Prunes and Prisms
It has been quite a year for blood, betrayal, lies and crime. Sometimes, when the cascading bad news turns into an avalanche, we, the educated but ordinary, the informed but powerless, may look for solace. We can suckle comfort out of love if we have it, or from literature, unfazed by the passage of time, even making up a wad satisfying enough to chew the cud with. We can mine it, going deeper to the mother lode of dead languages, from whence it came.
Of course, there’s always the high road and the low road. And sometimes the low road doesn’t do half badly. Notwithstanding the high-brow British Admiralty Officer, gold braid gleaming across the Naval Whites, Britannia did rule the restless waves, for a full century after Trafalgar. And this, without losing even a single battle! Britannia did so, using formulaic quantities of the fabled “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash”.
But as Annus Horribilis 2008 grinds towards a close, we may need to remind ourselves of certain fundamentals that seem to have eluded the mighty. This even as the world’s ordinary people huddle, like beasts sheltering from a storm, cringing under the whip arm of inimical fortune, hoping for betterment in 2009.
Many, here and around the globe, are facing calibrations of financial pressure, losing homes, jobs, contracts, feeling suicidal, and even slipping off the mortal coil altogether.
Alongside this financial purgatory, this crushing destruction of self-worth, we have had to endure terrorist threat, insecurity, fear for loved ones vulnerable to senseless attack, contemplate the spectre of sudden death.
But even as we cast about for rescue, flailing for stability, hoping; we are met with unrelenting, inexhaustible, political chicanery, chaotic governance, insensitivity and animalistic opportunism. It must be admitted, however that “there is narcissism about insecurity,” as Lauren Laverne, a BBC presenter put it. We the members of the Indian public, protected by the scantiest ratio (1.45:1000) of police personnel per thousand, less than half the global average, are yet, no doubt, narcissistic about our personal safety. But how much more intensely must the self-love run amongst our amply protected politicians?
Yes, it has been quite a year for blood, betrayal, lies and crime. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of White Collar Criminals have made off with hard-earned investments, placed in their fiduciary trust, Bernie Madoff fashion.
Bernard Madoff was a trusted money-man for forty years, investing billions from European and Swiss Banks, from American Charities and Celebrities. He is 70 now, and facing twenty years of prison time. He has fraudulently lost 50 billion dollars in a grand Ponzi Scheme. But this man was considered one of the very best. Till recently, he was Chairman of NASDAQ and adviser to the Government of America on, ironically, how to deal with financial scams.
But we are no longer surprised. Madoff is just the latest in a long line of appalling developments. We are bracing for more. Newsweek has put it at four trillion American Dollars, or 7 per cent of the world’s GDP, needed to make the global season of bailouts effective. And all this money needs to be found, pledged, and spent now and within two years.
But this is already about the cure, and we haven’t quite finished discussing the disease. There is a drought of integrity in high places. It has become hard to believe anybody. How is it that Integrity came to be side-lined so comprehensively? Did the Movers and Shakers really imagine they could render it obsolete? Is this what the Age of Click and Mouse has come to?
Yes it’s truly been a landmark year for grand larceny and reckless brigandage; a year of pirates and desperadoes, of system failures and chaos. And there is no clear answer to that age old posit: “who will protect us from the protectors”. You can vary the question: ergo, “who will watch the watchers/who will guard the guards/ Quis custodiet ipsos custodies”; but don’t expect an actual answer. If there was a viable, incorruptible answer, we wouldn’t still be asking. So what if Roman poet/satirist Juvenal put it down in the first century A.D.
As for comfort, it might be appropriate to take heart from a great writer whose soul was humiliated and lacerated by early want, but not so much that he failed to extract wry humour and touching emotion from adversity, penury, bleakness and blight. All this in the smoggy twilight of a full-blown Victorian Industrial Revolution.
Charles Dickens was only 12 when his father, mother and siblings were whisked off to Debtor’s Prison. It was 1824, and they went to the infamous Marshalsea. Charles himself was assigned to work off some of the debt at Warren’s Blacking Factory. Charles’ father John, a clerk at The Naval Pay Office, and his family, were released when his finances improved a little. And Charles was able to go back to school. But this experience marked and informed all that Dickens wrote over a long and illustrious career.
Some of it, was not about the inequity, or tragic circumstance. It was about helplessness and perhaps, the whimsy of amusing oneself as best as one could under the circumstances. In Little Dorrit, set in a Debtor’s Prison, Dickens writes: “Papa. Potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism.” It makes you purse and stretch your lips over the words as you read them and benefit from a simple amusement for paupers.
But Dickens wrote about money quite directly too. To wit, putting this in Mr. Micawber’s mouth: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness”. It sounds idyllic in this season of savage de-leveraging and erstwhile bumper profits using borrowed money, but it must be remembered Mr. Micawber, from David Copperfield, was, in fact, sent to prison for his debts.
Or, this little primer for today’s Wall Street: “A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match”.
What else? Perhaps, just this one from his A Christmas Carol. ... “A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!"
(1,055 words)
December 19th, 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in The Pioneer on 30th December 2008 as "Good riddance to 2008" and online at www.dailypioneer.com and also archived there under Columnists.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Jannat & Jahannum
Jannat and Jahannum
Pondering the Cosmos is weighty stuff at any time. But sometimes it is complicated further by the same words conveying different meanings to different people. The Pakistani jihadi connotation of the Urdu for Heaven and Hell, namely Jannat and Jahannum are such words.
But understanding the Pakistani jihadi take on Heaven and Hell could hold the key to their fantabulous thinking. It can explain the ghastly and savage use of 13 year-old suicide bombers in Afghanistan, for example. And it may also shed light on the missing purity of intent behind another much abused Urdu word: Shaheed.
These are special, revered, mystic words. They are understood differently by those who follow the inclusive Sufi tradition, as do the vast majority of Muslims in India, and those, across the border, who get their vengeful perspective from Saudi-financed Wahhabi Madrasas and hard-line theological Ulooms.
Almost every Islamic terrorist grouping, including the Taliban and the Al Qaeda are spawned, trained or supported by persons with this mindset. It is this blood-thirsty, “Infidel” murdering version of Jannat and Jahannum that is universally understood and subscribed to in the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI.
So fine as the words are, they need to be understood just as men on Lahore streets do. But words, as we know, often mutate in transmission, let alone translation. They wing across languages and races, cross oceans and continents, picking up sights, smells, angers, hurts, defining memories, and inevitably, the winds of change. They can also be deliberately twisted to suit political or ideological purposes.
Thus it is, that an indoctrination and radicalisation process has been maturing and marinating for over two decades already. Because, it was about then that Pakistan began recruiting its rank and file from the Madrasas--ever since the late President Zia Ul Haq’s drive towards a more focussed and calculable Islamism with the tacit backing of Saudi Arabia.
The Islamisation was instituted, ostensibly, as backlash, after Pakistan’s earlier experiments with democracy; even if it did profess Socialist, Nationalist and anti-Indian sentiments. But this democratic interlude ended because it dared to lean less than expected on the Armed Forces, and even less on support from the Maulvis and Ulemas.
When Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was eventually overthrown, not only did the Army take over once again, but his rule was characterised as deviant and louche. He was called corrupt, apostate (ridda), and was thought to be altogether deserving of meeting his end on the gallows.
The jihadi notion of Jannat, that is attracting so many young followers, is more than Heaven, that spacious “Mansions in the sky” home of a Christian heavenly father. Jannat here means a hedonistic Paradise, where all austerities and sacrifices on Earth are eternally compensated. It has great physical beauty and tangible perfection. It is green and well watered. It contains an inexhaustible chorus line of nubile and well-endowed nymphets, wiggling with welcome and promise.
This Jannat then surely has the greater power to lure the credulous than the flat Biblical vision of Heaven with its lyre-playing angels in curls and hoary retainers with white eyebrows. Besides, the afterlife in Christianity is daunting, with the very real prospect of Judgement Day looming large.
As for Hell, the Anglo-Saxon Latinate conception of Hell was also formidable once, backed by an Inquisition and torture-laden Witch-Hunts. It terrified the ignorant and unlettered. But today, its intolerance and barbarism is gone. But gone also is its retributive artillery. It stands emasculated by Science, Logic, Mockery, Modernity, and most of all, by a general abandonment.
Hindu Hell? Hard to tell what and where it is, especially when you put it in context of a religion based on reincarnation. And Hindu Heaven? Perhaps it is closest to an Open Forum of Gods and Goddesses, major and minor, demi-gods, Devlok, Demons, Apsaras. It is, without doubt, the greatest do-it-yourself karmic opportunity in the Cosmos.
But if Hindu Heaven is an obscure and under-signposted Parlok , and its Hell is determined by your own thoughts and deeds, there is no such vagueness in the Pakistani lexicon.
The jihadi idiomatic meaning of Jahannum is not just Hell but hell-fire and Perdition. But, the key point is that you don’t go to Jahannum for murdering the Infidel. In fact Jahannum is specifically lying in wait for “disbelievers”. So you go to jihadi Hell, however virtuous you may seem, only if you are Apostate.
So, to the simple-minded and rough hewn, the jihadi Jannat and Jahannum shooting match may well appear to have far greater spark. Particularly if one is very poor and turning terrorist looks like a viable career option. After all, it offers guts and glory, respect, money, guns, women. It cossets flotsam and jetsam. It imbues the neglected with meaning and purpose. It paints gaudy visions of Martyrdom and Paradise.
But nobody in Pakistan’s jihadi circles, identified as the “epicentre of terrorism” seems to notice the deeply anachronistic and medieval nature of a religious war in the “free choice” ambience of the 21st century. If they did, they would be moving fast to prevent their inevitable descent into the very bottomless Jahannum they seem hell bent on prescribing for others.
But then, theirs is an unhinged fanaticism, as bizarre as Hitler’s manic vision, and it too has world domination as its goal. And here again, would be martyrs to this “grand cause” are standing in line. They are eager for battle because they are convinced that a world dominated by Western values has become effete and too decadent to defend itself.
But the worrisome part is that this kind of thinking is not the wild and woolly fantasy of an illiterate frontier tribesman. On the contrary, it is the brain-washed and covertly defended assessment of senior state actors in the Government, Army and its instruments. This, despite all Pakistan’s red herring sophistry, designed only to mislead and bamboozle.
It is a mad gambit, but like other mad gambits, quite convinced in itself. Otherwise, Pakistan and its terrorist hordes would be aware of the looming threat of certain annihilation as the world hardens its stance. But the Jihadis, like all fanatics, will not be reasoned with. To them, it is a confrontation they expect to win against the odds. That they won’t, is mere Infidel talk, and at complete variance with what their religious conviction tells them.
(1,058 words)
15th December 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Also published in The Pioneer as "The terrorist's faith" on Wednesday, 17th December 2008 and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived at www.dailypioneer.com under Columnists.
Pondering the Cosmos is weighty stuff at any time. But sometimes it is complicated further by the same words conveying different meanings to different people. The Pakistani jihadi connotation of the Urdu for Heaven and Hell, namely Jannat and Jahannum are such words.
But understanding the Pakistani jihadi take on Heaven and Hell could hold the key to their fantabulous thinking. It can explain the ghastly and savage use of 13 year-old suicide bombers in Afghanistan, for example. And it may also shed light on the missing purity of intent behind another much abused Urdu word: Shaheed.
These are special, revered, mystic words. They are understood differently by those who follow the inclusive Sufi tradition, as do the vast majority of Muslims in India, and those, across the border, who get their vengeful perspective from Saudi-financed Wahhabi Madrasas and hard-line theological Ulooms.
Almost every Islamic terrorist grouping, including the Taliban and the Al Qaeda are spawned, trained or supported by persons with this mindset. It is this blood-thirsty, “Infidel” murdering version of Jannat and Jahannum that is universally understood and subscribed to in the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI.
So fine as the words are, they need to be understood just as men on Lahore streets do. But words, as we know, often mutate in transmission, let alone translation. They wing across languages and races, cross oceans and continents, picking up sights, smells, angers, hurts, defining memories, and inevitably, the winds of change. They can also be deliberately twisted to suit political or ideological purposes.
Thus it is, that an indoctrination and radicalisation process has been maturing and marinating for over two decades already. Because, it was about then that Pakistan began recruiting its rank and file from the Madrasas--ever since the late President Zia Ul Haq’s drive towards a more focussed and calculable Islamism with the tacit backing of Saudi Arabia.
The Islamisation was instituted, ostensibly, as backlash, after Pakistan’s earlier experiments with democracy; even if it did profess Socialist, Nationalist and anti-Indian sentiments. But this democratic interlude ended because it dared to lean less than expected on the Armed Forces, and even less on support from the Maulvis and Ulemas.
When Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was eventually overthrown, not only did the Army take over once again, but his rule was characterised as deviant and louche. He was called corrupt, apostate (ridda), and was thought to be altogether deserving of meeting his end on the gallows.
The jihadi notion of Jannat, that is attracting so many young followers, is more than Heaven, that spacious “Mansions in the sky” home of a Christian heavenly father. Jannat here means a hedonistic Paradise, where all austerities and sacrifices on Earth are eternally compensated. It has great physical beauty and tangible perfection. It is green and well watered. It contains an inexhaustible chorus line of nubile and well-endowed nymphets, wiggling with welcome and promise.
This Jannat then surely has the greater power to lure the credulous than the flat Biblical vision of Heaven with its lyre-playing angels in curls and hoary retainers with white eyebrows. Besides, the afterlife in Christianity is daunting, with the very real prospect of Judgement Day looming large.
As for Hell, the Anglo-Saxon Latinate conception of Hell was also formidable once, backed by an Inquisition and torture-laden Witch-Hunts. It terrified the ignorant and unlettered. But today, its intolerance and barbarism is gone. But gone also is its retributive artillery. It stands emasculated by Science, Logic, Mockery, Modernity, and most of all, by a general abandonment.
Hindu Hell? Hard to tell what and where it is, especially when you put it in context of a religion based on reincarnation. And Hindu Heaven? Perhaps it is closest to an Open Forum of Gods and Goddesses, major and minor, demi-gods, Devlok, Demons, Apsaras. It is, without doubt, the greatest do-it-yourself karmic opportunity in the Cosmos.
But if Hindu Heaven is an obscure and under-signposted Parlok , and its Hell is determined by your own thoughts and deeds, there is no such vagueness in the Pakistani lexicon.
The jihadi idiomatic meaning of Jahannum is not just Hell but hell-fire and Perdition. But, the key point is that you don’t go to Jahannum for murdering the Infidel. In fact Jahannum is specifically lying in wait for “disbelievers”. So you go to jihadi Hell, however virtuous you may seem, only if you are Apostate.
So, to the simple-minded and rough hewn, the jihadi Jannat and Jahannum shooting match may well appear to have far greater spark. Particularly if one is very poor and turning terrorist looks like a viable career option. After all, it offers guts and glory, respect, money, guns, women. It cossets flotsam and jetsam. It imbues the neglected with meaning and purpose. It paints gaudy visions of Martyrdom and Paradise.
But nobody in Pakistan’s jihadi circles, identified as the “epicentre of terrorism” seems to notice the deeply anachronistic and medieval nature of a religious war in the “free choice” ambience of the 21st century. If they did, they would be moving fast to prevent their inevitable descent into the very bottomless Jahannum they seem hell bent on prescribing for others.
But then, theirs is an unhinged fanaticism, as bizarre as Hitler’s manic vision, and it too has world domination as its goal. And here again, would be martyrs to this “grand cause” are standing in line. They are eager for battle because they are convinced that a world dominated by Western values has become effete and too decadent to defend itself.
But the worrisome part is that this kind of thinking is not the wild and woolly fantasy of an illiterate frontier tribesman. On the contrary, it is the brain-washed and covertly defended assessment of senior state actors in the Government, Army and its instruments. This, despite all Pakistan’s red herring sophistry, designed only to mislead and bamboozle.
It is a mad gambit, but like other mad gambits, quite convinced in itself. Otherwise, Pakistan and its terrorist hordes would be aware of the looming threat of certain annihilation as the world hardens its stance. But the Jihadis, like all fanatics, will not be reasoned with. To them, it is a confrontation they expect to win against the odds. That they won’t, is mere Infidel talk, and at complete variance with what their religious conviction tells them.
(1,058 words)
15th December 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Also published in The Pioneer as "The terrorist's faith" on Wednesday, 17th December 2008 and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived at www.dailypioneer.com under Columnists.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Universal Exports
Universal Exports
The way Ian Fleming wrote it, “James Bond (007)”, the fictional British MI-6 spy with a “licence to kill”, pretended, on occasion, to be a dapper travelling salesman from “Universal Exports”, selling, one knows not what.
Now if JB, fast forwarding from the Cold War to present times, was called Hafiz Mohamed Sayeed instead, and was working for the ISI/LeT/Jamaat/Pak Army/Civilian leadership/Al Quaeda, and used a similar Universal Exports card, because it did sort of describe his outgoing nature and was broadly descriptive of what he did; he wouldn’t be able to say what his company really sold either.
Of course, Fleming’s laconic “Export” subterfuge was never enthusiastically defended, and was always something of a see-through fig-leaf, for all, except the likes of comical East European Customs officials who have no English, and were expected to be satisfied with the moniker, provided “James” didn’t start leaping over the conveyor belts firing his Walther PPK.
But enjoyable as the Bond series still is, standing in for comfortable thrills and spills in an uncertain world, one doesn’t really want to endure the “B Movie” version playing out in real life.
This one comes with moustachioed and bearded villains, uniformed oil-can Harrys, shifty-eyed heavies in suits, swearing and oath-taking militia with rotted middle teeth and yellowed fangs, pathan-suit and woolly hat clad sarkari journos with aquiline noses, other commentators in banker’s pin-stripes, all reasonably intoning orchestrated lies in Oxonian accents, nicely laced with menace.
Pakistan loves calling “Hindustan” names. Some are rather inventive, like the hybrid “Saffron Zionists”, updated after the latest Mumbai attacks. They comment derisively on our incompetence and suggest we are trying to shift the blame for home-grown troubles across their green and pure borders.
A substantial section of the Pakistani media is put out with Indian “belligerence”. It is amazed that we dare summon their ISI Chief or that we demand the extradition of Indian criminals and terrorist warlords nestled in their midst. In short, the Pakistani intelligentsia can’t understand why they are being accused at all, and quite a few analysts are convinced we have staged the Mumbai terrorist attack ourselves in order to malign Pakistan.
But then, such fantasy-mongering seems to be an uniquely Islamic phenomenon. It is often so outrageous that it would give Joseph Goebbels, the club-footed sex maniac who was Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, an inferiority complex.
When Iraq was being demolished during the Second Gulf War, their Minister of Information, Muhammad Al Sahhaf, dubbed “Comical Ali” by the World Press, regaled satellite TV with unsinkable but hilarious hyperbole on the supposedly grand successes of the Iraqi Armed Forces. And President Ahmenidajad of Iran, never threatens in twenty-first century terms. No, for him it’s always about dismemberments and beheadings.
Some of us will recall listening to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s feverish ranting in 1967, claiming the invasion of Israel during the Six Day War. In reality, the Egyptian Army abandoned 400 brand new tanks on the Golan Heights along with the Heights themselves, and ran away. They did the same with Gaza, abandoned it, but you wouldn’t know it if you listened to dear old Nasser’s broadcasts.
Ignominy and defeat never seems to stop Islamic fantasists. In Pakistan, true to form, the counter propaganda is in full flow. Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed, Head of the banned LeT, responsible for the attack on Indian Parliament, on the Red Fort, on the Mumbai local trains, and now, the hotels, station, hospital, streets, and Chabad House; is protesting his innocence.
Mr. Sayeed is flooding the airwaves with denial. He says he cannot understand why his good name is being besmirched. The Jamaat ud Daawa, where he sits these days, is engaged only in social work, and all of Pakistan knows it.
President Zardari is doing his bit too. He says he doubts that the terrorists are Pakistani at all and muses they may be “stateless people”. He says he might have to abandon the fight against the Taliban and the Al Quaeda and concentrate his troops on the inexplicably angry Indians instead. He says this to the visiting Condoleeza Rice, to put her off her stroke. And Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani chimes in with an offer of the “fullest cooperation and assistance to bring the perpetrators to justice”. It doesn’t hurt to make promises, and Gilani knows it.
Everyone in the Pakistani Government has an insatiable appetite for “evidence” and “proof” though. You’d think they were sticklers for the law if you didn’t know better. Still, it doesn’t stop them scoffing at any and all evidence and proof submitted. They always find fault with its probity, efficacy, veracity, accuracy and anything else they can think of to trash it. This, from what the US Congressional Committee on the Prevention of Terrorism calls the “intersection of terrorism and nuclear threat” is not as funny as it may seem.
And Pakistan’s idea of democracy is a number of mutually secretive power centres. The civilian government’s influence, now threatened by military coup already, is limited to sections of Islamabad. Most of the rest of the country is parcelled out between bands of marauding terrorists and the Armed Forces/ ISI. There are also tribal areas and other bits and pieces which are only Pakistan on paper.
But perhaps this time America will not be looking for a certificate of veracity from Pakistan. They may be working towards a relentless end game even as the Pakistani establishment are falling about wheezing over their latest caper.
If they stop to think, they might realise they won’t get away with it this time. Perhaps it will occur to them that the outgoing US administration, with barely 50 days to go in office, is not going to be the one to deliver the comeuppance. But the new President could well have other plans.
One Mr. Robert Kagan from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, might be reading the Crystal Ball for Pakistan. In a recent Op-Ed piece in The New York Times he says, “perhaps they need a further incentive-like the prospect of seeing parts of their country placed in an international receivership”.
Ah but what parts would that be? The bits with the nuclear facilities in it one hopes. Because, if it’s Al Quaeda, Taliban and other assorted terrorists America is after, they might just have to occupy the whole country!
(1,056 words)
December 5th, 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
The way Ian Fleming wrote it, “James Bond (007)”, the fictional British MI-6 spy with a “licence to kill”, pretended, on occasion, to be a dapper travelling salesman from “Universal Exports”, selling, one knows not what.
Now if JB, fast forwarding from the Cold War to present times, was called Hafiz Mohamed Sayeed instead, and was working for the ISI/LeT/Jamaat/Pak Army/Civilian leadership/Al Quaeda, and used a similar Universal Exports card, because it did sort of describe his outgoing nature and was broadly descriptive of what he did; he wouldn’t be able to say what his company really sold either.
Of course, Fleming’s laconic “Export” subterfuge was never enthusiastically defended, and was always something of a see-through fig-leaf, for all, except the likes of comical East European Customs officials who have no English, and were expected to be satisfied with the moniker, provided “James” didn’t start leaping over the conveyor belts firing his Walther PPK.
But enjoyable as the Bond series still is, standing in for comfortable thrills and spills in an uncertain world, one doesn’t really want to endure the “B Movie” version playing out in real life.
This one comes with moustachioed and bearded villains, uniformed oil-can Harrys, shifty-eyed heavies in suits, swearing and oath-taking militia with rotted middle teeth and yellowed fangs, pathan-suit and woolly hat clad sarkari journos with aquiline noses, other commentators in banker’s pin-stripes, all reasonably intoning orchestrated lies in Oxonian accents, nicely laced with menace.
Pakistan loves calling “Hindustan” names. Some are rather inventive, like the hybrid “Saffron Zionists”, updated after the latest Mumbai attacks. They comment derisively on our incompetence and suggest we are trying to shift the blame for home-grown troubles across their green and pure borders.
A substantial section of the Pakistani media is put out with Indian “belligerence”. It is amazed that we dare summon their ISI Chief or that we demand the extradition of Indian criminals and terrorist warlords nestled in their midst. In short, the Pakistani intelligentsia can’t understand why they are being accused at all, and quite a few analysts are convinced we have staged the Mumbai terrorist attack ourselves in order to malign Pakistan.
But then, such fantasy-mongering seems to be an uniquely Islamic phenomenon. It is often so outrageous that it would give Joseph Goebbels, the club-footed sex maniac who was Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, an inferiority complex.
When Iraq was being demolished during the Second Gulf War, their Minister of Information, Muhammad Al Sahhaf, dubbed “Comical Ali” by the World Press, regaled satellite TV with unsinkable but hilarious hyperbole on the supposedly grand successes of the Iraqi Armed Forces. And President Ahmenidajad of Iran, never threatens in twenty-first century terms. No, for him it’s always about dismemberments and beheadings.
Some of us will recall listening to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s feverish ranting in 1967, claiming the invasion of Israel during the Six Day War. In reality, the Egyptian Army abandoned 400 brand new tanks on the Golan Heights along with the Heights themselves, and ran away. They did the same with Gaza, abandoned it, but you wouldn’t know it if you listened to dear old Nasser’s broadcasts.
Ignominy and defeat never seems to stop Islamic fantasists. In Pakistan, true to form, the counter propaganda is in full flow. Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed, Head of the banned LeT, responsible for the attack on Indian Parliament, on the Red Fort, on the Mumbai local trains, and now, the hotels, station, hospital, streets, and Chabad House; is protesting his innocence.
Mr. Sayeed is flooding the airwaves with denial. He says he cannot understand why his good name is being besmirched. The Jamaat ud Daawa, where he sits these days, is engaged only in social work, and all of Pakistan knows it.
President Zardari is doing his bit too. He says he doubts that the terrorists are Pakistani at all and muses they may be “stateless people”. He says he might have to abandon the fight against the Taliban and the Al Quaeda and concentrate his troops on the inexplicably angry Indians instead. He says this to the visiting Condoleeza Rice, to put her off her stroke. And Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani chimes in with an offer of the “fullest cooperation and assistance to bring the perpetrators to justice”. It doesn’t hurt to make promises, and Gilani knows it.
Everyone in the Pakistani Government has an insatiable appetite for “evidence” and “proof” though. You’d think they were sticklers for the law if you didn’t know better. Still, it doesn’t stop them scoffing at any and all evidence and proof submitted. They always find fault with its probity, efficacy, veracity, accuracy and anything else they can think of to trash it. This, from what the US Congressional Committee on the Prevention of Terrorism calls the “intersection of terrorism and nuclear threat” is not as funny as it may seem.
And Pakistan’s idea of democracy is a number of mutually secretive power centres. The civilian government’s influence, now threatened by military coup already, is limited to sections of Islamabad. Most of the rest of the country is parcelled out between bands of marauding terrorists and the Armed Forces/ ISI. There are also tribal areas and other bits and pieces which are only Pakistan on paper.
But perhaps this time America will not be looking for a certificate of veracity from Pakistan. They may be working towards a relentless end game even as the Pakistani establishment are falling about wheezing over their latest caper.
If they stop to think, they might realise they won’t get away with it this time. Perhaps it will occur to them that the outgoing US administration, with barely 50 days to go in office, is not going to be the one to deliver the comeuppance. But the new President could well have other plans.
One Mr. Robert Kagan from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, might be reading the Crystal Ball for Pakistan. In a recent Op-Ed piece in The New York Times he says, “perhaps they need a further incentive-like the prospect of seeing parts of their country placed in an international receivership”.
Ah but what parts would that be? The bits with the nuclear facilities in it one hopes. Because, if it’s Al Quaeda, Taliban and other assorted terrorists America is after, they might just have to occupy the whole country!
(1,056 words)
December 5th, 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Accountability...
Accountability…
We are being told now that actionable and reasonably precise intelligence on the recent Mumbai terror attacks came from various sources, for up to a month before the outrage. This suggests not only that the Indian state is soft but also that it is compromised, perhaps deliberately so, and suffers from lack of accountability. But the shortcomings of the Indians are like a Teddy Bear’s Picnic compared to the rogue accomplishments of Pakistan and the global threat it poses.
Yes, India was tipped off about the impending attacks by the US government, the state government of Gujarat, the Gujarat and Mumbai based Fishermen’s Associations, and home-grown intelligence agencies RAW and IB. And the information from the US specified some of the targets, the identity and origin of the attackers, their sea-borne method of entry, coordinates of their ship, and even the date of the expected attack.
Everyone knew in advance--the Government of India, the Maharashtra Government, the attacked hotels, the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, the State Police and its Anti-terror Squad.
But not only did they nobody act, but several precautionary security measures set up in response to the warnings were withdrawn a day or two before the attacks actually came. Inferential conjectures point towards a local and highly efficient fifth column, with reach in high places. It has the signature style of the Mumbai underworld, long rumoured to be hand in glove with certain influential Mumbai politicians. It is this same shadowy force that appears to have organised the detailed and professional reconnaissance. They also obtained route maps, detailed floor plans of the hotels, helped to cache the arms, ammunition, grenades, rocket launchers, RDX, obtain fake identification, real cash and credit cards.
This will be difficult to prove, despite the best efforts of not only the Indians, but also the American FBI, the British Scotland Yard and Shin Bet from Israel, all working on the case now. But, much valuable intelligence is often a matter of inference, and Pakistan knows it won’t stand up in a court of law.
And so India, even after gathering high quality intelligence from the sole terrorist taken alive, is getting nowhere in its efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice. Pakistan has shrugged off reports of the POK-based Lashkar-i-Tayeba being responsible, despite its established links to Al Quaeda and the Taliban. They can’t see how this makes the State of Pakistan culpable in any way.
It has trotted out its time-tested alibi of plausible deniability, but this time with a Jeffrey Archerish twist in the tail. Pakistan has threatened to move 100,000 of its troops to the Eastern border with India if pressed too hard, moving them from the Islamic militant infested Afghanistan border!
But then, why should India be surprised? After all, Pakistan has had this device of plausible deniability in place since 1946. It was then that their provisional government put in Army regulars in tribal-style Pathan Suits to occupy half of Kashmir.
They did it again, during General Pervez Musharraf’s misadventure in Kargil. Once again, India found itself killing Pakistan Army regulars in battle, but wearing Mujahideen disguises. What these Mujahideen were doing this time with Pakistan Army identity papers on them, is just another matter of inconvenient detail.
Pakistan has already fought three unsuccessful conventional wars with India, the last being over Kargil, before switching track very sharply towards the war “of a thousand cuts”. This same surreptitious technique has also served Pakistan well in its efforts to pressurise the West, right from the days when it was inducted by America to train and support the Afghan Mujahideen that successfully sent the Soviets packing.
Over the last decade however, Pakistan has gone into wholesale business for itself and emerged as the world’s most successful terror factory, recently characterised as an “international migraine” by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Pakistan is now a past-master at using proxies, irregulars and disguised armed forces to effect governmental distance and plausible deniability. They are also very good at brazening it out under diplomatic pressure as demonstrated after 9/11, extracting more money and arms from America, even as it kept its terror network intact.
President Musharraf, a consummate ex-commando, adopted a raft of techniques that included consorting with offshore radical Islamic and criminal groups, aiding the radicalisation of Muslim youth globally and the creation of sleeper cells. He also successfully internationalised the demographics, so that Pakistani nationals are not the only ones who turn up in the terror-net worldwide.
Pakistan now hosts a veritable Jehadi International, that includes ethnic Pakistani-British, Talibanised Afghans, Chechens, Pakistan’s lawless NWFP denizens, Bangladeshis- both free-lancers and the official collaborators, malcontents from Kashmir, from India’s North East, turned Muslims from other parts of India, those from Sudan, Somalia, Indonesia, Malaysia, even Muslim insurgents from China. And let us not forget Pakistan continues to host Osama Bin Laden.
To strengthen the doctrine of plausible deniability further, the Pakistan Government also collaborates with the international “Bhai” network. This underworld connection has worked to fund terrorism and insurgency with proceeds from forgery, currency counterfeiting, money-laundering, extortion, intimidation, blackmail, drug-running, prostitution and smuggling.
Other proven State run techniques include proliferation of nuclear and missile technology. This self-help laundry list complements the shameless cap-in-hand forays to the oil rich Gulf and the over-the-barrel West. The latter are also persuaded to supply arms to “fight” the very terrorism that Pakistan has turned into its most effective international calling card.
But the global worry today is not how well Pakistan has been playing the Artful Dodger, or how effectively it runs circles around a weak Indian government, but the very real threat that the radical Islamists, once ready to do the Pakistan Army and ISI’s bidding, are poised to swallow up the State itself, and seize its nuclear arsenal. One might even see a concordat emerge between the radicals and the Pakistani establishment as hinted at by Pakistan Army Chief Kiyani.
That would end Pakistan’s era of plausible deniability, but the world would then be looking at a Talibanised nuclear power. This then, is the nightmare rogue state with the very real WMD threat. The window of opportunity to stop this inevitability has to begin with neutralising Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Otherwise, the very definition of international diplomacy and accountability may have to be rewritten.
(1,051 words)
December 3rd, 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in The Pioneer on December 8th,2008 as "It's Pakistan silly!" and online at www.dailypioneer.com where it is also archived under Columnists.
We are being told now that actionable and reasonably precise intelligence on the recent Mumbai terror attacks came from various sources, for up to a month before the outrage. This suggests not only that the Indian state is soft but also that it is compromised, perhaps deliberately so, and suffers from lack of accountability. But the shortcomings of the Indians are like a Teddy Bear’s Picnic compared to the rogue accomplishments of Pakistan and the global threat it poses.
Yes, India was tipped off about the impending attacks by the US government, the state government of Gujarat, the Gujarat and Mumbai based Fishermen’s Associations, and home-grown intelligence agencies RAW and IB. And the information from the US specified some of the targets, the identity and origin of the attackers, their sea-borne method of entry, coordinates of their ship, and even the date of the expected attack.
Everyone knew in advance--the Government of India, the Maharashtra Government, the attacked hotels, the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, the State Police and its Anti-terror Squad.
But not only did they nobody act, but several precautionary security measures set up in response to the warnings were withdrawn a day or two before the attacks actually came. Inferential conjectures point towards a local and highly efficient fifth column, with reach in high places. It has the signature style of the Mumbai underworld, long rumoured to be hand in glove with certain influential Mumbai politicians. It is this same shadowy force that appears to have organised the detailed and professional reconnaissance. They also obtained route maps, detailed floor plans of the hotels, helped to cache the arms, ammunition, grenades, rocket launchers, RDX, obtain fake identification, real cash and credit cards.
This will be difficult to prove, despite the best efforts of not only the Indians, but also the American FBI, the British Scotland Yard and Shin Bet from Israel, all working on the case now. But, much valuable intelligence is often a matter of inference, and Pakistan knows it won’t stand up in a court of law.
And so India, even after gathering high quality intelligence from the sole terrorist taken alive, is getting nowhere in its efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice. Pakistan has shrugged off reports of the POK-based Lashkar-i-Tayeba being responsible, despite its established links to Al Quaeda and the Taliban. They can’t see how this makes the State of Pakistan culpable in any way.
It has trotted out its time-tested alibi of plausible deniability, but this time with a Jeffrey Archerish twist in the tail. Pakistan has threatened to move 100,000 of its troops to the Eastern border with India if pressed too hard, moving them from the Islamic militant infested Afghanistan border!
But then, why should India be surprised? After all, Pakistan has had this device of plausible deniability in place since 1946. It was then that their provisional government put in Army regulars in tribal-style Pathan Suits to occupy half of Kashmir.
They did it again, during General Pervez Musharraf’s misadventure in Kargil. Once again, India found itself killing Pakistan Army regulars in battle, but wearing Mujahideen disguises. What these Mujahideen were doing this time with Pakistan Army identity papers on them, is just another matter of inconvenient detail.
Pakistan has already fought three unsuccessful conventional wars with India, the last being over Kargil, before switching track very sharply towards the war “of a thousand cuts”. This same surreptitious technique has also served Pakistan well in its efforts to pressurise the West, right from the days when it was inducted by America to train and support the Afghan Mujahideen that successfully sent the Soviets packing.
Over the last decade however, Pakistan has gone into wholesale business for itself and emerged as the world’s most successful terror factory, recently characterised as an “international migraine” by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Pakistan is now a past-master at using proxies, irregulars and disguised armed forces to effect governmental distance and plausible deniability. They are also very good at brazening it out under diplomatic pressure as demonstrated after 9/11, extracting more money and arms from America, even as it kept its terror network intact.
President Musharraf, a consummate ex-commando, adopted a raft of techniques that included consorting with offshore radical Islamic and criminal groups, aiding the radicalisation of Muslim youth globally and the creation of sleeper cells. He also successfully internationalised the demographics, so that Pakistani nationals are not the only ones who turn up in the terror-net worldwide.
Pakistan now hosts a veritable Jehadi International, that includes ethnic Pakistani-British, Talibanised Afghans, Chechens, Pakistan’s lawless NWFP denizens, Bangladeshis- both free-lancers and the official collaborators, malcontents from Kashmir, from India’s North East, turned Muslims from other parts of India, those from Sudan, Somalia, Indonesia, Malaysia, even Muslim insurgents from China. And let us not forget Pakistan continues to host Osama Bin Laden.
To strengthen the doctrine of plausible deniability further, the Pakistan Government also collaborates with the international “Bhai” network. This underworld connection has worked to fund terrorism and insurgency with proceeds from forgery, currency counterfeiting, money-laundering, extortion, intimidation, blackmail, drug-running, prostitution and smuggling.
Other proven State run techniques include proliferation of nuclear and missile technology. This self-help laundry list complements the shameless cap-in-hand forays to the oil rich Gulf and the over-the-barrel West. The latter are also persuaded to supply arms to “fight” the very terrorism that Pakistan has turned into its most effective international calling card.
But the global worry today is not how well Pakistan has been playing the Artful Dodger, or how effectively it runs circles around a weak Indian government, but the very real threat that the radical Islamists, once ready to do the Pakistan Army and ISI’s bidding, are poised to swallow up the State itself, and seize its nuclear arsenal. One might even see a concordat emerge between the radicals and the Pakistani establishment as hinted at by Pakistan Army Chief Kiyani.
That would end Pakistan’s era of plausible deniability, but the world would then be looking at a Talibanised nuclear power. This then, is the nightmare rogue state with the very real WMD threat. The window of opportunity to stop this inevitability has to begin with neutralising Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Otherwise, the very definition of international diplomacy and accountability may have to be rewritten.
(1,051 words)
December 3rd, 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in The Pioneer on December 8th,2008 as "It's Pakistan silly!" and online at www.dailypioneer.com where it is also archived under Columnists.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Cannon-Fodder Raj
Cannon-Fodder Raj: The Treason of the Learned
In the outpouring of anguish and anger, now that Islamic terrorists have struck at the iconic and internationally interesting five-star restaurants, lounges and bedrooms of the powerful; a significant dogma of the Liberal and the Left has still been left intact.
This is not surprising, because the same dogma has been promoted relentlessly, and been taken advantage of, by, among others, Pakistani and Bangladeshi terrorist organisations and their local supporters over nearly five bloody years of UPA rule.
When Osama Bin Laden, the global Grand Master of terrorism, declared that
But the key reason for this disgraceful vulnerability is not gross intelligence failure, sluggish response, logistical inadequacy, ill-equipped constabulary or a less than high-tech armed force, but that same debilitating dogma that saps our political will. And in a functioning democracy, political will is of paramount importance. It is political will and firm direction that has kept terrorist strikes in the singular-and-never-again category in the
That dogma is the notion that the porous national security situation is a fair consequence of a bungled “heart and minds” matter at the root. Therefore, Islamic terror is, understandably, its natural consequence. Ergo, Islamic terror cannot rightfully end until the hearts and minds of brazen and perverse killers, ignorant, near illiterate adherents of medieval madrassa-fed shibboleths, and their supporters, as well as the much-deprived community they belong to; is assuaged.
Thus, implies this particular Lib-Left dogma, if we, the rest of the Indian people, want to live in peace, we must appease and satisfy our tormentors. And the preferences shown and affirmative actions taken are no more than reparations for the original stack of sins of design, omission and commission.
And, say this dogma’s adherents, similar wrong-doings need to be made good by the international community too. That is why they have been specifically targeted in this latest instance. That is why Israelis, British, Americans, other Europeans, the Japanese, Australians were killed and maimed for drawing closer to
But the West is not sentimental at the expense of its security. For it, one attack is more than enough. It is not confused about the difference between ordinary, law-abiding Muslims and the Islamic Jihadi, who must, of course, be neutralised. And to make this distinction between wheat and chaff, it does not hesitate to suspend certain civil liberties, including very strong preventive detention and interrogation practices. It does not consider aggressive monitoring of all affairs Islamic intrusive, and swiftly applies the fullest penal rigours of its laws where necessary.
But
Nevertheless, this must be why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced with ringing clarity that India’s largest minority had the first right to the nation’s developmental resources. He did not see the irony or the unfairness in his pronouncement even if most Indian Muslims are both poor and uneducated, because, naturally, there are others too. And that must also be why the Lib-Left intelligentsia that supports the UPA alliance, conveniently expects, quite without basis, the new African-American president-elect of the
The UPA version of twisted reality demands all Indians to shoulder their responsibility towards this permanently aggrieved minority community, even as it harbours, aids, abets and cheers terrorism in mosque, chaupal and home alike. We should simply mop up the blood of innocents, bury and cremate the dead, mouth platitudes for those martyred in our defence, used up like so much cannon-fodder, and then return to normality without demur. And wait for the next round of retribution from justifiably angry Jihadis.
This kind of apologist thinking is what the French call “la trahison des clercs” or the treason of the learned. It is a dangerous conceit that has positioned this country on the edge of the precipice. It threatens to destroy the morale of the bureaucracy and a unified military, para-military and police force. It divides us with its injustices and political calculations. We are so ill-governed that we can be roiled by less than a score of well indoctrinated and trained teenagers on the ground and their controllers in
In the aftermath, scapegoats in the form of the Home Minister, the National Security Adviser and the Maharashtra Chief Minister are in the process of being offered up in this current season of ongoing Assembly and forthcoming General Elections. Their successors, such as they are, can hardly do worse.
But as for getting tough with
But we may have to lose our innocence after all. The oft quoted “secular” narrative, said to be at the core of the very idea of
It is time to end this Cannon-fodder Raj that uses up its heroes to no purpose. It is time to hit back hard with the requisite political will. And if the UPA does not have a stomach for this fight, it might have to be replaced by those who do.
(1,050 words)
30th November 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in The Pioneer as "Treason of the learned" on the OP-ED Page on Tuesday, December 2,2008 and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived at www.dailypioneer.com under Columnists.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Of Free Lunches and Dutch Uncles
Of Free Lunches and Dutch Uncles
On Indian television recently, the venerable Mr. Henry Kissinger was asked if he saw the possibility of America ceding power to Asia in deciding matters of global finance. The News Channel interviewing Kissinger alluded to the manner in which old Europe ceded substantial decision-making power to America after World War II. Kissinger blandly replied that if India, or China, or indeed all of Asia, are able to do for America what America did for Europe during and after the War, then the answer would be yes.
But, as the saying goes, there are no free lunches. Even if there are indeed times you really can’t pay for lunch. So what if the meals cost rather more in the end? Dire straights give you a ferocious focus on essentials. Particularly, when even going Dutch is a no-can-do. And tough, advice-giving Dutch Uncles smoking Meerschaum pipes are anyway hard to come by. But thankfully, they’ve metamorphosed, like Kafka’s spider, into paternalistic governments instead.
Governments are today’s institutionally constituted mater and pater familias. They can feed you for sustained periods with their inexhaustible pantries and indefatigable kitchens. They have their social securities, doles, free medical schemes, subsidies, and occasionally, loan waivers too. And the full-bellied you can go about minus that squirmy sense of obligation or guilt. After all, it has generally been the other way around. The Government fed off you. You paid your taxes, direct and indirect, but it was the Hukumat that gave the orders, and you did the obeying. So now if it takes care of a mountain of your bills gone bad, why worry?
As things unfold home and abroad, it is evident that it will take trillions and trillions of US dollars to take up the slack from a stack of financial and real economies de-leveraging from multiples of forty and even seventy. This puts this money game outside the scope of private players. You need the ability to lend and issue credits against sovereign guarantees, the ability to grow your deficits as necessary, and the keys to the country’s legitimate currency presses, to deal with this.
And if this fever is to break, we all have to set to. All governments must pump-prime every enterprise and institution in need of funds. The action cannot falter or grow weary. But still, there is no need to feel cheated. The governments don’t have to give anything away to floundering corporations, mountebanking banks and swindling insurance companies. They can requisition, take-over and nationalise instead. They can kick out failed managements to the general applause of the humble. They can nurse what they’ve bought on-the-cheap back to health. They can use altogether different sets of honest drivers. Later, when all is well, they can sell off the fattened calves to new owners at a substantial profit.
President-elect Obama has already said he will do “whatever it takes” for the economy. It is fortunate, given the circumstances, that Mr. Obama is a Democrat. And with a Democratic Party majority in Congress and a near majority in the Senate, and an aggressive Chief of Staff in Mr. Rahm Emmanuel, Mr. Obama should indeed be able to move swiftly and surely after his inauguration on January 20th 2009.
But the real restructuring will take much more time. Take for instance the fact that General Motors already has USD 48 billion in debt even as it asked for a USD 25 billion bailout. It is widely known that without radical surgery and brutal changes, General Motors cannot survive anyway. That they have been sent packing to rework their pitch is entirely to the Bush government’s credit.
Meanwhile, China, has smartly announced a fiscal stimulus of about USD 600 billion. All of it to be spent on its domestic infrastructure in the next two years to hold the economy steady at 8 per cent growth, in place of the erstwhile double digits. India too hopes to grow its economy at between 6 and 8 per cent in this fiscal and the next, the projections based overwhelmingly on its domestic consumption and on the strength of its infrastructure building. That is what makes them realistic on the one hand. But India, on its own, does not have the resources for its infrastructure build-up, estimated at a minimum of USD 500 billion, and is staring at substantial back-sliding, without outside financing.
In any case, India and China cannot, as Mr. Kissinger pointed out, rescue America, Europe, Japan and the others from their recessions. But in a world of economies posting minus growth figures, they do stand out, and can be of help. Brazil and Russia, the other major emerging nations, could also make a contribution. David Rothkof, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, says a full 75 per cent of growth in 2009 will come from the BRIC countries.
India and China can make their infrastructure development plans inclusive and open their doors to imports of infrastructure-building materials and machinery. India could, in addition, accelerate its civilian nuclear programme and its defence purchases, thereby boosting American, European, Israeli, Australian, Japanese and even Russian exports, while securing much tied credit and finance via US influence at the World Bank and the IMF and those of the Japanese and others at other lending agencies.
India could also encourage urgent foreign direct investment in its road, power, port, petroleum exploration, space programme development, climate control initiatives, and even railway modernisation and development; but without the red tape and suspicion that have always marked our dealings with others.
Note that we could put the Arabs also in as partners, because, notwithstanding their well capitalised Sovereign Funds looking for lucrative investments, they have money going forward too. Because, even at USD 50 per barrel of crude oil says McKinsey, The Gulf will collectively earn USD 4.7 trillion every year from now till 2020.
Bottom-line: we have a chance, as the second largest growth story in the world after China, to make a difference both to ourselves and others at this time. If we take it, we might truly earn a bigger say on the Boards of the IMF and the World Bank and even get ourselves a Security Council Seat at the UN. And all of this while truly growing at the 9 and 10 per cent per annum that we routinely dream about these days.
(1,055 words)
21st November 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in The Pioneer as "Bailing out the rich" on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 on the OP-Ed Page and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived under Columnists at www.dailypioneer.com
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Wish I had his money
Wish I had his money
There’s a 21st century trendiness to this latest economic crisis that all the reams of analysis seems to have ignored. It is about the preference for the fashionably chimerical presence of the straw house that one can actually huff and puff and blow right down. It is also known as a financial economy, divorced from demand and supply economics, grown globally to be many times the size of the real one. In America, it was a holographic forty times the size of the real economy till recently, puffed up on borrowed money.
It makes the solidity of the old brick and mortar real construct look positively prehistoric on a good day when it is delivering bumper returns, even though such a day may now be a long time coming.
John Lennon, during the eight, largely private years in New York, living in the very solid, very Gothic Dakota Building, used to take his young son Sean out on walks. They would go to the park and play-ground, to eat ice cream, to the shops, just like any other regular father and son. If anybody recognised the ex-Beatle, telling him he looked like John Lennon, he would always reply, “I wish I had his money”, garnishing the remark with a suitable leer.
There’s universality in that thought, like a lot of Lennon’s thoughts, and transference too. But it is an old fashioned, working class, everyman-must-work-for-his-pay notion from a more innocent world that has been given a go by for some time now.
In the 21st century, and more so lately, the financial wizards have shown the world that you don’t really need to have money to spend money. You merely borrow it. And in case being spendthrift is not your pleasure, you can build assets with borrowed money too. But it’s not “Go West Young Man” or East, or to The Gulf, or Bollywood, to “make your fortune”, as one did in the 20th C. It’s learn “leverage” instead. The basic point being that you don’t have to hold back your ambitions and their gratification just because you can’t afford them.
When individuals borrow, they sign papers labelled “credit” or “loan” or “mortgage”. When banks do it and take risky bets with the proceeds, it’s called “investment banking”. When companies do it, and apply it to expansion of capacity or to buy another company, it’s called “growth”, both “organic” and “inorganic”, and there are experts in mergers, acquisitions, bridge-financing, long-term financing, initial public offerings, private equity and so on, to help them do it. And when countries do it, using the proceeds on anything the politicians deem fit, but hopefully spending at least some of it on public works, it’s called “deficit financing”.
But, all of it predicates on the earnings of the morrow in advance, and is conjoined at the hip in a daisy chain of debt. So the individual borrower and the sovereign are connected in their owing, often reckoned and trotted out on digital tickertape that announces the national debt per every individual in the nation in a minute to minute fashion.
And the tickertape tab doesn’t even include the individual’s personal debt, nor the global interfaces of debt in a shrinking world. But real experts, worth their mounds of considerable salt, count their expertise in the sheer amounts of borrowed money they can generate.
And the inevitably sad fact of it is, not everyone who borrows has the resources to pay the instalments due, let alone the entire sum borrowed. In hindsight it becomes clear that neither should such people borrow, nor should they be lent to. But, whom do you blame and how does the blame game help you make recoveries when it comes down to it?
So inevitably, some profligate individuals go under, financially speaking, insolvent but largely unrepentant, because insolvency is essentially sympathised with, at the individual level, and not treated as that much of an offence, let alone a crime. Witness the court restraints on debt recovery agent bullying.
But the mood changes to outrage when viewing the institutional level because the problem does not stop at the collective, only becomes very much bigger. Highly trusted and respectable banks and mortgage companies also default on their debts. But more often than not, they qualify for rescue and are often deemed too big to “fail”.
And sometimes, incredibly, it applies also to little fishing and farming countries like Iceland, population 300,000, gone wild in a multiple year orgy of borrow and spend, before going bankrupt.
Such current economic horror stories from around the world may not be India’s fate but they have exposed our woeful lack of room to manoeuvre because India too is struggling with a huge current account and fiscal deficit hovering at the 10 per cent of GDP mark from years of refusing to balance its books. So, if we weren’t growing, we’d be sunk.
It makes it all the more ironic because till the other day this present government was doing everything it could to curb this very growth in an attempt to rein in the runaway inflation, brought on, not by our growth but imported via high oil prices of a few months ago.
But as we slow down, with companies sacking staff and staggering production, we have very little money to throw at our problems. And, the frantic loosening of our monetary stays will take some months before they show favourable results. We cannot use the stock markets either because, in the global mayhem and sharp FII withdrawal of resources, our financial markets have shrunk to half as big as our real economy.
China is using her considerable reserves of over a trillion US dollars to stimulate its domestic economy by building up its infrastructure. They are throwing half of it into the fray. India’s rulers are contenting themselves with reassurances that they will do “the needful as and when needed” with their usual flair for inanity. But what might that be? Do we use our 250 billion US dollar reserves to prop up our imports or to provide fiscal stimulus to infrastructure? Like John Lennon masquerading as a man in a street, our powers that be must be wishing that that they had Hu’s money- that’s President Hu Jintao to you, and please don’t go writing him a letter like Aravind Adiga.
(1,055 words)
12th November 2008
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in The Pioneer on Monday, November 17th, 2008 as "You don't need money" on the OP-ED Page and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived online under Columnists.
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