama Masjid and he arrested six of the Hindu Mahasaba people and two of the Akadis (?), and he paraded them in an open jeep for three hours. He manacled them in handcuffs, and he announced, “If anybody does anything, I will take care of these men.” And things died down. There's a reason: Nobody questioned Jawaharlal Nehru's sincerity. You may have disagreed with him; you may have called him a Muslim lover; but you wouldn't have questioned either his personal courage or his integrity. Something has happened to this government.
I think this Batla House shootout in Delhi was a very serious turning point. I do not know who those guys were. I do not know if the cops fired first. I have no idea. But the mood among educated Muslims is that the police are trigger happy. It's a very serious issue. What every one of them says is something very interesting. They say, “You know, in 1993 there was the bomb blasts in Mumbai, which were horrific, and there were the [anti-Muslim] riots [that followed]. 80 percent of the bomb blast accused have been convicted. Less than 1 percent of those accused have even been tried in the case of the riots. And there's been a Congress government in Mumbai since 1999 and a Congress government in the center since 2004. You know, I feel this government doesn't realize what thin ice it's skating on. Look, with the Hindu middle classes, the party's over. These are groups who move really fast. They were toasting Manmohan Singh in 2004. That's all over. Now they're looking at the housing loan rate, which was at seven and now it's at 11 percent; they're going to look at inflation; they're going to look at the stock market; they're going to look at the crisis in housing—it's completely collapsing; and of course they're going to listen to the BJP guys saying you're under threat, somebody's going to bomb you and these guys are not protecting you, they're letting people walk free. They [the Congress] have to find their own voice, and they'd better do something soon. They better do it fast. I'm not able to see any sign of that, but let's give them their due, maybe they know something we don't.
--ends--
JO: What do you think the BJP's chances are in the upcoming elections?
MR: At this moment I would say that they can bank on substantial dissatisfaction with the union government on the question of inflation, which is very important in the states going to polls. Most of these are states with very large numbers of poor people. Inflation also happens to bite the middle class in a significant way. Second, I do think they gain from the redistricting. The way the boundaries of the seats have been redrawn increases the weightage of the towns and urban seats, and in the most recent elections in most of these states were as long ago as 2004, and with the exception of Delhi in the northern states they did well—you know Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh. So I think they've got a bit of an edge.
JO: Assuming they do well, does that carry over into next year's general election?
I really don't think it does carry over, and I think the reason is very specific. Both in 2003 and 1998 the party which did well in precisely these elections triggered early general elections; in '98 the Congress did well in most of these states and it precipitated a crisis which led to the downfall of the Vajpayee government. In 2003, Vajpayee read the results in a certain way—at least the party read the results in a certain way; we have reason to believe he was not so clear—and you know in both of these cases we saw that the advantage in these states did not carry over into the general elections. There are two reasons. These states are fairly atypical of vast regions of India, because primarily both the two big parties are the contenders for power. This is not true in the entire Gangetic basin, which is where most Indians live, and it's not true in significant parts of South India, like Andhra and Tamil Nadu. The other thing is that up to now these states have not had a strong third force. Not in the last two decades at least. In the absence of a third force, a regional party, a strong lower caste or marginal caste party, the results are very skewed. So I'm not sure they are that typical of the country.
Having said that, a good performance in this election will definitely give an enormous morale boosting shot to whoever does win. They will be raring to go for the general election. In that sense it's very important. It's important for party morale and the mood in the leadership, perhaps less so as an indicator of where the country is going.
JO: So it kind of helps you keep your party members in line and maybe in forming alliances?
MR: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think to both these parties these are among the very few states – there are 6 to 8 states depending on how you count them – where the fight is between these two. In the rest of India, either neither is in contention or only one is in contention or a major regional force is in contention in a very important way. So of course it helps them in terms of their bargaining power and standing. I also think it's an important election because it's the first election since this economic crisis has struck—the slowdown, as opposed to food price inflation. We will have some sense, particularly in Rajasthan, which has a small but significant industrial base, so is the slowdown really biting, particularly in the towns, export-oriented units? Is globalization hurting? If you look at Madhya Pradesh, one of the major products of Madhya Pradesh is soybeans. Now soybean prices have crashed. I think – I don't recall the figure, you can check it – I think it went from 43 to 26 or something like that. It's a huge crash and it happened after the sowing. Now farmers are set to take a huge harvest in, and they're not sure what to do, because even if they sell all of it it will be at a very substantial loss. This of course takes us to the next question: Who are they going to blame for their plight? Will it be the state government or will it be the center?
JO: Or will they understand that the government has no control over that [issue]?
MR: Even if the government has no control, the government can definitely do something. Government has eased credit for a lot of big industries, and it has done it very fast. I guess in the current situation nobody can complain about that. But there are other sections [of society] that are going to say, 'Why him and not me?'
JO: Right.
MR: Of course, of these states Delhi is also very important. It's a small state, and it's a very pampered Union Territory with lots of federal funds and so forth. But I still think it's important. The Congress has ruled Delhi for 10 years, which believe me none of us ever thought was possible. This is a natural BJP city – at least the city of the '60s and '70s, which was the time that Advani and Vajpayee really rose to their present stature. So I think for the BJP taking Delhi back is very, very important. It is not to be measured in terms of numbers. It's symbolically of enormous significance to them, and they've put a lot into the battle for Delhi.
JO: So that would again be sort of a moral victory, or would it have any other....
MR: ...Definitely! No, it has. You see, people don't realize it, but Delhi's per capita income over the last decade has outstripped Mumbai's for the first time in history. It's got a huge middle class, it's got an incredibly large consumer base. It's incidentally also got a very large number of poor people in the unorganized sector. So it might give you a sign of where urban India is going. And because it is 14 million people, and there are people in Delhi drawn from virutally all the parts of India—I'm a South Indian; people don't know this but there are 2 million Southerners in Delhi; it's a huge number—so I wouldn't say it's a microcosm but it is a city of some significance to them. Also, whoever takes Delhi will preside over the Commonwealth Games, and you know, for politicians those things do matter. I think it's a very important election also because it's the first after these recent bomb blasts.
JO: Apart from the bomb blasts – there have been bomb blasts all over – but also this linking of Hindu extremists to terrorism. What impact do you think that will have?
MR: Who knows? It could go either way. One way it could be is that there's a deep abhorrence of these groups, and these are fringe groups but some of them have affiliations with elements within the BJP. And some elements of the BJP—particularly their party president who's gone out of his way to defend these people.
JO: So in one way it may turn into a sort of referendum on that issue [of Hindu extremism]...
MR: They're trying very hard to make it that. I think the battle plan from the BJP point of view is that they're going to argue that these people are being framed. And they're being framed only because they're Hindu. And I think that is already servicing as a very important plank. We have to see what the people think. AT this point it's very difficult to gage whether that argument is finding resonance with the people or not.
JO: What do you think it would mean if it does find resonance with the people?
MR: Look, I think that this politics of Hindu pride or Hindu hurt—these are their terms, not mine—will never go away. It will always be there. But you know, it ebbs and flows, and we've been through a period in which it was ebbing, so maybe the ebb is over and it's started flowing. I think one of their problems – and this is something that they're all willing to admit – is that they've not been able to find a symbol with the enormous potential that the Ram symbol had in the '90s, or the Kargil war had at the end of the '90s. In the beginning of the '90s they had Ram, which of course symbolizes their ideology and politics very clearly, and there happens to be a very important disputed spot as well. And in the late '90s with Kargil it was of course a defense of national territory, so it became a sort of nationalism, war, and all that. Now, look at the picture almost 10 years on. Where is the symbol? They tried Ram Sethu. It didn't work. Or it doesn't seem to have worked. They tried the Jammu issue, and the government gave way. They're a movement in search of a rallying point and a symbol. Will the Sadhvi who has been subject to interrogation by the police, or the serving officer in the army, or the former [head of] the Bhonsla Military School—will these people become the rallying symbol? Frankly, I don't know. But I'm not so sure. It will help rally their own people, that it will definitely do. The various wings of the parivar—and it's a vast organization—will rally together. They rally together when they feel they are being attacked.
The problem for this government – I'm talking about the Congress – is that it doesn't have anyone who does the political part of it. Let me assume that there is something against these people, the sadhvi, whatever. Whether there is or not the courts will decide. But politically, I would have expected the Congress to go on a huge offensive, and say, you know, that that party [the BJP] created the atmosphere, the climate, where this could happen. I'm very struck because ten years ago, in her first election meeting in Ram Lila Maidan, Ms. Sonia Gandhi actually began by saying that the BJP is a party which espouses the same ideas which inspired the man who was the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. She was very careful. She didn't say he was a member of the RSS—he was not at the time—but she said that he believed in the same school of thought. That sends a signal that the Congress is willing to take the battle into their camp. The minute you say that, they will react and say he was not one of us. He was not a member, he left the RSS, he was in the Mahasaba, and he left the Mahasaba. We have nothing to do with him... You know, they go on the defensive. But that's not happening.
The Congress's core issue is very, very serious. I see these six elections – if you include Jammu & Kashmir and Mizoram.... If you ask me, see, the Congress is facing a score of 0-8. They have lost eight state elections in a row. Lost means they didn't come to power. IN some cases they were in power, in some cases they hoped to come to power, in some cases they couldn't have come to power but they could have bettered their record, let's say in UP, but they didn't. It's a deep crisis within the party. The Congress is a party that likes to win. They rally around the members of the Gandhi-Nehru family because those people know how to win. They're not born to rule. They rule because they rally the people and the rank and file of the party are convinced that they can reach out to the people, that they have their finger on the pulse, that they understand the mood of the times and they set the agenda. You have to give Sonia Gandhi the credit that it 2004, she stuck it out and kept saying that India Shining won't work. You know, if you read Ed Luce's book, she told Ed Luce in a very understated way, “I don't know about the papers but when I go out into the countryside and talk to people, they don't think things are that good, and my party's assessment is that we're going to do much better than all of you think.” She was right.
But now, five years on, is this a party – her, the PM – have they actually lost touch with the popular mood? Have they lost the ability to reach out? It often happens. Being in power always carries that risk. And more particularly, the person who is supposed to take charge, because we all know who he is [I.e. Rahul Gandhi] what has he actually done to energize this party? You know, our state elections are like national elections if you look at the numbers. They're so immense! It's organizationally a great challenge. And I would have expected him by this time to be out [campaigning]. Not in St. Stephen's College—it was like a walkabout by a rock star, which was great. But is he reaching out beyond that circle? I don't know. I would expect Rahul Gandhi to take the battle into the RSS camp on the bombs, saying you know my grandmother died, my father died, I'm opposed to the cult of violence, whatever. He's not doing that. Why? I'd expect him to go out and say we're facing a major economic crisis, but you know we're going to have the second-fastest growing economy in the world because of the outstanding leadership of our economist prime minister, and I am standing with him. He is going to run the government but my mother and I are going to give him all the support he wants. Will you help me? He's not saying that. What is he saying? What's the message? There's none.
JO: Yes, there's a kind of silence, or a kind of reactive stance....
MR: No, no. There's something much more serious going on. I think their machine is in tatters. I think it's worse today than it was five years ago, strange as it may sound. You look at each of the states—this state [Delhi] is different, because Sheila Dikshit is an incredibly capable leader; I think she's going to lose the elections, but that's a completely different matter. After ten years, we expect anybody to lose the election. But look at the other states. There's no clarity of leadership. There's very little clarity of the social profile [I.e. the different castes and communities that the party will woo]. The party is being run by remote control by general secretaries in Delhi. Obvious natural leaders who emerged from these states have not been put back in charge – Digvijay Singh, Ashok Gehlot-- I don't know. I actually think this party.... Somewhere in their heart of hearts the fight has gone out of them, which is bizarre, because the Congress normally fights incredibly hard.
JO: In the Gujarat election, there was that question about do we want to go down that road of criticizing the BJP for the riots because in a way it serves up the ball for them to bring back Hindutva. So they avoided mentioning that with Modi until the end, when after being criticized by the press Sonia Gandhi brought it up....
MR: ...and the way that she brought it up actually played right into his hands.
JO: Do you think that something like that is going on now?
MR: I don't know. My reading of Gujarat was that they were never in the race. He [Modi] fought the election in a completely new way. He marginalized his own party. He marginalized all the front organizations. He rendered them toothless. He fought effectively. He was the candidate in all the 182 constituencies, which is something that is very new for the BJP. The BJP is essentially a cadre driven party with an ideology—like the old Commie parties or the Nazi party or whatever. But he didn't fight it like that. He fought it as The Leader. And the way he did it, you have to give him credit organizationally. He used two groups very interestingly. One was the elected leaders of the panchayats. The other was the cooperatives. Nobody has realized this out here [in Delhi]. The key organizers were the leaders of the panchayats and the cooperatives—all out of personal loyalty to him. And he fought the elections – Gujarati asmita pride was there, and Gujarati asmita has a Hindu color to it, no doubt. But the other dimension is in the economy. It's not the big projects – it's not the petrochemical factories and fertilizers or IT—it was hard economic achievements. Jobs in terms of industrialization of the small towns. The huge transformation of agriculture, particularly cotton, but also groundnut. SO it's a very unusual state where agricultural growth and the growth of the manufacturing sector played to the advantage of the government. Hindu society is multi layered – at the top there is the Brahmins and then there are the dominant landed classes in Gujarat, the Patels – he reached out below both of these. IF you look at the BJP in Gujarat, he has brought in the backwards and the tribals in a big way. And, it has to be very clear that he has done this completely unrepentant about his past [association with the 2002 Ahmedabad riots]. That was not the central point this time, because I've traveled a little in rural Gujarat, and it was a little disconcerting how matter of fact people were about what happened, but that was not the main driving force this time.
I don't think the Congress was ever in the fight in Gujarat. At times they looked like a pale copy of the BJP. I'm forgetting the name [but] in Surat, the person who fought for the Congress—Rahul Gandhi campaigned in his constituency—was one of the major perpetrators and accused in the Surat riots of 1993. Horrific riots. They're were among the most horrific riots in this country's history. There were at least 8 people who were RSS / BJP people who went over to the Congress and were given tickets. This may not be known to you, but Muslims knew it. And I'll give you a statistic. Gujarat is around 9 percent Muslim and they're 182 seats, so you should have around 16 Muslim candidates. The last time Congress won the elections it was 1985. It had 26 Muslim candidates of whom 18 won. This time it had six. It had eight people who had been accused in riots who were from the BJP / RSS. They were far more communal than Narendra Modi had been in public. So I think the Congress doesn't know what to do. On the one hand it's willing to do anything to get elected, including being a pale copy of the BJP and Modi. On the reverse, as you rightly say, they suddenly say Oh we're very secular and we're going to attack them. People have seen through this. And I think it's a very serious issue for the Congress. IF you look at the mood of the minorities today—not only Muslims but also Christians—the feeling is that this union government is incapable of protecting us. That is very serious.
JO: So they're getting it from both sides, being accused by the BJP of being soft on terror, and by the minorities of failing to protect them?
MR: They're getting it on both sides. Yes, yes, yes. It's very interesting. I'll give you an example. In '47-'48 when the riots were very bad in this city, Jawaharlal Nehru was fighting for control. I'm forgetting the name of his officer but I think it was Kanungo who was in the police; he told him “Look, I want the Walled City quiet.” Kanungo drove to Jama Masjid and he arrested six of the Hindu Mahasaba people and two of the Akadis (?), and he paraded them in an open jeep for three hours. He manacled them in handcuffs, and he announced, “If anybody does anything, I will take care of these men.” And things died down. There's a reason: Nobody questioned Jawaharlal Nehru's sincerity. You may have disagreed with him; you may have called him a Muslim lover; but you wouldn't have questioned either his personal courage or his integrity. Something has happened to this government.
I think this Batla House shootout in Delhi was a very serious turning point. I do not know who those guys were. I do not know if the cops fired first. I have no idea. But the mood among educated Muslims is that the police are trigger happy. It's a very serious issue. What every one of them says is something very interesting. They say, “You know, in 1993 there was the bomb blasts in Mumbai, which were horrific, and there were the [anti-Muslim] riots [that followed]. 80 percent of the bomb blast accused have been convicted. Less than 1 percent of those accused have even been tried in the case of the riots. And there's been a Congress government in Mumbai since 1999 and a Congress government in the center since 2004. You know, I feel this government doesn't realize what thin ice it's skating on. Look, with the Hindu middle classes, the party's over. These are groups who move really fast. They were toasting Manmohan Singh in 2004. That's all over. Now they're looking at the housing loan rate, which was at seven and now it's at 11 percent; they're going to look at inflation; they're going to look at the stock market; they're going to look at the crisis in housing—it's completely collapsing; and of course they're going to listen to the BJP guys saying you're under threat, somebody's going to bomb you and these guys are not protecting you, they're letting people walk free. They [the Congress] have to find their own voice, and they'd better do something soon. They better do it fast. I'm not able to see any sign of that, but let's give them their due, maybe they know something we don't.
--ends--
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
sonal shah denies links to hindu nationalism
In case anybody reads this who doesn't read the Indian press, Sonal Shah, the member of Obama's team who was a member of the VHP's American branch as part of a charitable relief project, has clarified that she has no interest in the chauvinist policies of the Hindu right.
Goes to show that all of us should be sure to check the antecedents of the groups to which we donate our time or money. They could be one step removed from organizations that we have no desire to support.
Goes to show that all of us should be sure to check the antecedents of the groups to which we donate our time or money. They could be one step removed from organizations that we have no desire to support.
Friday, November 07, 2008
obama linked to loony hindu group?
The Hindustan Times reports today that one of Obama's top advisers is a member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a chauvinist group that in India has advocated the founding of Hindu suicide squads to target Muslims.
According to the story, Sonal Shah, an Indian-American adviser on Obama's transition team, was a national coordinator of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America campaign to raise funds for Gujarat earthquake victims in 2001. That sounds pretty innocuous, I know. But the Indian press has often shown links between charitable Hindu organizations and the more dubious activities of the VHP. Also, the story goes on to say that Sonal's father, Ramesh, works with the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)--which has its roots in fascism and advocates turning India into a Hindu state. He was involved with the RSS's Ekal Vidyalayas project--which are single-teacher primary schools that promote "Hindu values" among the children of tribal regions--as part of the "reconversion" movement that demonizes Christian missionaries claiming that they are tricking or forcing Hindus to convert to Christianity.
According to the story, Sonal Shah, an Indian-American adviser on Obama's transition team, was a national coordinator of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America campaign to raise funds for Gujarat earthquake victims in 2001. That sounds pretty innocuous, I know. But the Indian press has often shown links between charitable Hindu organizations and the more dubious activities of the VHP. Also, the story goes on to say that Sonal's father, Ramesh, works with the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)--which has its roots in fascism and advocates turning India into a Hindu state. He was involved with the RSS's Ekal Vidyalayas project--which are single-teacher primary schools that promote "Hindu values" among the children of tribal regions--as part of the "reconversion" movement that demonizes Christian missionaries claiming that they are tricking or forcing Hindus to convert to Christianity.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
sahibs who loved india
Continuing my time-honored tradition of reviewing books that I haven't read....
What's up with the title of this one? Sahibs Who Loved India. Isn't that like White Guys Who Loved Jazz?
Why should we care about these guys. OK, I get it that there are some cracking adventures from the Raj era, when plucky young British chaps would dress up like natives and darken their faces with boot polish to go undercover on the frontier (and whatnot). But shouldn't that "Foreign Devils on the Silk Road" type stuff be strictly for British consumption?
And if it's really so normal, how come there aren't any titles like Americans Who Loved Russia or Africans Who Loved America?
Are Indians really so interested in these elusive sahibs? And, if so, why? Wasn't it the sahibs who first presented the idea that India was crowded, dirty, and cultureless? I mean, that is, before they "discovered" Buddhism and all that stuff that they are meant to have done?
What's up with the title of this one? Sahibs Who Loved India. Isn't that like White Guys Who Loved Jazz?
Why should we care about these guys. OK, I get it that there are some cracking adventures from the Raj era, when plucky young British chaps would dress up like natives and darken their faces with boot polish to go undercover on the frontier (and whatnot). But shouldn't that "Foreign Devils on the Silk Road" type stuff be strictly for British consumption?
And if it's really so normal, how come there aren't any titles like Americans Who Loved Russia or Africans Who Loved America?
Are Indians really so interested in these elusive sahibs? And, if so, why? Wasn't it the sahibs who first presented the idea that India was crowded, dirty, and cultureless? I mean, that is, before they "discovered" Buddhism and all that stuff that they are meant to have done?
Monday, October 20, 2008
the alleged booker prize
It's less Orientalist and doesn't trap you in the little-brown-man box
JASON OVERDORF
(Outlook India, October 27, 2008)
Normally, when an Indian wins the Booker Prize, the country rallies round to cheer, and even the most dubious "voracious readers" from the pages of Stardust suddenly develop an interest in literature. But Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger was never a book Indians wanted to read, and even with the much-coveted stamp of approval from abroad, it's hard telling whether it will get the 1,00,000-copy boost in sales experienced by Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss.
Consider the front-page Times of India story that announced the news. The first paragraph cites as the reason for the win Adiga's "alleged ability to offer insights into the struggle of a developing nation on the rise"—effectively condemning the Booker winner as a fake. The conventional and obviously objective alternative would have been to say, "In awarding the prize, the judges praised Adiga's skill in providing insight into the struggle of...." 'Alleged', which to the newspaper man implies somebody is being accused of a crime and the lawyers are worried about a case of libel, is a word used to skewer. Any editor will tell you that its use here was no accident.
From the beginning, The White Tiger received an uncomfortable reception. The author (a friend of mine) is, if not actually a foreigner, then foreign-returned, which my wife tells me ranks even lower on the totem pole. Worse still, regardless of his ethnicity, he was a writer for Time magazine, and therefore guilty of writing bad stuff about India: that the people here are poor; they suffer from diseases like polio and tuberculosis that have been eliminated across much of the world and similar nonsense. And he did it in the book, too! The White Tiger is about a guy from Bihar, for goodness sake! Naturally, the reviews, and even some of the news articles, are peppered with backhanded compliments.
But there are worse things than being called poor. Compared with Inheritance of Loss, The White Tiger is more compelling, better written, and—and this is the really important thing—less Orientalist.
Inheritance of Loss infuriatingly propagates the "little brown men doing cute little things" rubbish, that by all rights should have disappeared with India's colonists. But Indian readers overlooked this allegedly cute stuff about Anglo-Indians and Nepali immigrants and their silly ways, because of the book's nostalgic, patriotic content. Though The White Tiger has its own broad brush moments, that kind of pandering—cheap, tired jokes about "peculiar" Indian English and the like, with which that schlocky, much-praised tome Shantaram was chock-full—is largely absent. The trouble is that The White Tiger is gleefully vicious in lampooning the middle class who are, regardless of the tired accusations about "writing for the foreign market," Aravind's true audience.
It's a familiar reaction. The critics of the foreign correspondent corps insist we are always banging on about poverty and filth, when we should be pointing out the five-star hotels. But stories about India's slowness in eradicating poverty, malnutrition, disease and the like are rarer than you think. Aravind has called The White Tiger "a result of my secret, uncensored articles", because it is almost impossible to get anything into Time or The Economist or Newsweek about the problems that India has had for decades and—because they are too big, or the system is too flawed, or whatever—hasn't been able to solve. Poverty is bad. It is everywhere. But it is not news. When articles on these topics appear, nobody should be surprised. The same thing appears in the Times of India every day and Outlook every week.Nor should they be angry, unless the writer tries to imply that some white guy could step in and sort the mess out in a year or two.
It's the other kind of foreign correspondent rubbish, the Orientalist crap, that ought to get people incensed. Why does every article have to begin with a woman in a colourful sari, squatting in the dust? Why are western readers so concerned with the fate of tame elephants, snake-charmers and eunuchs? And why do we always find somebody to quote who speaks in Indian English as unbelievable as that invented by Gregory David Roberts? Because it's exotic, because it's allegedly cute. But it makes you all out to be little brown folks, funny but inscrutable.
I, for one, would rather be called poor. And I'd rather have somebody, like Aravind, to make me angry about it.
JASON OVERDORF
(Outlook India, October 27, 2008)
Normally, when an Indian wins the Booker Prize, the country rallies round to cheer, and even the most dubious "voracious readers" from the pages of Stardust suddenly develop an interest in literature. But Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger was never a book Indians wanted to read, and even with the much-coveted stamp of approval from abroad, it's hard telling whether it will get the 1,00,000-copy boost in sales experienced by Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss.
Consider the front-page Times of India story that announced the news. The first paragraph cites as the reason for the win Adiga's "alleged ability to offer insights into the struggle of a developing nation on the rise"—effectively condemning the Booker winner as a fake. The conventional and obviously objective alternative would have been to say, "In awarding the prize, the judges praised Adiga's skill in providing insight into the struggle of...." 'Alleged', which to the newspaper man implies somebody is being accused of a crime and the lawyers are worried about a case of libel, is a word used to skewer. Any editor will tell you that its use here was no accident.
From the beginning, The White Tiger received an uncomfortable reception. The author (a friend of mine) is, if not actually a foreigner, then foreign-returned, which my wife tells me ranks even lower on the totem pole. Worse still, regardless of his ethnicity, he was a writer for Time magazine, and therefore guilty of writing bad stuff about India: that the people here are poor; they suffer from diseases like polio and tuberculosis that have been eliminated across much of the world and similar nonsense. And he did it in the book, too! The White Tiger is about a guy from Bihar, for goodness sake! Naturally, the reviews, and even some of the news articles, are peppered with backhanded compliments.
But there are worse things than being called poor. Compared with Inheritance of Loss, The White Tiger is more compelling, better written, and—and this is the really important thing—less Orientalist.
Inheritance of Loss infuriatingly propagates the "little brown men doing cute little things" rubbish, that by all rights should have disappeared with India's colonists. But Indian readers overlooked this allegedly cute stuff about Anglo-Indians and Nepali immigrants and their silly ways, because of the book's nostalgic, patriotic content. Though The White Tiger has its own broad brush moments, that kind of pandering—cheap, tired jokes about "peculiar" Indian English and the like, with which that schlocky, much-praised tome Shantaram was chock-full—is largely absent. The trouble is that The White Tiger is gleefully vicious in lampooning the middle class who are, regardless of the tired accusations about "writing for the foreign market," Aravind's true audience.
It's a familiar reaction. The critics of the foreign correspondent corps insist we are always banging on about poverty and filth, when we should be pointing out the five-star hotels. But stories about India's slowness in eradicating poverty, malnutrition, disease and the like are rarer than you think. Aravind has called The White Tiger "a result of my secret, uncensored articles", because it is almost impossible to get anything into Time or The Economist or Newsweek about the problems that India has had for decades and—because they are too big, or the system is too flawed, or whatever—hasn't been able to solve. Poverty is bad. It is everywhere. But it is not news. When articles on these topics appear, nobody should be surprised. The same thing appears in the Times of India every day and Outlook every week.Nor should they be angry, unless the writer tries to imply that some white guy could step in and sort the mess out in a year or two.
It's the other kind of foreign correspondent rubbish, the Orientalist crap, that ought to get people incensed. Why does every article have to begin with a woman in a colourful sari, squatting in the dust? Why are western readers so concerned with the fate of tame elephants, snake-charmers and eunuchs? And why do we always find somebody to quote who speaks in Indian English as unbelievable as that invented by Gregory David Roberts? Because it's exotic, because it's allegedly cute. But it makes you all out to be little brown folks, funny but inscrutable.
I, for one, would rather be called poor. And I'd rather have somebody, like Aravind, to make me angry about it.
space you can use
India may now be the world leader in deploying satellites that assist practical work on the ground.
Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Oct 27, 2008
Nobody would mistake India for a leader in outer space. Many Indians are hopeful that the launch this week of the Chandrayaan I spacecraft, which will orbit the moon in search of water, will mark a turning point for the nation's space program. The Indian mission will carry instruments for the U.S. and European space agencies in addition to its own Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Judging from local media coverage, Indians are following the mission almost as closely as the gyrations of the stock markets.
The Indian space program is already far ahead in one respect: its use of space technologies to solve the everyday problems of ordinary people on the ground. For more than 20 years, India has been quietly investing hundreds of millions of dollars in its earth-sciences program with an eye toward helping farmers with their crops, fishermen with their catches and rescue workers with management of floods and other disasters. "India is leading the way in the approach towards the rationale for earth observation," says Stephen Briggs, the head of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Earth Observation Science and Applications Department.
Measured by the number and sophistication of their satellites, America and Europe may be ahead of India. But with an annual budget of about $1 billion—less than a tenth of NASA's—ISRO covers a lot of ground. It has built and launched 46 satellites, which provide data for at least nine Indian government ministries. Its 11 national communications satellites are the largest network in Asia, and its seven remote sensing satellites map objects on Earth at a resolution of less than a meter. These form the backbone of a series of practical initiatives that, according to a Madras School of Economics study, have generated a $2 return for every $1 spent. "We have clearly shown that we can give back to the country much more than is invested in the space program," says ISRO chairman Madhavan Nair.
The satellite network is the fruit of an effort begun in 1982 to connect India's remote—and often roadless—regions to radio, TV and telephone networks. By 2002, ISRO had expanded satellite TV and radio coverage to nearly 90 percent of the country, up from 25 percent.
India's investment in Earth observation satellites over the years comes to only about $500 million per satellite, about a tenth of the cost of its Western counterparts. After introducing a satellite service to locate potential fish zones and broadcasting the sites over All India Radio, ISRO helped coastal fishermen double the size of their catch. For the government's Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission, begun in 1986, satellites have improved the success rate of government well-drilling projects by 50 to 80 percent, saving $100 million to $175 million. Meteorological satellites have improved the government's ability to predict the all-important Indian monsoon, which can influence India's gross domestic product by 2 to 5 percent.
Next, ISRO plans to roll out satellite-enabled services to hundreds of millions of farmers in India's remote villages. In partnership with NGOs and government bodies, it has helped to set up about 400 Village Resource Centers so far. Each provides connections to dozens of villages for Internet-based services such as access to commodities pricing information, agricultural advice from crop experts and land records. ISRO's remote-sensing data will also help village councils develop watersheds and irrigation projects, establish accurate land records and plan new roads connecting their villages with civilization as cheaply and efficiently as possible. One ISRO partner—the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation—has used satellites to conduct 78,000 training programs for more than 300,000 farmers in 550 villages, teaching them about farming practices like drip-and-sprinkle irrigation, health-care awareness programs for diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, and information about how to access government services. Using satellites to guide reclamation of 2 million hectares of saline and alkaline wastelands is expected to generate income of more than $500 million a year.
The United States and Europe may have beaten ISRO to the moon, but India's vision might just show the way for mankind's next giant leap.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/164599
Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Oct 27, 2008
Nobody would mistake India for a leader in outer space. Many Indians are hopeful that the launch this week of the Chandrayaan I spacecraft, which will orbit the moon in search of water, will mark a turning point for the nation's space program. The Indian mission will carry instruments for the U.S. and European space agencies in addition to its own Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Judging from local media coverage, Indians are following the mission almost as closely as the gyrations of the stock markets.
The Indian space program is already far ahead in one respect: its use of space technologies to solve the everyday problems of ordinary people on the ground. For more than 20 years, India has been quietly investing hundreds of millions of dollars in its earth-sciences program with an eye toward helping farmers with their crops, fishermen with their catches and rescue workers with management of floods and other disasters. "India is leading the way in the approach towards the rationale for earth observation," says Stephen Briggs, the head of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Earth Observation Science and Applications Department.
Measured by the number and sophistication of their satellites, America and Europe may be ahead of India. But with an annual budget of about $1 billion—less than a tenth of NASA's—ISRO covers a lot of ground. It has built and launched 46 satellites, which provide data for at least nine Indian government ministries. Its 11 national communications satellites are the largest network in Asia, and its seven remote sensing satellites map objects on Earth at a resolution of less than a meter. These form the backbone of a series of practical initiatives that, according to a Madras School of Economics study, have generated a $2 return for every $1 spent. "We have clearly shown that we can give back to the country much more than is invested in the space program," says ISRO chairman Madhavan Nair.
The satellite network is the fruit of an effort begun in 1982 to connect India's remote—and often roadless—regions to radio, TV and telephone networks. By 2002, ISRO had expanded satellite TV and radio coverage to nearly 90 percent of the country, up from 25 percent.
India's investment in Earth observation satellites over the years comes to only about $500 million per satellite, about a tenth of the cost of its Western counterparts. After introducing a satellite service to locate potential fish zones and broadcasting the sites over All India Radio, ISRO helped coastal fishermen double the size of their catch. For the government's Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission, begun in 1986, satellites have improved the success rate of government well-drilling projects by 50 to 80 percent, saving $100 million to $175 million. Meteorological satellites have improved the government's ability to predict the all-important Indian monsoon, which can influence India's gross domestic product by 2 to 5 percent.
Next, ISRO plans to roll out satellite-enabled services to hundreds of millions of farmers in India's remote villages. In partnership with NGOs and government bodies, it has helped to set up about 400 Village Resource Centers so far. Each provides connections to dozens of villages for Internet-based services such as access to commodities pricing information, agricultural advice from crop experts and land records. ISRO's remote-sensing data will also help village councils develop watersheds and irrigation projects, establish accurate land records and plan new roads connecting their villages with civilization as cheaply and efficiently as possible. One ISRO partner—the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation—has used satellites to conduct 78,000 training programs for more than 300,000 farmers in 550 villages, teaching them about farming practices like drip-and-sprinkle irrigation, health-care awareness programs for diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, and information about how to access government services. Using satellites to guide reclamation of 2 million hectares of saline and alkaline wastelands is expected to generate income of more than $500 million a year.
The United States and Europe may have beaten ISRO to the moon, but India's vision might just show the way for mankind's next giant leap.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/164599
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
social networking
I don't pretend to be an expert on Internet businesses. But I can't help but wonder why I keep getting invites to join new social networking sites like hi5.com so late in the game. Once in awhile I'll join one of these (otherwise useless) networks because I'm looking for the email address of a potential source, and that's the only place I can turn up through a google search. But otherwise, I don't see the point. Why would I want to monitor a dozen different web pages for mostly redundant functions--email, instant messaging--and nonsense info that I don't really care about. I've experimented with facebook, and I can see the appeal (a little). If nothing else, you can see what your old acquaintances look like now that they're old. And you can obsessively endeavor to one-up your rivals with more friends, better trips abroad, more attractive photos of yourself and your kids, etc. But facebook is a colossal waste of time, and most of the time I'd rather go out and have a beer than poke somebody or send them a virtual pint. And any network I establish on Orkut, hi5, etc. is bound to be even worse.
One email inbox, free of spam, and occasional missives from people I like. That's really all I want. Maybe some kind of efficient, all-encompassing professional directory with the work phone numbers & email addresses of every conceivable bureaucrat, corporate flack, and university professor. But I'm not holding my breath for that. Perhaps I'm unlike the usual "consumer" of this crap because I'm not stuck in a cubicle, and if I don't have any work I can just switch off my machine and go read a book or see a movie or whatever. Or perhaps I'm just an old, over-the-hill Luddite.
But please, stop inviting me to join your network. If you want to tell me something, send me an email. Or if worse comes to worst, I'm on facebook, waiting for google to integrate it with all their virtual photo albums and what have you. But I'm drawing my line in the sand there.
One email inbox, free of spam, and occasional missives from people I like. That's really all I want. Maybe some kind of efficient, all-encompassing professional directory with the work phone numbers & email addresses of every conceivable bureaucrat, corporate flack, and university professor. But I'm not holding my breath for that. Perhaps I'm unlike the usual "consumer" of this crap because I'm not stuck in a cubicle, and if I don't have any work I can just switch off my machine and go read a book or see a movie or whatever. Or perhaps I'm just an old, over-the-hill Luddite.
But please, stop inviting me to join your network. If you want to tell me something, send me an email. Or if worse comes to worst, I'm on facebook, waiting for google to integrate it with all their virtual photo albums and what have you. But I'm drawing my line in the sand there.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
the new space race is in asia
As China tries to catch up to the United States and Russia, its regional neighbors are fast on its heels.
By Mary Hennock, Adam B. Kushner and Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Sep 29, 2008
If the weather holds, China plans to celebrate another milestone on its long march to the moon this week in a PR extravaganza that will rival its Olympic performance a few weeks ago. Fittingly, a Long March II-F rocket will take off from the Jiuquan launch center in Gansu province carrying three astronauts on China's third mission to low Earth orbit. After a live broadcast of the launch and heartwarming made-for-TV linkups between the crew and their families, the ruggedly handsome Zhai Zhigang will open the hatch and emerge into outer space. It will be China's first spacewalk and another step in its ambitious plan to build its own space station by 2015 and—if the rumors are true—to put astronauts on the moon by 2020.
The display will no doubt be lauded as yet another indication that China is ready to join the ranks of the world's space titans, Russia and the United States. But are these missions cause for worry in Washington and Moscow? The Soviet Union performed the first spacewalk in 1965 when Aleksei Leonov stepped out of a Voskhod II capsule, and the United States did it later that year when Ed White left his Gemini capsule. Although the ability to launch payloads can also be used to lob bombs, the military implications of a manned program are virtually nil: nobody has yet figured out what humans can do in space that robotic weapons can't do better.
China sees its spacewalk as a way of proving that it belongs with the United States and Russia in the top tier of space-faring nations. But its true opponent in this space race is not the West so much as its Asian neighbors—India in particular. India has in recent years transformed its space program from a utilitarian affair of meteorological and communications satellites into a hyperactive project that seems designed to make a splash on the world stage. Its robotic-exploration program is scheduled to launch a probe on Oct. 22 that will orbit the moon for two years. And Japan is considering expanding its well-established (if less ambitious) space program—which includes research on the International Space Station and a respectable commercial satellite business—and exploring military applications. Against this backdrop, Beijing's dominance is not unshakable. Just as the Soviet Union's launch of its Sputnik satellite back in 1957 was only a fleeting victory, China's recent accomplishments have provided merely the opening salvos in a modern-day Asian space race.
The two biggest forces driving the race between China and India are their insistence on self-reliance and the idea that space exploration feeds national prestige. Naturally, the two ideas work in tandem. India was shut out from NASA and European space missions for years after testing its first nuclear bomb in 1974; now many technologies for its space program have been developed by Indian engineers with little outside help. (India has agreed to carry U.S. and European payloads on its moon launch.) Beijing has watched U.S.- Russian cooperation on the International Space Station rise and fall with their diplomatic relations. "The most important thing is that China has developed and formed its own system for space aviation independently," says Huang Hai of the China Aviation Science and Research Institute. Ouyang Ziyuan, a space expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, summed it up to People's Daily: China's program "suggests comprehensive national strength …, increasing China's international prestige and the cohesive power of the Chinese nation."
Beijing's space program electrified the competition when astronaut Yang Liwei orbited the earth in October 2003. Last year China shot down an aging weather satellite, adding an arms-race quality to the battle for prestige. It is now constructing its fourth launch base, on Hainan Island, for a new 25-ton booster rocket that will carry aloft modules for its space station, which will be permanently staffed. Also ahead: robotic moon landings (a data-gathering probe is already in orbit) and even a rumored manned trip to the lunar surface—a prospect that provoked a minor crisis in Washington, culminating in President George W. Bush's State of the Union promise in 2004 to establish a permanent U.S. moon base. Despite technology export controls imposed by the United States, China's commercial satellite business is thriving. It has launched 79 satellites altogether—10 of them in 2007. This year India has launched 11 satellites, including nine from other countries—and it became the first nation to launch 10 satellites on one rocket.
The United States and the Soviet Union were racing in the context of a cold war, but India and China are vying for leadership in a competitive marketplace of people and knowledge industries. It's about developing technology, talent and markets. All of which has stimulated Chinese technology: sensors built for space have ended up in GPS systems, washing machines and other products. The Chinese hope to spin out their rockets and orbiters into inventions and products they can patent. And "they're now right up in the world class of robotics," says British scientist Martin Sweeting, CEO of Surrey Satellite Technology, which built Beijing a pollution-monitoring satellite for the Olympics and does work on China's moon rovers.
None of this has gone unnoticed abroad. China's manned space program "shook up all the neighbors because the Chinese asserted, 'We are the dominant regional power'," says Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. After China used a ballistic missile to blow up the aging weather satellite in January 2007, scattering debris into low orbit, Japan's Parliament overturned a law isolating its space program from military uses, and its space agency is trying to capitalize on the new mood by requesting a 29 percent budget increase at a time when the general science budget is growing by only 1 percent per year. The public, however, worries more about the social problems of an aging population than beating China to the moon. As a stable democracy and charter member of the world's most advanced economies, Japan simply has less to prove.
The repercussions of China's program were felt most strongly in Delhi, where the 36-year-old space program is now ramping up its moon project at launch speed. China first sent a man into space in 2003, and India won't achieve that goal until 2015, but according to unofficial schedules, China will beat India to a moon landing by only a year. Reaching the moon is the childhood dream of Madhavan Nair, chairman of India's space program, which is now spending about $1 billion per year, compared with an estimated $2.5 billion a year in China. If all goes well, at the end of October India will launch the $100 million Chandrayaan-I, its first lunar orbiter, using the workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The orbiter will fire a probe at the moon's surface, kicking up a cloud of lunar dust that scientists will analyze from afar—and it will plant the Indian flag in lunar soil. Its successor, Chandrayaan-II, a cooperative effort with Russia (and, therefore, one looked down upon by Chinese analysts), is expected to land a rover on the moon by 2012. The space agency, if it can persuade Parliament to fund all its dreams, aims to put a man on the moon by 2020, followed by robotic missions to Mars, a nearby asteroid and the sun—an agenda even more ambitious than China's.
The Indian space agency is careful to defend the program as more than an ego competition with the Chinese. It argues that its space program has earned a return of $2 on every dollar invested by the government, according to Nair. For example, its remote sensing satellites, which map the Earth's surface at a resolution of close to one meter, have helped find well water in dry regions, saving the government's drill boring program $100 million. And, while only a few years ago Indian space officials ruled out manned missions as too expensive and of dubious scientific value, they now speak—just like the Chinese—of mapping the moon for deposits of aluminum, silicon, uranium and titanium, probably with an eye to lunar mining. "I don't think we're in any race as far as the space program is concerned," says Nair. "We have our own national priorities, and based on those priorities we try to concentrate on developments which will benefit the people."
Moon shots for the masses? "If you ask people [in the space agencies], they will never acknowledge there is a competition," says Pallava Bagla, the author of "Destination Moon," a book about India's moon mission. "But subliminally there is a definite race there." The two sides don't talk about it because, says the Stimson Center's Michael Krepon, "for Beijing, you don't want to put New Delhi on the same playing field. For New Delhi, you don't want to acknowledge anxiety." Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, a member of Parliament and Nair's predecessor, says that in addition to luring Indian engineers from the high-paying IT divisions into astrophysics, the space program will "establish our credentials in the international community." It makes India a player.
The benefits of manned missions for the military are only somewhat clearer. Beijing's satellite shoot-down last year demonstrated the potential vulnerability of objects in space. Its space program—which is ultimately run by the Army—got its start when engineers took military rockets and stuck capsules on the tip. And despite Delhi's claims to the contrary, Western analysts suspect that booster technology developed for India's civilian space program is used by its military arm. But the quick way to strengthen military rockets is to fund them directly, not to fly moon missions. By the same token, ground-based and orbiting lasers would probably make better antisatellite weapons than missiles. "The U.S. military and the Russian military searched for years for good reasons to put military people in space and never found any," says John Logsdon, senior fellow at America's Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Still, a space race is a risky way to boost national status: after all, a catastrophic accident while attempting merely to repeat this step for mankind would be a historic humiliation. But the risk is not without rewards. Successful space flight is a kind of national advertisement for satellites and, more broadly, quality control. "[China's] manned space program has gone a long way to proving to potential customers that their products are safe," says Theresa Hitchens of Washington's Center for Defense Information. In these days of global competition, that's a message both China and India desperately want to send.
With Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/160037
By Mary Hennock, Adam B. Kushner and Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Sep 29, 2008
If the weather holds, China plans to celebrate another milestone on its long march to the moon this week in a PR extravaganza that will rival its Olympic performance a few weeks ago. Fittingly, a Long March II-F rocket will take off from the Jiuquan launch center in Gansu province carrying three astronauts on China's third mission to low Earth orbit. After a live broadcast of the launch and heartwarming made-for-TV linkups between the crew and their families, the ruggedly handsome Zhai Zhigang will open the hatch and emerge into outer space. It will be China's first spacewalk and another step in its ambitious plan to build its own space station by 2015 and—if the rumors are true—to put astronauts on the moon by 2020.
The display will no doubt be lauded as yet another indication that China is ready to join the ranks of the world's space titans, Russia and the United States. But are these missions cause for worry in Washington and Moscow? The Soviet Union performed the first spacewalk in 1965 when Aleksei Leonov stepped out of a Voskhod II capsule, and the United States did it later that year when Ed White left his Gemini capsule. Although the ability to launch payloads can also be used to lob bombs, the military implications of a manned program are virtually nil: nobody has yet figured out what humans can do in space that robotic weapons can't do better.
China sees its spacewalk as a way of proving that it belongs with the United States and Russia in the top tier of space-faring nations. But its true opponent in this space race is not the West so much as its Asian neighbors—India in particular. India has in recent years transformed its space program from a utilitarian affair of meteorological and communications satellites into a hyperactive project that seems designed to make a splash on the world stage. Its robotic-exploration program is scheduled to launch a probe on Oct. 22 that will orbit the moon for two years. And Japan is considering expanding its well-established (if less ambitious) space program—which includes research on the International Space Station and a respectable commercial satellite business—and exploring military applications. Against this backdrop, Beijing's dominance is not unshakable. Just as the Soviet Union's launch of its Sputnik satellite back in 1957 was only a fleeting victory, China's recent accomplishments have provided merely the opening salvos in a modern-day Asian space race.
The two biggest forces driving the race between China and India are their insistence on self-reliance and the idea that space exploration feeds national prestige. Naturally, the two ideas work in tandem. India was shut out from NASA and European space missions for years after testing its first nuclear bomb in 1974; now many technologies for its space program have been developed by Indian engineers with little outside help. (India has agreed to carry U.S. and European payloads on its moon launch.) Beijing has watched U.S.- Russian cooperation on the International Space Station rise and fall with their diplomatic relations. "The most important thing is that China has developed and formed its own system for space aviation independently," says Huang Hai of the China Aviation Science and Research Institute. Ouyang Ziyuan, a space expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, summed it up to People's Daily: China's program "suggests comprehensive national strength …, increasing China's international prestige and the cohesive power of the Chinese nation."
Beijing's space program electrified the competition when astronaut Yang Liwei orbited the earth in October 2003. Last year China shot down an aging weather satellite, adding an arms-race quality to the battle for prestige. It is now constructing its fourth launch base, on Hainan Island, for a new 25-ton booster rocket that will carry aloft modules for its space station, which will be permanently staffed. Also ahead: robotic moon landings (a data-gathering probe is already in orbit) and even a rumored manned trip to the lunar surface—a prospect that provoked a minor crisis in Washington, culminating in President George W. Bush's State of the Union promise in 2004 to establish a permanent U.S. moon base. Despite technology export controls imposed by the United States, China's commercial satellite business is thriving. It has launched 79 satellites altogether—10 of them in 2007. This year India has launched 11 satellites, including nine from other countries—and it became the first nation to launch 10 satellites on one rocket.
The United States and the Soviet Union were racing in the context of a cold war, but India and China are vying for leadership in a competitive marketplace of people and knowledge industries. It's about developing technology, talent and markets. All of which has stimulated Chinese technology: sensors built for space have ended up in GPS systems, washing machines and other products. The Chinese hope to spin out their rockets and orbiters into inventions and products they can patent. And "they're now right up in the world class of robotics," says British scientist Martin Sweeting, CEO of Surrey Satellite Technology, which built Beijing a pollution-monitoring satellite for the Olympics and does work on China's moon rovers.
None of this has gone unnoticed abroad. China's manned space program "shook up all the neighbors because the Chinese asserted, 'We are the dominant regional power'," says Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. After China used a ballistic missile to blow up the aging weather satellite in January 2007, scattering debris into low orbit, Japan's Parliament overturned a law isolating its space program from military uses, and its space agency is trying to capitalize on the new mood by requesting a 29 percent budget increase at a time when the general science budget is growing by only 1 percent per year. The public, however, worries more about the social problems of an aging population than beating China to the moon. As a stable democracy and charter member of the world's most advanced economies, Japan simply has less to prove.
The repercussions of China's program were felt most strongly in Delhi, where the 36-year-old space program is now ramping up its moon project at launch speed. China first sent a man into space in 2003, and India won't achieve that goal until 2015, but according to unofficial schedules, China will beat India to a moon landing by only a year. Reaching the moon is the childhood dream of Madhavan Nair, chairman of India's space program, which is now spending about $1 billion per year, compared with an estimated $2.5 billion a year in China. If all goes well, at the end of October India will launch the $100 million Chandrayaan-I, its first lunar orbiter, using the workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The orbiter will fire a probe at the moon's surface, kicking up a cloud of lunar dust that scientists will analyze from afar—and it will plant the Indian flag in lunar soil. Its successor, Chandrayaan-II, a cooperative effort with Russia (and, therefore, one looked down upon by Chinese analysts), is expected to land a rover on the moon by 2012. The space agency, if it can persuade Parliament to fund all its dreams, aims to put a man on the moon by 2020, followed by robotic missions to Mars, a nearby asteroid and the sun—an agenda even more ambitious than China's.
The Indian space agency is careful to defend the program as more than an ego competition with the Chinese. It argues that its space program has earned a return of $2 on every dollar invested by the government, according to Nair. For example, its remote sensing satellites, which map the Earth's surface at a resolution of close to one meter, have helped find well water in dry regions, saving the government's drill boring program $100 million. And, while only a few years ago Indian space officials ruled out manned missions as too expensive and of dubious scientific value, they now speak—just like the Chinese—of mapping the moon for deposits of aluminum, silicon, uranium and titanium, probably with an eye to lunar mining. "I don't think we're in any race as far as the space program is concerned," says Nair. "We have our own national priorities, and based on those priorities we try to concentrate on developments which will benefit the people."
Moon shots for the masses? "If you ask people [in the space agencies], they will never acknowledge there is a competition," says Pallava Bagla, the author of "Destination Moon," a book about India's moon mission. "But subliminally there is a definite race there." The two sides don't talk about it because, says the Stimson Center's Michael Krepon, "for Beijing, you don't want to put New Delhi on the same playing field. For New Delhi, you don't want to acknowledge anxiety." Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, a member of Parliament and Nair's predecessor, says that in addition to luring Indian engineers from the high-paying IT divisions into astrophysics, the space program will "establish our credentials in the international community." It makes India a player.
The benefits of manned missions for the military are only somewhat clearer. Beijing's satellite shoot-down last year demonstrated the potential vulnerability of objects in space. Its space program—which is ultimately run by the Army—got its start when engineers took military rockets and stuck capsules on the tip. And despite Delhi's claims to the contrary, Western analysts suspect that booster technology developed for India's civilian space program is used by its military arm. But the quick way to strengthen military rockets is to fund them directly, not to fly moon missions. By the same token, ground-based and orbiting lasers would probably make better antisatellite weapons than missiles. "The U.S. military and the Russian military searched for years for good reasons to put military people in space and never found any," says John Logsdon, senior fellow at America's Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Still, a space race is a risky way to boost national status: after all, a catastrophic accident while attempting merely to repeat this step for mankind would be a historic humiliation. But the risk is not without rewards. Successful space flight is a kind of national advertisement for satellites and, more broadly, quality control. "[China's] manned space program has gone a long way to proving to potential customers that their products are safe," says Theresa Hitchens of Washington's Center for Defense Information. In these days of global competition, that's a message both China and India desperately want to send.
With Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/160037
Saturday, September 20, 2008
india's police
In the midst of the hoopla surrounding the killing and capture of several men suspected of involvement in last week's terrorist bombings in Delhi--discussed here in the Hindustan Times--I had a frank discussion about India's police forces and their preparedness for today's sophisticated criminals with a senior police officer with whom I've developed a passing acquaintance.
Interestingly, he was more critical than even I have ever been (in my practiced India-basher mode). Apart from being poorly trained, poorly equipped, and undermotivated, he said (not in those exact words), the police sees itself as "against" the army, the intelligence bureaus and the various other security forces. One reason for this is that these other outfits are better funded, and enjoy a better reputation in the press and among the public--a phenomenon he attributed to the fact that nobody knows what they do and they have little interaction with regular folks. Adding to their troubles, they are very poorly paid (I think this is the general consensus), which contributes to the problems of corruption and laziness that account for their poor reputation among the public.
Several years ago, I read an interesting essay by longtime India hand Trevor Fishlock (in his book Indiafile) that presented some interesting arguments for how to reform the police forces. I'm frequently guilty of the "foreigner trying to fix India at the cocktail party" fault, I confess, and sometimes this blog falls into that category. But I won't go too deeply into my two-drinks-down solutions now. However, I would like to venture the question: What administrative policies / practices separate the Indian Army and the Indian police? By most accounts, the army enjoys a good reputation with the public, and is generally considered to be honest and competent (except in militancy-plagued areas). The services supposedly are still able to attract fairly skilled & educated recruits, and supposedly they're free of much of the religion-and-caste based animosity that causes problems in other organizations.
If there are any obvious reasons for this apart from the nebulous "tradition," perhaps there's something to be learned that can be applied to the police.
Interestingly, he was more critical than even I have ever been (in my practiced India-basher mode). Apart from being poorly trained, poorly equipped, and undermotivated, he said (not in those exact words), the police sees itself as "against" the army, the intelligence bureaus and the various other security forces. One reason for this is that these other outfits are better funded, and enjoy a better reputation in the press and among the public--a phenomenon he attributed to the fact that nobody knows what they do and they have little interaction with regular folks. Adding to their troubles, they are very poorly paid (I think this is the general consensus), which contributes to the problems of corruption and laziness that account for their poor reputation among the public.
Several years ago, I read an interesting essay by longtime India hand Trevor Fishlock (in his book Indiafile) that presented some interesting arguments for how to reform the police forces. I'm frequently guilty of the "foreigner trying to fix India at the cocktail party" fault, I confess, and sometimes this blog falls into that category. But I won't go too deeply into my two-drinks-down solutions now. However, I would like to venture the question: What administrative policies / practices separate the Indian Army and the Indian police? By most accounts, the army enjoys a good reputation with the public, and is generally considered to be honest and competent (except in militancy-plagued areas). The services supposedly are still able to attract fairly skilled & educated recruits, and supposedly they're free of much of the religion-and-caste based animosity that causes problems in other organizations.
If there are any obvious reasons for this apart from the nebulous "tradition," perhaps there's something to be learned that can be applied to the police.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
quiet revolution
While Asia reels from a food crisis, India is benefiting from three years of investment in farming.
Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Updated: 11:24 AM ET Sep 13, 2008
The food crisis earlier this year hit developing countries particularly hard, but India has fared surprisingly well. That's partly because India had already gone through a crisis of its own, three years ago, when surpluses were depleted; agricultural output was hardly growing; and farmers were committing suicide in record numbers. For this reason, agricultural productivity has been a hot-button issue for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. To keep his party in power, Singh needed not only to increase food production, but also to increase farmer incomes and end a debt crisis. Despite these gains, India lags behind China and Vietnam in productivity. P.K. Joshi, director of the New Delhi-based National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jason Overdorf about the challenges India faces. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: India produces only about half as much rice per hectare as China, the world's largest producer, and just about a third less than Vietnam. Why are India's crop yields so low?
P.K. Joshi: We need not compare China's yield and India's yield, because of several reasons. The first reason is that India is a very heterogenous country, from irrigated area to rain-fed area and rice is also grown in very marginal areas. So the average productivity seems to be very low. If we look to our irrigated areas, the yields are very high compared to any part of the world, and in rain-fed areas they are low because of less water and other factors. In China, they are using more than two-and-a-half times [the fertilizer that] Indian farmers are [using]. And China is growing hybrid rice, which has very high potential, and because of their governance system, they distribute the seed, and the farmers have to produce that variety.
In India, we have a democratic society, and the farmer is free to choose any variety or any hybrid. If the farmer has enough money to buy good seed, he does. But if not, he uses his own seed (from the year before). Another reason is the length of growing season. You know, in China, they take one crop per year. If you see our farmers, in Punjab they are growing rice and wheat in one year. In Haryana, rice and wheat. In some parts of West Bengal, the entire Indo-Gangetic Plain, three rice crops are being taken up per year. So if you compare the double crops, it will be on par with the Chinese one crop per year.
Should India be doing more to encourage farmers to use hybrids?
Yes, definitely. If we are speaking particularly about rice, then I would say that in rice, the hybrids have very high potential. There's a difference between high yielding varieties and hybrids. A hybrid is a cross between two different male and female plants, but the varieties are self-pollinating, so the hybrid has higher potential.
One issue for India's agricultural productivity appears to be water scarcity. Does India need more irrigation projects?
We do not have a water scarcity. But the issue of water management is important. We need to harvest water; use it more appropriately, use it more judiciously.
Has India invested sufficiently in agriculture, or has it fallen behind China and other Asian nations?
These countries are investing huge in agricultural research and also in agricultural development programs. In India, we [used to have] a huge surplus--if you go only six years back we used to have a huge buffer stock [of food grains]. [Unfortunately] we wanted to get rid of that buffer stock, either by subsidizing food or through many different social safety net programs. We started reducing poverty through these distribution programs, so investment in agriculture was reduced. And I would tell you that right now, this government has started increasing investment in agriculture, but it's still lower than what it used to be in 1970, if we compare in terms of percentage of agricultural GDP.
Why hasn't India been able to boost agricultural investment further? Singh has talked about this as a big issue since he came into office.
During the last three years, a lot of investment has been done in the agriculture sector because there was a serious crisis in Indian agriculture three years ago. Everybody was talking about agrarian distress. Farmers were committing suicide. And agricultural growth was less than 2 percent, while the target was 4 percent and more. The government [made] agriculture [a top] priority. Investment started increasing. Programs were tuned to increase agricultural production. [Prices were controlled] so they didn't rise as quickly as they did in the global market. The result was that when there was a serious food crisis around the world this year, India was almost comfortable. We were importing wheat two years ago, but for the past two years we have not thought about importing wheat. We now have a surplus in rice as well as wheat.
For several years, the growth rate of India's agricultural output has been slow. Apart from more investment, what does India need to do to rejuvenate the green revolution?
We expect the same kind of green revolution, which we witnessed in the mid 60s and early 70s. But we have an unnoticed revolution in Indian agriculture. If you look at sugar production, if you look at cotton, or dairy milk production, poultry or fish, or horticulture--which is vegetables and fruits, even maize--you see that the production of these commodities has remarkably increased. Also, you will notice that this year we had record food grain production--230.5-million tons. We have not seen that kind of food production during the green-revolution days. At that time, the reason we realized it was a revolution was that we were hungry. There was a famine in 1966, and suddenly production increased. Now that kind of hunger is not there, so we are ignoring the increase in production.
The introduction of genetically modified crops has been a controversial topic in India. Why are Indian farmers and activists concerned about GM foods?
Among activists, the apprehension is that [GM crops] may adversely affect [human] health. There's no evidence so far, globally, that it will. But activists [worry about] playing with nature and using genes from other organisms to change another species. The proponents feel that the future lies with these genetically modified crops, because the [cultivation] area is shrinking for crops, and you have to increase production. Production can be increased only by increasing productivity.
Even during the green revolution period, when high-yielding varieties came, there was a lot of apprehension. I still remember in 1967-1968 activists saying that it would create [stomach ulcers and that] the taste is not good. From the health point of view, the nutritional point of view, there was no negative effect during the green revolution. So may be the case with genetically modified commodities.
A lot of farmers seem to be shifting from essential grains to horticulture and cash crops to take advantage of the end consumer's higher spending power. Is it a concern from a food security standpoint that they're switching away from food grains?
As our incomes are increasing, as urbanization is taking place, as globalization is unfolding, the demand of the consumers is shifting away from cereal based diets to high-value commodities or processed commodities. Horticulture crops like fruits and vegetables have increased, milk products have increased. You now see lots of ice cream parlors--demand for processed dairy products [is rising]. Farmers are responding.
All these commodities are perishable in nature. If there is a sudden increase in production, there is a flood in the market and prices crash like anything because farmers cannot store these commodities. So what we need are good cold-storage facilities, we need the cold chains [to refrigerate products on the way to market]. And I feel that the government alone can't develop so many cold storage facilities or these cold chains. The participation of the private sector is very important, in this context, to integrate the markets.
Why does so much of India's agricultural production spoil on the way to market or in storage? I've read some estimates that peg the waste as high as 40 percent.
Largely, it is the perishable commodities. In the case of grains, it is only through rats and rodents and some storage problems. But in perishable commodities the waste is extreme. This is because the markets are not well integrated; there are missing markets; the roads are not good.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/158566
Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Updated: 11:24 AM ET Sep 13, 2008
The food crisis earlier this year hit developing countries particularly hard, but India has fared surprisingly well. That's partly because India had already gone through a crisis of its own, three years ago, when surpluses were depleted; agricultural output was hardly growing; and farmers were committing suicide in record numbers. For this reason, agricultural productivity has been a hot-button issue for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. To keep his party in power, Singh needed not only to increase food production, but also to increase farmer incomes and end a debt crisis. Despite these gains, India lags behind China and Vietnam in productivity. P.K. Joshi, director of the New Delhi-based National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jason Overdorf about the challenges India faces. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: India produces only about half as much rice per hectare as China, the world's largest producer, and just about a third less than Vietnam. Why are India's crop yields so low?
P.K. Joshi: We need not compare China's yield and India's yield, because of several reasons. The first reason is that India is a very heterogenous country, from irrigated area to rain-fed area and rice is also grown in very marginal areas. So the average productivity seems to be very low. If we look to our irrigated areas, the yields are very high compared to any part of the world, and in rain-fed areas they are low because of less water and other factors. In China, they are using more than two-and-a-half times [the fertilizer that] Indian farmers are [using]. And China is growing hybrid rice, which has very high potential, and because of their governance system, they distribute the seed, and the farmers have to produce that variety.
In India, we have a democratic society, and the farmer is free to choose any variety or any hybrid. If the farmer has enough money to buy good seed, he does. But if not, he uses his own seed (from the year before). Another reason is the length of growing season. You know, in China, they take one crop per year. If you see our farmers, in Punjab they are growing rice and wheat in one year. In Haryana, rice and wheat. In some parts of West Bengal, the entire Indo-Gangetic Plain, three rice crops are being taken up per year. So if you compare the double crops, it will be on par with the Chinese one crop per year.
Should India be doing more to encourage farmers to use hybrids?
Yes, definitely. If we are speaking particularly about rice, then I would say that in rice, the hybrids have very high potential. There's a difference between high yielding varieties and hybrids. A hybrid is a cross between two different male and female plants, but the varieties are self-pollinating, so the hybrid has higher potential.
One issue for India's agricultural productivity appears to be water scarcity. Does India need more irrigation projects?
We do not have a water scarcity. But the issue of water management is important. We need to harvest water; use it more appropriately, use it more judiciously.
Has India invested sufficiently in agriculture, or has it fallen behind China and other Asian nations?
These countries are investing huge in agricultural research and also in agricultural development programs. In India, we [used to have] a huge surplus--if you go only six years back we used to have a huge buffer stock [of food grains]. [Unfortunately] we wanted to get rid of that buffer stock, either by subsidizing food or through many different social safety net programs. We started reducing poverty through these distribution programs, so investment in agriculture was reduced. And I would tell you that right now, this government has started increasing investment in agriculture, but it's still lower than what it used to be in 1970, if we compare in terms of percentage of agricultural GDP.
Why hasn't India been able to boost agricultural investment further? Singh has talked about this as a big issue since he came into office.
During the last three years, a lot of investment has been done in the agriculture sector because there was a serious crisis in Indian agriculture three years ago. Everybody was talking about agrarian distress. Farmers were committing suicide. And agricultural growth was less than 2 percent, while the target was 4 percent and more. The government [made] agriculture [a top] priority. Investment started increasing. Programs were tuned to increase agricultural production. [Prices were controlled] so they didn't rise as quickly as they did in the global market. The result was that when there was a serious food crisis around the world this year, India was almost comfortable. We were importing wheat two years ago, but for the past two years we have not thought about importing wheat. We now have a surplus in rice as well as wheat.
For several years, the growth rate of India's agricultural output has been slow. Apart from more investment, what does India need to do to rejuvenate the green revolution?
We expect the same kind of green revolution, which we witnessed in the mid 60s and early 70s. But we have an unnoticed revolution in Indian agriculture. If you look at sugar production, if you look at cotton, or dairy milk production, poultry or fish, or horticulture--which is vegetables and fruits, even maize--you see that the production of these commodities has remarkably increased. Also, you will notice that this year we had record food grain production--230.5-million tons. We have not seen that kind of food production during the green-revolution days. At that time, the reason we realized it was a revolution was that we were hungry. There was a famine in 1966, and suddenly production increased. Now that kind of hunger is not there, so we are ignoring the increase in production.
The introduction of genetically modified crops has been a controversial topic in India. Why are Indian farmers and activists concerned about GM foods?
Among activists, the apprehension is that [GM crops] may adversely affect [human] health. There's no evidence so far, globally, that it will. But activists [worry about] playing with nature and using genes from other organisms to change another species. The proponents feel that the future lies with these genetically modified crops, because the [cultivation] area is shrinking for crops, and you have to increase production. Production can be increased only by increasing productivity.
Even during the green revolution period, when high-yielding varieties came, there was a lot of apprehension. I still remember in 1967-1968 activists saying that it would create [stomach ulcers and that] the taste is not good. From the health point of view, the nutritional point of view, there was no negative effect during the green revolution. So may be the case with genetically modified commodities.
A lot of farmers seem to be shifting from essential grains to horticulture and cash crops to take advantage of the end consumer's higher spending power. Is it a concern from a food security standpoint that they're switching away from food grains?
As our incomes are increasing, as urbanization is taking place, as globalization is unfolding, the demand of the consumers is shifting away from cereal based diets to high-value commodities or processed commodities. Horticulture crops like fruits and vegetables have increased, milk products have increased. You now see lots of ice cream parlors--demand for processed dairy products [is rising]. Farmers are responding.
All these commodities are perishable in nature. If there is a sudden increase in production, there is a flood in the market and prices crash like anything because farmers cannot store these commodities. So what we need are good cold-storage facilities, we need the cold chains [to refrigerate products on the way to market]. And I feel that the government alone can't develop so many cold storage facilities or these cold chains. The participation of the private sector is very important, in this context, to integrate the markets.
Why does so much of India's agricultural production spoil on the way to market or in storage? I've read some estimates that peg the waste as high as 40 percent.
Largely, it is the perishable commodities. In the case of grains, it is only through rats and rodents and some storage problems. But in perishable commodities the waste is extreme. This is because the markets are not well integrated; there are missing markets; the roads are not good.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/158566
Saturday, September 13, 2008
terror fatigue
Oddly enough, I'd just written a note to my editor in NY saying, "...I'm getting to the point where I don't care who blows me up, as long as I don't have to read about it anymore." And then they go and throw bombs in my backyard. It's enough to make you a wee bit paranoid.
narendra modi's best friends
It's hard to guess what India's homegrown terrorist cells want. The series of low-intensity bombs that have disrupted daily life (briefly) in several of the country's major cities this year--most recently yesterday evening in Delhi--have hardly stricken terror into the hearts of the average Indian. Yesterday, for instance, gawkers rushed to the site of the attacks hoping to get on TV--big grins pasted on their faces as though it was the next best thing to bungee jumping.
So, too, the likely result of the bombs seems to be the direct opposite of what the Muslim community would like to see happen in India. First off, the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) -- which is the Indian equivalent of the US Patriot Act, and very prone to abuse by law enforcement -- becomes more certain to return with each new blast.
But worse than that, Narendra Modi's star shines brighter with every explosion. Now with the BJP convention getting ready to kick off, his role as the successor to LK Advani (whom he just might manage to eclipse BEFORE the next election) is set in stone.
So, too, the likely result of the bombs seems to be the direct opposite of what the Muslim community would like to see happen in India. First off, the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) -- which is the Indian equivalent of the US Patriot Act, and very prone to abuse by law enforcement -- becomes more certain to return with each new blast.
But worse than that, Narendra Modi's star shines brighter with every explosion. Now with the BJP convention getting ready to kick off, his role as the successor to LK Advani (whom he just might manage to eclipse BEFORE the next election) is set in stone.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
no no no no no no no no no
I can't believe the bump that McCain is getting from Palin. Or that Obama seems to have fallen asleep at the wheel. Are my fellow Americans really that stupid? McCain is Bush with a slightly higher IQ, and a bit less enthusiasm for Christianity. What criteria are the respondents to the latest polls using, anyway?
I knew that the media (of which I don't really consider myself a part, sitting here in India) was exaggerating the degree to which America had moved beyond race. There's still a bunch of white folks out there who are looking for any excuse (OK, maybe subconsciously) to avoid voting for a black guy.
Unfortunately, the black guy in question seems to be the only politician in America with his finger on the pulse of what's happening, in big picture terms, in international relations. I.e. that the rest of the world is soooo over us.
I knew that the media (of which I don't really consider myself a part, sitting here in India) was exaggerating the degree to which America had moved beyond race. There's still a bunch of white folks out there who are looking for any excuse (OK, maybe subconsciously) to avoid voting for a black guy.
Unfortunately, the black guy in question seems to be the only politician in America with his finger on the pulse of what's happening, in big picture terms, in international relations. I.e. that the rest of the world is soooo over us.
Monday, August 11, 2008
when more is worse
India's vast plan to build a bevy of new schools will fix only half the problem: quantity, not quality.
Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 2:21 PM ET Aug 9, 2008
On the sprawling campus of Delhi University, the fear in July was as palpable as the excitement. For several weeks, prospective students rushed from college to college desperately combing admission lists for their names. Never before has India offered a better chance at a comfortable life after graduation. But never has getting a seat at one of the nation's universities been so hard. And for those who do land a spot, the troubles are just beginning.
Although India's economy and its job markets are booming, the nation's university system, which has been struggling for years, has recently hit a full-fledged crisis. The country's post-secondary schools currently offer only enough spots for about 7 percent of India's college-age citizens—about half the Asian average—and face a crushing faculty shortage. Already 25 percent of teaching positions nationwide are vacant, and 57 percent of professors lack either a master's or a Ph.D., according to a recent regulatory report. Curriculums are outdated, forcing companies to spend millions of dollars on "finishing schools" for new employees. Infrastructure is crumbling even at top schools like the famed Indian Institutes of Technology, where once cutting-edge laboratories have grown obsolete. And incompetent (or, as many allege, corrupt) regulators have let fly-by-night colleges proliferate while keeping out elite foreign universities keen to break into a potentially lucrative education market.
There is one ray of hope: for the first time in decades, the nation's leader has finally recognized the gravity of the problem. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called India's university system "dysfunctional" and embarked on the boldest educational reform program since Jawaharlal Nehru. But hamstrung by India's unwieldy bureaucracy and by ideological opponents, Singh may manage to dramatically expand the size of the country's higher education system without addressing many of its underlying problems.
Singh, himself a former economics professor at Delhi University, has promised to open 72 new post-secondary schools over the next five years, including eight new Indian Institutes of Technology, seven new Indian Institutes of Management, five new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research and 20 new Indian Institutes of Information Technology. To fund them, he's promised to boost the government's higher education spending ninefold, to $20 billion annually, during the five-year period that began in 2007.
But these changes may wind up addressing India's quantity problem without affecting its quality crisis. Already up to 75 percent of India's 400,000 annual technology grads and 90 percent of its 2.5 million general college grads are unable to find work. That's not due to a lack of jobs, according to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom)—it's due to a lack of skills. "For a long time after Independence, we were trying to solve the employment problem. Now we're trying to solve the employability problem," said Vijay Thadani, head of the Confederation of Indian Industry's committee on education. Loosening the purse strings will help Singh improve infrastructure and expand access for students, but it will take more than money to solve the faculty shortage, revamp outdated courses, encourage innovation and crack down on diploma mills. Indeed, rapid expansion could make these problems worse.
To be fair, Singh has tried to address the quality crisis. In 2005, he appointed a dream team of academics, planners and business executives to the National Knowledge Commission with a mandate to redesign India's entire education infrastructure by this October. Led by chairman Sam Pitroda—the architect of the nation's telecommunications network and thus no stranger to bureaucratic hurdles—the commission published a comprehensive set of recommendations in January 2007, focusing on "expansion, excellence and inclusion." Among its proposals, the commission advocated not only expanding the state university system but also diversifying sources of financing to include private participation, philanthropic contributions and industry links. It also suggested introducing frequent curricular revisions, moving away from the present system of standardized university-wide exams in favor of internal assessments of students by their professors, and setting up an independent regulatory authority. Yet while Singh's government has allocated a huge sum for building more universities and improving inclusiveness by expanding the quota system, it has yet to make progress on the crucial regulatory elements of the commission's plan.
That could prove disastrous. At present, India has no less than 16 different supervisory bodies for higher education, few of which are independent and all of which are of questionable efficacy. Mostly due to bureaucratic inertia, they've so far blocked attempts to modernize curriculums and methods of evaluation. They haven't done a good job at policing, either. Shoddy for-profit colleges have proliferated even as internationally respected foreign providers have been barred from opening up branch campuses and have struggled to get their joint programs certified. The All India Council of Technical Education, for example, has approved thousands of substandard private engineering colleges—many of them founded by profit-minded politicians. But it has refused to recognize the Indian School of Business, a private institution founded by former McKinsey & Co. managing director Rajat Gupta. And political wrangling at the parliamentary level (engineered by Singh's erstwhile communist coalition partners) has stymied legislation to allow foreign universities to set up campuses, even though Cornell, Columbia, and Stanford universities have all sent high-ranking delegations to the country on exploratory missions.
The will to reform remains strong, at least at the top. But the prime minister and his allies haven't succeeded in actually getting much done. In his introduction to the National Knowledge Commission's second report, published this January, Pitroda warned, "there is still resistance at various levels in the government to new ideas, experimentation ... external interventions, transparency and accountability, due to rigid organizational structures with territorial mindsets." If those obstacles can't be overcome, he wrote, "increasing resources could well result in more of the same." In other words, India could end up throwing good money—a lot of it—after bad, something this nation and its students could ill afford.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/151682
Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 2:21 PM ET Aug 9, 2008
On the sprawling campus of Delhi University, the fear in July was as palpable as the excitement. For several weeks, prospective students rushed from college to college desperately combing admission lists for their names. Never before has India offered a better chance at a comfortable life after graduation. But never has getting a seat at one of the nation's universities been so hard. And for those who do land a spot, the troubles are just beginning.
Although India's economy and its job markets are booming, the nation's university system, which has been struggling for years, has recently hit a full-fledged crisis. The country's post-secondary schools currently offer only enough spots for about 7 percent of India's college-age citizens—about half the Asian average—and face a crushing faculty shortage. Already 25 percent of teaching positions nationwide are vacant, and 57 percent of professors lack either a master's or a Ph.D., according to a recent regulatory report. Curriculums are outdated, forcing companies to spend millions of dollars on "finishing schools" for new employees. Infrastructure is crumbling even at top schools like the famed Indian Institutes of Technology, where once cutting-edge laboratories have grown obsolete. And incompetent (or, as many allege, corrupt) regulators have let fly-by-night colleges proliferate while keeping out elite foreign universities keen to break into a potentially lucrative education market.
There is one ray of hope: for the first time in decades, the nation's leader has finally recognized the gravity of the problem. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called India's university system "dysfunctional" and embarked on the boldest educational reform program since Jawaharlal Nehru. But hamstrung by India's unwieldy bureaucracy and by ideological opponents, Singh may manage to dramatically expand the size of the country's higher education system without addressing many of its underlying problems.
Singh, himself a former economics professor at Delhi University, has promised to open 72 new post-secondary schools over the next five years, including eight new Indian Institutes of Technology, seven new Indian Institutes of Management, five new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research and 20 new Indian Institutes of Information Technology. To fund them, he's promised to boost the government's higher education spending ninefold, to $20 billion annually, during the five-year period that began in 2007.
But these changes may wind up addressing India's quantity problem without affecting its quality crisis. Already up to 75 percent of India's 400,000 annual technology grads and 90 percent of its 2.5 million general college grads are unable to find work. That's not due to a lack of jobs, according to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom)—it's due to a lack of skills. "For a long time after Independence, we were trying to solve the employment problem. Now we're trying to solve the employability problem," said Vijay Thadani, head of the Confederation of Indian Industry's committee on education. Loosening the purse strings will help Singh improve infrastructure and expand access for students, but it will take more than money to solve the faculty shortage, revamp outdated courses, encourage innovation and crack down on diploma mills. Indeed, rapid expansion could make these problems worse.
To be fair, Singh has tried to address the quality crisis. In 2005, he appointed a dream team of academics, planners and business executives to the National Knowledge Commission with a mandate to redesign India's entire education infrastructure by this October. Led by chairman Sam Pitroda—the architect of the nation's telecommunications network and thus no stranger to bureaucratic hurdles—the commission published a comprehensive set of recommendations in January 2007, focusing on "expansion, excellence and inclusion." Among its proposals, the commission advocated not only expanding the state university system but also diversifying sources of financing to include private participation, philanthropic contributions and industry links. It also suggested introducing frequent curricular revisions, moving away from the present system of standardized university-wide exams in favor of internal assessments of students by their professors, and setting up an independent regulatory authority. Yet while Singh's government has allocated a huge sum for building more universities and improving inclusiveness by expanding the quota system, it has yet to make progress on the crucial regulatory elements of the commission's plan.
That could prove disastrous. At present, India has no less than 16 different supervisory bodies for higher education, few of which are independent and all of which are of questionable efficacy. Mostly due to bureaucratic inertia, they've so far blocked attempts to modernize curriculums and methods of evaluation. They haven't done a good job at policing, either. Shoddy for-profit colleges have proliferated even as internationally respected foreign providers have been barred from opening up branch campuses and have struggled to get their joint programs certified. The All India Council of Technical Education, for example, has approved thousands of substandard private engineering colleges—many of them founded by profit-minded politicians. But it has refused to recognize the Indian School of Business, a private institution founded by former McKinsey & Co. managing director Rajat Gupta. And political wrangling at the parliamentary level (engineered by Singh's erstwhile communist coalition partners) has stymied legislation to allow foreign universities to set up campuses, even though Cornell, Columbia, and Stanford universities have all sent high-ranking delegations to the country on exploratory missions.
The will to reform remains strong, at least at the top. But the prime minister and his allies haven't succeeded in actually getting much done. In his introduction to the National Knowledge Commission's second report, published this January, Pitroda warned, "there is still resistance at various levels in the government to new ideas, experimentation ... external interventions, transparency and accountability, due to rigid organizational structures with territorial mindsets." If those obstacles can't be overcome, he wrote, "increasing resources could well result in more of the same." In other words, India could end up throwing good money—a lot of it—after bad, something this nation and its students could ill afford.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/151682
Thursday, July 31, 2008
grassy knoll post 2: smoking gun?
OK, maybe it's not a smoking gun. Or a lone gunman. But the Mail Today reports that all of the unexploded bombs discovered in Surat were found by BJP activists (i.e. representatives of the party in power, and ostensibly "responsible" for failing to stop the deadly terrorist attack in Ahmedabad). No less than eleven of the bombs were discovered by one party worker.
Carefully avoiding libelous language (but not grammatical errors) Kamran Sulaimani writes:
"About two dozen bombs were discovered in the city, some at unlikely places--tucked behind hoarding bills and up on trees. But no one appears to know who first spotted a bomb.... The police seem to have been tipped off about most of the bombs by one group of BJP activists. But in most cases they weren't the ones who spotted the bombs. They were told about it by others. Now, in being asked, they seem to have forgotten who were the people who told them about the bombs."
Among the master sleuths was one Bhimji Budhna, who tipped off the cops about 11 of the 22 recovered bombs. A BJP corporator, he "doesn't remember who informed him about the bombs." But he was pretty good at finding them. He found one hanging from a tree, another hidden behind a billboard, and a third behind a tree guard (whatever that is).
Another guy, Sanjay Kapooria, who isn't a party member but Budhna described as "one of us," actually brought a bomb to the police station, where he claimed he'd fished it out of a trash can near his jewelry shop. Obviously a very courageous fellow, he says that after 18 unexploded bombs were recovered, he was sure that this one wouldn't go off either.
Carefully avoiding libelous language (but not grammatical errors) Kamran Sulaimani writes:
"About two dozen bombs were discovered in the city, some at unlikely places--tucked behind hoarding bills and up on trees. But no one appears to know who first spotted a bomb.... The police seem to have been tipped off about most of the bombs by one group of BJP activists. But in most cases they weren't the ones who spotted the bombs. They were told about it by others. Now, in being asked, they seem to have forgotten who were the people who told them about the bombs."
Among the master sleuths was one Bhimji Budhna, who tipped off the cops about 11 of the 22 recovered bombs. A BJP corporator, he "doesn't remember who informed him about the bombs." But he was pretty good at finding them. He found one hanging from a tree, another hidden behind a billboard, and a third behind a tree guard (whatever that is).
Another guy, Sanjay Kapooria, who isn't a party member but Budhna described as "one of us," actually brought a bomb to the police station, where he claimed he'd fished it out of a trash can near his jewelry shop. Obviously a very courageous fellow, he says that after 18 unexploded bombs were recovered, he was sure that this one wouldn't go off either.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
grassy knoll post: i don't wanna sound paranoid...
I don't want to sound paranoid. But it seems a bit dodgy to me that Gujarat managed to find and defuse 22 bombs in Surat the day after 18 exploded in Ahmedabad. Isn't that a little convenient? Like, Whoa, the police are incompetent--wait a minute, they're heroes! Or, from the opposite perspective: Whoa, the terrorists are evil geniuses--wait a minute, they're stupid morons....
Saturday, July 26, 2008
soft target
As an email from the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) taunts intelligence agencies with the promise of future terrorist attacks--daring police to stop 18 bombs in Ahmedabad BEFORE they went off--it is beginning to appear that India is the proverbial soft target. Several critics, including the Home Minister, had already laid into the intelligence bureaus for working at cross purposes, withholding information from one another, and generally acting incompetently. And few (if any) investigations into the deadly terrorist attacks perpetrated on Indian soil over the past five years have yielded any results. Yes, the authorities announce that they see evidence of the tried and true "foreign hand," and level (apparently unfounded) accusations at Pakistan or Bangladesh, and round up the usual (Muslim) suspects for interrogation. But in the end, nothing comes from their efforts.
It's entirely possible that these cases are simply too difficult to solve. And certainly the last thing India needs is a draconian anti-terrorism law that the incompetent police can use to persecute minority groups. But one wonders whether recent efforts--like the FBI visit intended to share info about forensic investigation--will have any effect, and whether greater international cooperation, as well as a complete overhaul of the Indian intelligence services, are warranted.
It's entirely possible that these cases are simply too difficult to solve. And certainly the last thing India needs is a draconian anti-terrorism law that the incompetent police can use to persecute minority groups. But one wonders whether recent efforts--like the FBI visit intended to share info about forensic investigation--will have any effect, and whether greater international cooperation, as well as a complete overhaul of the Indian intelligence services, are warranted.
Friday, July 25, 2008
businessweek: india beats china over longterm
Businessweek's William Nobrega argues that India will surpass China over the longterm because authoritarian governments always get out of the gate fast but falter late, while democracies build momentum as they slog onward.
He makes an interesting case. For instance, he points out:
"Since the 1980s, the Chinese government has focused on developing an export-driven economy supported by an artificially undervalued currency. Foreign direct investment was encouraged while domestic consumption was limited. Massive infrastructure projects were initiated, fueled by a growing trade surplus, with cities sprouting up in the hinterlands like some mythical phoenix. For years, the Chinese economy benefited from these policies with double-digit gross domestic product growth, vast foreign currency reserves, and ever increasing capital inflows.
But now the economic and social distortions have begun to appear with rising inflation rates, numerous asset bubbles, looming overcapacity, and rampant institutionalized corruption. The Chinese government finds itself in a quandary. If the government allows its currency to rapidly appreciate to reduce inflation it will drive down exports and fuel unemployment. If it fails to quell inflation, social unrest will quickly unfold."
But when it comes to the reasons that he cites for India's impending triumph over China, I'm not so sure that he knows what he's talking about. Here he goes:
Reason #1 - Property Rights
"As India becomes urbanized many families will choose to sell or borrow against their land so that they can start businesses, buy apartments, or provide education opportunities for their children. India is at the beginning of a gradual migration that is being driven by the development of high-end manufacturing and other sunrise industries that will require a vast pool of semiskilled and skilled labor. This migration will create an increasingly urban India that is expected to attract more than 200 million rural inhabitants to urban centers by 2025, primarily in what are known as secondary or "B & C" cities.
This transition will facilitate the sale of land holdings by an estimated 30 million farmers and 170 million other individuals indirectly tied to the agricultural sector. The sale of these holdings is expected to generate more than $1 trillion in capital by 2025. This capital will have a multiplier effect on the Indian economy that could exceed $3 trillion. The development of the mortgage-backed security and asset-backed security markets, driven by financial institutions like Citigroup (C), will create the liquidity required to free up this capital."
Meanwhile, in China he says:
"China, by contrast, has no rural property rights. China's 750 million rural residents who lease land are at the mercy of the local and regional government as to what compensation they will receive, if any, when they are forced from the land as a result of development, infrastructure improvements, etc. Additionally they have no right to borrow against their lease, and as such they have no assets. In fact, the Chinese government's official figures state that more than 200,000 hectares of rural land are taken from rural residents every year with little or no compensation."
...
The result is not unexpected, with over 87,000 mass incidents (or riots) reported in 2005, a 50% increase from 2003. Many provincial governments in China have begun to use plainclothes policemen to beat, intimidate, or otherwise subdue any peasant that dares to oppose these land grabs."
Can anyone say Nandigram?
He makes an interesting case. For instance, he points out:
"Since the 1980s, the Chinese government has focused on developing an export-driven economy supported by an artificially undervalued currency. Foreign direct investment was encouraged while domestic consumption was limited. Massive infrastructure projects were initiated, fueled by a growing trade surplus, with cities sprouting up in the hinterlands like some mythical phoenix. For years, the Chinese economy benefited from these policies with double-digit gross domestic product growth, vast foreign currency reserves, and ever increasing capital inflows.
But now the economic and social distortions have begun to appear with rising inflation rates, numerous asset bubbles, looming overcapacity, and rampant institutionalized corruption. The Chinese government finds itself in a quandary. If the government allows its currency to rapidly appreciate to reduce inflation it will drive down exports and fuel unemployment. If it fails to quell inflation, social unrest will quickly unfold."
But when it comes to the reasons that he cites for India's impending triumph over China, I'm not so sure that he knows what he's talking about. Here he goes:
Reason #1 - Property Rights
"As India becomes urbanized many families will choose to sell or borrow against their land so that they can start businesses, buy apartments, or provide education opportunities for their children. India is at the beginning of a gradual migration that is being driven by the development of high-end manufacturing and other sunrise industries that will require a vast pool of semiskilled and skilled labor. This migration will create an increasingly urban India that is expected to attract more than 200 million rural inhabitants to urban centers by 2025, primarily in what are known as secondary or "B & C" cities.
This transition will facilitate the sale of land holdings by an estimated 30 million farmers and 170 million other individuals indirectly tied to the agricultural sector. The sale of these holdings is expected to generate more than $1 trillion in capital by 2025. This capital will have a multiplier effect on the Indian economy that could exceed $3 trillion. The development of the mortgage-backed security and asset-backed security markets, driven by financial institutions like Citigroup (C), will create the liquidity required to free up this capital."
Meanwhile, in China he says:
"China, by contrast, has no rural property rights. China's 750 million rural residents who lease land are at the mercy of the local and regional government as to what compensation they will receive, if any, when they are forced from the land as a result of development, infrastructure improvements, etc. Additionally they have no right to borrow against their lease, and as such they have no assets. In fact, the Chinese government's official figures state that more than 200,000 hectares of rural land are taken from rural residents every year with little or no compensation."
...
The result is not unexpected, with over 87,000 mass incidents (or riots) reported in 2005, a 50% increase from 2003. Many provincial governments in China have begun to use plainclothes policemen to beat, intimidate, or otherwise subdue any peasant that dares to oppose these land grabs."
Can anyone say Nandigram?
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
nothing wrong with veda
Suvir Saran's India venture, Veda, suffered from bad reviews when it opened. Maybe it was the hype of a foreign-returned Indian who'd made a splash in New York (with a hip and stylish joint called Devi). Or maybe it was just that Indians don't like to pay a lot for Indian food, unless it's sanctioned by a five star hotel. But by and large the verdict was: It's not worth it.
I beg to differ.
I stayed away from Veda on the strength of the nay sayers for what must be a couple years, but now that I've finally tried the joint, I have to say that the food is pretty damn good. Definitely better than most of the Indian restaurants in town (especially where the vegetarian is concerned), and WAY better than most of the new "Western" and "fusion" restaurants of the Tabula Rasa-Blanco-Nu Deli ilk (by and large terrible). I didn't sample too much from the menu, so I might be wrong. But it's definitely worth a try.
Also, the bar is a very cool, chilled out place to relax -- very much like New York in ambiance, without too much noise -- and the drinks are comparatively cheap. Where most of the snooty joints in town are charging Rs. 200 for a 12-oz beer (which they incorrectly call a pint), Veda only charges Rs. 90. Cocktails are Rs. 275 or something, compared with as much as Rs. 450 elsewhere.
It ain't cheap, I know. But it is cheaper.
I beg to differ.
I stayed away from Veda on the strength of the nay sayers for what must be a couple years, but now that I've finally tried the joint, I have to say that the food is pretty damn good. Definitely better than most of the Indian restaurants in town (especially where the vegetarian is concerned), and WAY better than most of the new "Western" and "fusion" restaurants of the Tabula Rasa-Blanco-Nu Deli ilk (by and large terrible). I didn't sample too much from the menu, so I might be wrong. But it's definitely worth a try.
Also, the bar is a very cool, chilled out place to relax -- very much like New York in ambiance, without too much noise -- and the drinks are comparatively cheap. Where most of the snooty joints in town are charging Rs. 200 for a 12-oz beer (which they incorrectly call a pint), Veda only charges Rs. 90. Cocktails are Rs. 275 or something, compared with as much as Rs. 450 elsewhere.
It ain't cheap, I know. But it is cheaper.
us to give pakistan f-16s to fight terror
The NYT reports that the US is slated to shift $230 million intended for anti-terrorism aid to supply Pakistan with F-16 fighters instead. Pakistan has rarely (if ever) used this type of fighter as air support for anti-terrorism operations, though the F-16 is an important part of its deterrent force in its ongoing conflict with India.
Obviously, this is a dumb idea. Sell Pakistan jets if you want, as long as you make the same offer to India. But don't give them away. Especially when the so-called anti-terrorism efforts are limited to platitudes and expressions of helplessness.
Obviously, this is a dumb idea. Sell Pakistan jets if you want, as long as you make the same offer to India. But don't give them away. Especially when the so-called anti-terrorism efforts are limited to platitudes and expressions of helplessness.
the long knight
It may not be the best Batman movie, but it's definitely the longest. I've never been grateful for an intermission in an English movie before, but during the Dark Knight I decided it was much needed. Our party was running out of food and water, and we'd instituted rationing. But Shailaja was beginning to eye my leg hungrily. And that was before Heath Ledger started doing that thing with his lips (a tick that emerges after the Joker's capture).
Seriously, I think the only reviewer I've read who nailed this one was Newsweek's David Ansen, who called the film a "sometimes oppressive" epic, and lamented, "You may emerge more exhausted than elated. Nolan wants to prove that a superhero movie needn't be disposable, effects-ridden junk food, and you have to admire his ambition. But this is Batman, not Hamlet." Call me shallow, but I wish it were a little more fun."
By the way: Hamlet was too long, as well.
Seriously, I think the only reviewer I've read who nailed this one was Newsweek's David Ansen, who called the film a "sometimes oppressive" epic, and lamented, "You may emerge more exhausted than elated. Nolan wants to prove that a superhero movie needn't be disposable, effects-ridden junk food, and you have to admire his ambition. But this is Batman, not Hamlet." Call me shallow, but I wish it were a little more fun."
By the way: Hamlet was too long, as well.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
the new yorker's brilliant obama cover...
A good satire is always "offensive," to use the watchword of 1990s political correctness. That's why it works. Now that the New Yorker cover featuring a turban-clad Obama touching fists with his wife looking like a Black Panther in fatigues and Dr. Jay style Afro has been reproduced in the Indian papers, everybody can duly express his outrage.
But one thing that can't be done anymore with impunity is reproducing the thinly veiled innuendos about Obama's alleged foreign / Muslim heritage and emphasis on his race--e.g. when a flap erupted over his supposed dissing of a kid who wanted to give him a fist pump (in fact the kid asked him to sign his arm). That's why the New Yorker cover is brilliant. It steals the thunder from the right wing and exposes their sniping and conniving for what it is: Racism and Xenophobia.
But one thing that can't be done anymore with impunity is reproducing the thinly veiled innuendos about Obama's alleged foreign / Muslim heritage and emphasis on his race--e.g. when a flap erupted over his supposed dissing of a kid who wanted to give him a fist pump (in fact the kid asked him to sign his arm). That's why the New Yorker cover is brilliant. It steals the thunder from the right wing and exposes their sniping and conniving for what it is: Racism and Xenophobia.
making friends
I'm guessing this one will put me at the top of the India-bashers list for a few days.... Not to mention winning me a few friends among the rich and powerful.
Where Blood Runs Thick
By Jason Overdorf
(Newsweek July 21, 2008)
For some time now, Indian firms have been growing in competitiveness; companies like Tata, Reliance, and the Aditya Birla Group now rival giant Western multinationals like General Electric and Procter & Gamble. The conventional wisdom has also been that Subcontinental powerhouses are getting more sophisticated. Management is becoming more professional, too; bullish analysts point to the recent merger of Ranbaxy (India's largest drugmaker) with Japan's Daiichi as a sign of a new willingness among India's CEO scions to move beyond the walled garden of family firms and team up with smart outside companies.
Now a very public fight between Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd. and Anil Ambani's Reliance Anil Dhirubai Ambani Group—the billion-dollar refineries to telecoms rivals created when the brothers divided the family assets after a soap-opera-style split in 2005—underscores how much work remains. The brothers are battling over Anil's planned merger of his Reliance Communications unit with South Africa's MTN Group, which would create one of the world's ten largest telecoms companies, worth an estimated $70 billion and with 116 million subscribers worldwide. Mukesh has effectively stymied the deal by invoking his right of first refusal on any sale or transfer of Anil's shares in the company.
Nor are such tantrums limited to the Ambanis—many family-owned Indian monoliths still favor insider deals, hire relatives over better-qualified outsiders, squabble unproductively, and ignore independent directors' advice, according to a managing partner at a private-equity company that invests in such firms. The bottom line: don't look for the next Jack Welch on the Subcontinent any time soon.
Where Blood Runs Thick
By Jason Overdorf
(Newsweek July 21, 2008)
For some time now, Indian firms have been growing in competitiveness; companies like Tata, Reliance, and the Aditya Birla Group now rival giant Western multinationals like General Electric and Procter & Gamble. The conventional wisdom has also been that Subcontinental powerhouses are getting more sophisticated. Management is becoming more professional, too; bullish analysts point to the recent merger of Ranbaxy (India's largest drugmaker) with Japan's Daiichi as a sign of a new willingness among India's CEO scions to move beyond the walled garden of family firms and team up with smart outside companies.
Now a very public fight between Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd. and Anil Ambani's Reliance Anil Dhirubai Ambani Group—the billion-dollar refineries to telecoms rivals created when the brothers divided the family assets after a soap-opera-style split in 2005—underscores how much work remains. The brothers are battling over Anil's planned merger of his Reliance Communications unit with South Africa's MTN Group, which would create one of the world's ten largest telecoms companies, worth an estimated $70 billion and with 116 million subscribers worldwide. Mukesh has effectively stymied the deal by invoking his right of first refusal on any sale or transfer of Anil's shares in the company.
Nor are such tantrums limited to the Ambanis—many family-owned Indian monoliths still favor insider deals, hire relatives over better-qualified outsiders, squabble unproductively, and ignore independent directors' advice, according to a managing partner at a private-equity company that invests in such firms. The bottom line: don't look for the next Jack Welch on the Subcontinent any time soon.
finally, I get a eunuch story... now i'm a real foreign correspondent
All these years as a foreign correspondent in India, and I've never written a eunuch story. At first I took that as a point of pride. I didn't write about snake charmers or elephants, either. But then I started to feel a little niggling shame, a little peer pressure. Come on, my conscience whispered, everybody's doing it. Eventually, I succumbed. Who knows, maybe I'll go on an all snake charmers & tantrics, all the time, binge.
Anyway: Here it is
New job-training program aims to improve lot of India's eunuchs
By Jason Overdorf
Toronto Globe and Mail
NEW DELHI -- Following the example of India's 18th-century Mughal rulers, who used castrated men or hermaphrodites to guard their harems, the government of the eastern state of Bihar plans to post eunuchs as guards in girls dormitories, colleges and hospitals.
"We are trying to prepare a plan for them so they can be involved in normal economic activity of society," said Vijay Prakash, a principal secretary in the state social welfare department. "They will be trained to work as security guards and for other types of activities which suit their temperament or in which they have developed certain expertise. They will also be involved in promoting activities related to women and child development and AIDS education."
The program will begin as early as this summer, Mr. Prakash said. The department estimates that about 2 per cent of the state's population of 100 million are transgender.
Known as hijras in the Hindi-speaking north, the so-called third sex has a 4,000-year history in India, where they comprise a distinct religio-ethnic group. Most hijras are born as men, but renounce their gender and sexuality to worship the mother goddess Yellamma, also called Renuka. Traditionally, the castration ceremony was performed, at great peril to the recipient, by an elder of the community. Sex reassignment surgery is not available in India, and even today many hijras go to quacks or fly-by-night hospitals to be castrated, which, though it is not compulsory, gives them higher status among their peers.
Ostracized by their families and mainstream society, hijras live in communal homes headed by their gurus. Because discrimination prevents them from taking ordinary jobs, they earn money through prostitution or begging--and sometimes by extorting funds by threatening to lift their saris and expose their mutilated genitals.
This is not the first time that Bihar—a state with a dismal reputation for lawlessness and poverty--has capitalized on their unique position in society. In 2006, the Patna Municipal Corporation used eunuchs as tax collectors in what became one of its most successful revenue drives, as habitual tax evaders preferred to pay up rather than have hijras singing and dancing on their doorsteps for the whole neighborhood to see. "That was slightly negative," says Prakash, "since they were used to pressurize people to pay. We want to use them in a more positive way." Taking advantage of the hijras' traditional method of earning money—singing for alms at weddings and birth ceremonies—the government will train them to communicate messages about child development, family-planning and other important issues through their songs. "They're great singers, and whenever a child is born they go to the house," Prakash explained.
"They [the hijras] consider themselves to be outside of the society, and their interactions with society have been very, very negative," says Dr. Hetukar Jha, a sociologist based in Bihar. "Although I welcome this move, the government needs to study their culture and habits to find out the best points at which to expand their interactions with [mainstream] society." Otherwise, Jha argues, the added visibility of these new roles could create additional problems for the ostracized group.
Though they held respected positions in the courts of India's Mughal rulers—Central Asian Muslims who ruled India from the 16th to the 18th century—today hijras are often attacked and persecuted, according to the New Delhi-based People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). Salacious rumors still circulate accusing hijras of kidnapping children for castration, and apocryphal stories of hijras who passed themselves off as women in order to marry unwitting heterosexual men are common. These myths stoke fear and revulsion, provoking hate crimes ranging from rape to disfigurement with acid and even murder, according to PUCL, which has documented dozens of cases of such abuse.
Because homosexuality remains illegal in India—under Section 377 of the Indian penal code hijras and other homosexuals may be sentenced to a prison term of 10 years to life--corrupt policemen also routinely harrass the transgender community. "They're subjected to violence on a day to day basis by the community and the police, and there's no legal framework to deal with it," said Arvind Narain, a lawyer with the Alternative Law Forum, which represents marginalized groups and communities.
As the protectors of the state's young women, though, the state hopes the eunuchs will regain some of the respect they once commanded.
....
Anyway: Here it is
New job-training program aims to improve lot of India's eunuchs
By Jason Overdorf
Toronto Globe and Mail
NEW DELHI -- Following the example of India's 18th-century Mughal rulers, who used castrated men or hermaphrodites to guard their harems, the government of the eastern state of Bihar plans to post eunuchs as guards in girls dormitories, colleges and hospitals.
"We are trying to prepare a plan for them so they can be involved in normal economic activity of society," said Vijay Prakash, a principal secretary in the state social welfare department. "They will be trained to work as security guards and for other types of activities which suit their temperament or in which they have developed certain expertise. They will also be involved in promoting activities related to women and child development and AIDS education."
The program will begin as early as this summer, Mr. Prakash said. The department estimates that about 2 per cent of the state's population of 100 million are transgender.
Known as hijras in the Hindi-speaking north, the so-called third sex has a 4,000-year history in India, where they comprise a distinct religio-ethnic group. Most hijras are born as men, but renounce their gender and sexuality to worship the mother goddess Yellamma, also called Renuka. Traditionally, the castration ceremony was performed, at great peril to the recipient, by an elder of the community. Sex reassignment surgery is not available in India, and even today many hijras go to quacks or fly-by-night hospitals to be castrated, which, though it is not compulsory, gives them higher status among their peers.
Ostracized by their families and mainstream society, hijras live in communal homes headed by their gurus. Because discrimination prevents them from taking ordinary jobs, they earn money through prostitution or begging--and sometimes by extorting funds by threatening to lift their saris and expose their mutilated genitals.
This is not the first time that Bihar—a state with a dismal reputation for lawlessness and poverty--has capitalized on their unique position in society. In 2006, the Patna Municipal Corporation used eunuchs as tax collectors in what became one of its most successful revenue drives, as habitual tax evaders preferred to pay up rather than have hijras singing and dancing on their doorsteps for the whole neighborhood to see. "That was slightly negative," says Prakash, "since they were used to pressurize people to pay. We want to use them in a more positive way." Taking advantage of the hijras' traditional method of earning money—singing for alms at weddings and birth ceremonies—the government will train them to communicate messages about child development, family-planning and other important issues through their songs. "They're great singers, and whenever a child is born they go to the house," Prakash explained.
"They [the hijras] consider themselves to be outside of the society, and their interactions with society have been very, very negative," says Dr. Hetukar Jha, a sociologist based in Bihar. "Although I welcome this move, the government needs to study their culture and habits to find out the best points at which to expand their interactions with [mainstream] society." Otherwise, Jha argues, the added visibility of these new roles could create additional problems for the ostracized group.
Though they held respected positions in the courts of India's Mughal rulers—Central Asian Muslims who ruled India from the 16th to the 18th century—today hijras are often attacked and persecuted, according to the New Delhi-based People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). Salacious rumors still circulate accusing hijras of kidnapping children for castration, and apocryphal stories of hijras who passed themselves off as women in order to marry unwitting heterosexual men are common. These myths stoke fear and revulsion, provoking hate crimes ranging from rape to disfigurement with acid and even murder, according to PUCL, which has documented dozens of cases of such abuse.
Because homosexuality remains illegal in India—under Section 377 of the Indian penal code hijras and other homosexuals may be sentenced to a prison term of 10 years to life--corrupt policemen also routinely harrass the transgender community. "They're subjected to violence on a day to day basis by the community and the police, and there's no legal framework to deal with it," said Arvind Narain, a lawyer with the Alternative Law Forum, which represents marginalized groups and communities.
As the protectors of the state's young women, though, the state hopes the eunuchs will regain some of the respect they once commanded.
....
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
robbing the poor to feed the rich
This week, the Delhi food and civil supplies department cracked down on scams to defraud the public distribution system (which distributes goods at a reduced price to the poor), reports the Times of India. The investigators found 170,000 fake ration cards had been used to cheat the system, exposing what basically everybody already knew to be true: There are disgustingly immoral people out there, pitiless in the extreme, who are robbing the poor to make themselves rich. Apparently, this is a business that can make you hundreds of thousands of dollars, if you have no conscience or self-respect.
Apart from the obvious, I'm disgusted that these people are tacitly sanctioned by society--their friends, neighbors and relatives, who must have some idea what is going on. We need not send these thieves to jail to stop this kind of thing from happening; just ostracize them from decent society. If people "cut them dead" (as they say in 19th century novels to refer to the act of pretending somebody doesn't exist) in the street--even their close relatives--the shame would be too great for anybody to take on. But, on the contrary, their supposed cleverness in making the system work for their own pathetic ends is actually admired! So much so, that some, at least, are not ashamed to brag about their nefarious schemes.
Newspaper editors: If the court system is so incompetent that these scum will never be convicted, then do us all a favor and publish detailed accounts about them, including their names, addresses, and exactly the way they screwed the system, devoting as many words as you do to those "feel good" stories about the victims of terrorist attacks when you are trying to make the events more "real." Stealing from people on the brink of starvation is murder by another name, and those guilty of it should pay a far higher price than being dropped unceremoniously from the list of approved shopkeepers (or whatever slap on the wrist is the current method).
Apart from the obvious, I'm disgusted that these people are tacitly sanctioned by society--their friends, neighbors and relatives, who must have some idea what is going on. We need not send these thieves to jail to stop this kind of thing from happening; just ostracize them from decent society. If people "cut them dead" (as they say in 19th century novels to refer to the act of pretending somebody doesn't exist) in the street--even their close relatives--the shame would be too great for anybody to take on. But, on the contrary, their supposed cleverness in making the system work for their own pathetic ends is actually admired! So much so, that some, at least, are not ashamed to brag about their nefarious schemes.
Newspaper editors: If the court system is so incompetent that these scum will never be convicted, then do us all a favor and publish detailed accounts about them, including their names, addresses, and exactly the way they screwed the system, devoting as many words as you do to those "feel good" stories about the victims of terrorist attacks when you are trying to make the events more "real." Stealing from people on the brink of starvation is murder by another name, and those guilty of it should pay a far higher price than being dropped unceremoniously from the list of approved shopkeepers (or whatever slap on the wrist is the current method).
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
signs of trouble
Delhi's traffic woes continue, with flyovers falling on cars, jams slowing the average speed during rush hour to 16 kmph, and the Bus Rapid Transit System (otherwise known as the great gridlock creator) sinking into neglect and disrepair as the government tries to lull voters into forgetting about it. The latest, though, is a story in today's Express about Rs. 1.6 crores (i.e. 160 million rupees, or about 4 million dollars) that has been spent to erect road signs in the leadup to the Commonwealth Games in 2010. Apparently, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit finds them "odd."
I'm not sure which signs are the new ones. But I can tell you this. Delhi's road signs are terrible. There are hardly any of them, and most of those that do exist are written in 12-point type and hidden behind a bush or secreted behind a public toilet, where a driver cannot see them unless he stops, gets out of the car, and asks a dozen passersby to help him in the search. The large ones that are legible are useless. Consider the signs leading to the flyovers that are meant to tell you what lane you should be in so that you don't miss the turn for where you're going. They show three arrows, all pointing up, indicating the various choices, e.g. Khelgaon Marg (up arrow), IIT (up arrow) and Delhi airport (up arrow). These signs are supposed to imply that you should keep left if you want Khelgaon Marg, but they unwittingly indicate you should be in the middle lane for IIT and the right lane for the Airport, and that you should go straight for all three destinations. In fact, there are more than four lanes (all in constant flux of course). If you want Khelgaon Marg you don't want to go straight at all, you want to go below the flyover and turn right or left. And if you want IIT or the airport it doesn't matter a bit what lane you're in, as long as you stay on the flyover. Because the signs are so bad, you constantly find drivers reversing down the flyover after realizing they've screwed up. More annoying, there's a simple solution to the problem, which the government sign painters would have hit upon immediately had they done the briefest of surveys of international signage standards. The answer: the arrows for the left lane should point DOWN if you're meant to go below the flyover. Better still, there should be a warning a kilometer before the flyover that says something like "Next intersection Khelgaon Marg, Keep left". Of course, I'd be happy if they actually labeled the roads. And stopped the practice of changing their names every few meters to honor a new leftist leader. But that's just me.
I'm not sure which signs are the new ones. But I can tell you this. Delhi's road signs are terrible. There are hardly any of them, and most of those that do exist are written in 12-point type and hidden behind a bush or secreted behind a public toilet, where a driver cannot see them unless he stops, gets out of the car, and asks a dozen passersby to help him in the search. The large ones that are legible are useless. Consider the signs leading to the flyovers that are meant to tell you what lane you should be in so that you don't miss the turn for where you're going. They show three arrows, all pointing up, indicating the various choices, e.g. Khelgaon Marg (up arrow), IIT (up arrow) and Delhi airport (up arrow). These signs are supposed to imply that you should keep left if you want Khelgaon Marg, but they unwittingly indicate you should be in the middle lane for IIT and the right lane for the Airport, and that you should go straight for all three destinations. In fact, there are more than four lanes (all in constant flux of course). If you want Khelgaon Marg you don't want to go straight at all, you want to go below the flyover and turn right or left. And if you want IIT or the airport it doesn't matter a bit what lane you're in, as long as you stay on the flyover. Because the signs are so bad, you constantly find drivers reversing down the flyover after realizing they've screwed up. More annoying, there's a simple solution to the problem, which the government sign painters would have hit upon immediately had they done the briefest of surveys of international signage standards. The answer: the arrows for the left lane should point DOWN if you're meant to go below the flyover. Better still, there should be a warning a kilometer before the flyover that says something like "Next intersection Khelgaon Marg, Keep left". Of course, I'd be happy if they actually labeled the roads. And stopped the practice of changing their names every few meters to honor a new leftist leader. But that's just me.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
misread
The blurb for Outlook Magazine's cover story on Manmohan Singh this week reads: "With Manmohan Singh intent on pushing the nuclear deal when he should be worrying about inflation, many have begun to wonder if he's putting personal interest before the national one." Nothing could be further from the truth. It's decidedly against Singh's personal interest to pursue the nuclear deal, since it would mean losing his post and having to fight elections (which as a terrible politician, he is loathe to do). I seriously doubt that "many" of whom Outlook writes really exist.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, it is silly to link the two issues of inflation and the nuclear deal, since they have nothing to do with one another, apart from the fact that one may precipitate elections and the other may make it impossible for the Congress to win. Inflation, like all economic problems, is not easy to manipulate by the stroke of a pen, and it is likely that the PM is very worried about inflation but also very much at a loss about how to initiate a sudden reversal.
The bottom line is that this deal (as Shekhar Gupta correctly wrote earlier this week) is not about energy--the Left gets that right. It's about bringing India back into the fold after years of ostracism following its nuclear test. Any supposed limitations that it puts in place are already in place today--when India is still essentially under sanctions--so it is ridiculous to say that India should keep out of it to protect its autonomy. (Essentially, that is like a prisoner saying he doesn't want to come out of jail because if he breaks the law he'll be thrown back inside).
The Congress will have to face elections in April, regardless what it does now. And Manmohan Singh will be the de facto choice as its prime minister, since Sonia Gandhi has already demonstrated her unwillingness to take the post, Rahul Gandhi is too young (by consensus) and there isn't anybody else that Sonia can rely on to rule by remote control. With those realities, the more that the party hamstrings Singh and turns him into an emasculated figure of ridicule, the more it increases the (already likely) scenario that it will be thrown out of office.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, it is silly to link the two issues of inflation and the nuclear deal, since they have nothing to do with one another, apart from the fact that one may precipitate elections and the other may make it impossible for the Congress to win. Inflation, like all economic problems, is not easy to manipulate by the stroke of a pen, and it is likely that the PM is very worried about inflation but also very much at a loss about how to initiate a sudden reversal.
The bottom line is that this deal (as Shekhar Gupta correctly wrote earlier this week) is not about energy--the Left gets that right. It's about bringing India back into the fold after years of ostracism following its nuclear test. Any supposed limitations that it puts in place are already in place today--when India is still essentially under sanctions--so it is ridiculous to say that India should keep out of it to protect its autonomy. (Essentially, that is like a prisoner saying he doesn't want to come out of jail because if he breaks the law he'll be thrown back inside).
The Congress will have to face elections in April, regardless what it does now. And Manmohan Singh will be the de facto choice as its prime minister, since Sonia Gandhi has already demonstrated her unwillingness to take the post, Rahul Gandhi is too young (by consensus) and there isn't anybody else that Sonia can rely on to rule by remote control. With those realities, the more that the party hamstrings Singh and turns him into an emasculated figure of ridicule, the more it increases the (already likely) scenario that it will be thrown out of office.
Monday, June 23, 2008
making anti-incumbency work...
One thing that's always bothered me about India's version of democracy. The politicians keep claiming that they can't enact unpopular, but necessary, legislation because they're scared of being thrown out of office. The nuclear deal is the latest big-ticket casualty, but the argument applies to everything from parking tickets and more expensive licenses for cars (to curb pollution and congestion in Delhi) to raising the tariff for water for the middle class (to finance better supply and reduce waste).
The argument bothers me for two reasons.
The first is that it's patently untrue. Witness the BRT. It was fantastically unpopular from the beginning, and has only gotten more so, yet it's being pursued with vigor.
The second reason is that anti-incumbency virtually guarantees that you'll be thrown out, no matter what you do. Why not do something productive?
The "golden quadrilateral" highway project (justifiably popular) is an example here. It has been pursued by two successive governments, despite their traditional rivalry and the long-standing practice of bringing in your own contractors so you can shift the kickbacks from the old govt to the new.
Considering that the two largest political parties--and many of their allies--can agree on substantial parts of the agenda of what needs to be done for India to develop as a modern nation, this seems to be the way to make anti-incumbency work: Focus on projects / legislation where there is a broad consensus, and push forward regardless of party ties, while using other line items to try to differentiate the party. Leaving aside economic reforms--even though the Congress and BJP are basically agreed on what measures are needed, though they refuse to admit it--Everybody wants good roads. Everybody wants functioning sewers. Everybody wants clean water. If you're going to essentially take turns holding power anyway, what do you have to lose in actually providing them?
There must be another reason than anti-incumbency that nothing gets done.
The argument bothers me for two reasons.
The first is that it's patently untrue. Witness the BRT. It was fantastically unpopular from the beginning, and has only gotten more so, yet it's being pursued with vigor.
The second reason is that anti-incumbency virtually guarantees that you'll be thrown out, no matter what you do. Why not do something productive?
The "golden quadrilateral" highway project (justifiably popular) is an example here. It has been pursued by two successive governments, despite their traditional rivalry and the long-standing practice of bringing in your own contractors so you can shift the kickbacks from the old govt to the new.
Considering that the two largest political parties--and many of their allies--can agree on substantial parts of the agenda of what needs to be done for India to develop as a modern nation, this seems to be the way to make anti-incumbency work: Focus on projects / legislation where there is a broad consensus, and push forward regardless of party ties, while using other line items to try to differentiate the party. Leaving aside economic reforms--even though the Congress and BJP are basically agreed on what measures are needed, though they refuse to admit it--Everybody wants good roads. Everybody wants functioning sewers. Everybody wants clean water. If you're going to essentially take turns holding power anyway, what do you have to lose in actually providing them?
There must be another reason than anti-incumbency that nothing gets done.
unisex toilets
This Sunday I was entertained by a little gripe from a woman journalist about the unisex toilets in some of Delhi's popular bars. The bad news: The closet-sized space means that your face is inches from the urinal when you're seated on the pot.
Personally, I could never figure out why they have the urinal in there at all. If I'm taking a leak, I lock the door: The last thing I want is for some massive mustachioed marauder in urgent need to come barging in and flop down on the seat to take a dump when I'm midstream. So I (and other dudes) could just pee in the toilet like we do at home, unless there's some special cache in urinals that I don't know about. Incidentally, this is the case in ALL the men's toilets, not just the unisex ones.
Now that I know women are freaked out by the whole staredown with the soapcake thing, though, I'm thinking I may be more metrosexual than I originally considered. Then again, I'm also tormented by Delhi's other (more common) architectural faux pas--the light switches with so many toggles that coming into your house feels like firing up a 747, the canted rooms (everything skewed at a ten degree angle), the bathrooms that you have to walk upstairs into because they had to make room for the pipes underneath.... These guys really need to start hiring professionals.
Personally, I could never figure out why they have the urinal in there at all. If I'm taking a leak, I lock the door: The last thing I want is for some massive mustachioed marauder in urgent need to come barging in and flop down on the seat to take a dump when I'm midstream. So I (and other dudes) could just pee in the toilet like we do at home, unless there's some special cache in urinals that I don't know about. Incidentally, this is the case in ALL the men's toilets, not just the unisex ones.
Now that I know women are freaked out by the whole staredown with the soapcake thing, though, I'm thinking I may be more metrosexual than I originally considered. Then again, I'm also tormented by Delhi's other (more common) architectural faux pas--the light switches with so many toggles that coming into your house feels like firing up a 747, the canted rooms (everything skewed at a ten degree angle), the bathrooms that you have to walk upstairs into because they had to make room for the pipes underneath.... These guys really need to start hiring professionals.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
murder (al)most foul
My pal Andy Buncombe of the Independent has written an interesting piece on the Aarushi Talwar murders, arguing that the furor over the whodunnit has exposed the rift between Delhi's rich and poor.
Some highlights:
"While the media attention devoted to Aarushi's murder was exceptional, even the family's lawyer believes such servants are often responsible for crimes. Pinaki Mishra said there were many factors behind the phenomenon – increasing economic disparity, the increasing influx of rural people into India's cities and even mafia-style groups that force domestic servants to steal from their employers....
Yet while such killings made big headlines, official figures suggest that the problem is not as great as some may believe. Mr Bhagat, the Delhi police spokesman, said that five people in the city with a population of more than 16 million had been robbed or killed by their servants so far this year. Last year the total was six."
Some highlights:
"While the media attention devoted to Aarushi's murder was exceptional, even the family's lawyer believes such servants are often responsible for crimes. Pinaki Mishra said there were many factors behind the phenomenon – increasing economic disparity, the increasing influx of rural people into India's cities and even mafia-style groups that force domestic servants to steal from their employers....
Yet while such killings made big headlines, official figures suggest that the problem is not as great as some may believe. Mr Bhagat, the Delhi police spokesman, said that five people in the city with a population of more than 16 million had been robbed or killed by their servants so far this year. Last year the total was six."
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
the crappening
It's confirmed. M. Night Shyamalan is in freefall.
The Happening is only marginally better than, and just as stupid as Lady in the Water. How does one explain his "crappening?" I think it all goes down with his childish and pretentious obsession with casting himself as an auteur--a concept so pretentious that there's only a word for it in French--which puts him in the disastrous company of Abel Ferrar (Bad Lieutenant to The Funeral and on downward) and David Milch (Deadwood to John from Cincinatti) as well as folks like Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman. It is entirely possible that Shyamalan cannot write--the Sixth Sense notwithstanding--and it is definitely proven by his last three films that his critical faculties are severely wanting. Delusional is the word that springs to mind. (I'm sure that the wise man at Disney who dumped him has been promoted way, way up the ladder). Filmmaking--like writing--is not really a solitary profession, it seems. You need people to tell you when you're doing something ridiculous, or pompous, or just plain dopey. My guess is that Manoj had about 100 projects in the trash can before he came up with The Sixth Sense, and that was a good thing. Unbreakable came next, and it was OK. But then the critical world (Newsweek and Time in particular) did him a colossal disservice by saying that Signs was a brilliant masterwork and enshrining him as the next Spielberg. Signs was stupid, too, folks. With badly drawn aliens and, again, that crushingly horrible whimsy that Manoj has patented in his post-Sixth Sense career: the aliens could be destroyed by tap water.
That's it. He's in the heap with Karan Johar and Abel Ferrar--I vow never to spend money on one of his movies again.
I guess this means UTV is not going to catapult itself into the realms of Village Roadshow etc--at least not yet.
The Happening is only marginally better than, and just as stupid as Lady in the Water. How does one explain his "crappening?" I think it all goes down with his childish and pretentious obsession with casting himself as an auteur--a concept so pretentious that there's only a word for it in French--which puts him in the disastrous company of Abel Ferrar (Bad Lieutenant to The Funeral and on downward) and David Milch (Deadwood to John from Cincinatti) as well as folks like Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman. It is entirely possible that Shyamalan cannot write--the Sixth Sense notwithstanding--and it is definitely proven by his last three films that his critical faculties are severely wanting. Delusional is the word that springs to mind. (I'm sure that the wise man at Disney who dumped him has been promoted way, way up the ladder). Filmmaking--like writing--is not really a solitary profession, it seems. You need people to tell you when you're doing something ridiculous, or pompous, or just plain dopey. My guess is that Manoj had about 100 projects in the trash can before he came up with The Sixth Sense, and that was a good thing. Unbreakable came next, and it was OK. But then the critical world (Newsweek and Time in particular) did him a colossal disservice by saying that Signs was a brilliant masterwork and enshrining him as the next Spielberg. Signs was stupid, too, folks. With badly drawn aliens and, again, that crushingly horrible whimsy that Manoj has patented in his post-Sixth Sense career: the aliens could be destroyed by tap water.
That's it. He's in the heap with Karan Johar and Abel Ferrar--I vow never to spend money on one of his movies again.
I guess this means UTV is not going to catapult itself into the realms of Village Roadshow etc--at least not yet.
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