Pretend Friends & Post-Modernism

Pretend Friends & Post-Modernism


Beautiful Rachel Uchitel, of “I have NOT had an affair with Tiger Woods” fame, who started the avalanche of revelations on the ace golfer’s extra-marital activities, is a professional host, a “pretend friend”, as The Sunday Times’ Style Magazine puts it.

She works at several swish nightclubs in New York and is paid to network with wealthy high–rollers and draw them in. And she is also entitled to a percentage of their hefty spends and makes substantial cash tips from said high-rollers too. And all of this without sex or blackmail entering into it, necessarily, despite the steamy allegations made by the National Enquirer.

Because what Uchitel does, is smooth the way, so that the rich and famous have a good time, with or without publicity as desired. There are many others willing and able to mingle with the seriously wealthy. After all, Rachel’s clients include both married and unmarried oil-rich princes, stars of film, music and sports, as well as international billionaires of every description.

But Rachel’s work is not to be confused with that of an up-market escort service. It is a niche product yes, typical of the 21st century urge towards differentiation and fine-tuning. It is personalised public relations facilitation, an opposite gender night-club Jeeves.

Irrespective of whether Tiger’s marriage survives after wife Elin Nordegren and he return from their media avoiding cruise aboard their 155 ft. yacht Privacy; the entire scandal has elicited a different response so far.

The classic response would have involved high-priced celebrity lawyers, a big financial settlement, and a divorce. Instead, efforts are on to find a more up-to-date solution, recognising perhaps the temptations and pressures of international stardom and constant travel on the 33 year old champion.

Meanwhile, the billionaire world number one golfer ha s put his career on hold to try and save his marriage despite his multiple and publicly acknowledged “transgressions”. Tiger’s Swedish wife Elin, an evidently post-modern spouse, seems willing to give their marriage a chance, provided Tiger never travels on his golfing trips henceforth without her and their two children in tow.

In other words, a negotiated marriage, with new ground rules. Its been done before, also in the public glare, by former President Bill Clinton and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for example.

But apart from the compromise and accommodation such negotiated continuance suggests, there is a subtle reworking of the concept of modernity afoot as well. This new view of modernity may well define not only personal affairs but world affairs too in the coming decade and beyond.

This new look modernity does not believe in refusing to acknowledge ground reality. It does not take the easy route to facile retribution, realising that it may lead to a justice of sorts but not a satisfying justice after all.

History shows the damage done by forced and unequal treaties, such as the Versailles Treaty that humiliated Germany after World War I, and sowed the seeds of Hitler’s ascendancy and an even more cataclysmic World War II.

So, to contain the destructive potential of the old eye-for-an eye justice, the new modernity attempts to look at available and residual options as dispassionately as possible with a view to improve matters, rather than settle scores.

We saw this principle operating at the Copenhagen Summit recently with President Obama personally barging into a meeting of the “BASIC” countries of India, China, South Africa and Brazil when they were on the brink of a walk-out, and emerging instead with an accord of sorts.

An accord that ignored heaps of other countries, less significant in climate control politics, including those in the EU and Japan. An accord that did not flounder on the rock of the now bypassed Kyoto Protocol reckoned to be the lodestone of climate negotiations.

And closer home, the move to allow more small states to be born is not necessarily the pestilence escaped from Pandora’s Box. It is patently unfair to have lop-sided development within larger states and do nothing to rectify things. The creation of Chattisgarh and Jharkhand and Uttarakhand has not been harmful to its inhabitants. And there is no cause to fear that further small states that may emerge out of an unwieldy Uttar Pradesh or a much neglected “Gorkhaland” will be bad for the cohesiveness of the Union.

Elsewhere, corporate bosses such as Mr. Ratan Tata, are calling for reform of land acquisition policies. What is the justice in underpaying poor people for land they are compulsorily required to hand over to the Government for the use of industry or infrastructure? Is it enough to hide behind the brook-no-opposition plea of “public purpose” when it robs the peasant and tribal of his wherewithal without adequate recompense?

It was alright for a colonial power with a different frame of reference, but clearly unfair for a republic where all citizens have been created constitutionally equal. India cannot be allowed to rob Bharat in the name of progress. In fact, greater equity in such matters will take the wind out of the sails of Maoists and other exploiters of the poor and their misery.

Post-modernism probably needs to come into the thinking on all our knotty issues. As an early advocate of compulsory voting myself I am delighted to find myself on the same page as a mass leader like Chief Minister Narendra Modi of Gujarat. He is as yet talking of local elections in Gujarat, but the beneficial arguments hold good at the national level too.

Perhaps this same post-modernist wind will cause the next decade to be marked by pragmatism rather than dogma both in the ruling combine and in the opposition. Mr. Nitin Gadkari, the new BJP Party Chief, a Brahmin himself, wants more Dalits and Muslims in the party. He also wants dissidents and the expelled to return to the fold.

This is a sign of bold post-modernist thinking likely to steer the BJP into new centrist and inclusive positions. At this rate, we can once again look at the future of the principal opposition party with hope, and confidence about its continued relevance to our collective future.

And the recent emphases of the Government, such as PSU performance and divestment, progress in security, diplomacy, reformist and military matters, unhampered by old axioms also owe more to a future post-modernist vision that the past.

(1,055 words)

22nd December 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Appeared as Edit Page Leader on December 30th, 2009 in The Pioneer with same title as above. Also see online at www.dailypioneer.com on the day and archived under Columnists.

Independent Mobile Republic

Independent Mobile Republic


David Loyn, esteemed BBC correspondent, wrote a well received book called Butcher and Bolt in 2008. It is on 200 years of failed “foreign engagement” with Afghanistan.

The intriguing title refers to the unofficial British Raj policy conclusion, arrived at after several bloody tangles with the Afghans, that they were just too violent and rebellious for Afganistan to be occupied. The Raj description of the indomitable Afghan tribesmen echoes Writer and Activist Arundati Roy’s colourful description of herself as an “Independent Mobile Republic” in one of her high decibel essays from 2003.

The trouble, as the British found out, and the Pakistanis are learning, is that the Afghan is not easy to properly corrupt, “civilise” or finally subdue. He will take your gold if it is on offer, and your guns too, for that matter, and even politely give you a hearing. But any treaty, pact or understanding he agrees to is not binding by dint of his temperament. The Afghan owes his allegiance strictly to himself and at a pinch, and temporarily, and only for tactical reasons, to some of his tribal compatriots. He is probably Jean Jacques Rousseau’s quintessential “noble savage” in the flesh.

Accordingly, the imperial Raj eventually preferred to foray into Afghanistan for a quick incursion, give the Afghans a sharp taste of British tactical warfare, and dash back to British India. Ironically, the latest version of President Obama’s AfPak Policy seems to suggest a similar strategy, couched in much oratory, with the announcement of a surge juxtaposed with a phased withdrawal come 2011.

As for aerial bombardment, so spectacularly effective in reducing rubble to rubble in the first flush of Dubya’s wrath in 2001, it is difficult to bomb populous Karachi into dust.

Because, it is there, and in Rawalpindi, and Islamabad, that much of the Taliban/Al Qaeda leadership, plagued by those unmanned drones in forward areas, have moved to. Besides, it is getting very difficult, as in the days of the Vietnamese and the Vietcong, to recognise which is which amongst the “mobile republic” citizenry of AfPak.

Mr. Obama has sonorously warned Pakistan not to use their infamous non-state actors to advance their policy objectives. But are they truly non-state or just “irregulars” in the first place, given former President Musharraf’s proud claim of Pakistani Army and ISI “ingress” into all terrorist organisations in AfPak?

But irrespective of the sophistication, audacity and durability of such linkages, as long as Pakistan can keep American/Chinese largesse flowing by playing on their separate needs and wants, they are not in any urgent need to comply with any one benefactor’s wishes beyond a point. As a result, President Obama may have finally recognised the need to leverage China for greater effectiveness of his Pakistan Policy.

From the Pakistani point of view, terrorism and its AfPak epicentre has proved to be a veritable golden goose that it would be foolish to throttle. This despite the brinkmanship in diplomacy it entails along with the growing threat to its own cohesiveness and nuclear assets.

David Loyn writes confrontation is futile in Butcher and Bolt. He advocates negotiation with the Taliban. He points out the historical failure of occupation. He does not think much has materially changed, despite awesome employment of technology in the latest US led version. A little bleakly, Loyn points out that the Taliban, has a ready resource of over one and a half million new recruits being indoctrinated in Saudi Arabia financed madrasas in Pakistan.

Of course, the West intends to train opposed Afghans to look after themselves. This will mean the arming, training and financial sustenance of anti-Taliban militia and an induced civil war fuelled by the formation of a new pipeline of gold for all concerned.

But in any case the West is tired of Afghanistan and decidedly weary of the fight. The British, Germans and French have not even committed additional troops. The policy of confrontation and playing one side against the other without taking into account that they may well be meeting in the middle has conclusively failed. The Taliban/Al Qaeda and other comrades in arms are simply waiting for them to leave.

So what is next in the coming decade? Call it the responsibility that goes with emerging as the fastest growing economies in the world with a thirst for global recognition and greater influence. The new guardians of the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre in the medium term will be India and China, large regional powers conjoined at the geographic hip.

Both China and India are themselves buffeted by internal security issues. India, as a democracy with a thriving fourth estate more so, and China, a totalitarian state with its robust forward policy on any manifestation of internal dissent, less so. But it is clearly recognised by the US that China can do much to rein in the Pakistani predilection to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds.

Without China’s provocative material support, Pakistan will be forced to curb its international terrorist based adventurism. It will also have to cut back on its regional strategic policy objectives including the infamous doctrine of “force multiplication” via a Talibanised Afghanistan.

China, on its part will have to rein in its own hegemon’s harassment of India both directly and via Pakistan. And the US will play umpire and underwrite China’s good behaviour even as India will have to considerably beef up its own self-helping military muscle.

India's role will be in the stabilisation of Afghanistan. It is well regarded there to Pakistan’s great chagrin. But India has gained from having resisted military involvement in favour of rebuilding the country’s infrastructure. India will be required to continue on this path and stay the course as America and its Western allies pull out.

And without a doubt there will be numerous carrots for both India and China on easier terms as a result. These will include more say in the World Bank and the IMF, in the G-8 and the G 20, in the WTO and Climate Control fora, and for India, almost certain enrolment in the Security Council.

The US and its NATO allies will indeed butcher and bolt. It is the new order of things for the next decade that will have to fill up the vacuum, manage things in their own backyard and bring order and prosperity to it.

(1,054 words)

December 4th, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Mohamed and the Mountain

Masjid Nimra at Arafat near Makkah

Mohamed and the Mountain


In the extreme media coverage on our own 26/11 event of a year ago and the damp squib of the tabled Liberhan Committee Report after 17 long years, most people may have missed the exhortation from Mufti-e-Azam Saudi Arabia Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah Al Sheikh in his Hajj sermon of 26th November.

The Mufti of Makkah’s sermon was both unexpected and surprising, but only in so far as so few of the senior Islamic clergy around the world, and moderate laity for that matter, have thus far condemned Islamic terrorism in unequivocal terms.

Sheikh Abdul Aziz urged the Muslim Ummah not to compromise against terrorism and be united against suicide attacks. The sermon was delivered by the Mufti-e-Azam in Masjid Nimra at Arafat near Makkah to tens of thousands of pilgrims. This is indeed most welcome, coming as it does, from the most prominent cleric in Saudi Arabia, and on the eve of a new decade, after one scarred by much needless strife and bloodshed.

If, like the Mufti’s, enough moderate Muslim voices amongst other clerics and laity, decide to criticise, censure, curb, and eventually expel the warped logic being pushed in the name of Islam, much can indeed be accomplished. Especially,if the change in sentiment is followed by action to cut off extremist lifelines. Even those which fuel the ancient animosity between the Islamic sects of Shias and Sunnis.

After all, every war is probably only one part classical warfare and two parts a battle for hearts and minds. What Islam can do to reorient itself against terrorism from within, no outside retribution from injured people of other faiths can do.

It is certain that the jihadis must know their chances of winning this war against all others, including those Islamic regimes they see as reprobate, is doomed; but as the self- brainwashed Sword Arm of Allah, they see themselves in miraculous, if unrealistic terms.

But sermons such as the Mufti of Makkah’s, holds out hope to give the lie to Samuel Huntington’s dark prognosis of a “clash of civilisations”. Echoing, as it does, the logic of the Crusades of antiquity, it should not gain further ground. If Muslims themselves curb their extreme fringes and refuse them the liberty of giving the vast majority a bad name, this nightmarish progression can be arrested much faster.

Also, jihad, always intended to be an improving and internal battle of the spirit, in which good overcomes evil, stands a chance of returning to its true Islamic meaning, one in which the spilling of innocent blood has no place.

The Mufti of Makkah’s bold and statesmanlike call for a peaceful departure from the terrorist’s “deviant ideology”, taken at face value, can perhaps be viewed as a very important step towards the eventual elimination of terrorism. After all, it is a call from Islam’s highest pulpit, at the start of its most important pilgrimage, one incumbent, at least once, on all true believers.

This sermon, if amplified suitably by others who take up the Mufti’s call, should have great resonance amongst the moral majority. After all, common or garden Islamic terrorism, with its subversive guerrilla tactics, is claiming altogether too many victims both in the world at large and from the ranks of Muslim youth alike. And this, with little or nothing of value to show for itself. It seeks, improbably, to simultaneously overthrow the West, and the Jewish nation, and also the Hindu one, but could nevertheless end up annihilating mankind via a nuclear misstep.

That is why apocalyptic retaliation cannot be seen as anything but pyrrhic, while prevention, even if successful, as a product of a siege-like, freedom destroying and suspicious defensiveness.

Only internal reform and reorientation amongst the Muslim brotherhood can heal this wound in the most effective way. It is ironic though, that in today’s world, the ways of peace sound like a pipe dream. Perhaps it is a bridge too far, as always, but wasn’t mankind meant to learn from the futility of past ideology/religion based warfare?

It is therefore very pleasant to dream of an Islamic terrorism without moral, financial and popular support from other Muslims. This terrorism without roots would not only be doomed in terms of its eventual outcome, but couldn’t even persist and prosper for long.

In the same sermon, the Mufti also blamed the ongoing economic crisis around the globe on the non-observance of Islamic principles in the conduct of business and economic affairs. This of course, tends to put the maximum leveraging ways of Dubai, an Islamic Emirate, in the same boat as several banks and institutions in the Western world.

And while terrorism may not be migrating across ideological frontiers with as much facility as greed, both owe their “deviant behaviour” to exaggeration and excess. The world’s capitalist excesses have the same world searching for moderation, probity and recalibration. This promises, after a season of tribulation, a more secure future with more realistic assumptions.

If there is a parallel between the amoral terrorism of Islamic fringe elements supported darkly by certain Governments and the economic turmoil caused by guardians of capital making much too free and easy with it, it can only be in terms of the extremes that both have gone to.

Since terrorism has the greater potential for ultimate destruction, it is good to read in the Mufti’s message, his juxtaposition of global economic mayhem and the deviant ideology that has produced Islamic terrorism; a subtext of redemption.

The world is being compelled to curb its economic extremism, Dubai being the latest citadel brought to its knees, due to eventual non-viability. By the same token, we can expect terrorism to also see its own depraved face in the mirror some day and realise shattering the mirror won’t do away with its innate ugliness.

It will however, sooner or later implode upon itself, not so much as a consequence of losing its jihad, but more because it will inexorably lose its raison d’ etre.

The Mufti of Makkah’s message is a message of peace and a call for course correction. With the Christians about to celebrate Christmas espousing similar sentiments a scarce few weeks away, and the dawning of a new decade days after that, it may be time to re-frame the world-view defined by the attacks of 9/11 in 2001.

(1,053 words)

November 29th, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Edit Page Leader in The Pioneer under the title "Sermon with a difference" on December2nd,2009 and simultaneously online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived there under Columnists.

Chinese Chequers

Chinese Chequers


In Chinese Chequers, the skill lies in vaulting over one’s opponent’s counters, into his or her “home”. Ahead, that is, of him or her doing likewise into yours! The Red Chinese have, over the decades since Comrade Deng, proved themselves to be good at this game using a very successful export-based model. But how good is that in absolute terms? Has some of the reportage and commentary on Chinese dominance and mastery run somewhat ahead of itself?

China has indeed invested nearly $2 trillion of its reserves in US Treasury Bonds. But doesn’t this money support the very economy that buys most of Chinese export? And didn’t this export, till recently account for a full 38% of Chinese GDP? So, isn’t the money placed in US Government Bonds helping China as much as it is financing a proportion of the US deficit? And aren’t the Gulf countries and other producers of petroleum eagerly doing the same thing too?

As for the opaque Chinese Renminbi, it is linked to its banking sector, sitting, it is rumoured, on very large non-performing assets, (NPAs). And these NPAs are not acknowledged. But obviously they do have a bearing on the true strength of the Yuan and the national balance sheet despite apparent double digit growth.

Note also that the bulk of the export is made up of labour intensive, low unit value, consumer goods. This suits high wage environments, to have items manufactured cheaply to fixed price contracts in China. It also employs a lot of people at the selling-end of things but doesn’t alter strategic realities. And everywhere in the commercial space, we are reminded that price warriors are vulnerable to diversification of dependence, over which they have little or no control.

To get out of this precariousness, China will have to turn its economic ship to stimulating domestic consumption, particularly when the export gravy train is derailed temporarily or for more sustained duration.

But stimulating domestic consumption in a largely agrarian country with low per capita income is not going to be an easy thing. And keeping the numbers up via export into new territories like Africa will not be quite the same. But for the time being, the growth figures are fine because of the ongoing infrastructure spends spurred by the $650 billion stimulus package.

But later, the export dependence will have to be replaced by manufacturing and services for domestic consumption, and doing that by subsidy, as in exports, will not work. Besides, there is little or no political freedom outside of Hong Kong and this will exert its own pressure particularly as the economic gap keeps widening between the millions in the city and the billions in the countryside.

Technologically advanced countries have been happy to cede the low end of commerce to China and others in favour of high-end technologically evolved armaments, super computers, planes, technical know-how and so forth. But even with a degree of developed competence, nobody is buying high-tech Chinese. Unless, that is, you count Pakistan and other nations and organisations unable to get their small arms, ammunition, larger ambition missiles and even nuclear how-to-do-it kits, from elsewhere.

Historically too, the strength of Chinese exports owes itself to the most favoured nation treatment China received after the Nixon-Kissinger tilt towards China. But that tilt was designed to counteract the influence of the USSR. The USSR is now gone, and it may be time for China, raising its profile, to draw some new conclusions for itself.

With regard to Chinese grumblings about the weakness of the US dollar affecting the value of its own reserves, it may lack both leverage and conviction. Because, China’s Yuan can neither fund the world, any more than a much stronger Euro can, nor risk full convertibility, without losing control over its manipulated books of account. And talk of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), as an alternative to the US dollar as the reserve currency of the world is, as yet, wildly premature.

But there is decided change in the air brought on by the economic downturn. There are quality and safety complaints. And a recent American poll showed over 73% now resent the ingress of Chinese goods into America. This may or may not portend protectionist sentiments, but the atmosphere is charged, and should China push too hard, the US could move away from it economically. Especially when, and if, the domestic political cost-benefit analysis reveals unaffordable costs!

One or two US regimes, such as the present one, or Bill Clinton’s before it, may indeed try naive appeasement as a stop gap. But sooner or later, America and its NATO allies will have to call China’s bluff and withdraw a proportion of its economic largesse to deflate the so-called Chinese miracle.

China, despite its aggressive military spends and infrastructure build-up, cannot seriously engage in overt military adventurism in today’s world; not even with regard to India. And its clumsy attempts at pressuring the West by proxy, using a host of countries including North Korea, Pakistan and Iran, is transparent. As it is in the Asian theatre as well, via its support to insurgents and rogue regimes and its unsubtle bullying. But will all this deliver the global leverage and regional dominance China seeks or help to consolidate opposition to it?

But even without getting any deeper into the true strength of China, there is a hopeful lesson for India to learn. China has changed its status from third world country into contention as an economic growth engine on the back of a mere three trillion dollar economy and promise of further double digit growth.

But even then, as the beauteous Maria Bartiromo of CNBC put it, China’s three trillion dollar economy cannot rescue America’s 14 trillion dollar one! This is so much any port in a storm talk, and the best thing about it is that India and China and Brazil and Russia are still growing when others are not.

But it does make for some heady flattery from America, and all India has to do to receive similar stardust, is grow its economy three-fold based on its famed domestic consumption. They say the first million, or in this case trillion, is the most difficult, but we’ve already done that and that's without counting our parallel 'black" economy!If we keep this up, we might get good at Chinese Chequers too.

(1,060 words)

20th November 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Icons

Madhubala

Icons


Technology, 24x 7 TV, the Internet and the access of the Information Age may have put paid to the age of icons. Most that still exist belong to an earlier time when beauty and pulchritude, magnetism and charisma, could evanescence slowly into public consciousness, like candlelight. But those days are long gone, cut down to size by the magnificence of demystifying push-button access.

Richard Linklater, American filmmaker, recently wrote in Blackbook Magazine of New York that, “An icon is someone who floats above the culture,” that spawns him or her. Linklater, who is completing a film on Orson Welles, wisely does not try to define the term. He describes it though, writing: “When you’re an icon, you’re not just a person—you’re a myth,” and, “The supremely talented have a way of upending expectations”.

India, in something of an existential crisis after just over six decades, clearly could do with new icons on its political firmament. The old ones, from legend, mythology, more recent history and the freedom movement, now seem anachronistic. And inducing their spark to fire our imaginations is not what it must have once been.

But since the age of iconography has irrevocably passed, it is hard to fill the perception of a leadership vacuum in the midst of a tumultuous democracy straining more than a little dangerously on a long leash of slack governance. The polity is behaving badly, frustrated perhaps for being a little lost.

No new icons of equivalent stature to the freedom fighters have sprung up since. Not even the children of midnight or thereabouts like Indira Gandhi who carried the political narrative forward to the relatively recent eighties. And though, she unarguably was, despite her despotic side, a staunch Indian patriot. But Indira Gandhi was also from the same drawer. She too was witness to the freedom movement led by the Mahatma, like many of her colleagues, her legendary father, and all the other stalwarts from her father’s and grandfather’s time.

And during, as well as after her time, we have had several able leaders and functionaries, all contributors to the crucial business of nation building. But any among them that were indeed iconic, men such as Jayaprakash Narayan and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, also came from that earlier era. There was, at the expense of sounding revisionist, a sense of mission and greater purpose that animated all these leaders which created an image that enabled them to rise and float above the culture they led.

Rajiv Gandhi, our youngest prime minister to date, had a worthwhile vision too, but, as it turned out, was persuaded too often against his better judgement by cynical vested interests. The disinterested stance of independence era leaders, conscious of the necessity for sacrifice, was also given short shrift by the Gucci wearing, Mercedes driving, young prime minister.

But he might have still achieved iconic status had he lived longer because the late eighties were still not swamped by technology. Perhaps the uncharismatic but erudite Narasimha Rao, his successor, was able to see through, what might have been at least partially Rajiv Gandhi’s vision. And perhaps his success owed itself to over three decades of experience in the governmental labyrinth and much greater maturity of years.

But the transactional style, antithetical to iconic governance, had well and truly entrenched itself by Rao’s tenure, symbolised by pictures and lengthy commentary on entire suitcase-fulls of cash being delivered hither and thither to shore up his government.

But were the old icons benefited because of the stimulus of struggling against a mighty foreign colonial power? And those from the era of kings and emperors and epics of yore presumably lived with entirely loftier terms of reference. But who knows? Icons are a little “unknowable” says Linklater. He calls them perpetual “works in progress” .

But is this all dead aspiration now? Our current leaders seem to have little time for the enunciation of a beneficial vision several sizes larger than themselves. Instead politics has become a sum total of manoeuvres in the name of strategy and wily tactics in the pursuit of pelf, power, perpetuation.

What has come in place of stature acquired through good work and slow release exposure is noisome promotion, publicity and manufactured hype, pumped up considerably as budgets and technology and communication vehicles have improved from the early radio days of the republic.

Perhaps Indian politics itself has diminished in stature as a consequence of relentless exposure warts and all. Besides, those capable of assuming legendary proportions are no longer in it. They are found now on the cricket field, in the movies, in literature, amongst the more reclusive of businessmen, where the unknowable aspects of iconography can still operate. So we do have living legends like Ratan Tata, Amitabh Bachchan, Sachin Tendulkar and Salman Rushdie.

This shrinkage of political stature has been affecting us in a particularly adverse manner for quite some time. Largely unchecked, the corruption is much grown, the dereliction of duty more shocking, and the flouting of constitutional norms more routine. There is a dangerous emphasis on regional issues over the national interest that is beginning, in a serious way, to challenge the very idea of India. And this, at a time when there are grave external and internal security threats as well.

But to be fair, it is certain our current leaders are definitely grappling with a level of complexity and aspiration unknown in the early decades after independence. The information flow is intense, with over 90 day and night news channels on TV and hundreds of newspapers, magazines and online sites. It is difficult to be a hero in the glare of such unrelenting and familiar scrutiny.

The same shortness of shelf-life applies today to celebrity and stardom too. So quelle chance netagiri?

Let us realise there will be no more new Mahatmas and Subhas Chandra Boses. No new Madhubalas, no more Nargises, no triumvirate of Dharam, Vinod and Dilip. No new Raj Kapoor or Dev Anand. Ram Rajya itself would have to be reevaluated for relevance.

It is not easy to float above a culture morphing into the benefits of Space Age technology at ever increasing speeds. But the minimum requirement of netagiri, that of disinterested service to the nation, is still impervious to the ravages of technology.

(1,048 words)

12th November 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Op-Ed Page Leader in The Pioneer under the title "Looking for new icons" on November 19th, 2009. Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and archived there under Columnists.

Anarchy Inc.

Elbobo- Pablo Picasso

Anarchy Inc.

A democracy cannot be both ignorant and free. --Thomas Jefferson

The propensity, the scale, and audacity of Government corruption in India of late seems to rival anything associated with Central African regimes or South American dictatorships. Corruption, petted, cosseted and by implication condoned, has mutated and evolved into a ravenous bare-fanged and fast loping Steppenwolf, brazenly keeping pace with our overall rate of progress.

And this corruption is seen to be most fecund amongst the depressed classes in an inversion of the ethical dilemma to do with the privileged and deprived. The humbler the origins of the alleged culprit, possibly less the fear of social ostracision and greater the thirst for rampant brigandage!

And for alleged venality, recent reports on both former Chief Minister Koda of Jharkhand and Union Minister Raja of the Telecommunications Ministry are hard to beat.

In a lesser key, witness that a week-long fire at an Indian Oil Depot in Jaipur that killed 11 and injured over 30 could, it now emerges, well have been arson. The fire may have been lit by IOC officials themselves, callously trying to destroy evidence of massive oil pilferage and associated fraud unearthed by the CBI recently.

The Central Government and its watch-dog agencies seem inept at doing anything to prevent such occurrences. If they get wind of something before it is too late, it is often not acted upon by higher ups more interested in a cover up or to prevent inconvenient public scandal. So, mostly they wake up in time to conduct expensive post mortems and make futile attempts at redressal.

The main thing is that corrupt politicians are not afraid of consequences. Our laws are soft on economic offences and money spread around protects admirably. Besides, many politicians feel only nominally accountable, and more to their party bosses than the public in any case. They view their limited time in office as an opportunity to feather their nests and those of their supporters.

And since everything to do with politicians, including bringing them to book has a political calculus, no action is undertaken on the merits of the rule of law alone. Besides, these are the days of coalition politics which works as a virtual open sesame for political corruption.

As it stands, the various wings of Government, their supporting bureaucracy and associates, fixers and agents inclusive, seem to be in a state of competitive corruption, with the corporate private and public sectors unwilling to be outdone!

But is there a remedy or are we to sink into the morass and quicksand of our greed till we all but disappear? Is this the anarchy come upon us that Winston Churchill prophesied for India run by Indians?

Well, it has often been said by imperialists from the dying days of the Raj, confronted by rising nationalist protest, that the Indian character can always benefit from a bit of stick. This is probably why, in a leftover sense, the symbol and most of the substance of public law and order enforcement to date is still, and literally, the humble danda.

And this, along with light bamboo shields to withstand the brickbats of rioters, in an age of suicide bombers, Kalashnikovs, Uzis, AK 47s and so forth is a little hard to take seriously. Our law enforcement danda may be the supple and seasoned bamboo stave, wielded with dexterity by semi-literate but rangy lads, but they don’t frighten even the local hood with a country made revolver anymore.

Most accusations of police brutality in India might mean a havildar laying about his victim enthusiastically with said danda and have little to do with torture and sadism doled out in dungeons. And this softness of approach and lack of a sinister secret police may well be animating the entire machinery of sarkari retribution and doing its unintended bit to encourage corruption.

After all, there is no sharp uniformed Gestapo/Stasi/Savak/Robocop component to our law enforcement, overt or covert. This includes our investigative and intelligence agencies such as the IB, CBI and RaW, peopled, as they are, with time-serving and out- of- shape babus. There isn’t a single James Bond type in sight outside of the regular armed forces which, constitutionally, and for that matter temperamentally, keep out of politics and domestic administration.

That leaves the Black Cat, the Cobra and other such exotic crack unit seconded from the Army- who look and act the part and are certainly capable of cleaning up the badmashes chop chop.

But in the main, the Rapid Deployment Force apart, they are used to tend to their high profile neta protectees, ironically some of the best of breed that corruption can offer.

So generally, India’s law and order is administered by waved danda, as much in greeting and traffic control as in warning. Figuratively, the danda may well stand for the impressive big stick. But in practice, our danda, for internal strife, daylight robbery or external threat, is not what it ought to be.

If we truly had a big stick, we could, to paraphrase President Theodore Roosevelt’s famous aphorism, speak softly enough as long as we carried it about.

So what can we do being deficient in the menace department, at least for the moment?
Well there’s transparency, and worked properly, it does very well to quell corruption over time.

And recently, two quiet steps towards transparency have indeed been taken. One is to do with the decision to divest 10% of the equity in profitable central PSUs as an opening gambit. This will not only yield at least Rs. 30,000 crores for the Government coffers, but bring about a scrutiny of their functioning by virtue of their listing on the bourses.

The other was to begin monitoring primary items including food and fuel on a weekly basis for inflation, using the base year of 2004-2005, which is far more relevant than the Wholesale Price Index base year of 1993-1994, not to mention its out of date composition.

Everyone knows and feels the pinch of food prices that have rocketed up over 100% in the last year, but the remarkable thing is now the Government is willing to place it in the form of official data before the public, with the intent of controlling it. This is most commendable and will yield good results over time.

(1,052 words)

8th November 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Intent & Outcome

Intent & Outcome


Abraham Lincoln was drawn into the American Civil War in 1861, almost immediately after being elected President on his anti-slavery platform. This because the declaration to secede, on the part of the 13 Southern States came first. And it was the Confederacy again that fired the first salvo when it attacked the Union garrison stationed at Charleston in North Carolina. These two events wrecked the option to negotiate.

And so it was only left to Lincoln to retaliate. And retaliate with such resolution that it broke the back of the secessionists and swept the old South into the dustbin of history, a process described poignantly in the pages of Margaret Mitchell’s classic Gone With The Wind.

But in hindsight, and in the interests of equity and justice, romancing the South might have been just so much sympathy for the devil. Similarly, liberal sympathy for Maoists, even as they behead people, kill policemen and CRPF personnel, blow up roads and bridges, hold hostages and write slogans on hijacked trains, may be misplaced.

The Indian nation cannot responsibly ignore their declaration of war, emboldened, most probably, by the kid-gloves treatment accorded to them over years of State ambivalence. But the Maoists are dead serious and, seduced by petty successes at armed insurrection, are dreaming of victory over the Republic itself.

The recent hostage exchange in the Lalgarh region of West Bengal was portrayed as an exchange of POWs, and the Bhubaneshwar-Delhi Rajdhani train hijack later was an attempt to spring some other prisoners from captivity. Let us also remember that close cooperation between terrorists of different ideologies and persuasions is a grim reality.

The Maoists would have it that they are justified in waging all-out war against the Union of India. This even as their apologists try to find ways and means to explain their stance. But the time for debating pros and cons of such anarchism, its causes notwithstanding, may have slipped away. And the Indian state, like the America of Abraham Lincoln, is left with no choice but to firmly put down such blatant sedition. The consequence of further ambivalence over the issue will only result in turning problems even more intractable.

The US is now nearly two and a half centuries old. But in 1861, at the start of the Civil War, it must have seemed like a massive risk to both sides. Without the gift of omniscience, no one could have known how the conflict would turn out.
But after the loss of over 600,000 lives, a most effective naval blockade, and the passage of just four years, it all became crystal clear.

American nationhood was steeped in the blood of martyrs, from that of the earlier War of Independence from the British; and again, from their home grown, even harder fought, Civil War. In the interim there was also the shameful genocide of Red Indians and sharp battles with the Mexicans at the famous fort at Alamo.

Through it all emerged an unshakable American nation with no further wars fought on its home turf since. But it consumed over a million lives to get there. And this without counting the American lives lost in subsequent wars fought abroad: in South Korea, in Europe, against Japan; in Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan.

India may have had a reasonably non-violent independence movement led by Mahatma Gandhi, but it did have to send in tens of thousands of Indians to die on foreign shores during WW II. And it has fought three wars against Pakistan and one with China since independence. It has also faced constant challenges to its nationhood from within, in the North East, in Kashmir, in Punjab, and now via the old Naxalite movement grown into present day Maoist insurrection. Blood seems to be the price of nationhood.

Today the threat to India is unprecedented, both from within and without, from Islamic and Maoist terrorism, from Chinese belligerence, Pakistani chicanery, and a variety of secessionist and seditious movements in different parts. And most tellingly, from its state of abject unpreparedness.

But perhaps our policy makers are at last coming around. It is ironic that we should be so threatened when India as an economic entity is poised on the threshold of greatness. There is reasonable commentary that sees the Sensex at 50,000 within five years, implying a more than doubling of the economy in the interim. Good and fine, but will we snatch defeat from the mouth of victory instead?

The American LeT operative Headley let slip to the FBI, news of the stalking of a certain “Rahul”. This may or may not be referring to the scion of the Gandhi dynasty but it tells you how vulnerable the leaders of an open democracy and a soft-state can be.

The Home Minister’s recent clear-cut warning that another 26/11 style attack masterminded from across the border will be met with decisive retaliation is most welcome. It represents a stiffening of the Indian spine not seen since Mrs. Indira Gandhi authorised Operation Bluestar.

There are other stirrings; such as the raising of new and specialised battalions, moves to urgently improve infrastructure in border areas, provide our police, para-military and armed forces with modern arms, equipment, facilities, and move troops and equipment to where they may be needed; on fronts facing both Pakistan and China. These are long overdue steps, and given the right provisioning, India will be no pushover.

Former President George W Bush underscored the realpolitik involved on a recent visit to give the keynote address at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. He implied that India’s entry to the UNSC, with or without veto powers, will depend as much on our hard power as our diplomacy.

None of the present five permanent members are going to countenance expansion of the Council, and a consequent dilution of their own power, without compelling bilateral and multilateral benefits. And this applies as much to other contenders such as Japan, Germany and Brazil, as it does to India.

Omniscience may not be a human gift, but prescience can be. India must modernise and strengthen itself on all parameters. We can’t use the piece-meal approach anymore. This preparatory phase of India’s ascension to the big league demands things be done very differently from that of a new nation emerging from the yoke of colonialism to freedom at midnight.


(1,051 words)

November 2nd, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Published as the Op-Ed Leader on 4th November 2009 in The Pioneer entitled "Break their back, now!". Also published simultaneously online at www.dailypioneer.com and is archived there under Columnists.

The Contours Of Recovery & The Asian Century

Painting above by Wassily Kandinsky

The Contours Of Recovery & The Asian Century


Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Premier Wen Jiabao reportedly had a very pleasant meeting on the sidelines of the 15th Asean Summit in Thailand.

They talked of the need to promote greater functional cooperation and not about
much publicised and thorny cross-border issues. There is already some economic cooperation and convergence of views on climate change, but clearly nothing near a true alliance or partnership.

The two leaders dutifully agreed that India-China cooperation: “Is in the interest of the region and the whole world”. They also reiterated that: “For the Asian Century to become a reality, it is important that India and China live in harmony and friendship and enjoy prosperity”.

This is indeed great news, and taken at face value, it is the right prescription for the Asian Century exactly. Its chances of succeeding beyond pleasantries however, are probably best described under the concept of détente or balance of power, much beloved of arch-hawk Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s Metternich admiring Secretary of State. With détente it becomes impossible to exploit a perceived weakness for short term gain or leverage, forcing reasonableness into all bilateral negotiations as a consequence. Unequals don’t usually make good partners.

But meanwhile, in the West, the financial system is clearly back into profits for the second quarter in a row. Unemployment, amongst those still looking for jobs, will however stay near or above the 10% mark for most of next year. This is because the return to profitability is not through the portals of manufacturing or retail servicing that employ great numbers at the lower reaches of the pyramid.

Right now, the economy is recovering because of a revival in business confidence, rebuilding itself from a stand-still and lending again. Demand for money is picking up and so is the willingness to lend it. John Maynard Keynes’ spirit is smiling.

And in the West, unlike India, where low lending rates mean rates ranging between 9% to 15% per annum, there is still a benign low interest scenario of 3% or under, without much threat of inflation apparent as yet.

And this, in a overall growth environment of not more than 2% per annum anywhere in the large economies of Western Europe, America, Japan and Australia, is probably as good as it is going to get for the coming decade.

That is, barring unforeseen spikes in the price of oil owing to disruption, unrest, terror-strike or warfare in the large oil producing regions. And provided the world does move away from its dependence on the stuff as it constantly promises to do, in order to dampen down the ever growing demand profile for petroleum and its derivatives.

But in the closing months of 2009, we can see banks, investment companies, insurance and mortgage lenders and their surviving white collar staff are finally over the hump. Threats of more bank closures and collapses are not getting the play they used to.

Something similar is happening here in India too, struggling to ratchet up from a slowed rate of GDP growth of around 5% to maybe 7% in 2010, notwithstanding an inflexible unemployment and under-employment rate amongst eligibles in the 25% region!

Here too, it is the banks and their activity that is perking up. And in India, with its perpetual pent up demand for infrastructure, the order book is filling up for capital goods.

In the US the Dow Industrial Average is again above 10,000 points. The Standard & Poor 500 is above 1,000 too. Newsweek magazine thinks it will go to 11,000 and S&P 500 above 1200 in 2010 and no back-sliding.

And the upswing will come, not so much in reflection of domestic consumption, as the expected profits earned by American companies from their international operations, particularly in India and China.

The Indian stock market too, with revived industry and foreign money pouring in, can expect a new all-time high in 2010.

The world today is indeed interconnected. America was saved from years of recession, if not depression, by a combination of massive Government stimulus spending and staunch financial confidence from China and the oil-rich Middle East. But then, saving the American economy has become tantamount to saving the international economy. And whatever goes for America goes also for the West as a collective, in a corollary sense.

India is not so important on the downside because of our anchoring in the domestic economy. And because our foreign exchange surpluses are not that grand. But it is highly interconnected on the upside as an engine for international recovery.

The same applies to China which may have been earning 30% of its GDP from exports heretofore, but may have to concentrate on its domestic growth for the foreseeable future.

China has already revived to nearly 9% GDP growth on the back of its own stimulus programmes. More will come from domestic investment into its large and impoverished rural hinterland and its shiny, modern cities alike.

The Chinese, like the Indians, are split between those who think pouring money into the countryside will be so much money down the drain and those who think its exact opposite. The countryside, argue the former, cannot benefit substantially from improved infrastructure because it has nothing to sell beyond low yield agricultural produce. The cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, on the contrary, are capable of returning substantial returns on investment.

The catch is in the fact that some 60% of the Chinese, like rural Indians, live in the countryside in more or less abject poverty. So not lifting these people up the economic ladder is asking for certain trouble.

In India, the proposition is less ambiguous because we are a democracy and all politicians are dependent on the rural vote. Besides, even amongst the 40% in the towns and cities, there are many toiling migrant villagers, whose ties to and sympathies for the countryside are very strong.

But in the bigger picture that the world is looking at, India and China are growth engines pure and simple. The Asian Century, Thy Kingdom Come, they pray. We may be grappling with infrastructure development, greater consumption needs, and priorities. And all this on a massive, unprecedented scale because there is much left to do. But to everyone else, it’s all good healthy economics that will uplift us and simultaneously come to their rescue as well.

(1,052 words)

25th October 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Published in The Pioneer as Op-Ed Leader entitled "Towards an Asian Century" on October 28th,2009. Also simultaneously published online at www.dailypioneer.com and archived there under Columnists.

Engine Driver

Engine Driver


Thought for the day on Vikram Samvat 2066? The key to improving India’s security perception and the trimurti of its politics/economics/diplomacy is wrapped up in its treatment of the domestic market.

This is the engine of India’s growth. If the domestic market is accelerated due to robust Government policy, the knock-on effect on all our other concerns would be substantial.

It is the domestic market that makes India important to the world. Because, rather uniquely, India’s domestic growth path can be largely self-driven. It rides, from education, health and agriculture, to manufacturing industry and services, on the demand generation of our billion plus population.

India also has a wealth of indigenous raw materials, including a great deal of the world’s Thorium, that can, given a dedicated burst of further R&D, substitute for scarce Uranium in our nuclear reactors.

We don’t, alas, have 70% of the petro-carbons we need. But we do have self-sufficiency and periodic surpluses in food, and sufficient arable land mass/river/monsoon water to do very well. Given, that is, some better management by way of irrigation/dams and recharge/reforestation, to get us out of the clutches of perpetual drought/flood.

Ironically, we did not choose to be an overwhelmingly domestic-led economy. But years of Nehruvian non-alignment followed by a nationalistic self-reliance under Mrs. Indira Gandhi resulted in what we have become. But, by the same token, we did not plan on becoming the most prominent exporter of software, or the global hub for the manufacture of small cars and automotive components either!

Both consequences resulted from our multi-pronged approach to policy making in combination with shifts in global forces beyond our control. This has put us in a happy place where we need not sacrifice our exports to the domestic market.

India accounts for a negligible proportion of world trade and there is much room to grow. But here too, improving our domestic capabilities can only upgrade our exports, which account for 12% of GDP now. This might also make them less price sensitive and vulnerable to a strengthening currency. But more significantly, when the rupee strengthens, it benefits our substantial import bill.

If we concentrate on developing our domestic market which accounts for over 80% of the economy, we could trigger huge strategic gains. New facilities sprouting where none exist today will meet massive pent up demand. And improved roads, ports, airports, power generation/distribution, oil & gas exploration/development/ refining/distribution; scientific agriculture plus a slew of food processing industries; enhancement of military and nuclear oriented manufacturing capacity etc. will multiply our options manifold.

We would, by doing this aggressively, not only boost GDP with the investment involved, but ensure access, availability, ease, and the removal of bottlenecks that presently bedevil our competitiveness and rate of progress.

Twenty years like this will transform the India proposition, as it has done for China.

We will have the sophisticated but saturated economies of the West, as also the resource rich economies elsewhere, all making a beeline for India. It may well make the difference between survival and extinction for many among them.

Consider that China rescued the iconic Humvee from extinction. Harley Davidson is looking to prospective India sales and low import duties, to pull itself out of the doldrums. In the past, we saved Bofors and Westland helicopters and Jaguar aircraft in their home countries. And at present, we are doing it for Land Rover and Jaguar cars too. Our upcoming Defence purchases are expected to be among the largest global opportunities in this sphere.

Our domestic demand scenario is already good. But the clincher is perhaps the unique Indian blend of management expertise and careful husbandry of resources demonstrated by Laxmi Mittal after taking over one ailing steel mill after another around the globe.

We also have inexpensive labour and the impressive ability to each buy a little to yet make up a humongous total. This is a formula for viability in present times, when much of the West has lost its ability to be thrifty. Besides, we are, even now, the second fastest growing economy in the world.

It is no coincidence that $ 13 billion has come in via FII this year completely wiping out the amount pulled out during the downturn of 2008. FDI too is pouring in at unprecedented levels once again. But this FDI can be enhanced by multiples of the $ 90 billion that has come in between 2000 and now, if the Government were to lift restrictions and bans in many sectors.

It is also true that much of Indian business is not in the public domain. Besides, listed companies, some 7000 in number, of which only about 1000 are actively traded, are often closely held by their promoters, with very little tradeable stock.

This needs to change with more listings from the private sector and venture capital/private equity universe, via IPOs. The huge value locked up in the better performing and near monopolistic PSUs could also substantially enlarge and deepen our stock markets. The Government administered pension funds invest very little, even of the 15% of their corpus they have now been permitted to place in the bourses.

Leading investment player Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, reacting to the present dominance of FII money in the bourses, repeatedly makes the point that the amount of domestic money waiting to be invested is such as to render the FII component insignificant.

Statistically, this is true enough, with just 6% of the savings making its way to the stock market in both equity and debt segments. It is also true, that like China, India has a gross domestic savings rate in excess of 30%.

But Indians are not great fans of financial instruments. They prefer Gold, Silver, Diamonds and Real Estate. This is no bad thing in itself, and can all be leveraged for part of their value if made easier and publicised properly.

Besides, Real Estate development benefits the national growth story quite substantially. This was borne out over the last two years when new construction ground to a near halt, hurting a slew of industries and services from cement and steel to sanitaryware .

As in Real Estate so in the Real Economy, money moves. Boosting the engine drivers with policy and funds may be the best thing we could do for ourselves in Vikram Samvat 2066.

(1,051 words)

17th October 2009
Diwali & start of Vikram Samvat 2066
Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Op-Ed Page Leader in The Pioneer on October 20, 2009 as "Go for domestic market". Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and archived there under Columnists.

Perils of Polly!

Roy Lictenstein-Whaam!

Perils of Polly!


Polly the parrot traditionally has perilous encounters with the family cat and also with machinery such as fans and automated plate-glass doors not designed to accommodate the needs of feathered friends.

Polly the proverbial young girl has perils of a different order. Hers are mainly to do with attempts by males, females and transgenders alike trying to “make” her; in trains and planes, in mountain or dale, always on the razor’s edge of ruin in classic Hindi film “bachao” default.

But frankly, there is a self-inflicted quality to the antics of bird and dolly-bird alike that makes the less liberal observer wonder why they get into unnecessary scrapes in the first place. Sensible pet parrots confine themselves to their cages. And nubile polyannas should presumably learn to enjoy their perils with the pleasure they apparently provoke.

But then, all this may be the jaundiced view of the classic spoilsport that does not enjoy daily mayhem and murder, has no appetite for subversion and no kink for humiliation either. This spoilsport cannot bring himself to consider such goings on as minor kerfuffles all in a day’s work.

He does not think border incursions and infiltration are to be expected every year before winter and the snows set in. He does not relate hundreds killed needlessly because there is no security of life and limb in this country, to the national population count of over a billion people.

This spoilsport is appalled by the type of liberal who says the state is the actual problem and the quintessential “big brother” style bully just millimetres away from full blown fascism.

Neanderthal caveman of a spoilsport that he is, he must reorient his thinking and perspective, the better to be in synchronisation with the intelligent mood of the times, unconcerned with national security, and in order to maintain a necessary political correctness of demeanour.

The spoilsport needs to also consult the cynical manager’s handbook which opines that it is the manager’s duty to first create a problem, then allow, even aid and abet it to grow and fester and splinter into multiplicities. And then, with sufficient fanfare and publicity, come to the rescue and solve the self-same problem. But in doing so, the manager must take care not to solve it all at once, and certainly not all the problemmettes, root and branch, because then he would be working himself out of a job and heading towards an arid redundancy.

Once properly trained and reengineered into the right frame of mind, the erstwhile spoilsport finds himself smiling in relief. He now points to all the chaos and pointless bloodshed from a decidedly philosophical perspective.

He sees that it is to do with the rhythm of life and the battle constant between good and evil in which the ground rule is that neither side can, or should be, eliminated out of the game and benched fruitlessly.

In the game of life one needs both winners and losers and if any side is depleted by way of attrition, why, it must be replenished without delay so that proper balances can be maintained at all times.

This cynical outlook is apparently not just a management survival strategy but may explain the futility of much of our government policy, particularly in hindsight. Our politicians and their endless prevarication on decisions and their impact on poll prospects, has much, actually much too much, blood on its hands. It is a constant and unwavering saga of late comings and inflated consequences with a dash of too little too late.

We have lost more soldiers and civilians in Kashmir than in all the wars and insurgencies since independence, when all we have done is attempt to maintain the status quo rather than solve the problem. Meanwhile, if its instruction we need, anarchic Pakistan has not been tardy in swallowing up Gilgit!

It is true that we’ve been through these situational challenges almost from the start of our independent journey as a nation : in Kashmir, in the North East, in Bengal, with the Khalistanis in Punjab, and now with Maoists scattered in the forested and tribal areas spread all over coastal and peninsular India.

We have overcome each of these internal security threats to our unity in the past after considerable struggle, time, and lives lost on every side. But we have failed always in preventing the anti-national structures forming, drawing sustenance and growing in influence and structure through the early and middle stages.

We have ignored the financing and counterfeit money injection, the drug rackets, the superior arms and ammunition smuggled in, the training and indoctrination, more often than not from foreign sources determined to harm the integrity of our nation. Even if we knew, we never did anything about it.

The Indian Mujahideen, Simi, and others, constantly renamed, the so-called home grown subversives, are yet another case in point. Particularly when they seem to dovetail seamlessly with the LeT and other Talibanised outfits from across the borders to Pakistan and Bangladesh. In addition, the illegal immigration from Bangladesh, shamelessly aided by political complicity, itself tops some two crore people!

We are today behind in terms of force strength, in men and materials alike, to tackle a large and sophisticated internal insurgency problem. Anti-nationals of every hue and in every hot spot have better equipment, training, communications and armaments, as is evident from the relative casualty listings with each passing encounter.

This has emboldened the insurgents to go on the offensive. They now terrorise and subdue not just unarmed civilians and tribals in remote areas, but attack our police, paramilitary and armed forces in towns and cities. They blow up major infrastructure and disrupt election processes. They propagandise, threaten and issue dictates and fatwas. And the fact is we have brought it all upon ourselves because of sustained neglect.

We are no safer in terms of maintaining our borders, seas and territorial integrity either,with an ill equipped, under staffed, under funded and antiquated security and intelligence apparatus. The escalating internal insurgencies and our military unprepared ness is linked. The only way out is to go on the offensive, as we are now doing in Maharashtra, have done in Bengal recently, and not stop till the job, the entire job, is done. And we must make ready for the backlash on our borders.

(1,051 words)

October 11th, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

The Way To The Future

The way to the future


Last night I watched a rerun of The Aviator (2004), the acclaimed film on the life of maverick American billionaire Howard Robard Hughes Jr., visionary, inventor and entrepreneur extraordinaire. And I wondered afresh, and not without envy, about a political system and business environment that lets entrepreneurship have full play without any significant let or hindrance.

Competitors, in all his different fields of endeavour: making independent movies, running commercial airlines, designing and manufacturing military planes, making tool bits, were allowed their say, and the effect of their lobbies. They did all they could to retard or stop Howard’s progress but not, it is seen, with much success.

The US Government investigated and harassed Hughes also, partially at the behest of his competitors, and partially because they had some difficulty comprehending his audacity even if he did epitomise the “American way”.

But, through it all, they let Mr. Hughes fight back hard, and let the nation hear his counter arguments. By the time he died in 1976, there was, for all to see, a wonderful flowering of enterprise, invention, daring and robust accomplishment. Howard Hughes enriched not only the quintessential American experience but much of the world at large, owing to the fact that he lived and worked his vision in a proven “land of the free and home of the brave”.

Actor Leonardo di Caprio’s fairly recent rendering of Hughes reminded me of another great American media pathfinder, crusader and newspaper baron, William Randolph Hearst, immortalised in Orson Welles’ masterpiece Citizen Kane(1941). These men are both great American stereotypes, and there are dozens more, such as Henry Ford of Model T mass production, and “you can have any colour as long as it’s black” fame.

That is not to say things were stage-managed for any of them. It doesn’t work that way in “melting pot” America. But the dynastic way does bedevil and stultify most of Europe, South America, large swathes of Asia and Africa, and some of what goes on here in this country.

In such places, the tug of the past, caste, rank, order of birth, gender, feudal position, family money, tribe, religion, loyalty, patronage, ideology, cadre, and so on, exerts a greater, if static pull, than the merits involved, and the beckoning of an uncharted future, however exciting.

So, almost axiomatically, men without the right backgrounds and connections are rendered ineligible. Of late however, meaning the last two decades, the top ten corporations in India have given the partial lie to this “tradition”, by a kind of Darwinian evolution, as opposed to anything pre-ordained by the existing establishment.

Dhirubhai Ambani came from a no-name village in Gujarat notwithstanding his highly educated and capable sons at the helm today, and Sunil Mittal and his brothers, though their father was a businessman already and a Congress MP, were modest bicycle parts manufacturers in hometown Jullunder a scarce 20 years ago.

The brothers Mittal went on to create a telecommunications behemoth and storm into the top ten corporate entities in India, going to over $5 billion in turnover with dizzying speed, and then doubling it again (market value today is over $ 33 billion). And till very recently, they stood at the edge of effecting a $ 23 billion merger with South Africa’s MTN that would serve 200 million customers.

That our home-grown Mittals, the Ambanis, Azim Premji, Narayana Murthy and company, the Singh brothers of Ranbaxy, the Mahindras etc. have done it in a politically suspicious, highly regulated and uncomprehending bureaucratic environment, is all the more creditable.

Other fabled second and third generation players like the Tatas and Birlas have also accomplished much, given a cautious and controlled step-by-step approach to market reforms at all times.

And of course, NRI Steel Baron Laxmi Mittal has demonstrated what can be done by a second-generation businessman without the fetters of Indian command and control to hamper things.

I find myself wondering what might our entrepreneurs have done already with the brakes off! Of course there have been subversions and scams, big ones since 1991, but just because some will abuse a liberal market-centric approach, how can we refuse to play?

Mr. Sunil Mittal and Brothers are stymied elsewhere as well. Bringing in the most successful “pile it high and sell it cheap” mass-marketer in America, namely Walmart, as partners in their retail venture, is viewed by our policy makers, not with joy it should elicit, but with trepidation.

Instead, they favour a self-serving nationalist lobby in favour of reserving retail for domestic players even though it is doubtful if they have access to either the massive finances required or the necessary expertise for organised retail on a grand scale.

Most of our other big companies are facing similar Governmental blocks on what they can and cannot do on top of a highly taxed environment riddled with infrastructure bottlenecks and shortages.

All in all, if we are to face up to the demands of the future we cannot continue to make deliberately dwarfish policy. If we are not yet ready for universal foreign exchange convertibility on the capital account, we might consider devising a second track for our top ten corporate players at least. We should grant them special privileges and backing by way of a soft launch of capital account convertibility.

We can monitor progress to see how it works in a limited context before enlarging the space on a phased basis for others just as we have done already on the current account. This shouldn’t be anathema because we have already declared that we will go in for a convertible currency in much less than a decade.

The Government, in which the PM and FM have already pronounced themselves in favour of the Bharti-MTN deal, should now take the lead in reviving it on South Africa’s terms. After all, all they want is to be able to trade in one of their biggest corporations on their own bourses. How can we fault them for that? Would we like to see a Tata or Reliance bought-over or merged with a foreign entity without that option?

Let us remember we only liberalised in the face of a World Bank ultimatum in 1991 when we were practically bankrupt. But we haven’t done badly because of it since. Maybe it’s time to act of our own volition this time.

(1,055 words)

4th October 2009
Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Op-Ed Page Leader in The Pioneer on 7th October 2009 as "The way to the future". Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and is archived there under Columnists.

Time to scale up!

Time to scale up!


Ma Durga, believers aver, “arrived” this year on a celestial swing, a dolna, depicted in all the puja pandals by chains descending from the heavens on either side of the idols. And the clear implication of this, to a troubled and much harried world, is that she would waft our troubles away by the displacement caused by that heavenly swinging motion.

And to cement the image of impending good times, on Dussehra/ Vijaya Dashami 2009, she also “departs” grandly, on elephant back. And this elephant or gaja as her vehicle/ Vahan, symbolises an ushering in of prosperity.

For us Indians perpetually under the yoke, prosperity generally means a lessening of our trials and tribulations as opposed to an out-and-out transformation. We are so used to living in the embrace of relative shades of grey that we dare not aspire to brazen upliftment!

So much so, that achievements and breakthroughs, such as ISRO finding hydroxyl and ice on the moon; and Leander Paes winning his 10th Tennis Grand Slam Doubles Title; have perforce to be regarded as exceptions rather than the rule.

Our own occasional stabs at greatness are in sharp contrast to the world view of the “can-do” Americans. They have a singular talent for thinking big.That they also routinely gather up the best human capital available globally, accounts for their other great characteristic-innovation; and what they themselves call “American ingenuity”.

It must be a matter of some pride that many of the individuals that make up the tapestry of American achievement are ethnic Indians. Of course, this luminescence comes from the export of our best and brightest and the only consolation is that out well of talent does, in fact, run deep.

That is how the success of Chandrayan I comes to pass. But this achievement, like Leander Paes’ consistency, or Pankaj Advani’s winning of every conceivable title in World Billiards, or Vishwanathan Anand’s long reign in International Chess, or the virtuosity of Sachin Tendulkar with a cricket bat; is still far less than we ought to aspire to as an ancient culture of a billion plus souls. But to do so, we need to learn from the experts without reservation and unleash our potential.

A crushed and humiliated Japan after WW II, was remade in the American image by General Douglas MacArthur. Japan accepted the challenge of its changed circumstances and worked its way back to economic prosperity, albeit in the fields of electronics, automobile and two-wheeler engineering/manufacturing in the main. But in these fields they have long been world-beaters, at least in volume and mass market terms and are now climbing the luxury charts too.

So much so, that in the Koreans, the Chinese, the Singaporeans, the Malays and the Thais, you find very able imitators of the original imitator, Japan, with suitable modifications that play to their individual strengths, but with that same export oriented will to prosperity. That they all serve the Americans and their market to an overwhelming degree, is a specific vulnerability of their model seen in 2009, but we know that already.

Here, in India, driven primarily by a large and under-serviced domestic market, we have huge possibilities begging to be addressed. But first, amongst a logjam of other pent up needs, we have to deliver cutting-edge technology for once! And this, along with quality, reliability and sufficient capacity - to get away, from our “shortage” psychosis left over from the Licence-Permit Raj. And we have to do so in manufacturing, infrastructure and services alike, to achieve that most necessary quantum leap into the desirable and state-of-the-art, rather than languishing forever in the land of jogar and make-do.

Japan with its initially tinny cars and low-end and unreliable electronics, was also once derided as the fountain of all that is “cheap and nasty,” and some of that low quality opprobrium, the dangerous corner-cutting, attaches to Chinese goods today.

But in time, it is repeatedly seen, such problems recede in the face of a national determination to excel. We might be the product of a resurgent neo-colonialism and its patronising pushing of “intermediate technology” solutions designed to facilitate the selling of imported high-end goods and services to us in perpetuity. We also flaunt a third-world exceptionism, sometimes cloaked in fashionable “green” raiments, but it is motivated local collaboration to keep us desiring, only “appropriate”, translation- second-rate, solutions.

We need to view such subversive theses and their spokesmen with suspicion. And subject them to the same scrutiny we presently reserve for all those mega initiatives that may actually catapult us into the big league. A case in point is the recent observations of the Vice-President of the French senate’s committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence Mr. Chevenement, also a former Defence and Home Minister of France, who stated it is not China that would give the thumbs down to India acquiring a permanent seat in the UNSC.

China apparently sees India as another welcome Asian addition to the Security Council. And alternative European collaborators in the high-technology stakes, Britain and France, are not opposed to India’s entry either. This leaves the US and Russia. And so, we must try to fathom why they would want to keep India out?!

But intrinsically too, we are chronically suspicious of prosperity and power and thus easy to manipulate. It is a hangover of recent decades of failed socialism certainly, but also the ravages to the psyche suffered by a long subordinated people.

But the time may have come to put all this behind us. Dan Brown’s new million selling book on Masonic Symbols in Washington DC has put astrology back in fashion. Our own celebrity astrologer Bejan Daruwala has long predicted India will emerge as a “superpower” in the next few years after all.

Meanwhile, as per Vedic astrology, Saturn has recently moved from a most difficult placement in Leo to a much nicer berth in Virgo, where it will stay for the next two and half years. And coincidentally, India’s mahadasha has just changed from Venus to that of the Sun, associated almost always with growth and betterment. This mahadasha is only six years long, unlike the Venusian twenty; but if it provokes bold thinking and causes us to dare to scale up, it is time enough for the progress and prosperity we all so fervently pray for.

(1,051 words)

Vijaya Dashami
28th September, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Op-Ed Leader in The Pioneer on September 30th, 2009 entitled "Time to raise the bar". Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and is archived there under Columnists.

Three Coins In The Fountain

Three Coins In The Fountain


Romantics throw coins into wishing wells and fountains. The Trevi in Rome is a particular favourite. But such wishes as accompany those myriad coins, despite the illogic of it, are sometimes, some say always, answered. In the Indian context, there are at least three wishes and hopes that have caught the public’s fancy in recent days.

Number one would be the opposite of our woeful lack of military preparedness should China decide to push into Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim. They have walked into, or fired, flown and littered in, all of the above lately, and found no one on our side to object.

Some, including the Prime Minister, the NSA, our Lah-di-Dah helmsmen at the MEA, and a section of the media, would have us believe this is nothing to worry about now that we are in 2009 and not 1962. But, as far as I know, the law of the jungle has not changed in the interim.

If one listens to what retiring service chiefs let slip routinely, coupled with nuclear scientists casting aspersions on our much vaunted nuclear deterrent, our level of preparedness to beat China back-is about the same as it was in 1962. Then too, Pandit Nehru and Defence Minister Krishna Menon were dismissive about the Chinese threat.

And let us not forget that in 2009 we have to reckon with China’s well documented encirclement policy too, using the Pakistanis, the Nepalis, the Bangladeshis, the Srilankans, the high seas, and even the Burmese!

And also note the insurrections they are fanning on the inside - in the North East, among the Maoists, via the Pakis and the Nepalis. Besides, the Khalistanis are reportedly active once again. And the Pakistani sponsored terrorism continues unabated.

We need to urgently beef up every law and order and national security force/agency from the police and intelligence to the para-military, the commando units, the armed forces and their support systems; and equip them with generous quantities of the best weaponry and logistics available. We also need to sharply upgrade our own defence/nuclear manufacturing facilities including those that can be developed faster and better by the private sector alongside.

This entails at least a doubling of the defence budget from present levels. China, an economy over three times as large as ours, currently spends 4.3% of its GDP on Defence and it would be silly to suggest it is doing so without purpose. India, on the other hand, spends less than 3% of its GDP, even after increasing it 34% in Budget 2009-10.

To gain any kind of parity with China, we need to enhance our spends to about 10% of GDP in short order, or about $ 100 billion annually. Most of the new money should go towards modernisation and expansion of armed strength of numbers as well as access and deployment oriented military roads, airports, harbours, surveillance equipment and other infrastructure; which will, coincidentally, also benefit civil society and commerce just for being built.

The Government could also introduce tax free Defence Bonds paying a competitive rate of interest. And such Defence Bonds should also welcome our unfathomable reserves of Black Money, including returning hawala money from abroad, no questions asked.

The second debate that is much in the news concerns the size of our government itself and its gargantuan expenditure. It has grown to truly worrisome proportions, and similar runaway but inefficient statism was partially responsible for the economic collapse of our erstwhile mentor, the USSR.

While token efforts to cut expenses under “austerity” drives are commendable, they are not nearly enough. To really bring down recurring costs we need to downsize government and privatise as many parts of it as possible. Many new initiatives in the core sector may still need initial government investment, though recent private sector successes in the fields of oil and gas and increasingly in steel and power seem to suggest otherwise.

But it is seen that several older government owned core sector behemoths are now doing well. They need to be offloaded to public investment and listing on the bourses. Many that have already gone public are showing good results and far greater management accountability.

The third issue creating a buzz is the disbelieving optimism arising out of a “V” shaped recovery on the bourses that has confounded many expert doom merchants. And an FII influx of USD 9 billion so far this year is also nothing to sniff at. But the big question is, will it last?

No one can tell you about day to day fluctuations with certainty, but the point to be understood is that this next decade is going to be the decade of infrastructure and modernisation in India. And this transforming endeavour will suck in enormous investment that cannot but help boost the economy and keep it growing at a healthy clip of anywhere between 6 to 9 per cent per annum.

So as things stand in the world, India’s is a growth story second only to China. And some argue that is why China will not upset the applecart with war. That might turn out to be right and yet needs to be seen as cold comfort. Because China seems determined to pressurise all our bilateral negotiations and contain India’s aspirations in a multilateral context as well.

Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly is about to hold its annual summit in New York. The world’s leaders and diplomats will assemble to make and listen to speeches. They will discuss the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the apparent inability of the world to stop it.

Iran, the latest designated bad boy will be there. China will be there to protect North Korea and Pakistan. China will also side with Iran, and Russia will concur. Libya will be there to underscore its reformed status. Political correctness will rule the roost. Everyone will avoid remarks that are liable to sharpen the North-South Divide.

The Security Council will also be there. So what if it is reduced to a checkmated chess game.

India will be a non-presence as usual, perfect at being there in a manner as good as not being there. But then New York in the autumn can be very pleasant, and one might just find a wishing well and a coin to drop into it.

(1,052 words)

19th September 2009
Gautam Mukherjee


Published as OP-Ed Page Leader on 21st September 2009 entitled "Enter the dragon". Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and archived there under Columnists.