We Are Also Part of India’s Democracy

Keynote Speech at the Exchange4Media PR Summit
The Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi
May 21, 2010

Good morning,

Thank you, Anurag and your team, for organizing this PR Summit. I hope that over the years it grows and becomes a major platform for dialog within our profession.

I have titled my remarks: “We Are Also Part of India’s Democracy.”

I have stated my SOCO up front. As PR professionals, we are as much a part of India’s democracy as we are of its economy.

But PR is also about telling stories. So I’m going to tell you a story that I hope will give you a perspective on how our business has grown and developed and the challenges it faces.

Many years ago, when I came to India to set up IPAN, I used to tell the story of how PR became the world’s second oldest profession. We all know what the oldest profession is.

It has to do with Moses, who led the chosen people out of Egypt with the Pharaoh hot in pursuit. They found themselves stranded on the banks of the Red Sea. This was a huge problem. So Moses got his core strategy team together to look at the options.

There seemed to be none. His defense guy said they should stand and fight. His finance guy, who understood the salubrious impact of money, suggested the possibility of buying them out. But in their heart of hearts, his key advisers knew only a miracle could save them.

“Don’t worry,” said Moses, “I will part the sea and we will walk across to liberty. At that point, his PR guy spoke up, “Sir, if you can do that that I will get you ten pages in the Old Testament.”

So Moses performed the miracle and got his ten pages in the Old Testament.

I told this story 20 years ago, when PR consulting was a little known business. Times were simpler but mindsets were rigid. The press (and it was just the print media those days) did not entertain any releases or information from the corporate sector. For its part, the corporate sector saw PR as a free advertising.

Meanwhile clever operators like the public sector and some private sector firms managed to play the press like a fine-tuned fiddle. Just think, the public sector delivered very little but no questions were asked. It was the holy cow. I can remember the PR strategy of a Calcutta-based public sector firm: “Kill the story and I’ll get you two tickets on the Rajdhani.”

Some private entrepreneurs also cultivated friends in the press to oppose liberalization and reform. The notorious Bombay Club fought tooth and nail against foreign investment and against any changes in the license-permit raj.

Fast forward two decades and we find that the media are friendlier; our profession is recognized in its own right and is a significant player in the fast growing economy.

Recent developments have however cast a shadow that could affect our standing. I am referring to the current media attention on the role of PR firms in influencing choices in public policy. It is not at all surprising that the telecom sector is the source of stories about corporate sleaze and government corruption.

Why do I say it is not surprising? Let me digress a little: to the early 1980s, when I lived in the US. We had formed a group called India Forum that met weekly to consider developments in India. All of us were struck by the emergence of Rajiv Gandhi. In the event, many of us including my good friend Sam Pitroda took our first tentative steps to engage with India.

Our focus was on telecom because that was Sam’s field. At the time, the sector was in a primitive state. There were not enough phones and existent phones rarely worked. It was a project to make long distance calls, impossible to get connections. In fact, it was said that the entire telecom bureaucracy made money from providing out-of-turn connections.

We took the matter up with Rajiv Gandhi. The task was to convince him that the sector was vital to economic growth and to change political mindsets that held telephones to be a luxury. As such, Rajiv put his heft behind our recommendation that India should go in for digital rather than analog technology.

The rest is history. But the baggage is still there. The telecom sector seems to be a magnet for sleaze and murkiness as the recent controversy shows. And our profession risks being stigmatized unless we make some forceful interventions.

In a recent email interview to a leading financial paper, I was asked about lobbying and what the reporter saw as concomitant sleaze. She did highlight my responses in her front-page story and I believe I may have even helped her re-look at the lobbying controversy in which it was alleged that a PR firm tried to influence the choice of telecom minister and subsequently telecom policy.

There is nothing wrong in trying to influence public policy. Indeed, in a democracy, everyone has the right, nay the duty, to challenge wrong-headed legislation or to advocate for new policies to deal with changing situations. Over the years, I have chalked up many, many case studies in which we actively influenced government decisions in areas as diverse as consumer products; financial services; cable and satellite television; power generation; water management; public health and primary education.

Our strategy was to win media support, raise the debate in various public forums and to seek out articulate spokesmen and credible third-party endorsements.

To ensure that our profession does not get besmirched by the dirt and corruption of illegal methods, we need to make the following assertions:

1. Lobbying is a legitimate activity. It does not mean the exchange of money and favors to achieve a desired outcome. Bribery and corruption are illegal.

2. Lobbying is not relevant in India because of the sheer lack of transparency in government and politics. Legislators do not have backup policy staff; bureaucrats are too control-minded to be open to legitimate suggestions.

3. An advocacy strategy may be the most effective way to influence public policy. This involves working with the media and other influentials to advocate our views to policymakers.

4. The claims in the media are wildly exaggerated. I find it difficult to believe that a PR executive can influence the selection of cabinet ministers.

5. The gratuitous remarks by civil society activists about the pernicious impact of lobbying should be dismissed out of hand. They are themselves power brokers and fixers. Their prescriptions have crippled the economy, especially in the areas of infrastructure and agriculture.

On the other hand, the media also have much to answer for. You would think triviality is the first as in the sad spectacle of Sania Mirza; Shashi Tharoor; Lalit Modi; the IPL. Obsessed with trivialities, the media and their concomitant sources, the pr guys, tend to hijack the public debate.

There are other issues such as the nexus between the marketing people of corporations and the “brand managers” in the media. Just recently, The New York Times ran a story about how the major media are selling editorial space and time.

What’s happening is a travesty. If you undermine Indian democracy, you take away a major advantage we enjoy in the world.

On the economy, while I lament the Leftist thinking that still dominates intellectual life in India; I have to say that rampant commercialism is a bad thing. If we acquiesce in “treaties” and “packages,” we are selling our profession short, making it the equivalent of advertising.

It’s not just these subversive agreements, we are all called upon to measure our contribution in terms of advertising spends.

Our profession has its roots in Mahatma Gandhi. He used an advocacy strategy in which he staged events to influence the press and the government and petitioned the courts to in order to assert his rights under the law. That defeated first, the racist government in South Africa and then the colonial British government in India.

His SOCO: it is possible to change things.

I know there is a deep-rooted cynicism in the public debate that the only way to get things done in India is to bend rules, pay bribes or resort to blackmail.

Of course, these things happen. But if we are ever going build our profession as a legitimate part, not just of the economy but of India’s loud and raucous democracy, we have to stand for skepticism not cynicism; debate and negotiation, not surrender and compromise. Above all, we must stand for transparency.

This may sound impractical given the fact that media are willing to sell editorial space for a consideration. But then, I for one did not come to India to spark the PR consulting business only to see it flounder in murk and opacity.

I repeat: our business is squarely rooted in the Gandhian tradition. This sounds so idealistic that many of you would be blameless if you think I am naïve. Thank whatever Gods there be, our founding fathers who wrote our Constitution were not cynical. Else, we would have been like Pakistan, or Iran or any of the multifarious countries who are called the developing nations.

Remember the SOCO; our profession is as much a part of our democracy as it is of the economy.

And by the way, the term SOCO was invented by my team at Hill & Knowlton in Chicago in the early 1980s.

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2010

Good Policy

Need Governance

In many ways, the government has embarked on a path breaking route, in terms of both domestic and foreign policy.

To begin with, there is the issue of fertilizer subsidies. In one fell swoop, by targeting subsidies on the basis of nutrients, the government has changed the game. Now farmers will look to nutrients other than urea. This will increase yields dramatically. Urea-based fertilizers were good and government policies championed their use. Over the years, it became clear that they had passed the point of diminishing returns. Everywhere in the world, governments promoted suplhur-based and other nutrients in the mix to increase yields and protect the soil.

With all the noise about food inflation, the government has pointed to the exploitative role of middlemen in the journey that farm products make from the fields to the market. The finance minister made several references to the need for organized retail in the grocery business, most recently at the CII national meeting in Delhi.

Coming to taxes, the finance minister, in his budget speech, cut individual taxes while increasing some indirect levies. The idea is sterling: put more money in the hands of middle class families and let them decide what they can or cannot afford. If I am considering buying a car and it costs a few thousand rupees more, it is my call. By putting economic decisions in the hands of citizens, the government has made a major paradigm shift.

On internal security, the government has made major moves. It has taken on the Maoist movement in central India with force. The most recent incident in Dantewada only underscored the Prime Minister’s six-old assessment that Maoists pose the most significant threat to national security. True, there are complaints of security forces riding roughshod over the militants. But then, Dantewada showed that the Maoists are not known for their grace and diplomacy either. This tough approach seeks not only to contain the insurgents but to send a clear message that this is a hard government that will not stomach violent agitations.

On the national security front, the government has embarked on a new course. While initiating talks with Pakistan, it authorized a major Air Force exercise in the desert of Rajasthan to demonstrate its fighting capabilities. It was a brilliant move to invite most defense attaches of diplomatic missions and to leave out the representatives of China and Pakistan. The idea clearly was to exhibit hard power.

To reinforce the government’s hard line, the Prime Minister went to Saudi Arabia and urged the authorities there to weigh in with Pakistan to control the various terrorist groups that operate from there. It’s clear the Pakistan government has neither the wherewithal nor the will to reign in various terrorist groups that have a free run within its borders. A Saudi nudge could go a long way to boost the crippled Zardari government and the rogue elements within its army and the intelligence agency.

The emphasis on infrastructure is a key feature aspect of the government’s priorities. Roads, ports, airports, railroads are being built. The trouble is that corrupt and inept government agencies are in charge and its users are citizens, who lack civic consciousness. Thus it gets caught up in the bottlenecks caused by lackadaisical enforcement and scofflaw citizens.

Many cities now have modern airports; they are like white elephants because the minute you step outside there is total chaos. It’s the same thing for the highways. We recently traveled to Chandigarh from Delhi. The road is a work in progress and there are significant flyovers and wide pavements. But there is total traffic chaos. Even as you rev to the top speed of 90 kilometers an hours, you find yourself having to deal with vehicles going the wrong way, underpowered trucks, three-wheeled vehicles, bullock carts, cycle rickshaws, handcarts, herds of cows and sheep and scariest of all, daredevil pedestrians trying to cross the highway. There is simply no policing, no signage or any other accoutrements that go with modern highways. It’s almost as though modern amenities are made available to people with a medieval mindset.

Tragedy is the police have no authority to enforce the law. Even worse, they don’t even know the law. Just recently, I stopped a police car on the spanking new expressway that connects Delhi and Gurgaon to the airports. I told the police officer that the unchecked use of the expressway by two- and three-wheeled vehicles was a major traffic violation. I told him there were signs that these vehicles were not allowed. He told me to mind my own business. The government needs also to show its hard self here as much as it is doing with the Maoists in central India.

In the end, you have a modernizing government that is beset by a crude political class, a malignant bureaucracy and a pre-modern citizenry. As such, even though the government pursues enlightened policies, the ship of state seems to be caught on the rocks of casteism, communalism and corruption.

Bureaucrats blame crass politicians and the ignorant citizenry. Politicians castigate the bureaucracy. Citizens berate politicians and bureaucrats. It’s a sort of beggar-thy-neighbor view that enables the entire system to elude responsibility. If everyone’s to blame, then nobody is accountable.

This is the challenge for India that the world deems as an up and coming power.

An edited version of this article appeared in The Times of India, April 21, 2010

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2010

From The Times of India, 15 years ago

Click on the image to enlarge..

RTE: The Devil in the Detail

Parliament recently passed the Right to Education act that is intended to provide universal and compulsory education for children from eight to 14. For those of us who have been in the vanguard of this nearly two decades long effort, passage of the act was a historic vindication. In the early 1990s, UNICEF led the effort to convince lawmakers that universal and compulsory primary education was India’s ticket out of poverty. As adviser to the resident representative, I helped develop an advocacy campaign to reach members of parliament, business leaders, members of the academy and journalists.

With evident satisfaction, I looked closer at the act and found there were several problems that could complicate the implementation of this admirable initiative of the UPA government. There are the usual issues of definition; plus, there are plenty of grey areas that could subvert its intent. In the end, the goals of this laudable law could become obscured and it could degenerate into a tangle of rent-seeking opportunities for bureaucrats and politicians.

Thus in section 12, the bill mandates that schools “shall admit in class I, to the extent of at least twenty-five per cent of the strength of that class, children belonging to (the) weaker section and disadvantaged group in the neighborhood and provide free and compulsory elementary education till its completion." Here’s the problem with this otherwise beneficent provision: who will define the “weaker section and disadvantaged group in the neighborhood?” It has the potential of turning into slippery scams like BPL cards and ration cards.

The act goes on to say that the school in question “shall be reimbursed expenditure so incurred by it to the extent of per-child-expenditure incurred by the State, or the actual amount charged from the child, whichever is less." According to most estimates, the government spends less than 3,000 rupees per child per annum or about 250 rupees a month. According to the government’s own NREGA scheme, the minimum wage is 100 rupees per day for 100 days a year. That’s the rub: if the government can pay 10,000 rupees a year to help a rural laborer keep his body and soul together, why is it so miserly when it comes to primary school children?

These are but two examples of how the devil in the detail could sabotage a noble-minded effort. There are other such minefields in the draft that the small band of officials who are transcribing the act into law ought to be aware of and ensure that the notified law closes all possible loopholes. As such, the new law will overcome the threat of poor draftsmanship. It is important to abide by the letter, yes; but it is crucial to uphold the spirit of the RTE act. However, some of the spirit behind the act may already be vitiated. In framing the new law, the government may have left itself open to the charge of bureaucratic thinking.

Accordingly, the universe of primary schools is divided into several categories: the first broad distinction being government and private schools. Then, it further subdivides the former into the category of ordinary schools and “special schools like Kendriya Vidyalaya, Sainik School, Navodaya School, etc.” Under the provisions of the act, these special schools will be subject to Section 12, which mandates that at least 25 percent of students admitted in class I must be from the weaker sections.

In the government’s thinking, private schools also come in several avatars: aided and unaided, recognized and unrecognized. The biggest chunk of students can be found in the “unrecognized” category. These are essentially private schools based in urban slums and rural outposts; stepchildren of the government dominated education system, simply because they are for-profit private ventures run by entrepreneurs focused the “weaker sections” of urban slum dwellers and rural poor.

The notion that only the government can provide education and other services for the poor is an outdated concept, dating back to the colonial raj. It is a relic of the “white man’s burden,” a cousin of racism and imperialism. In making government recognition the touchstone of its education policy, lawmakers in India simply perpetuate the colonial tradition of imperial government and missionary charity. For all the names of cities and streets they change to demonstrate their anti-colonial credentials, the ruling elites are nevertheless inheritors of the white man’s burden.

Socialism, central planning, nonalignment were all part of the same burden. Today the economy and foreign policy are largely directed by the public interest; the economy has been broadly privatized; foreign policy is free from ideological blinkers. However, as the RTE act shows, the social sector is still not free. This is not a blanket call to privatize education but an argument that policymakers consider the ground reality: commercial schools are a reality even among the poor population. Instead of trying to shackle them with unattainable requirements for recognition, the government needs to help them serve their students and communities better.

In fact, the government needs to create an environment in which all forms of schools flourish. The challenge of primary education needs all hands on deck: private and government schools for the affluent as well for the “weaker sections.” The RTE act could serve as a deterrent to unrecognized private schools that serve the poor. The group of officials charged with making rules and regulations based on the act would do well to scrap the onerous criteria private schools must fulfill for government recognition and tighten instead vigilance over qualitative issues such as curricula and teacher training.

At a recent event, a senior official in the HRD ministry told the assembled audience that the 2009 RTE act would do for the education sector what the reforms of 1991 did for the economy. It is certainly true that RTE act is broad and sweeping in scope and could indeed achieve that. The devil is in the detail.


An edited version of this article appeared in Education World, February 2010.

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2010

Trick Or Teach?

Here is an incontrovertible fact: the majority of children between the ages of eight and 14, rich or poor, attend private schools. Even poor families shun government schools and willingly pay fees to enrol their children in private schools. To cater to this demand, private schools are flourishing, not just in cities and small towns but in villages as well. These schools have been established as commercial ventures. They are of two kinds: recognised and unrecognised by the government. To obtain recognition, private schools have to fulfil impossible criteria including infrastructural demands and have to pay teachers according to the government-appointed Pay Commission's recommendations. Thus, teachers must be paid upward of Rs 20,000 a month as entrants and the scale rises with experience.

Of course, schoolteachers should be paid well and the new scales are welcome. These salary standards, however, are daunting for private schools except elite institutions securing funds from trusts and alumni. In the end, most private schools are commercial ventures that need not just to balance their books but also make a profit. There is a limit on the fees they can charge. And yes, in order to sustain themselves, they must have money to pay their bills and provide a return to investors. Most people are aghast that schools can be run as commerce. Actually, all schools are: the recognised ones are eligible for government grants; the elite ones depend on trust funding; government schools eat up taxpayers' money. Any which way, schools are an enterprise and cannot indefinitely sustain themselves without government funding, alumni benefaction or fees.

Parents shun government schools because these don't function. Government schoolteachers are political factotums who must perform election duty and schools are closed because they are venues for the vote. Politics always get the right of way. In my neighbourhood, i have to cast my vote in the local government school that is truly a beautiful setting, with huge grounds and trees. But when I go into the classrooms where the voting booths are, I find the rubble of broken desks, splintered blackboards and a general aura of decay. One election agent told me very few teachers actually attend class; they mostly have a side business as private tutors. It makes me wonder: what are the children in these schools learning?

The government school system is broken beyond repair and everybody knows that, including the poor. Yet the new Right to Education (RTE) Act turns a blind eye and instead seeks to impose impossible burdens on private schools, not just elite institutions but others catering to the common man. Recognised or not, these schools are filling the gap that government apathy and ineptitude has created.

Recently I attended a conference in which participants debated the newly-enacted RTE Bill. The focus of the discussion was Section 12 of the legislation, which mandates: "For the purposes of this Act, a school, specified in sub-clause (iii) [special schools like Kendriya Vidyalaya, Sainik School, Navodaya Vidyalaya, etc] and (iv) [private unaided] of clause (n) of section 2 shall admit in class I, to the extent of at least twenty-five per cent of the strength of that class, children belonging to (the) weaker section and disadvantaged group in the neighbourhood and provide free and compulsory elementary education till its completion.."

Also, "the school specified in sub-clause (iv) [private unaided] of clause (n) of section 2 providing free and compulsory elementary education as specified... shall be reimbursed expenditure so incurred by it to the extent of per-child-expenditure incurred by the State, or the actual amount charged from the child, whichever is less (sic)..."

Talk about obfuscation. Who is to decide who this "weaker section and disadvantaged group in the neighbourhood" is? And what is "the extent of per-child-expenditure by the State"? The answer to the first question is: state-level bureaucrats and local politicians will decide who qualifies. It sets up one more opportunity for milking the poor and holding private schools to ransom. In addition, the government's "per-child-expenditure" is about Rs 3,000 a year, based on an extrapolation from figures provided by the standing committee on human resources development. That's Rs 250 a month! Under the NREGA, the government pays Rs 100 a day for the poorest of the poor to dig ditches. Even that is low. In Goa, the mandated rate for manual labour is Rs 200 a day.

The RTE Act is poorly framed. It is currently being translated into policy under the ministrations of half a dozen bureaucrats. Like all well-meaning legislation, it will only create more problems. Government schools will remain non-functional. Private schools will have to face, in addition to highfalutin government influence over admission policies, the spectre of dealing with low-level bureaucrats and local politicians (read thugs).

Which leads to a crucial question: who says only the government can provide welfare services? Private schools are doing what the government is unable to do. Instead of helping them discharge the function, the new RTE Act creates problems. Is it ineptitude or another scheme to extract rent? Confusion has wrought its masterpiece.

This article appeared in The Times of India, Goa, December 29, 2009.

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2010

In the Early Hours of 2010…

A Family Celebration

Breathes there the man with soul so dead whose children are alienated from him? When the hurly burly’s done, my daughters seem actually to enjoy time spent with me. Nothing is more fulfilling; nothing so soulful.

And so it was on New Year’s Eve in Goa, we ordered several bottles of champagne while awaiting 2010. There was music and dancing and much merriment. I felt lucky to be me. Those assembled that night were an incestuous mix of family and friends. Above all, it was a raucous lot.

Noise somehow seems to be directly proportional to the fun you are having. And our noise started before even the first glass was poured. If a bunch of stone-cold sober people can stir up the pot, what happens after a couple of bottles of champagne?

Answer: it does not get maudlin or sentimental or nostalgic, only much more fun as people yell and smile and nod at each other to communicate over the loud music, without really hearing what anyone’s saying. They happily pour themselves that extra glass of champagne that teeters between enhancement of reality and oblivion.

So what’s the big deal about this particular midnight? I think it is a generic birthday celebration when we all get older by the calendar year, never mind specific birthdays. It’s not as though human existence can be subsumed by accurate accounting: no, I’ll be 50 only in March; or 65 in September or 21 in July and 40 in April.

On January 1, everyone is a year older, give or take 365 days.

New Year’s Eve is a communitarian birthday celebration and as such egalitarian. Random strangers come up and wish you with a smile in their eyes and good cheer in their heart. And you think to yourself, what a wonderful world! You think about new beginnings, rather than endings; of spring, not fall. The key message is renewal, not decay.

There’s no denying, for many of us, more such celebrations are behind rather than ahead of us. Growing older is a complicated process. At once, you are wiser, more sure of yourself. You realize clearly you will never run a four-minute mile or do a breakdance. The real issue is whether you find value in your life or moan the years that have flown

My wish for New Year’s Eve is we will continue to have fun with family and friends, not just on mankind’s common birthday but on every occasion we can grab.

Happy New Year!

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2010

Christmas Cheer

A Prayer for Family Togetherness

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. As the Yuletide dawned, two things happened: our married daughter moved in with us to spend the Christmas holiday and together, we went to the airport to receive our younger daughter who came to visit us from New York City. We were a family again, together after long. It is magical: the years drop away and we indulge in the same madness we did years ago when both our daughters lived with us

You say yes, I say no.
You say stop and I say go go go, oh no.
You say goodbye and I say hello
Hello hello
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello

For the moment, we’ve said our hellos. We know full well that in a matter of days, it will be time to say goodbye. That is inevitable; what’s important is to stretch the days to enjoy every single moment we spend with our daughters. It isn’t easy because they’re twenty-somethings and strew a few hours around to spend with us. We lap it up and try to make them feel at home with Christmas music, decor and comfort food.

Sometimes I wonder whether ten or 15 years down the line, when we are older, that we can still work the magic for them. These are fleeting thoughts as we try to spend every single moment we can with them. Our love for them is unconditional, not sentimental because we are hugely aware they can be a great pain in the derriere, much as they remind us we can no longer assume they will spend time with us

We take time off from work and bring our social life to a standstill only to find they have their own plans that exclude us totally. Their mother is more sensible about this and while catering to them, she still has her own life. I am a sucker for my daughters and will give up the world to spend a few hours with them and sit on my hands until the next time they deign to spend some with me.

My wife’s approach is a lot more pragmatic. As such, they don’t take her for granted. She makes the most divine food for them which they beg for and lap up. On the other hand, the father has very little to offer. There is a sense of being bereft. When they were younger, I introduced them to the computer, Inspector Clouseau and the music of divinity. I realize with some chagrin, I have very little to offer them now.

It’s easy to get depressed about the situation. But my spirits are uplifted when I listen to them hold forth. They are fearless and opinionated. In those qualities, I see my contribution, especially when it comes to political correctness. But that is hardly the basis of a relationship. We clash increasingly about intellectual issues. They see me as some right wing mastodon.

This is the worst indictment for a liberal soul like me. I wonder if I had been sterner, would my daughters have imbibed the values I hold dear: of dissent and activism? Our daughters are in many ways traditionalist and conservative. The 60s word "groovy" comes to mind; they come unfailingly to midnight mass, for example. They dress for church and ask me to play the wonderful "Jingle Bell Jazz" compact disc through the season. They play in the same groove and seem to resist any change.

In the end, I’m happy we share Christmas together. as a family. Of course, I don't hide and shake a tambourine at midnight to announce the arrival of Santa or leave milk and cookies out for the jolly fellow. Those were magical days when they were still babies; today the charm is about being together.

It is increasingly difficult to believe, as we get older, that things will be the same. They have their own lives now and I'm grateful they find time to spend time with us. They think I'm passe; I think they are uber cool. They have things to do, places to go, people to meet. and as such, less time to spend with me That doesn’t mean they love me less or I them; it is simply an anticipation of the future. Loneliness is writ large on that parchment

When the hurly burly’s done, I will have to look in the mirror and ask myself: were you a good father?

Having said that, it’s Christmas and my immediate goal is enjoy it with my girls in whatever way I can. The music’s on all day at home; the wondrous scent of good food wafts through the house and the togetherness is a great Christmas present. What happens in later years is a cross I must bear on my own. "One" could indeed be a lonely number.

Growing older, or being of “non-traditional age” as a friend’s daughter told me, is to lose hope in the future because of the inevitability of death.. But that's not the point: in the use of that new-fangled phrase, however, our children and their friends firmly place themselves in the "traditional" category. Call it the Woodstock revenge. My Yuletide wish is for the family to be close forever.

Happy Christmas!

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2009

My Friend, Rajiv Badlani

Too Young To Die

On Sunday December 13, I sat with him, drinking coffee, listening to music and laughing about something I cannot now recall. With Rajiv, it was always that…laughter and joy. His mother walked in, put her hand on his head with an infinite sadness in her eyes. She said something to which he responded, “Mother, I have peritoneal cancer. My life expectancy is between eight to eleven months, of which four are already gone. So let’s not pretend I’m going to get better.”

I wanted to ask him how he felt being on death’s door. Was he scared? Did he sleep well? Wonder about the after life? But I held myself in check. “So,” I said to him, “do you read, watch television?” His eyes were bad, he said, plus he had attention deficit disorder.

We changed the subject and talked of nothing. I was just happy to spend a few hours with him on my trip to Ahmedabad. The previous day when I saw him, he told me to come the next morning at eleven. I showed up and he was taking a massage. “Ah, the good life,” I said. “Well, it feels good, the firm touch on my body,” he replied. He finished his massage, went to the bathroom and showed up in his den and ordered coffee for both of us.

Aside of the fact that his body was ravaged by the brutal assault of cancer, it felt like old times again. He kept asking if instead of coffee, I wanted to have a Black Russian. “Yo, it’s noon on a Sunday. The Lord frowns on people who drink on His morning, when He rests,” I told him.

A half hour later, I grasped his hand in the solidarity handshake. I wanted to hug him. I didn’t for two reasons: we had a waspish relationship that discouraged touchy-feely stuff; plus he looked so frail, I felt he would be physically uncomfortable if I hugged him. So the handshake was all. “See ya next month,’ I said in farewell. “Come back soon, it’s good to see you always,” he said. I left reluctantly and made a mental note to come back to visit mid-January.

On Monday, his wife Manini told me, he was going to the hospital for his chemotherapy and returning home only on Tuesday evening. I made a mental note to call Wednesday morning to see how he handled the latest bout of a cure that is worse than the disease. Early Wednesday at about 1.30 am, my phone rang. He was gone.

Our relationship was nearing 50 years. We were just twelve when we met in the ninth grade. A handsome lad, he made his presence felt, much to the consternation of our class teacher. Asked about his antecedents, he told the teacher he stood second in the eighth grade. “How many students in your class?” the teacher asked him firmly. “Well Sir, there were two,” he announced. The class broke into a spasm of laughter.

Later during the lunch break I sought him out and complimented him on his sense of humor. I also warned him the teacher could make his life miserable for making a fool of him. “True,” he said, “but he will also find out that my father is the education director for the government of Gujarat. That should give him pause.”

Since that day of June 1962, we became good friends. We discovered the Beatles together and Helen Shapiro and the Jarmels and the Cascades of “Rhythm of the Rain” fame. We navigated P G Wodehouse and James Hadley Chase and let our pre-teen hormones run riot, panting after any woman or schoolgirl who merely looked in our direction. Mostly, we built a world of our own, far removed from the moffusil sophistication of Ahmedabad.

Despite his friendship, I hated it in Ahmedabad. I wanted to leave home and after we finished the tenth grade, I left to go back to Bombay. We met subsequently during the holidays and we met again on the campus of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. We lived in the same dorm but plowed different furrows; him in Commerce, me in Engineering. I was put off by Baroda in the first few days and decided I would quit and return to Bombay. As I lugged my bag to the railway station, I bumped into him.

“Hello, where are you off to?”

“I’ve had it with this place. I’m going back to Bombay.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he admonished me and grabbed my bag and steered me back to the dorm. He came and sat with me in my room and then told me to get dressed. “I’m gonna show you the magic of Baroda.” I went with him meekly that evening. We walked to the women’s campus where he introduced me to his cousin Sharda and her friends. From that moment, I never looked back and made Baroda my home.

Over the years we drifted apart. He finished college and went to the Bajaj Institute of Management for an MBA. I stuck around in Baroda to finish my course and then escaped to America. We stayed in touch and I made it a point to see him each time I visited India. He visited me too in Chicago. Our friendship survived the test of time and distance. After I relocated to India in the late 1980s, I visited Ahmedabad frequently to visit with my parents and my in-laws. An evening with him was always on top of my agenda.

Now he’s gone. And the Clapton song comes to mind:

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven
Will it be the same
If I saw you in heaven


That’s the tragedy. “Beyond the door,” the place that Clapton sang about, is a whole new game. I wonder: is there a ninth grade there, where we can start all over again?

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2009

Indo US Ties Nosedive

Obama Has No Time for India

US President Barack Obama has sent a huge message to India. He visited every major country in Asia: Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, China, and South Korea but could not find time to include India in his itinerary. In Beijing, he acquiesced in a joint communiqué that covered a lot of ground. What struck home in India were media reports focused on a passing reference that urged China to ensure peace and stability in South Asia. It is probably true that what Obama meant was to tell the Chinese to refrain from arming Pakistan.

Nevertheless, the statement was a measure of Obama’s inexperience in dealing with India’s prickly sensibilities, especially with regard to China. India has never forgotten the humiliating backstab in 1962 when the Chinese army attacked India; nor has it come to terms with China’s dubious role at the International Atomic Energy Agency conference to approve the all-important waiver that was necessary for the fruition of the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal. Plus India treads warily of the Chinese fifth column, the CPM, which did all it could to scupper the deal; every thinking Indian believes that Prakash Karat and company were acting at Beijing’s behest. More recent, the Indian government has had to deal with Beijing’s aggressive stance on Arunachal Pradesh, the northeastern state that it calls southern Tibet.

It is becoming clear to those of us who champion Indo-US relations that Obama really has no time for India. He’s from Chicago, where I lived for the best part of the 1970s and 1980s. And India is not big in the Chicago political mindset. As such, India is not in his list of priorities.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to visit Washington later this month. In a patronizing way, the White House has billed it as the first state visit of any world leader. But that’s meaningless. Every major leader has visited the US and met Obama. The “state visit” business is a piece of diplomatic fluff. It is very clear India is very low in the Obama scheme of things.

Nobody is more pained about the Obama administration’s cavalier attitude to India than those of us who have fought for all these years for a closer Indo-US relationship. Manmohan Singh put his government on the line for the civilian nuclear deal. Not just that, the Indian electorate voted his government back to office with an increased majority.

The Obama administration’s Asia policy puts the Singh government in jeopardy; it fought long-held anti-American mindsets to align with America. This is further underlined by the changed Indian positions on world trade and global warming that are now more in line with Washington’s thinking. As a huge supporter of better and more intense Indo-US relations, I am troubled by this president’s neglect of India; it feeds into the knee-jerk anti-US mindset of the establishment.

As such we are headed for a period of rocky relations with the US government. It happened under Indira Gandhi in the 1970s. It was a different India then. Today it is among the world’s fastest growing economies that is raising millions of people out of poverty. Obama does not seem to realize that. I am now not sure Obama is good for India, even though to many Americans and Europeans, he is Jesus Christ resurrected.

Those of us who support a strategic alliance with the US, including the Prime Minister, feel badly let down. The joint communiqué in Beijing apart, Obama has made protectionist noises about the outsourcing business. Little wonder then that the Indian foreign ministry with its deeply-rooted anti-American mindset issued a truculent statement in response to the communiqué.

Obama’s unthinking approach to relations with India will only embarrass and weaken the growing tribe of opinion leaders who support a strategic alignment with America. Willy nilly, it will strengthen the knee-jerk anti-Americanism that is always at play in India’s foreign policy. “I told you so,” is a refrain that is increasingly louder in Delhi. After the romance with Bill Clinton and George W Bush, pro-American opinion is silenced, not knowing what to expect from Obama and his slick PR machine.

The Prime Minister’s upcoming visit to Washington promises to be just a ceremonial exercise. In the event, it will be all style and no substance. There will be a banquet, many speeches, including a stirring one by Obama. Then it will be over. What does the Indian prime minister have to say to Obama in any case?

To begin with, he could take a firm line on the emergent market for nuclear power plants in India. Given Obama’s faux pas, the Indian government could take the view that American firms that do business with China are not welcome in the nuclear power industry for reasons of national security. After all, China has jut asserted that the northeastern state, Arunachal Pradesh, is part of China. It could do the same with other security-related sectors such as the purchase of aircraft and other military hardware. It could disengage from Afghanistan, where it supports the American development effort. Plus, the Indian delegation could take a hard line on Obama’s view on outsourcing.

Time to play hardball.

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2009

Seeing Through the Potemkin State

Perhaps it is about getting older. Or that the excitement has waned. Increasingly the prospect of arrival in India fills us with apprehension as the cab winds its inevitable way to JFK or Chicago’s O’Hare. For me, America is a cultural home: the food, the music, the clothes, the humor, the aesthetics, the very idiom of language is all comfortingly familiar. Driving is a pleasure; walking the streets a delight and everywhere smiles and hellos…well, maybe not that many in New York City! But it’s less about extolling America than dreading what lies in wait at Delhi or any other port of entry to India.

Within seconds of landing, the harsh reality hits you between the eyes. The airport is shoddy, grimy and smelly. To exit is to confront a menacing crowd of people, straining at the barricades: vast numbers of drivers pushing and shoving; swarms of noisy families come to receive their near and dear ones; and various other categories teeming around the crumbling arrival terminal. True, such crowds gather at arrival terminals everywhere in the world but at Indian airports it adds another dimension to the chaos that reigns supreme.

Step outside and it is quickly evident there is no system to smooth the way for arriving passengers. You are left on your own to dodge honking and swerving cars torturing the driveway; and everywhere, smoke and fumes and rubble.

However, if you are an anointed “VIP,” as India’s public servants are called, you are whisked away through a plush private terminal to a private parking lot and into your car, all within minutes. Public servants don’t even wait for their bags; there are flunkies to retrieve them and deliver them to your house along the VIP route into Lutyens Delhi of the smooth, wide, tree-lined boulevards with flowering rotaries, manicured parks and expansive villas.

In stark contrast, the taxpaying citizen has to endure subhuman conditions in the terminal and bump along cratered tracks that pass for roads and deal with seriously demented drivers who whiz through the non-VIP parts of the capital as if possessed by demons. It is apparent that you have landed in one of the world’s least developed countries: Incredible India!

You get angry at the rank disparity. In America, things work smoothly for ordinary citizens. Yes, the economy is flagging and people are finding it tough to get or hold on to jobs. But the cities and communities are pleasant and there is a heady rush of egalitarianism in the very air. The entire political and bureaucratic setup in America is geared single-mindedly to the welfare of citizens. The accent on public service is pronounced and evident.

In India, you can have a top job or a fortune as a businessman but unless you are in the VIP zone of the cities and towns, you may not have reliable electric power, adequate water supply and any sanitation at all. Those who can afford it make their private arrangements; the rest suffer. Just in recent days, when it rained consecutively for two days, the capital was submerged. Questioned, a VIP dismissed the water logging and the traffic jams as an act of nature, a result of the heavy rains; he seemed criminally unaware of the problems people faced getting around the city. In his Lutyens Delhi, there is no flooding, light traffic and your workplace is but a pleasant drive of a few minutes.

This disparate order makes the chaos of India not just irksome but menacing. It is as though the system milks the ordinary individual who has a job or business to provide for the VIP. The random but deadly civil disturbances that plague India are spontaneous expressions of civic anger against the system that barely makes room for the middle class, leave alone marginal groups.

In huge swathes of India, the most deprived people have fallen sway to Maoist ideology and have taken to violence. No political party, not the hydra-headed government agencies, not the self-righteous NGOs can control them. Such civil violence will increase in frequency and scope as more and more citizens begin to see the disparity: not just the gap between rich and poor but between the privileged and the rest.

In the past few years, the elite have bought into the notion that India is set to emerge as a world power. Nothing belies the claim so comprehensively than the question mark that hangs over the staging of the Commonwealth Games next year. The controversy has shown up the Potemkin state, a cheap cardboard cutout fashioned by bureaucrats and politicians to fool themselves into believing the world power fantasy.

You don’t have to look too hard to see beyond the Potemkin mirage: dysfunctional highways and airports; garbage strewn cities and hapless villages; deadly traffic and pervasive pollution; the poverty of civic values and the sheer indignity of the human condition.

The slogan “Incredible India!” cuts both ways: one, the Potemkin way that the government intended; two, it is incredible that a modern 21st century democracy with one of the fastest growing economies in the world is in such a shambles.

An edited version of this article appeared in The Times of India, November 16, 2009.

copyright Rajiv Desai 2009

The Seminal Revolution

A New Dawn for Education

You get to hear bits and scraps about the government’s education policy in the newspapers . But the media are largely clueless about the fundamental reforms underway in the sector. One senior official of the HRD ministry called them "as significant as the economic reforms of 1991. They could change the face of India in the next decade. As follows:

In 1992, I was appointed adviser to the UNICEF chief in India. Eimi Watanabe told me that the primary education system was a problem. She said the issue was enrolment as well as dropouts. Our advocacy campaign for universal primary education reached far and wide. We looked at ways of influencing politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and businessmen with a plan to push free and compulsory primary education. Our argument was simple: India boasts that its technical and scientific prowess is recognized the world over and yet it harbors among the world’s largest number of illiterates.

We highlighted this paradox to promote universal primary education. We showed the contrast between the lack of enrolment and the high dropout rates at the primary level and the huge demand for higher education. A powerful argument in our campaign was that the paradox of Indian education has created and seeks to perpetuate a class divide with educated elite on one side and a vast illiterate underclass on the other. Primary education is a powerful equalizer, we said. In addition, the UNICEF advocacy campaign sought to demolish several arguments offered by policy experts, including the pernicious one about children of the rural poor being needed to help out in the farm.

Nearly three years of dogged advocacy paid off when on November 14, 1994 (Children’s Day), Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao and his senior cabinet colleagues made a public commitment to provide “education for all” by the year 2000 at Delhi’s Vigyan Bhavan. Nothing happened as India got roiled in political controversy, which saw an uncertain period of a shaky BJP alliance that was eventually defeated ten years later.

Fifteen years later, in August 2009, Parliament passed the landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2008. My good friend Kapil Sibal, who, as HRD minister, piloted the bill, described it as the “harbinger of a new era.” For me, it was a vindication. In 1992, we faced severe opposition. But Eimi Watanabe, who is now a member of the World Bank’s Inspection Panel that seeks to ensure the Bank’s activities don’t harm people, is the unsung heroine. Without her commitment to free and compulsory primary education in India, this bill would never have come to pass.

It’s been just two months since the bill was ratified; its impact will be felt over the next decade. Free primary education provides access for the poorest; compulsory will generate a demand that will eventually overcome the bugbears of enrolment, dropouts, absentee teachers and irrelevant curriculums. Kapil Sibal is indebted to Eimi, who placed the issue on the national agenda.

On secondary education, Kapil has proposed a regime to reduce the stress on children in schools by opting for ongoing grades rather than a final exam. In doing this, he has won the support of the middle class parents, who live in dread of exam results. The notion of grading students on a term basis gives parents greater say in the advancement of their children. Teachers will be held accountable for the progress of their wards.

Above all, students will be relieved of the stress of make-or-break exams. Graduating from high school will no longer be a random exercise determined by nameless examiners. Pretty soon, parents will question teachers about their children’s prowess. As such, teachers will have to give up authoritarian ways and will have to work with parents to ensure that their children get the best from their educational experience.

In the event, creativity will triumph over conformism. Students will learn that asking questions is more important than rote learning. Already, the advent of Cambridge International Examination and International Baccalaureate curriculums proved to be a challenge to the moribund Indian school system. There’s been a steady migration of upper middle class students to these foreign certification schools.

Finally, in the higher education sector, the Foreign Educators Providers Bill is about to be passed in Parliament. The bill focuses on providing access by a nine-fold increase in the budget for the establishment of new institutions. It talks about equity without a dilution of standards. Plus it seeks to enhance quality by exposing India’s fossilized universities to foreign competition.

The bill faces a lot of opposition because higher education is totally politicized. Already, as a high level source in the HRD ministry said, there are complaints from vested interests , who seek a “level playing field;” much like the Bombay Club did when the government scrapped the license-permit raj in 1991. The proposed bill also seeks to attract foreign students in the hope it will generate a demand for more relevant curriculums and more funds.

In addition, the bill hopes to encourage private funding. “The key to autonomy is funding,” a senior official in the HRD ministry said. Already in Gujarat, this is happening. Many affiliated colleges have opted to join the newly formed Ahmedabad University. “They have done so in the hope that of a more conducive environment,” a respected Gujarati industrialist told me. His family funds many colleges affiliated to Gujarat University and they have shifted to the new university formed by his family.

Between the changes at the primary, secondary and higher education, a revolution is well and truly underway. It will change the face of India’s education system. It will be transformed from an elite selection process into a knowledge system. We should all cheer. Kapil Sibal champions this radical change. India will owe him a debt of gratitude for facilitating the transformation.

Some decades from now, we will have a Nobel Prize winner and this will continue through the century. We won’t have to put up with a curmudgeon like Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, the newest Nobel laureate of Indian origin, who used the occasion to denigrate his roots. Sadly, Venky studied at the same universities in India and the US that I attended.

An edited version of this column appeared in Education World, November 2009.


copyright Rajiv Desai 2009

Delhi Journal

George Bush, Indian Hero

At a recent event in the Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi, I found myself with my arm around his waist and his arm around my shoulder, posed for a photo opportunity. George W Bush, the much reviled former President of the United States, was in an expansive mood that evening. Aside of his “base” in America, this was fawning that had to be seen to be believed. He is the unquestioned hero of India’s elite. A senior member of the ruling Congress party said he would recommend him for the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award.

In his early sixties, Bush is sprightly and amazingly friendly. He mingled with guests and stayed on to have what I consider the Taj’s most fabulous spread. Bush has been a divisive item in my immediate family and my friends in America. They hate him for the "shock and awe" bombing of Iraq; his assent for the atrocities in Guantanamo. It is truly terrible. For me though, those are American problems. Why should I get worked up about it?

Having worked closely with the US mission in Delhi and the Prime Minister to steer the Indo-US civil nuclear deal to its completion, I was proud to shake hands with him, be photographed with him. Bush, for India, has been the best ever US President. Bill Clinton, whom the Indian establishment still admires, set the trend. Bush accomplished what seems to have not occurred to Clinton. He brought India into the global mainstream. If Richard Nixon is held in esteem for opening China, Bush should be acclaimed for his outreach to India.

“President Bush, thank you for your support,” I said to him. Hated, reviled and caricatured among my liberal intellectual and activist friends in the US, Bush to me has been an icon; he overcame the traditional US highbrow establishment’s “attitude” about India. Between my friends in the US embassy in Delhi and in the Prime Minister’s office, we worked to see the deal through. It wouldn’t have happened without the unflagging support of Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

With the Prime Minister committed to the deal, the diplomats in the US Embassy in Delhi led from the front. They overcame bureaucratic hurdles on both sides to push the deal. We always knew there would be opposition. For one thing, there was the Left, a key supporter of the Congress-led UPA government. It was also not very clear that the Congress Party was enthusiastic about the deal. Once assured of US support, the Prime Minister put his government on the line and the Congress Party fell in line thanks to Sonia Gandhi’s enlightened world view.

In the event, much drama happened. There was a vote in Parliament and the deal was sealed. Of course, Dr Singh is the hero and Sonia Gandhi, who backed him. Nobody can, however, deny that Bush’s enamored view of India was the driving force. Not to forget, the Congress managed to win another term in 2009.

That’s why I was thrilled to meet him, never mind that my friends in America won’t talk to me. They may have questions about Bush; for India, he is the greatest US President ever. It showed that evening.

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2009

Ahmedabad Journal

The Butterfly City

Late on a moonlit night, Ashish and his wife Nicole, my niece, drove me along the newly-built embankment on Ahmedabad’s Sabarmati River. Flowing north to south, the river roughly divides the old city with its rich tradition and heritage architecture and the modern suburban development on its west side. As we drove along the river’s edge, I marveled at the sheer beauty of the waterway in full flow. I lived in the city for three years in the 1960s and my parents made their home there. So I have a proprietary hometown interest.

When I lived in Ahmedabad, the Sabarmati held no water. Its banks were slum-ridden. In the middle, you had these wonderful sights of people drying their colorful clothes and donkeys laden with sand to fuel the furious building activity on the west side of the river. Every now and then, the river would become flooded as the barrages upstream released water in the monsoon. By and large though, the river ran dry and the many bridges across it seemed pointless.

All that changed in May 1997. The Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation was set up under the stewardship of then chief minister Shankarsinh Vaghela to develop a plan for the riverfront. Twelve years later, Vaghela’s dream is taking shape. The river is full now, fed by the water of the Narmada Dam. When the project is completed, Ahmedabad will join Goa’s capital city Panjim as the only other riverside city in India to develop its waterfront.

The riverfront development in Ahmedabad is a huge and sophisticated urban renewal project. When it is complete, it will transform this city that is already fond of the good life. Traditionally known for its parsimonious ways, Ahmedabad has changed over the years to become possibly the most global city in India; not because of multinational firms as in Gurgaon but mostly because it has a huge connection to the US, where many of its denizens reside. This least Western city in India is curiously its most American city.

As such, Ahmedabad is truly egalitarian. On a recent flight from Bombay, I bumped into my friend Sanjay Lalbhai, scion of the city’s illustrious Lalbhai family and the head of Arvind Mills, traveling with me on an all-cattle-class Jet Konnect flight. His family is, among other things, a benefactor of the city’s famed Indian Institute of Management and the renowned CEPT University.

In an India of new and in-your-face wealth, Sanjay remains an icon of understated old wealth: unassuming and courteous, wedded to larger development causes such as higher education. He does this not as part of some PR-driven corporate social responsibility program; he is convinced, like his forebears, that a publicly-traded corporation has a duty to the community.

People like Sanjay and a relatively enlightened bureaucracy have transformed Ahmedabad from a moffusil place into India’s most dynamic city: its new Bus Rapid Transit System makes its Delhi counterpart look like a third-world system; the city’s airport, roads and its smooth power supply make it closer to global standards than any other city in India.

Historically, the laughing stock of India’s western provinces, Ahmedabad today is the face of new India. Never mind Bombay, people commended even Surat, Baroda and Poona over Ahmedabad. But the city will have the last laugh. It is set to emerge, with its mixture of schlock and exquisite architecture, superb infrastructure and thriving consumerism, as India’s premier city in the 21st century.

This does not mean that Ahmedabad is suddenly a pretty city; far from it. Flat, featureless and dusty, it grew privately. Builders from the north transformed this once genteel city into a treeless monstrosity of ugly multistory buildings. Over the years, conscientious civic authorities decided to take the city back. So you have this unusual combination of ugly private buildings, superb public architecture and now, sophisticated public spaces with a well-designed bus rapid transit corridor and a cleverly designed ring road with flyovers that work.

The expressway that links Ahmedabad to Baroda is a marvelous piece of road engineering that makes the Delhi-Gurgaon highway look like a country road in Burkina Faso. It runs about 100 kilometers, a distance that can be traversed in 55 minutes. The city’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel airport makes the new terminal in Delhi look like a provincial airport in some remote African country. The city is abuzz with new and lasting solutions to urban problems. They have no power cuts, a brand new water supply and sewerage system and piped cooking gas.

On the other hand, Ahmedabad remains among the most polluted cities in India. There is no getting away from the ugly commercial and private buildings. Its climate has to rank among the worst in India, thanks largely to the absence of trees and greenery.

Already, though, with water in the river, you can feel the climate is changing for the better. The vastly improved and well thought out infrastructure is bringing pride back to the city. As such, this maggot of a city is about to be transformed into a butterfly, albeit with ugly wings.

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2009

American Life 2

Chicago: The Livin’ is Easy

It’s summertime in this city of broad shoulders and the Grant Park Symphony is performing works by Mendelssohn, Schumann and Haydn in Millennium Park, a 25-acre park built on what were parking garages and railway yards when we lived there in the 1970s and 1980s. The Great Lawn that spreads in front of the stage in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion is swarming with people, nearly 10,000 of them, savoring a picnic dinner made mostly of local ingredients and sharing bottles of wine.

What a wonderful tableau of post modern life in America: a city that enhances your life beyond the income you earn, the house you live in, the schools your children go to, the stuff you buy and the social circles in which you live! Chicago has created wonderful public places for people to mingle, surely with their friends but also with people you would not normally meet. Though the word is politically charged in India, Chicago has as such developed “communal” spaces, where people of every hue can intermingle. It is as though Woodstock had a bath and a shave and switched from drugs to wine.

There was camaraderie in the air that evening. People seemed to revel in being denizens of this great city. Everyone smiled, nodded and enjoyed the communal experience. Sure there was huge mess of tourists from other more bland parts of the Midwest. They stuck out like sore thumbs, determined to enjoy the big city. On the other hand, there were locals with an air of entitlement. “This is our city and that’s the least we expect,” their demeanor seemed to say.

We think of Chicago as our hometown. It’s our daughters’ birthplace; the city where be bought our first house. Chicago is where, in the 1970s, we launched a community newspaper that still survives; the city where we created a family of friends who are still very much part of our lives; the city where my twin careers in public affairs and journalism got started. Our particular affinity for the city is ingrained within our souls in a way no resident of or visitor to the city can imagine.

Our many Indian friends in Chicago dream fondly about their Delhi, Bombay, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Hyderabad, Bangalore or the hundreds of little towns and villages they came from. They paint India in the rose-colored hues of nostalgia, never mind that their cities (and indeed all Indian cities) are hellholes. On the other hand, we live in India and look forward to the next visit to our Chicago that becomes nicer, more exciting with each year that passes.

My good friend Ashis Nandy, India's leading social psychologist,is a leading thinker, whose critiques of the modern development paradigm have won global applause. His reasoned view is development should be on a human scale. He speaks about an egalitarian ethos, an embrace of local culture and a social system in which people can live with dignity.

Unlike most scholars in India, Ashis is an open man, ready to consider new ideas and arguments. He is not, like most Indian intellectuals, de facto anti-American, though he may have problems with the capitalist ethic and its attendant consumer ethos. He is a post modern thinker who worries about unbridled economic growth and the concomitant destruction of traditional values. It is through his eyes that I recognize that America has gone post modern in its approach to development. Urban planners in Chicago especially but also in the rest of America have learned and implemented the values of self reliance and sustainable lifestyles.

While most of the public debate in India is about American imperialism (the Left) and American debauchery (the Right), Ashis is the kind of iconoclastic thinker who would look beyond stereotypes to appreciate the urban revolution that is underway in America. And Chicago is the pioneer. It builds skyscrapers and expressways but also parks and promenades. The humane scale is there for all to see; one children’s park on the city’s newly-developed East Side is paved with a soft, cork-like material to combat scraped knees and bruised elbows.

When we lived in Chicago in the 1970s and the 1980s, India was seen as a poverty-stricken, disease-ridden basket case. Today, it is regarded as a possible engine of world growth. The Indian community in America is lauded as an accomplished minority. Fact is, though, that as India modernizes with all the attendant problems, America is in a post modern state of mind. Nobody really cares how many highways India builds or the rise of its stock market or the rapidly expanding middle class. Question is, as Chicago poses, what have you done for the people lately?

What the Indian establishment should say in response is “Father, forgive me for I have sinned.” Without a proper confessional, India will continue to flounder in confused urban development and be strangled by a vicious rural power structure.

Such dark and dire thoughts occur to people like us who care about the India project: a great democracy and a vital economy that is challenged by corrupt and inept governance. Fact is India goes its own sloppy way and there is a palace guard of politicians, bureaucrats and well-off citizens who couldn’t care less. The rest of the citizenry is left to fend on its own. Just think, in affluent neighborhoods too in Delhi and all the cities, towns and villages in India, there is no water supply, sanitation or electric power; there are no decent roads, no decent schools, no jobs; only rapidly dwindling hope. At some point, the crises may become overwhelming.

India's stark and brutal conditions stand out even more sharply seen against the post modern West. Once again, it is being left behind just when it seemed poised to catch up.

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2009

American Life

Manhattan: Shakespeare in the Parking Lot

So there we stood in the parking lot at the corner of Ludlow and Broome in New York’s fabled Lower East Side, watching a performance of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. It was a warm August evening and all the chairs were taken. Eventually we just squatted on the ground. I thought it would be some amateur effort but was pleasantly surprised at the caliber of the actors and the innovation of their production.

The play was staged by The Drilling CompaNY, an Off-Broadway troupe, which proclaims it is a jazz player that endeavors “to extend the same freedom in creation and production to theater artists that jazz extends to musicians.” The play performed that evening was truly Haryanvi in its intrigues and malafides. It got a bit uncomfortable after an hour of watching it and a Martini beckoned, so we left. It’s not like we didn’t know the end. We luxuriated in the performance, walked to a wondrous bistro: there to eat, drink and be merry with our daughter and her friend.

As we walked back to her place in Gramercy on that night in Manhattan, I couldn’t help marveling at her world of hard work and joyous play. As a twenty-something, our daughter lives this carelessly sophisticated life that is enviable. To live in Lower Manhattan, to have a good job, to have good friends, to shrug off care with awareness and compassion is a life devoutly to be wished.

Beneath her seemingly hard Manhattan exterior, she is good for a cuddly hug and nostalgia. “I’m not ready for this scenario,” I told her: a stereotypical situation when parents visit from the Old World and she takes care of everything. “Deal with it, Dad. This is a different America than when you lived here,” she said. Truth is both our daughters are “cool.” They get it from us because we defined “cool,” way back in the 1960s and 1970s.

It’s only a matter of time before they start saying “groovy” and “far out.” Already women are wearing long skirts and caftans; men are letting their shirts hang out rather tucked in. What they need to know is “whatever,” the coolest of all words today, was first articulated by Archie Bunker in the hit sitcom, “All in the Family.” He said that to a Latino woman character in the show, whose name he found unpronounceable.

Regardless, we spent a wonderful weekend with her. She had a problem because I like steak and burgers; her mother prefers exotic foods like tapas and sushi. “Ok, parents, you can visit only one at a time. I can’t handle these different tastes,” she said as we ended up in a low-grade Italian restaurant with terrible food and brown bag wine on MacDougal Street in the West Village, after much this and that.

Our first weekend in Manhattan was a revelation. Our daughter runs an enlightened home, small but neat and comfortable. We got an insight to her life, which seems to be a lot more about quality than quantity. It is so different than when we lived there in the seventies. She fits into the Manhattan life so easily, where we had to make certain painful adjustments living in Chicago. She was born in America but grew up in Delhi; in the past six years she has lived in Lower Manhattan , you’d think she’d always lived there.

And she ain’t never coming back, that’s for sure. That somewhat sad realization for us is tempered by the knowledge that she has a “Sholay” poster on her dining room wall. And that she went to the Independence Day parade and stood in line to have kulfi.

What a difference a generation makes!

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2009