FirstPost Issue-04

THE LAST WORD IN NEWS

S A T U R D AY, F E B 1 6 - 2 2 , 2 0 1 9 | N E T W O R K 1 8 M E D I A & I N V E S T M E N T S L I M I T E D

Jaish strike is challenge for PM Modi

THE PULWAMA SUICIDE ATTACK THAT KILLED 37 PARAMILITARY PERSONNEL IS A CHALLENGE INKED IN BLOOD FOR THE PRIME MINISTER IN THE LOOMING SHADOW OF GENERAL ELECTIONS

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VOLUME 01

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ISSUE 13

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NEW DELHI

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PAGES 20

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PRICE `8

Digging in for an Oil Reserve

THE GOVERNMENT PLANS TO INCREASE THE COUNTRY’S FUEL RESERVES TO 87 DAYS OF DEMAND BY 2020. A LOOK AT INDIA’S UNDERGROUND STORAGE SPACES AND THE STRATEGIC TIE-UPS WITH OIL COMPANIES

Both BJP and Congress have failed the minorities, be they Muslims, Dalits or women

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6

A TOWN WENT DOWN THE

TUFAIL AHMAD

FORMER BBC JOURNALIST

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Cut Out Director MANIKARNIKA IS THE LATEST EXAMPLE OF THE DIRECTOR LOSING HIS RELEVANCE IN CINEMA AS STARS HOG THE LIMELIGHT

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inside Cobalt Blues

Bharatpur Birds Pay Bovine Bill

CHINA HAS CORNERED MUCH OF THE WORLD’S RESERVES OF THE RARE EARTH, CRUCIAL FOR THE RENEWABLE ENERGY SECTOR

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AMID COW VIGILANTISM, STRAY CATTLE HAVE TAKEN OVER ONE OF THE FINEST BIRDING AREAS IN THE COUNTRY, THE KEOLADEO NATIONAL PARK

17 FIRST PERSON

In Black and White CHIEF ELECTION COMMISSIONER SUNIL ARORA HAS PROPOSED A CAG AUDIT OF POLITICAL PARTIES AS A STEP TO CLEAN UP THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM 9

NOW, IT’S TRYING TO DIG ITS WAY OUT

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 TRIPARNA

CRAPPY MUSIC The small Bengal town topped 2018’s Swachh Survekshan among towns with a population of over 1 lakh — for being the most filthy

POLITICS

CULTURE

After Jind, the Chautalas won’t be same again

The Army that Travelled With its Prostitutes

In the Jind by election, the party’s candidate finished fifth, while Digvijay, patriarch Om Prakash Chautala’s estranged grandson, came in second. A look at the family politics

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the swelling army of the East India Company travelled with its own retinue of women to ‘provide for its fighting men

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16

SUBSCRIBE TO THE LAST WORD IN NEWS GIVE A MISSED CALL AT 8744-024-024 Inaugural offer `249 for 52 issues

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Firstpost.

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Deep Focus

2.8%

Past Present

RUDE SHOCK

SP patriarch Mulayam wants Modi as PM again

“I want to see all present members of the House get elected as MPs and you, Mr Prime Minister, become prime minister again,” Mulayam Singh Yadav said in Lok Sabha on the last day of the Budget Session, setting tongues wagging in political circles.

Iran: The Elephant in the Room

STATE OF DELHI

AAP vs Centre: Mixed verdict from SC bench

is the proportion by which the Rafale purchase deal by the NDA government is cheaper than the one negotiated by the previous UPA government, according to the CAG report tabled in Parliament >>Firstpost.com

SAUDI CROWN PRINCE MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN VISITS INDIA NEXT WEEK

A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court has ruled that the Centre has control over corruption issues and investigations in Delhi, but referred to a larger bench questions on services and the power to appoint, post and transfer officials.

13

The Muck Stops Here  SANTAN

BHADRESWAR, a small town in West Bengal, is remarkable for nothing except its filth

A

NIKITA DOVAL

nil Kumar Sharma has taken a break from work to be trotted at as the Bhadreswar Municipality’s star witness for its efforts to transforming India. Yes, he says, the municipality has constructed a toilet for his family. Yes, he goes on, it is inside his home. Then, things start to go wrong.

It turns out the toilet is being used as a storeroom. “Listen, we adjust,” says a flustered Sharma. He doesn’t explain exactly how a room packed with bags and kitchen supplies manages to double as a toilet.

“This is a huge blot on us,” says Prakash Goswami, vice-chairman of Bhadreswar NINETEEN OUT of Municipality, offerthe 25 dirtiest cities ing me a glass of water. in India, according He isn’t talking about to the 2018 Swachh Sharma’s behaviour.

There are few things Survekshan, are in in life as welcome as West Bengal a tall, cool drink of water on a hot day— BHADRESWAR, WITH but this one has a cumulative total of emerged from the 448.33 points out of bowels of the sod4000, was the dirtiest den earth in what is in the category of cities officially India’s most with a population of shit-ridden city. more than 100,000 First prize for being India’s dirtiest city isn’t an honour Bhadreswar wants, and it’s working hard to lose it when new ratings are released this year.

Starting from Chittagong, in Bangladesh, the Grand Trunk Road runs through Hooghly district to its great journey towards Central Asia. There’s nothing grand about the Grand Trunk Road anymore, hedged in as it is by the rapid urbanisation of the small towns along the river with everyone from cattle, state transport buses, two-wheelers, hawkers to private cars jostling for space.

Bhadreswar is one such town which is remarkable for nothing except its filth.

first take

THE DIRT STICKS

The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), launched in 2014, aims for 100 per cent open defecation-free (ODF) status by October 2 this year. Between January 4 and 31 of this year, Swachh Survekshan, an annual exercise con-

ducted by the government that assesses rural and urban areas for their levels of cleanliness, was conducted. The results are expected later this year. Last year, Indore, like the year before, had topped the list to be declared as India’s cleanest city. And Bhadreswar, with a cumulative total of 448.33 points out of 4000, was the dirtiest in the category of cities with a population over 100,000.

Goswami likes to believe that the work of his municipality figures in “at least, the top five of West Bengal. So, the ranking, which we found out through newspaper reports, has been a huge jolt”. In November 2017, when the government was about to start its survey, Bhadreswar Municipality’s then-chairman Manoj Upadhyay was shot dead. “It was a huge jolt—one which we are still recovering from. The survey, our feedback and visit from outside supervisors all took place during that time frame and unfortunately we missed it all,” says chairman Proloy Chokroborty.

There are no visible garbage dumps though plenty of algae-covered water bodies. ‘Posh’ localities like the Government Colony, which even boasts of a ‘swimming pool’, are swept almost daily. “We generate 23 metric tonnes of waste everyday out of which nearly 3 per cent goes into the composting bin,” says Chandan Mahto from the municipality. The rest of it ends up in a 6-acre landfill. There hasn’t been any significant outbreak of a disease over the past five years.

In 2018’s Swachh Survekshan, the focus expanded from ODF to include waste collection, solid waste management apart from building toilets and sanitation strategies. Local bodies have been tasked with handing over bins to residents for segregation apart from educating them on how to do it. In Bhadreswar, Firstpost is told that all 22 wards have been covered.

However, in the working-class neighbourhood in Telenipara, there are differing views.

Anil Kumar Tanti says that while garbage collection takes place every day at 6 am on the dot, he is not aware of segregation. “We don’t sort our wet and dry waste. We haven’t been told about it.” His neighbour Rajesh Sahu, however, says they do segregate after they were told about it.

At the composting site, which is on the same plot of land as the landfill, two women are sorting the waste with hand. It is designed like a cattle shed with different blocks some of which are meant for separating and the others for manure.

The municipality has been selling the manure at `3 per kg.

CLEANEST/DIRTIEST CIVIC BODIES, ACCORDING TO THE RANKINGS CLEANEST

DIRTIEST

CHANDIGARH Punjab NDMC New Delhi BHOPAL MP

SIMARI BAKHTIYARPUR Bihar

3

CLEANING UP

BANSBERIA West Bengal

4

3

1 2

INDORE MP

3 2 5 1 4

BANKURA West Bengal

5

BHADRESWAR West Bengal CHAMPDANI West Bengal

VIJAYAWADA Andhra Pradesh Source: Swachh Bharat Survey (2018)

WASTE MISMANAGEMENT

Misery, it is said, loves company. Nineteen out of the 25 dirtiest cities in India, according to the 2018 Survekshan, are in Bengal.

The unscientific disposal of waste is considered to be one of the reasons why the state has performed badly as its landfills are near the end of their lifespan. The West Bengal Pollution Control Board’s annual report of 2016-17 says more than 8,600 tonnes of waste is generated daily in the state of which only 830 tonnes is processed. This has larger implications for public health.

West Bengal does have a better sanitation performance rate than the rest of the country with the total sanitation coverage around 65 per cent. In 2014, the state launched Mission Nirmal Bangla, its own cleanliness drive, starting with open defecation. Three years later, the Hooghly district was declared open defecation free. In Bhadreswar, 35 community toilets have been built over the past one year and 2,533 in homes. But building toilets, surveys and results have shown, isn’t the same as toilet usage. The National Rural Sanitation Survey, conducted by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, revealed that till March 2018, 77 per cent of

rural households had access to toilets and usage was more than 90 per cent for individuals in those households. However, according to the National Family Health Survey, more than half of India’s rural households are still defecating in the open.

We generate 23 tonnes of waste every day of which 3 per cent goes into the composting bin PRAKASH GOSWAMI

VICE-CHAIRMAN, BHADRESWAR MUNICIPALITY

“If you look at the parameters they wanted to judge us by; it was impossible. We don’t have biometric attendance in place or GPS trackers for our dumpsters. These are factors which have been introduced over the past two years and West Bengal did not participate then. They wanted citizen feedback through the app. Many people here aren’t even aware of it,” says Shisham Jaiswal of the Champdani Municipality. Champdani has started waste segregation only in a few wards. “But we were declared ODF in 2016.

The rankings are political,” Jaiswal says. It is a sentiment echoed across the state albeit in hushed tones.

In 2014, India had the largest number of people defecating in the open in the world. It has been directly linked to why Indian children are the shortest in the world apart from other health issues. Since then, SBM has expanded its scope to look at other equally pressing issues, but its biggest challenge, according to Avni Kapur of the Centre for Policy Research, is sustaining itself: “Ensuring the continuance of a practice like usage of toilets across seasons is as important as developing a sewage treatment system.” Funding remains a problem. On paper, SBM has a hefty budget, `62,000 crore, but when split across the country, it doesn’t amount to much. “Projects like these need prioritisation and with the funds allocated to them, municipalities can focus on only one or two projects,” says Dhruba Dasgupta, project director, Society for Creative Opportunities and Participatory Ecosystems, Kolkata.

SLUM TOWN

Hooghly has been a jute industry hub. It is here that the mills, started in the 19th century, laid the foundation for industrialisation, leading to urbanisation and migration. The presence of several European powers like the the Dutch and the French who established colonies like Serampore and Chandernagar contributed to the growth of the industry. This also led to large-scale migration. Bhadreswar still has two operational mills, Victoria and Northbrook, which employ nearly 10,000 of the town’s 1,11,477 people. The majority of these workers live in neighbourhoods that can be classi-

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Firstpost.

Deep Focus

SETBACK

The Accidental Prime Minister: FIR against Kher The Muzaffarpur Police has lodged an FIR against actors Anupam Kher, Akshaye Khanna and 12 others on a court’s direction on a complaint that The Accidental Prime Minister presented Manmohan Singh and other public figures in bad light.

SWACHH BHARAT MISSION: A 4-YEAR REPORT CARD OCT 2, 2014 SCHEME LAUNCHED

Vijay Mallya

Lobbyists and those who can afford it pay people to hold their spot so they get in 1st

“I respectfully ask why the Prime Minister is not instructing his banks to take the money I have put on the table so he can at least claim credit for full recovery of public funds lent to Kingfisher”

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ

Democratic Congresswoman on homeless people hired as ‘line-standers’ for $11 to $35 an hour. She has been exposing lobbyists’ tactics

ON PM MODI’S SPEECH ABOUT PEOPLE WHO RUN AWAY

IMPORTANT OBJECTIVES

OPEN-DEFECATION FREE

5.04 25 513 lakh STATES

94.55% SANITATION COVERAGE (RURAL)

DISTRICTS

VILLAGES

8.66

CRORE

HOUSEHOLD TOILETS BUILT

PACE OF ODF DISTRICTS

OCT 31, 2016 JUL 17, 2017 FEB 1, 2018 MAR 5, 2018 MAY 22, 2018 OCT 1, 2018

fied little better as slums. According to the 2011 Census, there are more than 13,000 slums in the city in which 61,528 people reside. Pinky Baidya, 26, lives in “jute mill quarters” as she calls them. “Our neighbourhood was very dirty. There weren’t any toilets and the place was like an open garbage dump. Things have improved considerably over the past one year though there are still stray instances of people not using the toilets.”

“Our target date for 100 per cent ODF is March 31, 2019, with a huge emphasis on access to safe toilets,” says Hooghly Zilla Parishad deputy secretary Hemanto Bose.

3

“Be it segregation or dissuading the use of plastic, we have been working hard at the gram panchayat level,” Bose adds. He cites instances of government schools in villages where washrooms were kept locked leading to more and more girls staying home during their periods than risk the embarrassment of asking the principal for the keys. “We have had to work a lot on changing attitudes.”

But Bose’s claim is only for the rural areas.

Municipality activities are not controlled by them, he says. “We only release funds to them.

Political will is the engine of their activities.”

According to official records, `1,36,95,144 has

59

149

310 314

385

513

been released to the Bhadreswar Municipality since 2016-17 for toilet construction.

Champdani is the municipality next to Bhadreswar that fared a little better than its sister town in the SBM rankings, coming in at 468. Over here, unlike Bhadreswar, there are more garbage dumps and clogged drains. Angus Maidan is crowded with not just children playing football, but also dogs vying for scraps. As Mohd. Alam, a jute mill worker, says dismissively, “There are more dogs than people around here on most days.”

Alam has never heard of Swachh Bharat Mission.

Eliminate open defecation Conversion of insanitary toilets to pour flush toilets Eradication of manual scavenging 100% collection and scientific processing of municipal solid waste To bring about a behavioural change in people regarding healthy sanitation practices Generate awareness among citizens about sanitation and its linkages with public health Strengthening of urban local bodies to design, execute and operate systems To create enabling environment for private sector participation in capital expenditure and Operation & Maintenance (O&M) costs

1 A woman readies wet waste for composting in Bhadreswar 2 Garbage hillocks at the landfill

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Firstpost.

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Politics

Not Just for kicks WITH THE ARRIVAL OF BIG GAME CONTESTS, WILL SEPAK TAKRAW FINALLY PICK UP IN INDIA?

AND POLICY

19

Many reservations about the latest ‘upper caste’ quota

PRAGYA SINGH

SIDDARAMAIAH The former chief minister (2013-18), now the head of a coordination committee meant to ensure the coalition’s smooth functioning. He can’t, however, stomach the fact that Kumaraswamy, the son of his one-time mentor and current arch-rival, HD Deve Gowda, is the chief minister. Expelled from the JD(S), Siddaramaiah joined the Congress in 2006.

Though Siddaramaiah is seen primarily as a troublemaker, he formally declared himself to be a troubleshooter last year

 SHATAKSHI

CONGRESS

DK SHIVAKUMAR CONGRESS

HD KUMARASWAMY JANATA DAL (S)

Precariously perched on the edge of the CM’s chair, not knowing when he will fall, Kumaraswamy has been openly venting frustration over his party’s coalition with the Congress, shedding tears in public. By exposing the incriminating audio tape, he is one-up for now, but that doesn’t guarantee his happiness for long

He does everything he can to stop Siddaramaiah from giving the government a tumble. One of India’s richest politicians, ‘DKS’ is a celebrated troubleshooter with a successful track record in keeping the party’s flock intact in five-star resorts when their loyalties become negotiable or when rivals try to nick them

BS YEDDYURAPPA BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY

The state BJP president is in a hurry to have another shot at the CM’s post. He is 76, and this may be his last chance. His three earlier terms were truncated — the first lasted seven days (2007); the second, three years (2008-11) and the third six days (2018). Many BJP leaders don’t share his gung-ho spirit for toppling the state government, but Yeddy may be unstoppable

There’s no Thor, just Lokis in Karnataka

ARSONISTS AS FIREFIGHTERS Leaders are busy fanning political flames while projecting themselves as saviours SRINIVASA PRASAD

I

n the year 965, Odin, the king of Asgard, wages war against the Frost Giants of Jotunheim and their leader Laufey, to stop them from taking over the nine realms, starting with Earth. Odin has two sons: Thor and Loki. Only one of them can take his place on the throne of Asgard. Loki asks the villain Laufey to kill his father. But his real intention is to slay Laufey as he enters Odin’s bedroom and then pretend to be a hero.

This is the plot of the 2011 American superhero film Thor. As we move from Asgard to Karnataka, in the ruling alliance of Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) there aren’t too may Thors, but Lokis abound. What happens as a result is the state’s worst-kept secret. First, there is always trouble within the Congress. Then there is more trouble when it attempts to uncover who made the original trouble.

In the confusion, the BJP steps in, apparently with suitcases of money to seduce MLAs and kick out the government.

Then troublemakers turn troubleshooters and frustrate the BJP’s plans, looking like knights in shining armour saving damsels in distress.

And just when everything appears like a they-lived-happily-ever-after ending of Mills & Boon pulp, it suddenly turns into the climax of an Arabian Nights tale: “They lived happily until there came to them the one who destroys happiness.”

The latest episode in Karnataka’s nataka is about an 80-minute audio tape which supposedly exposes BJP’s unabashed attempts to buy up MLAs of the

Congress-JD(S) coalition. The saffrons ended with planet-sized eggs on faces and made clumsy attempts to wriggle out of the allegation. This time, it was the alliance which had the last laugh — the exposé got four rebels of Congress, one of JD(S) and an Independent back to the coalition, saved the government from collapsing and apparently raised the hackles of BJP president Amit Shah.

Though it’s advantage Congress-JD(S) alliance for now, the underlying factors that contribute to the continuing drama are unlikely to change.

THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

Ever since the Congress-JD(S) alliance was hastily stitched together after the May 2018 elections, the government has been tottering from one existential crisis to another so fast that it looks like one long, horrible nightmare for chief minister HD Kumaraswamy.

The dramatis personae of the Karnataka thriller are:  HD Kumaraswamy of JD(S), precariously perched on the CM’s chair.  Siddaramaiah of the Congress, the former chief minister (2013-18) and ‘troubleshooter’. See this tweet: @siddaramaiah I have been made the leader of coordination committee to be the troubleshooter for the coalition govt. I ll nt allow anyone to destabilize the govt. Our govt will complete full 5 yr term. Ppl have very good opinion & farm loan waiver is being appreciated by all. @INCKarnataka 2:56 PM - Sep 30, 2018

 Congress leader and minister DK Shi-

vakumar, one of the richest politicians of India, whose main role is to stop Siddaramaiah from hurting the government.  BS Yeddyurappa, the state BJP president, toppler-in-chief of Karnataka.

It’s easy to see that the genesis of even the latest trouble lies squarely in Congress. A December 22 cabinet expansion left so many legislators disgruntled that they became easy prey for the BJP. But when the prey is sitting on the fence and winking at the predator, you begin to wonder who is up to what mischief.

The discontent was chiefly caused by the fact that Siddaramaiah’s supporters had the major advantage in the cabinet expansion.

Some MLAs supporting him later went to the extent of attacking Kumaraswamy publicly, leading to the impression of a tottering government.

For the time being, the tape has shifted focus from the coalition’s internal wrangling to the BJP’s wooing of MLAs. It has voices, allegedly of Yeddyurappa

When the prey is winking at the predator, you begin to wonder who is up to what mischief

and two BJP MLAs, wooing a JD(S) legislator (through his son) with money and claiming to have “taken care of the assembly Speaker and judges”.

After rubbishing the whole thing as fake, Yeddyurappa later said he had indeed met the MLA’s son but claimed that the incriminating parts of the conversation had been made up.

Considering the legal and technical uncertainties over forensic investigations authenticating recorded voices, the inquiry that Kumaraswamy has ordered may not end in a hurry.

‘TAPEWORMS’

There have been tapes of this kind in the past, supposedly incriminating leaders of the BJP, JD(S) and Congress. Parties have being hurling tapes at each other like gangsters exchange fire.

The history of ‘tapeworms’ biting into Karnataka’s politics goes back 36 years.

Yes, we are talking about the ‘Moily tapes’ of 1983 that stunned the whole nation.

It was an audio recording with a voice, purportedly of Congress leader Veerappa Moily, trying to entice an MLA with `2 lakh to topple the Janata Party government of Ramakrishna Hegde. It was four years later that Moily was exonerated for insufficient evidence.

If the latest tapes seem like a colossal blunder by the BJP, it is. But nobody can be sure what legal turn the Yeddyurappa tapes will take.

Now that the government is safe, for the time being, it’s once again a case of arsonists claiming to be firefighters.

Wait for the next sequel.

M

anoj Jha, Rajya Sabha member and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) spokesperson, cannot stop beaming. He confesses it’s because of the rousing response to RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav’s demand to have 90 per cent reservations in government jobs. “The mainstream isn’t covering Tejashwi’s campaign, but Bahujan consolidation is happening in Bihar,” Jha says in his office at Delhi School of Social Work, with stacks of books looming over him and portraits of first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru staring at visitors.

The Mandal Commission’s report, which introduced affirmative action for backward classes in 1990, had pegged OBCs (other backward classes) at around 52 per cent of the population and said a commensurate percentage of central government jobs should be reserved for them, just as scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (SCs and STs) get reservation in proportion to their population — 15 and 7.5 per cent, respectively.

However, the commission did not recommend proportional representation for OBCs out of deference to a court ruling, which had limited quota to 50 per cent.

They were, therefore, allotted a 27 per cent quota to ensure that the 50 per cent cap is not violated. And herein is the moral catch — OBC leaders say their acceptance of 27 per cent was a sacrifice, and that since the government has removed the 50 per cent cap, the limitation Mandal imposed no longer holds. They say OBCs should get their 52 per cent quota before 10 per cent is granted to economically weaker sections (EWS), essentially a code word for ‘upper castes’.

So, by announcing a 10 per cent EWS quota among castes not in the reservation pool until now, the BJP has gifted to a clutch of parties an issue they will use to deepen India’s caste chasm, often perceived as upper castes versus backward castes.

“This 10 per cent reservation is nothing more than midnight robbery,” says Jha, who, though a Brahmin, is opposed to it.

Tejashwi is not the only leader with a backward class base rallying people around the issue. At a meeting of Samajwadi Party (SP) president and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav that a news website organised on February 9, he too was asked to spell out his position on the new quota. Yadav said he has always wanted jobs among all social groups — SCs, STs, OBCs and general — to be distributed according to their percentage in the population.

Even beyond the northern belt there’s growing frenzy over the issue. Regional outfits favour expansion of the reservation pool because they view quotas as a battle for hegemony between elite and non-elite social groups.

This is in sharp contrast to the perspective of the national parties. Neither the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nor the Congress want to expand caste-based reservation.

“The decision to give 10 per cent quotas to the poor in the general category has been taken in a completely constitutional way,” says Bhupender Yadav, Rajya Sabha member and BJP national general secretary. “It has been done without so much as touching reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs, for whom there is adequate representation.”

It can be argued that both national parties want to woo elite-caste voters while smaller regional outfits seek to polarise Bahujans — the majority — against elite-castes.

Rajeev Gowda, Rajya Sabha leader and Congress spokesperson, says, “The 10 per cent allocation has set a very high income bar of `8 lakh annually. Rich upper caste members would benefit, not poor non-reserved people.”

The 10 per cent quota has set the stage for conflict at three levels: forward versus backward castes, individual versus group rights and regional versus national perspectives. If the demand for proportional representation comes to pass, the upper castes would be undeniably affected.

In granting reservation to economically weaker sections, the government, in the long run, may be responsible for shrinking the general category from 50 to 10 per cent.

OBC leaders say their community should get 52% quota before 10 % is granted to EWS

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Firstpost.

Politics

Dushyant and Digvijay Chautala have come out on top because they resonate with the rising aspirational class among Jats— perhaps even non-Jats

The

Chautalas of

Haryana



The Chautala clan

has been a dominant force in Haryana politics

 Patriarch of the family

Chaudhary Devi Lal was chief minister of the state twice: first in 1977–79 and then in 1987–89

SAFFRON CHARGE Being foot soldiers of Yogi brigade gives thousands of uneducated and jobless youngmen a sense of purpose, relevance

 He eventually went on

to become deputy prime minister from 1989 to 91

 His younger son,

Om Prakash Chautala, 84, was chief minister of Haryana four times:

Dec 2, 1989 to May 2, 1990

July 24, 1999 to March 4, 2004  OP Chautala is

serving a 10-year jail sentence since 2013 in the JBT recruitment scam

Chautala clan rift deepens after Jind

 OP Chautala has two sons,

Ajay and Abhay, and three daughters, Suchitra, Sunita and Anjali

 AJAY CHAUTALA:

OP Chautala’s estranged older son is also serving jail term in the teachers’ recruitment scam

 Wife Naina Chautala:

MLA from Dabwali

 Their son Dushyant, who

represents Hisar Lok Sabha constituency and is the youngest ever MP, founded the Jannayak Janata Party

 ABHAY SINGH

CHAUTALA: Indian National Lok Dal chief, leader of the Opposition in Haryana Assembly and MLA from Ellenabad

 ASHISH ASTHANA

July 12, 1990 to July 17, 1990 March 22, 1991 to April 6, 1991

5

PRAGYA SINGH

I

n September 1657, news of Shah Jahan’s illness triggered a battle of succession. Aurangzeb imprisoned his father and killed his brothers to wrest the Mughal crown.

Over three centuries later, another ugly dynastic battle is playing out— this time in Haryana.

Former Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala, serving a 10-year sentence in Tihar Jail for illegal recruitment of teachers, chose younger son Abhay to be his heir. It was assumed that Abhay’s sons, Karan and Arjun would be the Generation Next thus shifting the line of succession from older to the younger son.

But Abhay’s older brother Ajay, who too is in jail in the teachers scam, broke from the Chautala family-run Indian National Lok Dal (INLD). He floated the Jananayak Janata Party ( JJP) with his sons, Member of Parliament from Hisar Dushyant and Digvijay, who leads the party’s youth wing.

The family feud is beginning to tell.

In January’s Jind Assembly bypoll, the last test of the ballot in Haryana before the country votes for a new government, both INLD and JJP lost.

Sitting in his 18 Janpath office in Delhi’s power district, the 30-year-old Dushyant laughs off the comparison with the Mughal dynasty, whose family battles led to its dissipation. “I think we were successful in the Jind bypoll. Within 50 days of floating a new party, we went from zero to 38,000 votes. Even the BJP considers us its main opponent in Haryana,” Dushyant says. Brother Digvijay was the candidate from Jind.

Dushyant rules out truce with his uncle and cousins. “We are politically different entities now and it’s better to stay away from INLD.” Two months ago, Ajay, Digvijay and he were thrown out of INLD by Chautala. The Jind election was a test of who the inheritor was— and the crown has slid off Abhay and landed with Ajay’s side of the family.

Here’s how: with 37,000-plus votes, JJP couldn’t win the seat earlier held by

Haryana’s youth are embracing change catalysed by smartphones and social networking. Even some Jat khaps have tried to appeal to these aspirations by launching Twitter and Facebook accounts. Karan and Arjun, contrarily, represent Haryana’s rustic element—they’re closer to their grandINLD’s Hari Chand Middha. Middha’s father in style. son Krishna, caught in the middle of The Jind results offer other clues to these changes. In 2014, the INLD got the family feud, chose to shift to the BJP and won. This is the first time that around 31,000 votes, of which 23,000 the BJP has won Jind. But the JJP too were in villages, neatly conforming to made gains. INLD voters shifted to the the party’s identification with the Jat Ajay faction. INLD’s Umed Singh Redcommunity and farmers. This time, hu barely secured 3,500 votes despite the JJP got 24,000 rural votes—just Chautala speaking in his favour.

1,000 more. However, its urban Dushyant and Digvijay tally nearly doubled. Traditionally, the INLD never have come out on top for a reason. They rescrossed 8,500 votes in onate with the rising cities, but the JJP got aspirational class 16,000 urban votes. plus votes failed to help “We’re not a Jat party; among Jats—perwe represent all sechaps even non-Jats. the JJP win the Jind seat, tions,” says Dushyant.

Both were educated earlier held by INLD’s in leading residential In the bypoll, even Hari Chand Middha schools and Dushythe BJP made inroads into villages bagging 14,000 ant also has a universirural votes. Arguably, these are ty degree from abroad. Yet, they aren’t alienated from their roots. the Congress party’s voters who have Their supporters find their political migrated to the ruling BJP. This is bestyle akin to that of their greatgrandcause typically, Congress and INLD father Devi Lal. Their personality supporters don’t transfer their loyalbridges the divide between tradition ties. With the JJP, now there are three and modernity. parties that represent Jat interests in

37K

Haryana, limiting the community’s political appeal.

“We were initially nervous when the Congress fielded Kaithal legislator Randeep Surjewala, a strong Jat candidate, in Jind. We thought he’d lure our Jat voters. Instead, Congress’ voters migrated to the BJP,” says a JJP leader who closely tracked the Jind election.

Voters also migrated to the BJP because of the backlash against Haryana’s Jat dominance. “When an established community loses hegemony, it leads to consolidation of others,” says professor Pramod Kumar, director, Institute for Development and Communication, Chandigarh, referring to Haryana’s 26 per cent Jats, who have traditionally voted for the INLD, and their conflict with other communities, particularly Punjabis. “People may now be drawn to Khattar for his clean image,” he says of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar.

Jats are also considered aggressive— an image that was reinforced when in 2013 businesses and properties owned by Punjabis were destroyed as the community demanded quota in jobs and education. “Jats don’t want to be out of power, but non-Jats want a share in power too. They resent Jats for wanting only Jat chief ministers,” says M Rajivlochan, who teaches history at Panjab University, Chandigarh.

Dynastic succession has placed Dushyant and Digvijay in the limelight but they need political allies to come to power. Dushyant’s Diwali meeting with Rao Inderjit, a BJP MP who enjoys the support of Gurgaon’s Yadav community, came a cropper. In Jind, the INLD-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance fared badly, prompting BSP leader Mayawati to ask the Chautalas to resolve their dispute. Dushyant rules out a compromise. “On expansion, I’ll only say that more MLAs will join us soon,” he says. Another possibility is that the Aam Aadmi Party and the JJP will ally for the Assembly polls eight months on by banking on their urban-centric appeal.

“One cannot rule the INLD out because such parties have strong local roots and are skilled at political manoeuverings even after losing their ability to form majorities,” says Harish Puri, who taught political science at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.

The JJP and the INLD have to consolidate Jat votes, find allies across Haryana’s social groups or support another party in future elections. Jind marks the first battle in the war of succession afoot in the Chautala dynasty with round one decisively going in favour of the Dushyant-Digvijay duo.

Apex court delivers blow to Kejriwal in Delhi tug of war AAM AADMI PARTY @AamAadmiParty The verdict says ACB doesn’t come under the Delhi Govt. For the past 40 years the ACB was under Delhi Govt. How do we curb the corruption now ? :@ ArvindKejriwal

MANOJ TIWARI

@manojtiwarimp Serious offence by a political party, who does not respect the constitution of India recognition of @AamAadmiParty should be cancelled for misleading citizens and trying to create unrest in the society. @DelhiPolice must register Multiple FIRs and culprits should be penalised.

RAGHAV CHADHA @raghav_chadha It is painful that even after 4 years of a government elected with highest ever mandate in India’s electoral history critical subjects of administration like Services, ACB etc are not placed under its jurisdiction. All we have got is ‘tareek pe tareek.’

ANI

@ani Union Minister Kiren Rijiju: Arvind Kejriwal and Congress does not trust any constitutional body, they criticize the Election Commission, CAG, Supreme Court & other institutions. Anarchy is in their scheme of things. They don’t trust anybody, they just want to rule and loot.

ANI

@ani Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal on SC rules in favour of LG in 4 of 6 issues in Delhi vs LG matter: If a government can’t even transfer its officers, how is it supposed to function?

The party that has 67 seats doesn’t have the rights but the party who won 3 seats has those rights

ANI

@ani Sheila Dikshit on Delhi CM’s remarks on SC order: Constitution has defined the power Delhi has, its not unlimited. Centre, Lt Governor and Home Ministry handle a lot of things. So fighting is no solution, make changes if needed. Power doesn’t depend on the number of seats you have

AAM AADMI PARTY

twibate

@AamAadmiParty “The SC verdict is unfortunate. It is injustice with people of Delhi”

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Inside Out

 MIR SUHAIL

6

Firstpost.

In Shopian, the video murder of a woman ‘informer’

Jaish scripts bloody challenge for Modi OMINOUS PORTENTS Kashmir’s first car bombing in over a decade that left 37 paramilitary personnel and several others battling for life poses big questions for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the looming shadow of general elections

RAYAN NAQASH

I

t is dark. A woman in pheran is on her knees in the snow, her hands folded, as if begging for mercy. She drops to the ground as she is shot in the chin. When she hits the ground, another bullet is fired and the video ends.

The 10-second clip was circulated on social media on the night of January 31, along with a message in Urdu saying the woman was an informer and had alerted the security forces about Zeenat-ul-Islam, a senior Al-Badr member who was gunned down three weeks earlier.

While the clip was being shared, police were told about gunshots being heard near the Draggad village of Shopian district, where support for jihadists is strong. On the morning of February 1, security forces found a woman’s body under a tree in Tcherbagh, an orchard in Draggad. The snow had melted and the blood had mixed with the dirt.

Though 25-year-old Ishrat Muneer’s assailants can’t be seen in the video it is believed she was killed by jihadists.

On January 13, hundreds of villagers had gathered in Tcherbagh to offer funeral prayers for Zeenat after he was killed in a gunfight with security forces in Kulgam a day earlier. Ishrat, a resident of Dangarpora in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district, was a cousin of Zeenat. The family denies Ishrat was an informer. The execution-style killing and that, too, of a woman is rare in Kashmir, where the state is seen as the perpetrator of violence.

So, who killed Ishrat and why? Ishrat and Zeenat were maternal cousins. According to Ishrat’s brother, Ishfaq Muneer, Zeenat spent much of his childhood at his maternal uncle’s home in Dangarpora and was last there in 2015, a few years after he picked up the gun.

Within days of the video, a photograph of Ishrat was doing the rounds of social media. The message was the same – Ishrat was responsible for Zeenat’s “entrapment and subsequent killing”.

In the picture, Ishrat wears what looks like a bulletproof vest, but without the metal plates that shield bullets. Ishrat’s father, Munir, is saw both state as well as an assistant sub-inspector and one of her the jihadists use sexual brothers, Shaukat, is a constable with the violence to instil fear Jammu and Kashmir Police that issues such vests but doesn’t allow them to be taken home.

Officials say it is unlikely they procured the gear from open market. “It has to be Zeenat’s,” an officer says. Recently, Ishrat, Ishfaq and another brother among the six siblings visited Zeenat’s home in Shopian’s Sugan village. They were there for a week, says Ishfaq, who sells readymade garments in Pulwama.

A graduate, Ishrat had joined a distance education course in sociology to stay home, so she could take care of her mother. She had also signed up for computer classes but did not like it. “She barely left home,” says Ishfaq.

On January 31, a friend called her around 9.30am and the two were to go to the district college, he says. “She left a little before 10 but her phone was switched off immediately. Her friend could not reach her again.” When she did not return home by 4pm, the family began to worry. They looked for her till midnight but returned empty handed. Ishfaq says the family doesn’t know why Ishrat was killed.

“If there was something wrong, they should have told us. We would have apologised,” he says. “The video (of her killing) doesn’t even have a bayan (confession of guilt) that is usually recorded when they kill informers.”

Officially, police have described the murder as “a gruesome act of terror”. The “investigation is focused on some credible leads and it is expected soon the culprits shall be brought before the law”.

Unofficially, they are saying something else. “Zeenat was known to be a frequent visitor to her house which perhaps was not liked by his wife,” DGP Dilbagh Singh, posted in a WhatsApp group which has police personnel, bureaucrats and journalists as members. The family sees the veiled accusations as an attempt to discredit militancy. “The militancy has been pushed back,” says a relative. “Now they want to damage us morally, that our militants are not as righteous as we think, so that people would no longer support the militancy.” Police officials concede many alerts about the presence of gunmen are based on technical inputs such as cellphone locations, and not human intelligence.

It is a difficult time for Ishrat’s family, which is known for its ties to the separatist cause despite two senior family members serving in police. Ishrat’s funeral was led by Zeenat’s father but he neither condemned nor condoned the killing, says Ishfaq. “He wanted to know why she was killed,” he says.

90s

Ishrat’s family is known for its ties to the separatist cause despite two senior members serving in police

 REUTERS

PRAVEEN SWAMI

His testament could have been just another teenager’s Instagram holiday video, complete with tasteless graphics, low-grade mood-music, and the faux-machismo of the B-grade Bollywood potboiler. “It has taken a year of waiting, and god’s blessings, to get to this point.

By the the time you get this message, I’ll be frolicking in paradise”.

Except that Adil Ahmed was telling the story of how he was going to kill, and die.

Thursday’s car-bombing isn’t significant because it’s the first suicide-bombing by an ethnic Kashmiri: 17-year-old Afaq Ahmed Shah, the quiet introverted son of a Srinagar school teacher, blew himself up outside the XV corps headquarters in 2000. Nor is the scale of the carnage unprecedentTHE BOMBER released ed: in 2001, 34 were a video message that killed in a car-bomb warned of terrible attack on Kashmir’s vengeance on ‘drinkers assembly. of cow urine’ and Thursday’s atpromised that azaan tack—the most lewould again ring out thal in the state from the Babri mosque since September, 2016, when 19 Indian Army soldiers ADIL AHMED joined were killed at Uri— Masood Azhar’s Jaish-estill tells us someMohammed last year thing important.

The Jaish-e-Mohammed, the consistent AZHAR’S OUTFIT has author of the most been gaining momentum spectacular terrorist attacks in Kashsince Imran Khan was mir, has shaken off elected Pakistan’s PM the shackles placed on it by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government in Pakistan. This sunrise will have consequences in Kashmir, and beyond.

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the strike is a stern test: will he, elections ahead, retaliate across the Line of Control, as he ordered the army to do after Uri, or hold his fire since the attacker is an Indian national?

quick read

§ FROM Ahmed’s testament, we know how the village boy from Kakapora, in central Kashmir’s Pulwama district, understood his war. “The time is not far,” he proclaims, “when the azaan will sound again from the towers of the Babri Masjid. The more you oppress us,

the more lions will rise across India to wage jihad against you.” He vows “a terrible vengeance”: “you drinkers of cow urine cannot resist our wrath.”

To other young people in Kashmir, too, Ahmed had a similar message. “Your enemy is not just the enemy of Kashmir’s freedom,” he declaimed, “but of your faith itself.

They want to deprive you of Islam, and seduce you into a life of vulgarity and worldliness.”

Behind the words lie a lethal reality: for months now, the Jaish has been blossoming in Prime Minister Imran Khan’s not-so-naya Pakistan, systematically expanding its infrastructure and capabilities.

Last summer, Firstpost had broken news that the Jaish-e-Mohammed was building a new training complex on Bahawalpur’s fringes, adding to its existing headquarters in the city. The terror group’s house-magazine, al-Qalam, described rallies it was holding across rural Punjab, and asking for donations of ushr (religious tithes) from farmers.

In one typical report, al-Qalam quoted a leader identified as “Maulana Ammar” speaking at a mosque in Pattoki, not far from Nawaz Sharif’s home town of Raiwind, seeking donations because “jihad was a mandate of the Shari’a”. § THE story was much the same in 2016, when the Jaish struck at the Indian Air Force’s base in Pathankot.

Former Prime Minister Sharif had shied away from confrontation with the Jaish, knowing it had powerful patrons in Pakistan’s army. In 2016, videotape surfaced showing young men collecting funds in Karachi, for “the brave young men of the Jaish-e-Mohammed who are fighting for the victory of the name of god and Islam”—this even though the terrorist group is proscribed

by Pakistan’s own laws.

Earlier that year, Jaish attackers had struck at the Indian diplomatic mission in Mazhar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, leaving a message written in blood: “revenge for Afzal Guru” — the terrorist hanged for his role in attacking the Parliament House in 2001.

But, faced with the prospect of an India-Pakistan crisis after Pathankot, Sharif moved against the Jaish, publicly accepting its complicity. He also ordered the ar-

Last year’s Pakistan elections saw the Jaish throw its weight behind Imran Khan — cheered on by the army rest of Masood Azhar. The Army, however, stepped in to ensure that Azhar was only detained at an Inter-Services Intelligence-run safehouse in Islamabad.

From house arrest, Jaish chief Masood Azhar railed against Sharif. “The rulers of our country are sad that we have disturbed their friends,” Azhar wrote. “They wish to arise on the Day of Judgment to be judged as friends of (Prime Minister Narendra (Modi) and (former Prime Minister) Atal Bihari Vajpayee.”

In another article, Azhar described Nawaz Sharif as a “traitor”, “even worse than (General) Pervez Musharraf and Asif Ali Zardari”. He concluded: “Pakistan’s rulers have reduced their own country into a heap of ashes. Every single one of them comes, spreads fire and then escapes abroad.”

Last year’s Pakistan elections saw the Jaish throw its weight behind Prime Minister Khan—cheered on by the Pakistan army. “Choose the party that is pious and reject the corrupt”, wrote Talha Saif, one of Masood Azhar’s brothers. “Pick a party that rejects fohashani [vulgarity] and uriyani [nudity].”

The sentiments—even the exact words—figure in Ahmed’s suicide video. § PRIME Minister Modi’s Uri strikes— of far more limited military value than Bollywood might have led people to believe—were in fact mainly intended to send a message. Pakistan’s army had persuaded itself that India would not strike across the Line of Control, for fear of sparking a cycle of escalation that would lead to a costly war. India’s focus on economic growth, and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,

were seen in Islamabad as a shield, guarding against the consequences of terrorism.

The cross-Line of Control strikes questioned that assumption, making clear that, push come to shove, India was willing to throw its military dice in the air, and gamble on where they might land.

Even though the Jaish’s army backers had succeeded in sabotaging Prime Minister Sharif’s efforts to rein it in—an investigation against the group went nowhere, even though Pakistan was given precise names and phone numbers for suspects—the group thus operated very softly.

Following Imran Khan’s rise, though, the Jaish became increasingly defiant. “Flags of the jihad are flying on every street-corner in Kashmir, and we are victorious in Afghanistan,” Masood Azhar wrote in one article last year “Prepare yourself to be Muslim who practices his faith with the mujahideen”.

At around the same time, we know would-be suicide bomber Adil Ahmed had joined the Jaish— and the process of grooming him for his mission had begun.

In 2018, the Jaish stepped up the tempo again, hitting military targets across Kashmir—a campaign that culminated its strike on an army camp in Jammu. § “To Delhi, O’ Hindus, the army of the Prophet will soon return,” reads a giant mural over the entrance of the Jaish-e-Mohammed’s headquarters at Bahawalpur. Inside the building, there is a swimming pool, stables, training grounds and accommodation for hundreds of students. “The life of nations depends on martyrs,” Masood Azhar wrote in the Fathul Jawwad, his disquisition on the Quran. “The national fields can be irrigated only with the blood of the best hearts and minds.”

For many young people, groups like the Islamic State and the al-Qaeda offer a template for liberation, not the failed religious nationalism of groups like the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. This youth cohort, fired by global jihadism, offers unprecedented opportunity for the Jaish.

From the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC814, to the Parliament House attack, the Jaish has shown it means business. For New Delhi, there are no easy options.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Firstpost.

Eye of the Storm

To see her, who was also one of the most decorated nuns, go through what she does every day, is not easy for us

THE SISTERS who rallied behind the Jalandhar rape survivor say their faith in god — despite their struggle to get justice — is still undeterred.

Earlier this month, Pope Francis had also admitted the Church was aware of its probelm of abuse

SISTER NINA ROSE

We tried to solve the case within the Church since it’s a charge against a senior official.

But nobody was willing to listen

The Nuns Who Took on the Bishop

S

AISHWARYA KUMAR

ister Alphy, Sister Anupama, Sister Josephine, Sister Nina Rose and Sister Ancetta smile as they talk about the few hours they spend tending to their farm, which includes a few chickens, and looking after a few crops. “It’s nothing big but something for us to divert our minds,” Sister Anupama says. Getting to a state of mind where they have the energy to even step out of their Missionaries of Jesus Convent in Kuravilangad has not been an easy journey.

The small town, about an hour-and-a- half from Kochi, is now home to these women — joined not only by their faith in god but also by their fight for justice. The sisters, all aged between 30 and 45, shook the Catholic Church and the country last year when they decided to rally behind a fellow nun who alleged that Franco Mulakkal, the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jalandhar, had raped her repeatedly between 2014 and 2016.

To band together and confront the power of the Church was a test only of their courage, not of their faith. Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, their colleague, A KERALA nun last year was found dead at a church alleged that Franco Mulakkal, in Hoshiarpur’s Dasuya in Octhe Bishop of the Roman tober last year, months after Catholic Diocese of Jalandhar, he deposed against the bishop. had raped her repeatedly Earlier this month, Pope Franbetween 2014 and 2016 cis, in an unprecedented move, admitted that the Church had a problem and that lay in women being treated as ‘second class’ in PROTESTING sisters shook society. The world’s senior-most the Catholic Church and the Catholic leader didn’t stop there country when they decided — he also said that priests and to rally behind the fellow nun bishops had abused nuns and and confront the power of the that the Church was aware of the Church scandals, adding that a number of clerics had been suspended as part of the Church’s procedure of cracking down on abuse.

FATHER KURIAKOSE While many nuns were Kattuthara, their colleague, caught off guard by the Pope’s was found dead at a church frankness, the statement made in Hoshiarpur’s Dasuya in the Vatican clarify that he was October last year, months actually referring to a form of after he deposed against the abuse of power, which was bishop also reflected in sexual abuse.

More than 4,000 km away from where the Pope spoke, his speech resonated. Nothing sets this town of roughly 18,000 people, as per Census 2011, apart from other small towns in Kerala except that it’s the epicentre of a controversy that’s shaken up the Catholic Church. Once here, a narrow treelined, tarred road leads you to the Missionaries of Jesus Convent.

Here, the nuns are fighting for their rights, not just as women but also as Brides of God. The Catholic Church is also one where Virgin Mary is venerated as the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven and is yet most criticised for its handling of sexual abuses cases and for not ordaining women. When the sexual abuse of a fellow nun, whom the other five also consider a ‘mentor’, came to the fore in 2017, the women brought it up with the higher authorities of the Church, scared to go public as it was against a senior official of the Church. Months of knocking on several doors, at various levels, across cities finally forced them to go to the police. “We tried to solve the case within the Church only since it’s an allegation against a

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higher authority. But nobody was willing to listen to the survivor,” says Sister Anupama. The nuns also wrote to the Vatican but received no response.

The survivor, the nuns say, is the kindest woman they have met. Years of abuse and months of her fight to get justice have aged her faster than her peers. The survivor was once a Mother General, one of the top positions accorded to women in the Catholic Church. “To see her, who was also one of the most decorated nuns in our congregation, go through what she does every day, is not easy for us,” says Sister Nina Rose.

The survivor was isolated by the convent authorities. “There is nothing that they did not do.

No mobile phone, no laptop, no conversation.

It was like living in a cell for her. Now, however, she has all of us and we are not going anywhere,” said Sister Anupama. Her isolation triggered ‘the movement’. The survivor’s army descended on Kuravilangad from other parts of the country, including Punjab, Jharkhand and Bihar.

The group was recently asked to return to the convents they came from. Fearing for the survivor, who they believe will be tortured more if left without support, the sisters wrote to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, asking him to interfere if it came down to their leaving the convent. On February 9, the nuns were assured by Bishop Agnelo Gracias, the apostolic administrator of the Jalandhar diocese right now, that they will not be ousted from the convent as long as they are needed for the case.

Things, however, took a turn as the diocese PRO Peter Kavumpuram clarified that the transfer orders were not cancelled as it was completely within the jurisdiction of the Mother General and that the bishop did not interfere in their internal matters.

Until December last year, the sisters were not even stepping out of their convent in Kuravilangad till a visiting nun motivated them to do something to take their mind off the case. Sister Anupama’s face lightens up as she speaks about their little kitchen garden right outside the convent. “A few hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening, we tend to our little world,” she says.

Getting that started too was not easy. The convent administration, which they believe is under the influence of Mulakkal and making all attempts to disband the group, threatened the first man who came to till the land for the kitchen garden.

“They threatened him with a police complaint and he never showed up after that. We had to call someone else then,” says Sister Anupama.

The internal tussle in the convent has led to a sort of divide in the land around the convent. One side of the road is out of bounds for the nuns. The other side— with a small portion of the land—is where they have started their kitchen garden.

The sisters continue to be vulnerable but one thing is for certain—they will not back down before the survivor is given the justice she deserves. The survivor, too, had joined the Church in her teens.

Her sister, Alphy, who is also one of the protesting nuns, recalled how the survivor was the closest to their mother.“Bishop Franco and his team are a very strong opponent. Even the people running the convent here are his people. With each passing minute, every single day, they are trying very hard to destroy us. But we are ready for this trial.

We want justice,” says Sister Alphy.

Their respective families have stood by them throughout the ordeal. And that, say the sisters, was their biggest strength. It is the same support, they added, which they got when they decided to become god’s brides in their teens. Coming from humble backgrounds from various parts of Kerala, including Kodanad, Cherthala and having been brought up in Catholic families, the way of

The nuns wrote about the case to the Vatican but received no response

 GETTYIMAGES

SISTER ANUPAMA

the Church was not an isolated subject for these women, but the happenings inside were a shocker. Despite that, the women say their faith in god, years after their first tryst with the Church and despite the struggle to get justice, is still undeterred.

“Within our congregation only, it’s just us six.

There is no other support. The thought used to cross my mind, even now it does at times. But if that’s a negative question, there is a positive answer to it—that this was needed,” says Sister Anupama, an opinion also voiced by her fellow sisters.

Bishop Franco and his team are very strong... they are trying very hard to destroy us. But we are ready for this trial SISTER ALPHY

8

Firstpost.

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Versus

Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas mantra rules out religious inequality SHAZIA ILMI

TUFAIL AHMAD

ernment jobs, Gujarat scores far higher than Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, or West Bengal. These are matters one should ponder over.

Just before the previous Lok Sabha elections, Congress leader Salman Khurshid pitched the idea of a quota for Muslims. But Muslim-only beneficiaries and Muslim-only workshops alienate the community further, perpetuate their victimhood and relegate them to a state of subservience.

What the BJP is doing through its policies such as ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ is ensuring there is no discrimination on the basis of religion. But to say a few such schemes are only for Muslims is something the party will not do.

And even if it did, that wouldn’t help the Muslim cause, because they would be struck down by the Constitution, which prohibits any kind of special treatment based on religion.

Muslims benefit if people benefit. And because many Muslims are on the lowest rung of the ladder, socially and economically, they stand to gain more. When there is less corruption, when there are direct cash transfers, and when the leakages in the public distribution system get plugged, the intended recipients get the benefits. So, when you look at best practices for income distribution or welfare schemes, Muslims end up benefiting more.

Another key aspect is that the middlemen are out of the system now. There has not been a single case of deliberate discrimination in any of the schemes at the policy level related to education, employment, skill development, housing, or medical care.

Whether it is the RJD, BSP or — particularly — the Congress, what have they done after so many Muslims got killed under the watch of these so-called secular parties in so many riots? There have been no communal riots under the BJP regime and the indices of Muslim representation are much higher in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh than in the nonBJP ruled states. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

While the avowed secularists want to defend the Afzal Gurus and the Tiger Memons of the world, the BJP has its eye on the Muslim woman or girl who has been thrown out of her house without any assistance for her three children. The BJP is looking at the craftsman and the artisan. It is aiming to ensure better microcredit facilities for a Muslim rickshawallah. The idea is to focus on good governance and prevention of leakages in the system. Because that benefits everyone: the poor, the Hindus, the Muslims. So, as long as there is no discrimination of beneficiaries, of welfare, the BJP has not failed the Muslims.

BJP has its eye on the Muslim woman who has been thrown out of her house without any assistance

D

 IMAGING

G

rowing up in Kanpur, an impression prevailing among people was that we, the Muslims, become useful only during elections. With a peek at the indices of socio-economic progress, one realises that everyone has failed the community, because it is perceived to be merely a vote bank.

Indian Muslims vary from place to place, holding myriad points of view from sect to sect. So, I have a huge problem when we homogenise the community, as I know the narrative is proceeding in a very pitiable political direction. Muslims have long been political slaves of the Congress and other wannabe secular parties. The Congress has a lot to answer for as it was the so-called rehnuma, or messiah, of the Muslims. It is something that makes me very angry because this is fake conciliation, a patronising attitude of the party that has resulted in this brand

of thinking. Look at the kind of diabolical appeasement that has gone on; it is shameful. The average Muslim has only suffered.

In fact, a large section of the community has been failed repeatedly since the Shah Bano times by the Congress. The only party that has an unambiguous stand on instant triple talaq is the BJP. So, if there is one party that has not failed the real marginalised, the downtrodden among the Muslims, it is the Bharatiya Janata Party. There is the Srikrishna Commission report, which talks about the institutional bias implicit in the system irrespective of the Congress or the BJP, and which is present in various agencies such as the police and others.

Then we have the Sachar Committee report, which talks about the microcredit facilities, healthcare, school dropout rates, literacy levels and sanitation. With a study of these, you realise that it is the Congress and the avowed secular parties that are most at fault, and this has led to the worst economic and social indicators for Muslims. If you look at the representation of Muslims in gov-

Propaganda against Muslims has gained legitimacy under BJP

Biting the bullet after every ballot facts first MUSLIMS HAVE LONG been political slaves of the

Congress and other wannabe secular parties

IF YOU LOOK at the representation of Muslims in government jobs, Gujarat scores far higher than Uttar Pradesh, Bihar or West Bengal BJP LEADERS ARE targeting Muslims propagating the

view that there is a premium on minorities, and the community benefits from minority appeasement

IT’S AN AXIOMATIC truth that both the BJP and the Congress have failed minorities, be it Muslims, Dalits or women.

Shazia Ilmi is a BJP spokesperson

14.2% MUSLIM MPs LOWEST IN LOK SABHA: NUMBER OF MUSLIM THE LOWEST MPS IN LOK NUMBER IN SABHA IN 6 DECADES 6 DECADES

is the total strength of Muslims in India’s population

1

23

Muslim MPs (4.2%)

7 states,

2 11 out of 37

parties represented in the Lok Sabha have Muslim MPs

3

The highest representation was in 1980, when 49 Muslims were elected to Parliament

Congress and Trinamool Congress have 4 Muslim MPs each, PDP 3, AIUDF, IUML, CPI-M & NCP 2 each, AIMIM, AIADMK, RJD and LJP 1 each

1 Union Territory have Muslim MPs in the 16th Lok Sabha

543 MPs in the 16th Lok Sabha

4

5

uring and after the 2014 parliamentary elections, Narendra Modi promised Muslims that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would evolve into an inclusive party. His slogan ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ (Together with all, development for all) promoted his inclusive vision. “Development is only possible when Muslim youth will hold Quran in one hand,” he had promised, “and computer in the other”. He budgeted `100 crore for madrassas and spoke against instant triple talaq, a social evil in this day and age—and his actions resonated with Muslim women.

Cut to Adilabad on November 28, when BJP national president Amit Shah lashed out against KCR administration’s minority appeasement in Telangana.

Minority is a weapon that’s unleashed against Muslims though there are other social and religious groups. BJP leaders are targeting Muslims, propagating the view that there is a premium on minorities, and that the community benefits from minority appeasement. This is utter rubbish.

The appeasement is of Islamic clerics, not Muslims at large.

The fact of the matter is that Hindus are recipients of the biggest appeasement. The BJP talks about minority appeasement because it helps the party build a robust Hindu vote bank. In 2017, though Yogi Adityanath gave 100 per cent subsidy for the Mansarovar Yatra, the BJP accused Muslims of getting Haj subsidy, which, in reality, went to Air India. If Muslims aren’t compelled to travel by Air India, the Haj will cost much less.

Madhya Pradesh provides subsidy for Hindu pilgrimages. Ditto for Rajasthan, Karnataka, Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. Shah, whose party aggressively promotes majoritarianism, accuses his rivals of indulging in minority politics. But the BJP has used hot socio-political issues like nikah halala and triple talaq to consolidate its Hindu vote-bank.

In his 2017 booklet Why is BJP in Politics?, Shah wrote: “A political party’s character can become known also from its leaders.” So, let’s judge the BJP’s character from its leaders’ utterances. BJP’s Unnao MP Sakshi Maharaj has called for razing of Delhi’s Jama Masjid.

Rajasthan minister Jaswant Yadav made a direct poll pitch during his campaign in the Assembly elections, which concluded on November 28. “If you’re a Hindu, vote for me, and if you’re a Muslim vote, for the Congress,” he said.

Union minister Giriraj Singh subscribes to a similar toxic view that the Muslims should go to Pakistan and has dubbed Deoband’s Darul Uloom as a “temple of terrorism”.

BJP’s Aligarh MP Satish Gautam has accused the Aligarh Muslim

6

7

In terms of Muslim representation, this is the worst after 1957, when there were only 22 Muslim MPs

University of propagating Taliban ideology. Many of these BJP members are elected lawmakers. Anti-Muslim propaganda and hate speeches have gained legitimacy and currency during the BJP rule.

Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas is the proverbial elephant’s teeth, meant to be displayed in public as an electoral rhetoric. When Modi was Gujarat chief minister, he ensured systematic exclusion of Muslims from political life. Under him, the BJP did not give a single ticket to Muslim candidates for either Lok Sabha or Assembly elections. After he became Prime Minister, the BJP persisted with a similar policy barring exceptions such as in Jammu and Kashmir.

Recently, a Jain family left a Muslim-dominated neighbourhood of Pune because their child went out with Muslim children and ate chicken. Muslims and Hindus stand deeply divided in towns across India because of entrenched societal biases. In case of Gujarat, the BJP government has forced Muslims to live in ghettos. The BJP expanded the scope

Modi condemned cow vigilantes only when victims were Dalits, not Muslims of Disturbed Areas Act in towns, preventing Muslims from buying property in Hindu areas. Similarly, Hindus shun Muslim-dominated areas like the plague. In Uttar Pradesh, towns are being divided along religious lines. Exclusion equals racism. Modi appointed Yogi Adityanath as the UP chief minister despite the latter’s bigotry: “If they (Muslims) kill one Hindu, we will kill hundred.” No wonder, the cow vigilantes’ attack on Muslims is a logical culmination.

The BJP leaders have refused to unequivocally condemn the growing incidents of cow vigilantism. Both the BJP and the Congress have failed the minorities, be they Muslims, Dalits or women. Muhammadiyah, the oldest religious organisation in Indonesia, runs 177 universities and over 1,000 schools — but these don’t cater to Muslims alone.

Unless women become emirs of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, and run modern schools for all, it is criminal for Muslims to think political parties can engineer their progress.

Tufail Ahmad is a former BBC journalist and senior fellow at Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington DC

West Bengal has the largest number of Muslim MPs — eight; 4 from TMC and 2 each from Congress and the CPI-M

8

9

5.6 times

The factor by which Hindu population at 96.63 crore exceeds the Muslims (17.22 crore), as per India’s 2011 census

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Firstpost.

First Person

9

SUNIL ARORA CHIEF ELECTION COMMISSIONER

THE POLLYNOMIAL EQUATION

Poll chief for CAG to audit funds of political parties

A

SANJIB KR BARUAH

EXCLUSIVE

few years ago, Sunil Arora, then-secretary in the newly set-up skill development ministry received a call on his office landline on a very busy day. His driver had suffered a seizure. Arora got up with a start and took a lift in this journalist’s car to rush to a crowded government hospital in central Delhi. He made his way through a maze of people to reach his driver, who lay writhing on a stretcher at the far end of a corridor.

Arora held his driver’s hand and said, “Don’t worry; I will take care of everything. Get well soon.” The promise was duly kept.

That was the softer side of the 1980-batch IAS Rajasthan cadre officer. But his professional side is much harder stuff. And hard it’s got to be as Arora readies for the parliamentary elections. In the next few months, all eyes will be on India’s 23rd Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) as he organises and manages the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Known to hold his own during his career as a bureaucrat, Arora wants a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) panel to audit the funds of political parties. “The Election Commission of India (ECI) has already sent a proposal in this regard to the Ministry of Law and Justice that CAGappointed auditors should do it.

Meanwhile, the ECI does give it to ICAI (Institute of Chartered Accountants of India) to look into above expenditures

The Election Commission of India has sent a proposal to the ministry of law and justice on audit of funding of political parties as the issue of black money looms ahead of Lok Sabha polls

of a certain level.”

Arora’s got his work cut out, and the numbers tell that tale: in the 2014 elections, the electorate comprised 815 million voters; the number of polling stations was about 930,000 and more than 11 million polling officials and security personnel were deployed. The 2019 elections are on course to outdo the previous one in terms of sheer numbers and complexity of the exercise.

A lot has been reported on the significant role black money plays in elections. Even in the recently concluded Assembly polls in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana, about `146 crore was seized.

“There have been reports, not just in the recent elections but over the last 8-10 years, that money and freebies—whether in the distribution of cash or clothes or liquor—have been playing a role and trying to vitiate elections. What has happened is that over a period of time with all kinds of advancements in ICT [information and communication technologies], elections are becoming more and more insulated. But at the same time, just as there are a lot of positive stakeholders, there are a lot of people who are interested in getting a positive result for themselves either by fair or foul means—more foul than fair,” says Arora.

“The question is if `146 crore was seized, there could have been more (illegal cash) that was not seized. So more illegal cash should be seized during election season. But it is equally important that all legal steps required should be taken more swiftly, decisively and ruthlessly.”

On the standard operational procedure in fighting the black money malaise, the CEC says, “From ECI, for many years now, we have expenditure observers drawn essentially from the revenue department to keep a strict tab. We get accounts of candidates every third day even during elections.

We get accounts of parties even

after elections. Whenever we go to the states for reviewing election preparedness, we have Central government enforcement agencies.

During that time, the DGs of income tax department, of investigating wings tell us that they have taken all kinds of precautions. In fact, they are upping their level of precautions with every successive election in terms of air monitoring units, field units, etc.”

But what new measures does the ECI have in place this time?

“The ECI has to conduct elections as per Article 324 (of the Constitution). But at the same time, it cannot take on the role of the income tax department or customs or any other agency. Everybody’s trying to come up with more optimal measures and enduring solutions, but to say that the ECI alone can do it would be slightly overestimating it,” says the poll panel head.

Arora doesn’t seem very enthused by the idea of State-funded elections.

“I don’t think so. As it is, the State spends huge money on management and administration of elections.

Movement of lakhs of Central paramilitary forces, their allowances and their stay arrangements cost huge money. But there would be lots of issues, in case, state funds elections.

Far more in depth, consideration by all the stakeholders, including political parties, is required.”

So, how big is that figure (the cost of conducting the elections)?

“I wouldn’t like to discuss that,” the CEC says.

On the question of electoral bonds—a financial instrument that political party donors can buy and donate to their preferred party— Arora skirts the issue by saying, “It is for Parliament to decide the law of the land.”

However, he promises a detailed look into another aspect of funding of political parties which allows foreign entities—including companies and businessmen—to donate. “This needs to be gone into greater detail by the ECI. At the moment, we are too

The ECI has to conduct elections as per Article 324 (of the Constitution).

But at the same time, it cannot take on the role of the income tax department or customs

digital

For the full video of the interview scan this QR code using your mobile to go to firstpost.com

caught up with the organisation and management of elections. We just got free from the elections in five states and before that we had elections in Karnataka, Gujarat and Himachal. So, we will soon start looking at these issues and we will form a group, if required, and include outside experts after the Lok Sabha elections,” Arora says.

With the big polls looming, Arora is a very busy man—not the least in allaying fears over charges that EVMs (electronic voting machines) can be tampered with.

The latest round of allegations were made by ‘Syed Shuja’, a selfproclaimed US-based Indian cyber expert during a much-hyped January 21 London conference that he addressed via Skype.

“There is a difference between tampering, or manipulation, and malfunctioning. Tampering and manipulation of EVMs cannot be done. They are standalone machines that are not connected to anything. Malfunctioning does happen once in a while and immediate measures are taken to rectify it. In fact, there is a technical expert committee which goes into every technical aspect of EVM manufacturing. This technical expert committee has been there for almost two decades. The present chairman is a professor emeritus at IIT Delhi who was also associated with the earlier technical committee. Moreover, EVMs are manufactured in two facilities that also make defence equipment. So, they are secure.

And they are manufactured purely in India,” Arora says.

“There was so much hype over the London conference but it turned out to be a flop show.

Whether the person’s (Shuja) name is correct or not, we don’t know at this stage. He was never in the rolls of ECIL (Electronics Corporation of India Limited) like he claimed. On whether he acted on his own or was sent by somebody or somebody was orchestrating this behind the scenes, we have some information from here and there, but we don’t have any evidence,” Arora says “We have also lodged an FIR with the Delhi Police to get into the details and investigate this entire matter. We cannot be intimidated, pressured or for that matter bullied by such tactics,” the CEC adds.

“But why it feels bad is because so many people are working almost 24X7 for years to make the system secure, to make it tamper-proof and then they all feel demotivated and dispirited,” Arora adds.

On the clamour for holding Lok Sabha and Assembly polls simultaneously, the CEC says, “The Law Commission has also supported it. So, it is a highly desirable goal, but definitely not

in the coming elections. Because you have to align the life of the Houses in the Centre as well as in the states. And that kind of alignment can be done (only) by legal amendments.”

Refusing to be drawn into whether Indian democracy will do better with the Proportional Representation (PR) system as against the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) that exists at present, he says, “The existing law doesn’t support it. I will say only that much at this stage.”

Of the about 1,400 registered political parties in India, only about 70 are functional and contest elections. More than 1,300 are defunct for all practical purposes and exist merely for— reportedly—illegal purposes. So what can be done?

“Some amendments have been suggested to the ministry in this regard. They are under consideration. But my own view is that the ECI should not become an arbitrator of the fate of parties.

That would be assuming a different role for the ECI altogether. This is also about strengthening the powers of the ECI. The ECI should be empowered to ask more and more detailed questions in case of non-compliances, but not deregistration,” Arora says.

Reminded of former CEC Tirunellai Narayana Iyer Seshan’s clashes with the government, Arora is uncomfortable. “I am not very grandiloquent; I work under the radar. But I have plans. I try to go on a purposive and objective manner without fear or favour. After I end my term in office, it is for the stakeholders to say and to judge.”

Arora has some 33 more months.

The public will surely be watching.

Just as there are a lot of positive stakeholders, there are a lot of people who are interested in getting a positive result for themselves either by fair or foul means—more foul than fair

10

Firstpost.

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Crossroads BIG GAME Beijing is determined to dominate the age of electric transport by cornering giant swathes of the Congo’s cobalt

China Leads the Safari on Cobalt

As New Delhi struggles to shape its strategy on tapping cobalt in the Congo, Beijing has already become the dominant player in mining the shiny grey metal used to make lithium-ion batteries that power electric cars and smartphones

N PRAVEEN SWAMI

’sala, he was called, the man in the photo which didn’t shock the world.

“He hadn’t made his rubber quota for the day”, writer and photographer Alice Seeley Harris recorded in 1904, “so the Belgian-appointed overseers had cut off his daughter’s hand and foot. Her name was Boali. She was five years old. Then they killed her. But they weren’t finished.

They killed his wife as well. And because that didn’t seem quite cruel enough, quite strong enough to make their case, they cannibalised both.”

“And they presented N’sala with the tokens, the leftovers from the once living body of his darling child whom he so loved.”

Now, six decades after the Democratic Republic of Congo gained independence from Belgium, the war-torn and politically-volatile country is once again at the heart of one of the world’s great resource-races. The country is home to more than 60 per cent of the world’s cobalt—the hard, shiny grey metal that lies at the heart of the rechargeable batteries powering the next generation of cars, homes and even aircraft.

India’s hopes of transforming its economy rest, in many ways, on secure and stable access to the metal. The good news is New Delhi finally seems to be warming up at the starting block for the race to get it. The bad news is that its showed up ten years after the starting whistle was blown.

CHINESE COMPANIES MINE ALMOST HALF OF THE CONGO’S COBALT

46%

OWNED BY CHINA

FUTURE IS ELECTRIC

Last year, the government announced plans to make a third of India’s vehicle fleet electric by 2030—part of a sweeping push to green India’s energy consumption. The logic is sound, and not just because it will make our air cleaner. Ever since 2008, hydrocarbon prices have been falling thanks in part to shale oil and gas finds in North America. But India is importing ever-growing volumes, making it reliant on crisis-prone West Asia. India has to compete, moreover, with other energy-hungry Asian economies notably China.

“The future is electric,” Union minister of state for new and renewable energy RK Singh recently said. Noting that the average per-kilometre running cost of an electric car is just 0.85 to 6.50 for hydrocarbon variants, Singh said that going electric would “help us achieve autonomy from expensive petroleum imports”.

Like most things in life, though, there’s a catch. Ten kilogrammes, or so, of the hard, grey metal go into making a single car battery. The government’s most recent records, to the end of 2017, show India has 229,650,234 motor vehicles—which means the demand from this sector alone will be gargantuan.

Following the electric car decision, a Cabinet note—the bureaucratic briefs that facilitate decision-making at the highest levels—has been prepared, laying out India’s need for cobalt. The National Security Council Secretariat has also commissioned studies. In one, seen by Firstpost, the NSCS noted that there is “no production of cobalt in the country from indigenous ores” India’s estimated reserves of 44.91 million tonnes are trivial given the need; worse, they’re locked up in Odisha and Nagaland, where local resistance to mining is high.

“There’s also the problem that cobalt mining involves toxic residues,” says an official involved in the studies for the Cabinet, “which means local resistance will be stiff.”

Energy Ministry officials say they’re now working to set up a consortium involving the National Aluminium Company, Hindustan Copper and the Mineral Exploration Corporation that will work overseas to tie up sources of rare metals, including cobalt and lithium. Talks have begun with Australia and Peru, both of which have reserves.

But as India struggles to shape a strategy, China has already cornered giant swathes of the Congo’s cobalt—and is moving fast to lock in the rest.

THE CONGO-CHINA PARTNERSHIP

China’s involvement in the Congo’s cobalt is staggering. Eight of the Congo’s largest mining operations—Tenke Fungurume, Congo Dongfang, Ruashi, Kamoya, Metal, MJM, MKM and Sicomines—are Chinese-owned. Together, they accounted for almost 49 per cent of the Congo’s cobalt output last year, which in turn made up 68 per cent of global production. In addition, Shezhen-based GEM announced last year that it had contracted with global cobalt giant Glencore for 50,000 tonnes over three years—about half of the entire world production in 2018.

The invention of the internal combustion engine ensured European and United States supremacy in cars, railways and aeronautics for a century—a supremacy it cemented with political control of crude oil in West Asia.

Beijing is determined that its companies—already the big-

RUASHI

Ruashi Mining Jinchuan Group, China

6%

21% TENKE FUNGURUME

Tenke Fungurume CMOC, China

8%

4%

LUISWISHI

KAMOYA

Congo Dongfang Mining Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, China

COBALT COMPOSITION SHARE IN SELECTED LITHIUM-ION BATTERY CATHODES AS OF 2017

LCO LiCoO2

55%

Lithium cobalt oxide

gest battery suppliers in the world—will dominate the age of electric transport. Its presence in the Congo is meant to ensure no one else muscles in.

Following the success of Tesla’s gigafactory in Nevada, companies like Contemporary Amperex Technology have been mushrooming across China building similar operations that aim to exceed it in scale and ambition.

Laurent Kabila, the recently-removed Congolese president, was the key instrument of China’s rise. Trained at the People’s Liberation Army’s National Defence University, Kabila found reliable partners in Beijing who were willing to overlook his less-than-edifying human rights records.

Kabila succeeded in building a fortune through the relationship albeit at the expense of a population which still lives on just $1.25 a day.

The Congo Research Group, an independent research

DIVERSE

Metal mines Nanjing Hanrui Cobalt, China

4%

Kamoya Wanbao mining Ltd. (Comika), China

3% DIVERSE

MJM Jiana Energy, China

NMC

NCA

LiNiMnCoO2

15%

Lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide

LiNiCoAIO2

10%

Lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide

100 per cent OF THE BATTERY OF AN iPHONE IS MADE USING COBALT

29%

9%

MUTANDA

TILWE

Mutanda Mining Glencore, Switzerland

LMO LiMn2O4

0%

Lithium manganese oxide

Other includ mining

LFP

FeLiO4P

0%

Lithium iron phosphate

body, revealed in one report that Kabila and his siblings were at the centre of a web of companies with stakes in the mining sector, involving multi-million dollar revenues. Global Witness, another transparency watchdog, estimated that, at least, $750 million—about a fifth of the Congo’s mining revenues—was misappropriated between 2013 and 2015.

“Central Africa’s giant holds the continent’s richest mineral wealth,” analyst Aditi Lalbahadur noted in a recent paper . “Yet, having suffered war and violence for most of its history, its economy remains woefully underdeveloped and its people impoverished.”

A western mining business official familiar with the region says, “It didn’t take a lot to do business in the Congo. Basically, you needed a large suitcase and enough banknotes to fill it.” Beijing’s financial muscle helped Kabila ride out elections in 2005 and 2011, which were widely perceived

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

PHILIPPINES

Crossroads

CUBA

5%

Firstpost.

4%

11

COMMENT

Manoj Joshi RUSSIA

AUSTRALIA

4%

THE CONGO

68%

SHARE OF COBALT MINED GLOBALLY 2017

3%

CANADA

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

3%

3%

MOROCCO

MADAGASCAR

1%

3%

CHINA

2%

1% ZAMBIA

1%

NEW CALEDONIA

China plays heavy metal tune, world faces the music

SA

1%

O

BATTERY PLANT CAPACITY FULLY COMMISSIONED

EXPECTED BY 2021

380K 119K CHINA

US

51K

43K

36K

THAILAND

EUROPE

OTHER

Tesla Inc Contemporary Amperex Technology BYD Energy Absolute PCL LG Chem Tianjin Lishen Battery Joint-Stock Dynavolt Renewable Power Technology

53%

Microvast InC Guoxuan High-Tech

GLOBAL ELECTRIC VEHICLE SALES 2010-17 PLUG-IN HYBRID ELECTRIC VEHICLE

MUKONDO

Somika Somika SPRL, DRC

4%

5%

EZEMBE

r DRC ding artisanal g

ETOILE

Etoile/Usoke Shalina Resources/ Chemaf, UAE

3% BIG HILL

+53%

+58%

+162%

+659%

400

0 2010

as rigged. He sought to overturn a two-turn limit in 2016 arguing budgetary constraints and procedural problems meant elections could not be held.

Finally, this year, his hand-picked successor Felix Tshisekedi was declared winner in an election which both international observers as well as the country’s powerful Catholic church said had been won by opposition candidate Martin Fayulu. Kinshasa, the capital, has since been calling for civil disobedience.

Even if a democratic transition is secured, the chances that the Congo will stabilise are low. Eastern Congo, where much of the country’s mineral wealth sits, has seen running armed conflict in recent years on top of civil wars from 1996-1997 and then from 1998 to 2003. The region is controlled, on ground, by small, armed groups collectively known as Mai-Mai. “Indian businesses just don’t have what it takes to operate in environments like these,” a Research and Analysis Wing official told Firstpost. “We just don’t have the infrastructure it needs like military contractors to provide security or the kinds of regional experts who can make the deals needed.”

“Beijing,” he said, “has spent years learning how to do this right, and is willing to pay the price.”

BLOOD PAYMENT

800

+68%

3%

Big Hill GTL, Belgium/ Cuba

1,200

+42%

KISANFU

Boss Mining ERG, Luxembourg

+57%

BATTERY ELECTRIC VEHICLE

The 23 years of King Leopold II’s rule in the Congo, which ran from 1885-1908, is estimated to have cost the lives of 10 million Africans. From Adam Hochschild’s history, King Leopold’s Ghost, we know it involved the chopping off of hands and genitals, floggings and burning down entire villages. Figures like Alice Seeley Harris, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and Arthur Conan Doyle campaigned against these atrocities, but to little avail: the wealth generated by rubber was just too great.

2011

2012

2013

2014

Like Belgium’s savage rubber plantations, China’s relentless campaign to extract cobalt from the bowels of the earth is paid for with blood, and broken bodies. Twenty per cent, perhaps more, of the Congo’s cobalt is extracted by artisanal miners—untrained workers who dig in illegal tunnels, or in the tailings of industrial mines.

In addition to the hundreds of thousands of adults, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund reported in 2014 that the artisanal mines use upwards of 40,000 children who are paid just $1-2 for a 12-hour shift.

Amnesty International reported in 2016 that many suffered potentially-fatal condition called ‘hard metal lung disease’ as well as asthma, and decreased pulmonary function—a consequence of inhaling cobalt particles.

New Delhi’s strategic energy aims—reducing dependence of hydrocarbons and building a vibrant green-energy industry—require it to be actively engaged in the heart of Africa, where the metal that will shape the new era is to be found.

Yet, India has been absent from the global stages where the future of the Congo is being shaped. There’s no Indian voice in the growing global campaign to ensure batteries use ethically-sourced cobalt. Nor has New Delhi participated in multinational efforts to support a genuine democratic transition in Kinshasa—something which could constrain China’s quasi-imperial influence in the country.

“The cobalt story shows we just don’t have the institutional capital we need to secure our interests”, a senior Ministry of External Affairs official says.

“In China, there’s a host of companies working closely with the government to make gambles when needed. In India, we just don’t have corporations with that kind of risk-taking mindset nor a bureaucracy with the resources to help them,” the official adds.

2015

2016

2017

Eight of the Congo’s largest mining operations are owned

by China accounting for 49% of its cobalt output in 2018 Laurent Kabila, who was recently removed as Congolese president, was the key instrument in the rise of China in the country

Source: EV-Volumes.com McKinsey Analysis

OWNED BY OTHERS

n the morning of September 7, 2010, a Chinese trawler collided with two Japanese coastguard ships near uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that are claimed by both countries. When Tokyo decided to detain the fishing boat’s captain, Beijing hit back with a vengeance by placing an informal trade embargo on all exports of rare earth elements to Japan, its main buyer. China controls 93 per cent of this group of 17 minerals, and more than 99 per cent of the world’s supply. They are used in making everything from cell phones to electric motors, batteries, aircraft, wind turbines, MRI machines as well as advanced avionics and control systems of fighter jets.

The Chinese denied the move and lifted the ban within a week. Subsequently, Beijing reduced the export quota of these minerals by 40 per cent, resulting in a skyrocketing of their prices. The US, EU and Japan took the case to the WTO, which ruled in their favour. China’s high-powered economic growth has made it a leading producer and consumer of minerals and metals found around the world. As China moves towards a consumption economy powered by a growing middle class, its demand for these elements, especially the rare earths, becomes even more voracious. And Beijing has not hesitated to use strategic minerals as an instrument of foreign policy.

The world confronts two inter-related issues—first, Chinese demand could lead to a global shortfall of certain key minerals. Second, China could restrict the availability of minerals, particularly rare earths, of which it is a dominant producer or of which it has acquired control overseas.

The key player from the Chinese point of view is the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), their version of our Niti Aayog. But the similarity doesn’t extend far. Unlike the late unlamented Indian Planning Commission or its successor Niti Aayog, the NDRC has real teeth. Its major task is to formulate and implement strategies of economic and social development, to develop targets and policies, regulate financial structures and monitor the health of the economy. It is also tasked with maintaining the overall control of important commodities, and formulate plans for the overall imports in relation to agricultural and industrial products and raw materials. It has to work out the utilisation strategies of these materials in relation to national plans as well as manage the strategic reserves of the country.

While the NDRC provides tactical guidance and supervision, the everyday work is done through the newly established Ministry of Natural Resources and their instruments are the huge state-owned enterprises (SOE) of the country. In the last two decades, China established large-scale refining and production facilities of aluminum, tantalum, and cobalt. Exploration for minerals within the country has intensified though not at the level of Australia and Canada. Beijing has also encouraged its companies, especially the SOEs, to expand into international markets and invest in strategic resources globally.

The biggest investment is in oil, featuring the Chinese giants, the Sinopec, Sinochem, CNOOC and CNPC. But Chinese companies have also invested heavily in other areas in companies in Australia, Canada, sub-Saharan Africa, Mongolia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Laos, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Papua New Guinea, Myanmar, etc. According to one estimate, the accumulated stock of Chinese overseas direct investment (ODI) in 2013 was $106 billion, making mining the number two destination for Chinese ODI. Last year, Tianqi Lithium acquired 24 per cent shares in Chile’s SQM company, making it the second largest shareholder in a major producer of a metal that is used in electric vehicle batteries. China sold more than 750,000 electric cars, some 3 per cent of the total, in 2017. China wants to up this to 20 per cent in 2025.

The Chinese ascendancy has alarmed the US, which though has an abundance of such minerals, has yet become 100 per cent import dependent. This is an outcome of the restrictive US policies in permitting mining of these minerals. As China and the US move into a phase of political and economic competition, we could see a disruption of the current markets, or temporary shortages or, for that matter, artificial escalation of prices. Countries like the US and China plan for such eventualities and maintain specialised reserves to be used in times of crisis. India now has started building a petroleum reserve, but in the strategic minerals game it will have to dig much deeper.

China could restrict the availability of minerals, particularly rare earths, of which it is a major producer

Manoj Joshi is a distinguished fellow at the New Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation

Firstpost.

12

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Polinomics

THE ECONOMY TELESCOPE ANNUAL INFLATION RATE AVG ANNUAL GDP GROWTH (IN %) AVG INFLATION RATE DURING TENURE

JP

CONGRESS

Major drought occurs, JP govt falls, prices soar as second oil shock hits the world

20

Indira Gandhi comes back to power, prices reach decadal records due to poor farm produce

Rajiv Gandhi takes over as PM, introduces the first stirrings of liberalisation

The inflation and GDP rate relationship since the first non-Congress government in 1977

NF

CONGRESS

UF

NDA

VP Singh forms govt, oil prices rise on Gulf War

Narasimha Rao’s finance minister Manmohan Singh announces the New Industrial Policy, starts economic reforms

P Chidambaram presents ‘dream Budget’, drastic cut in tax rates

UPA

AB Vajpayee-led NDA promises to put economy on road to recovery. Unable to rein in food prices, BJP loses local elections in key states including Delhi

Manmohan Singh sworn in as PM after Cong forms UPA; economy clocks record growth rates as govt launches welfare programmes including NREGA

NDA

Scams like 2G and coalgate hit govt. Onion prices touch `100 a kg in some areas, becoming emblematic of UPA’s inflation woes

String of reforms unveiled, including deregulation of diesel price, auction-based allocation of coal blocks, UDAY and UDAN schemes

16 12

10.5

10

8.8

6.4

7.4

8

4.5

6.9

6.1

5.8

3.8*

4

2.6

0

5.9

ELECTION RESULTS

1977

5.2

1980

Janata Party forms India’s first non-Congress govt in 1977

1984

1989

Congress returns to power with an unprecedented majority

Congress returns to power in 1980

5.7

5.2

6.1

1991

National Front forms non-Cong government

1996

PV Narasimha Rao heads a Cong-led government

6

6.8

1998

United Front forms government

6.7

2004

2009

Cong-led UPA forms govt with outside support from Left Parties in 2009

BJP-led NDA alliance forms government

7.6 2014

UPA returns to power with a resounding win

2019

Narendra Modi takes the BJP-led NDA to a massive victory

*April-December; based on new back series data from 2005-06

Underworld: India builds caves to save oil for crisis

HPS AHUJA

CEO & MD, ISPRL

‘India’s reserves built at $17 per barrel, global average is $23’

I

The Modi government’s plan to build two new caves of strategic petroleum reserves in Odisha and Karnataka will take crude oil stock to 87 days of demand by 2020

The inevitable never happens.

It’s the unexpected always.

P

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

sychologists describe hoarding as an emotional syndrome when people find it difficult to part with things. A sense of eternal fear of running out of things is overwhelming as also the need to pile up goods, irrespective of value or utility, resulting in a disorderly existence.

That’s not the quite the case with every class of accumulator though. Deep inside the earth’s surface, in neat, uncluttered subterranean coastal caverns, many governments are quietly stocking up something that they fear may soon run out: oil.

About 700 million barrels of oil currently lie in 60 underground caves located in four inconspicuous locations in the United States, which has been building its strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) since 1970. There are now many other huge oil stockpiles peppered across the globe—Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, China and many others—with governments pumping in billions of dollars into creating such facilities. China has developed a vast network of strategic reserve facilities at multiple locations that hold an estimated 275 million barrels as of mid-2017.

India is a relatively recent entrant to the club building its oil stocks to deal with potential fuel supply disruptions and price shocks. On June 27, 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over

TOP FIVE STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVES

Crude oil reserves (million barrels)

DIESEL SALES IN INDIA

81,073

(in ’000 tonnes)

CHINA

146

60

324

JAPAN

120 S. KOREA SPAIN

20

70

Source: Oilprice.com

50

in ’000

in ’000

US

PETROL SALES IN INDIA

40 30 20

2005

2018

Source: Petroleum Policy and Analysis Cell

SHEBONTI RAY DADWAL

SENIOR FELLOW, IDSA

INDIA’S CRUDE OIL IMPORTS

220,433

25 8,251

20

15 10

0

The issue today is not so much whether oil will be available, but whether affordable oil will be available

(in ’0000 tonnes)

5

10 0

26,174

25

80 39,650

400

of India the first right to the oil in the case of an emergency. India on its part will save on costs for importing crude to store while retaining the first right of access in an emergency. In November, the government had approved a plan allowing foreign oil companies to store oil in Padur’s strategic storage, which it estimates will help cut costs by `10,000 crore.

India first decided to construct SPRs in 2004 as part of a broader strategy to deal with growing demand, stagnating domestic production, soaring global crude costs and dependence on the unsteady West Asian region for imports.

Globally, though, there is increasing talk of breaking the piggy bank. The US SPR, an institution born of the first international oil supply shock of 1973, is being raided for cash.

At its peak in 2009–2011, the reserve held about 727 million barrels of crude oil. This is now down to about 700 million barrels. Since 2015, the US Congress has enacted five pieces of legislation calling for the sale of SPR oil.

Taken together, these authorised sales will reduce the size of the SPR to around 410 million barrels by the end of 2027.

India’s approach has long been tied to oil prices, as it is a net oil importer, and rising prices are set to hit its economy. “Despite the government’s stated intention to reduce dependence on oil imports, oil will remain in demand for the next few decades,” said Shebonti Ray Dadwal, senior fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, in a recent paper Strategic Petroleum Reserves: Stocking Oil for Rainy Days (https://bit.ly/2E74pfT).

(in ’000 tonnes)

90

694

THE STRATEGIC petroleum reserve in Visakhapatnam alone can meet two-and-a-half days’ fuel needs of the country

a Cabinet meeting to approve a plan to build two new caves of SPRs which, when complete and tanked up, will create additional capacity to maintain supplies for up to 11.5 days’ oil needs in an emergency. This will raise India’s crude oil storage capacity to equivalent of 87 days of demand by 2020, which include 67 days’ worth of commercial stocks held by refineries (apart from the armed forces’ stocks).

One of the new caves will be built at Chandikhol, in Odisha, to store up to 4.4 million tonnes of crude oil; the other will be a 2.5-million tonne facility at Padur, Karnataka. This is besides the three SPRs India already has in Visakhapatnam, Mangaluru and Padur. The Visakhapatnam and Mangauluru facilities have been built to meet roughly 2.5 days of requirement each while Padur can meet 4.5 days’ of oil needs. These facilities can store up to 1.33 million tonnes, 1.5 million tonnes (Manguluru) and 2.5 million tonnes (Padur).

The Cabinet’s decision in June to build new SPR caverns came exactly 45 days after a container ship carrying the first consignment of 2 million barrels of crude oil set sail from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the Mangaluru SPR. Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC)—the only one to partner with India on its crude oil reserve programme till date—has tied up with Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Limited (ISPRL) (see interview) to store around 5.86 million barrels of crude oil in at the Mangaluru SPR at its own cost.

This agreement was signed during Modi’s visit to the UAE in February last year. In November, ADNOC signed another agreement with ISPRL to store oil in half of the Padur strategic oil reserve site. The agreement will allow ADNOC to sell oil to local refiners but give the government

in ’0000

GAURAV CHOUDHURY

95,861

15 10 5

2005

2018

Source: Petroleum Policy and Analysis Cell

0

2005

ndia will soon have the capacity to store crude oil in underground caverns that it can dip into to meet 90 days of requirements in case of an emergency. “We currently have built capacity that can store about 9-9.5 days of crude oil requirements. The oil marketing companies have about 65 days of crude storage. After completing the second phase of strategic petroleum reserves (SPRs), we will add another 12 days of crude storage capacity, which shall bring the total crude reserves to about 86-87 days (of requirement),” HPS Ahuja, CEO and MD, Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Limited (ISPRL) said in an exclusive interview with Firstpost.

As of now, there are about 20 million barrels of crude stored in three SPRs in Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and Manguluru and Padur (Karnataka). These three ISPRL-constructed SPRs have a combined storage capacity of total 5.33 million tonnes (MT), which is around 39 million barrels.

Padur is the biggest among the three with a capacity of 2.5 MT, followed by Mangaluru (1.5 MT) and Vishakhapatnam (1.33 MT).

ISPRL has built these three SPRs within seven years, meeting the global gestation period, at an estimated `4,000 crore. “The global average cost for SPRs is $23 barrel. We have built it at about $17 a barrel. Labour costs are lower here.”

In the second phase, India plans to build an additional 6.5 MT facilities at Chandikhol, Odisha, and Padur, with a capacity to store another 11.5-12 days’ crude needs. “Assuming we start work on these later this year, the facilities should be commissioned by 2025 given the usual gestation of six to seven years for such projects,” Ahuja said. It has allowed foreign oil companies to stock oil in the storages on the condition that the government will get the first right to use the reserves in case of an emergency or supply disruptions.

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) will fill up part of the SPRs in Mangaluru and Padur.

State-owned Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, which has borne part of the cost for building this facility, uses a third of the Visakhapatnam facility to store crude used in its refineries across the country. The government has stored crude in the remaining part of this facility, Ahuja said.

Likewise, the government and ADNOC have started stockpiling crude oil in the Mangaluru facility.

The Padur SPR has four compartments of 0.625 million tonnes each and ADNOC will use a part of this facility also (apart from Mangaluru) to stock oil, Ahuja added. “We are yet to take a view (on whether to allow foreign companies to stock oil) on the fourth compartment in Padur.”

Ahuja also disagreed with the view that electricity will eventually be the primary source of energy for vehicles in the next decade, negating the need to build too many SPRs. “I don’t see that happening in the near future in India. This requires big infrastructure development such as charging stations. This will take some time,” he said.

2018

Source: Petroleum Policy and Analysis Cell

As told to Gaurav Choudhury

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Firstpost.

Global Theatre

 GETTYIMAGES

SAUDI CROWN Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrives in Delhi on the back of a visit to Pakistan, where he is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding on a framework for $10 billion investments.

Iran, Pakistan the black swans in Saudi-India ties JAMES M DORSEY

SAUDI ARABIA’S relation with Pakistan and its concerns over Chabahar are two big complications for India

ter money laundering and funding of political violence. Things get complihen Saudi Crown Prince cated, however, when geopolitics kicks in. Prince Mohammed arrives in Delhi Mohammed bin Salman on the back of a visit to Pakistan, where meets Prime Minister he is expected to sign a memorandum Narendra Modi next of understanding on a framework for week, the elephant in the room is like$10 billion of investments, primarily in ly to be what weighs more: the issues oil refining, petrochemicals, renewable the two men agree on or the ones that energy and mining. divide them.

The memo follows significant Saudi As a matter of principle, Prince Moaid to help Pakistan evade a financial hammed and Modi are likely to take crisis that included a $3-billion deposit their strategic partnership to a new in Pakistan’s central bank to support the level because of changing energy markets, a decline in American power, country’s balance of payments the rise of China and the and another $3 billion in transnational threat of deferred payments for political violence. oil imports.

Discussions with The tricky parts are the investments the crown prince and his delegation of in the memoranSaudi businessmen dum that include on energy and ina plan by the SauSAUDI INVESTMENT vestment will prove di national oil comIN A REFINERY IN to be the easy part. pany, Aramco, to MAHARASHTRA’S Saudi Arabia supbuild a refinery at RATNAGIRI plies 20 per cent of Inthe Chinese-backed dia’s crude oil. It is now port of Gwadar, close investing $44 million in a reto Pakistan’s border with finery in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri.

Iran and the India-backed IraIndia, moreover, expects the Saudis to nian port of Chabahar. Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are closely monitoring invest in ports and roads while Riyadh Chabahar’s progress. is interested in Indian agriculture that would export products to Saudi Arabia.

A potential Saudi investment in trouAt first glance, security issues should bled Balochistan’s Reko Diq copper and be a non-brainer. The two countries gold mine would strengthen the kingdom’s hold in the strategic province that hold joint military exercises, share intelligence and cooperate on counterterboth Prince Mohammed and US President rorism. They are also working to counDonald J Trump’s hardline national secu-

W

$

44mn

rity adviser John Bolton see as a launching pad for efforts to destabilise Iran.

Taken together, the refinery, an oil reserve in Gwadar and the mine would also help Saudi Arabia in efforts to prevent Chabahar from emerging as a powerful Arabian Sea hub.

Saudi funds are flowing into ultra-conservative anti-Shia, anti-Iranian Sunni madrassas in Balochistan. It remains unclear, though, as to whether the money originates with the Saudi government, Saudi nationals of Baloch descent or the two million-strong Pakistani diaspora in the kingdom.

The money helps put in place building blocks for possible covert action should the kingdom or the United States—or both—decide to act on proposals to support irredentist action.

Such covert action could jeopardise Indian hopes of using Chabahar to bypass Pakistan, enhance its trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia and create an antidote to Gwadar, a crown jewel in China’s Belt and Road initiative.

Pakistani analysts expect around $5 billion in Afghan trade to flow through Chabahar, after India started handling the port operations in December.

It could also further strain ties with Pakistan that accuses India of fomenting nationalist unrest in Balochistan.

The funds take on added significance in the face of Saudi concerns about Chabahar and India’s support for the port. The money continues to flow even though the crown prince has significantly cut back on the kingdom’s global fund-

ing of ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim groups to bolster his assertion that the kingdom is embracing a more moderate, albeit as yet undefined, form of Islam.

The money started coming in at about the time the Riyadh-based International Institute for Iranian Studies said in a report that Chabahar posed a “direct threat to the Arab Gulf states” that called for “immediate counter measures”.

Written by Mohammed Hassan Husseinbor, a Washington-based Iranian Baloch lawyer and activist, the study warned that Chabahar would allow Iran to step up oil exports to India at the expense of Saudi Arabia, raise foreign investment in the Islamic Republic, increase government revenues and allow Tehran some muscle-flexing in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

Noting the expanse of Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province, Husseinbor said “it would be a formidable challenge, if not impossible, for the Iranian government to protect such long distances and secure Chabahar in the face of widespread Baluch opposition, particularly if this opposition is supported by Iran’s regional adversaries and world powers”.

Published in a country that tightly controls the media as well as the output of think tanks, the study resonated in a memorandum drafted a year later by Bolton before he assumed office. The memo envisioned US support “for the democratic Iranian opposition”, including in Balochistan and Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province.

Iranian officials believe that Saudi Arabia and the US have a hand in a string of recent attacks by Baloch, Kurdish and Iranian Arab nationalists, but have so far been unable to produce anything beyond allegations. Most recently, they point to a rare suicide bombing in Chabahar in December that targeted a Revolutionary Guards headquarters, killing two people and wounding 40.

Writing in the Pakistan Security Report 2018, journalist Muhammad Akbar Notezai said “to many in Pakistan” concerns about Indian support for the Baloch “were materialised with the arrest of Kulbushan Jadhav, an Indian spy in Balochistan who had come through Iran. Ever since, Pakistani intelligence agencies have been on extra-alert on its border with Iran.”

The journalist warned that “the more Pakistan slips into the Saudi orbit, the more its relations with Iran will worsen… If their borders remain troubled, anyone can fish in the troubled water.”

Notezai implicitly put his finger on the pitfalls that Prince Mohammed and Modi will have to negotiate to ensure that their ever closer economic, energy and security relations can withstand the challenges posed by the escalating and intertwined rivalries that link the West and South Asia.

James M Dorsey is a senior fellow at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture

Europe’s Instex takes on the dollar THE PROPOSED barter regime will liberate not just the continent, but any country from the straitjacket of the US currency RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL

Is 2019 the year de-dollarisation goes from being a crackpot Russian idea to something with real structure that the wider world can buy into?

Perhaps. France, Germany, and the UK have launched a barter-based system to trade with US sanctions-hit Iran. Instex, Europe’s Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, is the first state-owned trade intermediary of its kind. It is also the first real challenge to the dollar since the 1944 Bretton Woods conference gave the US currency the dominant position in the world.

Europe’s new non-dollar financial tool is different from other scattered attempts to bypass the greenback. By the mere fact that it exists, Instex has struck a blow for economic sovereignty against

increasingly restrictive American stewardship of the world economic order. In real terms, it has the potential to liberate not just Europe but any country chafed against the straitjacket of US sanctions against Iran.

India is a case in point. Iran is its third major supplier of oil after Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The sixmonth US waiver granted to India and seven other countries for limited oil imports expires in May. But Instex could nullify the need for American waivers or compliance with US restrictions. And India is heavily invested in developing the Chabahar port in south-eastern Iran that opens a new strategic transit route between India, Iran and Afghanistan.

Were Instex to become operational and expand, as European officials have suggested, to non-European countries, India’s

engagement with Iran could proceed on its own terms, without the threat of secondary US sanctions.

Accordingly, Europe’s non-dollar channel for legitimate trade with Iran should be seen for what it is — as a political statement of intent.

It signals the depths of European anxiety over punitive US unilateralism and could be the start of a wider, Europe-led rebellion against swingeing US extra-territorial sanctions in pursuance of controversial geopolitical goals. At present, Instex will facilitate trade with Iran in ‘essential goods’ — mostly European exports of food and medicine that are not sanctioned by the US. But it has room to grow.

The symbolism in the Instex launch is striking. London, Paris and Berlin—the three European capitals at the heart of the trans-Atlantic alliance–have made it clear that 2019 and be-

If Instex were to become operational, India’s engagement with Iran could proceed on its own terms, without the threat of secondary US sanctions

GIVE AND TAKE Instex will facilitate trade with Iran in ‘essential goods’ — mostly European exports of food and medicine not sanctioned by the US

yond would not be American-ordered business as usual. The E3 governments are shareholders and they have thrown a diplomatic shield around it. British, French and German diplomats will sit on its supervisory board.

Instex is to receive the formal endorsement of all 28 EU members. France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has described its creation as “a political act”.

Indeed, its political implications are significant. The E3 do not agree with America’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.

Britain, France and Germany also believe it is wrong for Trump’s America to relegate Iran to economic purgatory when it remains in compliance with the terms of the nuclear accord, as the UN’s atomic agency has repeatedly certified. Although the EU, just like the US, is wary of Iran’s regional adventurism and missile programme, it sees no purchase in isolating Tehran.

Europe’s need to push back against Trump’s weaponisation of the dollar is increasingly urgent.

Germany, for instance, is worried

13

Odd World ONE-ARMED BOXER

This underdog packs a punch

Vaggelis Chatzis’s life is the ultimate underdog story. His right arm was amputated from below the elbow when he was just a baby, but he grew up to become the world’s only one-handed professional boxer. The Greek was born with a cancerous tumour in his right hand which would have killed him if doctors didn’t amputate it. Growing up was tough, as the other kids would bully him.

That caused him to grow up into an angry man, and that anger got him trouble. But then he discovered boxing and fell in love.

PERSONAL HEADSPACE

Think inside the Thought Box

With open offices being so popular and distractions pretty much everywhere, finding a personal space to gather your thoughts can be a challenge. But with the Thought Box, a $650 cardboard and fabric box that you put over your head, you can enjoy some personal place anywhere. The box is exactly what it sounds like – a box to ‘help you think’. Sit down on the Thought Stool (included), put the box over your head and use the earplugs that come with it to disconnect from everything around you—and just think.

CARVED IN STONE

UK tycoon seeks Mt Rushmore II

Online luxury marketplace HushHush.com has revealed that a mysterious multimillionaire has reached out with an unusual request – he is looking to buy a mountain in the UK which he can turn into a personal Mount Rushmore. The stone real-estate has to be large enough to fit in portraits of the buyer, his wife, their three children and the family dog. The man is willing to pay up to £12 million for the mountain.

about the possibility of secondary US sanctions against Russia. These could imperil EU-Russia trade generally and a massive Russian project, the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, in particular. The $11-billion pipeline would send Russian gas to Germany.

Instex is a dual-purpose vehicle, capable of serving both economic and political goals, with Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang welcoming “the EU’s determination to uphold multilateralism”.

The larger context is worldwide economic uncertainty as the US withdraws from steady engagement. Kaushik Basu, former World Bank chief economist, recently noted the likelihood of the world economy remaining encumbered by the combination of “economic interconnectedness and political balkanization.”

Instex lays down a marker for economic interconnectedness as political balkanisation proceeds apace.

Rashmee Roshan Lall is an international affairs columnist based in London

14

Firstpost.

first take

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Cinema

FEBRUARY 16, 2011

Top of the pops

year

POP STAR LADY GAGA BECOMES THE 1,000TH ARTIST TO TOP THE BILLBOARD HOT 100 CHART, WITH HER SECOND ALBUM TITLED BORN THIS WAY

David Elliot’s web series featuring Rachelle Lefevre & Russell Hornsby is a legal drama that opens this weekend on Hotstar Premium

& ENTERTAINMENT

wthaet ek this

PROVEN INNOCENT

$ 50 million

“If you don’t have shadows you are not in the light”

IS LADY GAGA’S INCOME FROM MUSICAL COMMITMENTS OVER THE PAST YEAR, REPORTS FORBES. THIS MAKES HER THE FIFTH HIGHEST-PAID FEMALE MUSICIAN

LADY GAGA

A BAND APART

From behind the camera

TO THE BACKSEAT

TEN DIRECTORS WHO continue to redefine new-age Bollywood cinema within limited budgets and with content-driven efforts

THE DIRECTOR IS fast becoming insignificant in big-budget commercial Bollywood, in the era of PR-driven box-office kill and aggressive hardsell of superstars

VINAYAK CHAKRAVORTY

L

ong after her swashbuckling swordplay in the film becomes history, Bollywood buffs will recall Kangana Ranaut’s Manikarnika for the ugly battle the actress waged over according due credit to the project’s original director, Krish Jagarlamudi.

Looking back it all adds up to a bizarre chain of events that also underlines the diminishing importance of the director in commercial Bollywood’s current scheme of things. The film overshot time frame and, about three months before release, Krish announced he couldn’t continue anymore because of prior commitment to the Telugu biggie NTR: Kathanayakudu. In no time, Kangana’s PR machinery, and her sister Rangoli in particular, were discrediting Krish, and claiming the actress herself had shot 70 per cent of the film. Krish’s retort was sharp: It is impossible to shoot 70 per cent of a film as mammoth as Manikarnika in three months. “Kangana’s sister decided Kangana has shot 70 per cent of Manikarnika... Just how she came to that percentage I don’t know. She simply picked ‘70’ and took off from there. The entire team knows how much I’ve shot,” Krish said, producing Twitter screenshots to prove he had shot almost all of the film.

The actress finally gave co-director’s status to Krish in the film’s credits. Manikarnika, though, will always be known as Kangana’s film.

There is a pattern here. Only last Diwali, as Thugs Of Hindostan (ToH) became Bollywood’s indisputably most aggressively promoted film, all the buzz naturally gathered around its stars — Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan and Katrina Kaif — leaving the film’s director Vijay Krishna Acharya out in the cold. When the film ended up Bollywood’s most expensive box-office blunder ever, people panned its stars but couldn’t care less about directorial gaffes.

A quick stock of last year’s biggest blockbusters would throw up the names of Sanju, Simmba and Padmaavat. Sure, Rajkumar Hirani, Rohit Shetty and Sanjay Leela Bhansali made a difference, but they can never dream of basking in the same spotlight as their stars.

The fact becomes pertinent because we talk of perceptions changing in the industry. Yet, the reluctance to render due importance to the person who captains a film’s creative team continues to be symptomatic of all things Bollywood. It underlines how creativity is still not a priority in a gimmick-driven industry that primarily obsesses over the multiples of hundred crore.

The emergence of small-budget, content-driven fare has carved a sort of space for the director, but that works only within that particular genre. The larger-than-life brand of Hindi cinema, which continues to drive Bollywood economics, has learnt to ignore the person who wields the megaphone.

If cinema of any kind essentially defines the vision of its director, Krish or Vijay Krishna Acharya would perhaps not be amused at the idea that most among their films’ huge audience base probably have never heard their names.

There are many such instances in recent times.

Salman Khan’s Race 3 and the Tiger Shroff-starrer Baaghi 2 were among the most-hyped commercial releases of 2018. Remo D’Souza and Ahmed Khan, respective directors of these films, would struggle to garner fan recall. The scene is no different for directors of the 50-odd formula flicks Bollywood released over the past 12 months.

The obvious retort is that stars attracts crowds, so they are publicised. Kangana is the reason people watched Manikarnika, just as the disastrous ToH tried banking on Big B, Aamir and Katrina for ticket sales.

One needs to understand, in this context, that despite the presence of Amitabh Bachchan, Dhar-

ANURAG KASHYAP Gangs Of Wasseypur series, Dev.D Kashyap is the man every budding filmmaker, who wants to carve a different niche, looks up to. His foray into film production has been a boon for rising directors with an out-of-the-box story to tell.

RITESH BATRA

AANAND L. RAI

The Lunchbox

Tanu Weds Manu series, Raanjhanaa

He reimagined Bollywood romance with The Lunchbox before going global with the English films The Sense Of An Ending and Our Souls At Night, the latter starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.

Coming up is Photograph starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui.

Rai is credited with the surge of realistic, middle class-themed entertainers that are currently a rage. Best known for directing the Tanu Weds Manu films, his productions include Shubh Mangal Saavdhan and Tumbbad.

DIBAKAR BANERJEE Love Sex Aur Dhokha, Khosla Ka Ghosla The maverick who keeps you guessing, and comes up with something unusual every time. His filmography includes movies as varied as Khosla Ka Ghosla, Love Sex Aur Dhokha, Shanghai, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!

MOOLAH MASTERS DANGAL

Global gross

Five highest-grossing Hindi films of all time, and their directors

SULTAN

(2017)

(2016)

`966.8 CR

`623.3 CR

Global gross

`2,025 CR Directed by

Global gross

Directed by

NITESH TIWARI

Directed by

ADVAIT CHANDAN

ALI ABBAS ZAFAR

BAJRANGI BHAIJAAN

(2014)

Global gross

`832 CR

(2015)

`969 CR Directed by

KABIR KHAN

mendra, Hema Malini, Sridevi or Madhuri Dixit in their heydays, filmmakers such as Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra or Subhash Ghai held their own, thanks to trademark filmmaking styles.

Perhaps the changing popular mindset is an explanation: by now, the audience has figured out that being a Hindi commercial director hardly demands original brainwork.

Lately, the issue of which directors thrive in mainstream Bollywood has depended on which camp they align with, and whether the camp is ‘in power’ at the moment. Most directors now are less of creative heads and more of caretakers of film projects on behalf of stars who agree to work with them. Aamir and ToH producers Yash Raj Films have lately banked on Acharya, who

AMIT MASURKAR

VISHAL BHARDWAJ

Piku, Vicky Donor

Newton, Sulemani Keeda

Maqbool, Omkara

Masurkar went to the Oscars with his second film, Newton.

The movie did not make the final cut at the Oscars but it proved quality entertainers could be made within limited budgets.

A versatile mind, the writer-directorcomposer crafted desi drama in Maqbool, Omkara and Haider out of Shakespearean finesse. He is known for his unique brand of twisted suspense.

Few Bollywood directors fuse realism with entertainment as Sircar does — a fact that he has repeatedly proved, with films including Piku, Vicky Donor, October, Madras Café and Yahaan.

SECRET SUPERSTAR

(2016)

SHOOJIT SIRCAR

PK

VIKRAMADITYA MOTWANE

SRIRAM RAGHAVAN

Trapped, Udaan

AndhaDhun, Badlapur

Motwane’s unusual creativity is apparent in his directorial efforts such as Udaan, Trapped and Lootera. He also co-created the web series Sacred Games.

No one cocktails noir suspense with humour and angst in Bollywood as Raghavan does. He revealed the sparks early, winning a National Award for his FTII diploma short film, The Eight Column Affair, in 1987.

Global gross

HANSAL MEHTA

Directed by

Aligarh, Shahid

RAJKUMAR HIRANI Source: Wikipedia

directed Dhoom 3 earlier, just as Salman seems to have found a sturdy option in Ali Abbas Zafar — director of Sultan, Tiger Zinda Hai and the upcoming Bharat — after falling out with Kabir Khan post the Tubelight debacle.

The fading importance of the commercial filmmaker is perhaps also because the genre by and large does not appeal to new-age filmmakers with bright ideas. That breed of creative brains has lately been inclined towards the small-budget multiplex movie, a genre that allows them to experiment even as they entertain. Sriram Raghavan (AndhaDhun), Meghna Gulzar (Raazi), Amar Kaushik (Stree), Amit Sharma (Badhaai Ho) or Shelly Chopra Dhar (Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga) would testify to this fact.

After a few forgettable efforts early on, Mehta has emerged as a director who understands the protagonist’s psyche as few filmmakers in Bollywood do. Lately, he has been ably propped up by his mascot star Rajkummar Rao.

The fading importance of the commercial filmmaker is also because the genre does not appeal to new-age directors with bright ideas. That breed is drawn to the small-budget film, which lets them entertain even as they experiment.

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Firstpost.

iiiiiiCinema

15

MAGIC RELOADED

TOON CINEMA GETS A RAY OF HOPE AND JOY

A new animation film that re-imagines Satyajit Ray’s evergreen Goopy-Bagha adventure might just be the affirmation that children’s cinema in India needs

URMI CHANDA-VAZ

Main hoon naada, tu pyjama Tu hai lota, main hoon paani Main aam, tu gutli Tu patakha, main sutli

No Business like Snow Business at Sundance!

A YOUNG film hack looks back at his first-ever experience at Sundance and says the biting cold of Park City only makes it an ideal venue for the film festival, because you don’t want to do anything but sit inside a theatre and watch movies all day PRAHLAD SRIHARI

INSIGHT

WITH 119 feature films plus short films, episodic short-form stories and the New Frontier programmes, it is easy to get overwhelmed and, thus, overplan while at the festival

NEW WAVE

Pick of the Lot

A FEW FILMS that made waves at Sundance 2019

L

ayers. Layers. Layers.

Enough well-informed well-wishers had stressed upon the need to dress in layers in order to stay warm in the sub-zero temperature I was about to experience.

I was at my first-ever Sundance film festival in the wintry town of Park City, Utah, sufficiently packed with thermals, fleece, sweaters, down jackets, neck gaiters, gloves, woollen socks and more. One had never heard of many of these outfits until now and would perhaps never use them again.

Battling jet lag after near-inedible in-flight meals and a patchy GPS, you arrive at a town tucked between world-class ski resorts that you can neither afford nor have the time for. “You are here for the movies, not skiing,” you tell yourself.

The piercing mountain breeze hits you, and you feel like Jack Nicholson in that final, frightful shot of The Shining — one of thousands of frozen faces trying to deal, as you deal, with a high altitude and a higher density of stars.

Truly nothing can prepare you for the alpine fever dream that Sundance Film Festival is.

Contrary to what you may think, the frigid cold actually makes Park City an ideal and idyllic spot to host the festival.

In the biting cold, you don’t want to do anything but sit inside a theatre and watch movies all day.

The timing of Sundance could not be more fitting; Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson says: “This

festival drops right in the middle of the Oscar season, which means I’m so tired of talking about all of those movies. Here you have a bunch of fresh movies that whet your appetite for independent cinema. That’s a contrast to other festivals where it’s more hierarchical or more French,” she laughs.

Two days into the festival and you’ve stopped complaining about the weather, as you start realising the privilege you’re being given — to discover some great films before the rest of the world does.

This is where Jordan Peele, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Soderbergh made their mark before becoming big names. You spot budding actors hoping for a star-making turn, as Jake Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams or Michael B Jordan found theirs.

With 119 feature films plus

Sundance is the place where Jordan Peele, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Soderbergh made their mark before becoming big names short films, episodic short-form stories and the New Frontier programmes, it is easy to get overwhelmed and, thus, overplan while at the festival.

Rotten Tomatoes Editor Jacqueline Coley says you shouldn’t. “Take the mythos out of it... Get a plan, make a

THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO Joe Talbot’s film featuring Jonathan Majors is about a man in search of a home in an ever-changing city. It won wide acclaim.

plan and then be okay with just ripping up the plan,” she says.

Wilkinson concurs: “Sundance is like the discovery festival. I come with no preconceived notions about what I am about to see. A festival like Toronto is the opposite. You go there with a list of films you have to watch because those will be a part of the awards conversation.

Here it is like — who knows? Last year, for instance, there was this little film — Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade — that I wasn’t going to go watch because a YouTube guy made it. Then a friend recommended it, and it turned out to be one of the best of the year.”

When you’re at Sundance, be prepared to suffer serious bouts of FOMO. The Fear Of Missing Out does push you a bit further — every time I missed the premiere of a film that I really wanted to see, I’d simply catch it at the press and industry (P&I) screening the next morning.

During the festival, the snowy town’s public library, highschool auditorium and local commercial movie theatres are all converted into screening halls. Hotels, restaurants, bars and stores get revamped into venues for media events, panels and invite-only parties.

THE SOUVENIR Tilda Swinton stars in Joanna Hogg’s mystery drama, about a young film student attracted to a complicated man who can’t be trusted.

The whole town pitches in as volunteers — about 2,000 of them — in pink-and-white Kenneth Cole Sundance jackets.

They’re at every bus stop and outside every theatre, ready to guide an Indian reporter to the nearest vegetarian restaurant or kindly remind him that jaywalking is not his birth right.

“People here are very welcoming. The crowd isn’t cliquey, in comparison to other festivals.

You never know if a particular movie is going to win an Oscar or simply disappear. So, everyone’s here because they love this thing — this weird, independent storytelling,” says Wilkinson.

In the few minutes you get between screenings, Q&As or off-screen panel discussions, you network with fellow journalists, critics and the audience to monitor the buzz all around, and the trends emerging.

The various parallel conversations that take place in the packed Park City shuttles are a goldmine of data, too, so it is important to hit top form in the eavesdropping game.

As you take a Lyft back to your overpriced hotel room after a long tiring day, the driver almost always offers you a bottle of water, reminding you it is important to stay hydrated to fend off altitude sickness. Once you reach your room, you sit down to file stories for the day.

That leaves about three hours to catch up on sleep. Still, you can’t help but stay wide awake, wondering what to watch the next morning.

“It’s like the biggest scam ever, that we get to do this for a job!” Coley sums it up.

THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND

Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor’s debut as a feature director is about a Malawi boy’s efforts to build a wind turbine for his village.

THE FAREWELL Lulu Wang’s dramedy stars rapper Awkwafina as a ChineseAmerican woman who returns home to discover her grandmother’s cancer is being kept a secret.

(I’m the drawstring, you’re the pyjamas You’re the pot, I’m the water I’m the mango, you’re the seed You’re the cracker, I’m the wick)

The quirky lyrics describe the bond between Goopi Gawaiiya and Bagha Bajaiiya, protagonists of GGBB, a new animation film that reimagines Satyajit Ray’s Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne.

It is about Goopy the singer and Bagha the dhaak player, earnest underdogs who share an ineptness in and a passion for music.

Boons of ghostly benevolence later, the duo sets off to distant lands on a magical adventure.

Ray’s film was based on a story by his grandfather, Bengali novelist Upendrakishore Raychowdhry, which was published in the children’s magazine Sandhesh in 1915. GGBB — or Goopi Gawaiiya Bagha Bajaiiya — is filmmaker Shilpa Ranade’s effort to update the story for today’s children and adults alike.

The film took a while to complete, and releases on March 1.

Ranade, 52, is a designer, animator, illustrator and filmmaker, and a teacher at IIT Bombay’s Industrial Design Centre.

She worked for over five years on GGBB, a film that won awards at various festivals, including the AASIFA Award for Best Animated Feature Film and Jury Award for Best Art Work at ICFF, Hyderabad. In a world where imagination is ruled by Disney and Pixar visions, Ranade’s effort is praiseworthy.

Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne was pathbreaking fare. It marked

Ray’s departure from his usual serious idiom. Despite low budget, Ray achieved technical feats considered impossible back then — the mesmerising bhoot-er naach (dance of ghosts) sequence, for example. The film was about Ray taking a good story and turning it into great children’s cinema. Much has been written about the film’s underlying socio-political messages, but it is celebrated primarily for the joy it brings.

The Ray family has played a significant role in upholding children’s fiction in Bengal. Says well-known Bangla translator Arunava Sinha: “There was a tradition of children’s fiction in Bangla before the film, though Upendrakishore was among early writers. Not only did his son and grandson (Sukumar and Satyajit Ray) follow in his footsteps, so did others in the family like Lila Majumdar and Sukhalata Roy.” Bengalis are understandably possessive about Goopy Gayen Bagha Bayen, and its sequels Hirak Rajar Deshe and Goopy Bagha Phire Elo. The trilogy gave Bengali culture memorable characters, legendary actors, and brilliant music. Is Ranade apprehensive? “Going by the reactions of Bengalis at festivals, I’m sure it will find a place in Bengali hearts. My version doesn’t challenge the story’s amazing lineage but pays homage to it,” she says. Like the original, GGBB is a musical, with eight songs composed by 3 Brothers & A Violin. Ranade’s painstaking handmade puppets match the homegrown sounds.

The film’s release coincides with the 50th anniversary of Ray’s classic. Over three generations, Ray’s original has become a landmark for Bengali childhood, and is counted among the most inventive films in India.

Ranade now takes the legacy forward in Hindi, for a generation more used to animation.

Star Struck

“ You know how they say — God created someone with a lot of love and spent a lot of time.

She’s also one of my favourites.”

ALIA BHATT

on “didi” Deepika Padukone

Arts SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

& CULTURE

Events Calendar EXPERIENCE

ART

FOOD

SPEND A DAY IN AN EDIBLE GARDEN; AALI FARM, DELHI

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Farm Fest Partition Tales Culture Table

Company’s ‘gender no bar’ policy

Homosexual relations weren’t uncommon — and were quietly accepted. Lovers of boys got themselves posted to the Piffers, or the Punjab Irregular Frontier Force, which guarded the NorthWest Frontier, or the scouts.

Ethnic-Pashtun culture, like so many others around the world, was not judgmental about homo-erotic relationships, and for gay officers from England, this opened a world of sexual opportunity unavailable at home.

But officers posted to regiments with significant Pathan element or scouts faced unique headaches. There were times where a young recruit would put a bullet in the head of an old subedar to ward off unwanted advances.

Then there was a problem of discipline. A subedar might, for example, extend special favours to his ‘young lad’ by keeping him at the headquarters and giving him easy duties instead of sending him to remote posts. At other times, two young sepoys would insist they be posted together for night patrol or to an outpost where they would be together for days.

Early on, it is often forgotten, race was not a ironclad barrier in the colonial army.

“Large bodies of troops”, John Kaye wrote in his History of the Sepoy War in India, 18571858, “were sometimes despatched on hazardous enterprises under the independent command of a native leader, and it was not thought an offence to a European soldier to send him to fight under a black commandant.

The black commandant was then a great man in spite of his colour”“A brave man or a skilful leader”, Kaye concluded, “was honoured for his bravery or skill as much under the folds of a turban or a round hat”.

But the nature of these sexual relationship changed with the status of British in India — from traders and soldiers for hire to rulers.

WAR SPOILS Lord Charles Cornwallis receives the sons of Tipu Sultan as hostages after the end of Fourth Anglo-Mysore War

In the Company of Women HAMID HUSAIN

THE LAL BAZAARS

In 1850s, there were 75 military districts and in each of these, prostitution was supervised by authorities.

The doctors of the Indian Medical Service were responsible for regulating the brothels. All prostitutes had to be registered; none under the age of 15 could be enrolled. The women were provided with living quarters that were regularly inspected. A brothel in Lucknow had 55 rooms.

ART MOVEMENTS

born of such relationships.

GOING NATIVE

In the 18th and early 19th century, officers married among the local elite.

Most Company employees, both civil and military, joined the service at 16.

Several factors such as a young age, prolonged stay in India with limited home leave, posting to a far-off station with little contact with Europeans led to complete ‘nativisation’ of some Englishmen.

In late 17th and 18th century, many Europeans had concubines and also married local women. They were kept in a separate house named Bibi Ghar. Some Englishmen retained their religion while others converted to Hinduism or Islam and went native. Some children of such unions straddled the two worlds comfortably while others drifted to one side.

Historian William Dalrymple has documented these ties extensively in his book White Mughals. The British Resident, or ambassador, in Delhi Sir David Ochterlony lived like a nawab.

He had 13 Indian consorts, the most famous being Mubarak Begum.

Major General Charles Stuart became, for all practical purposes, a Hindu. Nicknamed Hindu Stuart and General Pandit, Stuart was buried in a Christian cemetery in Calcutta but with his Hindu gods.

Cultural differences sometime plagued such ties. Hercules Skinner, a soldier of fortune, married a Hindu Rajput lady and several children were born to them. The wife, however, committed suicide when

Skinner tried to bring their daughters out of purdah to be educated and married to Englishmen.

Their son, James Skinner, raised the famous irregular cavalry regiment Skinners Horse, precursor to India’s senior-most cavalry regiment, the Ist Lancers. James had 14 Hindu and Muslim wives and consorts. He lived like a Muslim but later in life regularly read the Bible and was buried in St. James Church in Delhi.

END OF THE AFFAIR

Evangelical Christian activity and the flow of European ladies to India severely restricted such encounters.

By the middle of 19th century, such relationships had all but disappeared.

The British were apprehensive about Indians interacting with English women. This unease was at play during World War I as well. Indian soldiers came in contact with women when they fought on the Western front. Some Indians, especially Sikhs and Pathans, had sexual relations with local French women. There were marriages as well, alarming the British who didn’t allow the soldiers to bring these women back to India.

Some deserter Pathans, mainly trans-frontier Afridis, married German women and a handful brought back their wives. The Khyber political agent files kept track of such people.

There is a record of an Afridi staying back in Germany after the war and running a tobacco shop in a town.

Hamid Husain is a chronicler of the British Indian Army

These 10 movements are fundamental to understanding the different types of visual art that have shaped modern history and culture

REALISM

IMPRESSIONISM

POST-IMPRESSIONISM

CUBISM

SURREALISM

EXPRESSIONISM

POP ART

KINETIC ART

PHOTOREALISM

LOWBROW

1840s - 1880s

1872 - 1892

EARLY 1880s - 1914

1907 - 1922

1924 - 1966

1905 - 1933

MID 1950s - LATE 1970s

1954 -

EARLY 1960s -

LATE 1970s -

ARTISTS TO KNOW GUSTAV COURBET, JEAN COROT, FRANÇOIS MILLET

ARTISTS TO KNOW CLAUDE MONET, PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR, MARY CASSATT

ARTISTS TO KNOW VINCENT VAN GOGH, PAUL CÉZANNE, PAUL GAUGUIN

ARTISTS TO KNOW PABLO PICASSO, GEORGES BRAQUE, JUAN GRIS

ARTISTS TO KNOW SALVADOR DALÍ, MAX ERNST, RENE MAGRITTE

ARTISTS TO KNOW EDVARD MUNCH, WASSILY KANDINSKY, PAUL KLEE,

ARTISTS TO KNOW ANDY WARHOL, ROY LICHTENSTEIN, JASPER JOHNS

ARTISTS TO KNOW ALEXANDER CALDER, DAVID C. ROY, GEORGE RICKEY

ARTISTS TO KNOW CHUCK CLOSE, RALPH GOING, RICHARD ESTES

ARTISTS TO KNOW MARK RYDEN, RAY CAESAR

Source: www.theartstory.org

BY THE 1850s, the East India Company was also in the business of supervising prostitution in its 75 military districts

T

he high-noon of the sepoy army”, one military historian called it. Those decades of the late-18th and early-19th centuries when the East India Company swept aside the Marathas, Mysore, northern India’s princes, the Gurkhas and the Sikhs. Ambala, Delhi, Kanpur, Meerut, Rawalpindi, Sialkot — imperial Britain’s cantonments swelled with men raised from across the country, with artillery, with Baker and Brunsfield rifles.

And they swelled, too, with an army of prostitutes. The Queen’s Daughters, historian Ratnabali Chatterjee calls them, housed and medically treated at the government’s expense.

Indian mores were considerably more relaxed than those of sexually-repressed Victorian England . Heterosexual and homosexual relations were open. Concubines were common. The army, perhaps the most regimented of institutions, saw the consequences for its teenage recruits, and responded as only armies could.

Young British soldiers, largely volunteers from impoverished sections of England and Ireland, made up the bulk of the demand for Indian prostitutes. In spite of their prudish Christian ideological leanings, officials conceded access to sex had a bearing on the health and vigour of the soldiers. The awareness became more acute after the 1857 revolt, as a strong British army came to be regarded as the precondition for a stable empire, Chatterjee says.

Women with sexually transmitted diseases were removed till they recovered. The concern for the health of soldiers was a military decision to keep the fighting machine fit to protect colonies. In 1864, the Contagious Diseases Act was passed in Britain; it also applied to other parts of the empire. The Act was also translated into different regional languages. A guide book for prostitutes in Bengali shows the women were instructed to fill out forms; brothel keepers and pimps were brought in as subsidiaries to police this system of prostitution.

Both Indian and European soldiers used these bazaars, but Indian sepoys were discouraged from visiting prostitutes preferred by European soldiers. British soldiers visited prostitutes more often than sepoys . British soldiers were not married, while sepoys were usually married men.

These bazaars were called Lal Bazaars, or the red markets, perhaps a local word for red-light areas. British regiments spent several years in India and many a times children were

 RAJ

16

Firstpost.

Disruption

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Firstpost.

17

POWERED BY

wired CANCER CURE

Scientists find cure for cervical cancer

LIFE & TECHNOLOGY

In a medical breakthrough that puts an end to cervical cancer, researchers in Mexico have found a cure for the cancer-causing Human Papillomavirus infection. The researcher from Mexico’s National Polytechnic Institute successfully cured 29 patients of HPV infection. This was done using a non-invasive treatment that uses a drug called ‘photosensitiser’, and light of a specific wavelength depending on the drug compound. When the photosensitisers are exposed to the specific wavelength of light, they release a form of reactive oxygen that damages the DNA in cells nearby.

 SUNIL

GREAT WHITE pelicans descend upon Bharatpur every winter, but their numbers rarely cross three digits. But this year, some 1,000-plus birds have flown in

Bovine invasion hurts Bharatpur sanctuary

BIRD’S EYE VIEW In the season of cow vigilantism, stray cattle have taken over one of the finest birding areas in the country, and the forest department of Keoladeo National Park is busy looking the other way

AJAY SURI

I

f you are heading to Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary with the thought of catching a glimpse of some exotic winged wonders, chances are you will stumble upon some more familiar, flightless creatures instead.

In January, when over 1,000 magnificent great white pelicans landed at the wildlife habitat in Rajasthan — their strongest presence here in living memory — they were welcomed by an equally large number of stray cattle, mainly cows, which have virtually taken over this UNESCO World Heritage Site. As of today, and by a conservative estimate, each pelican in Bharatpur is forced to share space with at least one cow. There are dogs too, dozens of them, roaming around the water bodies, often attacking birds, smaller

animals, and chasing away tourists.

In this season of cow vigilantism, it’s not hard to figure why the forest department of the Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur allowed the stray bovines to take over one of the finest birding areas in the world. They decided to look the other way, in a typical manifestation of fence-eating-the-crop syndrome.

Bharatpur’s 29 square kilometres of dry-deciduous area holds some of the finest wetlands, woodlands, swamps and dry grasslands. Bird lovers and photographers — amateurs as well as professionals — troop down from all over the globe. For ages, Bharatpur has been internationally recognised as not just a favourite spot for migratory birds, but also as a breeding ground for a large number of avifauna species.

In 1982, three years before UNESCO declared it a world heritage site, the Indian government banned grazing in the park. While the ban still exists, the bovine are, perhaps, unaware.

Now, one can’t walk more than 300 yards in any direction here without

encountering cattle. Officials fear the exasperating presence of such a large number of cows, as well as dogs, could spark off a deadly disease, similar to what happened in Gujarat’s Gir National Park that led to the death of several lions last year.

Field director of Bharatpur sanctuary, Ajit Uchoi, mutters about the “sensitive nature of the matter”, but declines to elaborate. What Uchoi is referring to has now become as conspicuous as an elephant in the room.

Instead of making amends, the forest department has further abdicated its primary role of maintaining a safe zone for the birds. “For the entire operation of moving the cattle out of the sanctuary, assistance is also being sought from the district administration,” Uchoi said. It’s extreme reluctance that Uchoi and his team of forest officials are looking at the district administration to pull them out of this hole.

Uchoi, the top forest official in Bharatpur, places the blame for this unprecedented invasion on “broken boundary wall at some places”, from

The sanctuary’s 29 square km holds some of the finest wetlands, woodlands, swamps and dry grasslands

MOTOR COACH

Tech Talk

SPACE TALK

NASA wants more humans in space

where the animals ostensibly walked into the sanctuary. This still doesn’t square up with the delay in repairs.

Obviously the infiltration would not have taken place overnight. Incidentally, the cost of removing one cow from the sanctuary would be less than `1,000, Uchoi said.

It’s not that the park has not faced the cattle menace before, but never to this extent and not once did earlier forest authorities allow the situation to escalate this far. On previous occasions, stray animals removed from within the sanctuary were placed far away in the ravines of Chambal, said Uchoi.

Besides being home to over 350 species of birds, of which about 100 migrate here in winter from European and other countries, Bharatpur also has a fairly healthy population of mammals such as spotted dear, blue bull, sambhar, fishing cat and jackal. A sudden virus attack sparked by stray cattle can put all animals at risk. It may not affect the birds directly, but would surely impact the ecosystem of the reserve.

As for cattle grazing in a protected zone, no other national park in India comes close to Bharatpur in cocking a snook at the laws. The issue did impact Ranthambore once, but that was in the 1990s and was taken care of, as was Uttarakhand’s Rajaji National Park.

The imperial looking great white pelicans descend upon Bharatpur every winter, but their numbers rarely cross three digits. The last great sighting was in 2004, but even then they remained far less than this year’s 1,000-plus.

A few happy coincidences in 2019 have created the pelican magic. Unlike in the recent past when there would be a recurring drought-like situation in Bharatpur, often pushing the sanctuary to the edge of doom, the area now receives water from two different sources: the Chambal river and Gowardhan dam. The good monsoon of 2018 also put in its weight, as did the fairly healthy quantity of fish in Bharatpur’s water bodies this year.

Now, if only the stray cattle and forest authorities had not played spoilsport.

The tiger is important for an ecosystem, no doubt, but so are the birds and their habitat. Will all the wildlife experts, academicians, filmmakers, guided tour operators, coffee-table book writers grab this problem by the horns?

Ajay Suri is a former journalist and an environment activist

TRAILER COACH

MOTOR COACH

BY AL ANKAR

TRAIN 18 vs MAGLEV Guidance magnets Support magnets

GALAXY COLLISION

Milky Way is on its way to a collision, astronomers predict

Our Milky Way galaxy is going to stay the way it is for a little longer than astronomers had previously predicted. The astronomy community has gathered that our galaxy is on its way to a huge collision with the nearest galaxy to our own, Andromeda. Earlier, this bang was expected to happen 3.9 billion years into the future. Now, new research based on data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia telescope has placed the estimate at 4.5 billion years.

ROBOTICS

A prosthetic arm made of Lego bricks

A 19-year-old boy David Aguilar has built himself a robotic prosthetic arm using Lego pieces after being born without a right forearm due to a rare genetic condition. Aguilar, who studies bioengineering at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya in Spain, is using his fourth model of the prosthetic and dreams to design affordable robotic limbs for others who need them. The plastic bricks became the building material for Aguilar’s first artificial arm at the age of nine.

TRAILER COACH Return

TRAIN 18

The newly launched, indigenously developed Train 18 works on the model of EMUs (Electric Multiple Units) or Metro trains where alternate coaches have electric motors which enable self propelling without a locomotive.

NASA wants to make sure that there’s never another day that space isn’t occupied by humans. “In fact, we want lots of humans in space,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told Space.com. Bridenstine said the space agency set itself back by leaving a gap of eight years without NASA astronauts in space — after the Apollo missions ended and before the Space Shuttle program took off. “Now we’re getting to the point where we’re ready to fly commercial crew. We’ve got a gap of about eight years in our ability to fly crew into space,” Bridenstine said.

Axle

Axle UNDER-SLUNG TRACTION MOTOR SYSTEM

Wheels

MAGLEV

Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) trains use Electromagnetic Suspension, which moves with attractive and repulsive forces of the interaction of a magnetic field on the track and another one on the bottom of the train.

The train levitates at 1 to 10 cm off the track.

Tracks Motor

These self-propulsion machineries of all motor coaches are vestibule (inter-connected)

Superconducting magnets Magnets

Electromagnet

N

Power supply INSIDE TRACTION MOTOR

S

Electromagnet

This simplified diagram shows power supply to an electromagnet system rotates axle of the wheels

Synchronised linear motors in the tracks fire the magnets in sequence, pulling the train forward similar to the way letters move across in a ticker.

18

Firstpost.

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Sports

Sergio Ramos ON VAR DECISION DURING REAL MADRID-AJAX GAME

AND FITNESS

action pack EYE ON WORLD CUP

RAYUDU, SHAMI’S FORM AMONG KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM NEW ZEALAND TOUR

Ambati Rayudu and fast bowler Mohammed Shami were not part of the Indian squad which played the Twenty20 Internationals in New Zealand, but they were the ones who would have warmed the cockles of the selectors’ hearts with their performances in the five-match ODI series that preceded it.

India would have happy memories and positive gains from the eight-match New Zealand tour, in which it won the ODI series 4-1 and lost the T20I series 1-2. Besides Rayudu’s success at No. 4 and Shami’s re-emergence as a spearhead, India spent time on the tour with a specific gameplan. Since the World Cup is drawing closer, the team utilised the T20Is as an extension of the ODI series. Selections for each game were an indication of how India wanted to use the chance to fine-tune their preparations, trying out some on the edge of being picked for the trip to England this summer. --- G Rajaraman

PREMIER LEAGUE

CHELSEA’S SYSTEMIC FAULTS RESURFACE AGAINST MAN CITY AS SARRI FACES HEAT March 4, 2018. A trip to the Etihad for the then-Premier League champions had resulted in one of the most abysmal displays from Antonio Conte’s Chelsea, the respectable 1-0 scoreline of defeat not fooling the fans or the board by any means. Less than a year later, many Chelsea fans would rather accept that form of defeat than what Maurizio Sarri’s side were subjected to, by an irresistible Manchester City.

After ninety minutes at Etihad, the 6-0 scoreline was overtly kind to the visitors, who were so shambolic in all the departments, that even the most fervent of Chelsea fans would not have complained if City had scored a few more. Not only did Sarri’s team drop down to sixth position, questions were also raised about the Italian’s future. --- Sreya Mazumder

Boards loom over Manu’s gold shot SHANTANU SRIVASTAVA

M

anu Bhaker sits casually on her delicately done chaise lounge, flipping pages of history. A few months back, the Class 12 student and ace shooter switched from biology to arts mid-session, and is racing against the clock to cram her syllabus before the CBSE board exams that start soon after the ISSF World Cup that begins in Delhi on February 20.

“This is keeping me busy. I have no time to dwell on the World Cup yet,” Manu says, holding up her history textbook. Pressure, she says, is not for her to take, not at this moment. If it’s an act of bravado, it’s an act done well, though one hopes the caprice of youth is still untouched by the trappings of glory.

There are moments of honesty, when she drops her guard and allows a glimpse into her teenaged world, like when she raves about her Instagram account and the earnest desire to post pictures there.

But largely, Manu’s business-like demeanour paints a single-tone image of an ar-

EXCLUSIVE

16-YEAROLD Manu Bhaker will lead India’s charge in the year’s first World Cup in the capital that begins on February 20

MONTPELLIER TITLE

TSONGA IS ON SONG AGAIN, 33-YR-OLD’S WIN REMINDS OF HIS GLORY DAYS Last month, the #10YearChallenge bug bit the social media handle of the ATP tour too; they posted pictures of Roger Federer lifting the Australian Open trophy 10 years apart – in 2007 and 2017 – and everyone was properly tickled. It was 11 years ago, at the 2008 Australian Open, that Jo-Wilfried Tsonga first made the world sit up. And now, in 2019, he is still setting the court alight: he won the Montpellier title on February 10, dismantling Pierre-Hugues Herbert. It may not fit perfectly into the #10YearChallenge box, but Tsonga has never been about perfection. If anything, his remarkably long career has given us something even better: #11YearsOfTsonga have been all about unpredictable, unfettered genius, and the thrill-ride of spectacular moments. --- Musab Abid CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

GHOSTS OF PAST EUROPEAN DEFEATS RESURFACE FOR MAN U AT OLD TRAFFORD

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer would have recognised February 12 only too well.

During his time as a player at Old Trafford, Manchester United often suffered at the hands of quality opposition in European football. Solskjaer’s manager Alex Ferguson looked back at those years with regret. Ferguson would particularly remember the matches at home when the Red Devils passed up opportunities to burnish their continental pedigree. At least Solskjaer came into the tie against Paris Saint-Germain with less pretension.

Even though the Red Devils were allowed to have plenty of the ball, a lack of cutting edge meant PSG won out comfortably.

Even Solskjaer had to admit that United got a reality check against PSG. --- Priyansh

digital For the full-length articles scan this QR code using your mobile to go to firstpost.com and then search with the author’s name

“I have said many times I am a great defender of the VAR because it will make football fairer little by little”

ON TARGET Bhaker consistently shoots around 580-585 points now as compared to the 571-575 that she averaged last year

tiste hopelessly committed to her craft.

Manu will lead India’s charge in the year’s first World Cup in the capital, where she will participate in three events in the pistol category — 10m, 25m, and mixed team. With Olympic quotas up for grabs, the importance of the tournament cannot be stated enough.

“At times, the thought of Olympic quota does hit me, and frankly, there are a lot of things going on in my mind. The board exams, the World Cup, the quota places... sometimes I don’t know what to do,” she admits, reminding the world that she is still 16. This, however, is a life that she has chosen, and she has no regrets.

“I don’t miss what one would call a ‘normal’ childhood. I am not into video games or social media, though I am fond of Instagram. I like clicking and posting pictures, but at the end of the day, after practice and physical exercises, you’re too spent to indulge in social networking,” she says.

This will also be the first world event for Manu at home, and playing in front of a capacity crowd is always a double-edged sword.

Manu, though, is happy with her preparation and reckons she is a better shooter than she was in 2018 — her breakout year that saw her win multiple gold medals across Senior World Cup, Junior World Cup, Commonwealth Games and Youth Olympics.

It was also a chastening year for her, for it gave the youngster her first brush with failure and public criticism. After she couldn’t win a medal at the Asian Games and the World Championships, questions were raised over her big-stage temperament. That her score of 593 in qualifying was a record at the Asiad and missed the current world record by a solitary point, that the level of competition at the World Championships is infinitely higher than the Commonwealth Games, and that same scores were good enough to win her gold at the preceding

events were continually ignored.

It did affect Manu, but realisation was not too far. “That’s what sports teaches you — dealing with failures,” she says.

“When you win, you celebrate; when you lose, you get down to work. This maturity comes with time, but I understood it early in my career due to my long association with various sports. Jaspal (Rana) sir and my parents helped me understand this and overcome the disappointment.”

And move on she did. In October last year, she became the first Indian shooter to win a gold medal at the Youth Olympics. More than the ‘comeback’ though, being chosen as the flag-bearer of the Indian contingent in Buenos Aires filled her with pride. “It was such an honour.

To be chosen among so many athletes to lead the country at that stage was surreal. It was more memorable than winning the gold,” she says.

Manu has also taken to yoga and meditation to calm her nerves, and the results are showing. “I am happier and more positive these days.”

Her scores have improved too. She consistently shoots around 580-585 points now as compared to the 571-575 that she averaged last year. “Nothing can guarantee a medal though,” she says.

Later this month, when she takes aim at the 0.5mm blur in the capital’s Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range, Manu’s mental and physical strength will be put to the test. Her hyperactive teenaged mind will, once again, quietly strive to slip into that elusive zone that shooters operate in, sieving belief from bluster and pride from pressure.“It’s never easy to shut yourself out in competitions. You train to handle such situations, but only an athlete knows what he or she feels when the time comes to perform,” she says.

Manu would hope those words are not needed. Instead, considering her newfound predilection for the subject, India would want some history from its shooting star, who clearly has more than one exam to ace.

I don’t miss what one would call a ‘normal’ childhood. I am not into video games or social media, though I am fond of Instagram MANU BHAKER

Young guns to watch out for THE FUTURE looks bright for India in the shooting arena, with a new crop of gunslingers raring to go

SAURABH CHAUDHARY

ADARSH SINGH The 17-year-old reigning national champion in 25m pistol event played cricket before switching to shooting. He is making his seniors’debut at the World Cup and will also be simultaneously preparing for his Class 12 boards that begin after the tournament.

The 16-year-old will represent India in 10m event, and also partner with Manu Bhaker for the tmixed team event. A product of NRAI’s robust junior programme, his biggest strength is his ability to absorb pressure.

ANISH BHANWALA The 16-year-old plies his trade in the 25m rapid fire category.

A five-time Junior World Championships medallist, he will look to shine in his maiden senior’s World Cup.

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

Firstpost.

Sports

19

ACROBATIC WONDER

THIS GAME ISN’T JUST FOR KICKS, IT’S A MIRACLE

With the arrival of big game contests, will sepak takraw finally pick up in India where scarcity of funds is the norm?

 GETTYIMAGES

 TRIPARNA

SANJIB KR BARUAH

Ranji breaking new ground but it’s still on a sticky wicket AYAZ MEMON

INSIGHT

WHILE THE tournament is breaking hegemony of traditional centres, it is struggling for audience and can do with some marketing and star power

ing Cheteshwar Pujara, who doesn’t find a place in the national limited-overs’ teams, hen Vidarbha lifted the Ranji and an India-reject in captain Jaydev UnTrophy on February 7 at Nagadkat. pur after a taut final against While it is true that some major centres Saurashtra, it capped an exhad key players on national duty — Virat Kohli from Delhi, Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya traordinary achievement.

Rahane from Mumbai, Ravichandran AshVidarbha’s second successive triumph win from Tamil Nadu, Ravindra Jadeja from — their maiden victory came last year — marked a decisive shift in domestic cricket, Saurashtra — the rise of smaller associations towards smaller centres. cannot be undermined.

Since the 2010-11 season, apart This is reflected in the change from Vidarbha, Rajasthan in the attitude of players from non-traditional centres. have won the country’s The IPL is a factor in premier title twice and “There was a time when fuelling growth of Gujarat once. Mumthese players would cricket in smaller cities. be overawed playing bai and Karnataka Bumrah, for instance, against us,’’ says forhave won twice played for Mumbai Indimer Mumbai capeach. In the same ans even before he made period, Saurashtra tain Milind Rege. have finished run“That’s no longer his debut for Gujarat ners-up thrice. the case. They take This skew shows the field as equals.’’ that the hegemony There are three of traditionally powfactors that have iner houses of the domesfluenced this shift. tic cricket — particularly First, the secular develMumbai, Karnataka, Delhi — opment of cricket across the is being steadily dismantled country from the grassroots and ‘smaller’ associations are upwards. The cash-rich Board coming into their own. of Control for Cricket in India has ploughed money into state For instance, Mumbai, who have won the Ranji associations to improve infraTrophy a mind-boggling 41 structure, coaching and other times, could not register a support systems to spot and single outright win this year nurture talent. and were beaten by Vidarbha Second, domestic crickin the pre-quarters. Karnataet now provides reasonable ka came to grief against Saulivelihood and this is one big rashtra in the knockout stage. determinant in youngsters takNeither of this year’s finaling to the sport. One reason ists boast of many ‘stars’. The why Mumbai, Tamil Nadu, Karonly current international nataka and Delhi dominated player in Vidarbha’s ranks the game was because players was fast bowler Umesh Yacould find jobs, playing for cordav who played from the porate or business houses. knockout stages because he Money matters. After the couldn’t retain his place in collapse of princely patronage, it were the business housthe India team. es that supported the players Saurashtra had high-scor-

W

DELHI

GUJARAT

BARODA

VIDARBHA

and the sport. Today, cricket in India is self-sustaining, and encouraging youngsters to venture into the sport, without worrying about their financial well-being.

The rise of players like MS Dhoni — who gave up a ticket collector’s job — has inspired waves of youngsters from the socalled boondocks of cricket to pursue their passion. And the self-belief to match the country’s best.

Today, the Indian team draws a bulk of talent from smaller cities and towns. Dhoni is from Jharkhand, Pujara and Jadeja from Saurashtra, the Pandya brothers from Baroda, Jasprit Bumrah from Gujarat, Yuzvendra Chahal from Haryana, Kuldeep Yadav and Bhuvneshwar Kumar from Uttar Pradesh, Mohammed Shami from Bengal.

Launched in 2008, the Indian Premier League (IPL) is the third big factor in fuelling growth of cricket in smaller cities. An IPL contract is not only good for the bank balance but can also fast track a player into the national team.

Bumrah, for instance, played for the Mumbai Indians even before he made his first-class debut for Gujarat. IPL allows youngsters a chance to go up against top Indian and international talent, giving them a chance to hone their skills and reduces the fear of competition.

IPL has contributed enormously to the richness of talent but there is a caveat: it has upstaged Ranji Trophy.

There were less than 1,000 people in the stadium when Vidarbha went up against Saurashtra in the final, which is a shame given how vital the Ranji and other domestic tournaments are for Indian cricket.

A two-fold effort is needed to improve the status of domestic cricket. It needs to be branded imaginatively and marketed aggressively, something that should not be too hard for BCCI. Also, big Indian names should be on the field to make Ranji Trophy more competitive and attractive to paying fans.

As a nursery of cricketing talent in India, the Ranji Trophy needs a leg-up not just perfunctory acknowledgement from the administration and players.

TAMIL NADU

MAPPING RANJI WINNERS OVER A DECADE WINNER RUNNER-UP

RAJASTHAN

SAURASHTRA

MUMBAI

MAHARASHTRA

KARNATAKA

DISMANTLING HEGEMONY

Vidarbha’s second successive triumph marked a decisive shift in domestic cricket, towards smaller centres. Since 2010-11, apart from Vidarbha, Rajasthan have won the title twice and Gujarat once. Mumbai and Karnataka have won twice each. In the same period, Saurashtra have finished runners-up thrice.

K

h Niken Singh’s knees hurt, his back is a mess and he knows the road to recovery will be slow and expensive, but he wears his battle wounds with pride. The 34-year-old Singh and his team have a place in sporting history — they won India its first Asian Games medal, a bronze, in sepak takraw at Jakarta in 2018.

Singh would rather be in Goa, where some big-ticket sepak takraw events are planned for later this year, than nurse his broken body but sport was never for the faint hearted.

“I am going to rest my body for a year as I am undergoing medical treatment in Imphal,” says Singh on the phone from his home in Imphal.

Who’s footing the bill? “While in the India camp, medical expenses were paid for. But after the camp, it is my own money,” the Manipur sports and youth welfare ministry employee says in a broken mix of English and Hindi.

That, in part, explains why sepak takraw has not really taken off in India—paucity of funds, facilities and no publicity.

Fairly popular in Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar and other countries of the region, sepak takraw is new to India, where most have not even heard the name of the game.

Often referred to as kick volleyball, sepak takraw, is a southeast Asian sport. Sepak is Malay for ‘to kick’ while Takraw is Thai for a cane or rattan ball, around which the three-a-side sport revolves.

It is so elegant a game that in Myanmar, it is played as Chinlone, where there are no opposing teams and the entire effort is to keep the ball aloft without using hands — almost resembling a dance form.

Chinlone is Myanmar’s favourite sport. Reports say it is almost, 1,500 years old and was once played by Burmese kings.

Now it is played everywhere and is also a regular feature of Buddhist festivals.

Sepak takraw is played in a badminton-like court, with a net separating the two teams.

It is played almost like volleyball but players are not allowed the use of hands and can only use their feet, knee, chest and head to touch the ball, which has to be pushed on the other side of the net.

Watching the game in Manipur’s leikais (neighbourhood in Meitilon, the official language of the state), under the LED-lit night sky is quite an experience.

Manipuris, who love their sports, play sepak takraw in every locality of the Imphal Valley. Little surprise then that eight of the 12 men and six of the 12 women in the 24-member Indian sepak takraw squad that played in Jakarta were

Manipuris.

“Manipuris are especially good at sepak takraw because almost everyone plays football and are naturally flexible. Sepak takraw is a game where you use your legs a lot,” says Vincent Nameirakpam, who played the game during his childhood in Manipur’s Singjamei.

Proximity to Myanmar has helped popularise the game in Manipur where equipment for the game comes easily as do the cheap but powerful China-made LED bulbs for the after-dark games.

“It did not become popular in the past because except Manipur, no other state was playing it seriously. People were playing it just to pass time,” says Muhindro Singh Thokchom, a Sports Authority of India coach. Though Assam and Nagaland picked it up, it was not spreading to the other parts of the country. “But in the last few years, many south Indian states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh are picking it up. So I think the future is good,” says Thokchom.

Fairly popular in Thailand, Malaysia, and Myanmar, sepak takraw is new to India where most have not even heard of the game He is optimistic that once Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh take to the sport, it will get popular. “These are states where tall players can come from and height is an advantage in sepak takraw,” he says.

Introduced in the Asian Games in Beijing in 1990, sepak takraw is expected to figure in Olympic Games soon.

Sepak Takraw Federation of India general secretary Yogendra Singh Dahiya is sure that the game is here to stay.

“It is getting popular by the day. Why I am saying the game has a good future is that it has been introduced at certain levels in schools and universities.

And with good governmental support, it can become a sport where India can do very well,” he says.

“The sport will figure in the National Games in Goa after which the Sepak Takraw World Cup tournament will be held.”

So, Goa may well turn out to be the veritable game-changer as far as sepak takraw in India is concerned.

20

Lastword Firstpost.

SATURDAY, FEB 16 - 22, 2019

TRIGGER-HAPPY TEEN WITH A GOLD FINGER 18

SIGNING OFF FOR THE WEEK

ON THE CARDS

Forecast

Pak to present evidence against Jadhav in ICJ Pakistan will provide all the evidence of ‘sabotage activities’ by former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav to the International Court of Justice on February 19.

Jadhav was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on spying charges in April 2017.

Hearing in Sunanda case from Feb 21 A DELHI SESSIONS COURT WILL BEGIN HEARING IN THE SUNANDA PUSHKAR CASE FROM FEBRUARY 21. PUSHKAR’S HUSBAND AND CONGRESS MP SHASHI THAROOR, WHO HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH ABETMENT OF SUICIDE, WAS GRANTED REGULAR BAIL LAST YEAR.

LOK SABHA POLLS

Modi to address rally in Kanyakumari on Feb 19 Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a rally in Kanyakumari on February 19, as part of the party’s campaign in Tamil Nadu. The BJP is experimenting with several strategies in the state to woo beneficiaries of central schemes even as Modi’s last visit to Madurai were mired in ‘Modi go back’ protests.

We need a political regime that understands war ARJUN SUBRAMANIAM

INDIA’S DEFENCE is too serious a business to be left to bureaucrats.

It cannot be conducted without a political system capable of guiding its course

THERE will, most certainly, be collateral damage in the political war raging over Rafale — the biggest casualty will be the Indian Air Force, its resources already depleted to near-breaking point. The IAF proposal to buy MiG-29s from Russia, made from incomplete hulks fabricated in the 1980s, reflects the seriousness of its capability erosion. This is music to the ears of India’s adversaries.

Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa has voiced a warrior’s anguish when he argues that while he will optimally exploit what he has, he doesn’t have enough to concurrently secure the nation’s frontiers, protect its interests and expand its influence in pursuit of its objective of emerging as a power of consequence.

The Rafale fallout has led some to argue that defence and security issues should be separated from politics. This argument in fact stands the problem on its head. We must stop politicising national security issues but, more than ever, we need a political establishment that understands war and the elements of

the instruments of force.

The suggestion that we isolate defence and security issues from the rough and tumble of politics — made recently, among others, by former defence secretary G Mohan Kumar — illustrates the complete disconnect between the establishment and the defence needs of a mature democracy. The argument is a well-known one: these are, proponents say “not matters to be discussed openly in the streets or subjected to the glare and searing heat of media debates”.

But defence and security decision-making structures can only evolve from an informed and decisive political direction that comes from the presence of a bipartisan constituency of politicians who take the lead in creating and running a strong strategic and security establishment.

Their mandate must also include sensitising citizens by engaging in meaningful debates in Parliament. These discussions must also be informed by public debate, conducted through media and academia.

Embedded within this political structure must also be adequate checks and balances through oversight committees

and ombudspersons to prevent corruption, brinkmanship and centralised decision-making.

Put simply, India’s defence is too serious a business to be left to bureaucrats.

It cannot be conducted without a political system capable of guiding its course.

When was the last time we heard a serious debate in Parliament on the challenges that China poses or on the resolution of the impasse between India and Pakistan on the Line of Control? Or, on what ails our defence manufacturing and innovation industry or reverse engineering capability?

As global interest in India’s security challenges grow, ideas on streamlining and restructuring organs of national security should be discussed seriously. However, introspection by leading political parties, looking at matters of security as a national mission, and not point-scoring, has been conspicuous by its absence.

On paper, there are already structures in place to enable multi-domain discussions, involving practitioners, technocrats, academics and information special-

ists — for example, the National Security Council, its associated secretariat and the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB).

However, they operate suboptimally because of the reluctance of a powerful bureaucracy and a comfortably cocooned military to open the management and direction of ‘defence and security’— to make it inclusive and knowledge-centric rather than power-centric and obsessively secretive.

For these reasons, I find arguments for delinking defence and security from politics as regressive and unmindful of the complicated geopolitical and security environment we live in. The current system enables the creation of fiefs designed for pursuit of power rather than synergy and interoperability.

These fiefs will come in the way of efforts to improve integration within the defence ministry and the three services — army, navy, and air force. They will also stall progress in creating synergies between intelligence agencies and the structures associated with external and internal security.

My prognosis involves clearing the cob-

webs that have ensnared acquisition of platforms and weapon systems, the creation of a vibrant indigenous defence manufacturing ecosystem, restructuring of higher defence organisation and improving coordination between various stakeholders of national security.

It is my belief that the next step that India needs to take to punch its weight in the international arena — after alleviating poverty and raising its Human Development Index — is to usher in a bipartisan political approach to national security that embraces intellectual capital and conveys intent and consistency.

Once that happens, India will be on track to emerge as a leading power and not merely a power with promise and potential.

That Rafale has become a tool for political skulduggery reflects the lack of substance within the current political debate ahead of the general election. But it also underlines the need for a bipartisan approach on defence and security matters.

Arjun Subramaniam is a retired Air Vice Marshal, a military historian and a strategic commentator

Printed and published by Ankit Singh on behalf of Network18 Media & Investments Limited. Printed at HT media Press, Plot No. 8, Industrial Area, Greater Noida, Dist-Gautam Budh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh and published at 428, Fourth Floor, Westend Mall, Near District Centre, Janak Puri, Main Najafgarh Road, New Delhi – 110058. Editor BV Rao, RNI NO. DELENG/2018/76684.