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