As India gets rich, it's trading Gandhi for guns.
By Jason Overdorf and Poh Si Teng
Editor's note: "India: armed and dangerous" is a three-part series on India's rising gun culture, the proliferation of illegal weapons and the middle-class fight to bear arms. Jason Overdorf and Poh Si Teng researched this project with the aid of the South Asian Journalists' Association (SAJA) Reporting Fellowship.
NEW DELHI, India — Three years after two teenage boys allegedly gunned down his 14-year-old son, Abishek, over a playground spat, Gurgaon businessman Rajinder Tyagi is dry-eyed as he describes the boy's senseless murder. A veteran of hundreds of media interviews, he's made himself numb in an endeavor to shield his wife and daughter from the press.
"My son was walking down the stairs," recalls Tyagi, his face set with grim determination. "They shot him from the back. Four bullets. He died on the spot." India's first school shooting at the posh Euro International School in New Delhi had claimed young Abishek Tyagi's life.
For now, schoolyard gunplay remains rare. But thanks to a strange coincidence of Americanization and traditional machismo brought on by rapid economic growth, India has developed a gun obsession that makes Charlton Heston look like Gandhi.
Police say there has been an alarming rise in gun violence in and around Delhi over the past few years as weapons proliferate. Illegal factories have become so common that country-made guns are sold like candy in local bazaars. And as more and more people seek to obtain legal, licensed guns, an organization modeled on America's National Rifle Association has emerged with the mission to ensure every Indian the right to bear arms.
Delhi is no Peshawar — yet — but it's starting to look an awful lot like South Central. Police say Abishek's 14-year-old classmates allegedly followed him into a deserted stairwell, where they shot him at point-blank range with an imported .32 caliber Harrison pistol that one of the assailants had brought to school hidden in a sock. When Abishek arrived at the nearby Pushpanjali Hospital, he had two bullets in his chest and one in his head.
"He was our only son," Abishek's father said, holding up his boy's school photo. "He was a good athlete. He was good in his studies. He was good natured. I remember everything from his childhood till the day he died. I spent 14 years of my life with him."
Every few weeks there's a new story. A motorist pulls a pistol to clear a traffic jam. An armed gang shoots and kills a young woman returning home late at night when she refuses to pull over to be robbed or raped. A man pumps a bullet into the skull of his fiancee when she decides to call off their marriage. Thugs gun down a real estate broker over a business deal. A businessman — drunk and angry over losing his job — shoots his wife, daughter and son before he turns his gun on himself. A middle-aged woman who berates two roadside Romeos for harassing her daughter is shot dead for her trouble. Or the police shoot and kill traders trying to escape with a stash of smuggled guns. In north India, and increasingly across other parts of the country, it seems, the emergent "India Shining" of election campaign slogans may turn out to be nickel-plated.
Nationwide, around 40 million firearms — only about 5.5 million of them licensed — are in civilian hands. That's the second-highest total in the world, after the U.S., though it amounts to only four guns for every 100 people in India, compared with 90 guns for every 100 Americans. And despite relatively strict gun control laws, police and anti-proliferation activists say the number of weapons on the street is growing steadily.
"We have weapons ranging from homemade guns, which are called kattas, right [up] to [fire]arms as sophisticated as the [American] M-16 and Israeli Uzi," said Binalakshmi Nepram, head of the Control Arms Foundation of India. "And in places like Uttar Pradesh, they say gun shops are mushrooming like public telephone booths."
India's most populous state — and known as one of its most economically depressed — Uttar Pradesh has around 900,000 licensed gun owners, and several times that number of illegal arms. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Uttar Pradesh, and two other northern "cow belt" states, Bihar and Jharkhand, accounted for two-thirds of India's gun-related homicides in 2008, the most recent year for which statistics have been collected.
But the killing isn't confined to the backwaters of these so-called "lawless states." Just as in the United States and other countries, gun crime is an urban phenomenon. Fearful city dwellers are clamoring for gun licenses to protect themselves from criminals. And, increasingly, the weapons of the mushrooming illegal rural factories of states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh — along with the culture of the gun — are finding their way into India's cities.
"Everyone in our family has one. Our family has the largest number of guns in Gurgaon," said Rajje Yadav, a real estate developer who also owns a liquor store.
Yadav is a representative of north India's new rich. Over the past several years, the rapid economic growth of the “National Capital Region” (NCR) that surrounds New Delhi — and an accompanying real estate boom — has brought radical social change to the traditionally macho, honor-obsessed communities of rural Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
Agrarian castes like the Jats and Yadavs have been propelled to fantastic wealth through the sale of their farms to real estate developers. But many have failed to integrate into the new urban society that surrounds them. For every new rich man there's a poor one who covets what he has.
And social tensions have been exacerbated as the educated members of the lower castes who once worked as bonded labor now leverage social programs to uplift themselves and overtake their one-time landlords. Throw in an obsession with izzat, or honor, and a fascination with guns, and you have the perfect recipe for violence.
"We and our relatives who are in the land and wine business have to handle enormous amounts of cash every day, so in order to protect ourselves we have to carry guns," said Yadav. But he admits that there's more to the phenomenon. "Guns have become a sort of status symbol," he says. "Possessing a gun takes a person to great heights."
Accidental deaths at NCR weddings — where revelers show off by shooting into the air — have become so commonplace that a council of leaders from some 40 villages in Delhi's hinterlands banned firearms from marriage ceremonies earlier this year. In a recent incident, for instance, bridegroom Pankaj Kumar was killed by a stray bullet at his wedding celebration when his father couldn't resist discharging his pistol into the air to show his status. No doubt today he feels much the same pain as Rajinder Tyagi.
"We pray to the almighty that something of this sort never happens to anyone, ever," Tyagi said. "The tragedy of losing a child is the greatest of them all."
But the rapid proliferation of guns suggests such tragedies are likely to grow more common. Already, in Meerut, another burgeoning city on the border of Delhi, guns accounted for nearly a quarter of accidental deaths in 2008.
"According to us, the reason behind this is the rapid industrialization and colonization in these areas,” an inspector general with the Meerut police recently told an Indian newspaper. “People are prospering and where there is money involved, there is always a fear of crime."
Because of that fear, it's not just rowdies, politicians and criminals who are arming themselves, and it's not only the newly rich of India's macho castes. It's doctors, lawyers and journalists, from the purportedly bookish Brahmin caste on down.
Consider Rakesh Singh, a native of Andhra Pradesh who has been a practicing doctor in Gurgaon for nearly 10 years. A few weeks ago at the private hospital he founded in 2007, located in a row of property dealers that hint at Gurgaon's red-hot real estate market, he gingerly pulled a licensed Indian-made revolver out of his desk drawer. He wasn't proud. He was angry.
"Deep down there's a sense of insecurity," he said. "Even in this city. Or as such in the NCR — Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon. Even when you're out with your wife on Saturdays with the children, or driving back [home] at 10:30, you have this insecurity."
Not long before, a car had forced him off the road while he was on his way home. Seeing a gun in one man's hand and realizing they planned to rob him, or worse, Singh threw his car in reverse as the man opened fire, shooting three times. Outside his clinic, he pointed out the place where one of the bullets hit the hood of his car. Next time, Singh plans to shoot back.
"[It's] survival of the fittest. If you want to live in Rome, you have to live like how the Romans do," he said. "I have a revolver. But I really wish I had a more sophisticated, easier-to-use weapon. Because I'm really angry about the whole thing and I wouldn't think twice about shooting back. ... Somebody needs to let them know, you're not going to take it lying down. You can't go around, get drunk and go shooting people, bully people around who are just doing their job."
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Thursday, December 02, 2010
India's battle to save the tiger
Park rangers have been given a license to kill. Are bullets the answer to poaching?
By Jason Overdorf
Global Post - November 30, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — As dawn was breaking the week before the global tiger summit began in St. Petersburg last month, a team of forest guards in Kaziranga, Assam, in northeastern India, sent their own unmistakable message to the bigwigs debating how to save the majestic cat.
After tracking four poachers through thick fog for much of the night on Nov. 15, the park rangers closed in. Suddenly, a group of guards came face to face with the poachers. The tiger- and rhino-killers opened fire. The guards fired back, killing two of the poachers on the spot. The others fled into the tall grass, escaping with a harrowing story for their partners in the illegal wildlife trade: In Kaziranga, park rangers don't run away. They shoot back.
"It is a common thing," said Surajit Dutta, director of Kaziranga National Park. "This year, seven poachers have been killed, and there have been lots of encounters."
Even before the experts in St. Petersburg sounded the alarm this month — warning that the tiger could be extinct in as little as 12 years time if countries failed to take concerted action — the front-line troops in Kaziranga had thrown down the gauntlet in India, which is home to nearly half of the world's remaining tigers.
Named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, Kaziranga has for years been India's most aggressive tiger reserve when it comes to fighting poachers — arming its forest guards and pushing them to match poachers bullet for bullet. And this July, Assam granted its park rangers the license to kill.
"Kaziranga is the only protected area with shoot-on-sight orders for poachers," said Belinda Wright, executive director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India. "There are shootouts frequently."
The results have been salutary, say park officials. Originally instituted to protect the Indian one-horned rhino — which is also highly endangered — the aggressive tactics that Kaziranga uses to fight poaching have helped give the Indian national park the highest density of tigers of any area in the world, with about 33 tigers per 100 square kilometers according to the latest population survey.
"It's not a safe place to be a poacher — or a guard," Wright said. "Every year, some guards get killed. But that's the price you have to pay for protection in this modern day and age because the rhino's horn and the tiger's body is so valuable."
Issued in July, the new notification under the criminal code of procedure essentially gives the forest guards the same immunity to prosecution for firing their weapon on the job that's enjoyed by the police. Instead of criminal charges, an internal investigation led by the local magistrate determines whether or not the shooting was justified.
But in a country with strict (though ineffective) gun control laws, where the vast majority of police officers rely on a bamboo stick, rather than a firearm, to keep the peace, the state of Assam's empowerment of its forest guards is unprecedented.
At least partly in thanks to these tough measures, Kaziranga boasts about 2,000 one-horned rhinos and as many as 100 of the world's 3,500 remaining tigers. But critics say the battle has just begun — and at least one wildlife advocacy group suggests that there's a grim footnote to the "highest tiger density in the world" tag.
Nature's Beckon, a locally based nongovernmental organization, for instance, argues that the real reason that the population of tigers within the Kaziranga reserve is so dense is that the habitat outside its boundaries has been ruthlessly destroyed.
That may well be the story across the country, where wildlife parks mark isolated dots on a map where villages are mushrooming into towns and cities. But with fast-growing India remaining the last best hope for maintaining a viable tiger population, the first skirmish in the fight is surely to stop the hemorrhaging at its national parks.
So far this year, Wildlife Protection Society of India says that India's reserves have lost 51 tigers, 26 of them to poachers, and in 2009 the country lost 85 of the big cats, including 32 killed by poachers. And some parks, like Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh and Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, have been forced to admit that all of the big cats under their protection have disappeared.
A big part of the reason could be the plight of the poorly paid, ill-equipped forest guards. In most of the national parks, they lack radios to communicate with one another — let alone the guns they need to protect themselves against poachers. And in those few instances where a guard does carry a firearm on the job, he dare not use it.
"If you are a forest guard in Panna National Park or any of India's other parks, and you have a license to carry a gun, and they allow you to carry it inside the park for protection, if you fire that gun and kill a poacher, you will be arrested for murder," Wright said.
But not in Kaziranga. Not anymore.
Copyright 2010 GlobalPost – International News
Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101129/india-tiger-conservation-poaching
By Jason Overdorf
Global Post - November 30, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — As dawn was breaking the week before the global tiger summit began in St. Petersburg last month, a team of forest guards in Kaziranga, Assam, in northeastern India, sent their own unmistakable message to the bigwigs debating how to save the majestic cat.
After tracking four poachers through thick fog for much of the night on Nov. 15, the park rangers closed in. Suddenly, a group of guards came face to face with the poachers. The tiger- and rhino-killers opened fire. The guards fired back, killing two of the poachers on the spot. The others fled into the tall grass, escaping with a harrowing story for their partners in the illegal wildlife trade: In Kaziranga, park rangers don't run away. They shoot back.
"It is a common thing," said Surajit Dutta, director of Kaziranga National Park. "This year, seven poachers have been killed, and there have been lots of encounters."
Even before the experts in St. Petersburg sounded the alarm this month — warning that the tiger could be extinct in as little as 12 years time if countries failed to take concerted action — the front-line troops in Kaziranga had thrown down the gauntlet in India, which is home to nearly half of the world's remaining tigers.
Named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, Kaziranga has for years been India's most aggressive tiger reserve when it comes to fighting poachers — arming its forest guards and pushing them to match poachers bullet for bullet. And this July, Assam granted its park rangers the license to kill.
"Kaziranga is the only protected area with shoot-on-sight orders for poachers," said Belinda Wright, executive director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India. "There are shootouts frequently."
The results have been salutary, say park officials. Originally instituted to protect the Indian one-horned rhino — which is also highly endangered — the aggressive tactics that Kaziranga uses to fight poaching have helped give the Indian national park the highest density of tigers of any area in the world, with about 33 tigers per 100 square kilometers according to the latest population survey.
"It's not a safe place to be a poacher — or a guard," Wright said. "Every year, some guards get killed. But that's the price you have to pay for protection in this modern day and age because the rhino's horn and the tiger's body is so valuable."
Issued in July, the new notification under the criminal code of procedure essentially gives the forest guards the same immunity to prosecution for firing their weapon on the job that's enjoyed by the police. Instead of criminal charges, an internal investigation led by the local magistrate determines whether or not the shooting was justified.
But in a country with strict (though ineffective) gun control laws, where the vast majority of police officers rely on a bamboo stick, rather than a firearm, to keep the peace, the state of Assam's empowerment of its forest guards is unprecedented.
At least partly in thanks to these tough measures, Kaziranga boasts about 2,000 one-horned rhinos and as many as 100 of the world's 3,500 remaining tigers. But critics say the battle has just begun — and at least one wildlife advocacy group suggests that there's a grim footnote to the "highest tiger density in the world" tag.
Nature's Beckon, a locally based nongovernmental organization, for instance, argues that the real reason that the population of tigers within the Kaziranga reserve is so dense is that the habitat outside its boundaries has been ruthlessly destroyed.
That may well be the story across the country, where wildlife parks mark isolated dots on a map where villages are mushrooming into towns and cities. But with fast-growing India remaining the last best hope for maintaining a viable tiger population, the first skirmish in the fight is surely to stop the hemorrhaging at its national parks.
So far this year, Wildlife Protection Society of India says that India's reserves have lost 51 tigers, 26 of them to poachers, and in 2009 the country lost 85 of the big cats, including 32 killed by poachers. And some parks, like Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh and Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, have been forced to admit that all of the big cats under their protection have disappeared.
A big part of the reason could be the plight of the poorly paid, ill-equipped forest guards. In most of the national parks, they lack radios to communicate with one another — let alone the guns they need to protect themselves against poachers. And in those few instances where a guard does carry a firearm on the job, he dare not use it.
"If you are a forest guard in Panna National Park or any of India's other parks, and you have a license to carry a gun, and they allow you to carry it inside the park for protection, if you fire that gun and kill a poacher, you will be arrested for murder," Wright said.
But not in Kaziranga. Not anymore.
Copyright 2010 GlobalPost – International News
Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101129/india-tiger-conservation-poaching
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Underworld: India's thirst for crime stories
In India, if it bleeds, it leads.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - November 19, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — In the cluttered North Delhi office of Crime & Detective magazine, editor-in-chief Shailabh Rawat oversees a team of designers who are putting the finishing touches on next month's issue.
As one designer pastes together a lurid photo spread dramatizing a violent crime, Rawat tells him to tweak the "torn" look a bit to leave less white space between the victim and murderer. Then, turning, in Hindi he tells the designer laying out next month's photo story, "Put some more kajol on her eyes. A little more. Enough."
For 25 years, Rawat — India's king of pulp — has been the heart and soul of this country's pioneering, and still top-selling, true crime magazines. Started by publisher Satish Verma in 1984, Crime & Detective now sells in three different versions, the gritty Madhur Kathayen and tamer Mahanagar Kahaniya, in Hindi, and the classic C&D in English.
With titillating skin shots and screamer headlines like, "Shower of love resulted in blood-shed," together the small-press titles — which are ubiquitous on railway platforms and across India's entertainment-starved small towns — sell upwards of 200,000 copies a month.
"Crime is — not in India, but internationally — the most read subject. It's a basic human weakness to read about crimes and such things," said Verma.
A hilarious mash-up of tragedy and farce, Crime & Detective offers an unwitting homage to America's 1940s-era noir and its near namesake, Bernarr Macfadden's True Detective — the pulp classic which helped bring fame to writers like Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson. Relying on police reports and inputs from stringers in India's remote burgs, the stories are embellished and fictionalized to include a patented formula of sex and murder, then translated into a ludicrous semblance of English that sets the gold standard in "so bad it's good." But the biggest payoff comes from the monthly photo story — a comic strip-style narrative of sex and speech bubbles that relies on struggling Mumbai models and low-cut leopard print.
"We have to target what our readers taste is. In high society there are things that happen that are not open, that happen in closed rooms. About that, the middle class reader wants to know more," Rawat said, speaking Hindi. "Those things that are open, people know about already. Those things that are closed, like gigolos or parties with wife-swapping, we try to make such stories available to our readers so that they can learn about that society, too."
But at what cost to Indian society are these kings of pulp flogging a country's guilty pleasure?
Consider some of the stories of the December issue of Crime & Detective — which highlights the story of 15-year-old Joncarlo Patton, an American tourist from the Pittsburgh area who is now on trial for the alleged murder of his mother, Cindy Iannarelli, in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Packed with bodies "simmering like suppressed flames" and punctuated by ads for products like Vita-Ex Gold (UNLEASH YOUR PASSIONS) and Jolly Fat-Go (Extra Tummy, Don't Ignore), the true crime stories manage to titillate and condemn at the same time — enticing conservative readers with boundary-breaking fantasies at the same time that its censuring tone enforces the prevailing social norms.
"Mansi's gang of thieves," for example, tells of a would-be model "with a distaste for service" who joined and then rose to lead a gang of housebreakers to "translate her high-rise dreams into reality." "The poison of suspicion" is the story of an inter-caste love affair that ended in murder when the couple's secret marriage was destroyed by jealousy. And "Seema's glamour mints money" portrays the (inevitable, according to C&D) descent into prostitution that follows when a young woman surrenders to her sexual desires.
"We want to teach them [readers] also, in a way, how to save yourself from all these things," said Verma. "We publish the story when the culprit or the accused is caught, so we want to express that nobody can escape after doing the crime. We do not glorify. We always take the side of the victim."
It's a shifting line — especially as India's fast economic growth engenders sweeping social changes. Over the past 20 years, for instance, the magazine has stopped writing about homosexual affairs as if they were crimes in themselves, says Rawat, even though readers remain obsessively preoccupied with gay murder.
And it's always a tenuous tightrope between truth and fiction, according to Verma, who says that none of his magazines has been forced to pay damages in a defamation case — but a nearly constant string of lawsuits and court appearances is part of the business.
"If the accused after a period gets relief from the court, then they file suit against us," said Verma.
That's right. Though Verma insists that Rawat carry only stories where police cases have been filed — precluding stories from India's mushrooming private detective agencies — Crime & Detective doesn't shy away from writing about crimes in which the alleged perpetrators have yet to be convicted. Facilitated by India's relatively weak libel laws, that's a decision in part motivated by necessity, since Indian court cases often drag on for decades. But this month's edition, which highlights the alleged crime of an American minor, may draw unusual attention.
With an "I never thought I'd be writing to you" type lead-in, "Teenager American tourist's deadly decision" depicts the nearly consummated flirtation between Iannarelli and a Reggie's Camel Camp employee named Jageer Singh as the final straw that pushed Patton to slit his mother's throat — an alleged crime that has yet to be proved. The fictionalization of the narrative precludes any mention of the source for the magazine's claims, and the detailed account of the crime, presented as factual, undercuts the buried acknowledgement that Joncarlo has maintained he is innocent.
Worse, Crime & Detective's signature style is unlikely to go down well with readers associated with the case — in the unlikely event that a copy of the issue comes to their attention. "All the shameful acts of Cynthia that she'd done with the ten member American Tourist Group were enough to anger her son John," a boldface pull-quote reads. "So he decided to eliminate her."
Weak laws or no, them's fightin' words.
Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101116/india-culture-crime-stories
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - November 19, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — In the cluttered North Delhi office of Crime & Detective magazine, editor-in-chief Shailabh Rawat oversees a team of designers who are putting the finishing touches on next month's issue.
As one designer pastes together a lurid photo spread dramatizing a violent crime, Rawat tells him to tweak the "torn" look a bit to leave less white space between the victim and murderer. Then, turning, in Hindi he tells the designer laying out next month's photo story, "Put some more kajol on her eyes. A little more. Enough."
For 25 years, Rawat — India's king of pulp — has been the heart and soul of this country's pioneering, and still top-selling, true crime magazines. Started by publisher Satish Verma in 1984, Crime & Detective now sells in three different versions, the gritty Madhur Kathayen and tamer Mahanagar Kahaniya, in Hindi, and the classic C&D in English.
With titillating skin shots and screamer headlines like, "Shower of love resulted in blood-shed," together the small-press titles — which are ubiquitous on railway platforms and across India's entertainment-starved small towns — sell upwards of 200,000 copies a month.
"Crime is — not in India, but internationally — the most read subject. It's a basic human weakness to read about crimes and such things," said Verma.
A hilarious mash-up of tragedy and farce, Crime & Detective offers an unwitting homage to America's 1940s-era noir and its near namesake, Bernarr Macfadden's True Detective — the pulp classic which helped bring fame to writers like Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson. Relying on police reports and inputs from stringers in India's remote burgs, the stories are embellished and fictionalized to include a patented formula of sex and murder, then translated into a ludicrous semblance of English that sets the gold standard in "so bad it's good." But the biggest payoff comes from the monthly photo story — a comic strip-style narrative of sex and speech bubbles that relies on struggling Mumbai models and low-cut leopard print.
"We have to target what our readers taste is. In high society there are things that happen that are not open, that happen in closed rooms. About that, the middle class reader wants to know more," Rawat said, speaking Hindi. "Those things that are open, people know about already. Those things that are closed, like gigolos or parties with wife-swapping, we try to make such stories available to our readers so that they can learn about that society, too."
But at what cost to Indian society are these kings of pulp flogging a country's guilty pleasure?
Consider some of the stories of the December issue of Crime & Detective — which highlights the story of 15-year-old Joncarlo Patton, an American tourist from the Pittsburgh area who is now on trial for the alleged murder of his mother, Cindy Iannarelli, in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Packed with bodies "simmering like suppressed flames" and punctuated by ads for products like Vita-Ex Gold (UNLEASH YOUR PASSIONS) and Jolly Fat-Go (Extra Tummy, Don't Ignore), the true crime stories manage to titillate and condemn at the same time — enticing conservative readers with boundary-breaking fantasies at the same time that its censuring tone enforces the prevailing social norms.
"Mansi's gang of thieves," for example, tells of a would-be model "with a distaste for service" who joined and then rose to lead a gang of housebreakers to "translate her high-rise dreams into reality." "The poison of suspicion" is the story of an inter-caste love affair that ended in murder when the couple's secret marriage was destroyed by jealousy. And "Seema's glamour mints money" portrays the (inevitable, according to C&D) descent into prostitution that follows when a young woman surrenders to her sexual desires.
"We want to teach them [readers] also, in a way, how to save yourself from all these things," said Verma. "We publish the story when the culprit or the accused is caught, so we want to express that nobody can escape after doing the crime. We do not glorify. We always take the side of the victim."
It's a shifting line — especially as India's fast economic growth engenders sweeping social changes. Over the past 20 years, for instance, the magazine has stopped writing about homosexual affairs as if they were crimes in themselves, says Rawat, even though readers remain obsessively preoccupied with gay murder.
And it's always a tenuous tightrope between truth and fiction, according to Verma, who says that none of his magazines has been forced to pay damages in a defamation case — but a nearly constant string of lawsuits and court appearances is part of the business.
"If the accused after a period gets relief from the court, then they file suit against us," said Verma.
That's right. Though Verma insists that Rawat carry only stories where police cases have been filed — precluding stories from India's mushrooming private detective agencies — Crime & Detective doesn't shy away from writing about crimes in which the alleged perpetrators have yet to be convicted. Facilitated by India's relatively weak libel laws, that's a decision in part motivated by necessity, since Indian court cases often drag on for decades. But this month's edition, which highlights the alleged crime of an American minor, may draw unusual attention.
With an "I never thought I'd be writing to you" type lead-in, "Teenager American tourist's deadly decision" depicts the nearly consummated flirtation between Iannarelli and a Reggie's Camel Camp employee named Jageer Singh as the final straw that pushed Patton to slit his mother's throat — an alleged crime that has yet to be proved. The fictionalization of the narrative precludes any mention of the source for the magazine's claims, and the detailed account of the crime, presented as factual, undercuts the buried acknowledgement that Joncarlo has maintained he is innocent.
Worse, Crime & Detective's signature style is unlikely to go down well with readers associated with the case — in the unlikely event that a copy of the issue comes to their attention. "All the shameful acts of Cynthia that she'd done with the ten member American Tourist Group were enough to anger her son John," a boldface pull-quote reads. "So he decided to eliminate her."
Weak laws or no, them's fightin' words.
Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101116/india-culture-crime-stories
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
India: infrastructure's secret weapon
A Hindu sect proves India can build things on time — when God lends a hand.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - November 17, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — Just a stone's throw from New Delhi's Commonwealth Games Village, a mammoth Hindu temple testifies to a simple truth: When builders can give laborers a sense of ownership and encourage them to take pride in their work, India's notorious problems getting things done disappear.
Constructed by expert craftsmen using ancient methods, the 140-foot high, nine-domed Akshardham temple was built entirely from white marble and pink sandstone — without the support of steel. Some 7,000 carvers fit blocks together using nothing but a little cement slurry and geometric formulas that have been passed down for generations. They then detailed the structure with more than 200 ornate pillars, 20,000 statues of gods and saints.
But here's the real trick: They pulled it off on schedule and under budget — an achievement that's virtually unheard of in India.
"All the experts who looked at our plans said it would take a minimum of 40 to 50 years to be completed," said Akshardham volunteer Kalpesh Bhatt, speaking at an independently organized TEDx event in Delhi earlier this year — an offshoot of the California-based idea-sharing symposium TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design).
Today, the temple, which is surrounded by a 100-acre cultural complex, attracts about 5,000 visitors per day. Apart from the ancient-style, stone temple, the park includes a life-sized diorama depicting the life and works of Bhagwan Swaminarayan, the inspiration for the Gujarat-based Swaminarayan sect of Hinduism that built the cultural complex. An IMAX theater screens a film on the 18th-century pilgrimage the god performed as a young yogi. A cultural boat ride ferries visitors through exhibits showcasing 10,000 years of Indian history — such as the world's first university and some of the discoveries made by ancient Indian scientists.
"It's an organization of middle class, professional people, who are committed to a cause," said Janak Dave, a spokesman for the Swaminarayan sect. "Some scholars compare it to the Presbyterian approach."
Even for these frugal teetotalers, keeping the $45 million project on schedule and under budget was no mean feat. To build the temple in under five years required some 300 million man-hours of labor. The project supervisors, including head engineer, Ashwin Patel, a civil engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi), were all volunteers. To meet the demand for skilled craftsmen, they sent a thousand stonecarvers back to their villages to recruit and train their relatives — whose caste tied them to the art. And to bring them on board, many volunteers moved out to the villages so the added craftsmen could work from home. At its peak, the project employed 7,000 craftsmen and 4,000 volunteers who acted as managers and supervisors.
"Stonework is always difficult, because most of the work is done manually," said Patel. "So it takes maximum manpower, and intricate carving is very time-consuming."
What Bhatt calls "small process innovations" played a key role in cutting costs and speeding the project to completion. For example, by first creating plaster of paris and clay models of the stones they needed, and then building a computer database of their exact dimensions, the builders were able to reduce the amount of stone chipped away into waste from 30 to 40 percent to just 8 percent. Moreover, by using computer design software and huge machines to cut the enormous stone blocks delivered by the quarry into shapes approximating the eventual end-product, engineers reduced the time it took craftsmen to carve the blocks, friezes and statues from 20 days to as short as a single day.
But the most intriguing aspect of the project was the factor that Patel cites as the biggest reason for its success. It wasn't "Six Sigma" or "Total Quality Management" or any of the dozens of change agents that Indian business relies on to improve performance. It succeeded because the volunteers and workers cared, and they took pride in their work. Training thousands of laborers to become artisans, Akshardham increased their earning power by six times, brought new life to an ancient art, and gave the new craftsmen a project of unprecedented size and complexity to work on.
"Only because of the grace of our guruji, because it's a noble job, everybody worked in good faith," Patel said.
Copyright 2010 GlobalPost – International News
Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101104/culture-temple-infrastructure
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - November 17, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — Just a stone's throw from New Delhi's Commonwealth Games Village, a mammoth Hindu temple testifies to a simple truth: When builders can give laborers a sense of ownership and encourage them to take pride in their work, India's notorious problems getting things done disappear.
Constructed by expert craftsmen using ancient methods, the 140-foot high, nine-domed Akshardham temple was built entirely from white marble and pink sandstone — without the support of steel. Some 7,000 carvers fit blocks together using nothing but a little cement slurry and geometric formulas that have been passed down for generations. They then detailed the structure with more than 200 ornate pillars, 20,000 statues of gods and saints.
But here's the real trick: They pulled it off on schedule and under budget — an achievement that's virtually unheard of in India.
"All the experts who looked at our plans said it would take a minimum of 40 to 50 years to be completed," said Akshardham volunteer Kalpesh Bhatt, speaking at an independently organized TEDx event in Delhi earlier this year — an offshoot of the California-based idea-sharing symposium TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design).
Today, the temple, which is surrounded by a 100-acre cultural complex, attracts about 5,000 visitors per day. Apart from the ancient-style, stone temple, the park includes a life-sized diorama depicting the life and works of Bhagwan Swaminarayan, the inspiration for the Gujarat-based Swaminarayan sect of Hinduism that built the cultural complex. An IMAX theater screens a film on the 18th-century pilgrimage the god performed as a young yogi. A cultural boat ride ferries visitors through exhibits showcasing 10,000 years of Indian history — such as the world's first university and some of the discoveries made by ancient Indian scientists.
"It's an organization of middle class, professional people, who are committed to a cause," said Janak Dave, a spokesman for the Swaminarayan sect. "Some scholars compare it to the Presbyterian approach."
Even for these frugal teetotalers, keeping the $45 million project on schedule and under budget was no mean feat. To build the temple in under five years required some 300 million man-hours of labor. The project supervisors, including head engineer, Ashwin Patel, a civil engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi), were all volunteers. To meet the demand for skilled craftsmen, they sent a thousand stonecarvers back to their villages to recruit and train their relatives — whose caste tied them to the art. And to bring them on board, many volunteers moved out to the villages so the added craftsmen could work from home. At its peak, the project employed 7,000 craftsmen and 4,000 volunteers who acted as managers and supervisors.
"Stonework is always difficult, because most of the work is done manually," said Patel. "So it takes maximum manpower, and intricate carving is very time-consuming."
What Bhatt calls "small process innovations" played a key role in cutting costs and speeding the project to completion. For example, by first creating plaster of paris and clay models of the stones they needed, and then building a computer database of their exact dimensions, the builders were able to reduce the amount of stone chipped away into waste from 30 to 40 percent to just 8 percent. Moreover, by using computer design software and huge machines to cut the enormous stone blocks delivered by the quarry into shapes approximating the eventual end-product, engineers reduced the time it took craftsmen to carve the blocks, friezes and statues from 20 days to as short as a single day.
But the most intriguing aspect of the project was the factor that Patel cites as the biggest reason for its success. It wasn't "Six Sigma" or "Total Quality Management" or any of the dozens of change agents that Indian business relies on to improve performance. It succeeded because the volunteers and workers cared, and they took pride in their work. Training thousands of laborers to become artisans, Akshardham increased their earning power by six times, brought new life to an ancient art, and gave the new craftsmen a project of unprecedented size and complexity to work on.
"Only because of the grace of our guruji, because it's a noble job, everybody worked in good faith," Patel said.
Copyright 2010 GlobalPost – International News
Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101104/culture-temple-infrastructure
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Obama in India: salesman-in-chief
Analysis: Don't underestimate the shift in US-India economic relations.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - November 8, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — A scant 10 minutes after U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in India, he'd already made a few foes with his emphasis on jobs for Americans and reluctance to talk tough on Pakistan.
Though he stayed at Mumbai's Taj Mahal Hotel as a symbolic gesture, his speech commemorating the victims of the Nov. 26, 2008, terrorist attacks on India's financial capital neglected to mention "the P-word."
And though he mentioned Pakistan during his visit, it was not until his speech to the Indian parliament today that he struck the right note for Indians, saying "We will continue to insist to Pakistan's leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders are unacceptable, and that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks be brought to justice."
Meanwhile, his advocacy of a permanent seat for India on the United Nations Security Council was probably not aggressive enough for Indian leaders, saying only, "In the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed United Nations Security Council that includes India as a permanent member."
But the economic achievements of the so-called "salesman-in-chief" may wind up meaning more for U.S.-India relations than tough talk or a host of promises of strategic partnerships. The reason: This time it's America asking India for help, and that may change the dynamic between the two countries.
Calling India "indispensable to addressing the challenges of our time," in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi today, the U.S. president outlined a raft of political moves intended to complement the business deals his delegation cemented in Mumbai. Yet even the biggest agreements — such as the removal of barriers preventing the sale of sensitive technologies to Indian space and defense organizations — appeared to be at least partially concessions to facilitate trade.
"There's a perception that there is a little less asymmetry in the relationship," said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of New Delhi's Center for Policy Research. "This is the kind of give and take you expect between two powers who are mutually dependent on each other. In that sense there's a psychological shift that's significant."
Obama will take home about $10 billion in deals ranging from $1 million to $4 billion in size that are estimated to create more than 50,000 jobs in the United States. And according to the Confederation of Indian Industry, that's just the tip of the iceberg. India's buying of U.S. military and nuclear hardware and civilian aircraft could create more than 700,000 jobs in the U.S. over the next 10 years, the business lobby claims in a recent report.
And what is the U.S. giving? Apart from the lifting of export controls and supporting India's membership in the Nuclear Suppliers' Group, Obama and Singh announced that the two countries had agreed to expand cooperation in space exploration, clean energy research, health, agriculture and higher education. Among the concrete steps to emerge from the bilateral talks will be a new joint research center in India focused on alternative energy, a joint disease detection center and agricultural initiatives designed to rejuvenate the fading gains of India's "green revolution" — which was fueled in part by American scientists.
But the most important step forward in the India-U.S. relationship might be in the subtext. By coming to India primarily as the leader of a business delegation — and in the supplicant role of seller, rather than buyer — Obama recognized India's global ambitions, and its ability to attain them. As Harold McGraw, chairman of the McGraw-Hill Companies, put it, "He was selling. Yesterday, he was salesman-in-chief." And that, more than the public statement he made in his joint press conference with Singh, is proof positive that the U.S. president doesn't "think India is emerging. It has emerged."
That's likely to spark a debate in Indian policy circles about how far India can push America, said Indiana University professor Sumit Ganguly, especially as rival political forces within India grope for ways to unseat Singh's Congress Party. Hardly 10 minutes after Obama finished his first speech on Indian soil on Sunday, for instance, Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy launched a withering attack against him for failing to act against Pakistan — though the BJP later disavowed his comments.
But can India expect to use its new economic clout, and the promise of access to its huge market, to extort the kind of concessions that China wrestled out of the U.S. in the 1990s? Or should New Delhi instead concentrate on further enmeshing the American and Indian economies to create a balanced, healthy and symbiotic Indo-U.S. business partnership that contrasts with Sino-U.S. codependence?
Obama and his delegation worked hard to prove that India-U.S. business relations have similar potential to the relationship between China and the United States. But India's emergence is coming in a different era from China's late-1990s hardball tactics on technology transfer and World Trade Organization concessions.
"What makes India-U.S. different from the Sino-U.S. relationship is partly that the security dynamic is much more important in our context," said Mehta. "India has to balance three things — the economic relationship, the immediate security context, where frankly the U.S. thinks India is not moving fast enough and India thinks the U.S. is not doing enough, and the U.S. general support for India playing a bigger role in global affairs, [such as in] the U.N. Security Council."
That means even if India has a lot to offer, it also still has a lot to gain, and focusing on the single issue of Pakistan is likely to prove unproductive — at least based on the way local observers are reading the U.S. president's oblique statements. "The truth is that its economic relations with the U.S. dwarf all others in terms of its importance to India’s economic emergence," the editors of the Hindustan Times wrote on the morning Obama was to deliver his speeches in New Delhi.
At the same time, it's clearer than ever that U.S. policy on Pakistan is not going to change, "despite the evidence of Pakistan's duplicity," said former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal, who was not persuaded by Obama's statements to the Indian parliament about pushing Pakistan to dismantle terrorist camps and prosecute the perpetrators of the attacks on Mumbai.
"These are the right points to be made," Sibal said. "There's no indication as to what are the specific steps behind the scenes or otherwise that would push Pakistan to actually bring [the Mumbai perpetrators] to trial and punish them. It remains at the level of a statement of desire. Insofar as safe havens in Pakistani territory are concerned, saying it on Indian soil is important, and its importance should not be minimized. But again, the problem is not so much in saying what needs to be said, but what is concretely intended to be done to coerce Pakistan to get rid of these safe havens. That road map is not clear."
In that context, building "win-win" business ties with America may be India's best shot at changing U.S. foreign policy, even as its increasing power makes the relationship more and more complex. As Obama pointed out in his address to parliament, "with increased power comes increased responsibility," and the U.S. will in the future be looking to India for support on issues like enforcing U.N. sanctions and criticizing corrupt dictatorships like Burma.
"As you rise, the range of things in which you begin to matter and the things which matter to you also begin to increase," said Mehta. "India has always played hardball, but now it has to play it when a lot more balls are in the air."
Copyright 2010 GlobalPost – International News
Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101108/obama-india-business
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - November 8, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — A scant 10 minutes after U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in India, he'd already made a few foes with his emphasis on jobs for Americans and reluctance to talk tough on Pakistan.
Though he stayed at Mumbai's Taj Mahal Hotel as a symbolic gesture, his speech commemorating the victims of the Nov. 26, 2008, terrorist attacks on India's financial capital neglected to mention "the P-word."
And though he mentioned Pakistan during his visit, it was not until his speech to the Indian parliament today that he struck the right note for Indians, saying "We will continue to insist to Pakistan's leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders are unacceptable, and that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks be brought to justice."
Meanwhile, his advocacy of a permanent seat for India on the United Nations Security Council was probably not aggressive enough for Indian leaders, saying only, "In the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed United Nations Security Council that includes India as a permanent member."
But the economic achievements of the so-called "salesman-in-chief" may wind up meaning more for U.S.-India relations than tough talk or a host of promises of strategic partnerships. The reason: This time it's America asking India for help, and that may change the dynamic between the two countries.
Calling India "indispensable to addressing the challenges of our time," in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi today, the U.S. president outlined a raft of political moves intended to complement the business deals his delegation cemented in Mumbai. Yet even the biggest agreements — such as the removal of barriers preventing the sale of sensitive technologies to Indian space and defense organizations — appeared to be at least partially concessions to facilitate trade.
"There's a perception that there is a little less asymmetry in the relationship," said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of New Delhi's Center for Policy Research. "This is the kind of give and take you expect between two powers who are mutually dependent on each other. In that sense there's a psychological shift that's significant."
Obama will take home about $10 billion in deals ranging from $1 million to $4 billion in size that are estimated to create more than 50,000 jobs in the United States. And according to the Confederation of Indian Industry, that's just the tip of the iceberg. India's buying of U.S. military and nuclear hardware and civilian aircraft could create more than 700,000 jobs in the U.S. over the next 10 years, the business lobby claims in a recent report.
And what is the U.S. giving? Apart from the lifting of export controls and supporting India's membership in the Nuclear Suppliers' Group, Obama and Singh announced that the two countries had agreed to expand cooperation in space exploration, clean energy research, health, agriculture and higher education. Among the concrete steps to emerge from the bilateral talks will be a new joint research center in India focused on alternative energy, a joint disease detection center and agricultural initiatives designed to rejuvenate the fading gains of India's "green revolution" — which was fueled in part by American scientists.
But the most important step forward in the India-U.S. relationship might be in the subtext. By coming to India primarily as the leader of a business delegation — and in the supplicant role of seller, rather than buyer — Obama recognized India's global ambitions, and its ability to attain them. As Harold McGraw, chairman of the McGraw-Hill Companies, put it, "He was selling. Yesterday, he was salesman-in-chief." And that, more than the public statement he made in his joint press conference with Singh, is proof positive that the U.S. president doesn't "think India is emerging. It has emerged."
That's likely to spark a debate in Indian policy circles about how far India can push America, said Indiana University professor Sumit Ganguly, especially as rival political forces within India grope for ways to unseat Singh's Congress Party. Hardly 10 minutes after Obama finished his first speech on Indian soil on Sunday, for instance, Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy launched a withering attack against him for failing to act against Pakistan — though the BJP later disavowed his comments.
But can India expect to use its new economic clout, and the promise of access to its huge market, to extort the kind of concessions that China wrestled out of the U.S. in the 1990s? Or should New Delhi instead concentrate on further enmeshing the American and Indian economies to create a balanced, healthy and symbiotic Indo-U.S. business partnership that contrasts with Sino-U.S. codependence?
Obama and his delegation worked hard to prove that India-U.S. business relations have similar potential to the relationship between China and the United States. But India's emergence is coming in a different era from China's late-1990s hardball tactics on technology transfer and World Trade Organization concessions.
"What makes India-U.S. different from the Sino-U.S. relationship is partly that the security dynamic is much more important in our context," said Mehta. "India has to balance three things — the economic relationship, the immediate security context, where frankly the U.S. thinks India is not moving fast enough and India thinks the U.S. is not doing enough, and the U.S. general support for India playing a bigger role in global affairs, [such as in] the U.N. Security Council."
That means even if India has a lot to offer, it also still has a lot to gain, and focusing on the single issue of Pakistan is likely to prove unproductive — at least based on the way local observers are reading the U.S. president's oblique statements. "The truth is that its economic relations with the U.S. dwarf all others in terms of its importance to India’s economic emergence," the editors of the Hindustan Times wrote on the morning Obama was to deliver his speeches in New Delhi.
At the same time, it's clearer than ever that U.S. policy on Pakistan is not going to change, "despite the evidence of Pakistan's duplicity," said former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal, who was not persuaded by Obama's statements to the Indian parliament about pushing Pakistan to dismantle terrorist camps and prosecute the perpetrators of the attacks on Mumbai.
"These are the right points to be made," Sibal said. "There's no indication as to what are the specific steps behind the scenes or otherwise that would push Pakistan to actually bring [the Mumbai perpetrators] to trial and punish them. It remains at the level of a statement of desire. Insofar as safe havens in Pakistani territory are concerned, saying it on Indian soil is important, and its importance should not be minimized. But again, the problem is not so much in saying what needs to be said, but what is concretely intended to be done to coerce Pakistan to get rid of these safe havens. That road map is not clear."
In that context, building "win-win" business ties with America may be India's best shot at changing U.S. foreign policy, even as its increasing power makes the relationship more and more complex. As Obama pointed out in his address to parliament, "with increased power comes increased responsibility," and the U.S. will in the future be looking to India for support on issues like enforcing U.N. sanctions and criticizing corrupt dictatorships like Burma.
"As you rise, the range of things in which you begin to matter and the things which matter to you also begin to increase," said Mehta. "India has always played hardball, but now it has to play it when a lot more balls are in the air."
Copyright 2010 GlobalPost – International News
Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101108/obama-india-business
Monday, November 08, 2010
Obama's Indian strategist?
An obscure Indian author claims to have steered Obama's campaign strategy.
By Jason Overdorf
NEW DELHI, India — As U.S. president Barack Obama makes his way from Mumbai to Delhi, an obscure Indian author is waiting for redemption. His name is Inder Dan Ratnu, and he believes that he deserves credit for the president's stunning landslide victory in 2008, as his third self-published novel, "First Lady President," outlines in detail the strategy behind Obama's "Yes, We Can" campaign.
Written in a month-and-a-half long torrent in 2003, "First Lady President" tells the story of the unlikely election victory of Beverly Hilton and her African-American running mate, Charak Sudama.
In the novel, Hilton selects Sudama as her running mate because she is impressed with an anti-war speech he delivers early in the campaign. But Ratnu believes that the real life inspiration for his African-American character lifted the ideas from that pivotal fictional speech to alter the outcome of the polls.
"He [Obama] was using these two, most powerful points mentioned there — in one of the most important chapters of the book, and underlined portions he was using — so I'm convinced that he used it," said Ratnu, who argues that Obama must have received his novel before forming his campaign strategy because it was sent to him by registered mail in April 2007 and not returned by the postal service.
Now, with Obama on his first trip to New Delhi, Ratnu hopes to get confirmation. Over the past two weeks, he has been trying to arrange meetings with Indian and foreign journalists to draw attention to his story. Obama's visit will focus on U.S.-Indian business relations and cooperation in counterterrorism efforts, but Ratnu hope to focus attention on his book.
"My aim is that somebody here, while he is here, should ask during the press conference this question, and let us see what is his reply," Ratnu said. "Most likely is he will say, 'Well, it is a news for me.' Because he's not that naive that he will say I have drawn inspiration from this book. No politician can do that. But who knows, he may say yes. That would be a blessing for me."
A former bank officer who worked for 23 years at the Bank of India, 60-year-old Ratnu hails from a small village near Jaisalmer, in the bleak Thar Desert of Rajasthan. Educated by a government teacher in classes held under a tree, he describes himself as "a topper, right through college," where he studied agriculture. Having attended Hindi-medium schools, he taught himself English by listening to BBC radio and memorizing the speeches of Winston Churchill — five hours of which he could once recite "word by word." He has not made a penny from the sale of his three novels and one non-fiction book — burning through his life-savings of around $10,000 to see them published and promoted. And he admits that "First Lady President," too, has so far been a commercial failure, even though he did prevail upon American Michael Burchett, who was at the time trying to start an editing/publishing business, to do a 100-copy test printing in the U.S.
"Fortunately, Inder himself was able to rouse sufficient advance interest in the book to allow me to recoup my costs," Burchett said in an email.
Whatever the merits of the author's story, the story of the author is remarkable.
With nothing more than a political intuition sharpened by Churchill and the BBC, Ratnu claims, he crafted a crucial campaign speech for Charak Sudama that bears striking similarities to the rhetoric of the Obama campaign, including its central message.
"The call for change is very famous, you know," Ratnu said. "That was the lady's speech in the book, which he [Obama] also adopted for himself. She said, and that is underlined, she says, 'It will not be a mere change of the gender of the White House, it will be a genuine change of the quality of life of the American people.'"
Many of the specifics of that change, including reforming social security, eliminating the budget deficit, and focusing on alternative energy, are also mentioned in the fictional speech, he adds, leafing through the novel and then quoting, "'We will in a big way develop alternative and cleaner sources of energy,' yet another point. Obama used it all. 'So we are not held hostage' — he used these very words, look! — 'So we are not held hostages by some oil companies or any nation or any region.' He used these very words, I tell you, in some of his speeches."
A member of the charan caste — bards who once sang the exploits of his region's warrior kings — Ratnu wears a white, Rajasthani-style kurta-pajama, graying from repeated washings, plastic-framed spectacles and a brilliant pink, green, purple and orange turban. He has a neat mustache — modest by Rajasthani standards — and he speaks in a soft, resonant voice that drops to a husky whisper when his tale comes to a dramatic point. It was Churchill who inspired his writing efforts, though, and one senses his admiration for the British leader's bombastic oratory in his penchant for underlining and capitalization, as when he describes the evolution of the title of his latest book.
"It [his intuition] became so strong and heavy that I could no longer hold it with me," Ratnu writes on his web site. "I had to pass it on to my publisher with a revelation that I intended to write a book in the future entitled — First Lady PRESIDENT is first LADY PRESIDENT. In due course following due consideration I changed it to First Lady President, highlighting the double meaning of the original title through font and color."
Ratnu is also somewhat prone to hyperbole, describing a question-and-answer book he penned about Churchill as something "nobody has ever tried in the western world" and occasionally referring to Burchett, who also printed his earlier novel about the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, as "my American editor." But it's impossible to fault his perseverance or to resist his sincerity, and, believe it or not, he does seem to have a track record of prescience.
"I'm more accurate than Nostradamus," he said. "What Nostradamus wrote were the stanzas, the verses, which were poetic, and people made conclusions out of it." In contrast, Ratnu's predictions are specific.
In his second novel, for instance, first titled "Ultimate Defense Against Impeachment" and later shortened to "The Ultimate Defense," Ratnu predicted Clinton's impeachment and outlined many of the arguments the president and his accusers would use during the proceedings. (That novel, too, might have influenced history, had it been read by any of the dozen senators or the chief justice to whom Ratnu sent complimentary copies).
And prior to the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Ratnu predicted the second Gulf War and toppling of Saddam Hussein, writing, "Make no mistake, in the event of the election of George W. Bush to the presidency of the United States, there is certainly going to be another round of Gulf War. ... I sincerely believe that even if Saddam, in view of the potential danger to his existence, restrains himself and offers the younger Bush no provocation, George W. in turn is likely to maneuver Saddam into making one, thus clearing the road for a second round of armed conflict."
When the events of his third novel looked to be coming true as well, Ratnu decided to take matters into his own hands. After mailing his novel to Obama, he traveled to the United States in 2008 to attend the Democratic Convention and — unwittingly somewhat in the manner of Sascha Baron-Cohen's Borat — seek out Hillary Clinton and Senator John McCain to provide them with his advice.
In Washington, a vigilant bus driver reported him as a terror suspect and he had to talk his way past a cordon of policemen before he could meet McCain staffers — to whose incredulous looks he explained that the running mate of McCain's fictional analogue was a white woman a scant six days before McCain named Sarah Palin. But the real adventures came in New York.
There, Ratnu managed to secure a meeting with Mary DeBree, Hillary's director of outreach, which he attended, as he does all his activities, in his white kurta-pajama and rainbow-colored turban.
"To my surprise, I found that she was not much interested in talking to us," Ratnu said. "Finally, I said, 'Look, there are two points in this book, which are very powerful, the call for change and anti-war, which I think the rival of Hillary Clinton is using.' I didn't mention to her, frankly, that I had sent a copy to Mr. Obama, but I just said he's using two points which are very powerful and they happen to be in this book also, and I think he can bring down your candidate with those points. She just smiled and said, 'Gentlemen, we appreciate you wrote a book, but we know American politics better than you do.'"
The cell number that Ratnu has for DeBree — published on his web site, incidentally — was not accepting calls. But the associate who accompanied him to the Clinton campaign office, Ramesh Gathoria of the Indian-American Intellectuals Forum, confirmed the gist of his story, though when asked if he had read the novel himself, he said, "Not completely, but a little bit, yeah. Mostly, I have heard from his mouth."
Questions also remain regarding whether Clinton read the copy of "First Lady President" that Ratnu left for her.
"It did not even reach Hillary Clinton," Ratnu said, who suspects that the first chapter White House sex scene between the former president and president-elect prompted the Clinton staff to deep six the novel.
"If it had reached, it would have made a difference. I'm certain about it. ... It is in details, the bedroom scene, so they must have felt repelled by that. They didn't see the useful things lying ahead in the book," he said.
So far, Ratnu has received much the same treatment from the White House, where he estimates he has sent a dozen or so letters, and CNN and the BBC, where he says the Indian staff downed shutters when they saw his turban coming. But if by some quirk of fate he does secure a meeting with the president he believes he helped elect, Obama might do well to listen to his next prediction — which sees Obama stepping aside after a single term and helping to put Hillary in office unless he can follow Ratnu's unpublished prescriptions for stopping Osama bin Laden. And those aren't going to come to light anytime soon.
"That I will not tell to any reporter, ever," Ratnu said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I will tell it only to one man, the president."
By Jason Overdorf
NEW DELHI, India — As U.S. president Barack Obama makes his way from Mumbai to Delhi, an obscure Indian author is waiting for redemption. His name is Inder Dan Ratnu, and he believes that he deserves credit for the president's stunning landslide victory in 2008, as his third self-published novel, "First Lady President," outlines in detail the strategy behind Obama's "Yes, We Can" campaign.
Written in a month-and-a-half long torrent in 2003, "First Lady President" tells the story of the unlikely election victory of Beverly Hilton and her African-American running mate, Charak Sudama.
In the novel, Hilton selects Sudama as her running mate because she is impressed with an anti-war speech he delivers early in the campaign. But Ratnu believes that the real life inspiration for his African-American character lifted the ideas from that pivotal fictional speech to alter the outcome of the polls.
"He [Obama] was using these two, most powerful points mentioned there — in one of the most important chapters of the book, and underlined portions he was using — so I'm convinced that he used it," said Ratnu, who argues that Obama must have received his novel before forming his campaign strategy because it was sent to him by registered mail in April 2007 and not returned by the postal service.
Now, with Obama on his first trip to New Delhi, Ratnu hopes to get confirmation. Over the past two weeks, he has been trying to arrange meetings with Indian and foreign journalists to draw attention to his story. Obama's visit will focus on U.S.-Indian business relations and cooperation in counterterrorism efforts, but Ratnu hope to focus attention on his book.
"My aim is that somebody here, while he is here, should ask during the press conference this question, and let us see what is his reply," Ratnu said. "Most likely is he will say, 'Well, it is a news for me.' Because he's not that naive that he will say I have drawn inspiration from this book. No politician can do that. But who knows, he may say yes. That would be a blessing for me."
A former bank officer who worked for 23 years at the Bank of India, 60-year-old Ratnu hails from a small village near Jaisalmer, in the bleak Thar Desert of Rajasthan. Educated by a government teacher in classes held under a tree, he describes himself as "a topper, right through college," where he studied agriculture. Having attended Hindi-medium schools, he taught himself English by listening to BBC radio and memorizing the speeches of Winston Churchill — five hours of which he could once recite "word by word." He has not made a penny from the sale of his three novels and one non-fiction book — burning through his life-savings of around $10,000 to see them published and promoted. And he admits that "First Lady President," too, has so far been a commercial failure, even though he did prevail upon American Michael Burchett, who was at the time trying to start an editing/publishing business, to do a 100-copy test printing in the U.S.
"Fortunately, Inder himself was able to rouse sufficient advance interest in the book to allow me to recoup my costs," Burchett said in an email.
Whatever the merits of the author's story, the story of the author is remarkable.
With nothing more than a political intuition sharpened by Churchill and the BBC, Ratnu claims, he crafted a crucial campaign speech for Charak Sudama that bears striking similarities to the rhetoric of the Obama campaign, including its central message.
"The call for change is very famous, you know," Ratnu said. "That was the lady's speech in the book, which he [Obama] also adopted for himself. She said, and that is underlined, she says, 'It will not be a mere change of the gender of the White House, it will be a genuine change of the quality of life of the American people.'"
Many of the specifics of that change, including reforming social security, eliminating the budget deficit, and focusing on alternative energy, are also mentioned in the fictional speech, he adds, leafing through the novel and then quoting, "'We will in a big way develop alternative and cleaner sources of energy,' yet another point. Obama used it all. 'So we are not held hostage' — he used these very words, look! — 'So we are not held hostages by some oil companies or any nation or any region.' He used these very words, I tell you, in some of his speeches."
A member of the charan caste — bards who once sang the exploits of his region's warrior kings — Ratnu wears a white, Rajasthani-style kurta-pajama, graying from repeated washings, plastic-framed spectacles and a brilliant pink, green, purple and orange turban. He has a neat mustache — modest by Rajasthani standards — and he speaks in a soft, resonant voice that drops to a husky whisper when his tale comes to a dramatic point. It was Churchill who inspired his writing efforts, though, and one senses his admiration for the British leader's bombastic oratory in his penchant for underlining and capitalization, as when he describes the evolution of the title of his latest book.
"It [his intuition] became so strong and heavy that I could no longer hold it with me," Ratnu writes on his web site. "I had to pass it on to my publisher with a revelation that I intended to write a book in the future entitled — First Lady PRESIDENT is first LADY PRESIDENT. In due course following due consideration I changed it to First Lady President, highlighting the double meaning of the original title through font and color."
Ratnu is also somewhat prone to hyperbole, describing a question-and-answer book he penned about Churchill as something "nobody has ever tried in the western world" and occasionally referring to Burchett, who also printed his earlier novel about the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, as "my American editor." But it's impossible to fault his perseverance or to resist his sincerity, and, believe it or not, he does seem to have a track record of prescience.
"I'm more accurate than Nostradamus," he said. "What Nostradamus wrote were the stanzas, the verses, which were poetic, and people made conclusions out of it." In contrast, Ratnu's predictions are specific.
In his second novel, for instance, first titled "Ultimate Defense Against Impeachment" and later shortened to "The Ultimate Defense," Ratnu predicted Clinton's impeachment and outlined many of the arguments the president and his accusers would use during the proceedings. (That novel, too, might have influenced history, had it been read by any of the dozen senators or the chief justice to whom Ratnu sent complimentary copies).
And prior to the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Ratnu predicted the second Gulf War and toppling of Saddam Hussein, writing, "Make no mistake, in the event of the election of George W. Bush to the presidency of the United States, there is certainly going to be another round of Gulf War. ... I sincerely believe that even if Saddam, in view of the potential danger to his existence, restrains himself and offers the younger Bush no provocation, George W. in turn is likely to maneuver Saddam into making one, thus clearing the road for a second round of armed conflict."
When the events of his third novel looked to be coming true as well, Ratnu decided to take matters into his own hands. After mailing his novel to Obama, he traveled to the United States in 2008 to attend the Democratic Convention and — unwittingly somewhat in the manner of Sascha Baron-Cohen's Borat — seek out Hillary Clinton and Senator John McCain to provide them with his advice.
In Washington, a vigilant bus driver reported him as a terror suspect and he had to talk his way past a cordon of policemen before he could meet McCain staffers — to whose incredulous looks he explained that the running mate of McCain's fictional analogue was a white woman a scant six days before McCain named Sarah Palin. But the real adventures came in New York.
There, Ratnu managed to secure a meeting with Mary DeBree, Hillary's director of outreach, which he attended, as he does all his activities, in his white kurta-pajama and rainbow-colored turban.
"To my surprise, I found that she was not much interested in talking to us," Ratnu said. "Finally, I said, 'Look, there are two points in this book, which are very powerful, the call for change and anti-war, which I think the rival of Hillary Clinton is using.' I didn't mention to her, frankly, that I had sent a copy to Mr. Obama, but I just said he's using two points which are very powerful and they happen to be in this book also, and I think he can bring down your candidate with those points. She just smiled and said, 'Gentlemen, we appreciate you wrote a book, but we know American politics better than you do.'"
The cell number that Ratnu has for DeBree — published on his web site, incidentally — was not accepting calls. But the associate who accompanied him to the Clinton campaign office, Ramesh Gathoria of the Indian-American Intellectuals Forum, confirmed the gist of his story, though when asked if he had read the novel himself, he said, "Not completely, but a little bit, yeah. Mostly, I have heard from his mouth."
Questions also remain regarding whether Clinton read the copy of "First Lady President" that Ratnu left for her.
"It did not even reach Hillary Clinton," Ratnu said, who suspects that the first chapter White House sex scene between the former president and president-elect prompted the Clinton staff to deep six the novel.
"If it had reached, it would have made a difference. I'm certain about it. ... It is in details, the bedroom scene, so they must have felt repelled by that. They didn't see the useful things lying ahead in the book," he said.
So far, Ratnu has received much the same treatment from the White House, where he estimates he has sent a dozen or so letters, and CNN and the BBC, where he says the Indian staff downed shutters when they saw his turban coming. But if by some quirk of fate he does secure a meeting with the president he believes he helped elect, Obama might do well to listen to his next prediction — which sees Obama stepping aside after a single term and helping to put Hillary in office unless he can follow Ratnu's unpublished prescriptions for stopping Osama bin Laden. And those aren't going to come to light anytime soon.
"That I will not tell to any reporter, ever," Ratnu said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I will tell it only to one man, the president."
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Obama in India: What to look for
Analysis: Can Obama's "breadth and depth" jump-start stagnating US-India relations?
NEW DELHI, India — U.S. President Barack Obama arrives in India on Saturday with a difficult mission.
With no "big ticket" pact in the works, fading popularity at home and suspicions in India about American military aid to Pakistan, he needs to reassure New Delhi that the burgeoning alliance begun by his predecessor is truly becoming a bona fide strategic partnership.
The bottom line: There's very little chance Indians won't be disappointed with the outcome.
"If you look closely at what the background briefings are from the Indian side and what is being said not only in Washington but by the U.S. ambassador here, one gets the sense that nothing dramatic is likely to emerge from the visit," said former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal.
Indeed, at a press briefing to outline the broad agenda for the visit, senior U.S. officials encouraged observers to focus on the big picture, rather than big agreements.
"The president's itinerary in India will highlight the growth, strength and breadth of the U.S.-India partnership and highlight the diversity and cultural vibrancy of India," a senior U.S. official said. "We believe the next big thing is taking this relationship from one focused on the civil nuke deal to one that's deeper and broader, and that rests on a full range of strategic areas of cooperation."
That means that the U.S. president will likely focus on India's potential to create U.S. jobs — simultaneously hitting the right notes at home and assuaging Indian fears about the protectionist tenor in recent U.S. statements and legislation regarding outsourcing. Obama will also emphasize that the U.S. recognizes India as a global power — reflected in more than 50 joint military exercises over the past eight years.
But the fact that the visit hinges on a combination of intangibles, closed-door discussions and a series of small steps forward ensures that the devil will be in the details.
"Mr. Obama and this administration are very good [people], full of nice sounding words, a lot of euphemisms," said Rajiv Sikri, a career Indian diplomat. "But I get the feeling that the Indian side is fairly hard-nosed, and will not be taken in. It's really action on the ground, and what the U.S. policies do to India's security and economic interests that will be the touchstone of how successful this visit is."
What India wants
In the wake of an announcement of more U.S. military aid for Pakistan and revelations that American intelligence may have withheld crucial information about the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai from their Indian counterparts, India wants assurance that the U.S. is coming closer to the Indian view that Pakistan is at the heart of the world's problems with terrorism.
While that won't be forthcoming, Obama's first address, at Mumbai's Taj Palace Hotel, will set the right tone, and the recent U.S. announcement of a director of national intelligence review of the Headley affair suggests that the U.S. intends to put more muscle behind cooperations on counterterrorism.
Perhaps more importantly, closed-door talks between Obama and Singh on Nov. 7 and 8 will likely flesh out the potential outcomes of the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan next year.
But symbolic gestures and closed-door assurances aside, India has concrete demands that Obama will be hard-pressed to satisfy. The two big items at the top of India's wish list are a clear statement backing India's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and some kind of official recognition of its territorial sovereignty — an oblique reference to its border disputes with China and Pakistan. Obama will probably steer clear of the border issues, experts say. And while the U.N. Security Council seat may find its way into one of Obama's speeches, the expectation is that the U.S. president's formulation will be too weak to fulfill India's hopes.
"If this was said after due deliberation, with full knowledge of the implications, a lot of discerning people would see that as a major change in how the U.S. is beginning to look at India after the nuclear deal," said Sibal.
The carefully worded statements of U.S. officials aren't promising. In a meeting with reporters to outline Obama's schedule, for instance, U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns would say only, "Given India’s rise and its significance, we believe that India will be a central part of any consideration of a reformed Security Council," continuing America's "natural candidate" line, which clearly stops short of pushing for immediate reform.
What the U.S. wants
America's ambitions for Obama's visit are smaller, perhaps, but would send clear signals that the economic and strategic relationship between the U.S. and India is growing closer. As a big win, the U.S. is still pushing for a revision of India's nuclear liability laws, which the U.S. nuclear lobby argues have robbed the 2008 Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear agreement of its significance by creating a business advantage for the state-owned nuclear firms of Russia and France.
To provide a much-needed boost for the American economy, the U.S. would also like to see India further loosen restrictions on foreign investment in multi-brand retail for stores like Walmart and finalize billions of dollars in defense contracts that would reportedly create tens of thousands of U.S. jobs. But here, too, little progress is expected.
Though India signed the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC) in October, its own Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Act remains in force. Moreover, with its failure to win compensation for victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy from Union Carbide as the backdrop for the negotiations, India appears both unwilling and politically unable to water down the 2010 law. As minister of state for science and technology, Prithviraj Chavan, told a gathering of reporters at the Founder’s Day celebration of India's Bhabha Atomic Research Center, “We won’t accept any conditions and agreements will be on our terms."
For the other items on the U.S. wish list, there's optimism on the question of if, but doubts regarding the question of when. Recently, India's commerce minister said the 51 percent cap on foreign direct investment in single-brand retail (e.g. the Nike store) could soon be eliminated, but said that a "consultative process" would be required before the ban on investment in multi-brand stores could be raised to an investment limit of 51 percent.
And while Obama is expected to conclude a $3.5 billion deal to buy 10 C-17 transport aircraft from Boeing, no decision is expected on an $11 billion tender for multi-role fighter jets — for which America's Lockheed Martin and Boeing are competing with European, Russian and Israeli manufacturers.
Wiggle room
Nevertheless, with some $50 billion in bilateral trade — and a broad trade balance — both the U.S. and India have strong economic incentives to ensure that Obama's visit is a success. As a result, both governments have worked hard to develop a set of "deliverables" where they believe there's a good chance to demonstrate tangible progress. These items include relatively anodyne projects in the areas of alternative energy and agriculture. But there could also be some wiggle room on defense moves that would provide clearer signals of a developing strategic partnership.
India is pushing for the U.S. to remove its space agency and defense research organization from the Bureau of Industry and Security "Entity List" that restricts them from purchasing so-called "dual use" technologies with potential nuclear applications, while the U.S. is pushing for India to sign several agreements that it says would facilitate better military cooperation.
Progress on neither is guaranteed, but both moves would mark significant steps forward. The removal of export controls — which were put in place after India tested its nuclear bomb in 1998 — would bring India a step closer to the acknowledgement as a legitimate nuclear weapons state that was the implicit promise of the Indo-U.S. nuclear pact.
Meanwhile, India's signing of America's three arcane defense pacts — the communications interoperability and security memorandum of agreement (CISMOA), the basic exchange and cooperation agreement for geo-spatial cooperation (BECA) and the logistical support agreement (LSA) — would demonstrate that the political and defense establishments in New Delhi no longer fear sacrificing neutrality if it means gaining a broader role in geopolitical affairs.
So far, the U.S. appears closer to removing export controls than India is to signing the defense agreements.
This August, Obama announced a general easing of restrictions on exports of products with potential military applications. And in praising India for signing the CSC, U.S. Undersecretary Burns expressed guarded optimism about the Entity List, saying, "We’re also making progress on cooperation in space and updating export controls to reflect the reality of a 21st century partnership in which India is treated as a partner and not as a target."
In contrast, Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony reportedly told U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates point blank at an October meeting in Washington that India would not sign the three "enabling" defense agreements during Obama's visit. Though the U.S. conducts more military exercises with India than with any other country, Indian defense officials maintain that the unsigned agreements do not pose a major impediment to the cooperation, and political concerns make signing the deals difficult.
"The implication of that [reluctance to sign the pacts] is that India should not be seen in too warm an embrace with the United States," said former Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak, referring to the desire in some quarters to adhere to the Cold War policies written when India was a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement. "[But] if India wants to exercise greater responsibility and influence and larger strategic and security capacities in the broader neighborhood, then India will have to take specific stances in situations."
The trick for Obama will be to connect enough dots to create the big picture he needs to convince the remaining naysayers in India.
Source URL:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101101/barack-obama-US-india-relations-manmohan-singh
NEW DELHI, India — U.S. President Barack Obama arrives in India on Saturday with a difficult mission.
With no "big ticket" pact in the works, fading popularity at home and suspicions in India about American military aid to Pakistan, he needs to reassure New Delhi that the burgeoning alliance begun by his predecessor is truly becoming a bona fide strategic partnership.
The bottom line: There's very little chance Indians won't be disappointed with the outcome.
"If you look closely at what the background briefings are from the Indian side and what is being said not only in Washington but by the U.S. ambassador here, one gets the sense that nothing dramatic is likely to emerge from the visit," said former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal.
Indeed, at a press briefing to outline the broad agenda for the visit, senior U.S. officials encouraged observers to focus on the big picture, rather than big agreements.
"The president's itinerary in India will highlight the growth, strength and breadth of the U.S.-India partnership and highlight the diversity and cultural vibrancy of India," a senior U.S. official said. "We believe the next big thing is taking this relationship from one focused on the civil nuke deal to one that's deeper and broader, and that rests on a full range of strategic areas of cooperation."
That means that the U.S. president will likely focus on India's potential to create U.S. jobs — simultaneously hitting the right notes at home and assuaging Indian fears about the protectionist tenor in recent U.S. statements and legislation regarding outsourcing. Obama will also emphasize that the U.S. recognizes India as a global power — reflected in more than 50 joint military exercises over the past eight years.
But the fact that the visit hinges on a combination of intangibles, closed-door discussions and a series of small steps forward ensures that the devil will be in the details.
"Mr. Obama and this administration are very good [people], full of nice sounding words, a lot of euphemisms," said Rajiv Sikri, a career Indian diplomat. "But I get the feeling that the Indian side is fairly hard-nosed, and will not be taken in. It's really action on the ground, and what the U.S. policies do to India's security and economic interests that will be the touchstone of how successful this visit is."
What India wants
In the wake of an announcement of more U.S. military aid for Pakistan and revelations that American intelligence may have withheld crucial information about the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai from their Indian counterparts, India wants assurance that the U.S. is coming closer to the Indian view that Pakistan is at the heart of the world's problems with terrorism.
While that won't be forthcoming, Obama's first address, at Mumbai's Taj Palace Hotel, will set the right tone, and the recent U.S. announcement of a director of national intelligence review of the Headley affair suggests that the U.S. intends to put more muscle behind cooperations on counterterrorism.
Perhaps more importantly, closed-door talks between Obama and Singh on Nov. 7 and 8 will likely flesh out the potential outcomes of the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan next year.
But symbolic gestures and closed-door assurances aside, India has concrete demands that Obama will be hard-pressed to satisfy. The two big items at the top of India's wish list are a clear statement backing India's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and some kind of official recognition of its territorial sovereignty — an oblique reference to its border disputes with China and Pakistan. Obama will probably steer clear of the border issues, experts say. And while the U.N. Security Council seat may find its way into one of Obama's speeches, the expectation is that the U.S. president's formulation will be too weak to fulfill India's hopes.
"If this was said after due deliberation, with full knowledge of the implications, a lot of discerning people would see that as a major change in how the U.S. is beginning to look at India after the nuclear deal," said Sibal.
The carefully worded statements of U.S. officials aren't promising. In a meeting with reporters to outline Obama's schedule, for instance, U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns would say only, "Given India’s rise and its significance, we believe that India will be a central part of any consideration of a reformed Security Council," continuing America's "natural candidate" line, which clearly stops short of pushing for immediate reform.
What the U.S. wants
America's ambitions for Obama's visit are smaller, perhaps, but would send clear signals that the economic and strategic relationship between the U.S. and India is growing closer. As a big win, the U.S. is still pushing for a revision of India's nuclear liability laws, which the U.S. nuclear lobby argues have robbed the 2008 Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear agreement of its significance by creating a business advantage for the state-owned nuclear firms of Russia and France.
To provide a much-needed boost for the American economy, the U.S. would also like to see India further loosen restrictions on foreign investment in multi-brand retail for stores like Walmart and finalize billions of dollars in defense contracts that would reportedly create tens of thousands of U.S. jobs. But here, too, little progress is expected.
Though India signed the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC) in October, its own Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Act remains in force. Moreover, with its failure to win compensation for victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy from Union Carbide as the backdrop for the negotiations, India appears both unwilling and politically unable to water down the 2010 law. As minister of state for science and technology, Prithviraj Chavan, told a gathering of reporters at the Founder’s Day celebration of India's Bhabha Atomic Research Center, “We won’t accept any conditions and agreements will be on our terms."
For the other items on the U.S. wish list, there's optimism on the question of if, but doubts regarding the question of when. Recently, India's commerce minister said the 51 percent cap on foreign direct investment in single-brand retail (e.g. the Nike store) could soon be eliminated, but said that a "consultative process" would be required before the ban on investment in multi-brand stores could be raised to an investment limit of 51 percent.
And while Obama is expected to conclude a $3.5 billion deal to buy 10 C-17 transport aircraft from Boeing, no decision is expected on an $11 billion tender for multi-role fighter jets — for which America's Lockheed Martin and Boeing are competing with European, Russian and Israeli manufacturers.
Wiggle room
Nevertheless, with some $50 billion in bilateral trade — and a broad trade balance — both the U.S. and India have strong economic incentives to ensure that Obama's visit is a success. As a result, both governments have worked hard to develop a set of "deliverables" where they believe there's a good chance to demonstrate tangible progress. These items include relatively anodyne projects in the areas of alternative energy and agriculture. But there could also be some wiggle room on defense moves that would provide clearer signals of a developing strategic partnership.
India is pushing for the U.S. to remove its space agency and defense research organization from the Bureau of Industry and Security "Entity List" that restricts them from purchasing so-called "dual use" technologies with potential nuclear applications, while the U.S. is pushing for India to sign several agreements that it says would facilitate better military cooperation.
Progress on neither is guaranteed, but both moves would mark significant steps forward. The removal of export controls — which were put in place after India tested its nuclear bomb in 1998 — would bring India a step closer to the acknowledgement as a legitimate nuclear weapons state that was the implicit promise of the Indo-U.S. nuclear pact.
Meanwhile, India's signing of America's three arcane defense pacts — the communications interoperability and security memorandum of agreement (CISMOA), the basic exchange and cooperation agreement for geo-spatial cooperation (BECA) and the logistical support agreement (LSA) — would demonstrate that the political and defense establishments in New Delhi no longer fear sacrificing neutrality if it means gaining a broader role in geopolitical affairs.
So far, the U.S. appears closer to removing export controls than India is to signing the defense agreements.
This August, Obama announced a general easing of restrictions on exports of products with potential military applications. And in praising India for signing the CSC, U.S. Undersecretary Burns expressed guarded optimism about the Entity List, saying, "We’re also making progress on cooperation in space and updating export controls to reflect the reality of a 21st century partnership in which India is treated as a partner and not as a target."
In contrast, Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony reportedly told U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates point blank at an October meeting in Washington that India would not sign the three "enabling" defense agreements during Obama's visit. Though the U.S. conducts more military exercises with India than with any other country, Indian defense officials maintain that the unsigned agreements do not pose a major impediment to the cooperation, and political concerns make signing the deals difficult.
"The implication of that [reluctance to sign the pacts] is that India should not be seen in too warm an embrace with the United States," said former Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak, referring to the desire in some quarters to adhere to the Cold War policies written when India was a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement. "[But] if India wants to exercise greater responsibility and influence and larger strategic and security capacities in the broader neighborhood, then India will have to take specific stances in situations."
The trick for Obama will be to connect enough dots to create the big picture he needs to convince the remaining naysayers in India.
Source URL:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101101/barack-obama-US-india-relations-manmohan-singh
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
India: Turning point for democracy?
An election in India's so-called backward state may herald a new politics of accountability.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - October 26, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — The odds are good you didn't hear about the state elections this past weekend in Bihar.
But had you been paying attention, what you would have read about happening in this dusty, impoverished outpost in eastern India might just wind up signalling a shift toward better governance for the entire country.
Bihar state, located on the Nepal border and long derided as a basket case, closed the second phase of its six phase state assembly elections Sunday on an unusually optimistic note.
Yes, Maoist rebels succeeded in torching a poll booth and abducting three officials. But the insurgents' routine call for a boycott failed to stop voters. In the first two phases of the election, voter turnout exceeded 50 percent — marking a nearly 10 percent increase in voting from 2005, the last time the so-called backward state held polls.
The reason: Nitish Kumar, the state's reigning chief minister, has rekindled optimism by slowly building a functioning government and squashed fear by jailing notorious, politically connected criminals. His re-election — likely but not guaranteed, when votes are counted on Nov. 24, experts said — could therefore mark a turning point in Indian politics by ending the revolving door of "anti-incumbency" and proving that good governance can trump caste- and creed-based rhetoric.
"This election will be a benchmark election, because it has completely new parameters," said Shaibal Gupta, head of the Asian Development Research Institute, based in Patna, Bihar.
What that means is that a state that has always been ruled by identity politics — with voters choosing candidates based on their caste or religious community — has now begun a substantive debate about development and its economic future.
"Every election is a referendum, but this election assumes a greater character because so many steps have been taken that had never been taken earlier," Gupta said. "We have never had a functioning state, so we had to create new benchmarks."
Bihar was once the seat of the powerful Maurya Empire, which spread Buddhism throughout Asia and as far as the Mediterranean. But for a couple thousand years since then, with a breakneck acceleration over the past 20, it's been steadily marching into ruin.
After the British let feudal landlords run rampant, a series of peasant movements made Bihar instrumental in India's freedom struggle. But once India gained its independence, those movements stagnated, and powerful landlords hamstrung any efforts at land reform until a new political
formation of lower caste herdsmen and laborers raised Lalu Prasad Yadav to the chief minister's chair in 1990.
The victory for the oppressed, far from ushering in a golden age of fairness and prosperity, instead accelerated Bihar's descent into chaos. Open warfare prevailed between the militias of upper caste landlords and lower caste tillers, and Lalu, who ruled virtually without rival for three consecutive terms, despite widespread allegations of corruption, used his power to patronize his caste and install his relatives in positions of power.
By 2004, when he was finally defeated by Kumar, the state was barely functioning — unable to disperse funds for ordinary projects like maintaining roads — and most of the rural hinterland was under control of career criminals. Highway travel was out of the question after dark, and even in the capital, Patna, violent crime ensured that the shops closed and the streets were deserted at 8 o'clock.
Finally elected in 2004 after voters finally grew disgusted with Lalu — a charming Falstaff with a brilliant knack for politics — Kumar started Bihar on the path to a turnaround with a risky gambit. Instead of encouraging his own flunkies to get their own forelegs firmly planted in the government trough, he declared an end to the politics of patronage by ending the "transfer industry" that sold coveted bureaucratic posts to the highest bidder and cracked down on criminals that had long enjoyed political protection.
Setting up fast-track courts and hiring ex-soldiers to speedily fill vacancies in the police, he jailed some 40,000 criminals over his first term — more than four times the number of convictions during Lalu's three terms in power. By re-establishing a functioning government, he also increased government spending on building roads and training hundreds of thousands of primary school teachers dramatically.
From $320 million in 2001, government spending rose to $1.2 billion in 2005-2006, Kumar's first year in office, then rose to $2.2 billion in 2007-2008 and $3.5 billion in 2008-2009, raising economic growth from a laggard 3.5 percent under his predecessors to around 11 percent — the second-highest of any Indian state.
There is, of course, still a chance that Kumar might lose. Elections are notoriously difficult to call in India, and not everything has changed in the troubled state. The number of candidates with criminal antecedents — or those who themselves are facing serious charges — remains as high as 40 percent.
And in some constituencies a new trend has emerged in which relatives are standing against each other for rival parties to ensure that power remains in the family's hands, according to Himanshu Jha of the National Social Watch Coalition, a group that monitors politicians and government performance.
Worse still, despite the progress the state has made, the living conditions for most Biharis remain miserable — leaving open the possibility that the very poor may vote against progress in exchange for the promise of sops.
But so far it appears voters are going to the polls this time convinced that there's more to democracy than simply expressing their displeasure with a venal and incompetent government or making sure the candidate from their own caste or religious community comes to power — though all the major political parties are still fielding candidates based on caste- and creed- formulations.
For example, the controversial Sept. 28 verdict [2] that granted ownership of the disputed site of the destruction of the Babri mosque to Hindu groups, which might have galvanized triumphant rightwing Hindus or disappointed Muslims, has played little role in the campaign. Instead, the debate has centered on issues like building roads and providing reliable electricity — new ideas for politics in Bihar.
The real turning point, though, promises to come after the election — if Kumar wins a second term as expected. Kumar pushed an anti-corruption bill through the state assembly in 2008 that has in recent months been approved by the central government. In his campaign speeches this round, Bihar's sitting chief minister has promised to progress from establishing basic law and order to taking on graft, saying, "The first time, I went after criminals. Next, it will be the turn of the corrupt." And, like his crackdown on crime, the promise could well prove to be more than election rhetoric.
Called the Bihar Special Court Bill, Kumar's new law for the first time empowers government investigators to confiscate assets of bureaucrats and politicians accused of corruption — which was previously impossible even after a conviction. And it sets the stage for fast-track courts like the ones he used to jail 40,000 thugs in four years.
In a state where government funds have always been siphoned off before work could begin, rather than while it was actually underway, the impact could be huge. Indeed, if Kumar wins, the money he confiscates alone might send the turnaround state's economic growth rocketing past his first term's 11 percent.
Moreover, because the Special Court Bill is unique for India, it just might make India's most backward state an example for the rest.
"If a couple of hundred people get punished, and their property gets confiscated, it will send out a message all over the country," said Gupta. "Things will be different."
India Bihar India democracy India development India elections India history Nitish Kumar
Copyright 2010 GlobalPost – International News
Source URL:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101025/bihar-elections-democracy-nitish-kumar
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - October 26, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — The odds are good you didn't hear about the state elections this past weekend in Bihar.
But had you been paying attention, what you would have read about happening in this dusty, impoverished outpost in eastern India might just wind up signalling a shift toward better governance for the entire country.
Bihar state, located on the Nepal border and long derided as a basket case, closed the second phase of its six phase state assembly elections Sunday on an unusually optimistic note.
Yes, Maoist rebels succeeded in torching a poll booth and abducting three officials. But the insurgents' routine call for a boycott failed to stop voters. In the first two phases of the election, voter turnout exceeded 50 percent — marking a nearly 10 percent increase in voting from 2005, the last time the so-called backward state held polls.
The reason: Nitish Kumar, the state's reigning chief minister, has rekindled optimism by slowly building a functioning government and squashed fear by jailing notorious, politically connected criminals. His re-election — likely but not guaranteed, when votes are counted on Nov. 24, experts said — could therefore mark a turning point in Indian politics by ending the revolving door of "anti-incumbency" and proving that good governance can trump caste- and creed-based rhetoric.
"This election will be a benchmark election, because it has completely new parameters," said Shaibal Gupta, head of the Asian Development Research Institute, based in Patna, Bihar.
What that means is that a state that has always been ruled by identity politics — with voters choosing candidates based on their caste or religious community — has now begun a substantive debate about development and its economic future.
"Every election is a referendum, but this election assumes a greater character because so many steps have been taken that had never been taken earlier," Gupta said. "We have never had a functioning state, so we had to create new benchmarks."
Bihar was once the seat of the powerful Maurya Empire, which spread Buddhism throughout Asia and as far as the Mediterranean. But for a couple thousand years since then, with a breakneck acceleration over the past 20, it's been steadily marching into ruin.
After the British let feudal landlords run rampant, a series of peasant movements made Bihar instrumental in India's freedom struggle. But once India gained its independence, those movements stagnated, and powerful landlords hamstrung any efforts at land reform until a new political
formation of lower caste herdsmen and laborers raised Lalu Prasad Yadav to the chief minister's chair in 1990.
The victory for the oppressed, far from ushering in a golden age of fairness and prosperity, instead accelerated Bihar's descent into chaos. Open warfare prevailed between the militias of upper caste landlords and lower caste tillers, and Lalu, who ruled virtually without rival for three consecutive terms, despite widespread allegations of corruption, used his power to patronize his caste and install his relatives in positions of power.
By 2004, when he was finally defeated by Kumar, the state was barely functioning — unable to disperse funds for ordinary projects like maintaining roads — and most of the rural hinterland was under control of career criminals. Highway travel was out of the question after dark, and even in the capital, Patna, violent crime ensured that the shops closed and the streets were deserted at 8 o'clock.
Finally elected in 2004 after voters finally grew disgusted with Lalu — a charming Falstaff with a brilliant knack for politics — Kumar started Bihar on the path to a turnaround with a risky gambit. Instead of encouraging his own flunkies to get their own forelegs firmly planted in the government trough, he declared an end to the politics of patronage by ending the "transfer industry" that sold coveted bureaucratic posts to the highest bidder and cracked down on criminals that had long enjoyed political protection.
Setting up fast-track courts and hiring ex-soldiers to speedily fill vacancies in the police, he jailed some 40,000 criminals over his first term — more than four times the number of convictions during Lalu's three terms in power. By re-establishing a functioning government, he also increased government spending on building roads and training hundreds of thousands of primary school teachers dramatically.
From $320 million in 2001, government spending rose to $1.2 billion in 2005-2006, Kumar's first year in office, then rose to $2.2 billion in 2007-2008 and $3.5 billion in 2008-2009, raising economic growth from a laggard 3.5 percent under his predecessors to around 11 percent — the second-highest of any Indian state.
There is, of course, still a chance that Kumar might lose. Elections are notoriously difficult to call in India, and not everything has changed in the troubled state. The number of candidates with criminal antecedents — or those who themselves are facing serious charges — remains as high as 40 percent.
And in some constituencies a new trend has emerged in which relatives are standing against each other for rival parties to ensure that power remains in the family's hands, according to Himanshu Jha of the National Social Watch Coalition, a group that monitors politicians and government performance.
Worse still, despite the progress the state has made, the living conditions for most Biharis remain miserable — leaving open the possibility that the very poor may vote against progress in exchange for the promise of sops.
But so far it appears voters are going to the polls this time convinced that there's more to democracy than simply expressing their displeasure with a venal and incompetent government or making sure the candidate from their own caste or religious community comes to power — though all the major political parties are still fielding candidates based on caste- and creed- formulations.
For example, the controversial Sept. 28 verdict [2] that granted ownership of the disputed site of the destruction of the Babri mosque to Hindu groups, which might have galvanized triumphant rightwing Hindus or disappointed Muslims, has played little role in the campaign. Instead, the debate has centered on issues like building roads and providing reliable electricity — new ideas for politics in Bihar.
The real turning point, though, promises to come after the election — if Kumar wins a second term as expected. Kumar pushed an anti-corruption bill through the state assembly in 2008 that has in recent months been approved by the central government. In his campaign speeches this round, Bihar's sitting chief minister has promised to progress from establishing basic law and order to taking on graft, saying, "The first time, I went after criminals. Next, it will be the turn of the corrupt." And, like his crackdown on crime, the promise could well prove to be more than election rhetoric.
Called the Bihar Special Court Bill, Kumar's new law for the first time empowers government investigators to confiscate assets of bureaucrats and politicians accused of corruption — which was previously impossible even after a conviction. And it sets the stage for fast-track courts like the ones he used to jail 40,000 thugs in four years.
In a state where government funds have always been siphoned off before work could begin, rather than while it was actually underway, the impact could be huge. Indeed, if Kumar wins, the money he confiscates alone might send the turnaround state's economic growth rocketing past his first term's 11 percent.
Moreover, because the Special Court Bill is unique for India, it just might make India's most backward state an example for the rest.
"If a couple of hundred people get punished, and their property gets confiscated, it will send out a message all over the country," said Gupta. "Things will be different."
India Bihar India democracy India development India elections India history Nitish Kumar
Copyright 2010 GlobalPost – International News
Source URL:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101025/bihar-elections-democracy-nitish-kumar
Friday, October 22, 2010
The Case for Going Rogue
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - October 23, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — Sarah Palin isn't the only one with a case for going rogue.
With U.S. President Barack Obama scheduled to come courting next month, Mother India might think about giving it a try, too.
Consider the evidence.
The U.S. today announced a $2 billion military and security aid package to Pakistan, a country widely suspected of harboring top leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban — including Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, by some accounts. In recent weeks, dozens of American fuel tankers bound for soldiers in Afghanistan have been blown up.
Coming on the back of a $7.5 billion package of economic aid announced in 2009, the new package brings the total since Sept. 11, 2001, to nearly $15 billion — double the amount of aid Islamabad received from Washington during all of the 1990s.
And the bulk of that money — about 10 times the amount of U.S. aid to India — came after 2004, when Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan confessed to providing Iran, Libya and North Korea with designs and technology to aid in their nuclear weapons programs, receiving a pardon after maintaining, unconvincingly, that Islamabad had no role in his activities.
What did New Delhi, supposedly America's natural ally, get out of the deal? In December 2001, Pakistan-based terrorists attacked India's parliament, killing six policemen and one civilian, leading to a fraught standoff between the two nations across the disputed Line of Control in Kashmir. Then, in November 2008, a well-trained team conducted more than 10 coordinated terrorist attacks in Mumbai, killing some 170 people and injuring more than 300.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was allegedly implicated by phone intercepts and the testimony of David Headley, who confessed to helping to plan the attacks on Mumbai's Taj Mahal Hotel and other locations. And new revelations from ProPublica suggest that America not only kept its knowledge of Headley's activities from India, but also that the former Drug Enforcement Agency informant may have been a double agent for the Central Intelligence Agency and the ISI.
When Obama visits India the first week of November, he'll have some explaining to do.
"The timing of this could not be worse," said Indiana University political scientist Sumit Ganguly. "With 16 days to go before the Obama visit, to announce this [aid package] was absolutely thoughtless. Of course, I don't know if announcing it after the visit would have been any better."
Though the U.S. has gotten precious little bang for its buck and India has been left out in the cold, for Pakistan the effects of going rogue have been positive. On Sept. 11, 2001, the value of the Karachi stock exchange's KSE 100 index stood at 1255.99 points. In 2002 alone, it doubled in value. By Friday's close, savvy investors have watched the formerly lackluster and volatile index march steadily past 10,000. Far from making Pakistan a stalwart ally or a liberal democracy, the lucrative gravy train has made it clearer than ever to many here that America's foreign policy establishment can be played.
"It has convinced the Pakistanis that America is so desperate for their support that they can get away with anything, including burning your supply trucks and doing precious little of what [America] wants," said Gopalaswami Parthasarathy, India's ambassador to Pakistan from 1998 to 2000.
From India's perspective, U.S. military aid to Pakistan is disproportionate to the actual cost of fighting terrorism — the ostensible justification for the funds — and Islamabad spends the bulk of the money on preparing for a possible future war with India.
This increases the risk of an escalating arms race in South Asia, implied Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony in discussions with U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not long after Pakistan received the first three of 18 F-16s — fighter jets that are ill-suited for ferreting out terrorists hiding in the caves of Waziristan.
Moreover, while America's military aid generally comes in the form of free or subsidized hardware from U.S. suppliers — acting as an economic stimulus for the U.S. defense industry — India believes that as much as half of the cash, paid as "Coalition Support Fund" reimbursements for expenses incurred supporting the U.S. war effort, is easily routed to make other purchases.
"The bulk of that [aid money] has gone to purchase Chinese weapons, because it goes as coalition support funds," said Parthasarathy. "So, militarily you are in effect promoting a Chinese-Pakistan relationship."
Over the past two decades, China has supplied Pakistan with everything from tanks to frigates, and aided the development of its nuclear program while under U.S. sanctions. But several big ticket purchases have come after the U.S. ramped up reimbursement payments. Pakistan signed a deal to buy four 2,500 ton F-22P frigates from China for $750 million in 2005, for example, and its navy recently expressed interest in buying some larger, 4,000-ton ships.
Meanwhile, under the ongoing JF-17 fighter project, speculated to be worth about $5 billion, Pakistan is expected to add some 250 jets to its air force by 2015. And, according to Farhan Bokhari, the Pakistan correspondent for Jane's Defence Weekly, it's difficult to compare those sums dollar-for-dollar, because China offers Pakistan deep discounts and concessionary payment terms.
The present government in New Delhi is convinced that the road to greatness runs through Washington, so India remains keen to wolf down whatever scraps Obama is prepared to offer to add substance to what both nations call a "strategic partnership."
That means India is less likely than ever to go rogue — by taking a firm stand to back neighboring Iran's nuclear ambitions, for example, or by funneling an expected $10 billion in defense purchases to its longtime supplier Russia instead of the U.S., even though some commentators here have pointed out that money will go into Pakistani pockets.
But Washington should be concerned about the other rogues in the audience, for whom the attractions of bad behavior just keep getting bigger. While Obama tries to keep Iran from seeking nuclear weapons, for example, the contrasting fates of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan demonstrate to many here that they are necessary for a seat at the big kids' table — so much so that an Indian general described the message sent by America's first invasion of Iraq as "get nuclear weapons as fast as possible, unless you want to be invaded by the U.S."
"I'm certain that any number of squalid dictators across the world will now infer that if you are suitably difficult and you have certain things that the U.S. desires, then squeezing the U.S. works," said Ganguly.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101022/us-announces-2-billion-aid-package-pakistan
GlobalPost - October 23, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — Sarah Palin isn't the only one with a case for going rogue.
With U.S. President Barack Obama scheduled to come courting next month, Mother India might think about giving it a try, too.
Consider the evidence.
The U.S. today announced a $2 billion military and security aid package to Pakistan, a country widely suspected of harboring top leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban — including Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, by some accounts. In recent weeks, dozens of American fuel tankers bound for soldiers in Afghanistan have been blown up.
Coming on the back of a $7.5 billion package of economic aid announced in 2009, the new package brings the total since Sept. 11, 2001, to nearly $15 billion — double the amount of aid Islamabad received from Washington during all of the 1990s.
And the bulk of that money — about 10 times the amount of U.S. aid to India — came after 2004, when Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan confessed to providing Iran, Libya and North Korea with designs and technology to aid in their nuclear weapons programs, receiving a pardon after maintaining, unconvincingly, that Islamabad had no role in his activities.
What did New Delhi, supposedly America's natural ally, get out of the deal? In December 2001, Pakistan-based terrorists attacked India's parliament, killing six policemen and one civilian, leading to a fraught standoff between the two nations across the disputed Line of Control in Kashmir. Then, in November 2008, a well-trained team conducted more than 10 coordinated terrorist attacks in Mumbai, killing some 170 people and injuring more than 300.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was allegedly implicated by phone intercepts and the testimony of David Headley, who confessed to helping to plan the attacks on Mumbai's Taj Mahal Hotel and other locations. And new revelations from ProPublica suggest that America not only kept its knowledge of Headley's activities from India, but also that the former Drug Enforcement Agency informant may have been a double agent for the Central Intelligence Agency and the ISI.
When Obama visits India the first week of November, he'll have some explaining to do.
"The timing of this could not be worse," said Indiana University political scientist Sumit Ganguly. "With 16 days to go before the Obama visit, to announce this [aid package] was absolutely thoughtless. Of course, I don't know if announcing it after the visit would have been any better."
Though the U.S. has gotten precious little bang for its buck and India has been left out in the cold, for Pakistan the effects of going rogue have been positive. On Sept. 11, 2001, the value of the Karachi stock exchange's KSE 100 index stood at 1255.99 points. In 2002 alone, it doubled in value. By Friday's close, savvy investors have watched the formerly lackluster and volatile index march steadily past 10,000. Far from making Pakistan a stalwart ally or a liberal democracy, the lucrative gravy train has made it clearer than ever to many here that America's foreign policy establishment can be played.
"It has convinced the Pakistanis that America is so desperate for their support that they can get away with anything, including burning your supply trucks and doing precious little of what [America] wants," said Gopalaswami Parthasarathy, India's ambassador to Pakistan from 1998 to 2000.
From India's perspective, U.S. military aid to Pakistan is disproportionate to the actual cost of fighting terrorism — the ostensible justification for the funds — and Islamabad spends the bulk of the money on preparing for a possible future war with India.
This increases the risk of an escalating arms race in South Asia, implied Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony in discussions with U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not long after Pakistan received the first three of 18 F-16s — fighter jets that are ill-suited for ferreting out terrorists hiding in the caves of Waziristan.
Moreover, while America's military aid generally comes in the form of free or subsidized hardware from U.S. suppliers — acting as an economic stimulus for the U.S. defense industry — India believes that as much as half of the cash, paid as "Coalition Support Fund" reimbursements for expenses incurred supporting the U.S. war effort, is easily routed to make other purchases.
"The bulk of that [aid money] has gone to purchase Chinese weapons, because it goes as coalition support funds," said Parthasarathy. "So, militarily you are in effect promoting a Chinese-Pakistan relationship."
Over the past two decades, China has supplied Pakistan with everything from tanks to frigates, and aided the development of its nuclear program while under U.S. sanctions. But several big ticket purchases have come after the U.S. ramped up reimbursement payments. Pakistan signed a deal to buy four 2,500 ton F-22P frigates from China for $750 million in 2005, for example, and its navy recently expressed interest in buying some larger, 4,000-ton ships.
Meanwhile, under the ongoing JF-17 fighter project, speculated to be worth about $5 billion, Pakistan is expected to add some 250 jets to its air force by 2015. And, according to Farhan Bokhari, the Pakistan correspondent for Jane's Defence Weekly, it's difficult to compare those sums dollar-for-dollar, because China offers Pakistan deep discounts and concessionary payment terms.
The present government in New Delhi is convinced that the road to greatness runs through Washington, so India remains keen to wolf down whatever scraps Obama is prepared to offer to add substance to what both nations call a "strategic partnership."
That means India is less likely than ever to go rogue — by taking a firm stand to back neighboring Iran's nuclear ambitions, for example, or by funneling an expected $10 billion in defense purchases to its longtime supplier Russia instead of the U.S., even though some commentators here have pointed out that money will go into Pakistani pockets.
But Washington should be concerned about the other rogues in the audience, for whom the attractions of bad behavior just keep getting bigger. While Obama tries to keep Iran from seeking nuclear weapons, for example, the contrasting fates of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan demonstrate to many here that they are necessary for a seat at the big kids' table — so much so that an Indian general described the message sent by America's first invasion of Iraq as "get nuclear weapons as fast as possible, unless you want to be invaded by the U.S."
"I'm certain that any number of squalid dictators across the world will now infer that if you are suitably difficult and you have certain things that the U.S. desires, then squeezing the U.S. works," said Ganguly.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101022/us-announces-2-billion-aid-package-pakistan
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Disneyland meets Bollywood at Indian theme park
A new theme park offers a Bollywood fantasy version of India, minus the dirt.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - October 18, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — From a distance, the new Kingdom of Dreams theme park outside Delhi looks and sounds like one of the amber-colored, sandstone palaces of Rajasthan.
At the ticket booth, turban-clad musicians sit, horns blaring, beneath a life-sized stone elephant, and the middle-class patrons shuffle between great stone pillars before passing through a metal detector — just like the ones omnipresent at Delhi's new, posh shopping malls — that punctures the illusion.
Opened this August, the Kingdom of Dreams is arguably India's most ambitious entertainment complex yet. Combining a retail-and-restaurant complex called Culture Gully, an outdoor stage for productions of the Ramayana and wedding shows, and a palatial 800-seat theater, it's Disneyland meets Bollywood. And this month, it's pioneering the country's first live Broadway-style musical — a fusion of the aesthetics of Hinduism's mythical epics and Bollywood's tearjerkers called Zangoora: the Gypsy Prince.
For the promoters — which include the Apra Group and Wizcraft International Entertainment, the firm behind Bollywood's International Indian Film Academy awards — it's a huge gamble. Apart from productions of mythological plays associated with the Hindu holidays and a small, insular art scene in Delhi and Mumbai, India has no tradition of live theater. Tickets for Zangoora range from around $25 to $150 — well out of range of the majority of local residents. And according to local press reports, the show will have to run eight times a week for two to three years in order for producers to recover their investment.
"Theater in India has never gone to the scale that Wizcraft and Apra have taken it," said Hussein Kuwajerwalla, the veteran television actor and Indian Idol host who plays the title role in Zangoora. "When I saw [the complex] in front of my eyes, I thought, these guys are going big. Big and how."
So far, the novelty of live action appears to be satisfying the crowd, thanks to the show's high production values — three cinema screens complement the sets with 3D animation, and in one underwater sequence aerial dancers hang from wires to twirl and somersault above the audience. The house was about half full for the midweek showing that I attended, and company officials say it's packed on weekends.
"What attracted me to this was the largeness of it," said television soap veteran Kashmira Irani, who plays opposite Kuwajerwalla. "When I came to this place, I was, like, Oh my God. This is the largest theater in India, the first, and to be part of something like this, I'm sure is going to create history."
The show is impressive. Kuwajerwalla, Irani and Bollywood debutante Gauhar Khan bring a healthy dose of glamour, and the costumes, sets and choreography are up to New York standards. But can it launch Indian theater?
"Sadly, in India, the only medium that people consider people to be actors is the film medium," said Khan, who recently starred opposite Ranbir Kapoor in Shimit Amin's "Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year." "But when [Bollywood] directors and producers actually see me on stage, and see what I do, they are actually taken by surprise."
Stylistically, Zangoora has more in common with the television variety show and India's increasingly elaborate mythological plays than with Broadway or Bollywood. None of the actors do their own singing, of course — lip-syncing is the norm in Indian films. The actors' microphones are tuned loud enough that their echoing voices have no semblance of verisimilitude, and the "big speeches" are pronounced in the booming, stagy tones of televisions mythological epics.
In that respect, Zangoora fits in snugly with the rest of the theme park. Billed as "an incredible Indian experience," the Kingdom of Dreams sales pitch hinges on community and tradition, just as Zangoora's main touchstone is the neighborhood productions of the Ramayana — called Ramlilas — which take place on the holiday of Dussehra. This month, for instance, the park's outdoor stage will feature nightly performances of Gujarati dandiya dances for the nine nights of the Hindu Navratri festival, punctuated with its own lavish Ramlila.
But as the slogan suggests — conjuring memories of the selective photography of the Ministry of Tourism's "Incredible India" ad campaign — the community offered here is an ersatz India that has been cleaned up for the upper middle class. And by all accounts, it's better than the real thing. The consensus: It's beautiful.
"It's a beautiful place," said Neha, a 23-year-old Delhi resident who'd come to celebrate her birthday with her boyfriend. "If you can say India has been summed up in just one place, under one roof, I would say that would be it."
Take the Kingdom's version of the Indian street. Culture Gully is an air-conditioned stage set with six themed restaurants, street food stalls, a massage center, an astrology complex, retail stores selling products from India's most iconic regions and — yes, Mahatma — three street bars. A false blue sky overhead ensures that it is always twilight, and there is no evidence of the real bazaar's thickets of dusty electrical wires and crumbling buildings.
Everything is clean and sparkling and colorful. At one end of the street, a houseboat from the backwaters of Kerala lies grounded on a playground's worth of white sand. Mid-way down, you can board a train bound for Mumbai's erstwhile Victoria Terminus (now called Chatrapati Shivaji), then step across the street for a Chennai filter coffee.
It's strangely unreal, and (actually) rather fun. But there's something disturbing, too, about the idea that an Indian street where everything works is such a popular fantasy — and charges about double the daily minimum wage for entry.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101016/bollywood-theme-park-disneyland?page=0,1
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - October 18, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — From a distance, the new Kingdom of Dreams theme park outside Delhi looks and sounds like one of the amber-colored, sandstone palaces of Rajasthan.
At the ticket booth, turban-clad musicians sit, horns blaring, beneath a life-sized stone elephant, and the middle-class patrons shuffle between great stone pillars before passing through a metal detector — just like the ones omnipresent at Delhi's new, posh shopping malls — that punctures the illusion.
Opened this August, the Kingdom of Dreams is arguably India's most ambitious entertainment complex yet. Combining a retail-and-restaurant complex called Culture Gully, an outdoor stage for productions of the Ramayana and wedding shows, and a palatial 800-seat theater, it's Disneyland meets Bollywood. And this month, it's pioneering the country's first live Broadway-style musical — a fusion of the aesthetics of Hinduism's mythical epics and Bollywood's tearjerkers called Zangoora: the Gypsy Prince.
For the promoters — which include the Apra Group and Wizcraft International Entertainment, the firm behind Bollywood's International Indian Film Academy awards — it's a huge gamble. Apart from productions of mythological plays associated with the Hindu holidays and a small, insular art scene in Delhi and Mumbai, India has no tradition of live theater. Tickets for Zangoora range from around $25 to $150 — well out of range of the majority of local residents. And according to local press reports, the show will have to run eight times a week for two to three years in order for producers to recover their investment.
"Theater in India has never gone to the scale that Wizcraft and Apra have taken it," said Hussein Kuwajerwalla, the veteran television actor and Indian Idol host who plays the title role in Zangoora. "When I saw [the complex] in front of my eyes, I thought, these guys are going big. Big and how."
So far, the novelty of live action appears to be satisfying the crowd, thanks to the show's high production values — three cinema screens complement the sets with 3D animation, and in one underwater sequence aerial dancers hang from wires to twirl and somersault above the audience. The house was about half full for the midweek showing that I attended, and company officials say it's packed on weekends.
"What attracted me to this was the largeness of it," said television soap veteran Kashmira Irani, who plays opposite Kuwajerwalla. "When I came to this place, I was, like, Oh my God. This is the largest theater in India, the first, and to be part of something like this, I'm sure is going to create history."
The show is impressive. Kuwajerwalla, Irani and Bollywood debutante Gauhar Khan bring a healthy dose of glamour, and the costumes, sets and choreography are up to New York standards. But can it launch Indian theater?
"Sadly, in India, the only medium that people consider people to be actors is the film medium," said Khan, who recently starred opposite Ranbir Kapoor in Shimit Amin's "Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year." "But when [Bollywood] directors and producers actually see me on stage, and see what I do, they are actually taken by surprise."
Stylistically, Zangoora has more in common with the television variety show and India's increasingly elaborate mythological plays than with Broadway or Bollywood. None of the actors do their own singing, of course — lip-syncing is the norm in Indian films. The actors' microphones are tuned loud enough that their echoing voices have no semblance of verisimilitude, and the "big speeches" are pronounced in the booming, stagy tones of televisions mythological epics.
In that respect, Zangoora fits in snugly with the rest of the theme park. Billed as "an incredible Indian experience," the Kingdom of Dreams sales pitch hinges on community and tradition, just as Zangoora's main touchstone is the neighborhood productions of the Ramayana — called Ramlilas — which take place on the holiday of Dussehra. This month, for instance, the park's outdoor stage will feature nightly performances of Gujarati dandiya dances for the nine nights of the Hindu Navratri festival, punctuated with its own lavish Ramlila.
But as the slogan suggests — conjuring memories of the selective photography of the Ministry of Tourism's "Incredible India" ad campaign — the community offered here is an ersatz India that has been cleaned up for the upper middle class. And by all accounts, it's better than the real thing. The consensus: It's beautiful.
"It's a beautiful place," said Neha, a 23-year-old Delhi resident who'd come to celebrate her birthday with her boyfriend. "If you can say India has been summed up in just one place, under one roof, I would say that would be it."
Take the Kingdom's version of the Indian street. Culture Gully is an air-conditioned stage set with six themed restaurants, street food stalls, a massage center, an astrology complex, retail stores selling products from India's most iconic regions and — yes, Mahatma — three street bars. A false blue sky overhead ensures that it is always twilight, and there is no evidence of the real bazaar's thickets of dusty electrical wires and crumbling buildings.
Everything is clean and sparkling and colorful. At one end of the street, a houseboat from the backwaters of Kerala lies grounded on a playground's worth of white sand. Mid-way down, you can board a train bound for Mumbai's erstwhile Victoria Terminus (now called Chatrapati Shivaji), then step across the street for a Chennai filter coffee.
It's strangely unreal, and (actually) rather fun. But there's something disturbing, too, about the idea that an Indian street where everything works is such a popular fantasy — and charges about double the daily minimum wage for entry.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101016/bollywood-theme-park-disneyland?page=0,1
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Why Wal-mart struggles in India
Fears of big retail are strangling growth.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - October 7, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — The timing for Walmart's first buyer-seller summit in India earlier this month couldn't have been better.
As Indian firms keen to tap the retailing giant's global network prepared their pitches, the Indian government gave the first concrete sign that it may be ready to open up its potentially huge retail market to foreign investors — an opportunity that America's largest retailer has been chasing for as many as 20 years.
It's not just big for Walmart, the company argues. "For India, the opening of retail would be a game changer," said Rajan Mittal, vice chairman of the firm's joint venture partner here.
Barred from opening retail stores in India, Walmart had been sourcing millions of dollars worth of textiles and other products here since 2001. Then, finally, after years of waiting for the world's next largest market to open its doors, the Arkansas-based company went around back — forming a joint venture with billionaire Sunil Mittal's Bharti Enterprises, best known as the operator of India's largest telecommunications network, Airtel. That gave Walmart the right to open wholesale stores in India and lay some groundwork through the Indian-owned Bharti Retail chain. But it wasn't exactly a sweetheart deal.
After opening its first retail store in China in 1996, Walmart swiftly ramped up to nearly 300 retail outlets, as well as 180 larger "supercenters." But in India, the company's Bharti-Walmart joint venture has due to restrictions managed only to open three so-called cash-and-carry stores — which sell in bulk to other retailers.
While Walmart's claim to fame is its supply chain, its best suppliers in India could only manage a score of 60 out of 100 by the company's standard, so it has to keep more inventory in India than anywhere else in the world. So, too, India's tiny grassroots retailers — the bread and butter of the retail sector — find that it's not worth their trouble to schlep out to the hyperstore.
Worse, it was barred from selling to the retail outlets of its joint venture partner, Bharti Retail. Until now.
On Sept. 29, India moved to allow foreign-funded wholesalers like Bharti-Walmart to sell as much as 25 percent of their goods directly to consumers through retailers that are part of the same corporate group.
Though Mittal called the job "half-done," it gave Walmart a small opening through which to explore India's retail market. More significantly, the change in regulations provided the strongest hint yet that India's government may finally be ready to talk business on FDI in retail.
"Our intelligence is that there will definitely be some policy relaxation [soon] in terms of allowing multi-brand retailing to come in," said NV Siva Kumar, leader of retail and consumer industries for PricewaterhouseCoopers India. "There will definitely be some conditions attached, but some kind of calibrated opening is what we expect to happen."
There was a gold rush air at Walmart's first pan-India buyer-seller summit, held at New Delhi's Taj Palace hotel on Sept. 30.
A host of Indian agricultural companies — including biggies like ITC Ltd. Kohinoor Foods and Amul — had taken booths to woo Walmart and associated buyers from 13 different countries, including the United States and United Kingdom. Many firms, like South India-based Nani Agro, which recently gained a spot on Walmart's approved list as a supplier of turmeric, were pitching the rest of their product portfolio.
Despite India's position as the world's second-largest producer of fruits and vegetables, the country's total agricultural exports amounted to just $8 billion last year, compared with China's $40 billion. Help from Walmart and its associated firms to meet international standards and make global connections could change that, India's farm and food companies hope.
For retailers like Walmart, as well as French competitor Carrefour and U.K.-based Tesco, the stakes are almost as high, and they are hoping that the first calibration in India's retail FDI policy could come as early as November, when U.S. President Barack Obama is slated to visit. Last month, Francisco Sanchez, U.S. under-secretary of commerce for international trade, told the Financial Times that opening up India's retail market is high on the agenda for Obama's delegation.
And, so far, most signs appear to be positive. The Indian commerce ministry's department of industrial policy and promotion recently issued a discussion paper that outlined the positive effects that FDI in retail could have on India's economy. "We believe that it is an opportunity to multiply jobs," a junior trade minister told Bloomberg.
However, India's Business Standard newspaper, citing unnamed sources in the finance ministry, has reported that no change is likely now.
Opening retail is perhaps the only big ticket item left on India's agenda of economic reforms, and the very idea of India lies at the issue's heart.
For the first six decades of India's independence, tiny cottage industries enjoyed various advantages due to regulations inspired by the philosophies of Mohandas K. Gandhi (better known as Mahatma). Small was good, subsistence was in and scale was out. Opening up retail to bigger-is-better players like Walmart would be a radical departure, and small trader organizations and India's communist parties are fighting it tooth and nail.
Experts from consultancies and economic think tanks, however, argue that opening up retail to FDI would benefit Indian consumers, farmers and workers in several ways. India's retail market is already worth some $400 billion, according to Business Monitor International. But the so-called "unorganized sector" of tiny mom-and-mop stores accounts for perhaps 97 percent of the market. And while outfits like the Confederation of All India Traders say that absorbing those tiny stores into larger, organized chains will result in massive unemployment, the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), which was tasked by the government to study the issue, found no evidence to support that claim.
According to the ICRIER study, big retail has little net effect on employment numbers. Moreover, large retail chains pay 25 percent higher prices for produce than farmers are able to get from the traditional market, and farmers selling directly to large retailers earn 60 percent higher profits — a remarkable fact considering that agriculture still employs two-thirds of India's 1.1 billion population.
But foreign funds could have an even larger impact. According to the Retailers Association of India, opening the retail sector to FDI would generate $20 billion in investment over the next five years. Much of that investment would go to improving transport linkages and developing the food processing industry, which could be a large employer and help cut the $12 billion a year's worth of agricultural produce that spoils before it ever reaches the market. According to ICRIER, small and medium sized companies in the textiles and clothing businesses would also get a huge boost.
PricewaterhouseCoopers' Kumar concluded: "It would be a terrific catalyst for trade."
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101006/walmart-economy
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - October 7, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — The timing for Walmart's first buyer-seller summit in India earlier this month couldn't have been better.
As Indian firms keen to tap the retailing giant's global network prepared their pitches, the Indian government gave the first concrete sign that it may be ready to open up its potentially huge retail market to foreign investors — an opportunity that America's largest retailer has been chasing for as many as 20 years.
It's not just big for Walmart, the company argues. "For India, the opening of retail would be a game changer," said Rajan Mittal, vice chairman of the firm's joint venture partner here.
Barred from opening retail stores in India, Walmart had been sourcing millions of dollars worth of textiles and other products here since 2001. Then, finally, after years of waiting for the world's next largest market to open its doors, the Arkansas-based company went around back — forming a joint venture with billionaire Sunil Mittal's Bharti Enterprises, best known as the operator of India's largest telecommunications network, Airtel. That gave Walmart the right to open wholesale stores in India and lay some groundwork through the Indian-owned Bharti Retail chain. But it wasn't exactly a sweetheart deal.
After opening its first retail store in China in 1996, Walmart swiftly ramped up to nearly 300 retail outlets, as well as 180 larger "supercenters." But in India, the company's Bharti-Walmart joint venture has due to restrictions managed only to open three so-called cash-and-carry stores — which sell in bulk to other retailers.
While Walmart's claim to fame is its supply chain, its best suppliers in India could only manage a score of 60 out of 100 by the company's standard, so it has to keep more inventory in India than anywhere else in the world. So, too, India's tiny grassroots retailers — the bread and butter of the retail sector — find that it's not worth their trouble to schlep out to the hyperstore.
Worse, it was barred from selling to the retail outlets of its joint venture partner, Bharti Retail. Until now.
On Sept. 29, India moved to allow foreign-funded wholesalers like Bharti-Walmart to sell as much as 25 percent of their goods directly to consumers through retailers that are part of the same corporate group.
Though Mittal called the job "half-done," it gave Walmart a small opening through which to explore India's retail market. More significantly, the change in regulations provided the strongest hint yet that India's government may finally be ready to talk business on FDI in retail.
"Our intelligence is that there will definitely be some policy relaxation [soon] in terms of allowing multi-brand retailing to come in," said NV Siva Kumar, leader of retail and consumer industries for PricewaterhouseCoopers India. "There will definitely be some conditions attached, but some kind of calibrated opening is what we expect to happen."
There was a gold rush air at Walmart's first pan-India buyer-seller summit, held at New Delhi's Taj Palace hotel on Sept. 30.
A host of Indian agricultural companies — including biggies like ITC Ltd. Kohinoor Foods and Amul — had taken booths to woo Walmart and associated buyers from 13 different countries, including the United States and United Kingdom. Many firms, like South India-based Nani Agro, which recently gained a spot on Walmart's approved list as a supplier of turmeric, were pitching the rest of their product portfolio.
Despite India's position as the world's second-largest producer of fruits and vegetables, the country's total agricultural exports amounted to just $8 billion last year, compared with China's $40 billion. Help from Walmart and its associated firms to meet international standards and make global connections could change that, India's farm and food companies hope.
For retailers like Walmart, as well as French competitor Carrefour and U.K.-based Tesco, the stakes are almost as high, and they are hoping that the first calibration in India's retail FDI policy could come as early as November, when U.S. President Barack Obama is slated to visit. Last month, Francisco Sanchez, U.S. under-secretary of commerce for international trade, told the Financial Times that opening up India's retail market is high on the agenda for Obama's delegation.
And, so far, most signs appear to be positive. The Indian commerce ministry's department of industrial policy and promotion recently issued a discussion paper that outlined the positive effects that FDI in retail could have on India's economy. "We believe that it is an opportunity to multiply jobs," a junior trade minister told Bloomberg.
However, India's Business Standard newspaper, citing unnamed sources in the finance ministry, has reported that no change is likely now.
Opening retail is perhaps the only big ticket item left on India's agenda of economic reforms, and the very idea of India lies at the issue's heart.
For the first six decades of India's independence, tiny cottage industries enjoyed various advantages due to regulations inspired by the philosophies of Mohandas K. Gandhi (better known as Mahatma). Small was good, subsistence was in and scale was out. Opening up retail to bigger-is-better players like Walmart would be a radical departure, and small trader organizations and India's communist parties are fighting it tooth and nail.
Experts from consultancies and economic think tanks, however, argue that opening up retail to FDI would benefit Indian consumers, farmers and workers in several ways. India's retail market is already worth some $400 billion, according to Business Monitor International. But the so-called "unorganized sector" of tiny mom-and-mop stores accounts for perhaps 97 percent of the market. And while outfits like the Confederation of All India Traders say that absorbing those tiny stores into larger, organized chains will result in massive unemployment, the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), which was tasked by the government to study the issue, found no evidence to support that claim.
According to the ICRIER study, big retail has little net effect on employment numbers. Moreover, large retail chains pay 25 percent higher prices for produce than farmers are able to get from the traditional market, and farmers selling directly to large retailers earn 60 percent higher profits — a remarkable fact considering that agriculture still employs two-thirds of India's 1.1 billion population.
But foreign funds could have an even larger impact. According to the Retailers Association of India, opening the retail sector to FDI would generate $20 billion in investment over the next five years. Much of that investment would go to improving transport linkages and developing the food processing industry, which could be a large employer and help cut the $12 billion a year's worth of agricultural produce that spoils before it ever reaches the market. According to ICRIER, small and medium sized companies in the textiles and clothing businesses would also get a huge boost.
PricewaterhouseCoopers' Kumar concluded: "It would be a terrific catalyst for trade."
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/101006/walmart-economy
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Has India got game?
An upstart Indian video game company launches its first big title.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - October 6, 2010
NEW DELHI, India and TOKYO, Japan — A line of patient gamers spiraled around the billowing white pavilion for El Shaddai — the first top-tier video game released by India's UTV Software Communications, which debuted at the Tokyo Game Show last month.
As the queue snaked past video screens playing scenes from the game's back story and display cases containing specially designed Edwin jeans “as worn by" the character Enoch in the game, some gamers scoped the storyboards, while others multitasked with handheld devices. At a game convention, you find game addicts.
The mood was mostly curious. Compared with Halo: Reach or Final Fantasy XIV, El Shaddai, designed by Sawaki Takeyasu for UTV's Ignition Entertainment unit, had virtually no hype going into the show. The animated trailer — a must for today's top-end, or AAA, games — would not be showing on a jumbotron at center court, and more than a few of the people waiting to play the old-school, third-person, punch-and-slash adventure had probably stumbled over because they'd stopped giving out badges at the nearby booth for the PlayStation Move.
But that didn't stop El Shaddai, a Cinderella at the ball, from winning fans. At the award ceremony on the final day of TGS, the 200,000-odd visitors voted El Shaddai "Future Game of the Show 2010" — honoring it among the top 10 favorite games showcased at the convention.
Now, for UTV, who invited me to attend TGS as its guest, the question is whether that recognition will pay off in sales. The Indian company — which has shelled out some serious coin to acquire game design firms in the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan, as well as India, over the past three years — has a lot riding on its first AAA game's success.
Building on the reputation and financial wherewithal that the company has built producing and distributing Indian movies and TV shows, CEO Ronnie Screwvala hopes to become a significant player in the global video game business.
That means developing games from UTV's own family of studios, pushing new distribution models and attracting independent game designers who need a Harvey Weinstein-type mover to take their titles to the boardrooms of Sony, Capcom and Microsoft. A big splash out of the gate would draw that kind of attention right away — just at the right time.
"It's very important," Ronnie Screwvala, UTV's 54-year-old CEO, told GlobalPost. "We've got a lot riding on El Shaddai."
Though it has potential, the game business in India is worth a tiny $100 million of the $20-plus billion global market. Moreover, virtually all of that comes from games for mobile phones, and Indian animators and game designers are at least a decade behind their counterparts in America and Japan.
That's why Screwvala is striving to build a global gaming company, rather than an Indian one. The idea is to follow the so-called "Pixar model," with which Apple's Steve Jobs built a $7.5-billion company from a base of a measly $10 million by assembling a small, committed team of in-house directors and animators. But that's easier said than done — especially from India, skeptics say.
"Financially, if we sell a million units [of El Shaddai], it's not a big deal," said Screwvala. "But it's more about, 'Where the hell did you guys come from?' That's the reaction we want from the industry."
Acquiring controlling stakes in Mumbai-based Indiagames, U.K.-based Ignition, and U.S.-based True Games in 2007 and 2008, UTV has pumped $75 million into developing its gaming division — adding more than 400 visualizers, game designers and technology experts at studios in London, Tokyo and Shanghai, as well as Austin, Texas and Gainesville, Fla.
Revenue started trickling in too. But the big prize of its acquisition spree — an action sci-fi game called WarDevil designed for Ignition by Digi-Guys that was poised to turn the game world on its ear with ultra high-definition game play — failed to surface in time to put UTV's gaming business on the map.
"If we'd ever come up with a date in public, which we haven't, then the question would be delay. But we set ourselves our own expectations, and our own internal deadlines and we definitely are not on track with those internal deadlines," said Screwvala, who blames the delay on a decision to make the game available on Microsoft's Xbox360, as well as Sony's PS3.
The game that marked UTV's debut instead, El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, is a completely different animal. It's a fantasy title, based on the apocryphal Book of Enoch — a text that was excluded from the Bible's Old Testament, which tells the story of the human Enoch's "ascent" to become the angel Metatron.
Naturally, in the game version, Enoch rises to heaven by taking out fallen angels with a flashing scimitar of God-energy (or some such). Where WarDevil is set to jump into the battle for ever more real-looking graphics through three-dimensional, computer-generated animation, El Shaddai has a hand-drawn feel reminiscent of Japanese anime.
Blogging for Wire.com, critic Daniel Feit, for instance, wrote that the game "dazzles with watercolor visuals." Will that made-in-Japan aesthetic play in the States — which accounts for the lion's share of the global game market?
"It has a very Japanese art form to it, but the storyline is very universal," said Screwvala. "So while most people feel that Japanese games, normally, are meant for the Japanese market, we've created a game in a Japanese studio but for a world market."
But, hey, if El Shaddai doesn't make that big a splash, don't expect UTV to roll over and play dead. Screwvala's Hollywood ambitions survived his company's production of M. Night Shyamalan's dismal "The Happening," and as far as he's concerned that flop just gave American show business another reason to recognize his name.
And unlike that lucky, or unlucky, one-off in Hollywood, UTV has a flurry of global game releases on the slate to ensure that even if El Shaddai flops, designers and distributors will take notice of the little video game company from Bollywood.
Targeting around $90 million in revenue and modest earnings, UTV expects to release seven sub-AAA console games this year. A massively multiplayer online fantasy role playing game called Mytheon from its Austin-based Truegames studio is due for release early in 2011. A second AAA console game called Reich — billed as a futuristic first-person shooter — and the much-awaited Wardevil are also scheduled for release. And, according to UTV, all three of its AAA console games have the potential to become movie-and-merchandising franchises like Resident Evil — or at least Streetfighter.
You know what they say: You can take the company out of Bollywood, but you can't take Bollywood out of the company.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - October 6, 2010
NEW DELHI, India and TOKYO, Japan — A line of patient gamers spiraled around the billowing white pavilion for El Shaddai — the first top-tier video game released by India's UTV Software Communications, which debuted at the Tokyo Game Show last month.
As the queue snaked past video screens playing scenes from the game's back story and display cases containing specially designed Edwin jeans “as worn by" the character Enoch in the game, some gamers scoped the storyboards, while others multitasked with handheld devices. At a game convention, you find game addicts.
The mood was mostly curious. Compared with Halo: Reach or Final Fantasy XIV, El Shaddai, designed by Sawaki Takeyasu for UTV's Ignition Entertainment unit, had virtually no hype going into the show. The animated trailer — a must for today's top-end, or AAA, games — would not be showing on a jumbotron at center court, and more than a few of the people waiting to play the old-school, third-person, punch-and-slash adventure had probably stumbled over because they'd stopped giving out badges at the nearby booth for the PlayStation Move.
But that didn't stop El Shaddai, a Cinderella at the ball, from winning fans. At the award ceremony on the final day of TGS, the 200,000-odd visitors voted El Shaddai "Future Game of the Show 2010" — honoring it among the top 10 favorite games showcased at the convention.
Now, for UTV, who invited me to attend TGS as its guest, the question is whether that recognition will pay off in sales. The Indian company — which has shelled out some serious coin to acquire game design firms in the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan, as well as India, over the past three years — has a lot riding on its first AAA game's success.
Building on the reputation and financial wherewithal that the company has built producing and distributing Indian movies and TV shows, CEO Ronnie Screwvala hopes to become a significant player in the global video game business.
That means developing games from UTV's own family of studios, pushing new distribution models and attracting independent game designers who need a Harvey Weinstein-type mover to take their titles to the boardrooms of Sony, Capcom and Microsoft. A big splash out of the gate would draw that kind of attention right away — just at the right time.
"It's very important," Ronnie Screwvala, UTV's 54-year-old CEO, told GlobalPost. "We've got a lot riding on El Shaddai."
Though it has potential, the game business in India is worth a tiny $100 million of the $20-plus billion global market. Moreover, virtually all of that comes from games for mobile phones, and Indian animators and game designers are at least a decade behind their counterparts in America and Japan.
That's why Screwvala is striving to build a global gaming company, rather than an Indian one. The idea is to follow the so-called "Pixar model," with which Apple's Steve Jobs built a $7.5-billion company from a base of a measly $10 million by assembling a small, committed team of in-house directors and animators. But that's easier said than done — especially from India, skeptics say.
"Financially, if we sell a million units [of El Shaddai], it's not a big deal," said Screwvala. "But it's more about, 'Where the hell did you guys come from?' That's the reaction we want from the industry."
Acquiring controlling stakes in Mumbai-based Indiagames, U.K.-based Ignition, and U.S.-based True Games in 2007 and 2008, UTV has pumped $75 million into developing its gaming division — adding more than 400 visualizers, game designers and technology experts at studios in London, Tokyo and Shanghai, as well as Austin, Texas and Gainesville, Fla.
Revenue started trickling in too. But the big prize of its acquisition spree — an action sci-fi game called WarDevil designed for Ignition by Digi-Guys that was poised to turn the game world on its ear with ultra high-definition game play — failed to surface in time to put UTV's gaming business on the map.
"If we'd ever come up with a date in public, which we haven't, then the question would be delay. But we set ourselves our own expectations, and our own internal deadlines and we definitely are not on track with those internal deadlines," said Screwvala, who blames the delay on a decision to make the game available on Microsoft's Xbox360, as well as Sony's PS3.
The game that marked UTV's debut instead, El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, is a completely different animal. It's a fantasy title, based on the apocryphal Book of Enoch — a text that was excluded from the Bible's Old Testament, which tells the story of the human Enoch's "ascent" to become the angel Metatron.
Naturally, in the game version, Enoch rises to heaven by taking out fallen angels with a flashing scimitar of God-energy (or some such). Where WarDevil is set to jump into the battle for ever more real-looking graphics through three-dimensional, computer-generated animation, El Shaddai has a hand-drawn feel reminiscent of Japanese anime.
Blogging for Wire.com, critic Daniel Feit, for instance, wrote that the game "dazzles with watercolor visuals." Will that made-in-Japan aesthetic play in the States — which accounts for the lion's share of the global game market?
"It has a very Japanese art form to it, but the storyline is very universal," said Screwvala. "So while most people feel that Japanese games, normally, are meant for the Japanese market, we've created a game in a Japanese studio but for a world market."
But, hey, if El Shaddai doesn't make that big a splash, don't expect UTV to roll over and play dead. Screwvala's Hollywood ambitions survived his company's production of M. Night Shyamalan's dismal "The Happening," and as far as he's concerned that flop just gave American show business another reason to recognize his name.
And unlike that lucky, or unlucky, one-off in Hollywood, UTV has a flurry of global game releases on the slate to ensure that even if El Shaddai flops, designers and distributors will take notice of the little video game company from Bollywood.
Targeting around $90 million in revenue and modest earnings, UTV expects to release seven sub-AAA console games this year. A massively multiplayer online fantasy role playing game called Mytheon from its Austin-based Truegames studio is due for release early in 2011. A second AAA console game called Reich — billed as a futuristic first-person shooter — and the much-awaited Wardevil are also scheduled for release. And, according to UTV, all three of its AAA console games have the potential to become movie-and-merchandising franchises like Resident Evil — or at least Streetfighter.
You know what they say: You can take the company out of Bollywood, but you can't take Bollywood out of the company.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Tokyo Game Show: Gamers go all out
In Japan, it's surreal reality meets virtual reality.
By Jason Overdorf
TOKYO, Japan — High atop a 30-foot tower built to showcase Microsoft's new Xbox360 Kinect, Japanese models kitted out in short-shorts, pigtails and sneakers scrambled to kick their virtual selves into high gear before a giant, cinema-sized screen.
As they jumped and ducked, and their on-screen icons — the popular skateboarders from Sega's new Sonic Free Riders game — raced and soared through the technicolor virtual landscape, it was hard to draw the line between the real and the surreal.
And all around the colossal tower, a horde of headsetted gamers shuffled to the hypnotic screens of blockbuster "franchises" like Halo, Assassin's Creed, Final Fantasy and Medal of Honor.
Welcome to the Tokyo Game Show, otherwise known as "TGS."
While you weren't paying attention, the global videogame industry has surpassed the movie business and the music business to become the highest-grossing entertainment industry in the world — bringing in about $20 billion a year.
That's right. The premier of a top title like Halo: Reach, the latest in a series of futuristic war games developed by a company called Bungie, is as big an event as the opening of a new flick from James Cameron or Steven Spielberg — both of whom have put their names behind top-flight game titles.
Tripling the opening weekend gross of Inception, Halo: Reach alone did $200 million in business on the first day of sales, which coincided with TGS, held Sept. 16-19 in Tokyo's Makuhari Messe.
And gaming console technologies like Microsoft Kinect's motion-sensitive game play (which makes Nintendo's Wii look like Pong) and Nintendo's glasses-free 3DS are actually pushing the cutting edge of computing.
But what's on display at TGS is not so much the technological advances in gaming — where the West has actually outstripped Japan in recent years, with biggies like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty coming out of Scotland and California.
What's on display here is the leading edge of virtual culture, where games go mainstream, and your average "salary man" blurs the lines between the everyday and the pixelated world.
TGS, which started way back in 1996, plays host to the biggest names in the game business, including publishers, developers and console makers like Capcom, Electronic Arts, Sony and Microsoft.
This year, more than 200,000 people attended the show, driving home the point that while Japan may be smaller in the gaming industry than it once was, the gaming industry is bigger than ever in Japan.
With Japanese developers creating franchises like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear and Resident Evil, handheld gaming devices as ubiquitous as mobile phones, and an arcade on every Tokyo corner, the videogame industry accounts for an even larger share of the entertainment market here than it does on the down low in the West.
Coming into this world as a non-gamer is a little like walking the red carpet at the Oscars without ever having seen a movie.
Fully a third of the attendees — most of them apparently amateurs — were dressed in elaborate costumes, portraying characters from popular games, anime and manga series like Naruto, Full Metal Alchemist, or Gyakuten Saiban ("Ace Attorney").
And the outdoor hallways between the exhibition centers were quickly taken over for impromptu photo shoots as duplicate versions of silver-haired, emerald-eyed elves squared off to compare threads.
The running patter of the models playing Sega's Sonic Free Riders game, piped over monstrous speakers, was like the banter between the hosts of a bizarre variety show. The girls themselves were the flesh-and-blood versions of the pop-eyed pin-ups of the anime world.
Outside the pavilion for Monster Hunter — the second-hottest selling game in Japan at the time — the surreal meets real aspect of the show hit me the hardest. A long line of fans waited patiently for their turn to be photographed with inflatable versions of characters from the game, and then grab a chance to play the new version for the handheld Playstation or Nintendo DS.
And in the back of the booth, a doe-eyed human mannequin sat with her feet in a bubbling wooden hot tub — ersatz ancient Japan, I suppose — while a mad horde of photographers surged in to snap close-ups. The kewpie-doll-style model worked her lips and eyes like an automaton, in perfect imitation of some animated self.
American game makers may have surpassed Japan's. But when it comes to gamers, Tokyo is still streets ahead.
By Jason Overdorf
TOKYO, Japan — High atop a 30-foot tower built to showcase Microsoft's new Xbox360 Kinect, Japanese models kitted out in short-shorts, pigtails and sneakers scrambled to kick their virtual selves into high gear before a giant, cinema-sized screen.
As they jumped and ducked, and their on-screen icons — the popular skateboarders from Sega's new Sonic Free Riders game — raced and soared through the technicolor virtual landscape, it was hard to draw the line between the real and the surreal.
And all around the colossal tower, a horde of headsetted gamers shuffled to the hypnotic screens of blockbuster "franchises" like Halo, Assassin's Creed, Final Fantasy and Medal of Honor.
Welcome to the Tokyo Game Show, otherwise known as "TGS."
While you weren't paying attention, the global videogame industry has surpassed the movie business and the music business to become the highest-grossing entertainment industry in the world — bringing in about $20 billion a year.
That's right. The premier of a top title like Halo: Reach, the latest in a series of futuristic war games developed by a company called Bungie, is as big an event as the opening of a new flick from James Cameron or Steven Spielberg — both of whom have put their names behind top-flight game titles.
Tripling the opening weekend gross of Inception, Halo: Reach alone did $200 million in business on the first day of sales, which coincided with TGS, held Sept. 16-19 in Tokyo's Makuhari Messe.
And gaming console technologies like Microsoft Kinect's motion-sensitive game play (which makes Nintendo's Wii look like Pong) and Nintendo's glasses-free 3DS are actually pushing the cutting edge of computing.
But what's on display at TGS is not so much the technological advances in gaming — where the West has actually outstripped Japan in recent years, with biggies like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty coming out of Scotland and California.
What's on display here is the leading edge of virtual culture, where games go mainstream, and your average "salary man" blurs the lines between the everyday and the pixelated world.
TGS, which started way back in 1996, plays host to the biggest names in the game business, including publishers, developers and console makers like Capcom, Electronic Arts, Sony and Microsoft.
This year, more than 200,000 people attended the show, driving home the point that while Japan may be smaller in the gaming industry than it once was, the gaming industry is bigger than ever in Japan.
With Japanese developers creating franchises like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear and Resident Evil, handheld gaming devices as ubiquitous as mobile phones, and an arcade on every Tokyo corner, the videogame industry accounts for an even larger share of the entertainment market here than it does on the down low in the West.
Coming into this world as a non-gamer is a little like walking the red carpet at the Oscars without ever having seen a movie.
Fully a third of the attendees — most of them apparently amateurs — were dressed in elaborate costumes, portraying characters from popular games, anime and manga series like Naruto, Full Metal Alchemist, or Gyakuten Saiban ("Ace Attorney").
And the outdoor hallways between the exhibition centers were quickly taken over for impromptu photo shoots as duplicate versions of silver-haired, emerald-eyed elves squared off to compare threads.
The running patter of the models playing Sega's Sonic Free Riders game, piped over monstrous speakers, was like the banter between the hosts of a bizarre variety show. The girls themselves were the flesh-and-blood versions of the pop-eyed pin-ups of the anime world.
Outside the pavilion for Monster Hunter — the second-hottest selling game in Japan at the time — the surreal meets real aspect of the show hit me the hardest. A long line of fans waited patiently for their turn to be photographed with inflatable versions of characters from the game, and then grab a chance to play the new version for the handheld Playstation or Nintendo DS.
And in the back of the booth, a doe-eyed human mannequin sat with her feet in a bubbling wooden hot tub — ersatz ancient Japan, I suppose — while a mad horde of photographers surged in to snap close-ups. The kewpie-doll-style model worked her lips and eyes like an automaton, in perfect imitation of some animated self.
American game makers may have surpassed Japan's. But when it comes to gamers, Tokyo is still streets ahead.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Quran desecration catalyzes Kashmir violence
Analysis: Will playing off the Quran destruction story discredit separatist struggle?
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost
September 14, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — Hatred at India has been fueling violence in Kashmir all summer long. But it was an act of desecration against the Quran, thousands of miles away, that ultimately sparked the bloodiest day of Kashmir's summer.
Following reports that a protester tore pages out of the Muslim holy book in front of the White House on Sept. 11, at least 17 people died in violence across Kashmir — a sequence of events that exposed the faultlines criss-crossing this conflict. A political dispute over geography and self-determination, it cannot seem to escape getting enmeshed in the global struggle between the West and fundamentalist Islam — whatever the motivations of the primary players.
"There's a whole [dimension of] state politics that's just circulated around radical Islamism," said Ajai Sahni, head of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management, a conservative think tank. "[Leveraging issues like these] is a very dangerous game."
On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met with top administration and military officials to discuss possible moves to quiet the escalating unrest in Kashmir — including, reportedly, a climbdown on the hated law that allows the military to search homes, make arrests and shoot to kill civilians.
But any significant peace offerings Singh might have announced were stymied by an outpouring of anger in Kashmir, sparked by exaggerated Iranian reports of the desecration of the Quran in the U.S. and fueled by long-harbored frustrations over the military occupation of the disputed region.
Police shot and killed protesters who defied a curfew and took to the streets, in some cases attacking government installations and in one instance allegedly burning down a Christian school. According to local reports, the police alleged that politicians affiliated with the separatist Tehreek-e-Hurriyat party used the Quran story to encourage the violence.
"If this wasn't the basis for frustration and anger, then you would have had something else," said Sumit Ganguly, a professor of political science at Indiana University. "It was inevitable in that there's such an angry mood, and the government's handling of it has been so inept. Any event that you could latch onto becomes one that you utilize to the best of your ability."
The danger in latching onto the Quran desecration is twofold. There is, of course, the danger of further radicalization of a population already incensed by decades of military occupation and thousands of cases of human rights violations — which could eventually lead to a resumption of an armed struggle for independence.
But there is also the danger that mixing too much religion into the fight will erode international sympathy and allow the government of India to dismiss the political dimensions of the separatist cause, which Kashmiris have been espousing for decades.
It's an idea that already has currency in New Delhi, where the separatist movement has been cast as a clandestine operation launched and funded from Pakistan.
"This is a pan-Islamicist movement," Sahni said in an interview with GlobalPost. "From the very outset ... the mobilization has been on the basis of pan-Islamism and radical Islam."
According to historian Ramachandra Guha, author of "India After Gandhi," fundamentalists co-opted the freedom struggle in Kashmir within a year after militancy began in 1989. The rallying cry changed swiftly from azaadi (freedom) to jihad (holy war).
Radicals pushed the local population to adopt the austere practices of fundamentalist Islam, shuttering cinema halls, banning smoking and drinking and ordering women to cover themselves from head to toe. But they didn't do it alone. The abuses of the Indian army pushed the local population to rally behind the separatists.
However, on the ground in Kashmir, observers say that the government of India is using the Quran desecration story to discredit the political struggle.
The present demands of the separatists do not have any religious character, and the ongoing cycle of protests has been raging for three months, during which Indian security forces have killed some 80 civilians. The separatists have demanded that India acknowledge that the dispute over Kashmir is an international one, begin the process of complete demilitarization, release political prisoners, end the killing and arrests of protesters, and prosecute the security personnel responsible for killing civilians.
"The Kashmir movement is an indigenous movement," said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a prominent separatist leader. "It's anger against state repression. India has tried its level best to try to link these protests to Lashkar-e-Taiba or Pakistan or even Al Qaeda, but that's not the fact."
Ordinary Kashmiris themselves reject the tag of radicalism, claiming that the valley's syncretic tradition of Islam, steeped in the spiritualism of the sufis, is alive and well. But there's a sense, also, that the army cannot remain in control indefinitely, and the government cannot continue to suppress political protests, without that changing.
"By and large, people in Kashmir are not of violent temperament, and have not been associated too much with [pan-Islamist] concerns outside," said Noor Ahmad Baba, a professor at Kashmir University. "But if this situation continues, maybe it can gradually develop."
On Wednesday, Singh will head an all-party meet to discuss the government's options in Kashmir. But it appears he won't have room for any meaningful maneuvers. The escalation of violence has made a substantial dilution of the army's powers politically impossible, even as Singh's opponents in the right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party clamor for taking a tough stance.
For the first time in a decade, Srinagar airport has been closed to commercial flights. A stringent curfew is in effect, with police under orders to shoot violators on sight. And the most hard-line separatists in Kashmir have announced an 11-day protest schedule, which will violate the curfew and inevitably result in more people killed by police bullets.
Meanwhile, as the big wigs pay lip service to addressing concerns about human rights violations in New Delhi, the security forces in Srinagar seem bound and determined to protect their own.
When a video surfaced on Facebook and YouTube last week that allegedly showed police officers parading a group of youths naked as punishment, there wasn't a murmur of outrage from official channels. Instead, a reminder was issued that it could not be ascertained from the video whether the footage was genuine.
Then, a spokesman for the Jammu and Kashmir police told the local press that they would be filing suit against Facebook and YouTube. And now, police have issued a press note alleging that "some miscreants are making repeated attempts to upload morphed pictures on Youtube against security forces to incite people" (sic). "With the latest missive in the battle for hearts and minds comes a reminder that uploading such pictures is punishable with a jail term of three years."
"Now the government is starting to crack down on people writing on Facebook [3]," said Farooq. "If the newer generation is becoming radicalized, it's because India is shrinking the space that's allowed to them."
Copyright 2010 GlobalPost – International News
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100914/kashmir-quran-september-11-islam
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost
September 14, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — Hatred at India has been fueling violence in Kashmir all summer long. But it was an act of desecration against the Quran, thousands of miles away, that ultimately sparked the bloodiest day of Kashmir's summer.
Following reports that a protester tore pages out of the Muslim holy book in front of the White House on Sept. 11, at least 17 people died in violence across Kashmir — a sequence of events that exposed the faultlines criss-crossing this conflict. A political dispute over geography and self-determination, it cannot seem to escape getting enmeshed in the global struggle between the West and fundamentalist Islam — whatever the motivations of the primary players.
"There's a whole [dimension of] state politics that's just circulated around radical Islamism," said Ajai Sahni, head of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management, a conservative think tank. "[Leveraging issues like these] is a very dangerous game."
On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met with top administration and military officials to discuss possible moves to quiet the escalating unrest in Kashmir — including, reportedly, a climbdown on the hated law that allows the military to search homes, make arrests and shoot to kill civilians.
But any significant peace offerings Singh might have announced were stymied by an outpouring of anger in Kashmir, sparked by exaggerated Iranian reports of the desecration of the Quran in the U.S. and fueled by long-harbored frustrations over the military occupation of the disputed region.
Police shot and killed protesters who defied a curfew and took to the streets, in some cases attacking government installations and in one instance allegedly burning down a Christian school. According to local reports, the police alleged that politicians affiliated with the separatist Tehreek-e-Hurriyat party used the Quran story to encourage the violence.
"If this wasn't the basis for frustration and anger, then you would have had something else," said Sumit Ganguly, a professor of political science at Indiana University. "It was inevitable in that there's such an angry mood, and the government's handling of it has been so inept. Any event that you could latch onto becomes one that you utilize to the best of your ability."
The danger in latching onto the Quran desecration is twofold. There is, of course, the danger of further radicalization of a population already incensed by decades of military occupation and thousands of cases of human rights violations — which could eventually lead to a resumption of an armed struggle for independence.
But there is also the danger that mixing too much religion into the fight will erode international sympathy and allow the government of India to dismiss the political dimensions of the separatist cause, which Kashmiris have been espousing for decades.
It's an idea that already has currency in New Delhi, where the separatist movement has been cast as a clandestine operation launched and funded from Pakistan.
"This is a pan-Islamicist movement," Sahni said in an interview with GlobalPost. "From the very outset ... the mobilization has been on the basis of pan-Islamism and radical Islam."
According to historian Ramachandra Guha, author of "India After Gandhi," fundamentalists co-opted the freedom struggle in Kashmir within a year after militancy began in 1989. The rallying cry changed swiftly from azaadi (freedom) to jihad (holy war).
Radicals pushed the local population to adopt the austere practices of fundamentalist Islam, shuttering cinema halls, banning smoking and drinking and ordering women to cover themselves from head to toe. But they didn't do it alone. The abuses of the Indian army pushed the local population to rally behind the separatists.
However, on the ground in Kashmir, observers say that the government of India is using the Quran desecration story to discredit the political struggle.
The present demands of the separatists do not have any religious character, and the ongoing cycle of protests has been raging for three months, during which Indian security forces have killed some 80 civilians. The separatists have demanded that India acknowledge that the dispute over Kashmir is an international one, begin the process of complete demilitarization, release political prisoners, end the killing and arrests of protesters, and prosecute the security personnel responsible for killing civilians.
"The Kashmir movement is an indigenous movement," said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a prominent separatist leader. "It's anger against state repression. India has tried its level best to try to link these protests to Lashkar-e-Taiba or Pakistan or even Al Qaeda, but that's not the fact."
Ordinary Kashmiris themselves reject the tag of radicalism, claiming that the valley's syncretic tradition of Islam, steeped in the spiritualism of the sufis, is alive and well. But there's a sense, also, that the army cannot remain in control indefinitely, and the government cannot continue to suppress political protests, without that changing.
"By and large, people in Kashmir are not of violent temperament, and have not been associated too much with [pan-Islamist] concerns outside," said Noor Ahmad Baba, a professor at Kashmir University. "But if this situation continues, maybe it can gradually develop."
On Wednesday, Singh will head an all-party meet to discuss the government's options in Kashmir. But it appears he won't have room for any meaningful maneuvers. The escalation of violence has made a substantial dilution of the army's powers politically impossible, even as Singh's opponents in the right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party clamor for taking a tough stance.
For the first time in a decade, Srinagar airport has been closed to commercial flights. A stringent curfew is in effect, with police under orders to shoot violators on sight. And the most hard-line separatists in Kashmir have announced an 11-day protest schedule, which will violate the curfew and inevitably result in more people killed by police bullets.
Meanwhile, as the big wigs pay lip service to addressing concerns about human rights violations in New Delhi, the security forces in Srinagar seem bound and determined to protect their own.
When a video surfaced on Facebook and YouTube last week that allegedly showed police officers parading a group of youths naked as punishment, there wasn't a murmur of outrage from official channels. Instead, a reminder was issued that it could not be ascertained from the video whether the footage was genuine.
Then, a spokesman for the Jammu and Kashmir police told the local press that they would be filing suit against Facebook and YouTube. And now, police have issued a press note alleging that "some miscreants are making repeated attempts to upload morphed pictures on Youtube against security forces to incite people" (sic). "With the latest missive in the battle for hearts and minds comes a reminder that uploading such pictures is punishable with a jail term of three years."
"Now the government is starting to crack down on people writing on Facebook [3]," said Farooq. "If the newer generation is becoming radicalized, it's because India is shrinking the space that's allowed to them."
Copyright 2010 GlobalPost – International News
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100914/kashmir-quran-september-11-islam
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