Setting the Record Straight

A mature response by the UPA government put an end to the disruption of Parliament led by the BJP. In a passionate statement, Pranab Mukherjee said, “I may be the most illiterate man in the House, but I fail to understand what purpose is served by dividing the House on a motion that seeks adjournment over black money in foreign banks. We have no conflict of interest on the issue.

We are with you on the need to curb the menace. So why have a division?” 

Involving as it does international tax treaties and laws of privacy; extracting information on Indian holdings in foreign banks is difficult, the finance minister said. The Mukherjee speech rates, in my mind, among the better interventions in the 60-year history of Parliament. 

Mr Mukherjee said there are enough laws on the books to deal with black money squirreled away in tax havens but they have not been effective. No banks will violate their secrecy code. Warming to his theme, he asserted that the BJP was in power for six years and had plenty of time to persuade foreign banks in tax havens to divulge their Indian secrets. 

In his forceful speech, Mr Mukherjee implied that the BJP is not a serious player and simply obstructs Parliament with a view to showing the government does not enjoy majority support. In the event, the adjournment motion was soundly defeated, leaving the BJP with egg on its face. 

The BJP’s assault on foreign holdings is meant to reinforce the canards they have spread for several decades that Congress leaders, especially the Gandhi family, have money stashed away abroad. It is of a piece with Anna Hazare not inviting the NCP’s Sharad Pawar to the muchhyped debate on the Lokpal Bill issue simply because they believe he is corrupt. Mr Pawar is the leader of a major political party that has a sizeable presence both in Parliament and in the Maharashtra state assembly. It has ministers in the Union Cabinet and in the state government. 

Two decades ago, V P Singh played the same game. He campaigned in 1989 with a piece of paper saying he had the Swiss bank account numbers of various Congress leaders and their friends. He promised he would reveal names once he was voted into power. It turned out that with the support of the BJP and the Left, he did become Prime Minister and all he did was to unleash the Mandal mayhem. If we must talk of public life and political leadership, you have only to look at Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, three tall leaders who were assassinated by fanatics. Then there is Sonia Gandhi, who suffered the slings and arrows of the BJP propaganda machine for being Italian by birth; she stepped back when she was entitled to become the Prime Minister in 2004. 

Since then, the BJP has pushed the line that Mrs Gandhi is the real power and Manmohan Singh is a mere puppet. The BJP leader, L K Advani, has been voluble in seeking to portray Dr Singh as a weak leader. I served on the Congress media committee for seven years and can say, having seen it at close hand, the relationship between Mrs Gandhi and Dr Singh was one of immense mutual respect. 

The question needs to be asked: did Mr Advani, home minister in December 1999, display great strength and resolve when the government cravenly succumbed to the demands of the hijackers of Indian Airlines flight 814? Could the Congress have accused him of being weak? The answer is yes, but they did not. It was a matter of national security and the Congress lent its support. 

The hijackers sought the release of three militants including Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born terrorist with ties to al Qaeda, who was implicated in the murder of Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. 

The BJP had its chance from 1998 to 2004. It started out with nuclear explosions in May 1998 that altered the balance of power in the subcontinent negating the conventional edge that India enjoyed till then after Pakistan responded by staging its own nuclear tests. The curtains came down on BJP’s rule in 2004 when, turned off by an insensitive India Shining poll campaign, voters turned away. 

Also, we must never forget the 13-day BJP government in 1996. That reckless act served to underline their lack of seriousness and their belief that being in government is about power and pelf, rather than service and sacrifice. 

Fifteen years later, its obstructionism in Parliament confirms that the BJP is confused and desperate. Now, can we please get back to the business of governance?

• The BJP’s actions are about self-interest, not seriousness on issues of national interest 

• In 1996, the party displayed it puts power and pelf above service and sacrifice 

• Now, its obstructionism in Parliament confirms the BJP is confused and desperate

This article appeared in The Economic Times on December 23, 2011.

Capital Letter

December 10, 2011

American Life: Washington Journal

Liberalism…

A Saturday afternoon at the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington DC: I am waiting for my bag. It shows up and so do my hosts Gautam and Rita and with them the promise of a fabulous weekend plus.

Gautam is the most insightful person I know. You really have to read his book, The Intolerant Indian, to know how perspicacious this man is. Yet, I have always thought of him a rock star, never mind he’s been the editor of The Times of India and founding editor of DNA. His book, however, leads me to believe there is so much more to Gautam than his editor persona or his Elvis singsong.

So there he was with his wife Rita, wheeling my bag to the parking lot. We drove to his house in Chevy Chase, savoring the prospect of the next few days. As soon as we got in his car, Gautam was all about business. And his business was about pleasure. “We’re going here, there and everywhere,” he says, in his Beatles-besotted way as he pulls his car out of the parking lot.

He makes me sit shotgun while Rita sits in the back; she is the “chopdi (book) aunty,” as a friend christened her once in Goa, for her encyclopedic knowledge about everything. That afternoon, she was leading the charge against “these reactionary Republicans.” In his wry way, Gautam reminds her that I am the only one in the car who had shaken hands and had a picture taken with George W Bush, the hate figure for American liberals.

We make our way through this gorgeous city and I can’t help but marvel at the stuff that flies by the car window; stuff we see all the time on television: this monument, that government building, whatever. It is truly a beautiful city and whether you like it or not, it is the capital of the world.

Driving through the city, we cross into Maryland’s Chevy Chase, where Gautam and Rita reside. The place has an air of understated class; which also describes my hosts.

Through the stay, I spent time with their friends and loved every minute of it. What was remarkable was these friends were as comfortable with me as I was with them; as though I’d known them forever. More likely, it was the old “any friend of Gautam and Rita’s” syndrome. Conversations were enlightened and at times, enlivened by my minor intrusions into their liberal groupthink.

They seemed to be all McGovern liberals. I gave up that ghost a long time ago when it became clear unadulterated American liberalism is about class and privilege, on the one hand; on the other hand, it has a streak of populism: a patrician dislike of business and commerce. Bill Clinton was not about that and W was a foaming-in-the-mouth response to classic American liberalism.

In the several salon-type interactions Gautam organized, it became clear the hatred for W and the Republicans among liberals is entrenched and ultimately as divisive as the agenda of their hate object, George W Bush. Equally puzzling is their lukewarm support for Obama, who has brought to the national scene the art of compromise and negotiation that is part and parcel of state and city politics in this admirable country.

The flight of liberals from Obama’s camp is, dare I say it, an expression of disappointment. They seem to be saying: we elected you, our first black president; you were proof of our liberal credentials and you compromise with all manner of people and policy positions that are anathema to us?

Much like in India, the ruling dispensation here seems to have lost its way between the assaults from the religious right and indignant liberals. The fate of Obama and Dr Manmohan Singh in India will determine the future of democracy and liberalism in the world. The EU crisis, as always with the Europeans, is about money.

On the way back to Delhi, at Dulles, I contemplated the stentorian arbitrariness of the Homeland Security system that stalks all American airports. Struggling through the gauntlet of not-so-bright people, who may have been recruited from the American jail regime or street gangs, I thought to myself: America national security state and India anti-corruption zeal are probably the two greatest threats to liberal democracy.

At American airports and in Indian media, it appears as though the regimentation and anarchy are on the rise. At Dulles, O’Hare, Kennedy and various points of entry, agents of the emergent national security regime evoke fear and awe, largely because they have the power to whisk you away and throw you in jail and keep you there for months without framing charges. In India, prodded by anarchists and their anti- corruption protests, the judicial system can do much the same.

###

This article appeared in The Times of India on December 17, 2011.


http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/capital-letter/entry/american_life_washington_journal

Do leaders need a better image?

Recently, Parliament has lost precious time, due to differences on various issues. NDTV's Pankaj Pachauri talks to experts including Mr Rajiv Desai (Chief Executive, Comma) on the issue of political reforms in India.

See Video: http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/money-mantra/do-leaders-need-a-better-image/217828 

American Life: Chicago Journal

Chicago: This city has been my sustenance for nearly four decades. I have lived away from it for many years but come here several times a year. It is where I got my first job; bought my first house; both our daughters were born there. I started a community newspaper in the 1970s. It is a legacy and the paper, India Tribune, still exists. I wrote regularly for the city’s main paper, Chicago Tribune. It was my hometown and still remains that in my mind.

In Delhi, I still can get lost in its chaotic streets. Not in this city: I can drive you any place in the blink of an eye. In the midst of Delhi’s daily mayhem, I console myself: I will go back to Chicago soon and enjoy driving. Here, they don’t just follow the rules of the road; they extend it to road manners, showing courtesy and concern.

Driving in Chicago is fun and virtually stress free. As I tool around the city, I find wonderful new restaurants and bars with great music; I also do the rounds of the usual stores that I have shopped at for the past 30 years.

Many of my friends and acquaintances rib me about my Chicago fixation. For me, though, Chicago is about change. The city has evolved into one of the most livable cities in the world. Everything that happens here is about tomorrow. Every time I am here, something has changed for the better.

The swirling currents in this city assure you that tomorrow will be better than today. As such, it is the quintessential American city. It honors the past but embraces the future with zeal and innovation.

I am fortunate. My friends here are on the top of the world. My experience is the high end: the best restaurants, great parties, intellectual engagement; most of all, the freedom and enjoyment to drive all over the city or take the “El” or just walk everywhere..

I used to go back to Chicago several times a year; now it’s maybe twice a year. And I think to myself, how long will you keep on coming here? The answer, much as I dislike it, is less often. My adopted hometown is headed the way of Surat, the buzzing city in Gujarat, where I was born.

Surat was my first love and my grandfather’s improbably large house there was the port in my storm-tossed adolescence. When he died in 1966, I never went back until 2001. In a Times middle, after my visit there, I wrote:

“Thirty-five years on, I feel the swirling confluence of the past and the present: as though the youth who lived in that house had journeyed into the future and returned with a 50-year-old man in tow. Then the youth disappeared into the past, leaving the older man to luxuriate in the warm and fuzzy memories of the house and its people.”

It is the same with regard to Bombay, where I lived in Juhu in the Theosophical Colony; and later in Court Royal in Byculla Bridge. These houses were my anchors; I thought they’d go on forever.

When we bought our condo in a restored old apartment house in Oak Park, the first suburb west of Chicago, I thought we had struck roots. Here, our first daughter was born; then we bought a wonderful house in the Frank Lloyd Wright historic district of Oak Park, where our second daughter was born.

We thought we had achieved permanence. Just five years later, we stood crying as the trucks rolled out to take our belongings to Delhi and bade farewell to our friends.

And I thought these were all permanent addresses…

…turns out, there are no permanent addresses.

My recent Chicago sojourn hammered in my head the need to deal with impermanence. Everything you got used to and thought would last forever changes and with it, your ability to adapt.

All that you build around you is to get a sense of security and predictability. You buy a house, spruce it up, eat good food, drink great wines, go on holidays and sup at the fount of plenty. You convince yourself that this will go on and on.

Things change. You may become wise and mature; but the clock of mortality keeps ticking.

On the other hand, all these years, my project has been to catch up and establish new relationships with old friends. In this, I have been spectacularly successful.

Old friends have become new; old relationships have been revived with a new idiom. It is a heady feeling to renew friendships that seemed permanent, got lost in the way of making a living and are now back in a last-ditch battle to give meaning to life beyond professional pursuits or financial achievement.

And it seems to stop this ticking clock and deters ominous feelings about the limitations of time.

(An edited version of this post will appear in http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com, December 8, 2011.)

Evergreen Optimism

As I stood there shaking hands with him when he came to receive the Dada Saheb Phalke award, the years seemed to melt away. It was as though I was in my pre-teens, having just watched Nau Do Gyarah , Munimji , Paying Guest or whichever film I first saw starring Dev Anand.

I can remember going straight into the bathroom, wetting my hair and trying to work up the stylish pompadour. Dev Anand was my absolute favourite screen personality and I religiously caught every single film he ever made.

My friends say I am an inveterate optimist, that's why I came back to India after nearly two decades in the US. The optimism has its roots in my early exposure to Dev Anand's films.

Since the late 1950s and through the early 1960s, he was my favourite hero, not necessarily because he was a good actor but because he stood for hope.

While Dilip Kumar represented the tragedy of the Indian condition, Raj Kapoor the misbegotten ideology that messed up India, Dev Anand stood for what India could be, smiling and stylish with a song on the lips.

Dev Anand represents the most modern of all creative idioms: Find talented people and let them grow. Through his organisation, Navketan, we were introduced to Guru Dutt, S D Burman and dozens of others, who entertained generations with movies and music that today are part of our memories.

About the time Dev Anand began to be recognised as an entertainer, the operative mood in Indian films was down-in-the-mouth, a victim of the colonial experience. The theme song was Duniya mein hum ayein hain to jeena hi padega, jeevan hai agar zahar to peena hi padega .

Along came Dev Anand with his worldview expressed best in the song from the film Hum Dono : Barbadiyon ka shok manana fuzul tha, har fikr ko dhuein mein udata chala gaya .

His films filled me with hope, the ultimate global value that was in short supply in India at that time.

Congratulations on the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, and thank you Dev Saheb, you instilled me with optimism about India before I reached my teens.

In the words of your immortal song: Jeevan ke safar mein raahi... de jaate hain yaadein . Indeed, you have given me, a fellow traveller in the world, a rich lode of memories, never mind your lyricist's other lines, which I have left out in the ellipsis.

This article appeared in The Times of India on February 16, 2004.

I am posting it as a tribute to my personal hero, Dev Anand, who died on December 4, 2011.

India at the limits

Command-and-control system failure

 

If you ever needed evidence that socialist ideology, political populism and the utter lack of governance holds India to ransom, all you have to do is to study the power crisis gripping India. For the past several weeks, the country has reeled from outages that last so long that they have become the norm; the few hours that power is available are the unusual occurrence. The gap between supply and demand is thought to be in excess of 15 percent on the average: ranging for zero in the case of Lutyens Delhi, home of the ruling class, to more than 50 percent in rural areas.

India’s power crisis bears examination because it highlights the sheer inability of the public sector edifice to meet the demands of a rapidly growing economy.

Let’s start at the source. The predominant fuel used in power generation is coal. The mining of the material is in the hands of a government monopoly, Coal India Limited, widely regarded as inept and corrupt. Faced with demands for increased production, the company actually told the coal ministry it is lowering its production target for 2011-12 by four million tons. Most analysts believe when March 2012 comes rolling around, the company will report a much bigger shortfall. In the first half of the year, ended September, Coal India fell short by 20 million tons.

Among other fuels, the government has been unable to secure assured supplies of natural gas or alternative fuels to mitigate the coal deficit.

Power generation is also largely a government monopoly run by similarly inept and corrupt public sector companies. Despite grandiose plans to increase power generation, the government achieved only 50 percent of its targets in the 20 years ending 2012. A Planning Commission official was quoted as saying that if the power ministry had succeeded in meeting its targets, the coal shortages would have been worse.

One of the key risks in the generation of power is environmental pollution. The agency in charge of ensuring that the risk is mitigated is the ministry of environment and forests, which in recent years has become a hotbed of populism. The ministry, in 2009, announced a ban on mining in forests and tribal areas. It also opposed hydroelectric projects in various parts of the country. Its views on nuclear power are also skeptical, led by fears of accidents.

Beyond that, because power supply is a concurrent subject, state governments are in charge of the distribution of power to citizens. Mostly, provincial governments supply electricity through state electricity boards (SEBs). Again, corrupt and inept, the utilities are bankrupt entities. A 2001 Planning Commission report on the working of these utilities says, “It may be noted that the information provided in the report is not always based on audited reports of the SEBs as the accounts of many SEBs are audited with a considerable time lag.”

In certain cities like Bombay and Ahmedabad, where the generation, transmission and distribution of power in the hands of private companies, the costs of power are higher but the supply is reliable. I have lived in both cities and thereafter in the US, so my first experience of a power cut was in Delhi. Things improved dramatically in the capital after 1998 when the Sheila Dikshit government privatized power distribution. Just the drastic reduction in the huge (nearly 50 percent) “transmission and distribution” losses (theft) made more power available.

India’s power conundrum provides a snapshot of the challenges policymakers faces as they try to cope with the demands of a new India. The Socialist command-and-control system simply does not work. As its hold diminished, businessmen and entrepreneurs showed that without the dead hand of government bearing down on the economy, they could work wonders.

But what the noted German social psychologist Erich Fromm called the  “freedom from” moment has passed; the “freedom to” moment of the modern economy calls for bold political leadership such as greater, crony-free privatization; it demands better-trained, more responsive and transparent government agencies.

Most of all, the burden has to be shared by citizens themselves. This is not an area of focus in public debate. It’s not just politicians and bureaucrats that are responsible for taking India forward; citizens cannot absolve themselves from the responsibility of the “freedom to” opportunity.

Here’s what I mean: on a recent flight, as the plane landed and the seat belt signs went off, I was buffeted by a rush from behind as some passengers dashed for the doorway, hoping to disembark first. There was absolutely no reason to do this because in the end we were all going in the same bus and we would arrive at the terminal at the same time.

My conclusion was that these men and women who sought to push their way up front were so focused on their personal agendas that they forgot their civic sense. If passengers disembark row by row, things get done in a much smoother and more pleasant way.

It’s the same for the traffic on the roads, though the consequences there are far more dangerous. This extends to paying taxes, avoiding bribes, evade building codes,  littering, urinating in public and all the “me-first, devil-take-the-hindmost” attitudes that make it so hard to be a citizen in India and make the public space into such a disagreeable environment.

An edited version of this article appeared in Education World, November 2011.

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2011

Capital Letter

European Odyssey: Swiss Journal 

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/capital-letter/entry/european-odyssey-swiss-journal-theme-for-a-gandhian-dream

Theme for a (Gandhian) dream...

Milan’s Malpensa airport is a bit like Ahmedabad airport before it was modernized. We arrived there on a hot and sultry day and waited forever to retrieve our bags. I was a bit grumpy; who would expect this in Milan, the world’s fashion hot spot? What next, I asked my wife? Rickshaw guys milling about the exit? I want my money back!

Within minutes of emerging into the arrival area, my frown disappeared. We were greeted with warm smiles by Beat (pronounced ‘bey-ut’ though our daughters often say his name to rhyme with neat) and Raul, the Swiss component of our family. As we loaded our bags into Beat’s Audi, I looked forward to the drive that skirted the city to take us into the hills of Switzerland, headed for Tessin, aka Ticino.

The picturesque Ticino canton is spread across mountainous country and is the southernmost part of Switzerland. Called Italian Switzerland, the region, I am surprised to learn, is, after Zurich and Geneva, the third largest financial center in the country.

It took us all of 90 minutes, including a stop in a farm with a tumble down barn where we bought fresh fruit and vegetables, to get to Al Ruscello, the house by the brook, in the heavenly little village of Gordola in the Locarno district. With a view of the northern tip of Lago (Lake) Maggiore, the house is Beat and our niece Lisa’s family home. On the northern side, it is surrounded by vineyard slopes that grow the local Merlot grapes. Ticino is the warmest part of Switzerland.

Lisa and Beat come here to get away from the hustle and bustle of Zurich, where they live.

Really? They need to get away from a picture-postcard city that is consistently voted the most livable city in the world? I guess it takes all kinds. Maybe the civilized 400,000 residents; maybe the smooth flowing traffic; perhaps the quiet neighborhoods and the picturesque lakefront get to them and they want to go rough it out in Ticino. But it’s just more of the same: quiet, easy, beautiful...only on a much smaller scale; Gordola’s population is just 5,000.

Even for just 5,000 people, there is a wealth of local infrastructure. Some of it is evident from  the balcony of Al Ruscello, which offers a view of local trains, commuter railroads, private boats and ferries, civilian planes and helicopters for medical emergencies. And it’s not just in Ticino; it’s all over the country: a display of civic extravagance that towers above the fabled wealth of Swiss banks and the affluence of its citizens.

Meanwhile, the superstructure is unobtrusive: the grocery store, the butcher shop, the bakery, the fruit and vegetable store appear modest and innocuous but are lavish with an abandonza of local products. It was this “local” aspect that also struck me when we visited Ticino five years ago.

In a column for a national newspaper,  I wrote:  “...isn’t this what Mohandas Gandhi said when he talked about...villages being self sufficient? ‘Every village will be a republic… (It) has to be self sustained and capable of managing its affairs even to the extent of defending itself against the whole world,’ he wrote in the Harijan, some 65 years ago, on July 28, 1946. So while the Swiss people exult in their village republics, they also have a global presence with world beating companies in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, machine tools, textile machinery and also in lifestyle brands like Swatch, Omega, Mont Blanc and even ultimately the Swiss Army.

“Sadly, in India, villages are dens of filth and inequity; major stumbling blocks to progress. As far as global brands, India now finally boasts some companies like Infosys, Wipro and Tata. In political terms, self sufficiency in India means cronyism and a seller’s market. But the Swiss version, which I experienced in Tessin, was modern and enlightened. I thought to myself: isn’t this exactly what Gandhi advocated?

“In reviewing Amartya Sen’s book, The Argumentative Indian, the historian Ramchandra Guha wrote: ‘As a multilingual and yet democratic country, India’s only rival is Switzerland.’ Guha’s review in the Economic and Political Weekly, October 8, 2005, a scathing dismissal of Sen’s book, which has become the bible of the soft left in India,  hit the nail on the head. Switzerland appears to have been the model on the basis of which Gandhi proffered his theory about village republics.”

In the five years that elapsed since our last trip to this wondrous region of the world, it appeared that things hadn’t changed much. They hadn’t deteriorated as they would in India, for sure. In fact, they might have gotten better. In the midst of the economic disaster in Europe, Switzerland held firm, bouncing back firmly from a slight downturn. In the quarter ended June 2011, the economy grew 2.4 percent and exports grew nearly six percent despite the fact that the Swiss franc appreciated sharply against the dollar and the euro.

It appeared as though this pristine little country has weathered the economic storms that are buffeting Europe. Switzerland has much to cheer about.

The dining room at Al Ruscella boasted a fireplace that served as a grill. We barbecued locally sourced beef, venison and sausage, tossed a hearty salad with local produce, selected the local white Merlot as an accompaniment to the meal, relished home-made dessert and topped the meal off with local grappa. We silently raised our glasses to the resourcefulness of the Swiss people and in thanksgiving that our extended family includes a Swiss branch.

This appeared on Capital Letter, The Times of India Blogs on November 7, 2011.

Rajiv Desai: Command-and-control system failure

If you ever needed evidence that socialist ideology, political populism and the utter lack of governance holds India to ransom, all you have to do is study the electric power crisis currently gripping India. For the past several weeks, the country has reeled from outages that last so long that they have become the norm; the few hours that electricity is available are the unusual occurrence. The gap between supply and demand is thought to be in excess of 15 percent on the average: ranging from zero in the case of Lutyens Delhi, which houses the ruling class, to more than 50 percent in rural areas.

India’s power crisis bears examination because it highlights the sheer inability of the public sector edifice to meet the demands of a rapidly growing economy. 

Let’s start at the source. The predominant fuel used in power generation is coal. The mining of this raw material is in the hands of a government monopoly, Coal India Ltd, widely regarded as inept and corrupt. Faced with rising demand for increased production, the company actually told the coal ministry that it is lowering its production target for 2011-12 by 4 million tonnes. Most analysts beli-eve when March 2012 comes rolling around, the company will report a much bigger shortfall. In the first half of the year, ended September, Coal India’s output fell short by 20 million tonnes. Simulta-neously, the government has been unable to secure assured supplies of natural gas or alternative fuels to mitigate the coal deficit.

Power generation is also largely a government monopoly run by similarly inept and corrupt public sector companies. Despite grandiose plans to increase power generation, the government will achieve only 50 percent of its target of the 20 years ending 2012. According to a Planning Commission official, if the power ministry had succeeded in meeting its targets, coal shortages would have been worse.

One of the risks of coal-driven power generation is environmental pollution. The agency in charge of ensuring this risk is mitigated, is the Union ministry of environment and forests, which in recent years has become a hotbed of populism. In 2009, the ministry announced a ban on all mining in forests and tribal areas. It also opposed hydroele-ctric projects in several parts of the country. Its views on nuclear power are also skeptical, led by fears of accidents.

Beyond that, because power supply is a concurrent subject, state governments are in charge of distribution to citizens. They supply electricity through state electricity boards (SEBs). Again, corrupt and inefficient, these utilities are mostly bankrupt entities. A 2001 Planning Commission report on the performance of these utilities says, “It may be noted that the information provided in the report is not always based on audited reports of the SEBs, as the accounts of many SEBs are audited with a considerable time lag.”

In several cities such as Mumbai and Ahmedabad, where the generation, trans-mission and distribution of power is in the hands of private companies, the cost of electricity is higher but the supply is reliable. I have lived in both cities and thereafter in the US, so my first experience of a power cut was in Delhi. Things improved dramatically in the capital after 1998, when the Sheila Dikshit government privatised power distribution. Just a drastic reduction in the huge (nearly 50 percent) “transmission and distribution” losses (theft) made more power available. 

India’s power conundrum provides a snapshot of the challenges policymakers face as they try to cope with the demands of a new India. The socialist command-and-control system simply does not work. As its hold diminished, businessmen and entrepreneurs have shown that without the dead hand of government bearing down on the economy, they can work wonders. 

But what the noted german social psychologist Erich Fromm called the “freedom from” moment, has passed. The “freedom to” moment of the modern economy calls for bold political leadership such as greater, crony-free privatisation and better-trained, more responsive and transparent government agencies.

Most of all, the burden has to be shared by citizens. This is not an area of focus in public debate. It’s not just politicians and bureaucrats who are responsible for taking India forward; citizens cannot absolve themselves from the responsibility of the “freedom to” opportunity.
Here’s what I mean: on a recent flight, as the plane landed and the seat belt sign went off, I was buffeted by a rush from behind as some passengers dashed for the doorway, hoping to disembark first. There was absolutely no reason to do this because in the end, we were all going in the same bus and we would arrive at the terminal simultaneously.  

My conclusion is that the men and women who sought to push their way up front were so focused on their personal agendas as to totally disregard their civic sense. It’s the same for the traffic on the roads, though the consequences are far more dangerous. This extends to paying taxes, avoiding bribes, evading building codes, littering, urinating in public and all the “me-first, devil-take-the-hindmost” attitudes that make it so hard to be a citizen in India, and transform public spaces into disagreeable environments.

(An edited version of this post will appear in http://www.educationworld.in, November 4, 2011.)

Capital Letter

European Odyssey: Paris Journal

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/capital-letter/entry/european-odyssey-paris-journal

C’est si bon…

It grows and envelopes you, this city. You feel like you belong here. You understand, mostly, the language. Give me a month here and I will speak the language fluently. Whenever I come here, I feel the language on the tip of my tongue but somehow can never get myself to speaking it. One way is to talk in English the way my friend Cedric Labourdette taught me. I have learned to do the inflections and the expressions so my English is French enough that people can understand.

We must to continue. We came in the old Orly airport and take some taxi to Rue de Fondary, where lives our friend, the family Labourdette, in the 15th, close to metro station, Emile Zola. Though our ticket-plane said it would arrive at five pm, the flight was late and it took forever to get our baggage. We reach in time for dinner.

“Not so late, like in India,” says Cedric as I suggest an aperitif; the flight was a nightmare and the traffic on the Peripherique was bad. “I don’t really care,” I told Cedric, “You must to give me some wine.”

Cedric is the only French person I know who does not drink wine. He points me to the bar and says, “I must to watch Dominique Strauss Kahn interview on TV.” DSK admits he had consensual sex with his accuser. “Much difference from Indian TV, n’est ce pas?” Cedric was referring to Claire Chazal, the businesslike anchor, who did the interview. He has spent a lot of time in India since 2001; he knows that Indian television journalism is infantile.

We sit in his garden and savor his Dad’s Beaujolais from the “Cru” village of Morgon, made from the famed Gamay grapes of the region.

That is how starts our Paris trip. We are old Paris hands. The joy of walking and hassle-free public transport is a bigger highlight for me than the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre or Montmartre. We walked everywhere, nipping into neighborhoods, darting into churches, sitting by the Seine, listening to church bells heralding the eventide Angelus.

Braving tourist hordes, we wended our way into Notre Dame Cathedral to hear the mass and the soaring “Kyrie.” We walked around Le Marais, the old aristocratic quarter on the Right Bank, marvelling at the renewal that kept the grace of the old and infused it with the excitement of the new.

Paris seems to me to be beyond liveability; it is about an innate sense of lifestyle. From mere shop attendants to artists and writers and intellectuals and politicians and executives and businessmen, they casually exude a “je ne sais quoi” sensibility that is difficult to explain. Old and young, men and women and children, good-looking or not, they make a statement with their personality. 

The scarf is a classic example. From elaborate wraps to a casual throw-it-around- your-neck insouciance, Parisians walk the street as though they are walking the ramp at a fashion show. Except that they appear not to be dressed by a fashion designer; it’s just the fiendishly stylish way they wear their clothes. The overall impression is not of narcissism but of immense self-esteem drawn from good food, good wine, good clothes and a cradle-to-grave social security blanket.

But we were not in Paris as mere tourists. Cedric and his folks are our extended family. Whenever we go in Paris, his brothers must to come and say hello and various nephews and nieces and family friends. It is a warm and wonderful feeling that I treasure. That is why Paris is so special.

We visited Cedric’s grandmother, a regal woman in her nineties, perfectly coiffed and attired, with great social skills. Sitting in the drawing room of her majestic apartment that offers vistas of the Eiffel Tower, Michelin Faure talks to us about Algeria, where she was born. There was in her conversation, even nearly 50 years after Algeria won its independence from France, a sense of betrayal that Charles de Gaulle called the election in which the Algerians voted for independence. She was part of a million-strong community, the “pied noir,” evacuated to France following the election.

The same day, we went to dinner at the apartment of Dominique Charnay. A well-known Tahiti-born French journalist, Dominique has just authored a widely acclaimed book called “Cher Monsieur Queneau.” The book reprises letters from aspiring authors to the renowned French novelist and poet Raymond Queneau. To hear Dominique talk about it, the book sounds hilarious. In addition, he showed us letters from the American essayist and playwright, Arthur Miller, to his (Dominique’s) mother, who had sculpted a bust of the playwright.

Another evening, we met Jean-Claude Barbier for dinner at an old Paris restaurant. I had met him on my last trip and enjoyed an evening talking about politics, economics, sociology and international affairs. An academic, who believes the European Union is doomed, Jean-Claude blames the crisis on weak leaders and ruthless financiers. He has a special interest in China and visits often; here too he paints a gloomy picture, saying the rise of China signals the death of aesthetics. Apparently, he is miffed at the hordes of Chinese tourists, who descend on Paris and show no affinity for the great cultural offerings of the City of Light.

Like all good things, our carefree and interesting time in Paris ended all too soon. I always feel a tinge of regret leaving this exquisitely stylish and intoxicating city.  As we head to the airport, I think to myself: we will always come back to visit with our extended family. And that eases the withdrawal symptoms.

So we bid “a bientot” rather “au revoir” and melted into the mass of migratory people that flits incessantly between airports in a frenzied pace from day to day.

This appeared on Capital Letter, The Times of India Blogs on October 18, 2011.

Capital Letter

European Odyssey: Barcelona Journal

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/capital-letter/entry/european-odyssey-barcelona-journal

How many streets must a tourist walk…

Wrong shoes. Bad mistake. Barcelona knocked the stuffing out of my back. We walked and walked and walked and walked. Mostly in celebration of the freedom to walk the streets, which you can’t do in Delhi. BCN is a wonderful city, as we all know. A bit like Paris. Indeed the French were early settlers. Nice buildings, great cafes, superb metro, the buzzing waterfront, museums, surprisingly nice beer, awesome food and drink Sangria till the sunrise. 

Thought of the word “anomie” in trying to describe a tourist’s jaunt through this comely city. All the other times I’ve been here, it’s been on a mission: a junket, a conference, and several meetings. This was the first time I came here at a loose end. A quick search of the web told me my first instinct about the word was right. Wikipedia says that “in common parlance,” the word anomie is “thought to mean something like ‘at loose ends.’” 

And you don’t get much more common than a tourist, tramping the streets of this city of creative geniuses including Picasso, Miro, Dali and Gaudi. So anomie is the word.  Gilded somewhat from the Wikipedia definition, I extended it to mean “footloose and fancy free.” 

From our apartment in the upscale Eixample district, we walked everywhere or took the Metro. We went to the Cuitat Vella (Old City) and meandered through the byzantine streets of Barri Gothic (the Roman Quarter), spilling onto the tourist-infested Las Ramblas to the Paral-lel metro station and up the funicular to the Miro museum atop Montjuic hill. We wandered the narrow street of La Ribera to the Musee Picasso. Just north of Eixample past the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s famous church into trendy Gracia and beyond that into Placa de l’Angel, considered home to the finest of the numerous urban renewal projects the city is famous for.

But how much can you walk? With my bad shoes and my spasmodic back, I was often reduced to debilitation. Had to sit and down a beer, eat some tapas. So how much tapas can you eat? How much Sangria can you drink? Judging from my own record, a lot. It became sort of addictive; every hour my back would act up and I had to sit. A beer or glass of wine, grilled meat and all was well again. Back to the trudge. This worked the first day; after that my traveling companions, my wife and my New York daughter, got wise to it. And so I had to walk hours before relief. 

At times, my daughter, clever young woman, would back my complaint of deathly pain and sit down and have a beer with me. It was all very democratic. Sometimes two-to-one against me; sometimes in my favor. Sat in more cafes, I did, than even in Paris. Ate more, drank more, walked more. The only time we didn’t sit in a café and chose instead to look at a map to find a recommended restaurant, we stood under a tree at the entrance to a park right beside the Miro museum on the Montjuic hill, a tourist trap in the southeast part of the city. We were all three of us, sprayed with what appeared to be bird poop. 

As we reeled from the violation, a woman ran out from the park and said, “Come, water to clean.” Gratefully, we followed her. But there was no water. A man appeared with tissues to help us clean the crap; another man appeared from the bushes with a bottle of water. “Such nice people,” my wife said. And asked where they were from. “Portugal,” the woman replied.

But the poop spill was substantive, so we hopped a cab to go back to the apartment to get cleaned up. “Obrigado,” said my Goan wife in farewell to the threesome. But clearly they had no idea what it meant.

In the apartment, I discovered I had been pick-pocketed. Fast forward to when we recounted this to our friends. “Chechens,” they said. Despite my sheer despair at losing all my credit and debit cards, money, driver’s license and what have you, I could not help marveling at the slickness with which the threesome had diddled us.

As if that was not enough, thanks to my research on my phone, we chose a Basque restaurant for dinner. The street number suggested it was close to our apartment, so we walked. For miles, back to the center of town. It turned out to be an expensive retro restaurant. It was good as we ate the food and drank the Rose Merlot. But as my wife said in a conversation much later, after we were back in Delhi, “I don’t remember the food I ate.” 

Between the loss of my wallet and the fine dining experience, I could not help but feel the jabs of tetanus-shot disapproval from my wife and my daughter. Later, on the flight to Paris, as our plane bucked like a startled filly in a thunderstorm, I thought to tell my wife she should consider forgiveness. But she was fast asleep as I, the original white-knuckle flier, contemplated a fiery death, convinced the plane would crash, crippled by lightning and high winds.

Hasta la vista, Barcelona!

This appeared on Capital Letter, The Times of India Blogs on October 11, 2011.

India Journal

Bangladesh and Our Foreign Policy Elitism

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/09/15/india-journal-bangladesh-and-our-foreign-policy-elitism/

 

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced he would visit Bangladesh, there were great expectations. It appeared as though ties between the two nations were finally on the right track, backed by diplomatic and political goodwill. Many believed that during his visit, the Prime Minister would make a “game changing” policy shift in the matter of the international border, trade and especially shared river waters.

Such issues have crimped relations between the neighbors. Mr. Singh’s visit was to herald a new dawn. His timing was impeccable. Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is much more India-friendly than the previous regime. Her father, Mujibur Rahman, the leader who challenged and triumphed over Pakistan, could not have done so without massive Indian support. It seemed as though as the ducks were lined up and Indo-Bangladesh ties were headed north.

However, one of the Congress party’s major allies, the Trinamul Congress led by Mamata Bannerjee, chief minister of West Bengal, pulled out from Mr. Singh’s delegation at the last minute. Her pique apparently was over the amount of water the government proposed to divert from the Teesta River, which also runs through her state, to Bangladesh.

The mercurial Ms. Bannerjee was concerned that her Communist political rivals could make the deal into a political controversy and cause her to lose the support of the farmers in the northern parts of the state.

Ms. Bannerjee’s decision caused heartburn in the Ministry of External Affairs. In foreign policy circles, many termed the chief minister’s behavior unwarranted, obstructionist and downright petty.

The tendency of the foreign affairs establishment to disparage local political sensibilities stems from a belief that foreign policy is a highbrow pursuit best handled by the Oxbridge lot. The corollary is that they would allow no moffusil (local) interests to get in the way of Delhi’s international relations agenda.

Similar thinking pushed Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi into a misadventure in Sri Lanka. Between 1987 and 1990, Delhi sent an Orwellian-named “Indian Peace Keeping Force” to fight the Tamil Tigers, who had fought a long and violent war in pursuit of Eelam, an independent state in northern Sri Lanka.

Faced with an unexpectedly fierce guerrilla challenge from the militants, the IPKF eventually withdrew. At that time too, local politicians in Tamil Nadu had advised against supporting the Sri Lanka government.

The elitist mindset that led to India’s misadventure in Sri Lanka and the subsequent assassination of Rajiv Gandhi survives two decades later. It is evident from the reaction to Ms. Bannerjee’s intervention in the river waters issue.

Neither Ms. Bannerjee’s recalcitrance nor the protest of the Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu against the IPKF had merit. Dravidian parties support for the Tigers never did get much political traction; Ms. Bannerjee, as always, has very narrow political concerns.

The issue, however, is not about the limited perspective of state politicians. It is about the inability or unwillingness of the Indian foreign policy establishment to take into account domestic sensitivities before they decide what they are going to do.

In 1955, the story goes, Jawaharlal Nehru conceded to China the United Nations Security Council seat offered to India. With his fabled vision and ideals, Nehru realized quickly that India, with high levels of poverty and illiteracy as pressing domestic concerns, was in no shape to take on global responsibility.

Even after 56 years, the Internet chatteratti rant and rave about Nehru’s decision, arguing that his naïveté cost India a place in the UNSC.

Nehru was right. The British government of India was a powerful force, whose writ ran from Afghanistan to Burma. The newly independent government that inherited the colonial mantle faced insurgencies in Kashmir and the northeast as well as the perils of poverty, disease and illiteracy. In addition, while the wealthy colonial government of India played a huge role in the British Empire, the newly independent entity was poor and powerless in the international arena.

Many in India and those who live abroad wrongly believe Nehru lost India a Security Council seat because of his arrogant idealism. The more important issue is that any concern for India’s standing in the world, and its relationships with other countries, has to take into consideration domestic realities.

This is especially true today. With the Indian economy on a roll and the ever-increasing ambit of Indian trade and commerce, the demands on diplomacy have become ever more complex. Diplomats are called upon to explain not just the evident disparities in Indian society and widely reported allegations of corruption but to use their skills to run interference for the growing number of Indian companies doing business around the world.

As they do so, Ms. Bannerjee’s much reviled opposition to the river water deal with Bangladesh is worth keeping in mind. It is an affirmation of what Henry Kissinger said in his seminal book, “Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy”: domestic politics cannot be “taken as given.” The Bannerjee dissent is a sure sign that Indian foreign policy has to descend from its elitist heights and deal with local politics.

This appeared on India Real Time, The Wall Street Journal on September 15, 2011