new book: the places in between

First-time author Rory Stewart roars out of the gate with The Places in Between, an account of his walk from Kabul to Herat in the aftermath of the fall of the Taliban. This one's definitely worth a read--as I explain in my review of the book in this week's Far Eastern Economic Review--but also serves as a reminder of Stewart's terrific essay in Granta 78. You want to know why the Afghan polls are destined to fail? Stewart's your man.

comics: off to save mumbai

That's right, loyal readers. Spiderman India hit the big leagues, with an even trimmer version of my story appearing in the US edition of Newsweek.

stop the presses

Sometimes the foreign press does something that you just have to serve up for general ridicule. This week, it's the Christian Science Monitor with its news flash that India's "cultural elite" has revived a muckraking magazine--yep, Tehelka. I thought it was bad enough when the NY Times weighed in on Tarun Tejpal's persecution following the bribes-on-tape scandal a good nine months after the fact, but that was (arguably) news.

the hindu right's sexual obsessions

I've long criticized the foreign press for ignoring the outrages of India's Hindu fanatics--which I see as more evidence that the West has a blinding preoccupation with fundamentalist Islam. Fortunately, the same studied ignorance is not true in the academic world, where many western scholars have observed and understood the dangers associated with saffron fanaticism. Case inpoint: this week, the soft-academic magazine Boston Review has published a fascinating essay by scholar Martha C. Nussbaum that investigates why the sexual torture of women was the focus of the violence in Gujarat in 2002. With convincing logic--though some of the language had a layperson like myself creased--Nussbaum links the Hindu fanatics' obsession with the "unclean" female bodies of Muslims to colonial law, German fascism, and Freudian psychology. Definitely worth a read.

call for comments on reservations

Dear readers,

I've been assigned to write an article on the potential business implications of the extension of caste-based reservations to the private sector. For this piece, I'll be speaking with executives from some of India's top companies to learn about their current hiring practices, as well as their thoughts on how reservations might affect their future operations.  I'll also talk to some advocates of Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Caste workers, as well as some staunch opponents of these kinds of employment quotas.

But these "representatives" don't always represent the feelings of real people, especially real people who aren't terribly interested in politics and already have good jobs with respected Indian or international companies.  That's why I'm sending out this call for comments, if anybody's out there.  What's the real dope on reservations?  Have they worked at all?  What problems have they caused?  Is caste-based discrimination still a problem in Indian life?  Did reservations rob you of your chance for a good job?  Or, on the contrary, did reservations save your family from a life of poverty and humiliation?  Are there qualified SC/ST and OBC candidates out there to fill jobs in the private sector, whether in the service industry or in manufacturing?  Would quotas simply force companies to bloat their work force with unqualified personnel, or could they find SC/ST or OBC workers with the education, skills and brains to do the job?  If so, why can't they get these jobs without quotas?  If not, does that show that the reservation policies in education have failed to end the legacy of discrimination?  Why and how?

a new feed

Delhibelly is now available in xml format, thanks to a reader who alerted me that the RSS feeder I was using was not updating the feed regularly. You can now direct your blog reading software to the following feed: http://delhibelly.blogspot.com/atom.xml .

a multicultural web

Spiderman dons a dhoti and fights a Hindu demon in a new Indian version of the popular comic, writes Jason Overdorf in this week's Newsweek International.

failing the grade

Who says cheaters don't win? In India, criminals are making millions by stealing exam papers. That's casting a shadow over the education system's ability to function as a meritocracy, writes Jason Overdorf in the Far Eastern Economic Review.

more reservations about reservations

Amit Phansalkar makes some interesting points in responding to my post on reservations in the private sector. Among other things, he rightly points out that it's not entirely logical to infer that press coverage of the reservation issue is biased because there aren't more Dalit journalists. I didn't say that, though I can see how a reader might have decided that was what I was implying. To be specific, I simply mention this to point out how easily Dalits themselves can be excluded from this debate. (It is also true, I'd venture to say, that there are very few journalists from backgrounds of extreme poverty). Also: Amit clearly isn't a bigot, and I didn't mean to suggest that he was by raising questions about the voices that should be loudest in this debate--which certainly should not include foreigners like myself, incidentally.

bjp's modi operandus

Today's Press Trust of India blurb quoting BJP president Venkaiah Naidu as saying the party has no proposal to remove Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi "at this juncture" is a good example of how the press has been left guessing about the stance of various BJP leaders on the 2002 riots (Atal Behari Vajpayee in particular).

More importantly, however, the structure of the blurb reveals the too-credulous attitude of the press that I lamented in an earlier post. After quoting Naidu, the report goes on to state with artificial reserve that the BJP president ended the press conference when journalists pressed him about whether the "issues raised by" Vajpayee were discussed. "Raised by?" Did Vajpayee really raise new issues when he claimed that he'd considered calling for Modi to step down? How hard had he tried to make himself heard on these issues before?

back in the us of a

Shailaja and I are back in the US, visiting my family in Michigan, so the posts may not be coming fast and furious over the next month. I'll do my best to chronicle my reverse culture shock, though. (Gasp: There's not a line at City Hall! And no scrum in front of the counter, either). I'm not one to carp about how easy things are to accomplish in the US, but I gotta confess I feel like there are way too many hours in the day when everything is so easy to do. Yesterday I got a marriage license, opened a bank account, bought a new wardrobe, got a short-term cell phone connection, went out to lunch, cooked dinner, went out to a bar and more. That's a week's work for me in Delhi.

india struggles to meet demand for higher education

The campus of Mewar University, one of 108 private universities established in the underdeveloped state of Chhattisgarh during the past two years, is a two-room house on a busy thoroughfare. One room is empty, except for a telephone; the other -- also a tiny, empty cell -- has "library" painted on the door. There is not a teacher, student, or book in sight, writes Shailaja in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Click here to read the full text of this article on the issues surrounding the rise of private universities in India.

yes or no minister?

Now that Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi faces a rebellion from his own supporters, who blame him for the BJP's failures in the latest election, the party's central leadership has decided to declare open season on the hardliner who was once its darling mascot. Yesterday, the rumblings began and today former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee himself was quoted to say that he favored dropping Modi and asking him to step down after the 2002 riots in Gujarat. In the end, though, Vajpayee claims, he decided to go along with the party consensus and let him stay.

Vajpayee has long proved himself capable of hunting with the hounds and running with the hare, so his latest assertion should come as no surprise. However, the Indian and foreign media alike have been much too credulous when it comes to the dignified former leader. Doesn't he deserve some criticism for so easily putting aside his reservations about Modi--a man held responsible by many for thousands of deaths in Gujarat? Where was his integrity? How much should we believe in Vajpayee's avowed "moderate" beliefs, if he never backs them up with actions? I can think of countless instances in which respected news outlets, both domestic and international, baldly asserted that Vajpayee was a moderate bulwark against the hardliners in the BJP. But never--never--did I see one direct quote from the man himself to back up that assertion. Where did the reporters who made these assertions get their information, if not from statements from the former PM or from his actions?

reservations about reservations

Amit Phansalkar opens the debate on Maharashtra's possible extension of job reservations, or quotas, for lower caste Indians to the private sector on Living in India. Maharashtra is the first state to consider acting on this proposal, which is part of the new United Progressive Alliance government's Common Minimum Program. Currently, India reserves a portion of all jobs in public companies and seats in government-run schools and universities for members of historically oppressed castes.

As an outsider, my experience with caste discrimination is limited. (Once untouchables of a sort, we firangs somehow acquired honorary Brahmin, Kshatriya or at least Baniya status sometime in the 20th century, it appears). But through the course of reporting several caste-related stories, I have met with 20 or so low-caste leaders, both from trade union type organizations and political parties. Without fail, every one of them credits reservations in education and government employment for his rise from abject poverty to relative affluence, usually accomplished in a single generation. For example, I met a union leader in Gujarat who began life as the son of a bootblack, helping his father shine shoes before and after school, in a remote town in Kutch. Through reservations, he secured a place in college in Ahmedabad. Commuting by bus (by that time the family had moved to a nearby town), he completed a degree in commerce and gained a job with a nationalized bank, again benefitting from reservations. Far from being a burden to his employers, he earned promotion after promotion until he attained a middle-management position. One of his sons now has a job with a private bank, while the other is planning to go abroad.

I mention this example to refute the notion--accepted as a given by most opponents of reservations--that quotas inherently hurt productivity and/or ensure that unqualified personnel receive jobs. To the contrary, most reservation jobs remain unfilled because administrators insist that they cannot find qualified applicants from the required castes, a claim that low-caste leaders strongly dispute. Countless people told me the same tale: You can get through all the quantifiable portions of the application process, but in the end it comes down to a face-to-face interview. And if you run into a bigot there, he can easily get away with inventing some shortcoming. In America, you'd have some hope with an anti-discrimination lawsuit. But in India? If it weren't enough that an Indian civil suit is "the closest man can come to experiencing eternity," as a wise man has put it, the low-caste plaintiff must plead his case before a high-caste judge.

Job and education quotas are problematic, to be sure. But considering the fact that there is not a single accredited Dalit journalist and only a handful of non-accredited Dalit journos, the debate seems a trifle one-sided, even when the liberal-minded elite join in. Barring the sudden induction of Dalit writers by the press--a move that might happen without reservations in the private sector?--it would be good if all those who enter the debate have met at least one Dalit on equal terms, sat down and shared a meal, perhaps. Otherwise, we're really just talking to ourselves about whether India's elites should share a small part of their "hereditary" wealth.

word moratorium

This is a call for an official moratorium on the word "irreverent," so often used to describe the prose of allegedly humourous columnists. Most often, the columns it describes are not particularly disrespectful, unless this disrespect is directed toward the general standards of prose writing. As in: this column is filled with slang and cliches and silly posturing because it's meant to be filled with slang and cliches and silly posturing, so don't think there's been some ghastly slipup at the copy desk. Irreverent has gone the way of ironic, I'm afraid. Now it means nothing, unless it means "to be read with an exaggerated, sarcastic lilt." Actually, that's not entirely true. What irreverent really means, in this context, is that whatever garbage is to follow was meant to make you laugh but won't. Otherwise they'd just call it funny.

freedom from friedman

What is India's obsession with New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman? His column, with its weekly dose of homespun homilies and facile analysis, is syndicated in nearly all the national dailies. Perhaps India likes him because he took a late interest in outsourcing, expressing his admiration for the way desis have built that business? Maybe it's his begrudging support--sometimes--for the Palestinians, at least in the aftermath of Sharon's infamous security perimeter (the new Berlin Wall)? Those stances were admirable, but he always seems to be one step behind the news cycle, making a living out of translating news into conversational prose.

I don't get it. But something about this guy bugs me. Maybe I don't like him because his "plain speaking" reminds me of George W's attempt at folksiness--with his "die-hard" and "evil" "bad guys" he's compiling a dictionary of contemporary propaganda. Or maybe I don't like him because he's one of the many American journalists who've started referring to the United States as we and us, instead of plain old U.S. More than likely, though, I'm just getting tired of his unerring ability to point out the obvious, as in this week's column, in which he explains why Iraq won't be anything like D-Day.

nationwide strike shuts universities in nepal

A nationwide education strike called by student allies of Maoist rebels in Nepal this week has closed all levels of instruction, from elementary schools to universities, and on Wednesday rebels blew up school buses outside Kathmandu, the capital, to enforce the shutdown, writes Shailaja in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

on my shelf

I’ve always thought it would be good to have a record of the books I’m reading, some kind of “reader’s journal” that records the time and place I read a particular book and a few observations about it. That may or may not happen here, but for now I’m optimistic. I’m going to start by going through the books on my shelf—an abbreviated list, I’m afraid, here in Delhi—once a week or so until I’ve caught up and can start with new acquisitions. (Full disclosure: if you click on these little “buy the book” blurbs, you’ll help me get some store credits with Amazon.com).

Empire by Niall Ferguson—Sadly, unread. The idea was to review this doorstopper, which made Ferguson the pundit of the moment for his baldface support of imperialism. But neither of us was able to strike while the iron was hot. Frankly now it’s just there to impress people. Buy the book?

Myths & Legends of India edited by William Radice—An interesting collection. I dip into this one now and again. Be warned, though, there aren’t too many stories here that you’ll really enjoy. It’s more like a textbook for cultural enthusiasts than a book of wonderful fairy tales. If that’s what you’re looking for, I don’t think you can do better than Aleksandr Afanas’ev’s Russian Fairy Tales (1945). I must have read every story in that collection a dozen times, and even managed to force my parents to buy a second copy when our original went missing for a few years after we moved from Birmingham to Chelsea, Michigan. Buy the book?

Orientalism by Edward Said—A classic work of scholarship. Best known for his role as Palestinian activist, Said was a fantastic literary critic. In this, his most famous book, he argues that the “Orientalists” of the 19th century used scholarship, with its rubrics and definitions, to circumscribe, codify and control the cultures conquered by the West. Imminently readable, like all Said’s work, this book was one of the most important foundation stones of the multiculturalism movement (if that’s an appropriate name). Buy the book?

india's quiet revolution

The growing popularity of mortgage financing in India will do more than just enable millions to become first-time homeowners. It will deepen the financial market, boost the housing and construction industries and spur economic growth, writes Shailaja in the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Issue cover-dated June 17, 2004

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SURESH VARMA, a 32-year-old entrepreneur who runs a small advertising company, recently splurged on a 3.5 million rupee ($77,000) home in the upmarket New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, for which he took a home loan of 2.5 million rupees. Varma began his career living in a two-room house and driving a beaten-up scooter. Now, he owns a (financed) fancy Honda City car and a plush three-bedroom apartment. His father, who is a retired central-government employee, isn't too happy at the amount of debt his son has taken on. "What if his business goes through an extended downturn?" he wonders.

Click here to read the full text in the magazine.

somebody had to say it

How terrible, really, was the poetry of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee? And why can't his supporters from the lunatic fringe of Hindu nationalism accept a cold, hard look at his verse? They were the ones, after all, who criticized him so sharply when he dawdled over building a temple in Ayodhya, even while they kept silent about his equally prudent (from a pragmatic standpoint) dawdling over the prosecution of rioters in Gujarat. Rediff.com columnist Krishna Prasad lays into the grand old man of Indian politics--is he the only funny Indian columnist working today?