Swarajya pre launch issue by Swarajya

Perspectives Bibek Debroy, Jerry Rao, Sanjeev Sanyal

the 9 things arun jaitley must do to grow the economy

indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biggest foreign policy blunder: AFGHANISTAN

December 2014

Sample issue. not for sale.

A New Idea of India The Indian Right needs a different narrativeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;one which is rooted in openness, and a refusal to discriminate based on identity. Can this man provide it?

Wallpaper Divas

Why Hindi film heroines are expected only to look pretty and not try acting

From the Editor

A New Magazine That’s 58 Years Old Dear Reader, In 1956, journalist Khasa Subba Rau, with the patronage of C. Rajagoplachari—Rajaji, India’s last Governor-General, freedom fighter and a statesman hailed by Mahatma Gandhi as his “conscience keeper”, launched a weekly magazine called Swarajya. Swarajya was intended to convey the founders’ quest to translate the joy of freedom not only from foreign rule, but full freedom as defined and promised by the preamble of our Constitution. It represented the first coherent and consistent intellectual response to Nehruvian socialism and the ever-expanding Big State in newly independent India. Long before it became fashionable, Swarajya championed individual liberty, private enterprise, the minimal State and cultural rootedness. Thiia whAt Rajaji wrote: “There is before the country the great problem of how to secure welfare without surrendering the individual to be swallowed up by the State, how to get the best return for the taxes the people pay and how to preserve spiritual values while working for better material standards of life. This journal will serve all these purposes.” So what is this Swarajya 2.0—about? Rajaji’s words remain as true as ever even, and especially now, in 2014. The new Swarajya wishes to be an authoritative voice of reason representing the liberal centre-right point of view. It remains committed to the ideals of individual liberty unmediated by the State or any other institution, freedom of expression and enterprise, national interest, and India’s vast and ancient cultural heritage. Swarajya has two avatars to begin with—a digital daily (www.swarajyamag.com; you can just scan the first QR code in the left column on your smatphone and reach there—and this monthly magazine.

(The next QR thing, I won’t tell you about. Let that be a surprise.) We aim to be a big tent for liberal right-ofcentre discourse that reaches out, engages with and caters to the New India in a manner that’s not arcane, abstruse, arrogant or self-referencing, through commentary, analysis, research, satire and opinion. Our focus will be on what we refer to as SPEC: the Social, Political, Economic and Cultural life of India. These are our articles of faith (in alphabetical order): • Democracy • Gender equality • Free markets • Individual enterprise • Individual freedom • Integrity of our country • Opportunity for every Indian to achieve his/ her potential • Promoting our cultural heritage • Reduced role of the State but a more effective one in its focus areas • Secularism which does not pander, and a separation of religion from politics • The dangers of dogma We have an Editorial Board of Advisors comprising outstanding thought leaders (again, in alphabetical order): Bibek Debroy, bold economist and distinguished Indologist; Jaithirth Rao, right-ofcentre philosopher, former CEO of IT giant MphasiS, and head of Citibank’s Global Technology Development Division; Manish Sabharwal, chairman of Teamlease Services, India’s largest staffing and training firm, and one of the country’s leading thinkers on employment and employability; fearless economist and perhaps the world’s best cricket analyst Surjit S. Bhalla; and Swapan Dasgupta, historian, veteran journalist and authoritative voice of the Indian right. OK, our ambitions are pretty high, and we are promising you a lot. But with your help—and the frank criticism essential to the principles of free discourse and exchange of ideas that we have carved in granite—maybe we can…maybe we can grow to be resonant—deep, full, and reverberating. Welcome, and do plan for a long stay. — Sandipan Deb editorial director sandipan@swarajyamag.com De c e m b e r 2 0 1 4

December 2014 C o v e r

S t o r y

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Bibek Debroy Jaithirth Rao Manish Sabharwal Surjit S Bhalla Swapan Dasgupta

w o r l d

In this issue 18

m e m o r i e s

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Sandipan Deb CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Prasanna Viswanathan PUBLISHER AND CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER Amarnath Govindarajan CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER N. Muthuraman FOREIGN AFFAIRS EDITOR Padma Rao Sundarji EDITOR-AT-LARGE Rupa Subramanya NATIONAL AFFAIRS EDITOR Surajit Dasgupta BOOKS AND CULTURE EDITOR Antara Das CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Aravindan Neelakandan Biswadeep Ghosh Jaideep A Prabhu Seetha FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS BERLIN: Hermanne Denecke TOKYO: Hiroyasu Suda DIGITAL NEWSROOM INTERN Kruthika Rao CREATIVE DIRECTOR Pranab Dutta

A New Idea of India

The Right needs to develop a different narrative—one that is rooted in the scepticism and openness innate to Indian tradition. Can Narendra Modi provide that? E n t e r t a i n m e n t

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We Lost Afghanistan

The Swatantra Years

The Indian government squandered Afghanistan’s goodwill through years of vacillating and incoherent policy towards the country. This failure wil have repercussions in the retire egion.

The son of Minoo Masani, co-founder of the Swatantra Party, committed to free markets and free enterprise, and the chief political opponent to the Nehruvian consensus, recalls those heady days.

C r i c k e t

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Letter from the Editor

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FirstLight 6

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What is right wing?

Jerry Rao

Interpreters of Maladies

Sanjeev Sanyal

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A l s o

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Seetha 41

Why Pretty Women Won’t Act

Beauty of the Bouncer

Paddy Padmanabhan

Mainstream Hindi films rarely delve beyond a woman’s physical beauty. Female actors bag roles on the basis of looks not acting skills, leading to the creation of more stereotypes than ever before.

Phil Hughes’ death is a terrible tragedy, but banning the bouncer, as many are suggesting, will be unjust and irrational, and can only diminish the beauty of cricket. If you really love cricket, you’ll bat for the bouncer.

Books 80

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Archives 82

Cover Illustration T F Hadimani De c e m b e r 2 0 1 4

Only 0.033 Per Cent of the Nation Wants to Know

firstlight Death of Employment: Welcome to the Singular

Used to be that you would join a company as a “permanent employee” at the bottom rung of the ladder and work your way up, sometimes staying there your entire career, and retiring one day with a pension plan, a gold-plated wristwatch, and a plaque. Changing employers seldom happened. Today, large corporations worldwide are embattled institutions struggling to remain relevant to customers. They have become completely soulless environments where the struggle for survival and job protection pits people against each other on a daily basis. Compassion and empathy don’t exist in large corporations today. In an age where the permanence of an employer is a big question mark, the notion of “permanent” employment is quaint and laughable. The rupture of trust between employers and employees is the only thing that is “permanent”. Disenchanted with large corporations, and lured by the opportunity to remain independent and do meaningful work, young men and women are increasingly choosing self-directed occupations over employment. This often takes the form of entrepreneurship. When every individual is expected to change a dozen jobs over the course of a career, it is employment by name but free agency for all intents and purposes. Every stint with an “employer” is just another gig that adds value through cash compensation, learning opportunities, relationship networks, and eventually, some form of success defined as money or expert knowledge. Call this the Singular phenomenon. A single individual drives his or her own destiny, with little or no guidance and support from an institutional employer, and often does this with the help of advanced and readily available technology, and most likely a very small group of fellow Singulars. In this world, every person operates as a single economic unit. Utopia? maybe not. It’s a Singular world. And it’s yours. Paddy Padmanabhan (For the full version of this text, visit www.swarajyamag.com)

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Anna to Go on Hunger Strike Again? On 22 November Anna Hazare met with Ram Jethmalani and the Aam Aadmi Party’s former head of legal cell Ashwini Upadhyay at his home in Ralegan Siddhi, Maharashtra, to finalize issues that the Adarsh Bharat Abhiyan (ABHA—Ideal India Campaign) would take up with the government. These include: expediting the appointment of the Lokpal; asking the government why six crucial Anti-Corruption Bills are pending in the Lok Sabha; pushing the 2006 Supreme Court order on police reforms; implementation of the Law Commission’s recommendations of 2009 on judicial reforms; and urging for an ordinance to declare all illicit money in India and stashed abroad as national assets. Hazare had written to Prime Minister Modi, seeking his response on these issues. The Prime Minister assured Hazare that the government is working on the necessary legislations and administrative reforms. However, ABHA, formed on 9 August, is not confident the laws will come through in the winter session of Parliament. If negotiations with the government fail, Anna will sit on hunger strike at Jantar Mantar on 21 March. Surajit Dasgupta

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Most of us have heard Arnab Goswami thundering at 9 pm: “Please answer the question! The Nation Wants to Know!” But how big is this ‘nation’ Goswami claims to represent? On any given night, less than 4 lakh Indians watch this show! Yes, you read it right. Less than 4 lakh! So to be technically correct, Arnab should be saying “0.033 per cent of this nation wants to know!” And of course, many among even those watching may not really be interested. • TV penetration in India is still low: about 12 crore TV sets in a country of 120 crore • Hindi entertainment, regional channels, Hindi movies and kids’ channels account for about 78 per cent of total TV viewership. • News viewership is less than 4 per cent of total viewership, and English news channels: less than 0.4 per cent. • Thus, even assuming every TV set has two viewers (which is an overestimation in case of news), there are about 10 lakh viewers per night for all English news channels put together! The reader can use market share data advertised by these channels to assess

The Boy They Called ‘Super Onion’

viewership of specific channels. So, next time you watch Goswami (or Barkha Dutt or Rajdeep Sardesai), bear this simple fact in mind—that their reach is 0.033 per cent of the population! In fact, many popular Twitterati may be influencing more minds than these news anchors on any given day! N. Muthuraman

IBM Highway Makes Better Sense than Vivekananda NH Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started renaming airports, streets, and projects hitherto named after members of the Nehru dynasty. It seems that Modi might rename streets and projects after Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Narayana Guru, etc. Why though? Yes, these luminaries contributed immensely to Indian society. So, OK, name some projects after them—one per head. Wouldn’t it make better economic sense to invite private parties to bid for naming of projects after the highest bidder? Who gains when the highway connecting Chennai and Bengaluru is

named NH4? Or even when it is named after a leader from a bygone era? But if it were to be named Microsoft Highway, after the highest bidder, it would bring huge revenue to the exchequer which could be invested in development. This idea could be extended to India’s ailing public schools, transportation, and hospitals. Naming projects after great Indians shuts out an important source of revenue. In that sense, figuratively speaking, a Vivekananda or Narayana Guru stands in the way of economic development. Kalavai Venkat

Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India, graduated from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, in 1979. Reena Theophilus Panikar, captain of the college’s ladies’ basketball team at the time recalls that Subramanian was known as ‘Super’: “And to his fellow basketballers, as ‘Super Onion’.” Says Sunil Mehta (who contributed the group picture to Swarajya, showing the victorious basketball men’s and women’s teams in 1976-1977, Arvind second from left standing): “He used to be thrilled each time we beat the college ‘across the road’ (Hindu College).” Padma Rao Sundarji, Foreign Affairs Editor, Swarajya, remembers Super as the guard in a Shakespeare Society play, Antigone, dressed in a ‘skirt’. “Super was also Assistant Editor of Kooler Talk (KT), our college rag that ripped everyone off.” Historian Supriya Guha reveals that it was on board the 210 (a Delhi public bus route) that classmates introduced Subramanian to Parul Tiwari, whom he married. Says Shavak Srivastava: “Arvind’s thoughts are way ahead of his ability to speak and then he gets so excited and speaks so fast. I wonder how Finance Minister Jaitley and the government will deal with that!”

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firstlight

Left Behind?

5 Facts Communists Have to Hide about Karl Marx

01.12.1955: Rosa Parks Won’t Get Up

Groucho was certainly the more entertaining Marx, and possibly made much more sense. Marx was a poet As a young man, Marx wrote quite a bit of poetry. Many of his poems are marked by violence, a sense of doom, a cursed universe, and pacts with the Devil. Sample this: “The worlds, they see it and go rolling on/ And howl the burial song of their own death./ And we, we Apes of a cold God, still cherish/ With frenzied pain upon our loving breast/ The viper so voluptuously warm,/ That it as Universal Form rears up/ And from its place on high grins down on us!” Scary! He played the stockmarkets On 25 June1864, he wrote his uncle, Lion Philips, who later founded electronics giant Philips: “I have…been speculating…in American funds, (and) English stocks, which are springing up like mushrooms…I have made over £400.” Many of his most famous lines were not his It was Jean-Paul Marat, a leader of the French Revolution, who wrote: “The proletarians have nothing to lose

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but their chains.” German labour leader Karl Schapper said: “Workers of the world, unite!” And French socialist Louis Auguste Blanqui first called for “a dictatorship of the proletariat”. Marx borrowed these pithy lines. He falsified data to prove his points In 1885, Cambridge scholars Joseph Tanner and F.S. Carey published a monograph in which they exposed how Marx had misquoted and falsified data published in British government reports (Blue Books) to make his points. They wrote: “He uses the Blue Books with a recklessness which is appalling… to prove just the contrary of what they really establish.” He was Britain’s greater exploiter of a worker Marx admitted that he never discovered a worker in Britain who was paid literally no wages at all. But Helen Demuth lived with the Marx family as domestic help for 45 years. She got her keep but was never paid anything. In 1851, Marx fathered a son through her, but refused to accept responsibility. Henry Frederick Demuth worked as a railway engineer and died in 1929.

It was rush hour in Montgomery, Alabama. A 42-year-old African-American seamstress took a seat on a bus on her way home from work. And set off a social revolution. On Montgomery buses, the front 10 seats were reserved for white passengers. Rosa Parks was in fact seated in the first row behind those 10 seats. When the bus became crowded, the driver instructed Parks to vacate her seat for white passengers. Parks refused, the driver called the police, and she was arrested. Her arrest became a rallying point. The African-American community organized a bus boycott. Martin Luther King Jr, a 26-year-old pastor, emerged as a leader during the peaceful boycott that captured the world’s attention. The 381-day boycott ended with a December 1956 US Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation. But Parks had triggered off the Civil Rights movement, which would finally triumph with the US banning discrimination based on “race, colour, religion, or national origin”. When Parks died in 2005, she became the first woman to lie in honour in the US Capitol Rotunda.

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firstlight

What If Gandhi Hadn’t Been Thrown Off The Train? On June 7, 1893, at a little station called Pietermaritzburg, Mohandas Gandhi was thrown off the train. Big mistake. For over 20 years, he was a thorough nuisance to the South African regime. He avoided violence, talked of virtue, refused to play fair. They were relieved when he left for India in 1915. But what if this had never happened? Supposing a fellow passenger had said, “Hullo, you look quite decent for a brown chap. Fancy a spot of tea?” Gandhi was not a born revolutionary. His family had hoped that he would earn some money and experience in South Africa, and come back and take over as Dewan of Porbander. Perhaps that’s what he would have done, remained a lifelong loyal servant of the Empire, and built Porbander into a model state, with good roads, clean toilets, and many goats. Once India became independent, it would have become an example for the rest of us. But without Gandhi, would we be free? We probably would, because the British were running out of things to steal. They could have kept us as a captive market for their products, but unfortunately they had already taken all our money, so we were not in a position to buy anything. So we would definitely have needed the freedom struggle. Who could have led us to freedom? Nehru, son of Motilal Nehru, and an excellent speaker, would certainly have been a player through the 1920s and 30s, and been pointed out as a leftie at tea parties. Like Nehru, Subhash Bose turned nationalist early, punching out British professors in college. There might never have been a Sardar Patel, though. He was inspired into action by Gandhi, suddenly, in his middle age. If this hadn’t happened, maybe he would have remained a respected member of the local community, known for his clear thinking, the right man to go to with a problem, never in his wildest dreams imagining that one

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When Arjuna Drew His Sword to Kill Yudhishthira

3 Steps to Create a Culture of Innovation

day he would become a big statue. Which leaves a Congress with Nehru and Bose as key leaders, along with one Mr Jinnah. Certainly a fine mind, but a cold fish. Nehru and Bose being impatient men, the Congress pushes for freedom sooner. They are militant. Meanwhile, the Indian Army is getting restless. The British raise salaries, which they can ill afford to do. In 1938 and 1939, Bose is Congress President. People notice that some Congress volunteers are wearing khaki, and marching. Jinnah (no one ever mentions the word ‘partition’) finds Bose’s costumes funny, but he can deal with him. When World War II breaks out, Bose sees Hitler as opportunity. By 1942, the Indian Army is disintegrating, fatally weakening the British war effort. Some have formed the Indian National Army. The Japanese win the Battle of Kohima, supported by the INA. They break through to the plains of Bengal, where the Japanese are thrilled to find so much

fish. Netaji gives the order to rise, and New Delhi falls in a military coup. Garrisons across Western and Southern India rally to his name. It’s worth remembering that in the Congress elections of 1938, every single Congress delegate from the South voted for him. Netaji is declared Supreme Leader, with Nehru as Foreign Minister. The first thing Bose does is request Stalin for support. Stalin is busy taking over Europe, distracted but sympathetic. Nehru flies down to Moscow. He floors all the women. The Americans cannot allow this. They make the British take back the Japanese possessions in East India. A much smaller British India is re-established, right next to the freshly independent Republic of India. An Iron Curtain falls over the subcontinent. Soon, a wall goes up, somewhere near Patna. Shovon Chowdhury (For a full version of this text, visit www.swarajyamag.com) S a m p l e I ssue

It was Day 17 of the Kurukshetra war. Though most ofn the maharathis of the Kaurava army had fallen, Karna still remained. He was now comander of the Kaurava army and had been unstoppable, scattering the “Pandu soldiers like a mass aof cotton by the speed of a mighty wind”. A harried Yudhishthira, unable to withstand the force of Karna’s assault, retired to his camp, awaiting news of Karna’s death. When Krishna and Arjuna entered his tent, he was elated: Karna must be dead! But Arjuna said no, he would fight Karna the next day. At this, Yudhishthira just lost it. He railed against Arjuna, calling him worthless, and a coward, ending with what today reads like a dialogue from a Hindi movie: “It would have been better if you had not been born in Pritha’s womb.” No true warrior would stand for this barrage of insults. Arjuna grasped his sword, ready to kill Yudhishthira. But why would these two brothers, the epitome of filial love, hurl abuses at each other? And why would Arjuna, who had two weeks ago received the timeless wisdom of the Gita from Krishna, lose control so much? OK, ask this: Aren’t we more likely to lose our temper when tired and exhausted, say after a long day and week at work, at the slightest of provocations? Thik about it: You are more likely to let out an obscenity at an errant driver

when you’ve been stuck in traffic for an hour on Friday evening, than on a weekend drive to a resort. Why is that? The answer may lie in “ego depletion”, a relatively new idea in social psychology, which has been used to explain various seemingly odd phenomena—why we are more likely to gorge on pizza and beer on Friday night rather than on Sunday evening. Self-control, or willpower, can be compared with a muscle—every decision we take that requires us to make a conscious choice, tires that muscle. But unlike physical muscles, more use does not seem to make the willpower muscle stronger. The stress of 17 days of battle had taken a toll on the warriors. The anger and frustration would have been under control on Day 1, but not Day 17. Ego depletion had set in. Even though Dharmaraj knew better than to snap at his brother, and so virulently, the psychological toll of war had withered away self-control. Of course, as you can guess that a bemused Krishna, who had been a silent observer till now, stepped in and broke up the fight. But the point is, keep that ego muscle well rested, lest it deplete. Abhinav Agarwal Reference: Dr Bibek Debroy’s Mahabharata (Penguin India, 2013), an unabridged translation of the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata.

To create a culture of innovation in companies or teams, start by being innovative. INSPIRE Set aside time to talk about innovation. Bring in, say, a mechanical water sprinkler and share with your team why you think it is innovative; better yet, ask them. This allows you to develop a shared sense of what is innovation— that it’s not only a cure for cancer. Over time, this can be things that your own team has innovated. MEASURE Put in a process, where the team can spend time focusing on problems which allow scope for innovation. This could be in technology, internal processes or any function within your business. And put in measures—only that which gets measured will get done. When you measure it, everyone pays attention. REWARD & RECOGNIZE But don’t celebrate success alone. Recognize and reward risk taking. We need to create a culture of tolerating mistakes and viewing them as a way to learn and do better. As Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, put it, “I view this year’s failure as next year’s opportunity to try it again.” K. Srikrishna (For a full version of this text, visit www.swarajyamag.com)

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Id e a s

Shovon Chowdhury

Excuse Me, But What is Right Wing? A deep, incisive, challenging multidisciplinary investigation into the Big Question. We try to make it easy for the reader with lithographs by Honore Daumier (1808-1879), the ‘Michelangelo of caricature’. 14

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part from being opposed to left-wing people, who or what is a right-wing person? In judging this, we usually go by instinct. Very often they have lots of money. Sometimes they wear khaki shorts. Like Paul McCartney, they long for yesterday. All these are clues. But such a burning issue can no longer be left to guesswork, not when whole magazines are being put together on the subject. In India, it could be anyone who hates Sagarika Ghosh. While this can be deeply satisfying, it seems rather fragile, ideologically speaking. What happens if she actually does immigrate to Pakistan? How do we fill the empty space in our lives? We could replace her with Arundhati Roy, but the emotions she evokes are so strong that sometimes people end up frothing too much at the mouth to form coherent sentences. This is not conducive to debate. Until the 18th century, there were no wings, only kings. The principles of governance were simple. You obeyed the king, or he chopped off your head. If he was a bad king, he chopped off

the heads of your family too, and in some cases, the rest of your village. If he was a good king, he settled for an arm or a leg. Even though kings were divine, and much greater than the rest of us, it was hard for them to do everything. So they surrounded themselves with a small group of well-armed well-funded people. This became the aristocracy. They became rich and powerful because of their proximity to the ruler. As a result, life was very good for the king and his friends, but not so good for the rest of us. The French are well known troublemakers. They changed this. They had a novel thought. “Why don’t we cut off the king’s head instead?” they thought. “Maybe things will be better then.” This was called the French Revolution. It was this Revolution that gave us the term ‘right wing’. Members of the French National Assembly in 1789, who supported the king, sat on the right. They supported the ancien regime, which is French for “this is the hotel of my father”. Outside the Assembly, the French people were busy killing clergymen and burning the homes of the rich. The right wing hurS a m p l e I ssue

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The French right wing consisted of people like Joseph de Maistre, who thought the most important employee of the State was the executioner, the ultimate guarantor of order

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riedly gave away as many of their privileges as they could. Soon after, the people burst in and hauled most of them off to the guillotine. From this, the right wing learnt, at the very moment of its birth, that giving things away is never a solution. The next 100 years were full of action, as people in other countries thought, if it worked for the French, than why not us? The Russians rose repeatedly. The British were far more gradual. They did kill their king, but they brought back his son, and they let most of the aristocracy live. These aristocrats became the Tories, whose philosophy was best summed up by the Duke of Cambridge. “There is a time for everything,” he said, “And the time for reform is when it can no longer be resisted.” The French right wing continued to thrive, inspired by Edmund Burke, and represented by people like Joseph De Maistre, who thought the most important employee of the State was the executioner, the ultimate guarantor of order. Meanwhile, Ferdinand of Naples, another notable conservative, dressed up as a woman and had himself sculpted as Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, by Canova. This shows that, even at this early stage, right wing politicians were willing to embrace diversity. As usual, what used to be a simple matter was unnecessarily complicated by the Americans. In the early 19th century, Andrew JackS a m p l e I ssue

son, an angry man who massacred many Native Americans, invented producerism. Producerism rallied hard-working producers against evil parasites. The middle class, the honest farmer, and factory-owners were the producers. The poor, the bankers, and people who had immigrated more recently than them were the parasites. This is a rich and powerful tradition, which lives on in America. Even today, elements of the Tea Party attack big business for supporting immigration, which is an evil plot to get themselves cheap labour. In fact, America was where economics was first introduced into the right wing thought process. At the turn of the 20th century, economic liberals and social conservatives joined hands, and the infernal brew that resulted was known as modern conservatism. They formed a union which has lasted for over a century, and has two guiding principles, “Don’t touch my money!” and “Why aren’t you reading the Bible?” This thought process has been very influential, and today most countries have at least one party which hates gay people and loves bankers. But there are wide variations across societies and cultures. For example, in America, “liberal” is a swear word. In the UK, it’s a political party. In India, it’s a girl of loose character, as in “she is very liberal”. Most fundamentally, what differentiates the right wing from the left wing is their attitude towards change. The right

In the US, Andrew Jackson invented producerism, which rallied hardworking producers against evil parasites: the poor, the bankers, people who had immigrated more recently than them wing believes nothing should change. The left wing believes everything should change until they can take charge. How has it worked out in India? We see everything through the lens of secularism. Broadly, we have two types of people: people devoted to cows, and anti-national pseudo-sickular Porkistani sluts. I’m no expert, but it’s probably not that simple. Why view everything through the lens of religion? A toilet has no religion, and neither does a roti. Many people in India need both. This doesn’t mean that faith isn’t important. Just that it’s not all-important. In India, like everywhere else, the right wing is a force of reaction. Reaction to one man, and his theories, economic and social. I’m not naming him because I’m not sure that’s allowed here. Let’s call him the Evil One. But maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe we should just thank De c e m b e r 2 0 1 4

The hand that we feel on our necks, governing everything, answerable to no one, is nourished on salaries that come out of our pockets him that we’re not Pakistan, and get on with our lives. Because there’s more to life than secularism. It’s a good thing we’re remembering Rajaji again. His views on caste are a bit worrying, but he was also the man who coined the phrase “License Permit Raj”. Instead of spending all our time cursing the Evil One and his socialism, maybe we can think about this. Who issues the licenses? Who produces the permits? Under whose Raj do we live? Why are they answerable to no one, and immune from any form of prosecution, unless they give permission, which they rarely ever do, even if we ask nicely? Adam Smith talked about the Invisible Hand. Whose hand is it that we feel on our necks, governing everything, from where we can put our penises to what we can make money from, and how much? Whose hand builds the schools without toilets, and the hospitals without doctors, and the irrigation systems for wineries, while farmers save up money for poison? Whose hand takes away 85 paise out of every rupee that’s supposed to reach the poor? Whose hand arrests the victims, and pats defense lawyers on the back, saying there, there, don’t worry, the file will be misplaced shortly? Whose hand steals the homes of war widows, and jeopardizes our international relations

because of a nanny, and keeps our brave soldiers on glaciers, with same-size-fits-all boots and no oxygen, and the nearest medical facility hundreds of miles away? Whose hand signs the vouchers for millions of phantom cleaners, while the garbage piles up on our streets? Could it conceivably be a hand nourished on salaries that come out of our pockets? Are we actually paying them to do this to us? Pappus will come and Fekus will go. Even AK49 will one day leave us wondering whether he was a CIA agent or a Maoist, or just a man in a muffler with delusions of grandeur. The Evil One will become a distant memory. Maybe it’s time we stopped fighting each other, and saw who our real enemy is. Maybe we should pause, just for a while, in our battle on behalf of labour, or against it, and stop arguing about what our fiscal policy should be, and what exactly a Hindu Muslim is, and whether bikinis are good or evil. Maybe we should get together, as citizens, joined by a common cause, and push through new laws that will get that dead hand off our necks, once and for all. If some of those hands break stones in Tihar, so much the better. That’s when we’ll really be free. That’s when we’ll have genuine swarajya.

Shovon Chowdhury’s blog, India Update, has horrified nearly 200,000 people. He is also the entire editorial staff of The Investigator, published by Hindu Business Line, which digs for the truth, so you don’t have to. He has recently edited the secret diaries of Manmohan Singh. He has completed one novel, The Competent Authority. His next, Death of a School Master, comes out in December.

To know more about the life and work of Honore Daumier please visit www.daumier.org

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Minoo Masai (left) at an election meeting with C. Rajagopalachari (centre) and Acharya J.B. Kripalani (right)

Dr Zareer Masani

The son of Minoo Masani, co-founder of the Swatantra Party, committed to free markets and free enterprise, and the chief political opponent to the Nehruvian consensus, recalls those heady days.

The Swatantra Years 20

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S a m p l e I ssue

he Swatantra Party first entered my life as a dimly understood rival for my mother’s attention. I would have been around 11 at the time, and my father Minoo had given up his comfortable job at the Tatas as JRD’s Chief of Staff to launch independent India’s first serious parliamentary opposition to Nehru’s one-party state. Though sympathetic to Swatantra’s free market ideology, JRD had been persuaded that Father’s continuance at the Tatas as an opposition leader would bring down the ire of the Nehru government on the whole business group. So Father set up on his own as a management consultant and hit the campaign trail as General Secretary of the new party in the run up to the 1962 general election. Mother increasingly had to accompany him, playing the role of loyal politician’s wife and adding her personal glamour and impeccably Hindu credentials to his agnostic Parsi origins. The Jan Sangh, precursor of today’s BJP, had been trying to discredit father as “a beef-eating Parsi”. For me, still ignorant of such political machinations, the Swatantra Party meant long and painful separations from an indulgent mother I adored, living in her absence with my very disciplinarian Parsi grandparents. Why, I asked

Father, couldn’t he take the far easier route of joining Nehru’s Cabinet instead? After all, they had been good friends, working closely together during the nationalist movement. Father’s reply was characteristically terse: “Because that would stop me doing the things I believe in, and the PM would feel much the same.” Father, by then, had already been active along with Jayaprakash Narayan and C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) in championing lost causes such as Tibetan independence, so abjectly surrendered to Red China by Nehru, and self-determination for Kashmir. Although Rajaji accepted no official position in the Swatantra leadership, he was its presiding deity, lending it the credibility of his august past as a leading Congressman and independent India’s first Governor-General. “The old fox”, my parents affectionately called him, partly because of his inscrutable smile and dark glasses, but also his reputation for Machiavellian political strategies. Like Mahatma Gandhi with the Congress in the past, Rajaji sanctified Swatantra gatherings with his presence and often had the last word behind the scenes. His entourage included the great singer Subbalakshmi, dubbed “the nightingale of India”, whose husband, Sadasivam, was Rajaji’s devoted assistant and secretary. Despite her roots in

Masani’s wife Shakuntala (exreme right) during a Swatantra Party campaign. To her right is one of the new party’s stars, Ayesha of Jaipur (Maharani Gayatri Devi)

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Minoo Masani electioneering in Rajkot, with a cow and calf. The Jan Sangh had denounced him as a beef-eating Parsi.

To read Rajmhan Gandhi on the Swatantra Party, use this QR code:

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Carnatic music, Subbalakshmi excelled at the Meera bhajans of northern India; her inspiring performances of these frequently opened and closed party conferences. The third and least impressive member of Swatantra’s leading triumvirate was Professor N.G. Ranga, a farmer leader from Andhra Pradesh, whose professorial title belied his bumbling presence and incoherent speeches. I often asked how and why he had been elected party president, to be told that his peasant credentials were necessary to balance the party’s strongly urban image. By the time I became a college student (at Elphinstone in Bombay), Father’s remarkable organising abilities and his oratory had made Swatantra the main opposition in Parliament, with Father at its helm hammering away at a Prime Minister whose failing health mirrored his humiliation in the disastrous 1962 war with China. In the 1967 general election, Swatantra did even better, crossing the necessary threshold to become India’s first official Opposition. Father became Leader of the Opposition, with Cabinet status and a Lutyens house to match in New Delhi’s coveted Tughlaq Road. My own politics through these exciting times were steeped in Swatantra ideology. I was dazzled by the glamour of the legendary beauty,

Maharani Ayesha of Jaipur, who led the cohort of Indian royalty that gave Swatantra its rural base, joining forces with the party’s urban businessmen and intellectuals. I remember Father grumbling about the Maharani’s penchant for disappearing to Europe unexpectedly with her polo-playing husband, just when she was most needed in Rajasthan for local electioneering. The Jaipurs, as close friends of the Queen and Prince Philip, led a jet-set lifestyle which made them easy targets for socialist jibes. Father had far more admiration for the grit and perseverance of the Gwalior Rajmata, although she gravitated eventually to the Jan Sangh. Perhaps the most appealing characteristic of the Swatantra Party was its uncompromising secularism and championship of minorities. Father, in particular, much admired Pakistan’s President Ayub Khan, who had backed India during the China war, and he blamed Indian intransigence on Kashmir for the hostilities which escalated into the second Indo-Pakistan War of 1965. I remember being dubbed a traitor by chauvinistic fellow students at Elphinstone when I argued Pakistan’s case on Kashmir in the prevailing climate of jingoism. The Swatantra Party strongly challenged the economic orthodoxies of Nehruvian socialism, and Father led the assault every year with his S a m p l e I ssue

Budget speech in Parliament, opening the debate as Leader of the Opposition. It was a challenging performance, since the Budget details were never known in advance, but Father always rose to the occasion with his usual oratory and a forensic skill in dissecting opaque official statistics. His speeches usually filled both the press and public galleries, were heard with rapt attention and were widely reported in the papers, though not on government-controlled broadcast media. Father was also the party’s main link with events and movements abroad during these tense years of the Cold War. Like Nehru, he was a firm internationalist, but the similarity ended there. Unlike Nehru, Father, then still a socialist, had been appalled by Stalin’s purges of the 1930s, followed by the Iron Curtain imposed on Eastern Europe at the end of World War II. He saw Communism as an expansionist ideology, which would attempt to sweep across India as it had China. Global Communism was for him the greatest threat to world peace, and he strongly supported the military alliances the West was sponsoring to halt the Communist advance. Not surprisingly, he saw Nehru’s Non-Alignment developing, under the baleful influence of the Communist “fellow-traveller” Krishna Menon, into a thinly veiled apologia for Communist tyranny. His warnings were vindicated by the attempts of India’s supposedly non-aligned government to condone Soviet suppression of both the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1967. Ironically, it was my years as a student at Oxford in the late 1960s, at the height of the antiVietnam War protests, that ended my Swatantra honeymoon. After two years of staunchly arguing the American case, I finally succumbed to the anti-war Zeitgeist. Father and I now had frequent rows about what I saw as his toadying to American imperialism, and I converted Mother to my own subversive views. Tensions at home escalated in 1969 when Indira Gandhi split the Congress and launched her bid for supreme power on a populist platform of nationalising banks and abolishing princely privileges. Father, now President of the Swatantra Party, resolutely opposed Indira and expelled C.C. Desai, a colleague who had been bought over by her to foment disaffection in opposition ranks. It won Father the reputation of being one of the last incorruptibles among Indian politicians. I remember a Times of India cartoon by the great R.K. Laxman, showing Father tall and upright in a sombre black Nehru jacket showing the door to a scruffy, little C.C. Desai, dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers and complaining: “But nobody dresses like that anymore!”

Indira had already carried the battle into our own home, where Mother and I split with Father to campaign for the left-wing Indira Congress in the 1971 general election. Father, under pressure from Rajaji, had, by then, been compelled to submerge the distinctive Swatantra identity into a so-called “Grand Alliance” with the discredited right wing of the Congress. The result was a landslide for Indira, in which Father, for the first and last time in his career, lost his own parliamentary seat. He insisted on taking responsibility for his party’s defeat and resigned as its president. A few years later, the party was wound up. Father devoted the rest of his long life to civil society groups promoting citizenship and free enterprise. Forty years on, the wheel has turned full circle, with a government ostensibly committed to economic liberalisation. My own politics have also returned to the pro-Western economic liberalism of my early youth. But like other secularist economic liberals, I now find myself politically homeless, unwilling to choose between a dynastic Congress rump and the saffron chauvinism of Narendra Modi’s RSS cadres. The sad demise of the Swatantra alternative left a political vacuum that has yet to be filled; this is not just my own nostalgia but the lament of left-wing Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. In his speech at this year’s Jaipur Literary Festival, he said he would not have voted Swatantra himself, but the country needed a secular, right-ofcentre alternative to the Congress.

1992: Masani with then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, who was credited for bringing in economic liberalization, something the Swatantra Party had fought for 30 years ago

Dr Zareer Masani is the author of Macaulay: Pioneer of India’s Modernization; And All Is Said: Memoir of a Home Divided; Indira Gandhi: A Biography; and From Raj to Rajiv: Forty Years of Indian Independence (written with Mark Tully). He is an Oxford doctorate in Modern History, and lives in London. De c e m b e r 2 0 1 4

C o v e r

S t o r y

A New Idea of India Rajeev Mantri & Harsh Gupta

The Right needs to develop a different narrative—one that is rooted in the scepticism and openness innate to Indian tradition “…Who knows, and who can say Whence it all came, and how creation happened? The gods themselves are later than creation, So who knows truly whence it has arisen? Whence all creation had its origin, He, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not, He, who surveys it all from highest heaven, He knows—or maybe even he does not know.” — The Nasadiya Sukta (Hymn of Creation), Rig Veda

he Foundational texts of Dharma, forged some three and a half millennia ago, are filled with such scepticism that would gladden the heart of philosophers and physicists to this date.

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Indeed, the great physicist Erwin Schrödinger, writing in 1944, observed that the Upanishadic concept that atman equals brahman or that “the personal self equals the omnipresent, allcomprehending eternal self” was, in contrast to Christian thought, “far from being blasphemous”, and in fact represented “the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world”. It is because of the sceptical tradition within the metaphysical aspects of what is now called Hinduism that, say, the New Atheist movement so prominent today mostly critiques Abrahamic or Western traditions when they critique “religion”. Hypocrisies and hierarchies exist in Indic religions as well but are primarily sociological—related to gender and caste—and less theological. This is not because there are no worrisome “holy texts” or doctrines, but because those texts and doctrines can be selectively followed. I ssue 001. 01

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Under Nehru, our democracy came to be based upon the State brokering settlements between groups of religions, castes and languages rather than guaranteeing equal rights to each citizen Nehru’s Certitude

Why Scepticism is Essential Scepticism is an indispensable foundation for what is today called “science”—the fundamental premise of scientific inquiry is that an unknown truth can be learnt through iterative experimentation and exploration. A dogmatic school of thought cannot profess to be scientific. As physicist Richard Feynman said, science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts. Applied to the spiritual sphere, a “scientific religion” would be one that can accept that its assumptions are wrong. Indeed, philosopher of science Karl Popper said much the same when he posited that for a theory to be scientific, it should be falsifiable. Popper also critiqued the historicist and teleological underpinnings of the Marxist and Hegelian worldview—that there were inexorable laws of historical destiny, all leading towards definite ends. In simple terms, the Indic worldview is more cyclical than linear. Similarly, an economic system that imbibes such scepticism cannot, by definition, be centrally planned, for that would require an omniscient, omnipotent body to allocate resources. In this sense, socialism is analogous with obscurantist and fundamentalist faith, while com-

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petitive capitalism is analogous to a “scientific religion”. Also, scepticism—and the intellectual humility that it engenders—is required to cultivate tolerance in a society, for it allows fellow human beings to accept mutual differences. This tolerance is also mediated through the mechanism of the social contract in the modern era of democratic, liberal nation-states, so that the views of one person or group cannot be forced onto fellow individual citizens. Social diversity too is the product of scepticism. Only if individuals are allowed to syncretically build upon, add and subtract from tradition and practice, without being required to dogmatically treat them as immutable rules, can diversity within a group emerge. This diversity is apparent and much celebrated in the land that is India, where the same festivals and rituals are celebrated in different ways by different communities and regions. Had the Hindu tradition been a dogmatic one, there would have been uniformity, not heterogeneity, in socio-cultural life. That is why the opposition from some factions of the Hindu right to multiple interpretations of, say, the Ramayana, is very unfortunate. S a m p l e I ssue

India under Jawaharlal Nehru and his successors decided to pursue a development model inspired by Soviet Russia, with the State enjoying a gargantuan participation in the economy. Under his leadership, our democracy came to be based upon the State brokering and negotiating settlements between groups of religions, castes and languages rather than guaranteeing equal rights and freedoms to each citizen. Inevitably, the State favoured some groups over others, needlessly anointing itself referee and vainly believing that it was best placed to decide what was right for whom. In both economic and social spheres, the Indian State exuded a certitude that chafed against the millennia-old ethos of the society it sought to govern. But the governance philosophy was not limited only to certitude; it was selectively condescending as well. While Hindu personal laws were modernised, Muslim laws were not. Perhaps Nehru wanted to cultivate a committed voter base as he pushed through his programme of leftist economics, for, despite being lampooned by the Right, Nehru always understood why India was united. In 1961, addressing the All-India Congress Committee session, Nehru had said: “India has for ages past, been a country of pilgrimages. All over the country, you find these ancient places, from Badrinath, Kedarnath and Amarnath, high up in the snowy Himalayas down to Kanyakumari in the south. What has drawn our people from the south to the north and from north to the south in these great pilgrimages? It is the feeling of one country and one culture and this feeling has bound us together. Our ancient books have said that the land of Bharat is the land stretching from the Himalayas in the north to the southern seas. This conception of Bharat as one great land which the people considered a holy land has come down the ages and has joined us together, even though we have had different political kingdoms and even though we may speak different languages. This silken bond still keeps us together in many ways.”

The “Secular” Confusion But Nehru’s philosophy of centralisation and certitude, carried forward with increasing

intensity by his successors, had disastrous consequences for economic development and communal harmony. However, it did not fail entirely—the carving out of linguistic states remains its biggest success. Today, the fact that Nehru’s successors are hard pressed to even acknowledge the civilizational unity that seemed obvious to India’s first Prime Minister shows how far they have travelled from their roots. In the quest to brand themselves “secular”, and guided by narrow electoral interests, they have transformed into deniers of India’s civilizational heritage. The fundamental flaw of modern India’s “secularist” philosophy is that it embodies what English-American political theorist and philosopher Thomas Paine had identified as the confusion between State and Society. Nowhere is this confusion more evident than in the way secularism and communalism are routinely touted as antonyms. The opposite of secularism is not communalism but theocracy, for secularism is a feature of the State—nationstates can be secular or theocratic. However, communalism is a feature of Society. In a free, democratic and liberal country, it is not only acceptable but sometimes even welcome for individuals to be “communal”. The more “communal” a society is, the more social capital it has. The networks of trust and cooperation that high social capital catalyzes bind together a society in myriad ways and thus encourage intercourse rather than creating distinctions, to use Paine’s words. It is important to recognize that the “type” of social capital is as important as the “quantum”, but the former is more a product of State policy than the latter. The degree of economic freedom determines the type of social capital, and the greater the economic freedom, the more likely it is that communities not tied exclusively to religious or ethnic identity will emerge. This same confusion between State and Society rears its head when India is spoken of as a “Hindu nation”. Whenever any politician, intellectual or public figure says so, there is much outrage and heartburn among a section of the left-liberal intelligentsia, who wail that secularism is in danger. But this intelligentsia fails to distinguish between Nation and State. Because of India’s civilizational ethos, demography and

To see and hear Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech at the moment of India’s Independence, use this QR code:

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There is a slow but sure realization that our idea of ourselves should evolve into seeing individual citizens as the unit of State policy history, India is already largely a Dharmic nation or society. However, it follows from the scepticism innate to India’s philosophical tradition that the concept of a theocratic “Hindu state” is illogical and absurd.

Contradictions of Indian Renaissance

To hear Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s speech in Calcutta on January 3, 1948, on his idea of the unity and diversity of India, use this QR code:

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But the left-liberal intelligentsia’s fears are not entirely unfounded. There is a section of the Hindu right that is certainly straying from the tradition that espouses scepticism and openness under the garb of protecting Nehru’s “land of Bharat” from foreigners. In a delicious irony, while purportedly protecting the land from “alien faiths”, the self-anointed protectors have come under the influence of foreigners in their interpretation and practice of the Hindu tradition, aping the antediluvian diktats—which disregard scepticism and deny openness—of the same traditions from which they aim to defend Hinduism. How else does one explain a “Hindu” faction that beats up defenseless young couples, yet subscribes to the same broad Hindu tradition that worships Krishna, famed for his relationship with Radha, with whom he was never married? How does one reconcile a self-styled “Hindu” faction that attacks women for drinking alcohol, when Hindu festivals are celebrated by men and women alike with the consumption of a drink made from the cannabis plant, and when the potent datura is offered in prayer to Shiva? These factions seem to have internalised the anti-blasphemy attitudes of medieval Turks, and the prudery of Victorian England. The Indian State has not been in consonance with Indian Society’s highest metaphysical impulses. Given that the Nehruvian experiment has largely failed, there is a slow but sure, if as yet unexpressed, realization that our idea of ourselves should evolve into seeing individual citizens as the unit of State policy, to quote Arun Shourie. It is this philosophy, the opposite of Nehruvian thinking, that is congruent with Indian Society’s heritage and best represents the possibility for India to emerge as a progressive, prosperous and strong nation for all her billion-plus citizens. India’s political right, with the Bharatiya Janata Party as its vehicle, has ensconced itself

on the national centrestage only over the last two decades. Under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the right embraced free market reforms despite a powerful faction committed to anti-liberal economic policies, thanks largely to the Prime Minister’s visionary leadership. This push for market reforms created a new constituency of right-liberals committed to economic and personal freedom. Competitive capitalism, as opposed to crony socialism, also helped dissolve the bonds of caste and community, as has been extensively documented by intellectuals like Chandra Bhan Prasad. Cut to 2014—a “low caste” leader from a supposedly “obscurantist” party winning a simple majority in the Lok Sabha, speaking about women’s rights with peerless eloquence from the Red Fort, is surely a first and something to S a m p l e I ssue

be celebrated by even cynics and opponents. When it comes to the normative underpinnings of our public discourse, the orthodox have been defeated decisively but not completely. But this is a defeat of orthodoxy and not tradition per se, for it is the tradition of our civilization to be flexible. Through the ages, Indian tradition has been shaped by modernizing influences of the time. Hence, the adjective Sanatana or “eternal” for India’s majority religion—and it is important to recognize that this is not an attitude limited to just one group. To take an advice given by the great poet Ghalib to Syed Ahmed Khan, we must focus on the present and the future and not the past. The Indian Renaissance will soon enter its third century, initiated by its encounter with British imperialism. While India was humili-

ated, looted and denuded like all colonies are, it got back a window to its ancient past—a culture that had influenced the Greeks with its scepticism, to which the Europeans looked up to for their own Enlightenment. The process of reform started off in Bengal, where the Hindu elite finessed the acceptance of modernity and Western education while rejecting the Christianity of colonial missionaries. The deist, egalitarian and relatively feminist views of Rammohan Roy and fellow travelers in the Brahmo Samaj were opposed by the orthodox Dharma Sabha. Today, an increasing number of educated Indians are closer to Roy’s ideas on rationalism and equality than that of the Dharma Sabha’s even as they confidently continue to idol worship and believe in “polytheism” as symbols of piety, diversity and tradition. De c e m b e r 2 0 1 4

Id e a s

Public intellectuals on the centre-right should rise above partisan bickering and apologia, and focus more on pushing ideas rather than individuals, and policies rather than parties A New Narrative for the Right

Rajeev Mantri and Harsh Gupta are co-founders of the India Enterprise Council.

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There are four levels of political consciousness, in increasing order of depth: party politics; public policy; philosophical; and psychological. At the party-politics level, public intellectuals on the center-right, be they animated more by liberal economic or civilizational concerns, should rise above partisan bickering and apologia, and focus more on pushing ideas rather than individuals, policies and philosophy rather than personalities or parties. Electoral politics should be left to the cadre, on the ground or increasingly online—and that too is a critical role in any democracy. However, idea entrepreneurs may come across as more credible if they keep reminding themselves that a political party is just a vehicle, and not an end in itself. At the policy level, there is room for substantial give and take. Both sides can agree to concede a little and drive change on connected issues such as Article 370 and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Special Marriage Act and concessions for minority educational institutions, and many other combinations. We have laws like the Right to Education, which does not respect private property and distinguishes between citizens based on religion. We have programmes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which is fundamentally Luddite in nature. We have welfare schemes like Right to Food, which do not understand choice and competition and instead force distribution of food to the needy through a government-run body in a centralized, top-down model rife with waste and corruption. This is just on the welfare side; on the supply side, besides a Byzantine bureaucratic structure, we also have the huge dearth of State capacity, with an woefully inadequate number of judges and police officers. This seriously undermines rule of law and justice delivery. Contracts are often not worth the paper they are written on, which drives Indians to work only with people they already know and trust, concentrating certain types of social capital within specific communities. At the philosophical level, the big question is what is it that the Indian Right is aiming for? Is there a Hindu version of Utopia or Ram Rajya besides rhetorical abstractions? If not, what

is the point of communal cold wars in the face of worsening demographics? The Right needs a different narrative. That is, the State must not discriminate based on identity, whereas individuals should be by and large allowed to do so, even if we find that personally reprehensible in some cases. Similarly, the antonym of an open economy is not a welfare state, but autarky—a protectionism-based, closed economic system that deludes itself into thinking it is perfectly self-sufficient. Competition-enhancing, supply-side reform is in no way inimical to the State taking care of the most needy, and indeed some competition should be introduced to make our welfare state more efficient. Swaraj is different from Swatantra. Individual freedom and local self-rule is very different from national independence. Finally, at the psychological level, the real debate is between self-belief and a deep-seated inferiority complex. After 67 years of Independence, why are we as a nation still seemingly scarred? Is it just the “millennium of colonialism”? The Hindu right should be pushing for free speech and free conversions, but is instead acting only defensively. Despite all the bluster, do most rightists believe that India can take on the world? We should not hide behind a victimhood complex, and then blame others of doing the same. The Indian nation will soon be the largest section of humanity but do we really belong at the high table, and what do we hope to contribute? These baubles that we have accumulated in the last generation or two—do we really believe that we deserve them? Do we say “Please” and “Thank You” to fellow Indians in the same way as we do to foreigners? Or is something other than politeness involved? Is one Indian as important as one non-Indian? The answer is no. Our economy will boom if we make prosperity, and not merely the removal of poverty, our aim. Our society will be free and open when we make self-improvement, and not the transfer of blames, our modus operandi. Instead of trying to bring others down, there’s no reason why Indians should not take responsibility for their destiny, channelize energies towards preparing to win, and as Krishna had advised Arjuna, do so without worrying about the outcome. S a m p l e I ssue

Jaithirth Rao

A Tactical Alliance With Ayn Rand Ayn Rand’s popularity in India can be used as the Trojan horse to direct India’s young away from the sterile paths of socialism, collectivism, Statism and State paternalism.

n interesting news snippet I ran across is that India has one of largest groups of young people in the world interested in Ayn Rand. This should constitute a great source of hope and excitement for all of us who are engaged in trying to spread the message of the overarching importance of individual freedoms. I have always felt that Rand was a pretty mediocre novelist. Her characters are wooden and stereotypes. Her situations tend to be simplistic binary ones. But of course, it is not the quality of her fiction that makes her such a compelling read. It is the fact that her fiction is merely a medium for conveying with extraordinary emphasis, her basic philosophy that the only way to achieve progress for humankind is by unleashing the energies of the dedicated individual. Collectivism will doom us to a world of envy and mediocrity, where individuals will cease to be free sovereign human beings and become servile cogs in a gigantic Statist wheel. Keeping Rand on Indian bestseller lists, disseminating her ideas, hosting seminars where Rand is the focal point of discussions, encouraging study groups to talk about Rand—these are ways we should consider to expand the attractive beachhead we already seem to have acquired among the young in India. Rand can, in effect, become the Trojan horse which we can leverage to direct India’s young away from the sterile paths of socialism, collectivism, Statism and State paternalism, so prevalent in our academic, political and bureaucratic spheres. Rand has an appeal to the hardheaded as well as to those attracted to

starry-eyed aspirational ideals. It is this combination of being grounded in consequential empiricism while appealing to the indomitable spirit within each of us that we need to keep pushing. The emergence of entrepreneurial energy in unlikely places, or places which people considered unlikely, is one more theme we can and should focus on. In this context, a book I would recommend is Defying the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs by Devesh Kapur, D. Shyam Babu and Chandra Bhan Prasad. This extraordinary book tells us how Dalits, who have been for centuries suppressed by a stultifying societal identity can liberate themselves as individuals and how so many of them have literally and metaphorically defied the odds and emerged as successful entrepreneurs. It is not State hand-outs or government doles that have been the key to the lives of these remarkable people. It is the call of the free market where the high quality of your product and the attractive

price of your service determines whether you succeed, not your surname or what accent you speak with, which caste you belong to or which college you attended. It turns out that the best cure for centuries of deprivation is simply having the right of free and unfettered entry into business—a right not granted based on birth or connections, a right not granted at all, a right that is grasped by sheer ability, resilience, chutzpah, risk-taking and hard work. No one turns down a good job in a factory because the owner is a Dalit; no one refuses a good bargain because the company providing the product has been started by a Dalit. The book is of course, inspirational— just like the story of any Ayn Rand protagonist. But it is also dedicated to the simple proposition of empirically verifiable consequentialism that a free market is the best antidote to entrenched casteism. Remember that in the licensepermit Raj, only the well-connected get licenses. But when you no longer need the State’s permission or license to start and run a business, guess what, out of the woodwork, dozens, hundreds, thousands of Dalit entrepreneurs emerge. Between Ayn Rand and the biographies of Dalit entrepreneurs, we have powerful weapons to encourage our young to turn their gazes and give their support to robust individualism, free markets and the enhancement of freedoms for all humans. The author is the former CEO of MphasiS, and was head of Citibank’s Global Technology Division. He is currently the Executive Chairman of Value and Budget Housing Corporation (VBHC), an affordable housing venture. Rao is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Swarajya De c e m b e r 2 0 1 4

“ E x p e r t s ”

Rupa Subramanya

The Interpreters of Maladies

Commentators on India in the foreign press tend to be Western “experts”, elite members of the diaspora or, if based in India, members of the Anglicised establishment elite

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S a m p l e I ssue

ho interprets India for the Western audience? This is not merely an arcane academic question, but for me has been brought sharply into focus by the spate of largely negative commentary pieces in the international media on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States. As representative examples, consider the blog post in The Economist by Patrick Foulis: “And suddenly, just after mid-day, Mr Modi is standing on the same floodlit spot (in Madison Square Garden) where Mick Jagger probably sang Sympathy for the Devil. Mr Modi ignores the dignitaries completely: idiots. He looks around the crowd smiling, savouring it all.” In The New York Times, Manu Joseph wrote: “(The Hindu diaspora backs the values) that triumphed with the ascent of Mr Modi, whom the Indian stockmarket adores, who complained in March that his political rivals were killing rhinos to make room for Bangladeshi migrants,

who has shown disdain for government spending on the poor and whom human rights advocates hold responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of Muslims in 2002, as did the American government, which barred him from entering the United States until a few months ago, when he became prime minister.” In his online column for Bloomberg, Pankaj Mishra went much further: “(Narendra Modi) may actually be the most dangerous of cliches, since the force unleashed by him can swiftly turn malevolent. India desperately needs a vision other than that of the vain small man trying to impress the big men with his self-improvised rules of the game.” Commentators for India in the foreign press tend to be Western “experts”, elite members of the diaspora or, if based in India, members of the Anglicised establishment elite. These three representative examples I have quoted roughly fit the paradigm. What you won’t hear are voices drawn from outside the establishment—such as members

Prime Minister Narendra Modi responds to an enthusiastic crowd in New York City

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Experience Narendra Modi’s speech at Madison Square Garden in New York City here:

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of the new middle class, largely self-made, or of the non-elite diaspora. In the language of post-colonial theory, these are the real “subalterns”—those whose voices are unheard, but instead are ventriloquised and caricatured. While the likes of The New York Times and Bloomberg assiduously exclude such dissenting voices from their pages, technology has given the dissenters an outlet in the social media, blogosphere and so forth. But for the most part, the mainstream narrative has remained firmly in the grip of an entrenched elite. This cosy state of affairs has been given a huge jolt with the overwhelming election victory of Narendra Modi. For the first time, a selfproclaimed outsider and vociferous critic of the establishment is in power, threatening the dominance of the Nehruvian consensus of the “idea of India”. Note the singular construction—implying that there is a monolithic and agreed-upon “idea” of what India is, rather than a plurality of competing and overlapping “ideas” which also give voice to the disenfranchised. What’s relevant in this context is that Modi’s support base is drawn largely from the very middle class who’ve powered India’s transformation into a modern economy since 1991, but have ironically been excluded from the telling of the tale. Equally, those middle class Indians forced to leave and seek opportunities abroad—including the many Indo-Americans and non-resident Indians (NRIs) who thronged Madison Square Garden—are scorned by the establishment elite (who had the luxury of crony connections that allowed them to prosper in India) and they too are excluded from the mainstream narrative. It’s telling that much of the criticism of Modi’s US visit centres not on any policy announcements he might have made or not made, but rather on attacking the non-elite middle class backgrounds and culture both of Modi himself and of his supporters. Contrary to what the orthodox Left would have you believe, and despite the hype, the communal violence in Gujarat in 2002 has little if anything to do with the many critiques of Modi being offered up. If it were really about 2002, why do the critics take such great pains to pour scorn and spew bile on the risen bourgeois (both domestic and in the diaspora)—the group, more than any other, which has come to represent Modi’s strongest support base? At the root of it, I would argue, is a deep-seated class bias that, try though they might, the critics find impossible to conceal. Modi and his supporters are most certainly

not “people like us”. The glaring irony is that many of these critics—who in India tend to come from the Left— are familiar with, or at any rate, ought to be sympathetic to, the ideas of post-colonial literature, the writings of Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha among others. Yet, they so often engage in the worst form of stereotyping, essentializing, caricaturing and more generally “Orientalising” their subject while at the same time ventriloquizing the voiceless—all of which plays perfectly for the intended audience in the West and Anglicised Indian elites both in India and abroad. As a prime example, those dissenting from the consensus view are often painted as crazy, irrational, religious fanatics, and so on. Establishment journalist Sagarika Ghose coined, to much acclaim, the term “Internet Hindus” to tar all critics of the left-liberal consensus as being radical Hindutva types, when these are at best a small minority. Sometimes this dislike is tinged with the hysteria of self-loathing and the insecurity it brings, as in the much publicised recent opinion piece cited above by that native informant par excellence, none other than Pankaj Mishra—a piece widely shared and lavished with praise by the establishment, but which would make any sensitive reader cringe. As Mishra writes, with barely suppressed disdain: “Not for him the barely audible speeches of his Oxford-educated predecessor; he brought a Bollywood fantasy to Madison Square Garden because that’s what his admirers have voted for. It actually reminded me of Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (Raju Becomes a Gentleman), one of many Bollywood films to assert that rising Indians can conquer the world in their own style.” Yet, Mr Pankaj Mishra lets the mask slip ever so slightly. There are many instances in world literature of the aspiring bourgeois who tries to rewrite the norms of society and ends up making a fool of himself—such as, for instance, Moliere and Lully’s classic Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, with which, one assumes, someone of Mishra’s presumed cultural sophistication is familiar. Yet his natural cultural reference point, to clinch (as he believes) his argument against crass Bollywood culture, is a Bollywood film! As it happens, Mishra was not born into the Anglicised elite establishment, but has climbed his way into an honorary membership in the club. As the writer Patrick French bitingly puts it: “Pankaj has obviously been on a long journey from his self-described origins—in what he calls a ‘new, very poor and relatively inchoate Asian society’—to his present position at the S a m p l e I ssue

Pankaj Mishra must be especially riled that Modi and his many fans at Madison Square Garden are a reminder of his own socio-economic origin in India, from which he’s fled so nimbly heart of the British establishment, married to a cousin of the prime minister David Cameron. But he seems oddly resentful of the idea of social mobility for other Indians.” But the membership is honorary. Mishra can’t quite muster the serious scholarship to be considered a “true intellectual” beyond reproach, nor, despite what we presume to be a valiant effort, can he quite emulate the faux Oxbridge accent that is so prized in the clubs of Lutyens Delhi. He must therefore, one presumes, be especially riled that Modi and his many fans at Madison Square Garden are a reminder of his socio-economic origin in India, from which he’s fled so nimbly. As my friend, the writer and art historian Deepika Ahlawat so aptly put it to me: “Note Mishra’s fetishisation of formal education

throughout, his mockery of Modi’s background, his disdain of popular culture, and his Socratic horror of democracy. This is a vicious and yet tragic piece. Because Mishra stares at Modi and sees only himself. Just less popular, less powerful and immensely less significant.” One might also add the delicious irony that Mishra’s disdain for the middle class NRI is the flip side of what used to be the middle class NRI’s disdain for everything Indian—two sides of the same coin of self-loathing. Yet, the truly abiding irony of this cri de coeur is that when Mishra damns the middle class NRI and their brethren back home, he is, one can only conclude, staring into a cesspool of disgust which reminds him of his own middle class origin in small-town India. But then this makes him just the pitch perfect native informant.

Rupa Subramanya is Editor-at-Large at Swarajya. She is a Mumbaibased economist, policy analyst, commentator and co-author of Indianomix: Making Sense of Modern India (Random House India, 2012).

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Id e a s

Sanjeev Sanyal

The Architecture of Hinduism An investigation into Hinduism as a complex adaptive system

anatana dharma or Hinduism has long suffered from a very basic problem—the difficulty of defining it. One can describe a particular sect or philosophy, but it is not easy to explain the whole. Thus, it is not uncommon for people to ultimately fall back on saying that it is a “way of life”. Unfortunately, such a definition is neither a meaningful description nor of analytical value. If anything, it causes a great deal of confusion by suggesting that Hindu religion is identical to Indic culture—the two are obviously linked but not exactly the same. The purpose of this article is to investigate the systemic logic of Sanatana Dharma as a whole and the processes by which it evolves. It is not concerned with the philosophical content or daily practice of any of the constituent sects, traditions and philosophies. Most world religions, particularly those of Abrahamic origin, are based on a clearly defined set of beliefs —a single god, a holy book, a prophet and so on. These are articles of faith or axioms from which each of these religions is derived. This is why the terms religion, belief and faith can be used interchangeably in these cases. In contrast, it is perfectly acceptable in Hinduism to be a polytheist, monotheist, monist, pantheist, agnostic, atheist, animist or any combination thereof. Thus, Hinduism is a religion but not a faith, although constituent sects or philosophies can be termed faiths or beliefs. Instead, it should be thought of as an organic, evolving ecosystem of interrelated and interdependent elements that are constantly interacting with each other (and with the outside world). There are many systems that fit the above description—financial markets, economies, cities, the English language,

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ecological systems and so on. These are all examples of “complex adaptive systems”. Note the contrast between the organic and evolving dynamics of such systems and the static laws of Newtonian mechanics. In turn, this has important implications for how we understand Hinduism and manage it. Not the Sum of Its Parts One of the most obvious differences between complex adaptive systems and Newtonian mechanical systems is that the former is not the sum of its parts. A mechanical system like a car is the sum total of all its parts as put together to an “intelligent design”. In contrast, a city is more than the sum of all the buildings and a biological ecosystem is not just the sum of all the plants and animals. This is why complex adaptive systems cannot be described neatly from any one perspective. The English language cannot be defined through even the most detailed description of its grammar. Similarly, the most detailed description of the Taj Mahal would not define Agra. Yet, speakers of English—and the citizens of Agra— have little difficulty identifying and using the language and the city respectively. The same is true of Hindus—their seeming difficulty in defining Sanatana Dharma poses no problem in recognizing and practicing their religion. Moreover, the evolving and mutating nature of complex adaptive systems im-

plies that even the most detailed description is not just insufficient but fundamentally wrong over time. For instance, given the constant absorption of words and usages into English, an exclusive reliance on Wren and Martin’s grammar to understand the language would miss the point. This is also true of Hinduism where even the most detailed reading of Dharma Shastras and Smritis would not give you the correct picture of the lived experience of the religion over time. History-Dependent but Not Reversible One of the common characteristics of complex adaptive systems is that they are path-dependent, that is, they carry the imprint of their historical evolution. Thus, most cities, biological ecosystems and living languages will show the layerby-layer accumulation of their history. Readers will no doubt recognize how this applies to Hinduism. Notice how this is distinct from Newtonian mechanics. Two identical footballs, in identical conditions, will behave in exactly the same way if exactly the same force is applied to them. There is no historical memory in the system, and it does not matter what was done with the two balls before we subjected them to this experiment. Complex adaptive systems, however, have an additional property—irreversibility. This means that the system will not reverse to its origin even if all historical events were reversed. Thus, revers-

It is perfectly acceptable in Hinduism to be a polytheist, monotheist, monist, pantheist, atheist, or any combination thereof. Thus, Hinduism is a religion, but not a faith S a m p l e I ssue

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ing history will not take English back to Old Saxon but to some other language. Reversing the events of human evolutionary history will not take us back to our ape-like ancestors but to a new species. Similarly, reversing urban history will not take a city back to the original village settlement. More likely, one will get a deserted city like Detroit or a museum city like Venice. Again, notice the difference with Newtonian mechanics where a perfect reversal of factors will take the system back exactly to its origin. An implication of these characteristics is that Hinduism carries its history within it but cannot return to a pure origin or “Golden Age”. It is necessarily about constantly evolving and moving forward even as it draws inspiration and ideas from its past. The holy books, traditions, customs and tenets of Hinduism should not be seen as a path to an ideal “Kingdom of God” or “Caliphate” to which everyone must revert. Rather, they are the accumulation of knowledge and experience. Critics may argue that idea of “Ram Rajya” contradicts this point but this is a misunderstanding. Hindus draw inspiration from the idea of Ram Rajya as a time of prosperity and rule of law, but it is not a vision for a return to the Iron Age. No Equilibrium State Yet another characteristic of complex adaptive systems is that they do not have an equilibrium or steady state in the long run. Again, note the contrast with Newton’s laws. Thus, the English language will keep adding words and usages with no tendency to stop. Similarly, successful cities will keep changing and/ or expanding. However, a corollary is that if the system begins to contract, it can keep contracting with no tendency to selfequilibrate. Thus, a city like Detroit kept declining even though theory would suggest that falling real estate prices would attract people back. Financial markets too behave in this way—they will keep rising past what people think is a “fair value” and then fall back well below— hardly spending any time at the so-called equilibrium. This behaviour has important implications for how to manage complex adaptive systems. First, it means that managers should not attempt to hold the system at some preconceived steady

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state. Rather, they need to accommodate the fact that the system is characterized by “increasing returns to scale” which can push the system into spiraling expansions or contractions. This does not mean that one should not attempt to manage such ecosystems—far from it. Financial markets, cities and even ecological systems can benefit from active management. However, the management should allow for constant movement. A city mayor or a financial market regulator who insists on holding the system to a static equilibrium will either fail or effectively suffocate the system. Although Hinduism does not have a centralized leadership, the above characteristics have many implications for how Hindus think about their religion and manage its future. For instance, they suggest that Hindu leaders refrain from being too prescriptive of where Hinduism should go in the long run. Much better that they focus on continuously updating and reforming the system on an ongoing basis while taking care to maintain internal diversity. The lack of uniformity may seem like a disadvantage in the short run but is a big advantage when dealing with an unpredictable long-term future. This is analogous to a species maintaining genetic diversity as a bulwark against epidemics and other shocks. Another possible implication of this intellectual framework may be that one needs to be less enthusiastic about “anti-conversion laws”. These have been proposed by some activists as a way to “protect” Hinduism in some Indian states but these laws are based on an idea of static equilibrium. Our analysis, however, suggests that such laws will have little benefit if the Hindu community is shrinking (for whatever reason). In other words, a defensive tactic cannot work if the community is in a downward spiral in a particular area. It would be far better to focus on expansionary strategies to re-inflate the system. These could include intellectual and cultural innovation, social and missionary work, building alliances with other like-minded religious traditions and so on. Some of these efforts can be derived from the past, but it is perfectly alright to use completely new strategies. The Importance of Flexibility One of the learnings from the study of complex adaptive systems is that

flexibility will always triumph over brute strength in the long run. Indeed, inflexible systems can sometime disintegrate very suddenly even if they look outwardly strong. Take, for instance, the evolutionary history of life on earth. The dinosaurs were big and strong, and dominated the planet for millions of years. Yet, they suddenly disappeared as they could not adapt to changed circumstances—except for a few species who adapted to become birds! Similarly, the Soviet empire, for all its nuclear warheads, collapsed overnight because it could not adapt. China adapted and thrived. A similar story can be told of cities. Oncegreat cities like Birmingham, Detroit and Kolkata were unable to adapt to deindustrialization. In contrast, by repeatedly reinventing itself, London has not only survived deindustrialization and the loss of Empire, but has been able to retain its place as the world’s financial capital. This has very important lessons for Hinduism. Indeed, the religion has survived for so long because it was able to continuously evolve though internal reform, innovation and absorption. Sometimes it was the slow accumulation of small changes, sometimes it was a rapid shift led by a reformer like S a m p l e I ssue

Adi Shankaracharya or Vivekananda. There were also many instances where Sanatana Dharma absorbed a foreign idea and made it its own—Hindu temples and idol worship is possibly inspired by Greek influence (Vedic Hindus only used fire altars). Interestingly, Hinduism’s flexible adaptive architecture may not have appeared entirely by chance but may have been deliberately set up by the ancient Rishis. Thus, Hindu scriptures are divided into Shruti and Smriti. The former are said to have been “heard” from the gods and consequently are canonical. Strictly speaking, only the first three Vedas—Rig, Sama, Yajur— are considered Shruti (although many would also include the Atharva Veda). All other sacred texts, including the much revered Bhagavad Gita, are considered Smriti. The Smriti are “remembered’ and therefore considered of human origin— the works of great thinkers, compilations of traditions, and so on. Some of them may be highly regarded but they are not canonical. This architecture has had important implications for Hinduism. The Shruti texts may be canonical and provide general principles but they are wonderfully

Analyzing Hinduism as a complex adaptive system shows us that its key strength has been its ability to evolve, adapt, innovate open-ended (just consider the Nasadiya Sukta or Creation Hymn in the Rig Veda to understand what I mean), whereas the Smriti texts are more specific but not canonical. This means that one can keep adding new texts and ideas forever, including texts that contradict previous Smriti texts. The much criticized Manu Smriti, by definition, can simply be replaced or revised if Hindus so wish. To conclude, analyzing Hinduism as a complex adaptive system provides many important insights into the functional architecture of Sanatana Dharma. It shows that the key strength of Hinduism has been its ability to evolve, adapt and innovate. This ability needs to be actively enhanced and strategically deployed in order to keep Hinduism healthy. For instance, it may be time to revive the tradition of writing new Smriti texts, a practice that went into decline in medieval times. Some orthodox Hindus

may consider this presumptuous but, as already discussed, it would be in keeping with the inherent logic of Sanatana Dharma. This essay merely illustrates some of the possibilities presented by the systemic approach to understanding Hinduism. It is not meant as a comprehensive treatise but an attempt to initiate a new way of thinking about Sanatana Dharma. The author hopes that others will build on it. Sanjeev Sanyal, currently global strategist with one of the world’s largest banks. is a Rhodes Scholar and Eisenhower Fellow. Ho was named “Young Global Leader 2010” by the World Economic Forum at Davos. A version of this article will be published in Probodhani, a collection of essays on Hinduism edited by Saradindu Mukherji, published as part of the World Hindu Congress, New Delhi, 21-23 November 2014

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P o l i t i c s

Jayant Chowdhury

Are Muslims in West Bengal Flocking to BJP? “We joined the BJP out of our own free will. The colour of Islam is green and the BJP’s colour is saffron. Together, we make for India whose flag has both these colours.”

hat the BJP is on the ascendant in West Bengal is well known. That the ruling Trinamool Congress, worried over this development, has been letting its goons loose on BJP supporters and activists, especially in rural areas, has also been widely reported. But a significant detail lies buried under the blood and gore of these continuing clashes that erupted immediately after the Lok Sabha polls: the BJP lost five of its supporters in these clashes and all five were Muslims! Muslims, as BJP state president Rahul Sinha attests, form a considerable chunk (about 15 per cent) of the new entrants in the saffron party. What makes this very noteworthy is that this is happening in a state whose chief minister has gone to great lengths to fashion herself as a champion of the minorities. Her controversial overtures to Muslims include sops like monthly stipends to muezzins (those who give the call for prayers at mosques) and imams (priests), which have not gone down well with members of other communities. While many of the Muslims who have joined the BJP in recent months had been Left supporters, there has been quite an exodus of Muslims from the Trinamool as well. The reasons are manifold. In keeping with the culture of retribution and violence that has characterized politics in West Bengal ever since the

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Communists came to power in the state in 1977, Trinamool Congress supporters and activists attacked, killed and maimed Left activists after Mamata Banerjee won the elections on the crest of a promised ‘paribartan’ (change) wave in 2011. They were merely avenging what they were subjected to by Left cadres when the Left was in charge in Bengal. Since Muslims formed a large chunk of Left supporters, they were at the receiving end of the Trinamool cadres’ retribution. But the Left parties, which had collapsed quite like the Berlin Wall after their decimation in the state assembly polls, were in no position to offer any protection to their supporters. Thus, for three long years till the summer of 2014, Left supporters, left in the lurch by the party apparatchik, bore the reign of terror that the Trinamool thugs meted out to them. And then things took a sudden dramatic turn with the BJP, with Narendra Modi at the helm, sweeping to power at the Centre earlier this year. Suddenly, the BJP emerged as the only party that could pose a challenge to and check the marauding Trinamool goons in Bengal. No wonder, then, that Left supporters, including Muslims, changed colours from red to saffron. The story of the other lot of Muslims who have been flocking to the BJP since the Lok Sabha polls is equally interesting. Trinamool, S a m p l e I ssue

point out political observers, is a breakaway of the Congress with all the ills and warts that pockmark the face of the Grand Old Party. Factionalism, thus, is rife in Trinamool—a party that lacks any ideological moorings and whose ‘leaders’ and office-bearers are there mainly for power and pelf. The jostling for power and its attendant benefits among various leaders of the party has led to intense rivalries that often find expression in violence. Leaders, and supporters of the weaker and marginalized factions within Trinamool have been facing the same plight as that of Left supporters and, in order to save their skin, have been joining the BJP. Many of them are Muslims. But then, say sociologists like Nikhil Chandra Chatterjee who used to teach the subject at Calcutta University, to say that Muslims are joining the BJP in Bengal for protection from Trinamool would be too blithe an explanation. The popular belief is that the BJP is, at best, apathetic towards Muslims and, as such, anathema to members of the community. Going by this belief, Muslims wouldn’t have joined the BJP even to save their skin. As many political observers point out, had the BJP really been a pariah party for Muslims, a far better option for them (the Muslims) would have been to swallow whatever humiliation they suffered at the

hands of Trinamool goons and seek shelter under Mamata Banerjee’s aanchal. That they haven’t done so, preferring instead to join a party that the self-proclaimed and selfserving secular cabals in India love to taint as communal and majoritarian, perhaps speaks volumes about Muslims’ changing perceptions about the BJP. As state BJP chief Rahul Sinha contended just the other day, had the BJP really been antiMuslim as the party has been portrayed, Muslims ought to have shied away from it. There is merit in his argument. More so because the Muslims who have been joining the BJP did have other options. They could have easily opted for the Jamaat-i-Islami which has turned away from its earlier bonhomie with Trinamool and is now pitting itself against the ruling party in Bengal. Jamaat leader Siddiquallah Chowdhury has been quite critical of Mamata Banerjee in recent months and could have been a far better option for Muslims to rally around, had they really been seeking protection from Trinamool. Also, the attar king Bajruddin Ajmal-led All India United Democratic Forum (AIUDF) which has emerged as a powerful force in neighbouring Assam and had set up base in Bengal a couple of years ago could have been another option for

BJP President Amit Shah addressing a rally in Kolkata on November 30. The Trinamool government tried to stop the rally from taking place.

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Id e a s

Seetha

The Crony Capitalism Scare India is a better place than it was during the heydays of socialism because there is more transparency today. Crony capitalism has been put on watch; crony socialism never was.

E Joining the Jamaat or the AIDUF would have guaranteed Muslims in Bengal complete protection, since Mamata Banerjee, hyperconscious of her ‘secular’ image, would never have allowed attacks on members or supporters of these outfits

Jayant Chowdhury is an avid observer of and commentator on politics and society in Bengal and eastern, including northeastern, India.

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Bengal’s Muslims. The AIUDF has announced it will contest the next assembly polls in the state in 2016. That Bengal’s Muslims did not opt for these two parties and chose, instead, to join the BJP is significant in itself. What is clear is that for the Muslims who were facing attacks from Trinamool, the BJP was definitely not the only option before them and they had the Jamaat, a political outfit, and the AIUDF that is perceived as a Muslim political party like the Hyderrabad-headquartered All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen, to join if they wanted to. If anything, for these Muslims, joining the Jamaat or the AIUDF would have guaranteed them complete protection since Trinamool would not have dared attack members or supporters of these two outfits. Mamata Banerjee, hyper-conscious of her socalled ‘secular’ image, would never have allowed that. But the BJP, to her and her goons, is fair game and the Muslims who joined the BJP knew that. And despite this knowledge, they joined the BJP. This proves that the theory that Muslims are joining the BJP in Bengal to save themselves from the marauding Trinamool is not the whole truth. The reality is that a growing number of Muslims in Bengal do not buy the propaganda that the BJP is a communal party. In urban and semi-urban areas, many literate and even semiliterate Muslims perceive Narendra Modi’s development plank very favourably. Most Muslims, as expelled CPM leader Abdur Rezzak Mollah, who was a senior cabinet minister in

both the Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee governments, says, have started seeing through the hollowness of Mamata’s touted proMuslim gestures. Mollah, who retains considerable clout in south Bengal, warned Muslims at a convention in Kolkata a couple of days ago against Mamata’s “minority communalism”. He believes Mamata’s gestures and sops to Muslims are hollow and insincere, aimed at only securing the community’s votes. His charge finds resonance among many Muslims. So does the BJP’s ‘sabka saath, sabka vikaas’ promise. Add to that Narendra Modi’s image as a nononsense incorruptible leader whose stated objective is fast-paced inclusive development that is in sharp contrast to the Saradha scamtainted, corrupt Trinamool Congress government that lacks any vision and objective and is characterized by misgovernance. Is it any wonder, then, that Muslims in growing numbers are joining the BJP? Khalil Sheikh, the bereaved father of 17-yearold Sheikh Jasim who was shot dead and then hacked by Trinamool goons at Chowmandalpur village in Bengal’s Birbhum district on November 16 for having joined the BJP, told visiting mediapersons: “We joined the BJP out of our own free will. The colour of Islam is green and the BJP’s colour is saffron. Together, we make for India whose flag has both these colours.” Khalil could well have been speaking for all his brethren who have joined the BJP, much to the anguish of Mamata Banerjee and other socalled secularists. S a m p l e I ssue

ver since the Supreme Court order on the coal block allocations came, the Socialist Syndicate has been on a roll. Smug smirks on their faces, they point out that the entire mess has proved every warning of theirs right—the private sector is unscrupulous, market forces have no morality and opening up the economy in 1991 has only encouraged crony capitalism. Fortunately, the defenders of free markets have been the first to welcome the order, seeing in it an opportunity to clean up a mess that is the result of what Firstpost’s R. Jagannathan calls crony socialism. The order has paved the way for putting in place a more transparent system where the scope for hijacking by a crooked politician-businessman nexus is minimised. Yes, certainly, the camaraderie between business people, politicians and bureaucrats is more open and unapologetic than in the pre-1991 days, when it was covert and sly. Yes, corruption seems to have increased. In their book, Corruption in India: The DNA and the RNA, Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari have noted that reforms seem to have thrown up opportunities for big-ticket corruption and that the frequency and monetary value of scams have grown. But the corporate sector also has never been under as much scrutiny. Indian jails had never played host to as many top business leaders—B. Ramalinga Raju, Jignesh Shah, Shahid Balwa, Sanjay Chandra, Neeraj Singhal, Subrato Roy. And notice that no one is crying about witch hunts. There is recognition and acceptance now that if businessmen try to game the system, they will have to pay for it.

In pre-1991 India, managing the environment was more important than managing the market. In post-1991 India too, businessmen do manage the environment with the help of obliging politicians and bureaucrats and by silencing the media with threats of pulling out ads and filing defamation cases. But they succeed only up to a point. Beyond that, they are brought up short against market agencies (rating agencies, market analysts) and independent regulators and the odd crusading NGO. How did the cooking of the books of Satyam Computers get outed? Stockmarket analysts and institutional shareholders raised the red flag, when Satyam approved the acquisition of Maytas Infra and Maytas Properties in what Raju later admitted was a bid to replace fictitious

assets with real ones. Raju had enormous clout with both the Congress and the Telugu Desam in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh. What led to the comeuppance of Jignesh Shah? It was a payment crisis at the National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL), promoted by his company, Financial Technologies, that saw an empire collapse like a house of cards. No government patronage could save it. How did the flamboyant Subrato Roy Sahara, who flaunted his proximity to politicians cutting across party lines, go behind bars? Roy had defied SEBI, which had restrained two of his companies from taking deposits from the public. He tried every legal measure to get his way, but ultimately nothing worked. Political clout did not save any of these businessmen. The limit to managing the environment is the result also of an increase in competition, again a post-1991 phenomenon. Earlier, there was a limited number of players in any sector, making manipulation and suppression of dissent easier. That is no longer the case. There are also tougher corporate governance and disclosure norms in place, far more stringent than when the state was micro-managing businesses. Yes, frauds still take place. Market players are not always scrupulous. For every case that independent regulators crack down on, there are allegations of them turning a blind eye to two more. There are still regulatory grey areas. The rule of law is not as robust as it needs to be. And yet, India is a far better place than it was during the heydays of socialism. Crony capitalism has been put on watch; crony socialism never was. Seetha is Contributing Editor of Swarajya De c e m b e r 2 0 1 4

Id e a s

Bibek Debroy

Creating artha is desirable, as long as it is done through legitimate means and the wealth created is used for desirable purposes. Without artha, dharma and kama can’t be pursued

The Desirability of Artha Selective and biased reading from texts gives the false impression that Hinduism is against wealth creation. In fact there is a healthy emphasis on creating wealth, with limited expectations from the State.

cross several texts of Hinduism, dharma, artha and kama are described as the three objectives of human existence. Dharma is difficult to translate in English. In different contexts, it can stand for duty, ethics, rule of law, code of conduct and the spiritual or metaphysical. Artha is wealth or prosperity, and kama is desire, but not necessarily interpreted in the narrow sense of sexual desire. Transcending dharma, artha and kama is moksha—the ultimate goal of emancipation or liberation. At a superficial level, there is an impression that moksha is superior to dharma, dharma is superior to artha and artha is superior to kama. Also at that superficial level, there is an impression that the template of good behaviour is based on varnashrama dharma, the four varnas and the four ashramas. To state the obvious and without defending its subsequent hereditary aspects, the four varnas represented nothing but economic specialization. If one leaves aside sacrifices, Brahmanas engaged in studying and teaching. Kshatriyas ensured security, rule of law and jurisprudence, imposing and collecting taxes. Vaishyas engaged in agriculture, animal husbandry and trade, while servitude was the lot of Shudras. As for the four ashramas, brahmacharya was the first, followed by garhasthya, leading to vanaprastha and finally to sannyasa. Since this is known, why waste words on something that is obvious? The problem lies with quoting from a text, ignoring the context. Take the Dharma shastras. Who were they primarily written for? They were primarily written

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for Brahmanas and Kshatriyas, especially Kshatriyas who were kings. Words like brahmacharya and sannyasa are symptomatic. Brahmacharya is usually understood as a period when one studies, which is fine. But it is also understood as celibacy, which is not necessarily true. I can cite chapter and verse to illustrate that brahmacharya was also interpreted, not as celibacy, but as indulging in sexual intercourse within the permitted norms of behaviour, such as with one’s own wife. Similarly, sannyasa did not mean renouncing everything and resorting to a life of mendicancy and becoming a hermit. Within the garhasthya (householder) stage, one can also practice sannyasa, as long as one sticks to some norms. The contested proposition is thus the following one. That, with its emphasis on the next world and dharma and moksha, Hinduism wasn’t concerned about creating wealth. It was instead about pursuing objects that weren’t material. As a counterpoint, you may think of Kautilya’s Arthashastra. But I didn’t really have this text in mind. Arthashastra is about rajadharma, the duties of a king. Arthashastra is about what we would today call government and governance, the enabling framework for wealth creation. I have in mind the Mahabharata instead, especially, but not only, the sections that have to do with Bhishma’s teachings to Yudhishthira when he is lying on the bed of arrows—in the Shanti Parva and Anushasana Parva. You will also find similar statements in Vana (or Aranyaka Parva) and to a lesser extent in Udyoga Parva. Incidentally, the Mahabharata also has a substantial section on rajadharma. In terms of describing the economy and

society, these are much richer than Arthashastra. The Mahabharata isn’t only about the core Kurukshetra War between the Kauravas and the Pandavas and it is unfortunate that these sections aren’t usually read. I am deliberately not going to cite chapter and verse. But three messages come out very strongly. First, creating artha is desirable, as long as that wealth creation is done through legitimate means and wealth created is used for desirable purposes. Without artha, dharma and kama can’t be pursued. Artha is the base. Second, brahmacharya (understood as the period of being a student) is a stage that everyone goes through. But after that, garhasthya is superior to resorting to vanaprastha or sannyasa. Had there not been householders, who would have sustained those who resorted to vanaprastha or sannyasa? Third, as one progressively goes down the cycle of yugas, Satya (Krita) yuga, Treta, Dvapara and Kali, tendencies towards dharma go into a decline. In Satya yuga, people were naturally inclined towards dharma. No longer. Hence, the role of the king and the carrot and the stick in ensuring rule of law. This proposition, about the importance of artha and garhasthya, isn’t new. For instance, it was also stated, without detailed probing, by Swami Vivekananda in several of his lectures, including the one named Karma Yoga. However, even when it is recognized, little is written about a householder’s role in creating wealth. For example, a lot of the discussion gets bogged down in the five daily sacrifices a householder must perform—towards Brahma (studying), towards ancestors (funeral sacriS a m p l e I ssue

fices, having offspring), towards gods (offering oblations into the fire), towards guests (feeding them) and towards nonhuman species (feeding them). These are respectively known as Brahma-yajna, pitri-yajna, deva-yajna, manushya-yajna and bhuta-yajna. Note that manushya-yajna isn’t quite charity, though it is often understood that way. There are strong injunctions against giving to the wrong person at the same time. Note also another point. If the king is equated with the State, there were limited expectations from the State, beyond

security, law and order and jurisprudence. For instance, public works were driven by individuals, not necessarily by the king. Who imparted skills training? Not the State, but the counterpart of what may be called guilds. On jurisprudence, it is interesting that the Mahabharata gives a listing of 17 types of civil suits, in order of priority, which the king should pay attention to. Right at the top was breach of contract. On the criminal side, there is an argument that rich people should not be imprisoned. That’s a drain on the public exchequer. Instead, monetary penalties

should be imposed on them. It is the poor, who are unable to pay fines, who should be imprisoned. This is a rather modern line of argument. Who created the wealth? Within that varna framework, given the occupations Brahmanas engaged in normally (exceptions were permitted for exigencies), wealth must have been created primarily by Vaishyas, with some Kshatriyas and perhaps even the odd Shudras thrown in. Whenever there was greater urbanization and trade, this wealth creation must have increased. In reacting to the texts and quoting from them, it is important to remember this, in addition to the chronological timeline. Why quote from the Dharma shastras, if we know those were primarily meant for Brahmanas? Remember that most of the support (including financial) for the Buddha came from Vaishyas. Hence, if there is an impression that Hinduism is against wealth creation, that’s because of selective and biased reading from the texts. There is a healthy emphasis on creating wealth, with limited expectations from the State. Indeed, there are arguments about a balance between the three objectives of dharma, artha and kama. But that’s not an argument against artha. Bibek Debroy is a noted economist. His ongoing 10-volume translation of The Mahabharata is one of the most seminal works in contemporary Indology. He is a member of the Swarajya Editorial Advisory Board De c e m b e r 2 0 1 4

E c o n o m y Surajit Dasgupta

9 Things Arun Jaitley Can Do The government is moving in the right direction, but rather slowly. It needs to go beyond procedural changes and strike at some very basic wrong premises that hold back India’s growth. Here are 9 major reform areas that come to our mind.

inance Minister Arun Jaitley has promised “a whole set of second generation reforms” in the Budget proposals that he is going to present before Parliament in February 2015. He said the reforms called for some “undoing”: allocation of resources without the executive exercising discretion, a rational and reasonable tax regime and some procedural changes in, among other things, land laws. 1. Beyond Incrementalism It is in the language of the third that the status quoism that the minister has been accused of, manifests. Procedural changes as well as freeing business from legal hassles had marked the announcements in his first Budget, but that clearly did not satisfy the liberal intellectuals who campaigned for a BJP government or the people who shunned their old favourites to vote for a Narendra Modi-led dispensation during the Lok Sabha elections to see an employmentgenerating, paralysis-free policy in place. 2. Land Acquisitions It is wrong premises—more than lengthy procedures—that stunt India’s growth. In the case of land, for example, government must cease to be a broker. A hands-off regime will not only set the ruling party free from the accusation of being guided by cronies, but will also send personal property prices hurtling down while helping stop generation of black money needed to book a piece of earth in this country. In case of acquisition, let it be a direct deal

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between the industry and the land owner; in case of housing, let there be no registration hassles. Government’s job should be restricted to oversight of compliance with regulations. Once land is acquired, an increase in its value will not lead to agitation by farmers who would regret having charged less for the land that is no longer theirs. For, only the State can be subjected to activism; private parties can’t. As the Lok Satta Party had put it last year in reaction to the UPA government-made law, “in the guise of helping the farmer, the Bill creates all sorts of bureaucratic hurdles in the shape of committees at the district, state and central levels for clearing land acquisition”. The party’s then president Dr Jayaprakash Narayan had said that the children of farmers who parted with land should be equipped with skills and provided jobs in activities that follow land acquisition. He recalled that he had the privilege of training 8,000 children of farmers who parted with their land for the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and providing permanent jobs to all of them. The Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act is completely silent on this aspect. The people get a raw deal, too. More than 50 per cent of land allotted to special economic zones (SEZs) across the country remains idle. The SEZs’ very purpose was defeated with no significant increase in employment even as the government’s revenue foregone was to the tune of Rs 83,000 crore between 2007 and 2013, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). S a m p l e I ssue

Will the NDA government change the scenario? On 12 November, The Indian Express reported: “Worried about the adverse political fallout of watering down provisions of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, the NDA government is unable to decide whether to go ahead with its plan to amend the Act in the forthcoming winter session of Parliament or try and build a larger consensus on the issue. Sources said the government is even toying with the idea of taking the ordinance route after the winter session of Parliament to effect key but politically sensitive changes to the Act. In fact, the government had earlier also mulled issuing an ordinance to give effect to the changes but the move did not fructify.” True, this columnist had explained to Swarajya’s readers in his 23 October article on swarajyamag.com that the new government was committed to reforms, but it would usher in changes keeping their political implications in mind. However, that cannot perpetually stay as the government’s excuse, especially after the BJP’s remarkable victories in Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections. If 288 seats in Parliament were not enough to instil confidence in Team Modi, the BJP will be in a better position to send its representatives to the Rajya Sabha with more states in its kitty, which its Upper House MPs can represent by the time February

2015 arrives. Still, will “procedural changes” be all that the people will get from Jaitley’s next Budget? 3. How about disinvestment? The government is indeed moving in the right direction, but rather slowly. The disinvestment programme for 2014-15 seems to have kicked off in right earnest with the Cabinet clearing the sale of government stake in four major public sector companies—Steel Authority of India (SAIL), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Coal India (CIL) and National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC). But what about several other businesses that, according to Modi’s pre- as well as post-election speeches, government had no business to be in? The Indian State is a strange authority that once nationalised domains where competition was possible and privatised those where it wasn’t. Tata Airlines, Oriental Life Insurance Company and other insurance companies, 20 privately owned banks etc were once forced to sell their stakes to Indira Gandhi’s government. Air India, Life Insurance Corporation, etc sprung up in their place and banks were now State-owned while retaining their old names in most cases. On the other hand, State electric and water supply contracts are being gifted on a platter to private industries, even though if the customer is not satisfied with the services, he can in no

Jaitley’s first Budget did not satisfy the liberal intellectuals who campaigned for a BJP government, or the people who shunned old favourites to vote for an employmentgenerating paralysis-free policy regime

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A 4.1 per cent fiscal deficit target, slack tax revenues and the challenge of raising $9.5 billion from asset sales could force spending cuts way switch from one supplier to another. Shouldn’t Government stop running hotels and airlines and being the country’s chief moneylender forthwith?

Scan this to go to Arun Jaitley’s offical site. Unfortunately, he does not seem to have provided a link where visitors can comment:

4. Smart Welfare When it comes to replacing subsidies by direct benefits transfer (DBT) via Aadhaar, bank accounts, Su-Pay, debit cards, and mobile payments, for instance, the subsidies on cooking gas and kerosene will soon be transferred to bank accounts of beneficiaries. The UPA government was handicapped by the Supreme Court judgement that said Aadhaar could not be forced down people’s throats for DBT. But Jan Dhan Yojana coupled with Aadhaar reaching Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand means an increase in the number of people with unique identification numbers to 1 billion by the end of 2015. Government must now rely on an anticipated human reaction; when some people get the benefits and others don’t, there will be a rush among those left out to secure their Aadhaar cards. DBT, therefore, must not be delayed any further. 5. Coal Mining The NDA government moved on 20 October to open up the coal industry to commercial mining, signalling the most serious shift in 42 years toward allowing private players full participation in the sector. But procrastination is writ large on its announcements. While the industry will be opened as and when required, no timeline has been set. Further, no foreign company will be allowed to do commercial mining. This isn’t totally liberal, but acceptable nationalism. Once coal-bearing land is taken back from private companies whose mining licences were cancelled by the apex court in September, the government will hold an electronic auction of the mines for steel, power and other companies for their own consumption in three to four months; this transparency is welcome. Now the status quo: No changes are being made to the structure of Coal India. 6. Fixing the Railways Liberals were quite happy with the first Railway Budget of this government, but then came the rude shock of the removal of D.V. Sadananda Gowda from the ministry. News of the

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Cabinet reshuffle was immediately followed by a report that the former Railway Minister was not able to get his job done. Why was he then put in the Law Ministry that is crying for judicial reforms? But this article is about economic reforms. Mercifully, a go-getter Suresh Prabhu has been put at the helm. The new committee on rail restructuring will come out with multiple reports on different themes. Before the next Railway Budget, the committee’s first interim report should be submitted. If the government desires, these recommendations can be implemented in a phased manner. 7. Labour Law Reforms India’s labour laws are archaic, suffering from a 19th century impression about capitalists, thereby making capital investments virtually impossible. Rigid laws discourage firms to introduce new technology, as that sometimes entails retrenchment. This deters FDI because of the fear that it would not be possible to dismiss unproductive workers or to downsize during a slowdown. Hence, getting FDI into export-oriented, labour-intensive sectors in India has not been fully achieved. The Industrial Disputes Act (1947) has rigid provisions such as compulsory and prior government approval in the case of layoffs, retrenchment and closure of industrial establishments employing more than 100 workers. A 21 days’ notice and employees’ consent are required if the job content or nature of work of employees needs to be changed, as per the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act (1970). The Trade Union Act (1926) provides for the creation of trade unions where even outsiders can be office-bearers. This hurts investor faith and restricts economic growth. Amendments to some restrictive provisions of the Factories Act (1948), the Labour Laws Act (1988) and the Apprenticeship Act (1961) have been cleared by the Cabinet and are set to be tabled in Parliament. The punitive clause that calls for the imprisonment of company directors who fail to implement the Apprenticeship Act of 1961 is sought to be dropped. Employers will no longer be required to absorb at least half of the apprentices in regular jobs if the amendments pass parliamentary muster. Doubling the provision of overtime from 50 hours a quarter to 100 hours in some cases and S a m p l e I ssue

from 75 hours to 125 hours in others involving work of public interest is on the cards. Companies with 10-40 employees will be exempt from having to furnish and file returns on various aspects, helping avoid procedural delays. But there is no proposal to increase low worker productivity in the country. 8. Insurance Needs Reforms Too In the insurance sector, thankfully, the BJP, as the then main Opposition party, had not made as much of a noise of protest as it had made against FDI in retail. It’s not just about increasing FDI in the sector from 26 per cent to 49 per cent. The proposed law gives more power to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) to decide on expenses of the insurers. This, among other things, allows the regulator to stitch a new commission structure for distributors. The Bill also puts the onus on the insurer to tighten its underwriting norms. Currently, an insurer has a window of two years after a policy is bought to reject a claim on grounds of any mis-statement or fraud. After two years, the insurer can still reject a claim on grounds of fraud such as intentional suppression of material information. The Bill, however, gives insurers three years to establish this, after which the insurer will not be able to reject a claim on any grounds. This will curb the practice of underwriting a cus-

tomer at the time of claim instead of at the time of buying the policy. The Bill and the proposed amendments gives more power to the regulator and brings in several customer-friendly reforms. It defines quantum of penalty on specific violations such as insurance sale through unlicensed entities and clearly prohibits damaging sales practices such as multi-level marketing. 9. Let’s go easy on Taxes While the Finance Minister said before his last Budget—and has maintained so thereafter— that he is personally for a wider tax net but lower tax rates, the exemption was upped in his Budget by a measly Rs 50,000 per annum. Elsewhere, how much RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan’s reluctance to reduce lending rates has curbed inflation is unknown, but the middle class, whose lives run on how efficiently they manage the monthly liability of instalments, has certainly got no relief. Goods and Services Tax is now the buzzword; hopefully, the states, which have been offered a good share from the consolidated tax, will not object. But what happens to competitiveness of indigenous products with imported ones in the scenario to follow is not clear. Further, with a tough fiscal deficit target of 4.1 per cent of GDP, slack tax revenues and the challenge of raising a record $9.5 billion from asset sales could force Jaitley to cut spending, risking a fragile economic recovery.

The new committee on railways restructuring will submit its first interim report before the next Railway Budget. If the government desires, these recommendations can be implemented in a phased manner

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D e f e n c e

Padma Rao Sunderji

Did the Germans Try to Sell Us a Lemon?

Fighter jet maker Eurofighter’s plans to sneak in through the backdoor looks set to backfire

t is the largest defence deal in the world and India is the buyer. India will spend $28-30 billion (Rs 173,600-186,000 crore) on 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) to meet the urgent requirements of the Indian Air Force (IAF) and replace its ageing Soviet-era aircraft. It is a deal that, for the IAF, is imperative and long overdue: there has been a dramatic rise in both fatal accidents involving its old planes but also in security threats in the volatile South Asia region. It is a deal that, since the first tender in 2007, tested and eliminated the US’ F-18 E and F16-E, Russia’s MiG-35 and Sweden’s Saab 39 Gripen, narrowing down the choice to two aircraft— both made in Europe. Finally, in 2012, India rejected the Eurofighter Typhoon built by the European Air Defence Systems (EADS) consortium (Germany, UK, Spain and France) and settled on France’s Dassault Rafale. Negotiations are in their last and final stage, over pricing. Dassault is confident of a wrap-up in 2015. But Indian media reports suggesting that price negotiations with Dassault are stuck over some issues seemingly provided a ray of hope for the Germans. For, two years after India settled for Dassault, German representatives and those of EADS have renewed and intensified their lobbying for the Eurofighter in New Delhi. In September, both German ambassador in India Michael Steiner and his boss, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier confidently told members of the German media that “negotiations with India are still on”. “To our knowledge, India is still considering two offers

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(Dassault and Eurofighter),” Steinmeier told ARD TV. “The Indians will decide on the one or the other.” All German media unquestioningly and without exception reported the same. But defence experts are perplexed at the Germans’ renewed bid to gain a ‘sideway entry’ into a deal which is just short of being finalized. “The possibility of the purchase of the Dassault Rafale being cancelled at this advanced stage is extremely remote,” said Rahul Bedi, defence analyst for Jane’s Defence Weekly. “There is a never-exercised-before procedure under which India can, under very extreme and desperate circumstances, cancel the import of strategic equipment, but it is not likely to be invoked. Backtracking on such a huge deal is also a question of India’s credibility and reliability.” Bedi cites other, even more important reasons: One, India would have to give adequate and acceptable reasons for cancellation. It would require tremendous political courage because a government that does so, would immediately come under attack from the Opposition for possible corruption. Two, cancelling the deal now would mean retendering. In the most optimistic of scenarios, a repeat of the entire procedure up to delivery of the aircraft could take up a further 20 years. Three, given its urgent requirement and growing regional security concerns, the IAF, which is satisfied with Dassault, is pressuring the government to sign the deal so it can start flying the new MMRCAs as soon as possible. Four, if the Dassault deal is completed by 2015, the first aircraft will be delivered only in 2018 and the last in 2025. To tide over the wait till 2018, France has reportedly offered two of S a m p l e I ssue

In October, the German army discovered ’a considerable number’ of defects in the tail of the Eurofighter Typhoon jets. Other countries, like Austria, too have been complaining

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If the Dassault deal is done by 2015, the first aircraft will be delivered in 2018. To tide over the wait, France has offered two of its Dassault squadrons immediately

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its own operational Dassault squadrons with immediate effect. This is a standard procedure which is good for pilots to train and get used to the new aircraft. What is also likely to take the wind out of the sails of the German and EADS lobbyists wooing India’s Defence Ministry all over again, are developments in Europe a couple of months ago. Just weeks after Steinmeier made a renewed pitch to sell the Eurofighter to India and not for the first time, the German army in October discovered ‘a considerable number’ of manufacturing defects in the tails of some of its Eurofighter Typhoon jets. Defects in the aircraft have also been reported in other European countries like Austria, whose bankrupt defence ministry has additionally been struggling with the astronomical prices of spare parts for the sophisticated Eurofighter. Despite these problems with the aircraft in Europe and even after India had settled on the Dassault, the Eurofighter manufacturers had made a presentation to then Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi, when it became clear that he would win the national elections. Aware that ‘going indigenous’ is high on Modi’s list of priorities, EADS is reported to have given him a detailed presentation of a plant they would set up in India, and even dangled the prospect of using the plant as a manufacturing hub for further exports. Could this newfound German confidence be based upon that meeting with Modi? Is there a likelihood of India purchasing the Eurofighter in addition to the Dassault? “Absolutely not,” says Bedi. “India already operates about 26 platforms needing 26 lines of repairs, servicing etc. to keep the equipment operational. Further, and since the requirement is for three generations of fighter aircraft (Dassault being the medium range) and we are also buying heavy and light fighters from the Russians, there is no money either.” Bedi agrees that indigenous manufacture is something which is bound to be attractive to the Indian government. Even the initial restriction to local manufacturing to Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (under UPA II) has, in the interim, been further expanded—to the greater comfort of Dassault—to include some private domestic industries. And yet, he firmly rules out a cancellation of the Dassault deal. But the German media reports of the Eurofighters’ manufacturing defects—which, perhaps due to language issues, have hardly been picked up in the Indian media—raise the disconcerting question: Have EADS and the Germans been trying to sell India a lemon? Quoting the German army’s own website, a report in German magazine Focus in October

stated that a “large number of manufacturing flaws” were discovered in the tail of the Eurofighter during a routine inspection. Though EADS assured the armed forces that the flaws in the tail did not compromise flight safety, the latter immediately reduced the ‘down-time’ (that is, the permissible flying hours till the next inspection), from 3,000 to 1,500, citing they were doing so as an ‘additional safety precaution’. To “avoid disadvantages and in the protection of its own interests”, the German army also “decided not to accept delivery of any more Eurofighters for the time being.” Worryingly, Focus also reported that of the German army’s total inventory of 108 Eurofighters, only 74 are theoretically accessible, of which only 42 are combat-ready. The discovery by the German army in October unleashed concerns in neighbouring European countries. Austria’s Wiener Zeitung reported that the country’s defence minister— already struggling with cuts in the defence budget—is considering legal action against EADS. Between 2007 and 2009, Austria had taken delivery of 15 first-generation Eurofighters. By May 2011, 68 defects that had led to emergencies had already been chronicled. Austrian defence expert Gerald Karner told S a m p l e I ssue

the daily that all sophisticated aircraft—like the Eurofighter or even the US F22—do frequently have glitches. But though some countries which needed fighter jets on a must-have basis like Saudi Arabia had purchased the Eurofighter, it was not as though dozens of others were queuing up to buy the jet either, he said. Indeed, manufacturing flaws in the Eurofighter have been reported frequently since way back in 2004. So could another reason for EADS’ enthusiastic offer to Modi to set up a manufacturing hub in India and thus offer what seems like a win-win for both sides, be the phenomenal rise in manufacturing costs of the Eurofighter in Germany itself? According to a 2013 report in Germany’s Spiegel-Online, the Eurofighter took 25 years to be developed. Till date, the German air force itself is yet to receive all 180 jets it had originally planned to order. Meanwhile, Berlin’s entire budget of $18.6 billion will have been used up on merely 108 jets. The Spiegel report also pointed out that the last batch of Eurofighters ordered by Germany—the Tranche 3B—which boasts the most sophisticated technology to date—will cost the government billions more than envisaged. Germany’s defence ministry reportedly said that a

decision had not yet been taken. Importantly for India, the site reported that there were plans to raise money for Tranche 3B by selling the older, first-generation aircraft delivered to the German air force to generate several hundred million Euros. But those jets are outdated by European standards, and NATO partners are only marginally interested. Given all these angles, Germany’s renewed —if futile—attempt to reverse the Indian Defence Ministry’s decision may well be aimed at tackling some of the myriad problems that have beset the Eurofighter in Europe itself. Defence expert Bedi says that Germany is not alone. Ever since the media reports suggesting roadblocks in negotiations with France’s Dassault, there has been a renewed attempt by all stakeholders including the Russians to launch fierce campaigns against one another. But even if the Germans were to undercut the French offer multifold, a reversal of the deal with the French manufacturer, at this advanced stage, still remains virtually impossible. “The nature of Indo-French relations is very different to that with Germany,” Bedi says. “We have nuclear cooperation with France, we buy a lot of other defence equipment from them. No government would want to jeopardize all that.”

The Indian Air Force, which is satisfied with the Dassault Rafale, is pressuring the government to sign the deal so it can start flying the new planes as soon as possible

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A s i a

Hiroyasu Suda

New Dynamics, New Chapter Much has appeared in the Indian media about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to Japan in September. But what do the Japanese think of Modi?

W When Satyajit Ray met Akira Kurosawa:

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hen Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose Japan for his first official overseas trip, diplomatic and business circles in both countries sat up and took note. “There are no two other countries in the region that can provide as steadfast and solid a base for economic development without much risk,” wrote Akihiko Tanaka, head of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), in the daily Yomiuri Shinbun. Importantly, Tanaka argued that Japan’s forging good relations with South Asian countries, notably India, is not merely a reactionary trend to China’s expansionism. Instead, the JICA chief sees it as an effort to lay a firm and long-lasting foundation for development in South Asia: one in which Japan can play a much more effective and dynamic role. Any India-watcher in Japan will tell you that it has been obvious for long that India holds enormous potential for Japan. And yet, a look at the past 23 years since India began opening up its markets to foreign investors reveals that Japan’s pace of investment in India, compared not only to western countries, but even other Asian economies like Singapore and South Korea—has been rather slow. The reasons for Japan’s reticence were not very different from those of many foreign investors. The Japanese too were overwhelmed by the chronic ‘India problem’: a combination of politics, bureaucracy and corruption. Consequently, for many Japanese companies, China and South East Asia remained the

main playing fields. Even though they were evaluating India’s unique potential as a ‘sleeping elephant’, Japanese investors prioritized expanding their businesses in geographically closer Asian markets first. But despite the sluggishness, Japan’s presence in India maintained a steady upward curve. Take New Delhi alone. In the 1990s, the number of Japanese residents in the Indian capital was around 1,000. In 2014, there are about 5,000 Japanese residents in the National Capital Region, most of them in the suburban business areas of Gurgaon. Since 2000, Tokyo’s polity has witnessed chronic stalemate. Several prime ministers have been toppled after the briefest terms in office. This unsteady scenario posed serious challenges to Japan’s overall business competitiveness. Asia’s most industrialized nation began to lose out to China and South Korea. As we struggled with domestic political turbulence, these two countries consolidated their presence across Southeast Asia, especially in the automobile and home electronics sectors. Of course, many Japanese remain confident of their prowess in sophisticated technology, which remains at the global forefront and still sells successfully in many countries. Indeed, current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe mirrors this faith. Abe and his team have made it clear that they are determined to rescue Japan’s economy from the doldrums, plagued as it has been by deflation over the past two decades. It is therefore entirely in keeping with that goal that Abe has set out to reassess Japan’s S a m p l e I ssue

In Abe’s vision, India would always be a ‘good partner’. But to improve relations with New Delhi, there were several hurdles to be crossed global partnerships and identify the ‘good’ ones that will be of reciprocal benefit. Ever since his Liberal Democratic Party came to power in a landslide election victory in December 2012, and much like Indian PM Modi, Abe has travelled more extensively than any of his recent predecessors, visiting almost 50 countries in barely two years. In Abe’s vision of who or what constitutes a ‘good’ partner, he had taken note of the potential India holds for Japan. But to improve relations with New Delhi, there were several hurdles to be crossed. The first was the nuclear disarmament issue. India has not signed Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for the discriminatory nature of the treaty between the ‘Haves’ and the ‘HaveNots’. But in Japan, the world’s only victim of nuclear weapons, strong anti-nuclear sentiment persists in some sections of public opinion: all governments have to factor this in to all policies, at least to an extent. Consequently, every initiative to improve relations with India must bear this section of opinion in mind. Since Abe’s first government (2006-07) faced

declining popularity at home, his idea of forging ties with India did not make substantial progress. This was followed by the global financial crisis of 2008, which crippled subsequent Japanese governments, already struggling with conflicts within both the Liberal Democratic Party as well as the socialist-inclined Democratic Party. Japan’s global strategy lay neglected. By the time the general elections of December 2012 came round, a deep distrust of all political parties prevailed among Japanese voters. All of them expected any new government to revive the stagnant economy. Much like the public mood ahead of the elections in India earlier this year, it is these voter expectations in Japan that lent a big momentum to Abe’s return to political centrestage. Given the significantly greater public support, Abe’s second coming has proved far stronger than his earlier tenure. He has begun to tackle the most crucial issues head-on: reviving Japan’s economy and lending consistency and pragmatism to domestic policies.

To see the absolutely unique beauty of Japan:

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Modi wih Japanese Prime Minister Abe at the Toji temple in Kyoto, a world heritage site that houses ancient Buddha statues

Hiroyasu Suda is a veteran Japanese journalist who has been Bangkok correspondent, New Delhi bureau chief, Hanoi bureau chief and senior editor in Osaka and Nagasaki, for Kyodo News. The ‘old India hand’ currently alternates between Bangkok and Tokyo and is a much sought-after senior analyst of South and South East Asian affairs

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Over the past 15 years, China’s expansionist policy became apparent and Tokyo’s relationship with two neighbours, China and South Korea, turned sour over territory and differing views on mutual history. Increasingly, Abe and Japanese business leaders began to share the view that Japan needs partner countries in areas beyond East and South East Asia. Abe was thus able to close the circle and return to his old idea of improving ties with India. The opportunity to employ Japanese technology to develop India and other countries connected with India, the Middle East and Indian Oceanrim African countries, is a stepping stone to that new dimension of Japan’s foreign policy. The bilateral relationship with India has already seen a significant development: Tokyo has made it clear that it will cooperate in the transfer of nuclear technology for peaceful use in spite of the domestically prevailing anti-nuclear sentiment. This clearly indicates a more pragmatic stance towards business. Another area of interest for Japan is the introduction of its rapid railway system in India. Of course there are other competitors—Germany, France and China—who are as keenly interested. Further, Japanese businesses are also considering some parts of India as hubs in the supply chain of Japanese goods to the world market. Such industrial estates already exist around Bangkok. These bases produce car parts and audio electronic goods for companies like Nissan, Panasonic and Canon to export to the world. But when Thailand was hit by severe

floods in late 2011, some of these factories were forced to suspend operations, leading to a sharp drop in their production of goods. Having another hub in India would certainly minimize this kind of risk. The landslide victory of the BJP in the May elections made news in Japan. But even Modi’s earlier reforms during his 12 years as Gujarat chief minister, such as streamlining the state bureaucracy and revitalizing the style of doing business were already viewed here as big successes. So it is no coincidence that Abe’s long-held interest in India has been energized through the emergence of the Modi government, one that is more ambitious to push for reforms than its predecessor was. Modi, on his part, set the ball rolling. By choosing Japan for his first official visit as Prime Minister, he sent a clear signal to Abe that he, too, views Japan as one of the most important partners for India’s development and economic reforms. Of course, sceptics abound in both countries: they want to wait for ‘substantial results’ before commenting on Narendra Modi’s promises to ‘rebuild’ India. Given India’s complexity of religions and castes, bureaucratic red tape and ironically because of its strong democracy, many Japanese know that India is a notoriously difficult country to govern. Yet, positivity has the upper hand. “The current scenario in India is vastly different from the past,” said a Japanese business leader. “This is a time of rare optimism, it has come after a decade. We must not lose the momentum.” S a m p l e I ssue

N e i gh b o u r s

Jaideep Prabhu

How India Lost Out In Afghanistan The Indian government squandered Afghanistan’s goodwill through years of vacillating and incoherent policy towards the country. This failure will have repercussions in the entire region.

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here used to be a time, not long ago, when Afghanistan could not get enough of India. Just in 2013, in addition to the usual delegations on business, health, security, and other sectors, then Afghan president Hamid Karzai paid three visits to India. Then suddenly, a coolness developed in India-Afghanistan relations when Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai took over as President after the Afghan elections of April 2014. Just like that, the hot romance cooled down to casual acquaintance. However, things were hardly that sudden. In fact, the Indian government squandered Afghanistan’s goodwill through years of vacillating and incoherent policy towards the country. Where decisions were taken, they went unhonoured as many times as not, and Delhi almost appeared disinterested in the future of the central Asian state. Most critically, India repeatedly deflected requests to play a greater role in the security of the nascent Afghan democracy. India’s historical ties to Afghanistan are well known; every Indian and Afghan leader likes to reflect upon them in front of the camera and analysts usually make at least a cursory reference to them. Yet India’s crisis in the mountainous country has little to do with either Mauryan conquests or Mughal control of the country. More importantly, the policy paralysis India

has exhibited in Afghanistan is symptomatic of deeper flaws in the Indian foreign policy apparatus that will have repercussions not just in the country but in the entire region. In October 2001, less than a month after the September 11 attacks, the United States and its allies launched the invasion of Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Freedom. The United States was quick to ask India to contribute towards its Global War on Terror. India showed a willingness to cooperate in terms of intelligence and logistics but firmly refused to play a military role in Afghanistan. Washington appealed to Delhi several times during the tenure of India-friendly president George W. Bush—even for Indian boots on the ground since 2006, but Raisina Hill did not budge. Perhaps some felt that the United States owed India for creating a grand mess in the region in the 1980s in the first place. Riding on the coattails of US military power comes easy to the world, especially when things are going well. However, by 2009, Americans were growing tired of a war on the other side of the planet that supposedly degraded terrorist networks but did not yield any visible prize. In May 2011, Osama bin Laden was found and killed in Pakistan, barely a stone’s throw away from a military facility of an American ally. Domestic public pressure to leave became S a m p l e I ssue

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Former President Hamid Karzai’s relations with Pakistan were as toxic as they were good with India. Just in 2013, he had visited India thrice

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stronger, now that the mission seemed truly accomplished—the Afghan government had been established in 2004 and it was their responsibility to safeguard their own wellbeing. Strategists warned, however, that the Taliban was not yet dead and would come back the moment NATO left Afghanistan; the Afghan National Security Force was as yet too weak to resist the Taliban on its own. The United States was desperate for allies in the region to hold on to the gains it had made. Already, as American plans to retreat became more pronounced, the Taliban began a small surge against local and foreign forces. India’s reticence to become involved in Afghanistan’s security has come at a high price. Even as talk of downsizing the American commitment to Afghanistan appeared in the US presidential election campaign in May 2008, the Indian embassy in Kabul was the target of a terrorist attack that left 58 people dead and 141 wounded. It was targeted again in October 2009, killing at least 17 more. In February 2010, terrorists levelled the Arya Guest House, killing nine Indian doctors. In August 2013, the Indian consulate in Jalalabad suffered a suicide bomb attack with 10 casualties, and the Indian consulate in Herat was attacked in May 2014, thankfully with no injuries. Indians have also been victims of kidnappings and executions in the central Asian version of the Wild, Wild West. Many of these attacks have been traced back to Pakistan and its notorious intelligence service, the ISI. The US retreat had not only encouraged the Taliban to launch their own Spring Offensive but also emboldened their patrons in Islamabad to try and dislodge Delhi’s

foothold in their backyard. In fact, Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff from 2007 to 2013, had publicly called for minimizing India’s role in Afghanistan in exchange for stability in Afghanistan. India’s inaction in the face of these provocations is curious. On the diplomatic front too, Delhi’s actions can at best be described as tepid except when it has come time to criticize the United States. However, India has helped neither itself nor the region with any proposal of its own. For example, from Delhi’s perspective, Iran holds the key to Afghanistan’s reintegration into South Asia. Yet India has done little to persuade the United States to make an exception to its sanctions on Iran so that India could continue the highway from Delaram to Zaranj through Milak to Chabahar. This route would not only open Afghanistan up to trade but also the rest of Central Asia. At the same time, Chinese companies trade routinely with Iran in arms, auto parts, electronics, mining, oil, power generation, textiles, toys, transportation, and more. China’s trade with Iran has increased dramatically since 2007 when it replaced the European Union as Iran’s largest trading partner, and is set to hit $44 billion this year. India has largely complied with the spirit of the US sanctions by reducing its oil dependency on Iran and disconnecting its financial links with the country. So timid has Indian diplomacy been that Delhi was excluded from the International Conference on Afghanistan, held in Istanbul in January 2010, largely due to Pakistani pressure. Last year, Delhi’s outcry at the preposterous attempt S a m p l e I ssue

by Washington to distinguish between a “good Taliban” and a “bad Taliban” was also ignored. Despite vociferously denouncing the withdrawal of US troops, Delhi remained predictably yet frustratingly quiet during the negotiations between Afghanistan and the United States over the Bilateral Security Agreement in 2013 and early 2014. If anything, India’s policy towards Afghanistan since the US invasion can be best described as masterly inactivity. To be fair, Raisina Hill has not been entirely inert: India has extended over $2 billion in aid to Afghanistan, the most it has ever extended to any country. India is the fifth largest bilateral donor to Afghanistan, after the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany, though Islamabad remains Kabul’s largest trading partner. Besides the much-publicised Delaram-Zaranj highway, India has also built power lines from Uzbekistan to Kabul, constructed the Salma Dam for hydropower in the Herat province, invested in the mining sector at Hajigak (although work has progressed so slowly that Kabul has threatened to take the contract away from the Steel Authority of India), and provided support in education, health, and telecommunications. India opened up four consulates in Herat, Jalalabad, Kandahar, and Mazar-e-Sharif, and in 2007, also pushed for Afghanistan’s entry into the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to better integrate it into the region’s economic networks. Howbeit, India would do well to look to its own history—if it ever opened its archives— to understand that developmental aid would never mean the same as military assistance. The United States and Japan were the largest

sources of developmental aid to India since independence and yet it was the Soviet Union that won the affection of the Indians with their MiG fighter jets and Uralvagonzavod tanks. India’s military aid to Afghanistan is not quite nil: Delhi trained 576 Afghan troops in 2012 and that number increased to 1,000 in 2013; over 650 officers and special forces commandos have also received training in India. According to Indian officials, there are also some 500 Indian paramilitary forces deployed in Afghanistan to guard Indian assets as they develop Afghan infrastructure. Finally, in May 2014, India worked out a deal with Russia whereby Delhi would pay Moscow to manufacture and deliver weapons to Kabul. Though the specifics of this deal are unknown, brand new weapons would cost more and cut into the volume of armaments Afghanistan is looking for. India would also pay to repair old equipment the Soviets had left behind in 1989. This is not enough for Kabul, which has been blunt about what they expect from India: second-hand weapons such as MiG-21 fighter jets, T-72 tanks, Bofors howitzers, AN-32 transport aircraft, MI-17 helicopters, trucks, bridge-laying equipment, radios, radars, other equipment critical to command and control, and significantly more military trainers. India’s excuses so far have been baffling, from claiming that India does not have surplus weapons and Pakistani refusal to grant overflight permission, to requiring Russian permission to manufacture weapons for export under license. Admittedly with the benefit of hindsight, it is nonetheless unclear why Delhi could not anticipate Kabul’s requests and work towards resolving these log-

New Afhan President Ashraf Ghani is an academic and technocrat who comes to the table with a blank slate and is willing to work with Islamabad to reduce terrorism in his country

The US Navy Seal who killed Osama bin Laden: “I shot him twice in the forehead...It was closure.”

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Afghan troops fighting the terrorist attack on the Indian embassy in Herat in May 2014

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jams once it received the first requests from Washington and Kabul in 2006. Seeing India’s hesitation, Afghanistan has reached out to other regional powers such as China and Russia and has been less prickly towards Pakistan, from whom it had once rejected any military aid, even training. For Kabul, Delhi was the ideal partner as it provided aid with no strings attached, given the considerable overlap of interests between the two countries. India itself invited China, Iran and Japan to find ways of providing for Afghanistan’s security. As most realists would point out, this was a grave mistake by the Indian government—one

never offers other governments an opportunity to enter one’s own backyard, especially when one of them harbours hostile intentions and has been known to support a rival neighbour. The real reasons for India’s vacillating Afghanistan policy are twofold. The first is that Delhi continued to subscribe to the foolish policy of placating Islamabad at all costs lest the latter escalate the situation in Kashmir and elsewhere. Over the last decade, India has approached Pakistan with a soft touch because of domestic vote bank politics and/or a mental paralysis that prioritizes looking noble and restrained over achieving results. While there S a m p l e I ssue

was no lessening of support for terrorist activity against India from Islamabad, Delhi genuflected to the half-baked logic of brotherhood and Pakistan as a co-victim of terror. As one analyst argued, India already deploys almost 10,000 troops abroad under the UN flag; it really would not have been that difficult or alien an experience for India to put boots on the ground in Afghanistan if it so decided. The second reason for India’s inertia is that its ruling political party was too inward-looking and occupied with domestic rivalries to formulate an effective national policy. Foreign policy was federalized, with Sri Lanka being

the purview of Tamil Nadu, Bangladesh falling to West Bengal, and Pakistan coming under the jurisdiction of Kashmir and its chapter in Delhi. There was no foreign policy community in the country that could grill the government as citizens became withdrawn from governance with scam after scam rocking the country and institutions crumbling one after the other. In April and May 2014, both India and Afghanistan went to the polls. In India, the BJP won in a landslide, the first time any party captured more than 50 per cent of the seats in the Lok Sabha in 30 years. Even before Narendra Modi took his oath of office, he received two calls from Karzai. The appointment of Ajit Doval as National Security Advisor gave hope to the outgoing Afghan president that India may at last step up to its regional responsibilities. In Kabul, Ghani took office; unlike his challenger in the polls, Abdullah Abdullah, Ghani had no ties to India. He had not fought alongside Ahmad Shah Masood against the Taliban. Ghani is an academic and a technocrat, educated at the American University of Beirut and Columbia University before teaching at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins and joining the World Bank. While Karzai’s relations with Pakistan were as toxic as his relations with India were good, Ghani comes to the table with a blank slate and is willing to work with Islamabad to reduce terrorism in his country. Now, India fears that this may increase Pakistan’s influence in Kabul yet again. Ghani is by no means anti-India. However, having watched the South Asian giant vacillate for years, he is following the prudent path by dealing with those ready to do so. Delhi fears that Ghani might overcompensate for his predecessor’s brusqueness with Pakistan and cooperate with them to reduce India’s footprint in Afghanistan in exchange for reducing support to the Taliban. The pity of it all is that Delhi remained aloof while it had Afghanistan trying to woo it and is now realising its folly, albeit under a different government, when Kabul has turned away to other partners. In many ways, Afghanistan is a litmus test for Delhi’s ascendance as a regional power. One of the many lessons a regional power must understand is that soft power, while useful, is meaningless without hard power. For a decade, Delhi proudly recalled that the most popular TV serial in Afghanistan was an Indian soap opera, Kyun Ki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, as proof of the superiority of its soft power over US military force. Yet Kabul burned, and as they used to say back home, dum Romae consulitur, Saguntum expugnatur—while Rome deliberated, Saguntum was captured.

Jaideep A. Prabhu is a specialist in foreign and nuclear policy; he also pokes his nose in energy and defence-related matters

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Id e a s

Paddy Padmanabhan

The Long Goodbye Why Indian guests linger at the door, and other timeless habits.

ome years ago, I happened to be in India for Diwali. Perhaps the first time in 10 years that I was in my hometown of Chennai for this most important festival in my culture. My good friend Shiv had invited me to his house for a Diwali party, which I was delighted to accept. What time should I be there, I asked. Oh, 7 pm should be fine, he said. I planned carefully, adjusted for traffic delays driving across town, and showed up exactly at 7 pm. Shiv wasn’t home, and his wife was getting the house ready for the guests. From the look of things, the guests weren’t expected anytime soon, and the hosts weren’t quite ready either. However, she graciously invited me into the house since I was already there— a bona fide guest who had showed up on time. I walked in, and I saw one other guest, sitting a little uncomfortably and examining the interior décor with great interest (it’s amazing how one can fixate on the most mundane of things when you have nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to talk to). He looked up at me with great relief, like he just set eyes on a fellow traveler in the Sahara who just might have some drinking water. Turned out he was from Minneapolis. It’s close enough to Chicago that we’re practically neighbours (relative to the distance we had both traveled to be in Chennai that evening). Our host, the aforementioned Shiv, a charming man with a mischievous grin, walked in and announced– oh, so the Americans are here! Just as we expected. He and his wife went on to explain that we “Americans” are always on time and hosts have a dilemma on their hands every time they invite Indian Indians and Western Indians home. The westerners will always show up on time, the Indians never

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will. As it turned out, the Indian guests arrived between 60 and 120 minutes later that evening. A random walk by any definition. I routinely suffered this embarrassment in the US, where I live. We have many Indian friends who are gregarious, party-throwing types for whom the concept of time is somewhat loose. We used to be always among the first guests to show at any party. One time, we showed up at the appointed hour and learned the hostess was upstairs taking a “nap”—at 8 pm. There was no food or drink anywhere to be seen, no other guests. The hapless husband poured wine in paper cups for us while we waited for her to wake up. That was the day I swore never to show up on time ever again for an Indian party. But then, it got me thinking about this strange cultural issue. Why are Indians never on time for parties? More specifically, for Indian parties, and even more specifically, when the party is hosted by close friends. And all this is just about getting to the party. It’s a whole another matter when it’s time to leave. There are broadly three types of departures—early departures, mass departures, and the stragglers—distributed nicely along a bell curve. Early departures: Guests have another party or two to hit up before the end of the evening, so they need to go. Mass departures: Group behaviour brought on by the sight of other guests beginning to gather up their belongings to leave. Stragglers: Ones who won’t leave till every last drop in the whisky bottle has been consumed. They all have one thing in common. The Long Goodbye. Indian guests who have spent the last

three hours catching up with every other guest, will suddenly remember many things they need to talk about just as they are about to leave. So between goodbye hugs all around, the conversation drags as they announce they are about to leave (the hosts will always protest—do you need to leave so early? Never mind it’s 1 am.). As the guests reach the door and put on their footwear ( Indians are very conscientious about leaving footwear at the door—it’s ingrained in our culture, just like never picking up food with your left hand), there are more hugs and goodbyes. Wait, it’s not over yet. The host will follow you to your car, or at least to the end of the driveway, while you’re getting ready to leave. By now, the kids in the back seat are ready to blow their brains out with boredom and frustration (after all, its 2 am now). And so finally, we depart. Our scriptures exhort us to honour the principle of Atithi devo bhava (loosely, the guest is to be treated and welcomed like God) but neither guest nor host seems to think that necessarily means being punctual. So, I decided to conduct some deep psychological and sociological research into the Long Goodbye. I wanted to leave no stone unturned in my quest for the truth. I started with three things: 1. I asked my close friends if they had read Raymond Chandler’s 1953 book The Long Goodbye in their teens. My hypothesis was that some kind of groupthink had developed in the 60s and 70s based on some influential book (no internet or TV back then). I quickly eliminated that theory because no one I talked to had read that book or seen Robert Altman’s 1973 film of the book (Never mind that the film changed the storyline dramatically, S a m p l e I ssue

and the book itself has nothing to do with anything here I’m talking about. I just want to impress the reader with the rigour of my research). 2. I talked to my wife and kids. My kids ignored my question and went on with their work. My wife shook her head and gently suggested I look at the grocery list to run some errands. 3. I talked to my American therapist. He said it was quite simple. You Indians Are Like That Only. I got upset with him because a) I was paying him for therapy, not to insult my culture, and b) he was probably right. Being of a scientific temperament, I decided then to start at the beginning of time. Or, more precisely, the beginning of Indian Standard Time. Turns out there’s quite a story there. Here’s what Wikipedia (the source of universal truth) had to say: After independence in 1947, the Indian government established IST as the official time for the whole country, although Kolkata and Mumbai retained their own

My American therapist said it was quite simple: You Indians are like that only. I got upset with him because a) I was paying him for therapy, not to insult my culture, and b) he was probably right local time (known as Calcutta time and Bombay Time) until 1948 and 1955, respectively.[3] The Central observatory was moved from Chennai to a location at Shankar Garh Fort Allahabad District, so that it would be as close to UTC +5:30 as possible. Daylight Saving Time (DST) was used briefly during the Sino–Indian War of 1962 and the Indo–Pakistani Wars of 1965 and 1971.[4] It also turns out there were attempts to introduce three different time zones in the 80s, and a proposal to revert to some

colonial era time zones (such as tea-time, not to be confused with the time for drinking tea—it was time observed in the tea gardens, the bagans of the North East where the sun rises and sets much earlier than in Aamchi Mumbai). As recently as 2001, there was even a government committee set up to assess the merits of multiple time zones for India, but their recommendations were shot down by the irrepressible Kapil Sibal who declared that “the prime meridian was chosen with reference to a central station, and the expanse of the Indian State was not De c e m b e r 2 0 1 4

large.” Wow. So we’re not a big country. Take that, you rabid nationalists. Anyway, the point is that we are a confused polity when it comes to deciding what time it is, or what time it should be, for anything. (Never mind what place it should be. Every town and street worth naming in India has changed names in the last 20 years. This has only caused more confusion and second-guessing among intelligent Indians.) Note though, that we are incredibly punctual and punctilious when it comes to our religious ceremonies. Ask a self-respecting Indian what he would think of being, say 30 minutes late, to tie the knot at his wedding with his bride, and potentially missing the auspicious moment. Not a chance. Or the glamorous Bollywood producer who has to break the nariyal for his film’s muhurat at an appointed time when the constellations line up in a certain way that makes a ka-ching sound at the box office. NFW. (Editor’s Note: If you don’t know what NFW means, check it up on the net, but only when your children aren’t looking over your shoulder) Note also, that in the horribly complicated US, which observes nine official time zones (yes—NINE. If you don’t believe me, look up Wikipedia), as well as daylight saving time—with some degree of confusion about Arizona, Indiana, the Navajo Nation and the like—Americans still get to work on time, show up for and leave parties on time, and are generally good about managing their time. I must clarify that the very same Indian Ameri-

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Growing up with a degree of timelessness at a time when no one knew exactly what time it was gave an entire Indian generation a warped sense of time cans I refer to are rarely, if ever, late for work-related appointments or official events, or parties hosted by Americans (which may or may not include other Indians). I grew up in an India where people would routinely ask other people for the time of day. Not many people had watches; they were a luxury. Many families listened to the radio to get a sense of time (If it was Binaca Geetmala on the radio, it was 7 pm). My father was the only one who had a watch in our home. It was gifted to him by my grandfather when he married my mother. It was a Favre-Leuba, with hand-winding machinery. One day, when I was in high school, he was mugged when walking along the road at Ekdalia Park in South Calcutta (oops, Kolkata, how things change with time!), and they took his watch. I know for a fact that we lost all sense of time (we were timeless, in some ways) for a long time. Many years later, after I moved to the US, I bought him a nice watch which he wore till the day he died. So here is my conclusive theory on this. Growing up with a degree of

timelessness at a time when no one knew precisely what time it was gave an entire generation a warped sense of time. In later years, external factors like unpredictable flight delays, horrible city traffic, complicated game theories about how late the other person was likely to be for the meeting, linear programming models that simulated a time-series flow of guests at an Indian party—all of these made the simple act of showing up on time an extremely complex thing to accomplish. But why do Indians linger at the door every time it’s time to say goodbye? I am currently studying the latest behavioural theories for clues to explain this phenomenon. For now, I am behind schedule in turning in this piece to my publisher. Paddy is a Chicago-based low-brow thinker, pop culture observer, and a repository of thoughts and ideas that serve no purpose in advancing humankind . During the week, he runs a healthcare analytics business. During the weekends, he sings and plays guitar in a classic rock and blues band. He hopes to own a 1959 Les Paul Sunburst some day. S a m p l e I ssue

C r i c k e t Sandipan Deb

The Bouncer Is A Fast Bowler’s Fundamental Right T

Phil Hughes’ death is a terrible tragedy, but banning the bouncer, as many are suggesting, will be unjust and irrational, and can only diminish the beauty of cricket.

he death of cricketer Phil Hughes after being struck on the back of his head by a bouncer in a Sheffield Shield match is heartbreaking. Hughes (the scorecard will forever, poignantly, read 63 not out) would have surely been in the Australia team in the series against India. He was three days short of his 26th birthday. A tragedy like this—a life so full of promise cut short even before it reached its prime—is almost disorienting in its sheer meaninglessness. It just seems plain unfair. However, what is also unfair is the flurry of suggestions coming from all quarters (except, as far I know, for men who play and have played cricket at the highest level) about bringing in more restrictions on fast bowlers. Enough damage has been done to the game already by tilting the rules in favour of batsmen, and (especially in the Indian sub-continent) carefully preparing dead pitches that offer the fast bowler no purchase. We certainly don’t need to load the dice any further. Op-ed writers have asked for the bouncer to be outlawed immediately. Any delivery that rises above the batsman’s shoulder should be called a no-ball, and if a bowler bowls a certain number of such no-balls, he must be taken off the attack. On Facebook, at least one senior

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journalist has gone an extra 22 yards and demanded that all deliveries above 130 km should be no-balled! Other ideas being floated include enforcing shorter run-ups for fast bowlers, soft pitches, even four-ball overs (This will rotate the strike quicker, because a fatigued batsman is more likely to be hit by a bouncer. What these innovative thinkers do not realize is that the bowler will also be less fatigued!). Of all the various brainwaves, the 130-km demand is the most unreasonable and bizarre. It reminds me of a Kurt Vonnegut story about a society of the future where all men and women who are found to be more intelligent than the average citizen have to mandatorily take medication that dumbs them down to the mean level. Those who are physically stronger than average have to go around with weights chained to their bodies (the stronger you are, the heavier the weights prescribed). If men and women are judged better-looking than the average, they have to wear masks in public, the hideousness of which are reverse-calibrated to their beauty. The great West Indian fast bowler Joel Garner was nearly 7 feet tall. There was nothing he could do about this, or the fact that when he released the ball, it was 11 feet above the ground. Coming down from such a height, the ball naturally bounced when it hit the track.

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So, Garner’s average delivery came at the batsman waist- or rib-high. This was merely immutable Newtonian physics. I suppose the 130-km gentleman would have wanted Garner to be allowed to bowl only if he released the ball from a bent-over or crouching position. Why not just ban fast bowling and ask some blokes to roll the ball slowly down the ground to the batsman? But I suppose then some people will carp that this is unfair to the batsman—balls rolling down the ground are difficult to hit for sixes.

Within a few says of Phil Hughes’ death, several lists appeared of cricketers who have died on the field. These run to 11 or 12 names (including Hughes), but on closer scrutiny reveal that only five players and an umpire have actually died from injuries sustained during a match. The others died on the field from heart attacks and seizures unconnected to the game. In fact, Pakistani cricketer Abdul Aziz was mortally injured during a domestic match in 1959 by an off-spin delivery which hit the rough and rose sharply to strike him in the chest! And

Phil Hughes is hit on the back of his head by a bouncer during a Sheffield Shield match. The injury was fatal.

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Everyone who goes out to play cricket at a certain level knows very well that a leather ball coming at him at high speed is a potentially lethal weapon. This is an integral part of the game

Watch this! Curtly Ambrose vs Steve Waugh, 1995, the best battling the best, and commentary by the best too, Michael Holding:

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Raman Lamba died after he took a pull shot on his head at close quarters, fielding at short leg without a helmet. So, out of the five relevant deaths, only three had anything to do with fast bowling. The number of officially recognized international Test matches and one-dayers played till today is 5,703. Lesser matches—whether international and domestic—played are obviously innumerable. Of course, there have been near-death situations related to fast bowling, the two bestknown involving New Zealander Ewan Chatfield and Indian captain and opening batsman Nari Contractor. In a 1975 Test match, Chatfield was clinically dead for a few seconds after being hit by a delivery from England fast bowler Peter Lever. And Contractor was almost killed in 1962 when he was struck on the head by the West Indies’ Charlie Griffith. Now the facts. Peter Lever did not bowl a bouncer to Chatfield. The ball hit his gloves at waist level and then slammed into his temple, felling him. And Contractor has said in many interviews that as Griffith came in to bowl, someone

opened a window in the pavilion right behind Griffith’s bowling arm, and Contractor couldn’t sight the ball (there was no system of having sight screens at that time). This was hardly Griffith’s fault. It is also a fact that many arms and legs and jaws have been broken and noses smashed, on cricket fields by fast bowlers, from Harold Larwood in the 1932-33 ‘Bodyline’ series, to Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson of Australia in the 1970s, and the fearsome West Indian pacers of the 1970s and 1980s. But it’s hardly true that it’s only while batting that cricketers have been grievously injured. Players get far more regularly hurt while fielding, and sometimes with serious consequences. Raman Lamba of course is the most tragic example. But think of Saba Karim, a fine Indian cricketer whose career ended suddenly at its prime, when he was hit by a ball under his eye while keeping wickets. What no one denies—or can dare to, without risking being branded a moron—is that cricket is a batsman’s game. In case of a close call, the decision has to always go in the batsman’s favour. I think I don’t need to go into the details of how over the last decade or so, rules have S a m p l e I ssue

been changed to aid batting sides, especially in the limited-overs formats; we can’t but admit that the bowler—especially the fast bowler—is already working as a second-class citizen. Phil Hughes’ death is a freak accident, and we need to recognize it as that, and not respond irrationally, and on the basis of immediate emotions. The unfortunate young man whose bouncer hit Hughes is technically not even a fast bowler. He is a medium pacer. Everyone who goes out to play cricket at a certain level knows very well that a leather ball coming at him at high speed is a potentially lethal projectile. That’s an integral part of the game, same as brutal shoulder charges are in rugby. Or keeping control of the vehicle while negotiating a curve at nearly one-third the speed of sound in Formula 1 racing. The bouncer is a completely legitimate weapon that a fast bowler has in his armoury, just like the yorker, which, when delivered perfectly by someone like Waqar Yunis, is referred to as the “toe-crusher”. Yes, the bouncer is most often used to intimidate rather than take a wicket, to try to jolt the batsman’s confidence a bit, but what is wrong with that? Every good batsman trains hard to tackle the bouncer and if he is scared of being hit, he should not be out there on the pitch. What use is a striker in soccer if he is terrified of the rough tackle? There is even some outrage that bowling a bouncer is not right in the “gentlemen’s game”. Cricket is a competitive sport, and as far as genteel behaviour goes, I find the reverse sweep far more uncouth than the bouncer, which is a delivery that, in cricket history, only the most

talented bowlers have been able to bowl consistently well. And sledging of batsmen using the foulest language is a much bigger insult to the spirit of the game. The spirit lives on in other ways; for example, though there is no law against it, bowling short stuff to a tail-ender has always been—and is still is—considered unsportsmanly. If you are in the team as a batsman, you are supposed to give as good as you get, and the bowler is honour-bound to give you the best that he has. And the fussy “gentlemen” can always go play croquet if they want. Batsmen today are as comprehensively armoured as they can be without the weight of the protective gear slowing them down. The helmet surfaced in Test cricket only in 1979, 102 years after the first Test match was played, when Graham Yallop of Australia came out to bat wearing one (It should come as no surprise that the rival team was the West Indies). Till then, batsmen were bareheaded or had a cap on, fully aware of and accepting the physical risk involved. The best ways to tackle a bouncer developed naturally—hook it, or duck without keeping your bat up like a flagpole, or just move out of the way. This is a skill that batsmen learn as a necessary component of their repertoire. Has there ever been a more beautiful sight in cricket than Sunil Gavaskar swaying his head and shoulders away just the required bit from a viciously rising delivery, while keeping his eyes on the ball all the time? The truth is that no fast bowler—not Larwood, not Malcolm Marshall, not Allan Donald,

From left to right: Harold Larwood of England was perhaps the fastest and deadliest bowler of all time. Pakistan’s Waqar Younis was renowned and feared for his ‘toecrusher’ yorkers, as nasty a delivery as a bouncer. West Indian Joel Garner was nearly 7 feet tall, so his normal deliveries would bounce off the track and come to the batsman at rib height

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As Nari Contractor faced up to Charlie Griffith, someone opened a window in the pavilion, right behind the bowler’s arm. Contractor was unsighted and was hit on the head. He almost died, but never blamed Griffith

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not Shoaib Akhtar—has ever wanted to kill anyone. Truly fast bowlers, by the very nature of their calling, have to instill some fear in batsmen, and the bouncer is the best way to do that. When a batsman is hurt, it is usually the bowler who reaches him first and is the most concerned (as also happened in the case of Hughes). Larwood went into depression after he had hit Australia’s Bertie Oldfield on the head. Marshall vomited right there on the field after he had smashed Mike Gatting’s nose in a 1986 match (Gatting was a tough man. He had to sit out a few games, then returned with his nose plastered. Unfortunately, he had to face Marshall again when he came in to bat, and the first delivery broke a bone in his arm). Peter Lever, after hitting Chatfield, was inconsolable, and was never the same bowler again (and he hadn’t even bowled a bouncer, since Chatfield was a tail-ender, the No 11 batsman). The truth also is that most good fast bowlers use the bouncer sparingly, because it is a notoriously difficult delivery to get just right (the same is true for yorkers). In fact, 80 per cent of the time, bouncers are wasted deliveries—they are either too high or pitch too short (and goes for a boundary or a six) or too wide for the batsman to even bother. Phil Hughes’ death is a terrible and shock-

ing tragedy, but it is also an event that has an extremely low probability, perhaps one in 20 million. The bowler is definitely not to blame at all, and every genuine cricket lover will surely hope that this 22-year-old cricketer can cope with what happened, be psychologically fit, and live a life without being pointed out on the streets as the man who killed Hughes. Because he did not. He is as much a victim of fate as Hughes was. Cricket is possibly the friendliest and most inclusive team sport on earth. This is a common sight in a Test match: a batsman makes a mess of handling a bouncer and turns and grins appreciatively at the bowler who also laughs and winks. Don’t tamper with a fast bowler’s right to bowl a bouncer. Don’t shackle him further. And listen to Nari Contractor, who would have thought about bouncers and the danger they pose more than almost any other human being alive (After his injury, though Contractor returned to first class cricket, he never made it to the India team again). Reacting to Hughes’ death, he said: “But then, this is part and parcel of the sport. I am hearing that some people are calling for change in rules and do away with bouncers. If that is done, it will take away the beauty of Test cricket.” This is a true cricketer. Respect. S a m p l e I ssue

E n t e r t a i n m e n t

Biswadeep Ghosh

Why Pretty Women Don’t Act Anymore

Mainstream Hindi films rarely attempt to delve beyond a woman’s physical beauty. Female actors bag assignments on the basis of looks not acting skills, leading to the creation of more stereotypes than ever before.

ehboob Khan remade his own 1940 film Aurat as Mother India in 1957. Almost 60 years later, this Nargis Dutt starrer is regarded as the most significant among popular Hindi woman-centric films ever. The reckless usage of te term ‘woman-centric’ implies that the man-centric film is normal and the former is not, which is deplorable. Films with women playing central characters are viewed as aberrations, which explains why they need to be categorised and manipulated to defend the patently indefensible: which is that the portrayal of the woman in films in cinema is regressive and stereotypical. That’s why whenever the subject of women in popular Hindi cinema comes up during a discussion, Mother India is usually the first title to pop up in our minds.

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Not that gender inequality is unique to Hindi cinema. It is a global problem, although India’s performance on every count is seriously embarrassing. A first-of-its-kind study was conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, UN Women and The Rockefeller Foundation, which analysed the content of gender roles in 10 most profitable film-producing territories. The case studies were ‘theatrically released between January 1st 2010 and May 1st 2013 and roughly equivalent to a MPAA rating of G, PG, or PG-13,’ two conditions which led to deductions which dedicated viewers of contemporary Indian cinema across all genres and languages may not like to hear. To start with, Indian films are among the worst in their emphasis on ‘sexy’ attire and ‘some’ nudity. Even more pathetic is the focus on attractiveness, an area in which India has emerged as the global leader. While no sample S a m p l e I ssue

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Kamli, Dhoom 3, Katrina Kaif):

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study can be perfectly accurate, the nation’s cinema in general and Hindi cinema in particular doesn’t attempt to look beyond the woman’s physical beauty in mainstream films. Female actors bag lucrative assignments on the basis of looks as opposed to acting skills, leading to the creation of more stereotypes than ever before. A typical example is Katrina Kaif, who has been trying to evolve into a decent actor for quite some time. If beauty has to be admired, she will possibly score a 9 on a scale of 10. As an actor, how good is she? Think Waheeda Rehman, Nutan, Meena Kumari, or Sridevi, Madhuri Dixit and Kajol, in spite of the many mediocre films they starred in. Katrina’s best moment as an actor may be as bad—or worse—than the worst of a Madhuri or a Waheeda Rehman. But she is one of the leading female actors at present. Enough said. That the past has to be evoked during assessments of quality is a reflection of the flawed present in which objectification at the expense of content has reached new levels. No film in the

modern-day counterpart of parallel cinema has been able to make the sort of impact that those with female central characters like Bhoomika, Mirch Masala and Arth did. Each of them had fine actors—Smita Patil and Shabana Azmi— and they delivered a significant sub-plot in the post-70s cinematic narrative. An irony of modern times is that obsession with attractiveness is getting stronger. Amidst such a decline, many in the media have been struggling to establish how more and more women are finding better roles in the Hindi film industry. Those supporting this argument must state that each year sees a rise in the number of releases from Mumbai’s film-producing factory. They ought to admit that the industry had never branded a film as a horex—a film blending horror and sex—before Ragini MMS:2 came along. This, they naturally don’t. Since 2000, Madhur Bhandarkar has directed several women-centric films such as Chandni Bar (very good), Page 3 and Fashion (good) and the not-very-convincing Corporate and Heroine. S a m p l e I ssue

The argument that a big film with a Katrina Kaif (Dhoom:3, facing page) or a Deepika Padukone (Happy New Year, above) as the main star can’t be made since no one has a story to sell is rubbish While Bhandarkar deserves a special mention since his choice of subjects has attracted top stars like Priyanka Chopra and Kareena Kapoor in spite of the low budget of the films, he appears to have delivered his best with Chandni Bar, his second film after the disastrous Trishakti. Besides, none of these films really qualify as mainstream cinema. Vishal Bhardwaj who is much more talented than Bhandarkar has directed some films with strong female characters such as 7 Khoon Maaf and the controversial Haider in which Tabu’s is the key role around which the story revolves. Tabu is an accomplished actor who has played

powerful characters in Astitva, Chandni Bar, Maqbool and even in the breezy and unambitious Cheeni Kum in which her character falls in love with a man who is older than her father. But since she is 42, mainstream Hindi cinema will judge her as an actor who is past her ‘expiry date.’ This eliminates the possibility of casting her as the central female lead—or the main supporting actor—in big budget films. Is this power? Vidya Balan is being seen as an actor who can steer solo starrers after her fine show in Ishqiya and the success of Kahaani and The Dirty Picture. True, The Dirty Picture brought De c e m b e r 2 0 1 4

Vidya Balan is seen as an actor who can steer solo starrers: Kahaani (above) and Dirty Picture (facing page). But much of Dirty Picture’s revenue came from those who went to see a ‘dirty’ picture The suicide of Silk, played by Vidya Balan, in The Dirty Picture:

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in more revenue than the producers might have imagined, but an honest analysis would suggest that a fair share of the revenue must have come from those who went to see a ‘dirty’ picture. This argument can be substantiated by the fact that this film became the highest grossing Hindi film with an ‘A’ certificate, a record eclipsed by the sexist filth fest Grand Masti not much later. Kahaani was admittedly a success, in fact, a huge one for a film with an estimated budget of Rs 8 crore. That kind of money is equal to, or less than, the fee of a top male star or what he

eventually earns because of his share in distribution rights. Mary Kom, Queen, No One Killed Jessica, Mardaani and Gulaab Gang are among films with powerful women characters that we get to read about every day. Gulaab Gang, being a bad film, bombed, which is fine. Dedh Ishqiya didn’t live up to its hype, which is not new either. But did any of the ‘hits’ come remotely close to earning Rs 100 crore in the Indian market— the new benchmark—at a time when the typical high-budget Hindi film with a Khan or Hrithik Roshan is targeting Rs 150 crore from ticket S a m p l e I ssue

sales in India alone? None. Did the producers shell out Rs 60 crore or more for any of these productions? Forget spending that much, a film which stars a woman rarely manages to earn that much. Earnings explain a film’s reach or the relative lack of it. This reach, in turn, is the only way real power can be understood. Major male stars have that in abundance, but those with comparable stature among women don’t have a fraction of what the men do. Try as we might, this fact cannot be overlooked or disguised. Within the film industry, a vicious cycle is at work. From day one, a big budget film is marketed as one with a big male star in the lead. Any insistence that a similar film with a Priyanka Chopra or a Deepika Padukone as the main star cannot be made because nobody has a story to sell is utter rubbish. The real problem is that directors are dependent on the money that producers invest. Producers evaluate the risk factor and

choose not to gamble because he won’t be able to find distributors who will shell out a much higher price. The final outcome is the smallbudget film which suffers because of ordinary marketing and is eventually released on a much smaller scale compared to the big-budget entertainer. Seekers of simplistic classifications call it an ‘art’ film. Nobody asks a key question since it is seen as irrelevant. If a commercial entertainer with a woman in the central role costs Rs 100 crore, will it manage to bring Rs 150 crore home, the way even a migraine-inducing movie like Bang Bang! can? Logically speaking, that’s possible, although producers need to believe in the idea and invest first. Distributors must respond by buying the rights thereafter. Since that won’t happen anytime soon, a huge film in the traditional sense will lead us to one more Dhoom:3. A big film with a female star will be another The Dirty Picture. Five times less reach as a sign of shifting balance of power? That’s a bad joke.

Having started out as a journalist at 18, Biswadeep Ghosh let go of a promising future as a singer not much later. He hardly steps out of his rented Pune flat where he alternates between writing and looking after his pet sons Burp and Jack. We decided to make him a Contruting Editor to Swarajya

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Id e a s

Mallika Nawal

The Image Rises, The Word Falls Language has infinite power and as long as there’s Romeo and Juliet or Laila and Majnu or You and Me, as long as there’s love in the world, language will find a way to cast its spell.

OW-WOW…POOH-POOH… DING-DONG…YO-HE-HO… LA-LA…Before you ask, let me set the record straight: No, I have NOT lost my mind (at least, not enough to land in an asylum—not yet). Nor am I imitating the two-year-old toddler that lives in my neighborhood (although sometimes, I do scream like him). So, what’s this gibberish? There is always a method to my madness, which usually happens when someone makes me really mad. And this time, the man who managed to press my buttons (and not in a ‘good’ way) was none other than the beloved “mass” author, Chetan Bhagat with his Half Girlfriend, in which a girl who speaks impeccable English agrees to be only “half girlfriend” to a boy from rural India who struggles with the language. I truly don’t know who’s more offended—the girl in me, the feminist in me, the linguist in me or the Bihari in me! Of course, this is not another review of the book, which, to be completely honest, I haven’t read—for the concept itself managed to put off my multiple personalities—all at the same time. However, before I delve into my twisted reasons for writing this article (and I solemnly swear to explain the balderdash at the beginning of this article), let me quote another IITian—this time an eminent IIT professor (and a close personal friend). During a session, he categorically informed his students, “You can never speak proper English. It’s not your mother tongue.” And I simply sat there, staring at him. I promise to get to those funny-sounding words in a moment—but for now,

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bear with me—just a little longer, at least for one last anecdote. I once dialed the number of this incredible hunk of a CEO and managed to ask “for” him, in flawless Hindi (in my defence, I had not expected him to pick up the phone). He was horrified: “Mallika, what the hell is wrong with you? Are you alright?” (The horror overpowered the happiness that I should have otherwise felt, realizing that he knew my voice). Since then, whenever I want to toy with him, I just head into the Hindi arsenal and bring out the big guns. And although, he has managed to dial down his horror, he’s yet to pack some heat… which finally brings me to my reason for writing this article and I can explain the mumbo-jumbo. Well, here goes nothing… Bow-wow, pooh-pooh, ding-dong, yohe-ho, la-la are simply derision-dripping ‘cute’ names that the great Oxford linguist Max Mueller used to denote the theories of the origin of language. That’s right: language, like humans, have their own evolution. They too follow the principles of natural selection and they too have seen the practice of artificial selection (aka selective breeding—please note, the proper term for such hybrid languages is ‘macaronic language’; for example, Hinglish, Britalian, Chinglish, etc). And language, like us mere mortals, has also known life and death. Speaking of death, let’s head back to the horrendous bout of Hindi horror. To be completely honest, this Greek-Godpersonified CEO’s consternation at Hindi knocked the wind out of me (and stirred up the hornet’s nest inside my head). Since then, we’ve both been at it— guns drawn, words loaded!

Although, I haven’t stopped pondering the implication of his questions: Is there something wrong with me if I choose to speak impeccable Hindi? If speaking good English was a hallmark of good breeding, when did speaking good Hindi degenerate into a debilitating sickness? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. It would be wrong to say I didn’t see it coming. I knew this war was imminent— signs of it were strewn about the World Wide Web and the telecom networks. Every day I receive intelligence from my assets who send me cryptic messages— messages without vowels. Even now my head reels at this bizarre boycott. And while I call them Slow Sluggish Sloths, they call me the Vestal Virgin for Vowels. (Alliterations are so much better than altercations, are they not?) The world that we live in is truly strange. There were three children, who lived in perfect harmony. But now, English is the only legitimate child. Hindi was abandoned in the dumpster long ago and Hinglish now bears the curse of illegitimacy. The war bugle has sounded! I know what you’re thinking—Chetan Bhagat and countless others have been cursing the English purebreds. It’s an exclusive club, after all, with special membership privileges. Are they wrong? Alas, no! English does open doors for you that would otherwise have remained closed. And the truth is that even those who openly condemn it; secretly covet it. But in the arena of impression management, through the battle-cries of image consultants, language has lost its lustre. Image is everything and the joy of simply learning a language has sucS a m p l e I ssue

cumbed to its battle wounds. Thankfully though, I was born in a family that had a reverence for the rhetoric. And in the limited time I have spent on planet Earth (of course, that’s my way of reminding you that I’m pretty young), I have lived and loved it all! I have experienced the covetous pleasure of English, the bewildering intimidation of Hindi, the sweet caress of Bengali, the rough embrace of Bhojpuri, the musical notes of Maithili, the flamboyant style of Punjabi, the diabolical similarity of Marwari and Gujarati, the longing desire of Urdu, the uber-simplicity of Oriya, the swift breath of Tamil, and the tantalizing intricacies of French. Unfortunately, in a world where shortcuts and ‘jugaads’ abound, corruption has permeated language as well —whether it’s the advent of Hinglish; or the use of ‘kinda’, ‘wanna’, ‘gonna’; or the mindless boycott of vowels. But before you condemn this corruption, remember —evolution will weed out the weakling. But the corruption itself does not enrage me, it’s the label. If speaking good Hindi makes me ‘SICK’; good English makes me a ‘SNOB’! Either way, it seems, I’m going to be stuck with some label. Of course, I don’t care what label I have to live with, I will not give up on my romance with language, and neither should you! But was it always like this?

Every day I get cryptic messages without vowels. My head reels at this bizarre boycott The answer is: No. Rousseau, in a posthumously published essay, contended that language developed in southern warm climates and then migrated northwards to colder temperatures. (And as the temperatures dropped, language too took quite a fall}. So, while at its inception, it was musical and had raw emotional power, the colder climates of the north stripped language bare, distorting it to the present rational form. The comparison of language to music is a befitting one. Can you honestly single out a single note in music and claim it’s more important than the rest? Can you choose a single colour and remove the palette? (Don’t bother answering—it’s just a rhetorical question!) To quote Otto Jespersen (1922), the Danish linguist: “The genesis of language is not to be sought in the prosaic, but in the poetic side of life; the source of speech is not gloomy seriousness, but merry play and youthful hilarity...In primitive

speech, I hear the laughing cries of exultation when lads and lassies vied with one another to attract the attention of the other sex, when everybody sang his merriest and danced his bravest to lure a pair of eyes to throw admiring glances in his direction. Language was born in the courting days of mankind.” After all, who amongst us has not felt both its warming glow and its cold icy sting…its companionship and its abandonment… How it makes us soar to the greatest heights of paradise or how it flings us into the deepest darkest recesses of hell. Truth is, language has infinite power and as long as there’s Adam and Eve (or Romeo and Juliet or Laila and Majnu or Martian and Venusian or You and Me), as long as there’s love in the world, language will find a way to cast its spell… just as it did, a long time ago, on a little girl who lived in Bihar. Chetan Bhagat notwithstanding. Curse you, CB!

Mallika is a professor-cum-author, about to complete her doctorate in marketing from IIT Kharagpur. She is the author of three management books which are prescribed textbooks in universities across India. She has taught at institutes like IIT Kharagpur, and S. P. Jain Centre of Management, Dubai. She is the author of the crime novel I’m a Woman & I’m on SALE. De c e m b e r 2 0 1 4

B o o k s Arnab Ray

Playing It My Way Sachin Tendulkar with Boria Majumdar Hachette India 497 pages Rs 800

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The Voice of God— And His Silences

Why Bharat won’t revolt against India

SRT’s autobiography works (mostly) because Sachin’s voice comes out strong and clear, despite stilted prose and an unimaginative retelling of that-which-everyone-knows.

Sengupta’s challenge to the inertia-ridden socialist political heads and dyed-in-the-wool demagogues is formidable. And his book is no armchair commentary.

There was a time, around a few thousand years ago, that God would talk to us. A lot. Sometimes He would say something from behind a burning bush. Sometimes He would appear in a dream. Sometimes He would give us his words in the field of battle and sometimes He would just send his son down to Earth. Then, for some reason, God became silent, round about the time Man started this whole “science” thing. Now once again, after Many Years, he has spoken, this time through a new prophet. Not surprisingly, the chosen one happens to be a Bengali by the name of Boria Majumdar. I apologize for the blasphemy I am going to commit right now. But I have to say it. Prophet Boria’s prose is, for the want of a less obvious word, boring. Not to sully the purity of His words, but one wishes that He had chosen a more accomplished spinner of sentences, someone like Rahul Bhattacharya for instance, who would have been less liberal with passages that sound like paraphrasing of scorecards. But perhaps I am wrong. God knows best. Perhaps only Mr Boria would have been able to capture the voice of God without superimposing his own. Perhaps each exclamation point was an “Ailaaa”, and God does indeed remember how many balls he faced and how many runs he scored of matches played decades ago. Perhaps. Because, truth be told, Playing It My Way is authentically Sachin. (Note: I shall from now use the word “Sachin” interchangeably with God). There is deference to higher authority, namely the BCCI, for even Sachin has His Gods. There is predictable silence on the contentious stuff. The Ferrari. Vinod Kambli’s outburst. The match-fixing that was taking place all around him. Needless to say, there is much carping on the interwebs for his silence on the latter. The problem in being God is that the infidels always carp. If he had said something about fixing, then the retort would have been: “Why did he wait till his autobiography to say this? He is just

His rationale is sound. And he has a way with words — he borrows from the popular US TV serial the term “Californication” to summarise Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze’s description of a liberalising India as “islands of California in a sea of sub-Saharan Africa”. Hindol Sengupta’s Recasting India depicts a country whose citizens have perhaps made more sense of freedom in the last two decades than what its politicians could muster. A member of the upwardly mobile middle class would be tempted to own it as his or her published title. Beginning with Dwarakanath Tagore, Gurudev Rabindranath’s grandfather who had interests in coal, tea, jute, sugar refining, newspapers and shipping, the author speaks of the rut that Bengal politics, and hence economy, eventually fell into while not forgetting to mention that this linguistic community was not found effete when the situation demanded, first modernising a regressive society and then bombing its way into the history of India’s freedom struggle. But before the reader can accuse him of parochialism, Sengupta flashbacks to Bhimji Parekh of 17th century Surat. Parekh’s parleys with British trade representative Gerald Aungier, which secured a place for Hindu Gujarati businessmen in Bombay makes the point that entrepreneurship is not always merely about managing to make profits but often about extracting assurances from the ruling class. As the book hovers over Mukesh Ambani’s Antilia, defiance of reasonable budgeting by Suresh Kalmadi’s Commonwealth Games, and A. Raja’s 2G spectrum bidders jumping the queue, it turns into a compelling argument explaining why the disparity between the rich and the poor is not spinning into a civil war, all anti-corruption movements of the recent past notwithstanding. The poor of the unorganised sector, Sengupta argues with reason, are trying with their limited capacities to climb the ladder by making and selling whatever they can. This “per capita hope”—which his father dismissed as “per capita joke”—is keeping them from taking to the gun. For, an atmosphere of business

creating controversy to sell his book.” Now that he has not, they are still pitchforking him. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. See, that’s the Problem. Whatever He does, God can’t win. And that’s often been the greatest criticism of Sachin, that He does not make India win, something He lets go outside the off-stump. There is some controversy of course, but even here, Sachin has gone for Henry Olongalike easy targets. Greg Chappell is the big bad wolf, as are Adam Gilchrist, Ian Chappell, assorted Australians and that English match-referee who denied God. Well, I take that back. There is one rather dramatic beef with another God, a kind of Zeus vs Hades, that is never quite as front-and-centre as the lightning strikes on Greg Chappell, but simmers and smokes throughout. I shall not “declare” the details here, because that would be a genuine spoiler, but suffice to say there is material for massive crusades on Twitter, some of which I see has already begun. But then when has a Holy Book not been contentious? Playing It My Way works (mostly) because it is this voice of Sachin that comes out strong and clear, despite the exclamation marks, the stilted prose and the unimaginative retelling of that-which-everyone-knows. There are remarkable insights into batting techniques. Though absolutely non-controversial, unlike a certain Sunil Gavaskar revelation in One Day Wonders, there are many personal anecdotes—of how he wooed Anjali, of his son resenting his prolonged absences, of self-doubt, anxiety, loss and fear. Even his broadsides against those who he feels have hurt him just goes to show that even God, with all the adulation and worship, can never forget a slight. And then finally there is my favourite, where he impulsively lets himself gets stumped after being beaten by a bowler who is hearing-impaired, even though the keeper flubs the chance the first time. It’s these that make Playing It My Way worth a read. You know, the places where God appears a bit...human. S a m p l e I ssue

does not support violence. The author sees even Maoist militancy in and around places buzzing with economic activity as a fight for Anitilia and not one against it; “We want to be up there,” the faceless protagonists of the story seem to be demanding. In this roughhouse of course, scams like Saradha happen, where old investors are paid high interest from the money of the new until the chain dries up. However, there is also the ilk of Shriram Chits that does not promise stratospheric returns but does something useful for trade: provide loans to truckers who would otherwise have to endure months of processing time if they were to apply to banks for the sum, a delay the business can ill afford. But Recasting India is no starry-eyed account based on anecdotes from the country’s metros. Hiware Bazar, six hours’ drive from Mumbai, for example, has its own nonfiction to narrate. Juxtaposed with the Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena’s protests against the toll one has to pay while driving on the expressway between the state’s capital city and Pune is the calm intelligence of doing business in the backwaters. The environs described in this chapter refreshed my memory of Himmatnagar in Gujarat which I visited just about a year ago: Pothole-free roads, clean water, round-the-clock electric supply, well-built and maintained houses and, most importantly, people making money and the poor turning middle class. And this capitalism comes with a good measure of social tolerance; there is just one Muslim family in the village, but Hindus have built a mosque to facilitate that family’s prayers. Sengupta’s challenge to the inertia-ridden socialist political heads and dyed-in-the-wool demagogues is formidable. His book is no armchair commentary. Born in 1979, the author himself exemplifies a change a relatively liberal India has brought forth that the book does not delve into: the emergence of a breed of right-of-centre ideologues equipped as impressively as communist activists in universities with statistics hard to deny.

Surajit Dasgupta

Recasting India: How Entrepreneurship is Revolutionizing the World’s Largest Democracy Hindol Sengupta Pan Macmillan India 239 pages Rs 499

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A r c h i v e s

Nehru: Philosopher Turned Technician This piece was written by Atulananda Chakravarti for the 2nd April 1960 issue of Swarajya.

hy do people follow me?” asked Prime Minister Nehru of the press sometime ago. He answered his own question. “It is,” he said, “because of my dedication to them, because of my patriotism”. The world came to read all this next morning with amusement and a shot of pain at the same time. They were amused by the stagey, theatrical tone of it; and the pain they felt was due to the Prime Minister trying to come out of a muddled self-appraisal. He is not alone in dedication and patriotism. There were and probably are thousands who can boast of the same. Where are they? Some have probably suffered and sacrificed much more, vastly more than he has. Do the people know them even? The answer he gave was not the right answer. The right answer is that people are still searching for the fierce idealist, the uncompromising leader, in the faded shadow that is Prime Minister Nehru. At home he wanted to unify India, but the agents he employed have substituted centralization instead. He initiated the Plans to make the people prosperous, economically and socially. The Plans have only let loose rackets of all kinds and degrees. While his apparently loyal followers are seeking to industrialize India, they batten on the economy and impoverish it, letting the essentials go neglected. The trouble began as Nehru took to a new role not his own. Gandhi had appointed him as his heir. A person bequeaths to another only what belongs to him. In the same way, an heir can be said to have inherited just that office which his predecessor used to hold. What was the office that Gandhi held? His was only the unofficial office of the

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from Swarajya’s 40,000 pages of archives since 1956. leader of the Congress, of the Opposition; institutionally it was Congress, spiritually, it was Opposition. And remember, Gandhi’s announcement of successorship was made at a time when Prime Minister-ship was not envisaged at all. He could not have possibly chosen Nehru as Prime Minister. And it would be a queer piece of logic to say that Nehru is Prime Minister by right of succession to Gandhi’s Office. He became Prime Minister by virtue of being the leader of the Congress Party—but then it was a Congress from which Gandhi had just gone out and which he was thinking of remaking after his own ideal in the light of the new necessities created by the Independence in which he could not participate. And since Nehru went over to the government it was left to the old man—the Master as he was called—to work as the

symbol of popular opposition to the government run by Nehru, and added that if the king would do a wrong he would say so and stand up against it. Since then, Nehru had been giving his best to the country as the spokesman of the left wing of the Congress. Great, though unperceived, tragedy followed the sudden change of Nehru’s habitual faculty, his radical amendment of his own mental constitution. It is seen only today in its naked horror when the only effective voice of opposition—Gandhi’s voice—has been silenced by destiny. The result has been pathetic. No omission, no commission, no corruption of the government can now be corrected by the force of fearless opposition; for that force, furthered by Gandhi, was Nehru’s; but he is the government, and as Prime Minister, its invariable defender. The self-contradictions of a great man whom Nature made an opposition leader and history turned into a Prime Minister are bound to have fatal consequences. These are reflected in the chronic conflicts within his party as well as within his government. Nehru goes much faster than it is possible for his men to catch up. His ideas rush upon him more impetuously than he can himself handle them. Before one innovation is absorbed in the system he embarks on another. All this is a fitful attempt to fit oneself into a situation for which one is an intrinsic misfit. A professional politician may easily adapt himself from opposition to the ruling position, but one who derives energy from inspiration cannot so easily change his place, for inspiration is not an outer garment that can be cast off at will. It is the tragedy of a political philosopher playing the role of a political technician. (For the full version of this text, visit www.swarajyamag.com) S a m p l e I ssue