GURU M A PORTRAIT OF THE YOGI AS KABIR
MJ AKBAR PAKISTAN’S LAST GAME
INSIDE THE DRAMATIC RETURN OF AMITABH BACHCHAN
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1 8 AU G U ST 2 0 14 / R S 4 0
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Little reforms that make a big ideological statement
PAS SAGE
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Volume 6 Issue 32 For the week 12—18 August 2014 Total No. of pages 64 + Covers
cover design Anirban Ghosh cover photo Yasbant Negi/India Today Group/Getty Images
18 AUGUST 2014
Bal Govind
First it was Muzaffarnagar, then Moradabad and now Saharanpur and Rampur; these communal riots, which were frequent during the 80s, have come back to haunt Uttar Pradesh (‘For a Piece of Land’, 11 August 2014). Things are really going out of control for Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. Though the Centre has sent additional forces to help check the violent situation there, it is surely going to create a huge gulf between the two communities Akhilesh should act fast that will not be easy to bridge. There will be and deal strictly with many families who will all the culprits. This is live in constant fear. And probably the best time sadly, political parties try for him to come out of to politicise the unfortuthe shadow of his father nate violence by igniting and uncles and assert emotions and passions his authority of different communities. I don’t know if imposing President’s rule would change the scenario in UP, but Akhilesh must take control of the situation without favouring any one community for political mileage. He should act fast and [deal] strictly with all the culprits. This is probably the best time for him to come out of the shadow of his father and uncles and assert his authority. letter of the week Books for Thought
in the zeal to run down Arundathi Roy, MGS Narayanan runs away from the core discourse of MK Gandhi’s stand on caste (‘Arundhati Roy’s Ahistorical Fiction’, 4 August 2014). Gandhiji had many great qualities in him, but his position on the issue of caste was ‘problematic’ to say the least and downright casteist to put it bluntly. Sure, Dr Ambedkar respected Gandhiji, but that was his greatness. For those interested in history and its distortions, there’s plenty out there to read and understand. You may want to start with Dr Ambedkar’s What Congress and Gandhi did to the Untouchables, and Annihilation of Caste. You may also want to quickly read Rajmohan Gandhi’s The Good Boatman, and skip to the
Various Agendas, One Goal
section where the author talks about his grandfather’s position on caste. Stalin K
this piece is in bad taste, not because it criticises Arundhati Roy, but because it actually does not criticise her. These are just canards thrown by an ill-informed historian. The author only rants, and you give him space. Is this the level of public discourse in india? A magazine should not be held accountable for the views expressed by its guest columnists and writers, but I guess it is well within its rights and duties to set the standards of public discourse. Yes, the same way an editor would censor swear words, even if they were written by a guest columnist. radha
it is no wonder that the BJP, or for that matter any political party, likes to promote only those who play sweet tunes (‘Disgruntled and Dangerous’, 11 August 2014). While it is hard to deny that the remote control of governance is in Modi’s exclusive possession, it is equally undeniable that persons like Ramdev and the others listed in the article do play ‘other’ roles, however controversial they may be. Amit Shah, for instance, now holds the top job of the party. Each one is given an agenda to push through. One harps on Vedic studies, the other consolidates the sentiments of Hindus, and the third targets political opponents. The BJP seems to bless things silently, conveniently distancing itself from various acts of commission and omission.
Chandrasekaran
True Lord of the Jungle
dear rajni george, I appreciate your article on the true lord of the jungle of Bastar (‘Lord of the Jungle and the Magic Potion’, 4 August 2014). Though I have met the jungle lord, Rajaram Tripathi, on a special literature discussion forum ‘Me Bastar Bol Raha Hun’ at Danteswari Herbal Ground of Kondagaon, and have heard much about him from others, reading your article gives me immense pleasure. Rajaram Tripathi is a practical man who is sincerely working for the livelihood of Tribal families. May his efforts bear fruit. Dr Dipak Swain
open www.openthemagazine.com 1
openmagazine to 56070
The Moral Police in God’s Own Country false consciousness
Partying at night in Kerala comes under the jackboot of cops with Marxist support
v i g i l The Kerala Police employ odd methods to prevent crime. Earlier, they were going after Bob Marley fans to curb narcotics. Now they have launched a drive against parties and night clubs. A series of raids have been conducted on hotels that host night parties, but with little to show for it. For example, a raid on Greek Cruise, a luxury boat at Kochi, found 400 cans of beer, a few bottles of brandy and 20 gm of marijuana. In the first week of July, a raid was conducted on a 18 AUGUST 2014
hotel at Kochi and the police only found one small packet of marijuana. Such operations seem to be media-driven with TV news channels so fond of airing ‘investigative stories’ on night parties attended by ‘booze and girls’. There is no consensus even among the police top brass on what or who the target is— drugs, illegal liquor, or boys and girls dancing together. “Night parties cannot be allowed because it is against the Abkari Act. A bar is a place to run a business, and enter-
tainment is not allowed in such a place. They do not pay their entertainment tax as well,” says Rex Bobby Aravin, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Kochi. The city’s Deputy Commissioner R Nishanthini has a different take. “We are not against DJ parties, we are only against the distribution and use of drugs at such parties,” he says. The Democratic Youth Federation of India, the CPM’s youth wing, welcomes the drive because it goes with its stance against Western
culture. That Marxism itself is Western does not bother it. “We strongly oppose the use of drugs and liquor in night parties. The very concept of a night party itself is a cultural degradation,” says M Swaraj, the DYFI’s state president. The Kerala Police has also deported six Filipino girls who used to sing and dance at a hotel in Thrissur. The CPM’s youth wing has defended these deportations as well, saying that it stands firmly against singing and dancing at hotels. n Shahina KK
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hurried man’s guide
Ebola virus outbreak
Right of passage
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Curse of the game
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The shaky alliance of Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav
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It’s the popularity, dammit!
person of the week chetan bhagat
Modern day Kabir
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Automated complaint recorder
Not a Half Phenomenon Does the announcement of an author’s new novel merit a full front page advertisement? Lhendup G Bhutia
I
n the world of newspaper advertisements, where every square inch is measured and calculated, a full front page advertisement in the most-widely read national English newspaper in the country, The Times of India, as any advertising professional will tell you, is wildly expensive. It is not surprising to see such an ad featuring a top star promoting a big brand or bigwig politician on the eve of a marquee election. Earlier this week, The Times of India ran one such advertisement but it didn’t exactly fit the mould. The celebrity and product were Chetan Bhagat and his latest book, Half Girlfriend. The advertisement, which seems to have been brought out by Flipkart in alliance with the author’s publisher, also ran into the second page, where the e-company’s other products were listed. He wrote on Twitter about the ad: ‘They told me nobody cares about books. Big day, not only for me, but also for Indian publishing. Front pg TOI today.’ How does a book, by no means a premium category product, and its author find their way to the front page advertisement of the most-widely read English newspaper? It is the stuff of every author’s wet dream. But Bhagat, given his writing and the subjects about which he chooses to write, has long confounded people. In a country where anything over a thousand sold copies is considered respectable, and 10,000 proclaimed a bestseller, Bhagat’s six novels, whatever the complaints against them may have been, has sold over 7 million copies in all. According to
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media reports, when Bhagat’s 2 States was released, it sold a copy every 20 seconds. His The 3 Mistakes of My Life apparently sold a copy every 17 seconds at the time of its release. What Bhagat possesses is a shrewd marketing brain that micro-manages every aspect of his books’ promotions. It is said that when he was trying to get his first book, Five Point Someone, published, he sent out his manuscript to publishers with a CD that contained a PowerPoint presentation on how to make the book an instant bestseller. The presentation talked about himself, the book and a marketing sumeet inder singh/india today/getty images
strategy of low pricing, buy-back offers, and tie-ups. This astute business sense is also in evidence with the announcement of Half Girlfriend ’s impending release. After the newspaper hit the stands, throughout the day he released a string of teasers on Twitter, talking about the thrust of the novel, and putting out an online commercial and the first chapter of the book. Bhagat, it appears, even had the book sent out to a few test readers and had their comments to coincide with the announcement. He re-tweeted designer Masaba Gupta’s comment on Twitter where she claimed to be one of the test readers and found it ‘terrific’. Before noon, Bhagat’s website had crashed. The author had to link the commercial and the first chapter to other outlets. It is also interesting to note the author’s pitch about himself and the subject of his books. For long, his works were campus novels, set in an IIT or IIM. This was also a time when his core readers were students in the thrall of these institutes. The current book, as its brief description points out, is the story of a Bihari boy who can’t speak English but loves a girl who can. If one goes by his interviews in the recent past, Bhagat has been pushing himself to be identified with people from smaller towns—as an author whose work becomes the first book they read and through which he can show them how to adapt to a fast-changing urban universe. He described the book on Twitter thus: ‘English is the new caste system. Half Girlfriend explores this aspect of our society today’. n 18 AUGUST 2014
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Nayantara Sahgal’s life and art
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f o r advocating the compulsory
study of the Bhagavad Gita in schools Last Saturday, while speaking at an international conference on ‘Contemporary Issues and Challenges of Human Rights in the Era of Globalisation’ in Ahmedabad, Supreme Court judge AR Dave said that if he were the dictator of India, he would make the Bhagavad Gita and Mahabharata
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compulsory for students from class one onwards. This, he said, would help them “learn how to live life”. The conference was organised by the Gujarat Law Society. There have been widespread objections to his statement and rightly so. Both the texts that he so gloriously propounds are identified with Hinduism and to make them compulsory might not be acceptable to adherents of other religions. Then there is the question of whether the Mahabharata is actually such a surfeit of wisdom that Dave makes it out to be. Like all mythological works, it is a matter of interpretation what one derives from it. The Gita, for instance, could be read without nuance by some as just an exhortation to war. Dave sees only unalloyed good coming from it, but that is his personal viewpoint. There is no reason for us to take that as the only valid interpretation. It is quite a relief that he is not the dictator of India. n
Narayan Rane resigned as Maharashtra’s industries minister in a bid to oust CM Prithviraj Chavan. But he withdrew his resignation when the tactic failed sign off and sign in
“I don’t want to be part of a government that is headed for defeat in assembly elections. Unless Prithiviraj Chavan is replaced, there are no hopes for Congress”
“The senior leaders of the party have assured me that whatever happened in the past will not happen again… I have decided to continue with the party…”
—21 July 2014
— 5 August 2014
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NOT PEOPLE LIKE US
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Rahul Gandhi’s Incorrect Assertions N e w D e l h i Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi has done something he hasn’t done before: troop into the well of the Lok Sabha, accusing the Speaker of the House of being partial to “one man”. Later he told reporters that he and his party lawmakers were not being allowed to speak in Parliament. “We are asking for discussion. There is a mentality in the Government that discussion is not acceptable. Everybody feels it, their party feels it, we feel it, everybody feels it,” he said. “There is a mood in Parliament that only one man’s voice counts 18 AUGUST 2014
for anything in this country,” he added. “We are raising a point, we are asking for discussion... It is completely one-sided, [it is] partiality...”Rahul went on. Rahul spoke with a lot of conviction. However, there exist data to contest his claims. According to an analysis by PRS Legislative Research, after nearly three years, over the past three weeks, the 16th Lok Sabha recorded ‘productivity’ of 103 per cent compared to the 15th Lok Sabha, which worked for only 61 per cent of its scheduled time. n open www.openthemagazine.com 5
angle
A Hurried Man’s Guide
On the Contrary
to the Ebola virus outbreak The Ebola virus, which has in the past had sporadic outbreaks in the tropical regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, is currently experiencing its deadliest outbreak. It began in March 2014, when for the first time the Ebola virus was reported in the Western African nation of Guinea. Since then, it has spread to Sierra Leone, Liberia, and also the US. Some 826 people of 1,440 confirmed cases have died as of 31 July 2014. The early symptoms of the virus are flu-like: a sudden onset of fever, weakness, muscle pain, headache, and a sore throat leading to vomiting, diarrhoea, impaired kidney and liver function, and, in some cases, even internal and external bleeding. What makes the virus particularly deadly is the need for people Some 826 people treating the infected to of the 1,440 constantly wear protecconfirmed cases tive clothing as the virus have died, as of 31 is extremely infectious July 2014 and can be transmitted through bodily fluids like sweat or saliva, apart from contact with contaminated objects like needles or soiled bedding. The symptoms often show up only between two and 21 days of infection.
misha hussain/reuters
In the US, two individuals are being treated for the virus. One of them is a doctor who was
EPIDEMIC? A scientist trying to locate the Ebola virus
flown to Atlanta after he contracted the virus in Liberia. The other patient showed up by himself at a New York City hospital after suffering from high fever and gastrointestinal symptoms. According to media reports, he had been to a country where the epidemic had broken out recently, leading many to wonder if similarly infected individuals could have arrived at various unaffected countries. Currently, there is no vaccine or specific treatment for the virus. India has so far been unaffected but needs to be vigilant. An article in The Hindu quoted Indian public health officials advising doctors to be more aware and screen travellers coming from affected countries at transit points. n
A Serial Killer’s Living Victim The pitiful predicament of Moninder Singh Pandher, the other accused in the Nithari killings case M a d h a v a n k u t t y P i l l a i
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here is a reason why serial initiated on almost identical facts and
killers are so rare and it has to do with something more than just the number of killings involved. A general in an army in the middle of a war would have no compunction in ordering thousands of deaths if it were tactically necessary. But it only makes him a hero if he wins the engagement. A serial killer, on the other hand, is someone outside all the structures civilisation has created to ensure order in death. He is immune to that rule by which human society was built—life cannot be taken without reason or authority. The serial killer is terror, puzzle and fascination mixed together, the reason there is an entire bestselling genre of books and movies on the menace. But when it comes to Moninder Singh Pandher, there is increasingly no mystery, just a unique tragedy. It is hard not to sympathise with him, even though the crime he is associated with has to be the most gruesome in modern Indian history. This Monday, Pandher got bail in five cases of the Nithari killings. There are about eight more murders for which he is still to get bail, which means he will continue to be in jail. His only crime, as it is becoming evident, is that he hired the wrong servant to look after his home in Nithari village in Noida. In December 2006, body parts were recovered from behind the home and investigations later revealed that the servant Surender Koli had killed 15 children and one adult. Koli has got a death sentence in one of the cases. Pandher was acquitted in that one. Last month, Koli’s mercy petition was rejected by the President. No one seems to doubt that he is a textbook psychopath. But consider some of the reasons the Allahabad High Court judge gave to grant bail to Pandher. They include, ‘…has already been acquitted in almost identical case
similar evidence...CBI had exonerated the applicant Moninder Singh Pandher for murdering and raping the deceased…Entire case is based upon circumstantial evidence…The confessional statements of co-accused Surendra Koli under section 164 Cr.P.C. does not implicate the applicant… It is stated that there is no satisfactory evidence of prior meeting of minds between both accused to constitute criminal conspiracy…’ In effect, there is really nothing to show that Pandher had a part in the killings beyond owning the home. If he is innocent, Pandher is a man who is a victim of both Koli and the justice system, which can keep a Pandher is a person in a man who is a long purgatory between guilt victim of the accused and the and innocence while grinding justice system, along at a which can keep snail’s pace. a person in a How easily, one long purgatory realises in retrospect, was between guilt Pandher and innocence dubbed a ‘monster’ in the beginning by everyone from the media to the police. He was accused of simultaneously being part of an organ theft and a child pornography racket, two crimes that would be a contradiction to each other given that you cannot make porn out of dead organless people. As it eventually turned out, both charges were false. And yet, he still waits for exoneration because the shock of the crime is so colossal. It was impossible to comprehend how 15 children could be killed in such a fashion, but it needed to be shown that something was being done about it. Getting two serial killers was therefore always better than one. n 18 AUGUST 2014
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It’s the Popularity, Dammit!
he national mind is the last refuge of the
autocrat. Take the one in Moscow. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is one of the most popular politicians in the world today. There are several reasons for this in spite of the fact that he has contributed more than any other post-Soviet leader to the stifling of Russian civil society. The most obvious reason is Ukraine, a country he invaded while the world slept; the annexation of Crimea to Russia was perhaps the easiest instance of extraterritorial terror in modern history. But Putin is in no mood to retreat; eastern Ukraine is his playground, and the recent shooting down of Malaysia Airlines’ MH17 was, in the book of Putin, an accident. Stuff happens. As the war raged in Ukraine, the warmonger’s popularity soared at home. Emboldened by anti-Russian noise from the European Union and elsewhere, and united by persecution complex, Russians rallied behind the uber nationalist who drew his strength from the fantasy of a Soviet empire. Today, American and European sanctions against Russia may hurt, but the Greater Russian’s popularity remains unaffected. Rather, it is rising. Does this mean that popularity alone is the mark of leadership? The leader who taps the rich vein of national pride, no matter how the world rates him, has the better chance of being mythicised at home. History has so many of those types—the good, the bad and the nasty. Hitler was a very popular leader—let us not forget that—but certainly not a model leader, unless you’re one of those anti-Semitic protestors enraged by Gaza. For a more recent example, there was Hugo Chavez, who in his nationalist delirium saw himself as part Simon Bolivar, part Che, part Castro, but was in sum a comic-strip demagogue. His popularity was sustained by the hysteria of nationalism and anti-Americanism. Autocracy itself is about a leader’s notion of being the one who knows better. The nation endangered and isolated needs the maximum leader who embodies the sorrows, humiliations, ambition and pride of the homeland—and such a figure claims complete copyright over the conscience of his subjects. He is the autocrat who makes himself indispensable by invoking the lost glory—and by ranting against the enemy within and without. That is what Putin, whose thuggery is camouflaged 18 august 2014
in ultra-nationalism, does. And that is what makes him, in the panegyrics of certain kinds of nationalists, a strong leader worth copying. The strong leader argument is in vogue in certain places, including Delhi, because we are living in a world let down by weaklings. India for ten years suffered one, even though Manmohan Singh had the opportunity to seize history. He, by preferring office to power, let it pass by him. India then was not yearning for a strong leader; it was just waiting to be led. Strong leaders are popular leaders, but their strength, invariably, is delusionary. And even in open societies, it could be the strength of the jackboot. Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, like Putin, is a strong leader for whom freedom is too contentious a concept to be left to amateurs who have the habit of swarming the city square and demanding the unthinkable. He has already challenged the secular ideal of Kemal Ataturk—and his inheritors in the military. His idea of inclusiveness is to make the secular state more Islam-friendly. He is the leader larger than the state who is entitled—or chosen—to do so. The leader-redeemer has to be stronger, and he listens only to himself. Every strong leader is not an autocrat, but every autocrat is a strong leader. And always, it is popularity that legitimatises his strength—and his transgressions. This brings us to the Indian strong leader. We all wanted one; and some of us thought that India badly needed a variation of Indira Gandhi. She was one leader India indulged till her last day; India formed an emotional covenant with her, and she played out the Mother India script to perfection. She struck such a fine balance between power and paranoia, and India swayed to the best and worst of her as a leader. It was her popularity— and her own idea of indispensability— that aggravated her totalitarian temptations. The age of Modi is all about Leadership with a capital L, and the size of the popular mandate that brought him to Delhi gives him that rare freedom to be the strong leader that India has been waiting for. He has shown no intention to copy a Putin or an Erdogan, and that is wonderful. Modi has a historic opportunity to prove that a strong leader can redeem democracy, which, according to his counterparts in Ankara and Moscow, hardly serve the nationalist mission. He could be the one who can tell the world that strength and popularity do not necessarily breed autocracy. n open www.openthemagazine.com 7
open essay By mj akbar
curse of the game Cricket and Pakistan: When military dictators and politicians thought they could win the people through a surrogate triumph on a playing field
N
azar Mohammad was the first
Pakistani cricketer to score a Test century, in 1952 at Lucknow, but his brilliant promise was aborted by an arm injury in 1953. This could have been a heroic tale in the annals of cricket, if perhaps Nazar had been felled by a fearsome fast bowler like West Indian Hall or Griffith. Alas, the incident is merely MJ Akbar tragi-comic, the stuff of tired cartoons is the author rather than epic poetry. Nazar broke of several his arm when he jumped out of his paramour’s first floor bedroom window books including to escape the wrath of a jealous husband. Tinderbox: The This exciting story appears in a footPast and Future of note on page 24 of Peter Oborne’s devotPakistan, and ed history of Pakistan cricket, Wounded a pioneer of Tiger (Simon & Schuster UK, 608 pages), modern English and is reason for a complaint. Peter journalism in India should have done a switch: turned his fabulous footnotes into treasure house chapters and shaved off a few stubbles in the body copy. But Peter, who ponders often in this fine book without becoming ponderous, has become an attorney instead of a historian. Since he cannot quite ignore anecdotes that have done so much to enliven the reputation of Pakistan’s once-happy band of cricketers, he places scintillating stuff at the mercy of asterisks in small type. As the greatest of Pak legends, Imran Khan, once proudly announced on his T-shirt during a trip to Australia, ‘Big Boys Play at Night’. I know Peter Oborne, and while one cannot quite claim him as a close friend, he is certainly a luncheon companion during my infrequent visits to London if he is not trotting across distant corners of the globe in search of a story. Peter’s bread comes from political reporting and columns; the butter is from excellent books like Alastair Campbell: New Labour and the Rise of the Media Class, The Rise of Political Lying, The Triumph of the Political Class and Basil D’Oliveira, Cricket and Conspiracy: The Untold Story. In Wounded Tiger Peter indulges his twin passions, politics and cricket. I wonder if he realised that expertise acquired in political commentary would work so seamlessly in Wounded Tiger: conspiracy, power politics, shifting class and cash relationships, intrusive media and nuanced lying by so many with a cause or career to promote through sport. So much of Pak cricket is about different games, ruled by politicians and military dictators who thought they could win the affection of subjects through a surrogate
triumph on a playing field. As hockey faded, cricket took over in both India and Pakistan, but Indian cricket reinvented itself through brilliant entrepreneurship, which has created a template for the world. Since money keeps an open-door policy for talent, there will be plenty of both in India during the foreseeable future. Pak cricketers, sadly, have not found an economy that can pay for their abilities or meet their aspirations. Too many of them, therefore, have been mesmerised by an alternative sub-plot, illegal betting. Throw in terrorism and ethnic violence, and Pakistan cricket has become a refugee searching for temporary habitation where it can play a Test series. If it were not real, it would be too weird to contemplate. This is no fault of the cricketers. They are simply young men trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time. Peter is accurate enough about his wounded tigers, but he seems almost reluctant to note that these wounds are selfinflicted. This is understandable. He is in love with his subject (at least until the next infatuation and another book come along), and every lover manages to convince himself that the hairy wart on the beloved’s moon-face is actually a pretty little mole planted by an angel from Heaven’s beauty parlour. Investigative rigour, consequently, disappears even on so important a problem as the various forms of corruption: spot-fixing, match-fixing, umpire-fixing, and even organiser-fixing in at least one infamous arid venue. Peter may have every humane reason to be kind to the young Mohammad Amir who, along with Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif, was caught spot-fixing, and pillory him for naiveté rather than condemn him for crime; but why does he abandon basic journalist demands when it comes to men at the centre of this fix, the bookies? He refers, for instance, to ‘a bookmaker named Ali, who tried to induce him [Amir] to cheat’. Any newspaper editor would have placed queries on the side: ‘Surname? Details? Where does Ali operate from?’ Et al. Ali was no stranger to the players; they would have talked. But Oborne is reluctant to add flesh to bare bones. In 1979, Pakistan captain Majid Khan voiced alarm when a
the guardian
Peter Oborne is accurate about his wounded tigers, but he seems reluctant to note that these wounds are selfinflicted. This is understandable. He is in love with his subject
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TESTING TIMES Pakistan’s Salim Malik in 1990; (right) Shoaib Akhtar, VVS Laxman and Danish Kaneria (clockwise from left) playing a Test in Lahore in 2004
‘big fat chap’ sat regularly on the team bus, despite being a stranger. What is even more strange is that the fat chap remained on the bus. The captain never ordered him off. Would such an order have led to a revolt in the team? Oborne does not provide the name of this big fat chap when dozens would have disclosed his identity. He simply does not ask. Nor does he disclose the name of the bookie who greeted the Pakistan team at Delhi airport and then shadowed the team in an expensive BMW—a pretty rare car in those days on the Subcontinent, and as sure a sign of flashy wealth as any. Peter is in a hurry to run past discomfiture, although, to his credit, he never whitewashes dirt from the narrative. But he does fall into that old trap of seeking justification in equivalence. He fingers Asif Iqbal, who once told his surprised Indian counterpart G Viswanath that the latter had won the toss. Peter adds, ‘Besides it was openly alleged that Asif Iqbal had joined hands with the top Indian speculators and gamblers, and that some of his team-mates were found too weak to resist similar sort of temptation’. So that’s all right then. Pakistanis can never do anything wrong without having Indians to blame. It is perfectly true that Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin and South African Hansie Cronje’s careers were ruined by similar scandals (Cronje died a broken man and Azharuddin became a Congress MP). But South Africa and India never suffered the epidemic-level infection that wasted Pakistan’s superb cricket talent. Note this incident from a New Zealand tour, where Salim Malik ‘claimed to have won the toss in the first Test after making a call in Urdu. He then picked up the coin before the home captain, Ken Rutherford, had a chance 12 open
to look at it, or ask for a translation’. That touch of Urdu is pure genius. You can’t be a good crook without brains. Only a thin crust of corruption has become public knowledge. As Imran Khan once pointed out, it takes collusion between five to seven players to fix a game. Even matches against sworn rivals India in the 1996 World Cup were not above suspicion. I quote: ‘A rumour circulated [at Lahore’s Gaddafi stadium] that Wasim’s injury was spurious and that he had taken money from bookies to miss the match against India. ‘He was forced into hiding as his effigy was burned and his home in Lahore was pelted with garbage by an angry mob. Wasim [Akram] denied the rumour at the Qayyum Commission, which acquitted him.’ Memory has not acquitted Wasim, which is why this ghost flutters into the book. Honest members of the Pakistani squad knew what was going on. In 1994, manager Intikhab Alam made his players swear on the holy Quran, but neither flag nor God could keep everyone clean. Surely the most interesting Test of that time would have been South Africa versus Pakistan in 1994, the former led by Cronje and the latter by Malik. Which captain made more money on the side? The joke that year was Pakistan’s loss to Zimbabwe by an innings and 64 runs. Jackie Hendricks, the match referee, refused to accept Malik’s claim that he had won the toss, and ordered a second flip of the coin. This time Zimbabwe won the toss. There is similar eagerness to save Pakistan’s reputation on that other massive bone of contention: umpires who got a stye in the eye at crucial moments of a match. Once upon a time, 18 AUGUST 2014
long, long ago, there was no television coverage, and nothing in the form of camera and computer-generated gymnastics that indicate where a ball would have travelled up to next Sunday. An umpire was God. Run-outs and leg-befores were the happy hunting ground of patriotism. Cooking up an elaborate defence, Peter makes an indigestive meal out of statistics, pointing out with slapdash enthusiasm that Pakistani umpires declared as many of their own players run out or lbw as they did Indians. Anyone with an ounce of cricket in his brain [and Peter has tonnes of it] knows that it is not quite the same thing giving Sunil Gavaskar out as sending Waqar Younis back to the dressing room when it doesn’t matter. Umpiring has caused such bad blood that it even infected the great ‘goodwill series’ of 1978 between India and Pakistan, when play resumed after 17 years. The bonhomie, the graciousness of guest and host, the nostalgia, were exemplary. A fancy Mercedes was sent to the airport for that great son of Lahore Lala Amarnath when he went as a commentator. The manager of the Indian team, Maharaja of Baroda Fatehsinghrao Gaekwad, thought the limousine was for him, and was politely told to get into the team bus (Since you ask, the Maharaja’s full name was Lieutenant Colonel Farzand-i-Daulat-Inglishia Shrimant Maharaja Fatehsinghrao Prataprao Gaekwad, Sena Khas Khel Shamsher Bahadur). But even this happy chapter ended on a bitter note when Indian captain Bishen Singh Bedi walked off the field in the third one-dayer because Sarfraz Nawaz kept bowling bouncers beyond the reach of Indian batsmen without being called by Pakistani umpires. In 1987 Tom Graveney said that Pakistan have been “cheating for 37 years and it is getting worse and worse”. That might have been an exaggeration but indicates the simmering bitterness of all visitors. Ian Botham spoke for the tribe when he suggested that Pakistan was just the place to send your mother-in-law to (History does not record what Botham’s mother-in-law had to say on the subject). Pakistanis themselves clearly had more fun when they were out of the fatherland. In 1993, Wasim and three colleagues were caught in the West Indies by the police for possession of marijuana in the company of two British girls. More details, please, Peter, in the next edition. It is to Imran Khan’s eternal credit that he recognised the damage to his country’s reputation, and led a long campaign for neutral umpires. Imran Khan was the most honourable and honoured player in Pakistan’s history, a class apart—literally. When Imran’s father Ikramullah Khan Niazi returned in 1948
after doing a post-graduate course at Imperial College, half the town came to greet the ‘England returned’ at the railway station. Imran decided his future lay in cricket after he saw his cousin Javed Burki (also Oxbridge) score a century. By the time Imran joined the Lahore cricket team in 1968, the class character of Pakistani cricketers had already begun to change; he could barely communicate (as he notes in his autobiography) with some of his teammates, who were from largely Urdu-medium schools. You cannot ring-fence a game synonymous with such glamour. Imran evolved to absorb elements from both worlds he bridged, one of agnostic blue-blood West-oriented privilege and the other of values derived from his religion. He claims he was jolted by culture shock when he went up to Oxford in 1972 and encountered the anarchic, subversive, iconoclastic humour of Monty Python on BBC. Imran completely trusted a clairvoyant named Mian Bashir, who predicted his future and told his wife Jemima, who came from a more cynical London elite, the three things she most wanted from life. As an Indian who witnessed the emotional upheavals around the 1978 Karachi Test, as well as the delirious 2004 Lahore onedayer, I wish there had been a little more about the complex interweave of sports, politics, culture and memory on the
It is to Imran Khan’s eternal credit that he recognised the damage and led a long campaign for neutral umpires. He was the most honourable and honoured player in Pakistan’s history
18 AUGUST 2014
steve holland/ap
Subcontinent. But that does not detract too much from a magisterial labour of love. My own encounter with cricket history came when a ragbag collection of Indian journalists were pitted against a local media side for an impromptu match on the rest day of the Karachi Test in 1978. To our shock and awe, the legendary Hanif Mohammad came to bat for the hosts. I was hiding somewhere on the field when a Hanif on-drive came straight towards me. With superb, youthful agility I jumped smartly to the side and let the ball carry on for a boundary rather than crack a finger trying to stop Hanif’s drive. There was applause from my fellow Indian hacks on the field, not all of it ironic. n open www.openthemagazine.com 13
Av e n u e s
The Power of Performance The Karnataka Government led by the Chief Minister, Sri Siddaramaiah, has focused heavily on performance over the past year. The aim is to provide a pro-people, efficient and clean government.
E
ver since its inception in office the government has taken conclusive steps to provide assistance and cater to the weak and the helpless, to empower women and sexual minorities and provide food grains to BPL families. The government has also worked towards providing a fillip to industry and infrastructure. WELFARE SCHEMES Through the Anna Bhagya scheme, food grains (rice, ragi, jowar and wheat) are distributed at Re 1/kg to people below the poverty line. BPL families are entitled to get upto 30 kg of food grain every month, thus ensuring food security for all. Ksheeradhare has given an increased incentive to 7.40 lakh dairy farmers, which has led to the improvement of the economic condition of Karnataka’s dairy farming community. This has led to the increase in daily procurement of 55
lakh litres of milk, which in turn has helped the milk producers co-operative unions achieve a total turnover of Rs 12 crore a day. The Bhagyajyothi and Kuteerajyothi schemes are aimed at providing free electricity to rural households that are below the poverty line. The waiver of Rs 268 crore (arrears and penalty) on all electricity bills have benefitted about 20 lakh people in need of relief. The Loan Waiver scheme, loans to the tune of Rs 1,340 crore has been written off, which has enabled the poorer sections of society to become debt-free. This scheme has benefitted nearly 10.18 lakh people. Housing projects have been implemented to make Karnataka slum-free. A total of 3 lakh houses are being constructed annually for the next 4 years. For the year 2013, the total houses constructed stood at 3, 17,485. A target of 3.7
lakh houses is set for the current year. The Ksheerabhagya scheme has been implemented since August 2013, through this scheme hot milk is distributed to three times a week to students from standards 1st -10th. This scheme has benefitted approximately 65 lakh students studying in 51,000 government schools and 39 lakh children from 64,000 anganwadis. Women, who are destitute or are spinsters, are entitled to a monthly allowance of Rs 500 through the Manaswini scheme. Sexual minorities and transgender individuals have been given monthly pensions under the Maithri scheme. The government launched Vidyasiri to provide assistance by way of food and accommodation to meritorious students of backward classes. Under this scheme, through direct bank transfer, Rs 1,500 stipend will be paid for 10 months. This scheme is set to benefit 50,000 students during the current year. The government has earmarked Rs 75 crore for this scheme.
“
HEALTHCARE The Government has taken many effective steps to provide health facilities to all. The infant mortality has been brought down from 47 to 32 per 1000 live births, maternal mortality has been brought down from 178 to 144 for every 1 lakh live births and 100% immunisation of infants has been achieved. Generic medical stores have been established in every taluk and 94 fully equipped emergency ambulances have been provided for under Arogya Kavacha. Affordable and quality oncology treatment has been made available at the Shankar Cancer Hospital in Bangalore. Ayush Health Services has been implemented through which 47 lakh outpatients and 27 lakh inpatients received treatment. Approval for a 10 bed Ayush unit in each taluk hospital has been given and Ayush Pushti biscuits have been distributed to anganwadi children across 4 districts on a pilot basis.
The government led by the Honourable Chief Minister Sri Siddaramaiah is firm in its commitment towards the all-round development of the downtrodden, neglected and weaker sections of society, especially women and minorities
“
R. Roshan Baig
Minister for Infrastructure Development, Haj and Information & Public Relations
E-GOVERNANCE The Sakala scheme guarantees services to citizens in the State of Karnataka within a clearly stipulated time. In case of any delay or default in delivering the service, applicants may seek compensation at the rate of Rs 20 per day for the period of delay subject to a maximum of Rs 500 per application from the designated officer. The service also updates the progress of every applicant’s service request, through SMS. It includes totally 660 services, like the issuance of a birth, death certificate, khata, land conversion certificate and ration card. The government has been awarded best national award for egovernance by the Government of India. INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT The Government has released Rs 18.58 crore for implementing projects under the PPP model,
the Bangalore International Airport has been renamed Kempegowda International Airport and expansion work on terminal 1 has been completed and is operational. Alongside development work on Belgaum and Hubli airports is in progress. The Devenhalli Business Park is being constructed over 408 acres and concrete steps towards the completion of ongoing railway projects are underway. Construction, maintainence and repairs of highways, fly-overs, roads and bridges are being undertaken. The government has also been proactive in constructing 550 km of sea walls across the shoreline to prevent erosion by the sea. For the development of the industrial sector, the government has given approval to 251 mega projects, which will result in investment of over Rs 42,117 crore in the state and create employment opportunities for nearly 1.7 lakh people. Additionaly a Rs 50 lakh grant has been provided for implementing awareness and training programmes for individuals to become entrepreneurs. ENERGY Karnataka has always given high priority to the development of the power sector. All parts of the electricity supply chain — generation, transmission and distribution have been given ample attention. To meet the changing energy demands, the government has implemented schemes like Ganga Kalyana, Bhagyajyothi, Kuteerajyothi and Kuteerabhasgya. For the year 2013-14, under the Rajiv Gandhi Rural Electrification scheme 24,021 BPL houses and 8 habitations have been energised. The Bellary Thermal Power station is expected to add to the power generation grid by December-end 2014. n
Karnataka’s New Mantra K
arnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah completed a year in office this May. In a short time, he has managed to start fulfilling his party’s election promises and even gone beyond the party’s manifesto. He told Open in an interview that his goal is to ensure the development of the state with justice for all sections of society as his mantra. Excerpts from the interview:
l Congratulations on completing one year in office. Are you satisfied with the progress made? Yes, certainly and thank you. My government started work from day one and announced a slew of measures for the upliftment of people belonging to various sections of society. I am happy to state that my government has worked
tirelessly to implement several schemes and will continue to do so for the next four years. l What are the various projects and measures undertaken? As soon as I formed the government, we announced Anna Bhagya where families below the poverty line get food grains at Re 1 per kg. We have spent Rs 4,300 crore on this subsidy scheme that benefits 1.03 crore families. The government has also announced Ksheerabhagya, a scheme where 150 ml milk is supplied to 61.49 lakh school children in government and aided schools across the state every alternate day to tackle malnutrition. We have already constructed 3.17 lakh houses and
distributed them to beneficiaries and our aim is to provide housing for all. We are working on many health initiatives where citizens can access emergency and healthcare at district hospitals, setting up specialised hospitals as well as upgrading primary health centres. The government has plans to increase its fleet of ambulances under the 108 scheme. This free ambulance service has benefitted lakhs of pregnant women and helped bring down the infant mortality rate from 47 to 32 per 1,000 live births. The health department has started New Born Care Corners to provide basic neo-natal care at all PHCs and government hospitals and increasing the number of ventilators. The government has set up two specialised hospitals in Mysore and Gulbarga to treat accident victims. The number of such centres will be increased in a time-bound manner as traffic density has increased on the state’s roads. We have plans to provide all citizens access to quality healthcare by roping in private hospitals. l Karnataka is a top performer when it comes to e-governance. What new initiatives have been taken? We have received the National e-governance Award for implementing the Right to Public Services Act called Sakala. It ensures transparent and citizen-friendly governance with
time-bound delivery of 660 services across 50 departments. It enjoys a 98% success rate and we are striving to make it 100% by levying fines on officers who fail to respond. l What are the efforts to increase literacy rates in the state? To encourage the enrolment of girls, the girl child has been given an incentive of Rs 2 for each day’s attendance in the first standard. The government pays 3.07 lakh such children and the cash incentive has cost us Rs 4.42 crore so far. Scholarships and free education to children belonging to neglected sections is a flagship programme that will increase literacy and alleviate poverty. We have implemented Right to Education totally in Karnataka. Under RTE, children from marginalised sections are being admitted to private unaided schools in their neighbourhood itself. The fee for these children is borne by the state government. In 201314, Rs 99.96 crore were spent on 73,228 children, and in 2014-15, the number has already grown to 93,960 and we have earmarked Rs 216 crore. We have also introduced reservation of university seats for transgender individuals. l Women and Child protection is being spoken about a lot these days. What are the steps taken by your Government to ensure their safety? My government is very sensitive towards women and children. We have directed all police stations to take complaints seriously when such vulnerable sections are involved. The state government has taken the initiative to post more policewomen at police stations, strengthened women and child helplines as well as taken up programmes to increase gender sensitivity. We have taken action against those employing child labour and strive to make Karnataka state child-labour-free. l The number of vacancies in many departments has increased over the years. Are there any plans to recruit? We have recently recruited 11,778 teachers for primary schools, high schools and colleges. There are plans to recruit more. We will also be recruiting police constables and increase the proportion of women in the police force from ten to 20 per cent. n
photo imaging by madhu bhaskar
RIGHT OF
Modi’s little reforms that make a big ideological statement—and all those endangered sacred cows BY PR RAMESH
T
he lectern thumpers of Indian industry rooting for big-bang reforms to reboot the economy did not reach for their vuvuzelas when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the NDA Government’s first Budget. After its electoral landslide, expectations were soaring high that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have his Finance Minister unfurl radical measures that would work miracles overnight. It was barely weeks after the Government had taken charge, but doomsayers had already pronounced their verdict: they were disappointed. However, tell-tale signs have been emerging that the economy is making a significant and calculated shift northward after its prolonged slump under the UPA II’s reign. For those keen on joining the dots, the macro picture is becoming clear: the Modi Government has cleared the way for a calibrated gearshift. Global credit rating agencies like Fitch have upped their projections of India’s GDP growth for 2015-16. Quietly, PSU chips have started making gains on the stock market, fired by the confidence that Prime Minister Modi means business. This recovery has been attributed to the certainty that this regime would effect a decisive economic turnaround, with the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors at its core. That sense of confidence is reflected elsewhere as well. Fresh from its success at the BRICS meet, India dug its heels in to defend its right to hold large foodgrain stocks and retain its food subsidies at the pre-Bali WTO meet in Australia. At the risk of irking the US, which doles out huge subsidies to its farm sector annually even though the sector contributes only 1 per cent to its GDP, Modi’s men refused to yield to pressure on updating the 1986 prices used to calculate India’s permissible food subsidy level. Suddenly, India had found its voice in the global arena. A disappointed Washington DC, archly accusing India of trying to upset a virtually pre-determined Bali agreement, was forced to acknowledge India’s concerns. With time until 2017 to clinch a food subsidy agreement at the WTO, India will now push for a
PASSAGE
Starting a business
Procedures Time (days) 2004 11 89 2014 12 27 illustration by anirban ghosh
Dealing with construction permits
Procedures Time (days) 2006 35 199 2014 35 168
Getting electricity
Procedures Time (days) 2010 7 67 2014 7 67
THE BURDEN OF INHERITANCE
Registering property
A World Bank survey on ease of doing business puts India at No 134 out of 189 economies. On several counts, India has improved little
Overall rank (2014) Japan Mexico Russian Federation China Brazil Indonesia South Asia average India
Procedures Time (days) 2005 5 61 2014 5 44
Easy Tough 27 53 92 96 116 120 121 134
Paying taxes
Payments Time (hours per year) 2006 55 264 2014 33 243
Resolving insolvency
India rank (2014) Starting a business Dealing with construction permits Getting electricity Registering property Getting credit Protecting investors Paying taxes Trading across borders Enforcing contracts Resolving insolvency
179 182 111 92 28 34 158 132 186 121
Time (years) Recovery rate (cents on the dollar) 2004 4.3 24.7 2014 4.3 25.6
Enforcing Contracts Time Cost Procedures (days) (% of claim) (number) 2004 1420 39.6 46 2014 1420 39.6 46 Source: www.doingbusiness.org, World Bank Group
Startups: On Their Own Startups in India are largely left to rise—and fall—on their own. About three-fourths of startups are self-funded, about half of them receive an investment of less than Rs 1 crore and about one-third are valued at less than $1 million (Rs 6 crore)
How are startups funded? Angel investors
14.1
Bootstrapped (by themselves)
73
Venture capitalists 2.5 Debt 3
How much are they investing?
How much are they valued at?
Rs 1-5 crore
23
Others 7.4 Below Rs 1 crore
57
Rs 5-12 crore
17
Above Rs 12 crore
3
Source: 2014 Product Monitor report by iSpirt and Sharique Hasan
Below $ 1 million
34 $1-10 million 50 16
Unknown
Disinvestment: CHANGE WHILE SELLING Of the Rs 1,52,789 crore raised from disinvestment of Central public sector undertakings (PSUs), only Rs 7,661 crore has come by way of the government ceding control—all in the last NDA regime. The rest has all been share sales, which end up bankrolling governments more than granting true autonomy to PSUs. Meanwhile, PSUs continue to operate in markets better left to the private sector
About 90% of disinvestment is minority share sales… Total amount raised (Rs cr) Minority sale
Till now
Majority/strategic sale
1991-96
1999-2004
Congress
2004-09
NDA
5 7
Total 152,789 Rs cr Total 9,961 Rs cr
UPA-II
47
22
100
2009-14
UPA-I
18
88
Sale of residual shares/others
60
53
Total 34,945 Rs cr
100
Total 8,516 Rs cr
Total 99,366 Rs cr
Figures in per cent | Source: Department of Disinvestment
…even though PSUs, as a set, are mediocre performers… 2002-03 2011-12
572,833 32,344
…with a quarter of them making losses… Figures for 2011-12
Growth 14%
1,841,927 97,512
Growth is compounded annual between 2002-03 and 2011-12
Growth 13%
Profitable Enterprises
Loss-making Enterprises
Profit (Rs cr)
Loss (Rs cr)
161
64
125,116
-27,602
…and just 10 firms, mostly in deregulated sectors, accounting for 90% of those losses BSNL Air India MTNL Hindustan Photo Films Hindustan Cables Air India Charters Fertilizer Corporation of India Indian Drugs & Pharmaceuticals Shipping Corporation Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation
648 603 539 490 428 381
1,352
7,560
4,110
8,851
M
* In 2011-12 Source: Department of Disinvestment, Public Enterprises Survey 2011-12: Vol-I
Subsidies: A TARGETED APPROACH In 10 years of UPA, oil, fertilizer and food subsidies increased 5.5 times. It has not delivered commensurate benefits. The public distribution system is leaky. And the 50% subsidy on urea has led to farm overuse, ruining soil health
A quantum increase…
…without proportionate benefits Fertiliser use by farmers (parts)
Subsidies (Rs cr) 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15 *
As % of GDP
Recommended Nitrogen
Actual
4
8.2 2.48 2.86 2 Phosporus 2.90 3.2 70,926 2.98 1 Potassium 129,708 3.52 1 141,351 3.39 Source: Economic Survey 2014-15 173,420 3.67 217,941 3.44 257,079 3.00 255,516 3.15 255,708 1.69
45,957 47,522 57,125
* Budget estimates
revised deal on its own terms. It was an example of Prime Minister Modi’s strategy to leverage the country’s position as one of the world’s top 10 economies in order to defend and promote India’s interests. Aware that the farm sector would have to move towards liberalisation, Modi has made it clear he will not give a quarter without ensuring that the sector gets back a quarter in equal measure. In another adept move, Jaitley opened up the defence sector in his Budget to foreign investment, carefully capping the FDI limit at 49 per cent, as a measure to boost domestic manufacturing and capabilities. Within weeks of that, the Government has also quietly managed to reopen the acutely challenging issue of reforming India’s archaic labour laws. “Narendra Modi is an astute politician who is extremely aware of the socio-economic complexities of our country. He is acutely conscious of the unfolding economic tapestry and the need to weave its warp and weft with care at this juncture. He is aware that radical economic reforms cannot be brought in with a bang in our society without sensitively managing the politics of it. He believes in controlling the pace of economic reforms and calibrating its content appropriately,” says a senior member of the Cabinet who knows Modi and his style of functioning.
graphics by howindialives.com
odi was following a govern-
ment tradition in economic policy making, one that goes back two-and-ahalf decades to the time India made its initial moves of economic liberalisation, shifting away from its socialist, protectionist and import-substitution oriented growth strategy to a New Economic Policy that would let market competition lead the economy’s expansion. That was 1991, the year after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait and threw fuel-price economics across the world into a tizzy; India saw winding queues of vehicles lined up outside petrol pumps, even as the high cost of crude oil imports depleted the country’s foreign exchange reserves and forced the country to near bankruptcy. It was a red-letter year in another way as well: the Soviet Union, which had inspired India’s centrally
Neo-Middle Class: Hungry For More There’s a large set of people caught in the middle. They have tasted the material fruits of rising prosperity and are eager for more
40% of families earn Rs 4,500 to Rs 12,500 a month…
Quintile
Annual household income (Rs)
0-20% 1,000 to 33,000 20-40% 33,000 to 55,640 40-60% 55,000 to 88,800 60-80% 88,000 to 1.5 lakh 80-100% Above 1.5 lakh Source: Preliminary findings of 2011-12 IHDS Survey
…and rural incomes are growing... Annual income (Rs) Urban
80000
Rural 2011-12 60,817
70000 2004-05 51,600
60000
nual Average an
50000 40000
2004-05 22,800
30000
growth 5%
2011-12 30,799 owth 2.6% e annual gr
Averag
20000 Source: Preliminary findings of 2011-12 IHDS Survey
…even as rural households acquire assets
77
82
Percentage of households owing… Rural
r
Fo u
r-
w
he e
pu t
le
er
er Co m
he
el
on w
Tw o-
ev is i Te l
Te l
ep
ho
ne
5. 2
2. 3 9.
8
14 .3
18
.7
33
35
.2
54 .4
Urban
planned economy, was collapsing and the virtues of the market economy were becoming apparent. On the precipice of a debt default, India appeared to have little option but to undertake a Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) that would make the country eligible for a bailout package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. In July 1991, the Congress government of PV Narasimha Rao announced what has been described as ‘the most radical programme of economic liberalisation in independent India’s history’. Industrial licensing was abolished along with many other restraints on business, and foreign investment invited into several sectors; within weeks, the Centre had outlined a switch to an export-oriented growth strategy that drew on market forces. The then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh also had to devalue the rupee, slash food and fertiliser subsidies, and take other hard decisions that would have left the old guard aghast. All of this needed the backing of the Congress Working Committee. Prime Minister Rao took the reform blueprint to his party’s apex decision-making body, which was packed with status quoists and socialists of Nehruvian persuasion. Most of them were outraged by Rao’s prescription to overcome the economic crisis. Arjun Singh, one of the pretenders to the PM’s post, saw it as an opportunity to take on Rao directly. With the help of party colleague ML Fotedar, he led the apparently socialist charge against Rao’s proposal, protesting that it would deal a body blow to Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy. The CWC meeting was inconclusive. It decided to meet after a few days to take up the discussion again.
A skilled politician, Rao knew the Indian as much as Congress mindset better than anyone in the CWC. He asked his advisors to rephrase the paper on reforms. “The paper should argue that it is aimed at India’s achieving the goal of self reliance,” he told his men. It worked. At the next meeting, the CWC okayed the New Economic Programme. That marked the start of the aforementioned tradition of reforming the economy by stealth. A week later, Singh presented his budget. There were loud protests within the party over it, and a CWC meeting was convened for an explanation. Rao advised Singh to take a copy of the election manifesto prepared by former PM and party president Rajiv Gandhi to the meeting: “You read out from the manifesto. It has enough in it to explain our current position.” Singh did exactly that, speaking of promises made by the departed leader. It worked like a dream. And by the end of 1991, India had its bailout. Successive years saw governments of various shades borrowing from Rao’s book to sell reforms to a reluctant political class.
T
wenty-three years later, as the country faced an election this May, there were expectations in some quarters that the new regime could pull off a PV Narasimha Rao redux. On 17 May, a well-known banker who frequents seminars approached a top BJP leader to share his prescription for pitchforking the economy out of the current morass. During the run up to the election, newspapers and TV channels were speculating that he would occupy a plum post in the new government. “We
Source: Census 2011
Labour: REFORM WHERE IT IS MOST NEEDED Those in the age bracket of 15-34 years comprise 46% of India’s labour force, but only 17% of them are in jobs that assure them a regular salary. Agriculture still employs about half the workforce. Its share is declining, but labour is moving towards casual employment, and not manufacturing, due to lack of opportunities and inadequate skills
Workers by age
Workers by work status
Figures in per cent
2004-05
2009-10
15-34 yrs
35-49 yrs
49.1
35.1
15-34 yrs
35-49 yrs
45.7
Workers by sector
Figures in per cent
36.7
50-64 yrs
15.8
50-64 yrs
17.6
Figures in per cent
21.5
20.8
Unpaid helper in household enterprise
31.7
26.0
Regular salaried/ wage employees
14.7
17.1
Casual wage labour
32.1
36.1
2004-05
2009-10
Self-employed
2004-05 Agriculture and related
2009-10
55.4 Mining, quarrying and manufacturing
49.6
6.8 14.4
Electricity, gas and water supply, construction
13.9
Others *
11 12.4
Wholesale/ retail trade, repairs, hospitality Others *
14.3 11.3 11.2
don’t need any blueprints at this stage. As and when we need expert advice, we will seek it,” the BJP leader told the banker, and the short call ended. Not one to give up, the banker then placed a call to Narendra Modi, only to be told politely but firmly that the BJP leader was right and that political leaders would decide how to steer the economy. Expert advice could be sought only after that, once the revival plan was worked out. The banker’s blueprint to reboot the economy contained radical suggestions that would slaughter virtually every ‘holy cow’ in the sector, from labour laws to FDI across sectors. Besides a radical hike in FDI limits in varied sectors, and a sharp pruning of the subsidy bill, possibly in the first year of the regime’s term, it wanted the private sector to take over the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy. The idea was to unleash ‘animal spirits’. Says a senior party man privy to the conversation: “Modi is a consummate politician who has immense faith in market forces and he is equally aware that a welfare state has heavy limitations in its ability to meet the aspirational demands of a fast growing India. But he is as acutely aware of the need to trim the sails of his ship to suit the social and political winds of a very complex nation.” Modi, he says, prefers to push significant but well-phased reforms. “Slow and steady wins the race,” says the BJP leader.
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hat is a view forcefully echoed by Jaitley, who is effectively the regime’s second-in-command. In conversation with Open, Jaitley says the Government has to be mindful of public and political opinion. “Economic reforms measures have to be calibrated and
considered. There is no room for complacency. There is no room for a big bang reforms scenario that could potentially trigger social and economic besides political confrontations.” His budget announced a right turn for the economy: the private sector was made a critical partner, government spending was reordered by transferring power and funds to states, the Planning Commission assumed a smaller role, the foundations of a digital economy were laid, and job creation was prioritised by fostering entrepreneurship. This sent out a clear signal that the Government was confident that a further liberalised market economy
did the Finance Minister not allow 49 per cent FDI in the insurance sector through the automatic route? For his part, Jaitley maintains that the decision to raise the FDI limit in the defence sector to 49 per cent was a ‘significant step’ in establishing an indigenous military industry. “Our assessment of the market is that the 49 per cent FDI [move] is a significant step. Public opinion and Parliament’s opinion in India [are] ready to accept the proposal I have made. Other, more radical economic proposals may be more controversial to society and polity alike.” The fear of reproach has not stopped
A well-known banker called a top leader of the BJP to offer his ideas on how to get the economy out of the slump. “When we need expert advice, we will seek it,” the BJP leader told the banker
held the potential to solve India’s problems despite its old socialist moorings. His budget also committed itself to a higher FDI limit in insurance (apart from defence), and signalled a record programme of PSU disinvestment. But selfstyled advisors of the Government, who operate mostly via TV studios and the opinion pages of newspapers, went ballistic expressing their disappointment over various aspects of the Budget. For the past 10 years, India has had no FDI in defence, some carped; hiking the cap from 26 to 49 per cent will not make India a hub of defence manufacturing; it will not create jobs. Why, asked others,
the Government from approving changes to key laws, including the Factories Act, Apprenticeship Act and Labour Law. “This is a priority in order to extricate the economy from the era of jobless growth through a considered strategy,” says a Finance Ministry official. Only five million jobs were created between 200405 and 2011-12, even while another 30 million plus dropped out of agriculture and related labour activities and swelled the unorganised sector areas such as construction. The Government is intent on an intelligent mix of pro-labour and proindustry changes. The agenda includes standardising minimum wages, lifting
Vipin Kumar/Hindustan Times/Getty Images
limits on night shifts for women while making security mandatory, barring pregnant women from handling machinery and underage children from the workspace, and dropping a provision that allowed employers not following the apprenticeship law to be jailed. Crucially, however, these changes—in which states are given a big role—are set to pave the way for crucial amendments on hire-and-fire provisions in the contentious Industrial Disputes Act that are viewed by industry as dampeners of growth. This move, already being discussed with trade unions, is expected to boost and empower the manufacturing sector, especially in National Investment and Manufacturing Zones. What could help is the sharp drop in strikes and lockouts by trade unions in recent times, and the realisation that workers and industrialists must cooperate with each other. Manufacturing just contributes 15 per cent to India’s economy compared to 45 per cent in China’s so-called ‘plug and play’ economy that has far less stringent labour laws. The Government wants that figure up to 25 per cent and the sector to create 100 million new jobs. Revisions of the Apprenticeship Act are expected to give shape to Modi’s plans to exponentially boost skilled labour and bring thousands of unskilled workers into the organised labour net. Jaitley announced a National Multi Skill programme, which is in line with Modi’s emphasis on ‘skill, scale and speed’. The Government has also set aside Rs 100 crore for institutes of higher learning, including five new IITs and five new IIMs across the country. Various projects—especially the Rs 4,200 crore earmarked for the Jal Marg Vikas project on the Ganga connecting Allahabad to Haldia—are expected to create lots of new jobs, especially highly skilled ones. To encourage start-ups, the Budget announced a Rs 10,000 crore fund for new businesses, apart from Rs 100 crore just for rural entrepreneurship; Rs 200 crore for Scheduled Caste entrepreneurs; and a ‘young leaders’ fund of Rs 100 crore. The Government has also issued notifications to ease environmental clearances for industrial projects. The UPA II, especially when Jairam Ramesh was environment minister, had stalled numerous such projects. 24 open
“Our assessment of the market is that the 49 per cent FDI move is a significant step. Public opinion and Parliament’s opinion in India are ready to accept the proposal” Arun Jaitley
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nterestingly, these changes could
not be brought about by the earlier NDA Government under AB Vajpayee. Back then, the ruling party could not even clinch the support of the country’s biggest trade union, also from the same ideological stable, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh. At a three-day meeting of the Sangh Parivar in 2003—a session held in the backdrop of stiff opposition from its leader Dattopant Thengdi—the then NDA Government was forced to give a categorical assurance that labour reforms would be carried out only after taking into account the union’s views. Despite the clear urgency to push economic reforms through, the Vajpayee regime was forced to put off its pet projects on this front, including labour law changes, as a measure to keep the peace within the saffron family. That the cur-
rent Government is operating on the strength of a different political matrix is evident from the fact that no consultation was held with the Sangh trade union before the Cabinet took up Modi’s labour reform initiatives. The Prime Minister, who has promised to address India’s yawning infrastructure deficit, particularly shortages of power, has put the concerned ministry in mission mode. Former Power Minister Suresh Prabhu has been taken on as an advisor. And there are more plans in the offing, sources in the Government say. On 15 August, when Modi makes his maiden Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi, he is unlikely to miss a chance to give an India beset with problems a glimpse of his modernist mission. He has to. n 18 AUGUST 2014
politics
Shaky Hands The alliance between Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad is beset with contradictions. The anti-BJP camp in Bihar is hoping against hope that it will survive by Kumar Anshuman
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n 30 July, three of Bihar’s senior
political leaders came together for a media briefing in Patna. Basistha Narayan Singh, president of the JD-U, Ramchandra Purbey, president of the RJD, and Ashok Choudhary, president of the Congress party, put up a perfect show of solidarity for the media. An alliance had been sealed, they declared. Likeminded parties, they said, had come together to block the rise of the BJP. But behind all that posturing, there was a sense of unease and uncertainty. The top leaders of the three allies were not present for the grand announcement. While this may be understandable for the Congress, which is an all-India party, the JD-U’s Nitish Kumar and RJD’s Lalu Prasad were notably absent. The former, who was the state’s Chief Minister till recently, had returned to Patna the night before after a visit to Mumbai and Delhi; Lalu Prasad, who had gone to Delhi for Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s Iftaar Party on 27 July, was still in the national capital. Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar had snapped ties back in 1994 when the latter floated the Samata Party, which later became Janata Dal-United and vowed to fight the ‘Jungle Raj’ of Lalu Prasad, the then Chief Minister of Bihar. Since then, the politics of Nitish Kumar has largely revolved around uniting nonYadav Backward votes against Lalu Prasad. All these years, he has successfully drafted the anger against Lalu’s rule
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(read Yadav Rule) to his benefit. No doubt, the BJP also played a key role in his rise to power by backing his development agenda. “The combination of Nitish Kumar and [BJP’s] Sushil Kumar Modi was a formidable one which worked positively for Bihar. Both the leaders focused on development, sidelining the biases of their own party men,” says Alakh N Sharma, Director, Institute for Human Development. With his mantra of ‘sushasan’ (good governance), Nitish Kumar thus emerged as a face of the ‘New Bihar’, and the state’s electorate voted him back in the 2010 Assembly polls. The big mistake he made, however, was to take this victory as his own—and he ended up parting ways with the BJP last June. His former ally’s resounding victory in this summer’s General Election—across the country and especially in Bihar— has raised a question about his survival in politics. After severing ties with the BJP, Nitish Kumar appears to have lost his halo in the state. The Lok Sabha election dashed his dream of pulling in minority
votes thanks to his opposition to Narendra Modi while also winning over his traditional vote base of nonYadav OBCs and Mahadalits. The JD-U won only two seats in Parliament. “This election completely went against the calculations of all those who were sure to win on caste and community,” says Union Minister and LJP leader Ram Vilas Paswan. Lalu Prasad, who was sure of making a comeback this time round on an anti-BJP plank, had his expectations crushed as well. His party did only a little better than Nitish Kumar’s, securing only four seats.
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ver the years, both leaders have seen their star appeal dimming. In the case of Lalu Prasad, it touched a new low after he was barred from contesting elections by a new law designed to keep law breakers from turning law makers. He couldn’t even secure a win for his daughter Misa Bharti in Patliputra, a Yadav-dominant seat, where his one-time aide Ram Kripal Yadav
Both Lalu Prasad’s RJD and Nitish Kumar’s JD-U are trying to turn Bihar’s political clock back to ‘social justice’ and away from the governance formula pursued by Nitish Kumar for eight years open www.openthemagazine.com 25
“Two zeros can’t become hundred; they will only remain zeros. It is not a battle of people. It has become a battle of egos with Nitish trying to prove that his ego is above all” Upendra Kushwaha
RLSP leader and union minister for state
“Over the years, the role of caste has declined in Bihar. Any political formation based exclusively on a caste combination will not be as effective as in the 90s” Alakh N Sharma
director, Institute for Human Development
“The General Election completely went against the calculations of all those who were sure to win on caste and community” Ram Vilas Paswan
Union Minister and LJP leader 26 open
defeated her by over 40,000 votes. More than anything else, this alliance is a sign of desperation at a time when the BJP’s prospects are high. “It was the need of the hour. Things which were relevant yesterday are not so today, and those of today will not be so tomorrow. There is no question of Jungle Raj and sushasan coming together. The alliance is to [prevent a division] of anti-BJP votes,” says Bashisht Narayan Singh. Both RJD and JD-U are trying to turn the political clock of Bihar back to social justice and secularism, away from the governance formula pursued by Bihar for eight years under Nitish Kumar. In the early 1990s, it was a platform that helped the two oust the Congress, turning it irrelevant in the state. This time, they hope to take on the BJP with it.
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any observers doubt whether this new formation can really challenge the BJP. “This is an abnormal alliance. Both Lalu and Nitish have been fighting on the streets for the last several years,” says Sanjay Kumar of Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. “They are just trying to experiment with this idea and see how voters react to it.” Upendra Kushwaha, Union minister of state and leader of the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party, terms the alliance a failure before it was even struck. “Two zeros can’t become hundred; they will only remain zeros,” he scoffs, “It is not a battle of people. It has become a battle of egos with Nitish trying to prove that his ego is above all.” However, on paper, the argument put forth by the parties does make the formation look formidable. In the recent Lok Sabha polls, the RJD got 20.1 per cent of the state’s votes, while JD-U got 15.8 per cent. Together with the Congress vote share of 8.4 per cent, that totals 44.3 per cent, which is far higher than the NDA’s 38.8 per cent in Bihar. The arithmetic can be broken down group by group as well. In the Lok Sabha polls, the state’s Muslim votes, 16 per cent of the total, got split between the JD-U and RJD. As allies, the two parties expect to consolidate that support. Also, Muslims and Yadavs account for 30 per cent of Bihar’s electorate. Apart from that, the alliance could count on
Mahadalits (11 per cent), Nitish Kumar’s caste group of Kurmis (3 per cent), and a chunk of Most Backward Classes (22 per cent): all this adds up to well over 44 per cent. Going by this calculation, the alliance may appear poised for power after the next polls. But ground realities have a way of making a mockery of such pie charts and numbers. “Even if the two leaders have formed an alliance, it is very difficult for core supporters of the two parties, Yadavs and Kurmis, to come together,” says Sanjay Kumar, “They have been fighting not only an electoral battle but also a social battle all these years.” For both Lalu and Nitish, the challenge would be to transfer their votes to each other’s kitty in various constituencies marked out by their seat-sharing arrangement. It may not be easy. Also, “Over the years, the role of caste has declined in Bihar if not been completely wiped out,” says Alakh N Sharma. “About 60 per cent of the youth of rural Bihar migrate every year. This has changed a lot in the thinking of new India, which prefers prosperity and growth over caste ridden politics. Any political formation based exclusively on a caste combination would not be as effective as it used to be in the 90s.” Sharma is right. Bihar has almost 13 Lok Sabha seats where Muslims and Yadavs together are in a decisive position. Despite this, Lalu Prasad lost most of them, as young Yadavs opted for the Modi-led BJP instead. The trends among other caste groups—say, OBCs and Mahadalits—are similar. “Dalits today don’t eat for hunger, but for taste. They have grown up and they too have aspirations beyond Roti, Kapda aur Makaan. Modi showed the promise to fulfil their aspirations,” says Chandrabhan Prasad, a noted Dalit ideologue.
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governance, something which Nitish Kumar identified himself with for eight years, was all of a sudden the poll mantra of the BJP, and the former Chief Minister simply let it go. After his Lok Sabha debacle, he asked Jitan Ram Manjhi, a Mahadalit, to take his place as Chief Minister, a move meant to display his ‘commitment’ to the community. According to experts, the new ood
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km sharma/times of india
UNLIKELY BEDFELLOWS Nitish Kumar (left) with Lalu Prasad Yadav (right) at an Iftaar party in Patna in 2007
political development has affected the economic growth of the state, which had been in double-digits year after year. Even the real estate boom has begun to flag over the past year or so. Mall projects are on hold. Law-and-order has deteriorated, reminding locals of the RJD period. All this means that those who voted for Nitish Kumar in the Assembly and for Modi in the Lok Sabha polls—an estimated 15 per cent of the state’s voters —are likely to stick with the BJP. The new partners will also face trouble trying to keep their flock 18 AUGUST 2014
They will also face trouble trying to keep their flock together. While Lalu Prasad has little to worry about, Nitish Kumar has to deal with restless party leaders together. While Lalu Prasad has little to worry about on this count, Nitish Kumar has to deal with restless party leaders. In the recent Rajya Sabha elections, some party rebels voted for independent candidates in defiance of a JD-U whip. Some have already switched to the NDA, or are in touch with BJP, LJP and RLSP leaders. On 31 July, JD-U MLA Rajib Ranjan wrote a letter to the party state president opposing its alliance with the RJD. He is trying to secure the opposition of others in the party too. The fate of the alliance may depend on
the results of the Assembly bypolls scheduled on 21 August. “If this combination wins five or more out of 10 Assembly seats, then it has a future though a tough one,” says Sanjay Kumar. Even JD-U rebels are waiting till 25 August, when the results will be announced. If it fails, the JD-U may split, with the breakaway faction moving to the NDA. All things considered, for the time being, it makes sense for both Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad to stay behind the scenes. n open www.openthemagazine.com 27
comment
ajoy kumar
Flawed Reasoning
The Modi Government should not yield to frivolous anti-English protests over the civil services test
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ith civil service aspirants taking to the streets and
our lawmakers running equally berserk in Parliament demanding scrapping of the CSAT exam that tests a candidate’s logical reasoning, quantitative and verbal aptitude skills, it is becoming increasingly clear that an apt expansion of the acronym, UPSC, is ‘Unnecessary Politics to Scrap CSAT!” Each year, approximately 600,000 students attempt the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exam, competing to fill up anywhere between 1,000 and 1,200 positions. These 1,200 candidates are then entrusted with the herculean task of the world’s most diverse democracy’s administration. Hence, for a test that essentially aims to select one candidate for every 500 rejected, it is imperative that it is designed in a scientific manner that effectively sieves out the proficient and the competent from a pool of mediocrity. If the present government’s incoherent policy flip-flops are anything to go by, a substitution of scientific reasoning for mindless populism could well be the order of the day. The discourse over the past few weeks has been centered on the Hindi-versusEnglish debate with, aspirant protestors claiming that the knowledge of English was inconsequential in their pursuit of civil service careers. This has prompted calls for the second paper of the CSAT to be scrapped completely. I believe this argument is flawed for two reasons. I served in the Indian Police Service for exactly 10 years from 1986-96, and was a Superintendent of Police in the Bihar cadre. Despite being proficient in Hindi, I found myself throughout my career needing to be equally proficient in English for fulfilling even the most basic duties as a police officer. I am bewildered and equally distressed by how any of the protesting civil service aspirants have effectively concluded that knowledge of English is of little importance for a civil servant in the 21st century. Today, English serves as an important link and is very widely spoken in most northeastern and southern parts of the country. The repeated argument in this one-sided discourse has been that the focus of CSAT-2 is entirely on a test of English comprehension, thereby putting rural and regional language candidates at a gross disadvantage. This is untrue. The CSAT-2 seeks to test a candidate’s ‘applied intelligence’. Of the 80 questions in the second paper, only eight test English comprehension skills. The remaining 72 test a host of other broad skills, includ-
ing ethics, elementary class 10 mathematics and logical reasoning. This is similar to the practice in several foreign countries. While scrapping an entire test that contains just eight questions of English comprehension is ludicrous and unwarranted, the larger disconcerting issue revolves around guiding a myopic policy discourse through an opportunistic lens that seeks to influence the process through political mechanisms. This can prove to be perilous in a heterogeneous democracy like ours. The civil services were envisioned to be the emissaries of change as India increasingly assumed a greater role in an increasingly globalised world. However, over the years, rampant corruption and other systemic inefficiencies have highlighted the need for a paradigm shift in the talent pool the civil service was attracting and absorbing. Moreover, as bureaucrats started handling various PSUs at different stages of their careers, it was also becoming crucial that they possessed managerial skills coupled with a sound knowledge of subjects that had a strong quantitative focus. There was also a need to curb rote learning. Dozens of coaching centres in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh had been thriving on their ability to train students to ‘mug up’ general knowledge textbooks such as the Manorama Year Book and Tata McGraw Hill. Other students also pursued high-scoring optional subjects like Pali Literature and Sanskrit, which were easier compared with conventional subjects like public administration and economics, but the knowledge of which was absolutely irrelevant to their role as bureaucrats. The CSAT exam was thus being seen as a suitable addition to the UPSC scheme of testing. By reducing the scope for rote learning, reduction of optional subjects from two to one, and, at the same time, introducing a testing strategy that was able to assess a candidate’s logical, verbal, quantitative and ethical inclinations, the UPSC was effectively killing several birds with one stone. Kautilya’s Arthashashtra remains the most seminal work on public administration in India. An important component of this classic discusses how a king must select logical and quick thinking ministers for effective administration. Were he to be alive today, he would have been delighted by the idea of the CSAT. n
The new test seeks to assess a candidate’s applied intelligence. Of the 80 questions in the second paper, only eight test English comprehension skills
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Ajoy Kumar is a former MP and IPS officer. 18 AUGUST 2014
I N N OVATI O N
Hi-Tech Crime Buster A police officer in Bhubaneswar comes out with an innovative machine to tackle violence against women. Gunjeet Sra meets the pioneer
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is a nondescript street in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, one that would have gone unremarked if not for the commotion outside an ATM where people are huddled at the side of a white police sedan parked irreverently on the curb. They stand slightly tense, alert, as if waiting for some sort of orders. On getting closer we find that the crowd is the entourage of 50-year-old Joydeep Nayak, Inspector General of Police, who is currently oblivious to them as he punches into something that looks like an ATM, but isn’t. It is the iClick (Instant Complaint Logging Internet Kiosk), which was launched almost six t
months ago in the city as a pilot project to help combat crimes against women. Nayak is the one who came up with the idea of the machine and is now here to demonstrate its functions. Excited at the prospect of an interview, he has swapped his uniform for a black pant suit for the day and begins raving about the project as soon as we meet him. “In this country women have a big problem going to police stations, they either have to be chaperoned or someone usually goes on their behalf to lodge a complaint. Why should they have to take help to do something so simple? It denies them a fundamental right. My point is very simple. We
The iClick also allows one to ‘voice record’ one’s grievance. On completion, a slip is generated which can be used to track the progress of the complaint 18 AUGUST 2014
are here to help. Just because you deny there is an epidemic, [it] doesn’t mean that people won’t die. We must admit that we have a problem of crimes against women and we must equip ourselves to battle [those crimes]. Not deny them.” The kiosk, an innovative grievance registering system, is connected to the internet and allows a complaint to be filed using one of three methods. First, ‘Online Filing’, where a complaint is registered by typing it out; second, ‘Document Scanning’ in which one can scan a pre written complaint; and the third, which is also perhaps the most important—‘Voice Recording’—which allows one to just speak one’s grievance into the machine. At the end of the process, a slip is automatically generated which can be used to track the progress of the complaint. An SMS is also sent to the complainant, if she has registered a mobile number along with the grievance. Once a complaint is registered, it is transferred to a central server from where it is then directed to the concerned police station for appropriate action. It can also be transferred to a control room or to the women’s helpline desk; and if a cognisable offence is registered by the police, the complaint is updated by the concerned police station. An Information Management System in the control room can indicate the status of the complaints too. Nayak dreams of iClick Kiosks being open www.openthemagazine.com 29
rachet mishra
contact the police in privacy Inspector General Joydeep Nayak with his brainchild, the iClick, which registers complaints online
placed in various locations. Inside existing ATM booths in busy areas, in schools, colleges and even railway stations across the nation—someday. But all he has right now is one machine and a pilot project. After Nayak explains the working of the machine and demonstrates a few test runs, he makes his way back outside and his entourage springs into action. The driver opens his door while another holds his coat and carries it for him as he settles down in the car. Nayak smiles expansively, a sign of benevolence, but not gratitude. Ignoring the servitude, he mutters something to his personal assistant who stands in a corner—the very cliché of a petty clerk to a government official—with file in hand. After their conversation is over, Nayak tells us that we are on our way to a more convenient place for an interview. He doesn’t want to hold the interview in his office like most police officers; perhaps in an attempt to show that he is more than just his job. “I am in this job for a number of years, [and] after that I will retire. I will be a com30 open
mon citizen. So what’s the big deal in trying to help one?” he asks, just as we arrive at an expansive estate where the staff greets him with the same enthusiasm of his entourage. He seems indifferent to his celebrity.
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ome fifteen minutes later, Nayak is comfortable and sipping coffee as he mulls over the exact moment when he thought of iClick. “The whole concept was that there should be ease of complaints. I had gone to London before the Olympics in 2012 and out of curiosity I checked out the number of complaints that the London police receive in a year; and I came across some startling figures that got me thinking. London has a population of about 8 million. For 8 million people, there were some 800,000 complaints. Delhi has around double the people and the complaints are somewhere around 60,000.” It struck him that since the police were not able to record com-
plaints, they were not able to serve the people. Although he came back and resumed work, he kept trying to think of a solution to the problem. “Once the Nirbhaya incident happened, I knew exactly what to do,” he says, adding, “I knew we had to do something [radical] for women, because in this country women are most vulnerable; and while crossing an ATM on my way to work one day, I thought, ‘Why not have an ATM kind of machine?’, as they are almost everywhere. A place where a woman could just walk in, complain and leave without a hassle or any chaperone.” He felt that the ease of access and anonymity would empower women to talk about their grievances openly. “No girl wants to go to a police station, complain about being eve teased and then keep following up on it. That is the police’s job. Hers is to get on with her life,” he says. The task of setting up was not easy and there were some technical glitches along the way too. The first thing Nayak did was to take the issue up with Rajendra 18 AUGUST 2014
Parsad Sharma, Commissioner of Police for Bhubaneswar-Cuttack, who was equally enthused by the idea. “I decided to suggest a pilot project in this city because it is a relatively small place with a population of approximately 1 million and a lot of women move around on motorbikes and scooters because of the distance... so I thought this would be a good place to test it out.” A meeting was then arranged between the CM, the Commissioner-cum-Secretary to the government for IT, MS Padhi, and the Police Department, to figure out the logistics and functioning of the machine. Diversified Technology, a Bhubaneswar based IT solutions firm, was roped in to figure out the technical aspects, along with CoLeague, an international IT company operating in India, Singapore and the US, to make the project a success. Bank of Baroda was brought on board at the last minute to share space and resources. The bank would not only partly fund but also provide electricity and internet connectivity to access the machine 24x7, just like an ATM. When he came up with the idea initially, Nayak had thought of involving Chanda Kocchar of ICICI. He felt that being a role model for women, she would be keen to be associated with the project. “But then I thought of all the going back and forth between Mumbai and the fact that I would have to defend my choice of a private sector bank repeatedly, so I dropped the idea,” he laughs.
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t took a year for the logistics to fall in place and to develop the perfect machine, but ever since it was rolled out six months ago, the response has been phenomenal. “We get an average of six to eight complaints daily. Most of them are about eve teasing and we follow up on each case,” he says. Currently waiting to tie up with the Odisha Commission for Women, he hopes the project becomes much more than a pilot and goes national. It is clear that he is passionate about his brainchild—that he even got patented last year—and he spends a considerable amount of time thinking about all the pros and cons of its implementation. “Our state government has been very supportive and we will roll out these machines throughout Odisha in 18 AUGUST 2014
the next couple of months. But I’d like to see them installed in major metros such as Delhi and Mumbai.” Nayak hopes that the Ministry of Women and Child Development notices his efforts and asks to be a part of it. But he is also aware that there are some loopholes that might become problematic when it comes to the mass implementation of this idea. “The crime rate will go up as the number of recorded crimes will increase; and no government likes that. They will have to prepare themselves mentally before installing the machines. This makes the entire process top down. Someone needs to ask for it from the top, only then can it be successful,” he explains, adding, “It will increase police accountability but also cause a lot of heat due to the pressures of [police] response time. One has to be prepared for it.” He unconsciously quotes from Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments in passing to elucidate a point about social responsibility. “If you think crimes against women have to [be] controlled, and if we say all two per cent CSR activities will be in that area, then these machines can be installed easily everywhere. We can get feedback from people on how to better it. You have to make it a joint effort between the society and the police, as this is a social problem.” Although he says it was the Nirbhaya incident of 2012 that pushed him towards this cause, it can perhaps also be attributed to the fact that he has two young
“No girl wants to go to a police station, complain about being eve teased and then keep following up on it. That is the police’s job. Hers is to get on with her life,” says Joydeep Nayak
daughters. As a father he is wont to worry for their safety, and is keen on a better environment for them to live in. “You girls have to be more aggressive. Chip in more and do not cow down, to make a difference,” he says, shaking his head like a patriarch.
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here is a lull in the conversation as
Nayak has now exhausted the subject of his invention. He takes his phone out to show a picture from his trip to Paris. It is the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. He zooms in and shows a message in French warning people of pickpockets. “If they can admit they can’t rein in all the pickpockets, and that we should be careful, why can’t we admit that we have a problem dealing with violence against women and generate awareness?” he asks. He admits to never switching off from work and constantly thinking of bringing more to his job. Although he does love golf, what he loves most are clever ideas—and having a non IT background doesn’t faze him. “The best guys changing the IT landscape in the world are non-engineers like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg,” he says. While a bit of his socialist streak may be attributed to the fact that he takes care of the Human Rights division of the Odisha Police, his education at Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he studied International Relations and Diplomacy, has also played an important role in shaping him as a person. And this isn’t his first innovative project for the Odisha government either. In November last year, he conceptualised a mobile water treatment and electrification unit called iPure for villagers in the state’s Ganjam district who were facing trouble accessing safe-drinking water. The names for his projects are clearly derived from what seems to be his favourite company, Apple Inc, and he hopes to get more ideas he can patent, as that is what pleases this self-professed maverick the most. “No bureaucrat other than me [holds] a patent in India. Thomas Edison had 1,000 patents to his name; I just have one, and it is for practical purposes. It gives one intellectual strength and confidence. Innovators and special efforts need tobe taken notice of; they encourage everyday people to be and do better,” he ends, beaming. n open www.openthemagazine.com 31
photographs by pn shanavas
Guru M
The fastest growing yogi of India doubles as a modern-day Kabir to spread the gospel of peace. Ullekh NP meets Sri M who was once Mumtaz Ali Khan
R
enowned Malwi folk sing-
er Prahlad Tipanya, who has made Kabir’s devotional songs such as Tu Ka Tu and Tara Rang Mahal Mein extremely popular overseas, was looking forward to meet the person he thought internalised the teachings of the 15th century saint-poet like no one else has done. “I also admire guruji Sri M for his simplicity and his innocent smile,” he says in chaste Hindi as we drive down from Bangalore to Madanapalle. Tipanya had met Sri M before, but not in Madanapalle, which is in Andhra Pradesh, where the 66-year-old yogi lives. A few hours later, the singer touches the feet of the guru who had initiated him into kriya yoga, which is at the heart of Sri M’s training as a member of the Nath tradition, just as it was Kabir’s. “The last time we met, you threw instructions in English and it was fun to hear it because I didn’t understand one bit,” Tipanya tells Sri M, who erupts in childlike laughter. Kriya yoga, the ancient form of yoga believed to have been revived by Mahavatar Babaji, guru of Sri M’s master Maheshwar Babaji, has brought many people from across the world to Madanapalle. Besides Tipanya and others, the visitors outside Sri M’s home Snow White—he named it so because of his fascination for snow-clad mountains—include Lina from Lithuania. For someone from a country that boasts of ultra high-speed internet connections, it’s ironic that she knew about the guru through word-of-mouth originating in yoga academies within India and elsewhere. “I wanted to come here for a long time since hearing about him. I had to postpone my trip many times. I am glad that I am learning the right things. Until I came here, I had a very different idea of what yoga was,” she says. Yoga has connected Sri M with many other followers too, including the likes of actor Rajinikanth. “I look up to Sri M, and I consult him on spiritual matters. I am closely involved with him in my spiritual practice. I also take a lot of tips from him on kriya yoga so that I don’t pick up any mistakes,” says Rajinikath, who emphasises the importance of gurus taking up initiatives to foster peace in the country. “One such is Sri M’s plans to embark on a 34 open
journey by foot from Kanyakumari to Srinagar,” he adds.
Walk for Peace
Sri M, who was born Mumtaz Ali Khan in 1948 in Thiruvananthapuram to fourthgeneration migrants from the North West Frontier Province, vows to spread the message of communal amity by organising multi-faith prayer meetings, planting trees, cleaning public places and teaching people meditation techniques as part of his ‘walk of hope’. He plans to walk more than 6,000 km over one-and-a-half years, starting early 2015. “We won’t walk too long in one day. We would end up covering 18-20 km a day and would retire at the end of a day in either a temple or a church or a mosque or a gurdwara or any place that offers us shelter at night,” says Sri M, who will be accompanied by a core team of 35-40 members. While he expects thousands of others to join him, he often tells his disciples excited about the walk that “it is not a rathyatra but a padyatra”. Muslim by birth and Hindu by initiation, Sri M—who left home aged 19 to live and wander the Himalayas in pursuit of spiritual knowledge—sounds self-effacing at the mention of his venturing into the karma mode or pursuing the path of social reforms. There is also a frequent comparison he squirms at: that
The guru wants to help with the work that Kabir left incomplete, especially in bridging communities and in helping them live in peace
with Kabir, who is revered in India by Hindus and Muslims alike. He admits some similarities. “Kabir, of course, was like me in some ways: he was born into a Muslim family (a family of weavers in Varanasi); like me, he was also inspired by Hindu philosophy. He called the Supreme Being ‘Ram’ not ‘Lord Ram’, but ‘Shuddha Brahma Paratpara Ram’,” says Sri M, who came under the spell of Kabir’s philosophy as a child. According to Kabir scholar Linda Hess, after learning the family craft of weaving, Kabir is believed to have “studied meditative and devotional practices with a Hindu guru and developed into a powerful teacher and poet, unique in his autonomy, intensity and abrasiveness”. Sri M, meanwhile, notes that he would really want to help with the work that Kabir, an iconoclast, left incomplete, especially in bridging communities and helping them live in peace. He feels that communal strife, which seems to have gripped parts of India, is not always because of religion. “It happens when some people exploit religion for their vested interests. More and more people should be made aware of these power struggles, politics and so on,” he says.
What M stands for
The guru’s ‘M’ is not merely short for ‘Mumtaz’. Sri M’s name in the Nath tradition starts with M, Madhukarnath. As a painter, the guru, who is also the author of the book, Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master, among others, used to sign off as ‘MM Ali’ or ‘M Ali’ on his works of art, a few of which still hang in his home. It was a friend from the Jaisalmer royal family who first called him ‘M’. Then she decided M was not reverential enough. She started calling him ‘Mr M’, but some people objected, saying it reminded them of James Bond’s boss M from Ian Fleming’s series. Finally, the friend’s niece suggested ‘Sri M’, and it stuck. Soon, he decided to write the story of his life: his meeting with his master who appeared before him when he was just nine; his journey in which he discovered that he was reborn as Mumtaz Ali—and that he knew his master and the practice of yoga from his previous birth; his series of mystical experiences, initiation into the Hindu order, encounter with the Yeti and several other ‘hard to believe’ stories. 18 AUGUST 2014
Multi faith approach Sri M, seated before a ritual fire, presides over a prayer meeting (top); Sri M offers a floral tribute at a dargah (above). Sri M says that his mission is to help various religious communities live in harmony with one another in India
Sri M, who says his guru Maheshwar Babaji is a disciple of Sri Guru Babaji, trained in the Upanishads and in kriya yoga and meditation for three years inside a cave near Badrinath
It was in 2011 that he published Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master, and he did so after much thought. He says he had waited for 25 years in fear that people would distrust him. But he was committed to his guru’s wish: that he write an autobiography. ‘Until now I have held most of the experiences written in this book close to my heart, never giving more than a hint even to my closest friends. However, I felt that I had no right to deny what I had experienced to people, so after deliberating a great deal, I reluctantly began to write this book,’ Sri M wrote in the foreword to the book, which has sold over 400,000 copies since and been translated into many languages (it has a Braille version too). For sceptics, this writer included, who tell Sri M that his book could be dismissed by some as a collection of cock-and-bull stories that have no scientific foundation, he has an answer ready. “There is this book called Proof of Heaven written by neurologist Eben Alexander MD, in which the author, once deeply distrustful of mystical experiences, writes of his own near-death experience,” says Sri M, who has also authored books on the Upanishads and on Hindu thought.
Seeker’s Quest
Readers of Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master know only too well the mystical
experiences Sri M has had as a child. Besides meeting his own guru Maheshwar Babaji, a tall and fair 30-year -old-looking man with very little facial hair, as a nine-year-old, he was also destined to experience bliss and epiphanic moments when he met many holy men in and around his home town of Thiruvananthapuram and elsewhere, starting from the naked Sufi, Kaladi Masthan; Gopala Saami; Mai Amma and others. He was also destined to meet Neem Karoli Baba and the head of his own order, Sri Guru Babaji, who is also referred to as Mahavatar Babaji in Paramahansa Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi. Before Sri M left home when he was 19 for the Himalayas, he had done what he calls “trial runs” to Kanyakumari and Tirunelveli and other nearby places, where he often stayed in various ashrams. When he finally left for the Himalayas, he was flush with funds to pay for his train tickets. He travelled by rail from Thiruvananthapuram to Egmore in Tamil Nadu, where he stayed on the Theosophical Society of India campus; a few days later, he boarded the GT Express to Delhi, took another train to Hardwar, where he halted for several days before leaving for Rishikesh. It was then he realised that the snow-clad
mountains that he was always longing to see couldn’t be seen in Rishikesh. After staying for a few days in Vasishta Cave there, he began to walk and hitchhike occasionally. He reached Badrinath a month later. He was offered shelter across the Alaknanda river by Ravalji, the head priest of the Badrinath Temple. Within a few days, he began to feel depressed because he had expected spiritual bliss on reaching these destinations. “I was contemplating jumping into the river,” he says, “It was then I passed by Vyasa Cave and saw it was empty. Then I happened to return a while later. I saw someone was inside. So I decided to explore. There I met a man whose eyes were the same as those of the man I met when I was just nine. ‘I will stay with you forever,’ I told him.” That was Maheshwar Babaji, the saint who never wore anything other than a towel around his waist even at the height of winter, who went on to train Sri M in the Upanishads and kriya yoga and meditation for the next three years. “My typical day in the Himalayas started around 5.30 am. I used to go collect some firewood, then wash my face and sit for meditation. Then we used to have an hour of yoga. Cooking was over in an hour. I had been trained by Babaji. Till evening I had time to wander around and explore. The
“I look up to Sri M, and I consult him on spiritual matters. I am involved with him in my practice. I also take a lot of tips from him on kriya yoga so that I don’t pick up any mistakes” Rajnikanth 36 open
18 AUGUST 2014
WALK OF HOPE Sri M plans to cover more than 6,000 km over a year-and-a-half of walking, “covering 18-20 km a day and retiring at any place that offers us shelter at night”
evening meditation used to be longish,” recalls Sri M. It was under Babaji’s guidance that he learnt to wander the Himalayas, and took a tortuous journey to Tholingmutt in Tibet on a failed mission to Kailash. Sri M says he had got used to life in the Himalayas when his guru dropped the bomb shell: you have to work with the masses. This can’t go on forever. He didn’t want to return to “the plains” and work, but finally bowed to his guru’s demand. Sri M also ended up working closely with people Babaji had asked him to meet, including J Krishnamurti, in his last years. Sri M worked briefly as a journalist, including as a trainee at India Today, and with New Wave, Andaman Times, Manthan and so on. He also returned home and helped the family with its medical distribution business.
Forefathers
Sri M’s ancestors were brought to India in the early 18th century by the Maharaja of Travancore, Marthanda Varma, who distrusted his soldiers and had powerful enemies such as Ettuveettil Pillas. Until recently, a member of Sri M’s family used to accompany the maharaja in his customary procession at the Aarat festival at 18 AUGUST 2014
the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram. By the time Sri M was born, the family had lost touch with its mother tongue, Pashtu, but never spoke in Malayalam. “We always spoke a variant of Urdu at home which can be called as DeccaniUrdu. This helped in communicating with my master. It also helped that I went to a good English-medium school in Thiruvananthapuram,” says Sri M. In a family that was reluctant to have any member marry even Kerala Muslims, it was Sri M who broke all traditions by marrying a Saraswat Brahmin, Sunanda, with whom he has two children. Sri M, founder of the Satsang Foundation, is a breakaway from the usual mould of gurus in an instantly apparent way as well: he is clean-shaven. He doesn’t talk in monosyllables. He wears a shirt and trousers or dhoti. He doesn’t perform any miracles; in fact, he has written a book titled How to Levitate under a nom de plume, James Talbot, explaining various tricks employed by godmen to lure crowds. “I performed the levitation trick before Krishnamurti and then showed him how I did it. He was amazed,” says Sri M. Sri M, who has worked in institutions
run by Krishnamurti and as the philosopher-guru’s confidant as well, remembers him as a down-to-earth person. “He had great humility. One day he was taking a walk and a wheelchair-bound boy was being wheeled around him. When he asked someone why he was being wheeled around, he was told that they believed he had the healing powers to cure the boy. He was shocked; ‘Are you pulling my leg? Please tell them I can’t do a thing like that,’ he said.” Sri M seems to have taken a leaf or two out of Krishnamurti’s book. He says that for days before he delivers a talk on the Upanishads, he reads his favourite PG Wodehouse novel or Sherlock Holmes or comic books such as Asterix and Tintin. “I always want my mind to be a clean slate before such occasions,” he says. He also goes for holidays, especially to get away from the madding crowd. He “flees” to Writer’s Bungalow in Ramgarh in Kumaon Hills, or to a hideout his family owns in Bandipur, or to a property on an island near Payyannoor in Kerala that can be accessed only by boat. But now it is time for some karma, declares Sri M, who often falls back on Swami Vivekananda’s Complete Works for inspiration. It is time to walk the talk. n open www.openthemagazine.com 37
Haute Baby Couture There is a sartorial baby boom and designers are living up to it Aekta Kapoor
I
t’s a regular work day at Preeti Jatia’s studio. As she shows me around, I run my hands over a diminutive pure georgette skirt attached to a cowl-neck, sleeveless blouse with a burst of maternal longing. A young mother with cropped hair walks in, wearing Juicy Couture jeans, a Louis Vuitton bag on her arm, her infant daughter in the arms of a maid behind her. The lady is annoyed—it took her a while to locate this place. But now that she’s here, she attacks with gusto the racks lined with baby clothes—a mélange of lace, net, satin, silk, flowers, bows, gowns, lehengas, embroideries. She will not leave till she has bought out everything
that fits her little angel, matching accessories included. Her desperation is understandable. Pune-born Jatia, 36, is one of Noida’s bestkept secrets. In business since 2008, Jatia’s clientele includes the baby scions of some of India’s most affluent families—from Samajwadi Party bigwigs in the north to DMK insiders in the south, from Bollywood celebrities to owners of large educational institutions. Supported by her husband Akhilesh, the Fayon Kids team of 15 create a limited quantity of children’s garments every month (300 to be precise), all of which are sold out within days of production. Orders need to be placed for elaborate pieces such as the 18 AUGUST 2014
Neelakshi Ray (Left) and Oiendrila Ray
“Mothers usually look for clothing that is fairly functional and comfortable. Children naturally gravitate towards bright colours and designs” Neelakshi Ray Nee & Oink
‘matching’ Rs 25,000 lehenga she created for a six-year-old who wanted to look like the bride at her masi’s (aunt’s) wedding. Jatia’s garments—fluffy clouds lined with seamless baby-soft cotton—don’t come cheap (from Rs 2,000 to Rs 40,000), but when you have the cash, why would you compromise on something as significant as your darling’s smile? “It’s not about the expense; it’s about looking exclusive and different,” says Chandigarhbased businesswoman Monica Bansal, a regular buyer of designer garments from Delhi for her three-year-old daughter and six-month-old son. “Parents want their children to look special and children need to be comfortable, so quality is im18 AUGUST 2014
portant,” she says. She often asks Jatia to customise a pair of mother-daughter clothes for special occasions, never mind the cost: “We get lots of compliments when we’re coordinated.”
L
ittle Indian kids went luxe in a big
way about half a decade ago, when attracted by the 20 per cent growth in the Rs 35,000 crore apparel market (estimated to touch Rs 80,000 crore by 2016) Indian fashion couturiers did a Benjamin Button and began designing for younger and younger audiences. Retailing from multi-brand stores like Mal in Mumbai and Kidology in
Delhi, both set up in 2010, fashion stalwarts such as Raghavendra Rathore, Ritu Kumar, Namrata Joshipura, Siddharth Tytler, Malini Ramani, Nandita Basu, and Gauri & Nainika catered to fashionforward mothers keen on equally natty kids. The younger crop of Indian designers was quick to follow: Aneeth Arora, Gaurav Gupta, Masaba Gupta and Zubair Kirmani (fondly, ‘Kashmir’s Armani’) all joined in with adorable mini-sized creations no mother could resist. A sartorial baby boom ensued, with prices for little lehengas, miniature kurtas, sherwanis and mermaid gowns ranging from Rs 2,000 to Rs 12,000, considered fashionably wasteful at the time. open www.openthemagazine.com 39
Kidology grew 40 per cent, year on year. The kids’ wear collection of Nishka Lulla, daughter of one of Bollywood’s most famous costume designers Neeta Lulla, grew 50 per cent in the first two years alone, and she says she now focuses as much on her kids’ range as the adult one. Then came the global luxury majors. And the game changed again.
I
n October 2011, Swati Saraf launched
Les Petits, which retailed among other European brands, Fendi Kids, Miss Blumarine, Young Versace, Baby Dior and the ridiculously popular Italian label, I Pinco Pallino, best described as ‘haute cuteness’. Prices for luxury kids’ garments soared, touching six figures. Soon other global majors began showcasing children’s wear at their existing showrooms in luxury malls such as Baby Gucci and Burberry Kids at DLF Emporio in Delhi and Palladium in Mumbai. Armani Junior and Roberto Cavalli set yet another benchmark in 2012—incidentally, Armani’s FallWinter 2014 range for 0-24 month boys includes an ‘awwww’-inspiring, super-cute single-breasted jacket in cotton blend. Around the same time, Saraf also launched Cherubs, another multibrand kids’ store with upmarket labels such as Paul Smith and Ferrari. The children’s garments often reflect the sensibilities, fabrics and silhouettes of the grown-up versions. There exist little woollen ponchos, fur-trimmed parkas and patent brogues, especially for kids above four to six years of age—a trend that has persist-
ed throughout history across most continents. In India as well, children wore, and still do, teeny versions of vests, kurtas, dhotis, lungis and ghagra-cholis worn by their parents. Here, however, fabrics tended to be weather-compatible and there was room for movement. In the 18th century, Western clothing for children became less restrictive and more child-friendly and, with colonialism, became ‘fashionable’ in the Third World as well. Reflecting their parents’ tastes and priorities, children of the rich
and famous had updated wardrobes; so much so that Suri Cruise, daughter of Hollywood actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, reportedly had a wardrobe of $3 million, one that was flooded with designer freebies until her mother clamped down on them around the time of their divorce two years ago. Valentina Paloma Pinault, the little daughter of actress Salma Hayek and luxury mogul FrancoisHenri Pinault, is regularly seen about town in wonder weaves. So too are the children of Madonna; Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt; Beyonce and Jay-Z; Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick; and the Beckhams, whose three-year-old daughter Harper wore Chloé to the New York Fashion Week. Now catching up with global children’s trends and labels available in their own cities, 21st-century Indians are keen to flex their fashion muscles as well.
The Kidology Team: (Clockwise from left) Neha Mittal, Ankur Mittal, Maya Nocon and Karina Rajpal
“Our designers are careful not to just create mini versions of their adult lines for kids. We spend time adapting their sensibilities so that they are relevant and comfortable for kids, and parents recognise and appreciate this” Neha Mittal Kidology
American president Franklin D Roosevelt had said, “We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.” Wealthy Indian parents took it to mean wearing a Burberry bib or a Versace romper. You’d think that in a budget-conscious land, mothers (no matter how rich) would be wary of spending large sums on baby clothing that would outlive its purpose in just a few months. But Indian mothers from all kinds of high-income backgrounds— from the socialite in Kolkata to the businessman’s homemaker wife in Indore—show as much valour in splurging on their kids as their contemporaries around the world. “Our price points are the cheapest in Asia. But they are higher than in Europe because we pay hefty taxes,” says Saraf, managing director of Prive Luxury, which owns Les Petits and Cherubs in Delhi, both of which cater to ‘closet consumers’, HNIs and a large expat community. The metros aren’t the only places to serve customers. “We have witnessed a surge in demand from buyers from cities like Kanpur, Amritsar, and so on,” says Saraf, adding, “We recently entertained a client from Ludhiana who came to shop for her grandson. She ended up purchasing above Rs 3.5 lakh worth of clothing, bed sheets, bedcovers and other products.” It helps business when parents are willing, grandparents are flush and kids are demanding.
W
ith their well-researched textiles
and on-trend silhouettes, international luxury labels set the standard higher for kids’ wear in the age range 0–8 in comfort, quality and style. Indian designers and labels were quick to respond. “Our focus is on occasion-wear for kids and our price range is relatively cheaper,” says Neha Mittal, co-founder of Kidology, who studied journalism, film and TV production, and now has a fivemonth-old baby of her own. “Our sensibility is also different. For example, the Princess Dress by Gauri & Nainika for Kidology is made with layers of draped net—it is couture without the unaffordable price tag! Moreover, our designers are careful to not just create mini versions of their adult lines for kids. We spend time adapting their sensibilities so that they are relevant and comfortable for kids, and parents recognise and appreciate this.” But the biggest factors that Indian designers have begun to leverage are their Indian
wear and customisation services such as coordinated ensembles for mother-daughter or bride-bridesmaid duos. Many designers create complete wedding wardrobes for kids, which means designing outfits and matching accessories for every function at a family wedding. “Projects like these cost substantial [sums] but parents are more than happy to pay. It’s a bespoke look for their little ones,” says Mittal, citing the case of a current six-year-old client whom they’re outfitting for six wedding events to take place at Pattaya this winter. Prices have inched upwards accordingly; Nishka Lulla, who retails clothes at her website Nisshk.com, says her customised outfits now range from Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000. A Siddhartha Tytler lehenga sold for Rs 24,000 at Kidology this year. One of Jatia’s clients, a south Indian industrialist’s wife, regularly spends Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 on flouncy dresses and gowns,
“One of my clients feels her daughter loses brownie points for appearance because she’s dark-complexioned. She says she doesn’t mind investing in beautiful dresses to make her feel and look like a princess” Preeti Jatia Fayon Kids
which sometimes use up to 10 metres of fabric per piece. “The lady feels her daughter loses brownie points for appearance because she’s dark-complexioned,” explains Jatia. “She says she doesn’t mind investing in beautiful dresses to make her daughter feel and look like the princess she is for her.” Besides the personal touch, Indian designers have also invested much time and research on making products more and more comfortable for tiny tots. Aneeth Arora, who is known for her ecofriendly fashion, specialises in fine khadi and mulmul fabrics for kids. Standing in Jatia’s Noida studio, I peek up a mannequin’s orange gown and find four layers, starting with a cotton lining stitched with pure cotton threads, a can-can layer made of hard net, a shantung layer which is shiny but breathable, finally ending with soft net on top. The dress has been made for an exhibition where garments tend to fly fast, so it’s pegged at just Rs 16,000.
I
n a trickle-down effect, the comfort
factor has also taken centrestage in premium kids’ wear. Kolkata-based label Nee & Oink—launched two years ago by sisters Neelakshi and Oiendrila Ray after they struggled to find good-quality, fashionable clothing for their own kids—also makes this its unique selling point. “We found that we were being forced to compromise between form and function, and decided to create a line designed for mini-fashionistas that used bright colours and fun designs without compromising on comfort,” says Neelakshi, who studied fashion and business at Parsons School of Design, New York, and worked with designers such as Giorgio Armani, Cynthia Steffe and Jason Bunin besides labels 42 open
“We have witnessed a surge in demand from buyers in cities like Kanpur, Amritsar and so on. We recently entertained a client from Ludhiana who ended up spending over Rs 3.5 lakh” Swati Saraf Les Petits and Cherubs
such as Coach and Calvin Klein before launching Nee & Oink with her sister; Oiendrila, a branding professional, handles design, fabric selection, embroidery development and the production unit. The duo try to balance the mother’s needs with the child’s wants by carefully curating natural fabrics. “Mothers usually look for clothing that is fairly functional and comfortable. Children naturally gravitate towards bright colours and designs,” observes Neelakshi. With their top-of-the-line garments (up to Rs 8,000) growing at more than 100 per cent over the past year, she is unafraid of the burgeoning competition she faces from other premium children’s wear designers, such as those on display at India Kids Fashion Week in Mumbai. “The promise of the emerging Indian [market]
is built on a young demographic that is beginning to earn more money, just as they are growing their nuclear families. This is extremely promising for the kids’ wear market in the years ahead,” she says. Perhaps the last word on children’s luxury comes from my seven-year-old USbased niece Anaya Kapoor, whose grandmum bought her a Gaurav Gupta outfit from Kidology after hunting through several stores in south Delhi malls last year. Asked why she selected it for her mamu’s (uncle’s) wedding, Anaya says, “Because it’s pink.” After a pause, she adds, “And my red one is pokey.” We can’t have anything ‘pokey’ at a sixhour wedding reception, now, can we? n Aekta Kapoor is a Delhi-based writer specialising in fashion and lifestyle 18 AUGUST 2014
E N T E RTA I N M E N T
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To B and Always B The tallest tower of Indian cinema returns to television
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N
ineteen sixty-nine is the year that everything changed, or so history tells us. It was a pivotal time, the year of the moon landing, the Woodstock music festival, the end of the Vietnam War, and the beginning of the breakup of the Beatles. Closer home, too, there was a lot going on: the Indian National Congress was split into two, the Indian Space Research Organisation was formed, and the first Rajdhani Express was flagged off from Delhi to Howrah. It was a momentous year in another way as well, though not as obvious at first. A young, aspiring actor who worked as an executive at a freight company boarded a train from Kolkata to Mumbai, and a flop film that marked his debut, Saat Hindustani, was released later that year. In 2014, it will be 45 years since Amitabh Bachchan has been in our lives. He will turn 72 this October. When he turned 70 in 2012, there was a barrage of fond tributes and attempts to examine his stardom and our devotion to him. At least two generations of Indians have grown up with his movies, and no other actor has shaped our relationship with cinema as much as he has. Bachchan, however, has always been more than a star to us, and our relationship with him has held through his good times and bad, through our good times and bad. “If all Indians had to group together and write a narrative for India,” says sociologist Shiv Visvanathan, “it would be the story of Bachchan.” In an email interview to Open, Bachchan, who has often spoken about the freedom he has found with age, explains his ubiquity. ‘My age does not invite the more popular young roles that most viewers wish to see; that is obvious and natural, so the onus of responsibility that usually falls on the lead is perhaps reduced. There is no freedom as such, there is a larger diversity of roles that present themselves, and that is challenging to an artist.
For the moment, a few [film] makers have been kind enough to offer me some projects... but they are not easy to come [by]!!’ July saw the debut of his first fictional TV show, Yudh. As soon as the series finishes its run in the middle of August, the eighth season of the crowdpleasing Kaun Banega Crorepati will be back on air. He even manages to slip in with regularity during ad breaks on his own shows. Advertisers consider him a safe bet and he endorses so many brands that it’s difficult to keep track. None of this precludes his presence from the big screen. This year, he was seen in the socio-political comedy Bhootnath Returns, playing the part of a moralistic elder who takes on the system. Last year was low key; he had just one movie, the rather uninspired Satyagraha, which was cobbled together from headlines of the Anna Hazare movement, apart from a cameo as a Jewish gangster in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, a part that he clearly relished more than the wise patriarch he played in Prakash Jha’s film. Next year, Bachchan will be seen in two theatrical releases, Shamitabh with his long-time collaborator R Balki, the adman-turned-director who has drawn some of Bachchan's best performances in recent times (Cheeni Kum and Paa), and Piku with Shoojit Sircar. The latter’s last film with Bachchan, Shoebite, never saw the light of day, but the two have worked together on the Gujarat Tourism campaign, and the actor has brought the director on board as a creative consultant for Yudh. Sircar is a self-avowed fanboy. “I am only writing films for him,” he says over the phone. “Of course, like most directors my age, there is an element of hero worship. But it is his dedication and child-like hunger towards his craft that gets you addicted to working with him. Besides, he is the only actor with whom we can experiment and yet feel safe knowing that he can carry a film on his own.” It is not just Bachchan’s film and television appearances that ensure his visibility; he has his diary packed, juggling many other things. Over the past few weeks, he has been busy with promo46 open
Lord of the screen Stills from Amitabh Bachchan's upcoming film Shamitabh (top); and a promotional spot for this year's season of KBC
tions for Yudh, and shooting for Balki’s film and KBC, apart from signing on as Maharashtra’s horticulture ambassador, attending a UNICEF conference on polio eradication, promoting his son’s team Jaipur Pink Panthers in the Pro Kabaddi League, unveiling a new smartphone for a brand he endorses, and all the while updating his blog and Twitter accounts, taking out time to engage with fans and stay accessible on social media. Just how does he do it? Keep up his
almost superhuman pace? Film journalist Anupama Chopra shares a story: “Once in an interview, he told me how he stays up till two in the night to blog and is up the next morning at six to hit the gym. I asked him when he sleeps. He replied with deadpan Bachchan humour, ‘Through interviews of course’.” ‘It is more than more these days…,’ wrote the actor in a recent blog post, ‘but determined we stand... undetermined we shall break’. For someone who is famously reticent in inter18 AUGUST 2014
views, it is on his blog that glimmers of his real self emerge. ‘More than more’ is perhaps why he keeps up his frenetic pace. It may be the one and only crack in his armour, the fear of slowing down. In Yudh, Bachchan plays the eponymous character, Yudhisthir Sikarwar, in a role that he has honed to perfection by now, that of an ageing patriarch— world-weary but idealistic, fighting the good fight—or, as some observe, being an older version of the Angry Young Man. His only vulnerability is his own mortality, which may be true of the actor himself. Bachchan explains his character: ‘Yudh is the short form of Yudhishtir, the name of the main character, and he is the owner of a construction company, a business man. He is divorced, and has remarried, has a daughter from the first wife and a son from the second.
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backing a show like this. Says Gaurav Seth, the channel’s head of marketing, “With KBC we found that he has universal appeal that cuts across age groups and categories. We are hoping that Yudh will have a longer lasting impact on television. The one thing with Mr Bachchan is that he appreciates the big numbers of TV more than any other star. And, he is responsible for single-handedly transforming television in India.” The show, supported by a cast-and-crew coup in Anurag Kashyap, Shoojit Sircar, Kay Kay Menon, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Sarika and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, has received a lot of attention but not much acclaim. The show’s setting—the industrial grime of Ghaziabad—is imaginative, the sets and treatment are realistic, but even diehard Bachchan fans cannot get past the uneven pace and occasional plot loopholes. Bachchan’s
shows him quizzing a young girl of the Northeast, and the second has a young Hindu man from a Muslim neighbourhood—both foster the idea of inclusion, of a greater Indian identity. These promos could not be more timely, given the angst these days over the idea of nationhood. Although the message could have sounded cheesy and overdone for a game show, it is rendered believable by Bachchan’s benign presence: “Yahan sirf paise nahin, dil bhi jeete jaate hain.” Indeed, it’s not just about winning money, but hearts as well. The journey of KBC (which first aired in 2000) from a quiz show with prize money to a symbol of changing middleclass India has been extraordinary. Ever since Bachchan made his return to the show in 2010—three years after Shah Rukh Khan’s disastrous interlude—as its kindly, humorous and credible host, the show has steadfastly reflected all
Yudh gave me a very wide graph to play an extremely complex character, which is why I chose to do it” Amitabh Bachchan
His first wife has also remarried. He faces competition from other business companies; he has family issues because of his past and he suffers from a debilitating disease, which could be life threatening. His character therefore becomes extremely complex when he has to contend with all these on a virtually daily basis. There is politics and politicians involved too. It gave me a very wide graph to play this character, which is why I chose to do it.’ “The title says it all,” according to Ribhu Dasgupta, director of the series. “It is a story about a man caught in a psychological battle with himself and his health, an emotional battle with his family and a corporate battle with his rivals. It is his journey in the backdrop of a city where construction is booming, very much like how Noida was 10 years back. Yudh is a vulnerable man with high morals and integrity and a strong emotional chord.” Its broadcaster Sony Entertainment Television took a calculated risk in
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performance as a man fighting his demons—he has Huntington’s disease, a fractured personal life and disagreeable business rivals—is flawless, but it’s not something we have not seen him do before. It is in his interactions with his daughter Taruni (stage actor Aahana Kumra in a remarkable debut) and his henchman Anand (played with finesse by actor Zakir Hussain) that some of the show’s best moments are to be found. These scenes, which set out to humanise him, end up having the opposite effect, and yet that is precisely why they work. When Bachchan appears on screen towering over his stocky lieutenant or young daughter, we are reassured that we are in the company of a higher presence, someone who exists on an exalted plane; it’s a reminder of why we have not given up on the show. The promos for the new season of KBC, tell us exactly why we repose our trust in Bachchan. The first promo
the things we’d like to believe of ourselves. Education and information as a currency, the rise of small town India and the importance of family values, all steered by a man who has overseen many transitions of India. This is a man who reflected the anxieties of the 70s and 80s, even the shifts of the 90s to an extent, and then recast himself as a symbol of propriety in keeping with the demand of the times.
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s amitabh bachchan boxed in by his own image? In the early 2000s, he turned the fortunes of the television industry around, took risks with experimental movies like Boom, Aks, Nishabd, Sarkar and even the ill-fated Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag. This was an actor free of the ‘onus of responsibility’ that he tells us about. He embraced his advancing age like no other star before, and that became the secret to his longevity. His physical bearing has closely reflected the stages he has gone open www.openthemagazine.com 47
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My age does not invite the more popular young roles that most viewers wish to see. A few filmmakers have been kind enough to offer me some projects, but they are not easy to come by!”
Amitabh Bachchan dinodia photos
through. Now, as he gets more firmly ensconced in the role of the patriarch— which he plays with aplomb in real life as head of the Bachchan family—along with the thick spectacles and distinctive beard, he often has a sage-like shawl around his shoulders in appearances both on and off the screen. As Shiv Visvanathan says, Bachchan reflects the four stages of man in Hindu tradition. We find him now in his ascetic ashram, the final stage, his years of trying new roles behind him. Yet, he, of all actors in Hindi cinema, has the ability to rewrite his own script. Director Prakash Jha has spoken of Bachchan’s appetite for acting as a ‘bhook’, a hunger that is rare for some48 open
one his age. Could he not, then, have been better used as a star? Some of it could be attributed to how he is perceived by filmmakers. Most new-age directors he works with—like Anurag Kashyap, creator of Yudh, who has even made a film on Bachchan fandom, Bombay Talkies—were fans before they were directors. It comes naturally to them to place him on a pedestal. “The character Vijay/Jai remains part of his star text and is easily evoked today,” as film scholar Rachel Dwyer says, “It’s up to the directors, do they want to pay tribute or do they want to try something new?” We find Bachchan pondering the question of how best to use him in an
interview he gave a newsmagazine in 1984. Back then, he had replied with a touch of conceit that now seems surprising, considering the air of modesty that he wraps as tightly as his shawl around himself these days, saying that he’s crucial to commercial cinema and the masses love to see him. “I also feel that not making the best use of me after casting me is a criminal waste—for me as well as for those involved in the film’s making.” Are directors listening? Thirty years on, asked when and where he is happiest, he responds with his usual flair for understatement. ‘I enjoy the thought of being in front of the camera,’ he says. n 18 AUGUST 2014
theatre
the lost libretto What happens when a Western classical opera is performed by an Indian cast Lhendup G Bhutia
practice makes perfect Singers rehearse before their performance of Henry Purcell’s opera Dido & Aeneas at the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai
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nder the dim enchanted lights of an opera, people undergo a remarkable transformation. Folks who otherwise take the cue of a darkened cinema hall to seek solace in their cellphones or engage in lengthy conversations with their neighbours, tut and shush at any wayward noise. They admonish those who hum songs, reluctantly give way to those arriving late, cover their mouths when they yawn, and when a man begins to absentmindedly shake his leg, an old woman beside tells him, “You are disturbing me.� The subject of this reverence is a man on stage dressed in a black buttoned-up shirt and pants. Contorting his face into a grimace, he sings, without a mike and over an orchestra, an unintelligible song that is apparently in English. Once he is done, the reverential silence in the audience erupts into applause, as the man, with an upturned palm in front of his stomach, bows for the audience in an exaggerated manner. What is unfolding on the stage on a rainy evening in Mumbai is a Western classical opera titled Dido & Aeneas, one made up entirely of an Indian cast. After a show in Mumbai, the troupe then travels to Goa and
a fellowship by the Royal College of Music (RCM), London, where she currently happens to teach. From 2009 onwards, she began visiting Mumbai three times every year, along with her husband-pianist, Mark Troop, to teach students in the city Western classical music. The duo also travelled to Goa, Delhi and Bangalore to tutor students there. When they weren’t around, they would appoint senior students as stand-ins. “Whenever I was in the city, everyone would ask, ‘When are you putting up an opera?’” Rozario says, “But I wanted to put it up when the students were ready.” Over the years, whenever Rozario held recitals in various Indian cities, she would always keep the following day open for those interested in singing. That way, she says, she would get to appraise the standard of singing in the country, and offer those she found had the aptitude a chance to train under her. “Everyone kept telling me how poor the interest and standard of Western classical music had become in cities like Mumbai,” Rozario recounts, “But it reminded me very much of my days in the 1970s, where students eagerly participated in music
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Delhi for performances. This, as its producers claim, is only the second time an opera has featured an all-Indian cast. The first such production, also put together by the same makers, was an opera last year meant for children in Mumbai, The Last Sweep. For the next one hour, the tragic love story of a princess and a Trojan warrior holds the theatre rapt, from the mouths of one singer after another, pouring forth in voices of liquid gold. The words, however, because of the manner in which they are sung, are lost on the audience, but the people nod and smile as though they catch every phrase or nuance. The groundwork for this opera was laid around five years ago when Patricia Rozario, one of the few Indians to achieve a mark in Western classical music, founded an institution, Giving Voice Society, to train Indian students in Western classical forms. Rozario, who grew up in the Mumbai suburb of Santacruz, is a well-known soprano who has sung in many international productions, with well-known composers like Arvo Pärt and Sir John Tavener writing for her. Rozario has been awarded the Order of the British Empire and
competitions organised by the local parishes. Perhaps the interest in Western classical had waned slightly. But the talent is very much there. I knew that with focused tutoring we could pull off an opera.” Earlier in January this year, Dido & Aeneas started taking shape, as students who trained under her were selected from various parts of the country as the opera’s cast. They had to memorise and learn to sing the songs mostly in isolation, with Rozario holding the occasional Skype conversation to check a student’s progress. “I’m not going to use Skype ever again,” she says. “It appears everything is fine, but later when you meet a student, you realise that either their diction is faulty, or that they haven’t been able to get a hang of the archaic English language [in which the play is set].” Three weeks before the performance, all cast members were flown down to Mumbai to commence rehearsals. When the cast of the opera is neither rehearsing nor performing, they rest their voices. They speak in muffled tones, and at short lengths, and avoid all cold beverages, lest their voices
musical productions in Delhi, plays Dido. She will be studying music in France later this year. At 34, Rahul Bharadwaj, who plays the role of the sorcerer, is among the older singers. He worked for over eight years in a supply-chain management firm, a job that he eventually quit to study music at a college in the US. He then started working as a singer in church and opera choirs there, and expects to join Trinity College in London later this year to pursue music. Bharadwaj says, “Unlike, say, Hindustani music [which Bharadwaj trained in before taking up Western classical], where the audience is incidental to a music session, the opera is different. Here the intention is to perform to an audience. It is grand and opulent. It is everything you want a musical stage performance to be.” The opera, composed by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell (1659–1695), is based on a story in Virgil’s epic Aeneid. It tells the tale of a queen, Dido of Carthage, who dies of a broken heart when her lover, Aeneas of Troy, abandons her. It was chosen by Rozario because it was written in English, and unlike other operas, which can go on for four hours or more, can be performed within just an hour. Rozario admits that the young voices of her singers may not be able to hold out longer.
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local talent Students of Giving Voice to India, an initiative by Mumbai-born soprano Patricia Rozario to groom Western classical singers in the country
suffer unnecessary strain. Some of them, in accordance with Rozario’s instructions, are also pursuing basic French and Italian: so that if and when they begin to sing operas in either language, they will have fewer difficulties in understanding the songs. Some are full-time musicians, while others are in the process of becoming so. The male protagonist, a baritone from Santacruz, Oscar Castellino, is pursuing music at RCM, and has already started singing for various operas in England. “I agreed to this role [of Aeneas] because it is ambiguous,” he says, in the dark passageway that leads to NCPA’s Tata Theatre, the opera’s venue, “[He] is not an out-and-out good or bad guy, like the others. I can interpret [him] the way I want.” Untrained ears, however, are unlikely to be able to distinguish one interpretation from another. Most others too are also studying music. Ramya Roy, a 22-yearold female mezzo-soprano who has the experience of various 52 open
here are no fat opera singers. There is no opulence or
grandeur. The people who enter the great oak doors of the theatre aren’t dressed in tuxedos or gowns and don’t have opera lenses with them. It bears no sign of the elitist cultural preoccupation that it is often made out to be. Some are dressed in blazers and crisp formals, but there’s an equally large section in jeans and shorts. Because most of the opera was funded by Rozario’s Giving Voice Society, production costs are kept to a bare minimum. All singers wear robes that can be turned inside out for another scene. They enact parts sitting on a wooden stool that can be disassembled and taken along to other shows, and apart from a robe that’s meant to denote the Queen’s status, she has very little regalia: she sings under a fluorescent umbrella that represents a canopy. The singers simply sit on wooden stools and belt out the story in songs—as the audience chimes in with applause. Whence could so much virtue spring? What storms, what battles did he sing? Anchises’ valour mixt with Venus’ charms How soft in peace, and yet how fierce in arms!
The libretto—the text of the lyrics—of the opera when you read it later, as excerpted above, is beautiful in language and composition. Although it is written in English, and not in Italian (as is common), it could well be in the latter language. The manner in which it is sung makes it quite impossible to make out what is being said anyway. Towards the end of the show, a wonder-struck man turns to his companion: “But...” he says, “but this is in English!” Perhaps he had assumed it would be in Italian. An old woman sitting next to him—who, for some unexplained reason, has been busy taking notes in a diary during the performance—reprimands him with an icy stare. n 18 AUGUST 2014
books
Serve and Sell Why Indian politicians are bad memoirists. An underdeveloped genre and the greater publishing possibilities it offers Sunaina Kumar “How’s the book coming along?” “Magnificently, my dear. Splendidly. I had no notion writing was so easy. The stuff just pours out.”
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his conversation between a man writing his mem-
oirs and a woman intent on persuading him to leave out certain elements appears in PG Wodehouse’s 1929 comic caper Summer Lightning—but it sounds a lot like the kind of back and forth that went on between Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh when she paid him a visit one day in May, along with ‘her charming daughter’ (as Singh refers to her in his epilogue). It fits in perfectly with the current political imbroglio, as does the plot: the Honourable Galahad Threepwood, after a long and picaresque career, is threatening to write his memoirs, and Lady Constance, his very proper sister, is anxious to stem the flow of his poison pen. When former American Vice President Dick Cheney wrote his memoir, In My Time, in 2011, he said, with barely contained glee, that the book was “gonna have heads exploding all over Washington”. Singh’s memoir One Life Is Not Enough can be said to have had a similar effect on heads all over Delhi. Members of Congress have said that the book has left them with an unpleasant taste, Sonia Gandhi has promised retribution with her own version of events in (newly) proposed memoirs. Singh, a brave man used to Walking with
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Lions (his previous work, out last year), is undeterred; he’s already promised a sequel, full of even more disclosures. The doorstopper of a book is flying off the shelves, though all the juicy excerpts and soundbytes are already freely floating about. When it comes right down to it, the book ends up reaffirming to the general public what it has long suspected: that Sonia Gandhi is ‘Machiavellian’, ‘vicious’ and ‘venomous’. To give him credit, he does display a colourful turn of phrase—Rajiv Gandhi depends on ‘a team of ignoramuses with inflated egos’ and Singh himself faces ‘verbal terrorism’—though the prose can crumble into mawkishness; when Rajiv Gandhi dies, ‘the scenery collapsed’ and ‘the spring went out of Sonia’s life’. However, to quibble with the prose seems irrelevant; Singh’s book will be remembered not for its writing, but for being the first of its kind. Pradip K Datta, professor of political science at Delhi University, calls it “an emerging genre of serve and tell, where political memoirs work as political instruments. At best these are written to cause public scandals and [sell]. By themselves these books are not interesting or important to understand the inner circles of power.” People can’t seem to stop publishing or buying them. HarperCollins will release the memoirs of Daman Singh, the daughter of Manmohan Singh, this month, intended to set the record straight on the much-reviled ex-PM. Coming up, Vinod Rai’s account of his days as the most news-worthy 18 AUGUST 2014
Comptroller and Auditor General and Jagdish Tytler’s My Tears Are Real, his version of Delhi’s 1984 riots.
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olitical memoirs most often are meant to stir controversy, settle scores and cast the author in the role of heroic saviour (Tony Blair checked off all these boxes in 2010 with his blandly titled memoirs, A Journey) —but not in India. Indian politicians have been loath to share their secrets. There have been sensational political biographies: more recently, Joseph Lelyveld’s biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle With India (2011), which raised questions about his sexuality, and Javier Moro’s fictionalised biography of Sonia Gandhi, El SariRojo (‘The Red Sari’, published in 2010), both tellingly not written by Indians. Sanjaya Baru’s account of his days as media adviser to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, The Accidental Prime Minister, which came along this year in the middle of election season, was the first book to pander to the new way we consume politics in India, which we find nearly as riveting as reality television. Baru claimed to have revealed only “50 per cent” of what he knew, but even then his book sold 70,000 copies according to its publisher Penguin Books India. The book was easier to dismiss for the Congress party as it came from someone at the second rung of power; much like Jawaharlal Nehru’s secretary 18 AUGUST 2014
MO Mathai’s controversial Reminisces of the Nehru Age (1978). Natwar Singh, however, writes from the frontlines. As former Aleph publisher Ravi Singh says, “There is very little information about how politics works in India, and a lot of curiosity. I’d still value a halfway decent memoir by a genuine mover and shaker. Bit players don’t write very interesting political memoirs. Their agendas are usually too small.” When secrets are dished out, the impact can be big. BJP leader LK Advani’s memoirs My Country, My Life (2008), where he delved into the Emergency, Ayodhya and the Rath Yatra, was in the news this year for the part where Advani confessed to have supported Operation Bluestar. Yet, the tradition of political memoirs in India falls very much into the tedious tomes category. Take the case of former Home Minister Shivraj Patil’s memoir Odyssey of My Life, out last month, which along with Reminisces and Reflections (1996) could serve as a prescription for sleep disorders. The new book could have been his chance to come clean about 26/ 11, but he chose the tested path of sycophancy. Patil is said to have been cautioned by Jaswant Singh’s experience; his book Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence (2009), with its controversial reading of Pakistan’s founder, led to his expulsion from the BJP. In his memoirs, A Call to Honour: In Service of Emergent India (2006), Singh wrote about the dilemma that confronted the state during the Kandahar hijacking. Arjun Singh’s A Grain of Sand in the Ocean of Time (2012), published posthumously, also proved the time-tested fact that Indian politicians take their secrets to their graves. A Big Reveal on the Gandhi family was expected, but Singh settled for expressing his bitterness for former PM Narasimha Rao. Rao himself wrote a much more engrossing account in The Insider, his 1998 autobiography masquerading as a novel. As journalist and biographer Rasheed Kidwai says, “Most autobiographies by Indian politicians have been economical with the truth.” He is the author of the sanitised and flattering version of Sonia Gandhi’s life, Sonia: A Biography (2003), but he does not see the irony of pointing out weaknesses in other accounts. Natwar Singh’s book, he says, “… displays traces of bitterness”, while acknowledging that: “… he is within his rights. And the book could be a valuable source of information.” Importantly, Kidwai indicates that there are many in the Congress who could set the record straight: Salman Khurshid, Mani Shankar Aiyar and Jairam Ramesh. After the success of Baru and Singh’s books, publishers are taking note of this genre. “There has always been a tradition of books that look back at historical figures, Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, but what is changing is the need to tell recent history,” says VK Karthika, publisher of HarperCollins India. “As if there is a need for course correction, to record the here and now, rather than wait to be judged by history. ” Chiki Sarkar, publisher of Penguin Books India, which brought out Sanjaya Baru’s book, says that publishers are always looking for “the ability and the will of the author to be honest. Most people don’t want to tell the truth.” But, as Sigmund Freud, who’d scoffed at the idea of ever writing his memoirs, said: “What makes all autobiographies worthless is, after all, their mendacity.” n open www.openthemagazine.com 55
books
“I
n fiction, there is no such thing as closure,” says
Nayantara Sahgal. “You keep drawing on your own life and those of many people’s lives around you. People you encountered maybe ten years ago you might write a story about.” At 87, she is not close to done, it would seem; a collection of stories are gathering from the many moments history has given her intimate admission to. “I will be commenting on the current situation and its many aspects through fiction,” she says. “You don’t write about a political situation or event; you write about its effect on the lives of ordinary people.” 56 open
Like most women of her generation who stood up and spoke out early, Sahgal speaks precisely, even sternly, in her crisp, well-modulated idiom, despite her soft voice and the small, elegant figure she makes. Nehru’s niece corrects me carefully as we walk through the lawns of the India International Centre in Delhi. The daughter of celebrated barrister Ranjit Sitaram Pandit and diplomat and politician Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit—the first Indian woman to hold a cabinet post—Sahgal found her own way to blaze forward as she chronicled the evolution of modern India. Later today, her latest book, The Political Imagination: A Personal 18 AUGUST 2014
Grand Dame of Destiny Nayantara Sahgal talks about her life, work and the ever-changing idea of India on the eve of a new book and biography RAJNI GEORGE
raul irani
Response to Life, Literature and Politics (HarperCollins India, 236 pages)—her twentieth—is to be launched in a conversation with political critic Ashis Nandy: a collection of letters, essays, addresses and lectures typically charged with her staunch political concerns. Simultaneously, a biography around her life and work will be released, describing how the author has, in the past, been charged with stepping ‘Out of Line’ (HarperCollins India, 400 pages), as the book is titled. Sahgal is one of the most respected pioneering Indian writers in English. The recipient of the Sinclair Prize for Fiction, the Sahitya Akademi Award (for Rich Like Us in 1985) and 18 AUGUST 2014
the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and helped found the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, serving as its vicepresident during the 1980s. The author of nine novels and 11 works of non-fiction which chronicle young India’s life and times, she has been likened to Nadine Gordimer and began a long career full of steady milestones in 1954. Prison and Chocolate Cake, a well-received memoir detailing the NehruGandhi family’s involvement with Independence and beyond, was published by no less than Alfred A Knopf in the US (and by left-wing publisher Victor Gollancz in England). “I had the urge to recapture the freedom struggle during which I had grown up, and how it had affected my family. I felt in a few years time it would be history, and another generation might not know about it,” says Sahgal. Indeed, if it wasn’t for her family, much of what we take for granted today might have been very different. Sahgal, who had been living abroad, returned home two months after Independence. “It was a very difficult time. Not something to rejoice over, except after a long hard struggle India was independent. For us as a family, it was a great fulfillment of all we had worked for; lived and died for, in the case of my father. He died when I was 16 because of his jail sentence. My mother and the rest of my family were [in and out of prison] too.” At a time when seminal authors Kamala Markandaya and Anita Desai were among the few women beginning to write and establish literary careers, the 27-year-old author came to the world’s attention, selling around 7,000 copies in hardback in the US alone (considerable then, and now, even if not a bestseller). Soon, she began to be read beyond those interested in the Nehru-Gandhi family, though she may have achieved a smaller kind of fame than some of her literary peers. Her novels, together, make up a picture of Indian society in its formative years, building on the legacy bequeathed her and her peers by previous literary forbears like Mulk Raj Anand and Nirad C Chaudhuri. “I was one of the first Indian writers to be published abroad,” recalls Sahgal, of a sparse publishing scene back home. “I felt I was doing what I wanted to do, I was happy it was being recognised, because I was talking about an India which was very different from the India which had been represented up till then through Western eyes, with subjects like maharajas and tiger shoots.” Her first novel A Time to be Happy (1958), an idealistic tale around the last days of the Raj and the decline of zamindaristyle feudalism, showed us characters from New India, idealistic and passionate about autonomy or attempting to protect the old order, alternately. This was followed by several smaller novels before the prize-winning Rich Like Us (1985), set against the backdrop of the Emergency, and Mistaken Identity (1988), about a minor maharaja mistakenly apprehended for subversive political activities. “One is a young Indianised IAS officer who opposed the Emergency, another an English Cockney woman in India,” says Sahgal, of the protagonists of Rich Like Us. “Both are highly courageous and upstanding women who stood up for something. I think my women have come out more and more in that respect.” open www.openthemagazine.com 57
`395 ISBN ISBN 978-81-7223-682-3 817223682-4 00395
9 788172 236823
00395
Non-Fiction
` 395 ISBN ISBN 978-81-7223-444-7 817223444-9 00395
9 788172 234447
00395
FICTION
Indeed, writers Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser count Mistaken Identity’s Razia among their favourites, she tells me. “I remember reading once that William Faulkner, a great writer whom I admire, once said ‘I have a great time running after my characters keeping up with them’. I know exactly what he meant, because it’s not you, it’s the characters who are relieving themselves; therefore the words are putting themselves on the page,” says Sahgal, who admires Graham Greene and Mahasweta Devi. Perhaps it was the urgency of the time. “I was writing about an India that had just come to life; the making of modern India.”
‘N
ayantara was heir to both the liberal, westernized ed-
ucation of the Nehrus, as well as to its reasonably conservative social and family conventions,’ Kali for Women publisher Ritu Menon, author of Out of Line, writes. Hers is a comprehensive account of Sahgal’s glamorous life. Sahgal has spent 15 years in Bombay, 14 in Delhi, several years in Chandigarh, was brought up in Allahabad, Lucknow, Mussoorie and Almora, and now lives in Dehradun, where her mother left her a house. Five years at Woodstock School in Mussoorie was her longest continuous period at school, and an instructive one in terms of being a co-educational school with an American syllabus; the sisters often had to change schools because of the political situation and her parents having to be in and out of jail. Next came Wellesley College in the US. “At the time my older sister had been arrested in 1942 and spent several months in prison. 58 open
The Government declared that no one from our family or any rebel family could enter university unless they gave an undertaking not to take part in political activities. Of course the student generation was highly political at the time, and certainly no one in my family could give such a guarantee.” The Chiang Kaisheks were visiting to try to persuade the British Government to set up a national government in India (so that Indians could take part in the war effort and support it), and Mrs Kaishek offered to help get the girls into Wellesley; she was one of their most distinguished alumni. “Both my parents were in jail at that time, and though I was not yet of age, [my mother] sent me and my older sister. It happened in a most unusual fashion.” In addition to the writer’s political development, we read of her early love affairs, her struggles with the conventions of marriage and the many legendary figures who made up the early education of a complicated and beautiful young woman. Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali and Max Ernst were among the bohemians she met at Greenwich Village, often at the MacDougal Alley studio of Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, who was romantically involved with Anaïs Nin and Frida Kahlo before falling in love with Sahgal. Welcomed by everyone from Pearl S Buck—who wrote presciently how ‘Tara’ would never be satisfied with simplicity, would crave more than just marriage—to Ho Chi Minh, she made a grand entrance onto the international stage. From this world of freedom, of which she speaks candidly in the book, young Sahgal returned, to duty, to home, to India. “There was never any question in my mind that India is my home. I was very certain that my contribution such that it is, is through being an Indian living in India. Mind you, there are many Indians living abroad writing. I have always felt that what they write, which is important, is a different genre. There is something unique about the connection between story and soil.” Understandable, of course, in a family which has made such sacrifices for the idea, and the reality, of India. The family wore khadi all through their lives, growing up. “I wore a khadi sari and flowers for my wedding,” Sahgal remembers, of her first marriage, to radically different businessman Gautam Sahgal; her second marriage was to EN Mangat Rai, an Indian Civil Service officer, with whom she exchanged a series of letters published as Relationship in 1994. Sahgal’s political writing started many years later after she moved to Delhi, following her divorce. “I never took part in political activity. I never wanted to. My uncle said ‘Why
Nayantara Sahgal, likened by some of her admirers to Nadine Gordimer, is the author of nine novels and eleven works of non-fiction which chronicle young India’s life and times
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‘There are many ways of being a writer, but I have always had a special admiration for those who seem to embody their time and place in some profound way… [Nayantara Sahgal] was in the room as India was transformed from colony, to a non-aligned would-be socialist state, to today’s world power. One of Sahgal’s many admirable qualities is that she has never been blinded by her privilege… In her eighties, she is still a working writer, and an important political voice.’
from
nayantara sahgal is the author of nine novels, ten non-fiction works and wideranging literary and political commentary. She has received the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Sinclair Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has held fellowships in the United States at the Radcliffe Institute, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Humanities Center. During the 1980s, she was vice-president of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties. In 1990 and 1991, she served as chair (Eurasia) on the jury of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. In 1997, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Leeds. She has received the Distinguished Alumna Award from Wellesley College Massachusetts in 2003 and from Woodstock School Mussoorie in 2004. A resident of Dehra Dun, she has been awarded the Doon Ratna. In 2009, she received Zee TV’s Awadh Samman.
‘My Hero: Nayantara Sahgal’ by Hari Kunzru in The Guardian, 21 July 2012
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Cover design Saurav Das www.harpercollins.co.in
the political imagination nayantara sahgal
should you?’ He said, ‘If you want to write, write.’ I simply family?’ I said ‘I am not going against my family, I am defendwrote because I feel there were issues I needed to comment ing it.’ Because I was defending Nehru.” on. Although I have never wanted to enter politics, politics Her eyes grow moist as she speaks of the man she calls her has been a great part of my life from my childhood on, therethird parent, as they do when we speak of her father’s time fore it has formed a background to all my fiction. It led me to in prison. take a deep interest in what was happening in my country.” “We adored him. He was a most amazing and heroic And so it began. “Fiction is one way of knowing a human being, as well as a very loveable one. We all, my writer. Non-fiction is a more direct way,” says Sahgal. “Events sisters and I, adored him. When my father died, which were such that I also needed badly to earn a living. So I took happened in 1944, Mamu became in his place like a father. It to writing political commentary for The Indian Express and was to him that I turned with all my problems.” other papers.” Her generation used sheer grit as a means of Our talk turns to today. “My worry—not that I know so survival, it would appear. “I’ve never been much about education today—is that perfrightened of anything. I was brought up haps subjects like history, philosophy, art, the not to be afraid. When Gandhiji took up the literature, are being put on the backburnpolitical leadership of the Indian National Congress, er in favour of commerce, technology and imagination his message was: don’t be afraid. We as chilthat kind of thing. If that is so, it means the dren were brought up not to be afraid. We younger generation does not know so much were told we must not cry in front of the about our recent past. I hope I am wrong, but police when they came to arrest our parents. I get the feeling young people don’t know as That’s the way I grew up, I can’t help it.” much as they ought to know. I’m horrified at This lesson bore the test of time. “There what I read in the newspaper about the textwas a very turbulent period when I opposed books being released in Gujarat, where they Mrs Gandhi’s emergency. During that are teaching mythology as science and as hisperiod I really put myself on the line. I was tory. If that’s the trend we’re going to take, on the Sahitya Akademi’s advisory board for we’re in for a very ignorant generation.” English, along with Pritish Nandy and Anita Does this return us to politics? “I am worDesai, and I wrote to the Sahitya Akademi ried about the fact that now we have the RSS saying that I would wish them to issue a in power, because I think it’s a very dangerstatement condemning censorship, conous situation in India. I don’t believe in the demning the imprisonment of writers and RSS slogan of ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’. others without trial, and condemning the All of this seems to be influencing the wholesale destruction of our fundamental Government more and more,” says Sahgal, rights. They refused to do that, so I resigned steely despite her age. (It is only after an hour my membership. And I did the same with or so that she suddenly reveals her son died the Authors Guild of India.” At the request of in January: “For me anyway, part of me died Vijayprakash Narayanan, Sahgal then went when he died.”) to Bihar, to write about the beginning of Perhaps subsequent generations have not what was known as the Bihar Movement. been as certain about being in India, want“I was under surveillance, I was under ing to make their way all over the world, I threat; that my husband and I would be suggest. “Which is right, why shouldn’t we turned out of our accommodation at 24 be all over the world?” responds Sahgal. hours notice if we didn’t step into line, if I didn’t stop writing. “I think it’s a natural development of the opportunities Although I was prevented from writing politically, I was people have today. Going abroad doesn’t make you less definitely writing for undercover circulation. The whole Indian. Indians are making a mark in every field.” time was not only dangerous for me because I might have And what of feminism? “I have a great admiration for the gone to jail any day, but financially disastrous, because, for whole feminist movement because it was so necessary. I several reasons, the novel I had written was dropped by the think I would [identify myself as a feminist] now, because publisher, because he said it was too dangerous. A filmmakbasically what it means is being autonomous, and being an er dropped a project for the same reason. For the second year individual, and I have certainly done this. In my family, it of the Emergency, to avoid arrest, I got out of the country; I was the men who were feminists; they encouraged women spent the second year of the Emergency abroad.” to come forward and act.” The opposition to her cousin Indira was much remarked Do they make Indian men like that today, I wonder, as we upon. “That was my only venture into political activism. I discuss the charm of a progressive man like Nehru and the did feel I had to step out because it was a dictatorship in India possibility of real progress. at the time and I couldn’t keep silent about it. I felt it went Sahgal is attentive, curious to hear what this generation against my whole past and my upbringing. Some thinks. She hears me out, pauses. “In time everything people said to me at the time, ‘How can you go against your changes,” she smiles. n a
personal
response to
life, literature
Through the last five decades, Nayantara Sahgal has constantly responded to the changes that enveloped India and the world through her wide-ranging works of fiction and non-fiction. This book collects her writings and lectures on subjects ranging from literature and the arts to international relations and imperialism, written through some of India’s most turbulent phases – Independence, the Emergency, globalization, terrorism. Her astute social commentary is laced with personal wisdom that comes from first-hand knowledge of Indian politics and diplomacy. Known for her refusal to compromise with attempts to subvert modern India’s democratic and multicultural traditions, Sahgal has watched some of India’s most historic moments unfold in her own backyard and has always appraised the situation with a critical eye and analytical acumen.
the political imagination draws from Sahgal’s rich body of work and includes letters and commendations written to her that have never been published before. Combining public history with personal reflections, Sahgal reveals the politics of her own imagination in this collection of her most culturally insightful and socially conscious writings.
and politics
NON-FICTION
The Political Imagination is a collection of letters, essays, addresses and lectures typically charged with Sahgal’s staunch political concerns
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capsaicin It is already broadly used as an analgesic in topical ointments; it works as an irritant to overwhelm nerves, rendering them unable to report pain for extended periods of time
Hormones and Harmony Humanity’s igreat leap was brought on by a decrease in testosterone levels
Chili Inhibits Gut Tumours
pictorial parade/getty images
science
less aggression A Siberian fox
A
ccording to fossils discovered so far, modern human beings began to appear on the planet around 200,000 years ago; about 50 millennia ago, a sudden leap occurred in human technology. They began using tools made of bones and grindstones, equipment to fish and hunt, and even learnt to use fire, all of which helped our ancient ancestors advance rapidly. Scientists have long wondered what could have led to such a sudden kickstart of human progress. According to new research, this occurred because there was a reduction in testosterone levels in humans and they started becoming more cooperative with each other. The study, conducted by researchers from Duke University in the US and published in Current Anthropology, argues that living together and cooperating put a premium on agreeableness and lowered aggression, and that, in turn, led to the advancement of humans as social animals. For the study, more than 1,400 ancient and modern skulls were examined. The researchers discovered that at about the same 60 open
time that society was blossoming, human skulls were beginning to change. Of the over 1,400 skulls examined, 13 belonged to modern humans more than 80,000 years old, 41 to people who lived between 10,000 and 38,000 years ago, and 1,367 to 30 ethnic populations of the 20th century. They found an overall reduction in the brow ridge and shortening of the upper face over time, reflecting a reduction in testosterone action. The researchers claim that similar phenomena have been observed among animal species. One such study, conducted among Siberian foxes, descendants of individual animals who showed less fear of humans and less aggression, began to display relatively juvenile behaviour following selective breeding for several generations. One of the researchers, Robert Cieri, concludes on Duke University’s website, ‘If prehistoric people began living closer together and passing down new technologies, they’d have to be tolerant of each other… The key to our success is the ability to cooperate and get along and learn from one another.’ n
According to a study published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, capsaicin—the active ingredient in chili peppers—produces chronic activation of a receptor called TRPV1, on cells lining the intestines of mice, triggering a reaction that reduces the risk of colorectal tumours. Researchers fed capsaicin to mice genetically prone to developing multiple tumours in the gastrointestinal tract. The treatment resulted in a reduced tumour burden and extended the lifespans of the mice by more than 30 per cent. The treatment was even more effective when combined with celecoxib, a COX-2 anti-inflammatory drug approved for treating some forms of arthritis and pain. n
New Humpback Dolphin Species
RL Pitman
Scientists have officially named a humpback Dolphin species new to science: the Australian humpback dolphin, Sousa sahulensis, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society and Clymene Enterprises. Apart from slight differences in overall length, number of teeth and vertebrae, and geographic distribution, the Australian humpback dolphin differs in appearance from the other three humpback species. Its dorsal fin is lower and more wide-based than those of Sousa teuszii and S. plumbea, and its colour is dark grey, as opposed to the distinctly white (often with a pink tinge) of its closest humpback cousin, Sousa chinensis. The Australian humpback also possesses a distinctive dark dorsal ‘cape’. n
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tech&style
LG X-Boom CM9940 A powerful system that allows you to play disc jockey at your own party gagandeep Singh Sapra Rs 124,000
A
key ingredient of a rocking party is great music, and if you add a dash of flashing lights and some pumped up bass, you can have your friends dancing away; but where do you get the perfect mix from? Yes, one can always call over a DJ to spin those tracks, but it compromises the privacy of the gathering, and reminds one of a Bollywood style wedding. Want to do it yourself? The LG X-Boom CM 9940 is a great friend to have. The speakers come in four parts to be stacked two each, with a sub-woofer for both the left and right channels. Built-in LED flashing lights let you synchronise them with the music and add that touch of bling to the party. Turn up the volume and you can shake the earth or bring the house down with its pure 3,200 RMS Watts of music. The 2.2 Sound setup allows you to experience bass like you have never done before. The central DJ console has multiple slots that allow you to plug in a microphone, a CD player in case you still use CDs, and pen drives. There is an option to play FM radio tracks. The microphone can be used to box 18 AUGUST 2014
beat if you like, make an announcement or open up the house to a karaoke session. Your friends can even connect their smartphones over Bluetooth and stream music directly to the console for you to mix. And to ease the connection, there is NFC onboard offering tap-and-connect simplicity. Being a DJ involves more than just mixing music, and the X-Boom with its various modes can make you look like a pro. From ‘Auto DJ’, ‘DJ Pro’, ‘DJ Effects’ to a ‘Jukebox’ mode with various equaliser settings, you can select what it takes to push out the right sound with the right music and keep the party going. There are even scratch pads to help you navigate those tracks on a pen drive and help you mix and work out the right beat. Though not meant to be a portable system, LG has designed the X-Boom set-up in a way that you can knock it down completely and carry it to a farm house or the rooftop for a great party. Setting up the system is easy and you don’t really need a pro to rig it up. The X-Boom is a sure bet for a great dance party. n
nfc A Near field Communication (NFC) is a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices to establish radio links among them by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity—of just a few centimetres
Dior w VIII Grand Bal Plissé Soleil
Price on request
Featuring galvanised steel dials tinted with either a slash of bold pink or delicate pale blue in a pleated pattern, the Dior Plissé Soleil watches are the latest addition to the Dior VIII Grand Bal collection. The latest 36mm models in stainless steel feature a diamond-set bezel decorated with a white mother-ofpearl ring. The crown is engraved with the unmistakable ‘CD’ insignia, while the white gold oscillating weight is decorated with white mother-of-pearl marquetry, finished with yellow hems and set with diamonds. Available in a limited edition of 188 pieces. n
Zepp Golf Swing Analyser
$150
If you want someone to help you improve your swing, the Zepp golf swing analyser is a handy tool to have. You wear this lightweight sensor on your glove and pair it over Bluetooth with your iPhone, which has an app on it, and you can see how your hand swings and how you hit the ball. Replay your swing from any angle or overlay your swing with your previous swings, and see where you are making a mistake. The app, however, cannot tell you if you are using the wrong club or if your posture is wrong. n Gagandeep Singh Sapra is The Big Geek at System3. He can be reached at gadgets@openmedianetwork.in
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CINEMA
of cinema and logic Lucy has been widely criticised for perpetuating the 10 per cent brain myth which posits that humans use only 10 per cent of their brain. Started in France during Napoleon’s rule, the theory has been refuted by modern neuroscience
Lucy Invoking the innocence of our ancestors, this film offers an indictment of human folly ajit duara
o n scr een
current
Hercules Director Brett Ratner cast Dwayne Johnson, John Hurt, Ian
McShane
Score ★★★★★
ansson, Cast scarlett joh , min-sik choi morgan freeman Director LUC BESSON
L
ucy presently lives in Ethiopia—at
least her skeletal remains do—and she is estimated to be about 3.2 million years old. Her Caucasian descendant, also called Lucy (Scarlett Johansson), is a 25-year-old American who lives in Taipei, Taiwan. Professor Samuel Norman (Morgan Freeman), an African-American descendant of Lucy, is a neuroscientist in Paris. In a riveting presentation, he says that the brain utilises only 10 per cent of its potential, and should that proportion increase to about 20 per cent, we would be a much more evolved species. The movie, Lucy, begins by cutting between this professor’s lecture and the simultaneous events that take place in Taipei when Lucy is kidnapped by a drug lord and turned into a courier of a synthetic drug called CPH4, which, apparently, can multiply the brain’s capacity to think and feel. The French director Luc Besson, who has also written and edited this work,
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gives us a taut 89-minute film that triggers a thought process and expands our philosophical imagination. His science fiction makes us wonder at the complexity of the planet and the recklessness of the species that dominates it. He looks at human greed through Lucy and the drug lord, and contrasts the venality of this materialism with the simplicity and beauty of the laws of physics and mathematics. Once Lucy absorbs the CPH4 that is stitched inside her stomach by the gangsters, she begins to think exponentially and gets a bird’s eye view of space, matter and gravity by using the dynamic that unites them all—time. Our only measurement of time, she says, is memory. She moves backwards to her infancy, remembering the taste of her mother’s milk. She then moves infinitely further back to her ancestor, Lucy, and touches her. Then she asks: “Life was given to us a billion years ago. What have we done with it?” Touché. n
The phalanx is a Greek military formation that is created by soldiers joining their shields to form an impenetrable human fortress. It was the first line of defence in battle and saved many individual lives. It is interesting how this new movie on the Greek legend of Hercules, while referring to mythology, looks at Hercules not so much as a god—the son of Zeus—but as a mercenary soldier. Hercules (Dwayne Johnson) and his band of merry men (and one woman, an Amazonian archer) are paid their weight in gold to turn a collection of farmers into an army that can protect a kingdom. The battle training and the difficulty of teaching these villagers the phalanx formation, are what hold you. The jokes about the rustic men who have to be turned into soldiers, and the bonding within this group of mercenaries, remind one of The Expendables, the hugely successful Sylvester Stallone series. Hercules is the ancient Greek version of Barney Ross and his boys from New Orleans. Hercules’ bulging muscles and personality are similar to Stallone’s. After the success of that franchise, Stallone and his boys earned their weight in gold. What goes in the favour of Hercules is that it’s more than the usual superhero hellfor-leather action movie. n AD
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Not People Like Us
R aj e e v M asa n d
The Annoying Perfectionist
There has been incessant chatter among film folk about the alleged falling out between Hrithik Roshan and his Bang Bang! director Siddharth Anand. The filmmaker was apparently nowhere in sight when Hrithik and the studio producing the film, Fox Star India, unveiled the film’s first teaser to press and tradewalas recently. Turns out Siddharth was away in the US that week—pretty bad timing to take a holiday, some would say! The rumours may have started when Hrithik openly revealed that he was personally involved in overseeing and approving the edit of the teaser till late in the night. Or when word leaked from the set that he had commissioned script rewrites midway during the film’s making. But those who know Hrithik closely have said this should not be construed in a manner that suggests the actor has no faith in Siddharth... although, let’s face it, the director’s CV does comprise such turkeys asTara Rum Pum Pum and Anjaana Anjaani, and such far-from-original films as Salaam Namaste and Bachna Ae Haseeno. Hrithik’s camp points out that it is no secret that the star is ‘deeply invested’ in his every film’s production, and especially in promotions. He famously sat on the edit of Krrish 3, which was directed and produced by his father Rakesh Roshan, and personally cut trailers for that film. The staff at Dharma Productions will tell you he was a regular visitor at their office when Agneepath was being edited there. To be fair, when I was invited for a preview of the Bang Bang! teaser a few weeks ago, Hrithik did make it a point to say he was pleased as punch with what his director had done with the film. “Siddharth’s made a very good film,” Hrithik announced, without a hint of sarcasm or irony. The only snide remark at the occasion came from me, I will confess. “Well then that’ll be his first!” I quickly responded.
Furiously Defensive
Kareena Kapoor Khan (that’s how she likes to be addressed now) made an honest confession to me earlier this week. “I haven’t seen Humshakals,” she said. She reveals that she was particularly turned off when she saw the film’s trailers. “It was just the wrong film for Saif, and I told him so.” The actress insists she doesn’t understand all the fuss over Saif Ali Khan ’s recent admission 18 AUGUST 2014
that the film was a bad decision on his part. “He’s accepting that he made a mistake. You’d think people would appreciate that,” she says rolling her eyes and shrugging her shoulders. The actress is excited about having signed her next project, a Kabir Khan vehicle opposite Salman Khan. “Saif has just completed Phantom with Kabir, and he has only the best things to say of his experience.” The Salman starrer, titled Bajrangi Bhaijaan, won’t go on the floors anytime soon, but Kareena reveals she’s in no hurry to pack more projects into her schedule. “I don’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore,” she says firmly. “They make a big deal about the fact that I turned down half a dozen big films in the last six months, but I won’t do anything I don’t feel a hundred per cent sure about anymore.” On Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani, which she was reportedly in the running for, she says, “It wasn’t meant to happen”, just like Ram-Leela and Devdas weren’t meant to happen earlier. “We’re both very strong personalities. And I’m sure we will work together on a film that both of us can agree on. But right now, we’re doing our own thing,” she says with characteristic diplomacy. Insiders however reveal that she’s unlikely to forgive Bhansali for offering her the older female part in Bajirao after he’d made it clear that Deepika Padukone would be his Mastani.
Where Real Gossip Resides
In the good ol’ days of film magazine journalism, you could always rely on an actress’ hairdresser and make-up man to dish out the real dirt on her, before ‘press-release journalism’ became the way. The Hindi film heroine’s staff is still possibly the most reliable source for information related to the diva. And one top actress’ team has reportedly been high-fiving one another lately over having figured out her dirty little secret. The boyfriend she’s been dangling around is very likely just a cover for the married actor she’s been having a fling with over the last several months. The reason few people caught on until now is that the male actor himself has been involved in a controversy that was the focus of all attention; allowing both him and his part-time squeeze to fly below the radar with their own shenanigans. n Rajeev Masand is entertainment editor and film critic at CNN-IBN open www.openthemagazine.com 63
open space
Kashmir’s Methuselah
by As h i s h s h a r m a
Feroz-un-Din Mir was born on 10 March 1872, as it says on his birth certificate. That makes him the oldest living man not only in India but perhaps even the world. Originally from Bihjama village in Kashmir’s Uri district, he has been a zamindar for much of his life. Mir is currently married to Misra Begum, 74. Of his seven children, the youngest is his 32-year-old son who was born when Mir was 110. His name may not have figured in the Guinness Book of Records yet, but Mir vouches for the authenticity of his birth certificate, signed as it is by the tehsildar of those days
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