What Fukushima tells us...

Rather than question the safety of nuclear power, we should strive to strengthen it. We must learn basic lessons from Fukushima. The impending energy crisis, the risks of climate change and the limited time we have in tiding over these threats cannot be lost track of.

The accident at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant as result of a tsunami seems to have made a heavier impact on the public mind all over the world than the tsunami itself. This calls for a deeper understanding of the perceived as well as real risks of nuclear power.

India is the fifth largest producer of electricity in the world after China, the US, Japan and Russia. However, in per capita terms, it ranks around 150. China is at the 80th rank, Russia 26th, Japan 19th and the US 11th. Annual per capita electricity consumption , a key index of development, is at around 650-700 kWh in India. This is less than half of the average in non-OECD countries, one-fourth the world average and 14 times less than the average in OECD countries. We need to decide what our target should be. In my view, 5,000 kWh appears a reasonable number. This is significantly better than the world average and about half the average in OECD countries.

At this level of per capita electricity consumption for a projected stabilised population in India of around 1.6 billion, we need to add to Indian grids electricity generation of around 40% of the present-day global output. To realise the same target, China needs only about half as much. Our coal reserves can support electricity supply at such a level for around 11 years. Our total hydro potential can provide for around 5% of the needed generation capacity. Other renewables excluding solar can support around 2%. Nuclear and solar energy are thus the only energy sources that can meet the challenge of our development. This does not mean less emphasis on other forms of energy generation. We need to make full use of all energy resources available to us.

Let us talk about solar first. We would need to earmark around 4.5 million hectares of area to be able to collect enough solar energy to meet our needs. This is roughly a fourth of the barren uncultivable land available in India. We, however, need aggressive development of this technology to make it cost competitive . Also, since the sun does not shine on a 24x7 basis, we need cost-competitive energy storage technologies. There are other areas of development of energy technologies for the future such as fusion energy.
We may well be at the oil peak around now. Our coal is likely to run out in around 40-50 years. Alternative energy supplies at the requisite level of use would need to be ready before this time. A severe energy crisis is likely to hit us much earlier than it does most of the world.

We should look at nuclear energy in this backdrop. It already provides 16% of world electricity in a cost-competitive manner. Despite Fukushima or the earlier Chernobyl, TMI and other accidents , real risks with nuclear energy are the lowest compared to various energy forms in commercial use. The advantage of nuclear would be even higher if one factors in the additional risks associated with the predicted consequences of climate change as a result of use of fossil fuels in a business-as-usual manner. Yet nuclear energy frightens us beyond all proportion.

According to a report of the United Nations Chernobyl forum expert group on 'health' published by the World Health Organisation in 2006, the Chernobyl accident caused 47 deaths till the year 2004 among firemen and severely exposed persons. From more than 4,000 thyroid cancer cases diagnosed in the 1992-2002 period, less than 1% died from this disease and the rest were treated successfully. We need to watch the situation further. An interesting point to note is that the effective dose as of year 2000 due to Chernobyl is already two and half times lower as compared to weapons fallout. We had Bhopal before Chernobyl when we suffered more than 3,500 fatalities. Yet Chernobyl remains a stronger image in our mind.

Fukushima so far has had no fatality caused by radiation. Seventeen workers have been exposed to doses in excess of 100 mSv, but that is lower than the permissible lifetime dose for occupational workers. There is radioactive contamination in the public domain, which will take quite some time to normalise. But the radiation dose received by people is unlikely to cause significant harm. The tsunami, which caused the accident at Fukushima, has taken more than 13,000 lives with more than 14,000 missing. Yet Fukushima seems to occupy much larger media space.

Seismically, the only region in India somewhat comparable to Japan is the Himalayan belt. As a matter of policy we do not locate a nuclear power station there. Epicentres that can potentially trigger a tsunami are around 10 times farther away in India's case as compared to Japan, which has not shut down reactors that are operable.

This is not to justify Fukushima . Such accidents are not acceptable . We must learn basic lessons from Fukushima and strengthen the safety of our nuclear activities without being complacent. We should also make rapid progress in bringing in advanced reactor systems such as AHWR with their greater degree of inherent safety. However, the impending energy crisis, the risks of climate change and the limited time we have in tiding over these threats cannot be lost track of. The tendency to read catastrophe into anything nuclear and allowing panic to grip us and deprive India from fulfilling its aspirations would be a self-defeating exercise.

Challenge science with fact, not jingoism....

The strange thing about controversies is that the logic of the text often loses out to the power of context. The myth of science has, as its ideal a value-free truth, a fact free from the colours of ethnicity, ideology or market interest. Controversies in science do not always follow the ideal.

Instead of a rational resolution by a peer group based on evidence, what we often get is a soap opera, where scientists slug it out, utterly indifferent to their professional roles. Consider the superbug controversy. It begins as an article in The Lancet, a prestigious and professional British medical journal, in August 2010. The journal publishes an article by Cardiff university scientists which observes that the water supply in Delhi has doses of the NDM-1 gene, which creates superbugs that trigger cholera and dysentery.

One must admit that the naming is a standard practice. But the naming here becomes lethal because of its mnemonic and labelling power. It is all right if basmati or champagne is seen geographically. It adds to its power as intellectual property but a bug named after its region of location lowers the market value of the region as tourist potential. Worse, such an act of scientific christening evokes a sense of pollution about the area conveying a negative sense of well-being, sanitation and hygiene. 

Now if a scientific fact were only a scientific fact, doctors would have met the argument by challenging it either with the empirical power of evidence, the statistical nature of the fact or the professionalism of the interpretation. The article would have been met with a well-behaved, well-marshalled rejoinder. Scientific issues whether on nuclear reactors, Bt Brinjals or superbugs rarely produced such well-behaved science. Science joins the costume ball of political and corporate interests.

The Indian medical establishment, politicians and the media reacted with concern but the concern was for Delhi's reputation. A city barely having recovered from the scandal of the Commonwealth Games could hardly afford a new scandal—especially an epidemic or a virus that is difficult to control.

The superbug threatened a variety of egos and interests. The naming of the bug after Delhi was seen as an insult. As a wag put it why malign a city, when a post box number could have served as an ID tag? The presence of the superbug challenges the competence of politicians. They are morally meant to be the keepers of hygiene. A superbug in the water becomes a challenge to Delhi's claim to good governance. Hygiene is to governance what chastity is to an individual. Third, it challenges a rising industry— medical tourism. This industry is built not just on lower costs and high efficiency but on a a boy scout reputation. The establishment retaliates with speed, questioning the study's sampling technique, the "singling out of Delhi", and the economic basis. It suggests it was inspired by a desire to promote certain pharmaceutical interests. Suddenly a bald fact acquires a baggage of other insinuations. Indian doctors retaliate that it is an attempt to threaten medical tourism and that the NHS record needs a detailed study. The media feels India has been insulted, convinced in its jingoism that the superbug cannot be a swadeshi effort. A conspiracy transforms a scientific debate into a cultural war.  

Our responses were too bureaucratic and ideological. Our health secretary wakes like Rip van Winkle and claims the study did not have the mandatory bureaucratic clearances. He goes one stage further by claiming the samples were intellectual property and insisting that "biological materials can't be exported without permission". Suddenly the bug seems to be pre-eminently native, circulating freely in the city of 17 million people.

The superbug as a scientific fact has met the suprabug of Indian polity—jingoism. A fear is a fear so long as it lacks an Indian marker. History is important here because there has been a tendency to ethnicize bacteria and viruses by locating their source in Africa or India. Tropical medicine always had a touch of colonial ideology. But oddly, when Indian science speaks on an issue, it sees itself as immaculately bias-free and sanitized of ideology or economic interest. There is often a double register of suspicion and immaculate science serving to protect science and governance in India.

The challenge before us is simple. Either India responds to science in scientific terms. Our scientists need to realize that a scientific fact is not value free. There are biases that surround it, which one must be sensitive about. Also, do we have to treat health and hygiene as chastity belts or can we realize vulnerability is a global phenomenon, which has to be responded to locally and globally? Why raise a scandal when we can be matter-of-fact? Why be jingoist or anti-colonial when we can be more at ease with science? Is meeting science with science a lost art form? Why do we behave like a church responding to a low-level Galileo? Can we anthropologize British fears of hygiene and immunity after Chadwick and Lord Lister and show that our cultures (bacterial and anthropological) have less to be afraid of? Is the inquisition still a permissible response to science? Imagine if the roles were reversed, would we respond the same way? The superbug has infected us all right. It shows we lack immunity to certain kinds of questions and our sense of science is still skin deep.  

This is how Kishan Baburao Hazare became 'Anna'

In the mid-1970's, a former Indian Army soldier declared war on illicit distilling and gambling in his village, Ralegaon Siddhi, in Maharashtra. Some liquor shops complied with Kishan Baburao Hazare's orders but for the rest, it was business as usual. Hazare decided to get tough when three drunkards from another village thrashed a local man.

He caught the three men when next they entered the village, had them tied to a pillar and flogged them with his army belt till they sobered up and promised to go on the wagon. Soon enough, all the liquor vends in the area vanished.

"It's not easy to bring change. If you really want to do some good, it's sometimes necessary to be tough," recalls Hazare with a smile.

Anna Hazare doesn't look like the toughie he talks about. He is short, moves slowly and talks softly. Dressed in a white dhoti-kurta, a Gandhi cap on his head, Hazare sits cross-legged onstage. Resting on a pile of white cushions, he surveys the crowd that has gathered at the site of his fast at the Ramlila Grounds in the national capital. Sometimes he claps his hands, joining the drumbeat of supporters singing revolutionary songs. Sometimes, he takes quick gulps of water from a steel glass offered by an attendant. Then as the sun climbs higher, he lies down, trying to sleep even as crowds swarm the stage from where he is challenging the government. 

"Look at this man. From which angle does he look like a fascist? He is 72 and on hunger strike to fight corruption and the politicians are calling him a fascist and a blackmailer. When politicians, cutting across party line, speak the same language, we have to be careful," says Ramesh Sharma, a social activist who has been camping at the venue, when Hazare began his fast-unto-death to force the government to accept civil society's recommendations on the Lokpal bill. Indeed, politicians have been talking much the same language.Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari said Hazare had no locus standi on the issue because he was not an "elected representative" of the people; Mohan Singh of the Samajwadi Party accused him of employing "fascist tactics" and the Rashtriya Janata Dal's Raghuvansh Prasad Singh poured vitriol on him for "dictating" terms to the government.

Every time a politician opens his mouth against Hazare, he gets a few-hundred new followers, thousands of Facebook pages get updated and millions show their support for the man who has become a symbol of the fight against corruption. Bollywood actor Anupam Kher calls him a "selfless man who is risking his life for the sake of the nation"; Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy extends his "active support" to Hazare; Ravnish Singh, a jobless school teacher from Haryana sees "hope for the country" in him; student Shruti Khanna gets "inspiration from him to do something for the country"; and housewife Malti Rana from Faridabad feels as if "Gandhiji has come back to give us independence from the corrupt politicians".

Anna Hazare has never claimed he is Gandhi.The boy who left school after class VII, joined the army just before the 1962 war with China. He was shunted off to the border after he took on his superiors over corruption in ration supplies. "I was always a troublemaker. I used to have a temper. I could not see someone doing something wrong that makes others suffer. I would end up opening my mouth and get into trouble," says Hazare, who survived a massive Pakistani air raid on his convoy during the 1965 war. His comrades were riddled with bullets, Hazare survived. "That attack made me think about the purpose of my life. God saved me for a reason. I had to do something good and positive with my life," says Hazare, who returned to his village in 1975 and decided to clean it up with the help of young people. As Ralegon Siddhi moved to prosperity, Kishan Baburao Hazare became anna (elder brother) to the villagers.

Today, he is anna or elder brother for much of India. "There is a lot of anger among the people and they don't know how to express it. Suddenly they see an old man fasting to death not for any personal gain and they rally around him," says an IAS officer who just "walked by" the venue to "soak in the atmosphere". The officer, who doesn't want to be named for obvious reasons, adds that "the government miscalculated the impact of his fast. In this country a selfless act of sacrifice can pull a lot of people."

Simplicity is Anna Hazare's greatest strength. Integrity is another major factor that distinguishes him from other public figures. "They are calling him names now but Raghuvansh Prasad and Mohan Singh have done nothing to fight corruption. Being honest personally is not enough, they are members of parties which are synonymous with corruption," says Ramesh Sharma, the social activist. "Lobbyists, arms dealers and political fixers can influence government policy but there is no place for an old Gandhian in this system."  

Anna Hazare is a Gandhian with a difference. He is more like a street fighter who is not scared of taking on anyone because he believes his cause is just. And he is a man of many causes. At the venue, groups of poor farmers from Maharashtra talk of him as a hero. For them he is a living legend. All his actions — the fight against the liquor mafia; the battle against corruption in government offices; the crusade for a Right to Information act in Maharashtra; the campaign against the Mumbai underworld—has become the stuff of legend. And now he has many new converts in his fight against corruption. "I read somewhere that corruption is a middle-class fad. That's wrong. The worst victims of corruption in India are the poor. My fight is for the people living in the countryside who have to pay bribes to get what is legally due to them," says Hazare. "I will continue to fight for the people."

Hazare has been an activist for 40 years but has never touched hearts and minds in the way he did during his hunger strike for the Jan Lokpal bill. In a matter of two weeks, Anna Hazare has become a much larger figure than when he arrived in Delhi on April 3. Now, with the Lokpal bill issue settled for the moment, the fighter in Anna Hazare must surely be looking for his next big cause.  

What the PM should learn from Dhoni

My andawala, Raghavan, is a bent old man in his 70's with a serious heart condition . He is originally from Madurai. Yes, he confesses tiredly , he’s a long way from home and longs to retire there some day. But he says, with a philosophical shrug, he can’t think of it, not at this stage of his life. Why can’t he? His two sons are doing well; his grandchildren are healthy and happy; his wife is willing to look after him in the autumn of his life. What’s his excuse? He leans forward, looks over his shoulder surreptitiously and whispers, "Corruption! I can’t handle it any more. The country has its corruption."


"Hadh ho gayi.” He seems resigned to the thought of spending the remaining years of his life cycling from building to building, delivering bread and eggs to his regular customers. Over the months, i have seen the bright gleam in his eyes reduced to a sad flicker when he says, “Purana zamana hi theek tha.” By that he means life under the British! I wasn’t sure i’d heard right the first time he said that. So, he repeated it a few more times. And we left it at that. It’s a pretty damn depressing comment for any citizen of India to be making 63 years on. But there it is.

I met him the morning after our historic World Cup victory and asked him if he’d watched the match on TV. Indeed he had… his eyes were shining again. Just like old times. What did he think of the match? Dhoni ? The team? He shut his eyes and exclaimed, “If only Manmohan saab could learn from these jawan boys! Just look at how they have enhanced our desh ki shaan. Wah!” After a brief, euphoric chat, he picked up his heavy basket and left. His eyes were still shining. Well… countless eyes were shining for at least a week after Dhoni lifted the magnificent Cup, along with the spirits of a disillusioned and angry nation.


Comparisons and conclusions between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and our cricket captain were inevitable. It was all about effective leadership and leading from the front. Something poor Manmohan Singh has never been able to do (his hands and feet being tied). Sachin (the Legend of Legends) called Dhoni the best captain he’d played under. That is a huge compliment coming from the Master Blaster. In the political context, can Pranab Babu say that in all honesty about our PM? And, err... who will carry Manmohan Singh on their shoulders around the stadium called India? Over a billion people will happily do that for Anna Hazare, though!


One wonders what Manmohan Singh’s takeaway was from the final game against worthy opponents, Sri Lanka. Surely he must have noticed a few of the bold, unconventional, individualistic and risky decisions taken by Dhoni (changing the batting order being just one of them)? And surely, he must have applauded the manner in which the entire team played as a tightly knit, well-oiled winning machine , supporting each other’s strengths, covering up weaknesses , all the way?

How did Dhoni do it? Not by waving a magic wand. Not through bulldozing and badgering . And certainly not by looking the other way when his boys were tripping up or losing heart. Everybody agrees only Dhoni could have pulled it off, and as convincingly too because Dhoni has shown over and over again that he plays with a straight bat. Simple. And expects the same from his team. Dhoni also doesn’t play favourites and treats every player with the same respect. Dhoni is smart enough to realize he doesn’t have all the answers and seeks the guidance of seniors, even juniors, besides listening attentively to the team manager. Dhoni audaciously puts himself on the line when he has to (Sreesanth!) and takes his chances when he needs to (making Sachin bowl). He’s a man who knows his mind and speaks it (no mincing words, not even about his earlier lacklustre performances ). He has transformed what was considered a good team into a world class one through strategic planning and total commitment.


This spectacular win was no fluke. The first people to admit as much are his critics and they do so ungrudgingly. There is much to learn from Dhoni. And if Manmohan Singh keeps his eyes, ears and heart open, it’s still not too late to start reversing the damage done to a bruised nation. A leader who’s good at his job instinctively realizes when to push ahead and when to back off. A leader also knows whom to give credit to… in Dhoni’s case, that one person was clearly Sachin, but he made sure all the other key players in India’s win (Gautam, Virat, Zaheer and of course, Yuvraj) were duly acknowledged, as was every player in the team. Dhoni demonstrated admirable restraint (that’s one powerful trait he shares with the prime minister ) all through the dramatic season. Perhaps, that’s the key common attribute that Manmohan Singh should capitalize on and adopt —Dhoni’s Mr Cool attitude . No matter what the provocation . Tough, but achievable.

Team India has shown the world what it’s capable of on the cricket field. It’s high time the other Team India scores a similar victory in the global arena. Come on, Manmohan Singh – go for it! If all else fails, induct Dhoni into your cabinet! For all our sakes.

Prevent IAS steel from becoming bamboo's

Is it possible to run a 21st century economy, galvanized by 22nd century ideas and social networks, with a 20th century bureaucracy , interpreting 19th century laws? One of the few institutions created by the British, which has survived the test of time in more ways than one, and yet had some notable failures is the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
Despite prodigious reforms, the IAS has seen limited change. This is a cause for concern. The classic Westminster model, on which the IAS is founded, postulated that while politicians would debate and legislate policy, the civil service would execute it. This has, over the years, been turned on its head.

Politicians have found it profitable to get into every aspect of execution and indulge in rampant corruption, while the civil service is left to write something that passes off as policy. Add to this the increasing criminalization of civil servants' political masters and the influence of money power within the system. The IAS urgently needs reform if it is not to become increasingly irrelevant to development or be co-opted by the corrupt. 

What must be done? First, the IAS must not be a lifetime appointment . Initial appointment should be for 15 years. After that, every officer's performance should be evaluated by a constitutional authority such as the UPSC. The evaluation should be based on a 360-degree kind of appraisal, which is considered superior to traditional forms of assessment. Inputs should be sought from everyone - superiors, peers, subordinates and clients. The World Bank and the UK's bureaucracy successfully follow this system.

Those who do not make the grade after the evaluation and an interview should be 'put out to pasture' . They could stay on at the same level, pay and position for three years, after which the commission would evaluate them again. Alternately, they could collect a pension proportionate to their years of service and move on.

If the officer does make the grade, he can be hired through a competitive process on seven year contracts, with specific performance targets. For example, if a new airport needs to be designed and implemented, or if a Right to Food Act needs to be drafted, the respective ministries must advertise and recruit IAS officers competitively , based on their experience , aptitude and education. The terms of the contract should incentivize performance. Their accountability should be to the result , not just to the process. Further, they should be given the freedom to pick their own teams and to reward or punish them.

Second, there must be quick and visible punishment for deviant officers. The IAS, which mirrors Indian society, has its share of people who shoplift, are corrupt, access internet porn or harass people sexually. They must be punished and removed from the service after a fair and speedy trial. This will have a salutary effect on those who join the IAS for the wrong reasons. Recently, Himachal Pradesh removed two officers ; Tamil Nadu did so too a few years ago after they were convicted of corruption.
  
Third, promotions in the IAS continue to be based on a mix of seniority and merit and the latter is evaluated in a very subjective way. In an era of intense scrutiny by the media, CAG, CVC, CBI and the judiciary , the natural incentive for an honest officer is to shun initiative and try not to make decisions, to sign every file only after 20 others have signed it. In contrast, E Sreedharan broke with procedure to give Delhi a world-class Metro.

There are several CAG reports on his violations but had he not taken the initiative to violate procedure, the Metro would not have been completed in time and under budget . Unless the honest within the IAS are protected, unless the all-India conduct rules and their implementation become more nuanced and less mechanical, initiative will be stifled and officers will be prevented from leaving the system to learn modern tools, gather rich global experience and return. Officers will become frogs in the well rather than eagles in the sky.

In what is considered to be one of the most rigorous contests in the world, 500,000 of the brightest in India write a year-long , multistage examination, competing for just 80 seats in the IAS-half of which are reserved. The percentage of success is just 0.02%, roughly the same as the IIT entrance exam . Yet, something goes wrong and it needs to be urgently addressed . Countless IAS officers work selflessly every single day in difficult circumstances. I challenge any corporate CEO in India to report to a Mayawati or a Pappu Yadav rather than a Ratan Tata or a Narayana Murthy and still turn out a market-friendly performance . The IAS is merely one subsect of Indian society and reflects both the bright sparks and its problems.  

Wariness about the impact of the ‘Mohali spirit’

India-Pakistan relations —a challenge at the best of times, and in the doldrums since 26/11 —received an unexpected boost in April, 2011 from an unlikely source: cricket. When the two countries became semi-finalists in the game's quadrennial World Cup, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited his Pakistani counterpart, Yousaf Raza Gilani, to watch the game with him at Mohali, with talks over dinner. Though the resulting thaw has involved no substantive policy decisions, Singh has nonetheless changed the narrative of the countries' relations, and seized control of a stalemated process.

Some Indian critics are less than enthused. The government suspended talks with Pakistan after the horrific attacks on Mumbai. By talking again at such a high level, despite there being no significant progress in Pakistan in bringing the perpetrators to justice, India, the critics charge, has in effect surrendered to Pakistani intransigence.

Indeed, the critics point out that the wideranging and comprehensive talks agreed to by the two sides are the old "composite dialogue" under a new label. It was this very dialogue that India justifiably called off after Mumbai: there was no point talking to people whose territory and institutions were being used to attack and kill Indians. The fear in some circles in India remains that Singh's government has run out of ideas when it comes to dealing with Pakistan — or at least that it has no good alternatives to a counterproductive military attack on the sources of terrorism or a stagnant silence. Yet it is also clear that "not talking" is not much of a policy. Pakistan can deny its shared history with India, but India cannot change its geography. Pakistan is next door, and it can no more be ignored than a thorn piercing one's side. 

India's refusal to talk to Pakistan did contribute, together with western (especially American) diplomatic efforts, to securing some initial Pakistani cooperation, including the arrest of Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi and six of his co-conspirators. But this cooperation had dried up, and India's continued reticence had long passed its use-by date. The refusal to resume dialogue had stopped producing any fresh results, and the only argument that justified it —that it was a source of leverage —gave some in India the illusion of influence over events that the government did not in fact possess.

Ironically, it was India —the victim of terrorist attacks financed, dispatched, and directed from Pakistan — that had come to seem intransigent and unaccommodating. The transcendent reality of life on the subcontinent is that it has always been India that wished to live in peace. India is, at bottom, a status quo power that would like to be left alone to concentrate on its economic development; Pakistan is the troublesome rebel, needling and bleeding its neighbour in an effort to change the power balance and wrest control of a part of Indian territory (Kashmir). Refusing to talk didn't change any of that, but it brought India no rewards. On the contrary, it imposed a cost: by appearing stubbornly truculent, India allowed Pakistan to appear reasonable and conciliatory, tarnishing India's international image as a constructive force for peace.

The thaw engendered by the two prime ministers —meeting , devoid of rancour, at a major sporting event, which Pakistan narrowly lost to India's eventual world champions — recognized that simply talking can achieve constructive results. Dialogue can identify and narrow the differences between the two countries on those bilateral issues that can be addressed.

Of course, not every issue that divides India and Pakistan can be resolved across a table, at least not right now. But specific problems like trade, the military standoff on the Siachen glacier, the territorial border at Sir Creek, and water flows through the Wullar Barrage are certainly amenable to resolution through dialogue. Progress on the big questions — the Kashmir dispute and Pakistan's use of terrorism as an instrument of policy — will require much more groundwork and constructive, gradual action. But, as Singh has realized, just talking about these questions can make clear what India's bottom lines are and the minimum standards of civilized conduct that India expects from its neighbour. And, should it prove necessary, dialogue can also be used to send a few tough signals.

"Cricket diplomacy" is not new on the subcontinent. It was tried twice before, each time with Pakistani military rulers travelling to India. General Zia ul-Haq's visit to watch a match in Jaipur in 1986 was an exercise in cynicism, since it was aimed at defusing tensions stoked by his own policy of fomenting and aiding Sikh militant secessionism in India. General Pervez Musharraf's visit to a cricket stadium in Delhi in 2005 came at a better time in the countries' relations, but, in hindsight, foreshadowed the sharp reversal three years later. Watching cricket does not necessarily lead to improved dialogue. But when two countries are genuinely prepared to engage each other, a grand sporting occasion can be a useful instrument to signal the change. That is what the "spirit of Mohali" has brought about. Now it is time to see if and how that spirit translates into genuine progress on the ground. 

Let's redefine 'progress' like Gandhi did

Is it time to let the 'historical Gandhi' fade into the background? At first this question may seem absurd . Pro-democracy protests in the Arab world have recently demonstrated the pervasive influence of Gandhian methods in challenging oppressive regimes. Anna Hazare's recent fast at the Ramlila Grounds was heavy with Gandhian allusions. All these protests draw on a relatively easy-to-admire dimension of Gandhi, the one that gives people confidence in truth and non-violence as a force more powerful than guns and swords.

But it is the catastrophe at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that compels us to focus more closely on the 'civilizational Gandhi'. Naturally, this is an extremely difficult endeavour. Every generation since Independence has been taught to revere Gandhi's persona but assiduously ignore or ridicule his critique of modern civilization.

The historical Gandhi was a mere mortal, born in 1869, who grew to extraordinary heights before he was assassinated in 1948. Methods he devised for speaking truth to power will continue to inspire struggles against oppressive and corrupt regimes for centuries to come.

The civilizational Gandhi is a philosopher and visionary who poses fundamental and troublesome questions. Is civilization about increase of material comforts or is it about moral and spiritual evolution? Is civilization to be equated merely with clever machines or with greater harmony between human systems and the natural world?
In the first half of the 20th century, when Gandhi was constantly raising these questions, the conventional or dominant wisdom rejected him as being backward, a throwback to the antimachine Luddites of the 19th century. Today, with severe depletion of biodiversity and a red alert on climate change, Gandhi seems ahead of his time. But even then, the historical Gandhi has a much larger presence. Why?

First, challenging the brute force of a political class and its bureaucracy is a relatively simple matter. There are offensive rules or policies and actions people mobilize to oppose them. While he excelled in such mobilization, Gandhi repeatedly said that the departure of the viceroy and his British officers would not give us true swaraj.

Second, Gandhi did not merely equate swaraj with moral renewal. He linked it to challenging and overthrowing "modern civilization". By this he meant, primarily, the amoral nature of modern science and industry. Gandhi perceived a profound violence at the heart of modern science . He abhorred the practice of vivisection scientific experimentation that inflicts pain on 'lower' forms of life and justifies it as a valid means in the pursuit of knowledge.

This, Gandhi believed, is wrecking havoc far greater than the old forms of "might over right". It would not have surprised Gandhi to learn that the second atomic bomb, the one dropped over Nagasaki, was partly a means of experimentation. Closer to home, people displaced by industrial projects are even today being told that someone has to pay the price for progress.

Third, since all this is seemingly remote from our everyday lives, it is generally deemed to be imperative that we continue to ignore Gandhi's civilizational vision. Even disasters like Bhopal, Chernobyl, Deepwater Horizon or Fukushima Daiichi are meant to be taken in our stride as part of an inevitable element of risk in human existence. There is room to ask for better safety standards but virtually none to question the definition of progress.

Yes, the catastrophe in Japan might trigger a comparative review of risk assessment between different forms of energy. But what's needed is a collective introspection not about specific technologies but about basics. Just how much energy do we need, rather than want? How much is being wasted? How might we seek that vast realm between the extremes of involuntary deprivation and born-to-shop consumption?

It might help to focus on just two dimensions. Distinguishing needs from wants can be creative rather than frustrating. And respecting all forms of life need not be a ticket back to the Stone Age. But working with these possibilities might become easier if we look at developments outside the BRICS nations' growth story.

Bolivia is about to pass the world's first law granting nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth is the work of Bolivian President Evo Morales, the first person from an indigenous tribe to lead that country. The law will redefine the country's rich mineral deposits as "blessings" and is expected to lead to radical measures to reduce pollution and control industry. Even Ecuador has changed its constitution to give nature "the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles."

Such measures are not complete in themselves. They are part of a larger striving to redefine progress. It is commonly argued that India does not have the luxury to travel down this road it must concentrate on the known model of growth and progress. In any case, where is the alternative model?

But we don't need a ready-to-install alternative model. Answers have to be found by individuals, groups, companies and governments by re-examining goals putting functional convenience in the background and values in the foreground . We could then engage with the civilizational Gandhi, not as an oracle who has all the answers, but as someone who can help us think things through.

Working to improve a rotten system

Rahul Gandhi: I am working to improve a rotten system

The very day Anna Hazare broke his fast, Rahul Gandhi wrote that though he was concerned about corruption “like most right thinking Indian people”, he was working quietly on that problem as he had “absolutely no interest” in becoming a hero.

The provocation was a sharply-worded letter he had received the same day, from former Supreme Court judge V R Krishna Iyer asking, “Why should the Hazare phenomenon occur at all? Only because so many evils and no action from Delhi !.”

In his response to Iyer, Rahul said: “Like most right thinking Indian people I feel exactly the way you do. I spend a lot of my waking hours thinking and working to improve what I see as a rotten system. The difference is that I cannot get away simply with writing letters and complaining as you can. I am faced with the reality of changing things which requires much more than the periodic release of emotion.”

If Rahul took such pains to convey his commitment to combating corruption, it is because Iyer had accused him of indifference as well as presumptuousness: ``If you are sensitive about the people's needs and aspirations, you must attack the big corrupt persons in power. Why are you silent? You are a young man and can rise to be a great nationalist, (but) not by ambitiously aspiring to be Prime Minister because you are of the Nehru family. That would be anti-democratic and oligarchic.''

The Gandhi scion also reacted sarcastically to the left-leaning jurist's suggestion that he could become a hero if he took up the challenge of turning India into ``an egalitarian society, a Gandhian India, a Nehruvian India, NOT nuclear India. Please be great so that the people may have a better tomorrow.''

Rahul's response: ``As far as becoming a hero is concerned, unfortunately that is of absolutely no interest to me. I work because I believe in working to improve a system that is rotten and not to be glorified.''

But he accepted the 95-year-old Iyer's counsel that he must read Jawaharlal Nehru's autobiography to understand socialism and patriotism. ``Thank you for your very impassioned and well meaning advice. I appreciate it. I have read JN's autobiography. I will do so again as you suggest.''

In this exchange on corruption and related issues, Rahul was however silent on Iyer's criticism of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Iyer had written, ``Your Prime Minister has become known for inaction. He does not touch the former CJI K G Balakrishnan or any other corrupt VIP. When public power is vested in anyone for the purpose of giving clean governance to the country, to be silent and inactive is breach of trust.''

It seems significant that while conveying his shared concerns, Rahul did not clarify whether his agreement with Iyer extended to his criticism of the Prime Minister as well.

Fashion victims

Getting front row seats at fashion shows can be a cut-throat business.

Do you know the most stressful part of organising a fashion show, asked a designer at the recently concluded Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week. Before one could guess it must be designing the clothes or finishing them in time for the show, he revealed, "It's the stress of whom to seat in the front row!" Another designer groaned in agreement, "Why don't people understand somebody has to sit in the second, third and fourth rows as well! How can everyone be in the front row?"


A third designer helpfully offered, "Let's do away with the front row! We should start seating from the second row!" All guffawed.


So coveted are front row seats that people have been known to walk out in a huff if these are denied to them. It's not enough that you get invited; where you are seated is indicative of your status vis-a-vis others at the show! And so, many would rather not watch the show than be seen sitting second row onwards.

So critical is the seating chart issue that at times FDCI president Sunil Sethi has been known to extend the standard 60-foot ramp to 80 feet just so that some more front row seats could be created to salvage fragile egos!


The front row normally seats around 100 persons. The demand for some of the coveted shows goes up to 200 - double the availability. Designers obviously do not want to upset anyone, so they leave it to the organisers to step on designer-shod toes. Clients, buyers, society doyens, Page 3 regulars and fashionistas, sponsors, media and immediate family are the usual front row claimants. In Delhi, add to that bureaucrats, politicians and cops, and you have a political situation!


Around 20-plus seats are reserved for sponsors, a similar number for the media, approximately 33 for the designers' guests and 20 for buyers.


Media focus on first rowers makes the situation worse. A senior designer accused the FDCI president of showing lack of respect when she couldn't find place in the front row; a beauty doyen flounced out when the coveted row couldn't accommodate her and her entourage. An art gallery owner insisted on her right to sit in the media section front seat till she was forcibly convinced otherwise. Two Page 3 regulars in front row seats squeezed in a couple of friends in between. "Please shift a bit, we can all fit in," they assured the disapproving lady next to them. Miss Afghanistan of 10-15 years ago sashayed in and walked out just as elegantly when offered a second row seat!


Disturbed by the constant shifting and adjustments a person's neighbour was making, he finally asked, "Are you alright?" Flashing him a smile she confessed, "Oh, it's the problem of wearing a short dress in the front row." Pulling yet again at the impossibly shrinky fabric, she added with a wink, "I surely don't want to be flashing at the front seaters opposite me!" Now he shifted uncomfortably, worried he might be sitting right next to a potential wardrobe malfunction. Hazards of the trade.


It is de rigueur to seat some prominent people in the front row because the presence of A-listers indicates the success of a designer and his show. But then there are those lesser ones who plonk themselves in premium seats without invitation, refusing to budge to the most polite requests.


At one of the shows sat two wide-eyed, middle-aged guys in the most premium seats. Their eyes never moved up from the legs of the models walking the ramp. Up and down the eyeballs rolled as they swallowed convulsively and forgot to shut their hanging jaws, to the delight of the frontbenchers across the ramp. Upon enquiry, the media was not surprised to know they were officials from some prominent ministries, taking time off for a look at the leggy lasses, design and designers be damned!


Ah, the vagaries of fashion as seen from the front row.

The other crusade

The government blinked. Anna Hazare broke his fast. Representatives from civil society are sitting with some central ministers to draft a new Lokpal Bill. The Bill will still have to be passed by Parliament before it becomes law. But, given the tremendous groundswell of support amongst middle India, it is a safe bet that major political parties will pass the Bill in some form.

What exactly have we won? In the best of scenarios, a Lokpal Bill will curb the incidence of highly visible scams such as the ones associated with the Commonwealth Games and 2G licences. But these instances of corruption, however repulsive they are, represent only a tiny fraction of illegal economic activities which have resulted in a gigantic parallel economy. Estimates about the size of the black economy vary from 50 to 70% of the "white" economy. Since the Lokpal Bill will have a tiny effect on the size of the black economy, we will only have won a match in the plate division of the Ranji Trophy! And even this victory may come at a cost.

Many columnists have pointed out that if civil society activists are allowed to dictate terms, then the new institution will give unbridled powers to the Lokpal. What are the safeguards which will ensure that the Lokpal will not be corrupt? In other words, who will monitor the monitor? In environments where even former chief justices of the Supreme Court have been accused of corruption, it is extremely dangerous to create anything resembling a Leviathan.
 
Most other established democracies are significantly less corrupt than ours. So, there is no reason why we cannot reduce the level of corruption without sacrificing basic democratic principles. Common sense suggests that the government either reduces the scope for citizens to indulge in illegal activities or it slashes the incentive for generating incomes through such activities.

The government has made some fledgling progress in the first respect by, for instance, making the use of PAN cards mandatory for a large number of financial transactions. Increased computerisation in the income tax department has also resulted in lower levels of income tax evasion.

Of course, huge holes still need to be plugged. Consider, for instance, how difficult it is to buy any property in Delhi without paying large sums in black, or the film industry where incomes are grossly underreported (although many film stars tweeted their support to Anna Hazare!).

While we are all incensed when politicians and senior bureaucrats indulge in corrupt practices, we seem to meekly accept the necessity to bribe government officials for services which are due to us, be they ration cards, income tax refunds or clearances to the corporate sector to start new plants. The amounts involved in most instances may be small. But, since bribes have become more or less standard practice in virtually all interactions with government babus, the total sum involved is inordinately large.

In most cases, bribes originate as a result of mindless bureaucracy. Consider, for instance, a recent order of the Delhi government banning the registration of all transactions of houses unless they had a certificate of "structural safety issued by competent authority". Although the order, subsequently revoked, was ostensibly designed to curb the construction of unsafe buildings, it did not stipulate that it was restricted to new buildings. However, the MCD did not have enough engineers to issue structural safety certificates for even a minuscule fraction of existing buildings in the city.
 
One is forced to conclude that orders of such monumental stupidity - of which there are far too many - are designed precisely to extract bribes from helpless citizens. It does not need any Lokpal to simplify bureaucratic procedures so as to reduce the scope for extraction of bribes.

It also makes sense for the government to turn the direction of incentives completely. That is, instead of citizens running from pillar to post, it should be in the interest of the government babus to make sure that their performance is par for the course.

The government can use the internet to announce the maximum time within which specific services will be delivered. It can also pass orders or legislation imposing steep penalties on the government if these deadlines are not honoured, and reward officials if they adhere to these deadlines. NGOs can help in implementing such schemes by ensuring that the government actually pays the penalties whenever services are not delivered within the promised period.

Lastly, it is imperative for the government to ensure that crime does not pay. In other words, the government has to make it increasingly difficult for individuals to spend what they stash away illegally. Consider a world where all goods and services need to be bought by issuing cheques or with credit cards. Then, it would be practically useless to hold stocks of "black money". What would you spend them on?

Of course, such a world is a utopian ideal. But a reasonably close approximation would be an economy where cash cannot be used in any high-value transactions such as purchase of jewellery, airline tickets or bills in five-star hotels.

Beyond corruption

Anna Hazare's crusade against graft is only the first of many battles India must fight.

Will there be a national life after Anna? The Gandhian's satyagraha against rampant corruption has evoked a countrywide response unmatched by anything in the history of independent India, not even perhaps by Jayaprakash Narayan's 1974 movement against the increasing authoritarianism of Indira Gandhi's government.

JP's 'swarajist' campaign - initially spearheaded by students in Bihar but later spreading to include citizens from all walks of life, across the nation - caused the biggest political earthquake the country has ever witnessed when Indira Gandhi, backed into a corner, declared her infamous Emergency and overnight turned democratic India into a totalitarian dictatorship.

But though shrouded, the torch of freedom was not extinguished. And it burned brighter and fiercer than ever when in the general elections following the lifting of the Emergency, the collective wrath of the people voted Indira Gandhi out of office and brought in the Janata government.

The new dispensation, which got into internal wrangles almost from day one, was to pose its own challenges of cohesion. But the 'spirit of '77' made one thing clear: no one would again dare to try and stifle India's irrepressible democracy. The powers-that-be today will attempt to derail Anna's runaway movement at their own peril. Some critics have tried to put a verbal spoke in the wheels of the anti-corruption juggernaut by suggesting, among other things, that such extra-parliamentary forms of legislative activity would eventually derail democracy by encouraging irresponsible copycat movements which could be wilfully subversive of the rule of law.

Such sceptics, however, have been swiftly silenced by the overwhelming support that Anna's cause has generated, targeting as it does what is universally seen to be the nation's single most baneful affliction. Public disgust with all-pervasive graft has reached a pitch where corruption is perceived to be the root cause of all our myriad social, political and economic ills. The groundswell of opinion seems to be that if we can somehow exorcise the demon of corruption we will be freed of all the other evils that daily bedevil us.
 
Such a single-point agenda would be dangerously short-sighted. Corruption, in all its many manifestations, is without any question one of the most harmful of the toxins poisoning our body politic. But it is by no means the only one. Anna himself has already identified electoral reform as the next banner around which to rally his growing legions of followers. The criminalisation of politics, and the open use of muscle-and money-power to capture votes has made such reform a vital necessity which has been far too long delayed. Some of the electoral changes debated have been the right of recall and the voter's right to cancel their ballots in case they find all the candidates unsuitable in a particular constituency.

Such much-needed political reform, however, presupposes that the voter is free to make a truly informed choice. Illiteracy and the deep-rooted patriarchal system by which women voters are no more than rubber-stamp extensions of the male head of the household are only two of the major obstacles in the path to making the electoral process more truly representative.

Indeed not a few would say that to the extent - and it is a very large extent - that gender discrimination in effect disenfranchises the female half of the population India is at best a shambolic democracy. The progressive disempowerment of women is revealed by studies of sex-selective abortions which indicate that in 20 years' time India will have 20% more men than women. A clear case not of genocide, perhaps, but certainly of gendercide. And perpetrated, largely, by the urban middle class which is the most visible in championing Anna's cause.
 
Let's get rid of corruption by all means. But let's not forget the other - and far worse - monsters which lurk within us.

Gandhi and privacy...

'Gandhi was never a man to conceal his private life'

Gyan Prakash, professor of history at Princeton University, shares his ideas and views on the man we call Mahatma.

One of the controversies in 'Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India' is the reference to the interesting friendship between Gandhi and Kallenbach. Gandhi has had many interesting relationships with sexuality and celibacy. Can you tell us more on that subject?

To be sure, Gandhi had a close, intimate relationship with Kallenbach. Joseph Lelyveld makes it clear that there is no evidence of a sexual relationship but suggests a homo-erotic one existed. To be scandalised by this is to know nothing about Gandhi's strong and open views on sexuality and love. Gandhi wrote openly and frequently about his struggles with physical desire in newspaper articles, letters and his diary. An unusual figure, he crossed many known boundaries of the public and the private.
 

Mard ko dard nahi hota

Boy oh boy! He is a monster when it comes to show of stunts, but is otherwise a softie which makes him adorable. There’s no limit to his daredevilry. My heart does a somersault; every time I see him hop on the TV set placed on a 4-feet tabletop from a 2-feet bed and then dive for the bean bag down on the floor. Like a skilled acrobat, he swiftly tucks his chin in his chest lest he bangs his head on the tiled floor. But, he is not lucky always. One slip and he falls flat. But, is quick to collect himself and sits there with hands folded across his chest, silently. “Did you hurt yourself?” I ask him with my heart in my mouth. “Nope,” comes a stoic reply. I know he is hurt badly, but doesn’t want to show his pain. Oh man, he’s not even four!

“Mard ko dard nahi hota,” rings an old friend’s humorous take on man’s innate behaviour of restraining himself from shedding tears when hurt. He bears the pain to the point of being superhuman -- no matter "how badly he has been beaten or how cruel the torture has been". But, “chot agar dil pe lagi ho to dard hota hai,” says a journo friend, “aur phir dil hi nahi, aankhen bhi zaar-zaar roti hain”. If a heartbroken man says that he is not wounded, he is not bruised and bleeding, then he is lying, he says, citing the case of his close friend, who broke a dozen hearts before meeting the same fate. Tears roll down his cheeks even today while nursing his wounds.
 
Salon terms the year 2010 as the year of tears for men. Citing an attorney, it states how male “machoism dominated early 70's. Men were not supposed to publicly display emotions as it was viewed as a sign of weakness. But stoicism gave way over the years to sensitivity as a desirable male trait, and by 2010, there were few fears for tears left among well-known American men”.

I have seen my father weep at the bidaai of my sister. I understand his crying as it was done at a time and in a particular circumstance that allowed him to lower his guard without the fear of ridicule. I am sure that he wouldn’t be moved enough by a good movie to let a drop out of his tear ducts. Not even by failure or embarrassment. How often we hear moms admonish their little boys, “Stop crying, be a man!” An oft-repeated phrase, ‘be a man’ means to look failure, frailty and fear squarely in the face, and not blink, says a feminist and a writer.
 
But down the years, men have become less inhibited in demonstrating emotions. In fact, we get to see more of this human side of the male now. What was once considered as unmanly, is now being viewed as a quality to have as an asset. The turnaround was ably captured in the Raymond’s ‘complete man’ ad series in 1990's. It broke the stereotypical image of a macho Indian man portrayed in Hindi films. “Raymond actually robbed the man of his mardangi,” says a columnist. And, instead emerged a “sensitive, vulnerable, versatile, caring, intellectual and fun” man. The next decade saw this softer side becoming more pronounced. Images of men crying openly began to fill the small screen space. TV actors left behind the likes of Archana, Tulsi and Parvati in the tear terrain. “It’s cool to cry as it shows that emotions are same for men and women,” says a TV actor. Not only on daily soaps, but also on the reality shows more and more men turned on the waterworks. Filmmaker Shekhar Kapur got so overwhelmed by the performance of a group of physically challenged kids on India’s Got Talent that he couldn’t control his sobbing. Sanjay Dutt -- the icon of macho Bollywood heroes -- wept on the Indian Idol 5 show after hearing the soul stirring AR Rahman’s Sufi number “Khwaja mere khwaja”.

Remember Qutubuddin Ansari! The face that flashed across the world as the face of the Gujarat riots -- eyes welling with tears, face covered with mud and dried blood, and hands folded in a plea for mercy. Or, cricketer Kapil Dev, who broke down on Karan Thapar’s show when asked if he had a role in match-fixing! And, can we ever forget our Men in Blue shedding the tears of joy and jubilation after winning the World Cup? Yes, the man has arrived – mard ko bhi dard hota hai…

The Pillitzer Prize

The Emperor of all maladies? The title clearly belongs to the cancer of politics.

Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for The Emperor of All Maladies, his 'elegant inquiry' into the history and continuing mystique of cancer. Wow. But, while reading about the New Delhi-born, New York-based oncologist's impressive literary achievement, it struck me that our entire news media is about maladies. And the unquestioned emperor of all these is politics.

It wasn't just a coincidence that the biggest headline of not just that day, but the whole week, was about a doctored CD, and the cancer of corruption which has been galloping unchecked across the body politic.

Serious illness means ambulance. Some lawyers are known as ambulance chasers, and there have been whispers that the Bhushan's have been doing just this in the guise of public interest. Their targets make no bones about these two busybodies being a pain in the neck. Some people have an even lower opinion of them. But they have to swallow their bitter PIL.

Like the subject of Dr Mukherjee's book, the Bhushan CD continues to confound the fraternity. Everyone has made it his business to diagnose it, including those who are accused of doctoring it. Pathologist Amar Singh has asked Shanti Bhushan to give a voice sample to establish proof of his paternity. Many suspect that the former SP leader is the one who should be taking the test.

Like allopathic medicos who dismiss any form of alternative medicine as hocus poke-us, the ruling politicos have branded Homeopath Hazare as a dangerous quack who will cause severe, long-term damage to the system. They say we must ignore his bogus white pills, and leave the treatment of corruption to those with a proper MP degree.

However, alarmed by the multiple organ failure caused by this galloping cancer, more and more people are beginning to place their faith in Anna-ji's grassroots prescription. So what if he's not that kind of pharma?

Shanti and Prashant Bhushan are a father and son team. This is common practice in law. As it is in medicine. Politics is even more genetically engineered. Biwi, bahu, beta are all symptoms or side effects. Since even chacha-bhanja causal links are found, the practice of this cancer is sometimes known as Uncology.

The deep-rooted cancers of the body politic have compromised its immunity, and also made it more susceptible to external factors. The very day that Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee was chosen for the Pulitzer, in faraway Ratnagiri, virulent protests against the Jaitapur plant exposed the already ravaged government to the hazards of unclear radiation.

Political maladies manifest themselves differently at different times. Parts of the country are now in the grip of a poll fever. Following textbook epidemiology, it was preceded by a rash of campaigning, blistering allegations, and bouts of violent attacks. Medical opinion differs on the best way to get it to subside or prevent it from assuming a virulent, or even fatal, form. But most agree that the best bet not only for diagnosis, but even treatment is the EC-ji.

Now that it is well established that politics is the emperor of all maladies, it follows that New Delhi's biggest hospital should be headed by a Dr Singh. Several expressers of mock concern have been suggesting that the Prime Medico himself needs a good orthopaedic surgeon to tackle his apparently weak knees and spine. The more aggressive say he needs complete replacement. Hopefully it won't come to that. We might mention that here, as in all hospitals, it's the Matron who actually calls the shots.

What after the Jasmine fades?

Democracy remains a distant goal in the Middle East, with many pitfalls on the way.

Images of democracy in motion make for intoxicating television. The kid next to the soldier with his tank at Tahrir Square, the exhausted rebel in a Libyan desert and women and children out in Bahrain's Pearl Square. Next stop, democracy, the footage suggests as anchors hurtle to keep pace with the compelling images and churn out the two-minute revolution theory.

The painful truth is that the path to Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen emerging as western-style democracies could be torturous and long. And even worse for places like Bahrain and other rich Emirates where civil society has suddenly discovered it has a political mind.

A look at the map of West Asia shows many straight lines drawn across the barren deserts by European powers and civil servants in London to create nations that suited the post-colonial foreign policy needs of colonisers. Little heed was paid to the demographic heterogeneity of the region where an artificial nationality negotiated with the local satrap was imposed on the people. Since then, most countries have lived under autocratic rulers at best and tyrannical at worst. Nasser in Egypt was anti-imperial but not a democrat.

By far the most peaceful and educated civil society in the region is that of Egypt's. But even there, few institutions exist. The heads of state have donned military colours and have exterminated critics and opposition with the help of an all-powerful secret police and perpetrated a regime of fear. Corruption is endemic, made evident by the Baksheesh culture that permeates all layers of officialdom; courts are arranged to favour the powerful and the upper middle class lives in negotiated comfort with the military. Will all this disappear in one fell swoop? Unlikely. Too many vested interests are entrenched, the biggest among them, the politico-military. Egypt is the best place to make the transition, though. It does have a parliament, a body of legislative rules and a set of laws that the courts can use.

Take the case of Libya, where US intervention looks menacingly like George Bush's regime change war in Iraq. Barack Obama has taken care to broaden Nato involvement but the first few rounds of US attacks muddied the waters and gave Muammar Gaddafi international oxygen to breathe fire against 'American Imperialists'. It's hard to sympathise with Gaddafi, but lifting all forms of control, undemocratic as they may be, will push Libya into violent chaos and reopen tribal faultlines. That the anarchy could be taken advantage of by Islamic extremists isn't unlikely, and dismantling the military overnight will remove a bulwark against mushrooming of terror outfits. The removal of the dictator will create a political vacuum in a country where no political elite barring Gaddafi loyalists has been allowed to flourish. Unlike Syria, where thanks to the Ba'ath Party, the political base is a tad wider, Libya has no second-rung of leadership to fall back on barring tribal leaders and military commanders.

In Syria, where tens of thousands are sitting in for Bashir Assad's ouster, the topography is even more complicated. Despite being overwhelmingly Sunni, Syria is a mosaic of competing faiths and cultures that have been papered over by a socialistic-sounding political system represented by the Ba'ath Party. If the order crumbles, it would expose chasms between the Christians, the Alawis, the Druze, the Ismailiyas and even the Greek Orthodox group. Flux in Syria could also lead to regional complications. The Damascus regime is viewed by many as a cat's paw for Iranian interests. Help to the Hezbollah in Lebanon, locked in a protracted war with Israel, also comes from Damascus and the Assads have a fair amount of clout in how the political structure in the fractured neighbour is arranged. It's insane to predict how things would shape up if Assad falls but violence is a fair certainty.

It's a shame that Bashir Assad didn't loosen up the political system fast enough to prevent this. The breakneck pace at which protests seem to be spreading won't leave him room for gradual change. That apart, the worst fear is that these regimes will fall in the hands of Islamic hardliners. That may or may not happen but the ground is fertile for such an outcome. In countries where regimes have been traditionally repressive, the mosques tend to transform into political arenas where dissidents and critics meet. That apart, the separation of the church and state isn't obligatory even in Islamic democracies.

Lastly, where the legitimacy of the existing ruler is destroyed by a public upsurge and there isn't any clear political succession in the works, clerics could assume leadership roles where none existed for them previously. Human societies crave order, and in situations of strife, clerics promising stability, whatever the terms of such an order are, could gain a mass following.

In Indonesia, when the 1997 Asian economic turmoil eroded dictator Suharto's credibility and finally caused his downfall, the leader of the tolerant Muslim country's largest religious movement, the Nahdnatul Ulama, Abdurrahman Wahid, was nominated as the successor. That Gus Dur, as he was popularly known, was a moderate leader with great respect for the minorities, helped Indonesia complete a transition to a modern parliamentary democracy that subsequently elected liberal leaders like Megawati Sukarnoputri as president. But that's not an outcome that's going to follow if in a vacuum, political space is usurped by religious hardliners with a conservative Islamic vision of civil society.

Coaching Classes: A parallel universe of education

It is unregulated, unorganised, and its profits can be the envy of some of the best and the biggest business houses in the country. And though it does not officially bear the tag of an ‘industry’, its growth, even during times of recession, can make the most pampered sectors in the corporate sector see green. There are no official estimates, but insiders say the total revenue in their business is close to Rs 10,000 crore which, incidentally, is only for class room coaching; home and online tutoring is said to be worth another Rs 20,000 crore. This is the world of shadow education in India — a segment that’s emerging stronger and larger with every passing year.

The coaching classes market, or ‘sweat schools’ as they are often referred to, consists largely of private tuitions and entrance test-preparations. But the sector, though huge, is highly fragmented and regional in nature. There are a handful of players (three to four) who are known to have an all-India presence and are worth more than Rs 100 crore.

Another 10-odd can boast of revenues in the range of Rs 10-100 crore. The rest, and the number runs into thousands even if we do not take into consideration the small momand-pop enterprises doing home tutoring, make healthy revenues of several lakhs.

Not surprisingly, even as the existing players are trying to consolidate, international ones - like Educomp - are jumping into the fray, hoping to expand in a big way as they are in a position to make more substantial investments.

UNLISTED, IN THE SHADOWS

Listed players in this segment, however, are still just a handful — Aptech, Career-Point, NIIT and Everonn - and have captured only about two per cent of the private education market. Interestingly, not all players are looking merely at private tutoring or coaching; many of them provide information technologies to schools or build brick-and mortar schools and colleges.

A large part of this sector continues to operate in the shadows. No regulatory restrictions on profitability, low capital intensity and a quick payback period of two-five years are the main growth drivers on the supply side. On the demand side, shortage of jobs, cutthroat competition for higher education, parental aspirations combined with underperforming mainstream educational infrastructure have led to the ever-growing appetite for supplementary education.

But whatever its name and nature - home tuitions, classroom coaching, study material source or online classes - demand seems to be on the rise for these ‘cram’ shops. No stream is sacred, no area untouched. Name an entrance exam and there is coaching available to help you ‘crack’ it. Engineering, medicine, management and civil services may be the more popular exams for which students undergo training, but think of any possible career, or the most obscure test, and chances are there will be some institute offering ‘training’ for it.

Even creative fields like art, where you would think coaching would be of little use, throw up a proliferation of trainers. Be it the prestigious National School of Design or, for that matter, even fashion designing, you can get coached for it. And it’s not just college and school going students who are the clients, even tiny-tots are in the net, getting ‘coached’ to make the right moves and noises to get admission into nursery classes of reputed schools.

BIG COSTS, LITTLE GUARANTEE

In the race to get ahead, everyone wants to maximise their potential, and this is where the coaching industry steps in. But none of this is easy on the purse; it comes at a substantial investment and with little or no guarantees of a positive outcome. One can even end up paying more in coaching fees than in expenses for the actual course one is preparing for. In fact, the amount spent on coaching and various affiliated needs may be higher than what they have to pay in terms of fees at, say, an IIT, which is about Rs 50,000 a year.

Students start training for engineering and medical entrance examinations from class XI onwards, sometimes earlier at class IX. While some go from bigger cities to training institutes in smaller places like Kota and Pala that have become coaching hubs, there is a parallel trend that sees students from small towns trudge to metros in search of better institutes.

Similarly, private tuitions at the school level are equally prohibitive. And, ironically, this sometimes happens when it is the same teacher holding forth both at the child’s school and tutorial. A number of such teachers double up as tutors after school hours — and going by the accounts of some of the students, teaching skills improve considerably in the latter. What is worrisome, though, is that some teachers penalise students in various ways for not availing of the tuition facility.

Though, in a certain way, coaching centres can be seen as something that helps break the hegemony of elite academic institutions by allowing access to students from humble backgrounds to better course material and training — thus allowing for a level-playing field — the high costs involved can put some of the same students at an immediate disadvantage, leading to further inequity in the system.

HYPER-DEMAND FUELS RACE

In all this, the hyper-demand for better learning ensures there is coaching even to get into some sought after coaching institutes which, in turn, hold their own examinations and screen students before admitting them. Just to give an idea in terms of numbers, the All-India Engineering Entrance Examination, one of the largest such exercises in the world, is taken by about 12 lakh students, 80 per cent of whom take some sort of coaching for it.

After engineering, it is the medical and management streams, along with civil services and tutorials for SAT and GRE (examinations required to study in the US), that garner the most number of students. There are several others forming a smaller part of the pie.

Matching the growing number of students in search of the ‘right’ coaching centre are the institutes, making it difficult for many to home in on the perfect ones. Compounding this are the blatantly false claims doing the rounds; students can never be too sure what they are getting into. In June this year, the battle between two Mumbai based institutes escalated so much that it reached the police. It happened after one of them put out an advertisement saying some students who had failed to clear entrance examinations after enrolling in other institutes (which they named) did so after being trained by them. In another case last year, two competing institutes training MBAs took their differences to the Advertising Council over false claims. Again, this year, human resource development minister Kapil Sibal had to intervene and order an inquiry regarding claims made over the success of a 2009 IIT topper.

Students have few avenues for recourse in case anything goes wrong. More often than not they are asked to pay upfront for the entire duration of the session; they cannot change their mind midway and ask for a refund. Many talk about the interesting modus operandi some of these classes adopt. Through internal selection, they pick out the brighter students and form a separate class which is mentored and tutored by their best teachers.

The others, meanwhile, are taught by mediocre teachers who are mere graduates or have failed to clear the very examination they are tutoring others for. Though selective tutoring helps institutes raise their ‘success rate’, bringing in more numbers, the larger group of students suffers.

For teachers, at least a majority of them, it is a win-win situation. Many on an average make up to Rs 2, 000 an hour. The best among them are known to command a staggering Rs 5, 000 an hour. Teaching for 10 hours a day, that’s a neat package of Rs 50, 000 per day. But this pales in comparison to the money the institutes make from every batch that may have anywhere from 35 to 150 students. The market for civil services coaching - an exam in which around 1.5 lakh candidates from all over India appear - in only Delhi is estimated to be about Rs 100 crore with students paying Rs 30, 000-45, 000 for a three to five month course.

BASIC EDUCATION GAP

Problems notwithstanding, it is easy to see what drives this phenomenal bazaar - the yawning gap between the learning imparted through our basic education system and the level of entrance examinations. “We operate in the valley that has been formed between academic standards in the mainstream system and the competitive standard of entrance examinations of various professional courses,” says the head of a coaching institute.

Occasionally, there are voices of opposition against this parallel universe of education, protesting the larger principle of it and the way it operates and impacts the mainstream education system. Both government and educationists grumble about it and say things that suggest the monster will be tamed and regulated. But on the ground it remains business as usual.

In 2006, IIT-JEE — the joint entrance examination held for Indian Institutes of Technologies — changed its test pattern after it was felt that students were spending too much time in coaching classes and ignoring their class XI and XII examination, negatively impacting their chances for other avenues. It was also found that almost 70 per cent of students who cleared the IIT-JEE in 2005 had dropped a year or more. Faculty at IIT's added that students who qualified for these institutes were burnt out by the time they entered the class rooms due to the years of preparation, and did not eventually perform well.

Starting next year, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) will ring in changes in the civil services exams that will reduce the importance of coaching by introducing an aptitude test instead of a subject-specific test.

But none of this seems to have made much of a dent on the coaching sector. True to its ‘shadowy’ character, it morphs and adapts accordingly, and continues to flourish. In anticipation of the UPSC change, coaching institutes have already started advertising and conducting classes for the aptitude test. They claim they can “bring out” the aptitude in students who don’t know “how to gauge it”. As for the JEE, the government is planning to increase the weightage given to performance of students in class XII. It is even considering an aptitude test for screening purposes before holding intense subject-specific exams.

NEED FOR REGULATION

But there is little else that is being done on the regulation front. Despite its formidable size and expanse, something that can bring the government good revenue, the sector functions mostly in an unregulated manner. The fact that these coaching shops do not qualify as educational institutions means they do not need to register with the government and can operate off the radar, unchecked and unquestioned. The government accepts it is concerned about the impact of this industry, but hasn’t done much.

Till such time that the concern translates into action, the world of shadow education will continue to attract in unending hordes students both desperate and ambitious, hoping for success in a new India that rewards like never before.

Unfriendly persuasion

Even more than our choice of enemies, it's our choice of unfriends which reveals what we are....

Recently I was introduced to a fascinating new word: unfriend. The word, a verb, comes from the social networking site called Facebook and it means turning a Facebook 'friend' - or someone you keep in touch with through the site - into an 'unfriend', someone whom you find so utterly objectionable that you no longer wish to have anything to do with the person. Being computer illiterate I don't do Facebook (or Twitter, or YouTube, or any of those other e-things) and I'd never come across the term 'unfriend' before. But the moment I heard it, it struck me as being a word particularly apt for our times.

Unfriend. The 'un' prefix gives it a unilateralism that brooks no argument or compromise. An 'unfriend' sounds like those 'un-persons' of the Soviet bloc in the days of Stalinism, people deemed to be so beyond any hope of political redemption that their names were deleted from all official records and their faces removed from group photographs. Soviet un-persons were like human black holes; they were literally sucked out of existence. An un-person was not someone who'd once been a person and was no longer such (i.e., someone who'd once been alive and was now dead); an un-person was a no-one who'd never existed. Similarly, an unfriend suggests not just someone who was once your friend but is no longer so - is now in fact your foe, as opposed to friend - but is someone who for you has no existence whatsoever, neither as friend nor foe.

We tend to think in pairs of opposites, with each side of the pair reaffirming the existence of the other. So yin reaffirms its opposite of yang. Light reaffirms dark, and friend reaffirms foe, and vice versa. Your foe, or your enemy, reaffirms your existence - often more than your friends do - even as you reaffirm the existence of your adversary.

A prime example of an interdependent pair of foes is provided by Pakistan and India. Pakistan needs to have India as its adversary, because if it didn't it would lose its own identity which is premised on the fact that it is 'not-India'. Likewise, India needs Pakistan as its arch opponent. Because if we didn't have Pakistan who would we accuse of cross-border terrorism (as distinct from home-grown terrorism represented by Maoists and Abhinav Bharat), play cricket against, and wrangle with over Kashmir? If Pakistan didn't have India and India didn't have Pakistan, whom would Afridi have cussed after the World Cup, and whom would Indian fans have gloated over after beating Sri Lanka in the finals?

Of course it was Sri Lanka we beat to take the World Cup. But gloat over Sri Lanka? Where's the fun in that? No, instead we'll gloat over Pakistan, which has always been our favourite scape-gloat.

A nation is known by the enemies it keeps. So too are people. Those whom we oppose, and who oppose us in turn, help us to identify us to ourselves, even more so perhaps than our allies might do. There's no getting away from them; we need our enemies, as much as they need us. Reliable enemies - like India and Pakistan - are hard to find and it would be not just foolish but detrimental to self-preservation to unfriend our best foes.

So whom should we unfriend? Whom should I unfriend? Who is so undesirable in every way, so detrimental to my existence from day to day? The answer to that in 2011 Anna Domini is obvious: the scamsters and swindlers who've pushed this country into the abyss of moral bankruptcy. Yep. I can safely unfriend the corrupt. Press the 'Delete' button on them. Whom to start with? Who do I know firsthand, and not through hearsay or media reports to be involved in graft, who's certainly given bribes though he mightn't have received any? Delete the person? Unfriend him? Done. Deleted.

Yikes. I think i've just unfriended myself.

On secular fatwas

Human rights activists are not shy about bringing their own prejudices to the table.

The disdain with which leading lights of the Anti-Corruption movement - Mallika Sarabhai, Medha Patkar, Kavita Srivastava et al - are publicly threatening to dislodge Anna Hazare from the leadership role because he praised Narendra Modi's rural development work in Gujarat indicates that the poor man was only being used as a convenient symbol that can be discarded as arbitrarily as he was chosen to lead the 'movement'.

Human rights activists can retain their credibility only as long as they remain steadfastly non-partisan. To the person killed, it matters little whether the murderous mob was shouting 'Lal Salaam', 'Har Har Mahadev' or 'National Unity' as did the mobs that massacred over 10,000 Sikhs in north India following Indira Gandhi's assassination. However, the secular brigade shows a consistent soft corner for those who kill under the Maoist or Communist banner as well as those who verbally profess secularism.

Narendra Modi's acts of commission and omission during the 2002 riots deserve the strongest of condemnations. Those crimes need to be impartially investigated and the guilty punished. Just as we are proud that our democratic system ensured a fair trial even for a publicly identified ISI-associated terrorist like Kasab, so also we should let the courts take the Gujarat trials to their logical conclusions.

Those who ask for Modi's head would do well to remember that hordes of Congressmen in Gujarat gleefully joined the BJP and RSS goons who went around massacring innocent people.

The overall track record of the Congress in this matter is no better, if not much worse, than that of the BJP. In addition to the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in north India, it masterminded numerous other riots through the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's. None of the killers of politically engineered riots in Meerut, Malliana, Bhiwandi, Bhagalpur, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Surat and scores of others were ever punished. The Congress also injected terrorism into Punjab by its covert support of Bhindranwale's Khalistani brigades in order to wrest control of the SGPC that presides over well-endowed gurdwaras. It did incalculable harm to the Sri Lankan Tamils by creating a Frankenstein's monster like the LTTE. The secessionist movement in Kashmir owes its origins and draws sustenance from the Congress party's penchant for rigging elections to install puppet chief ministers.

And yet, even those of us who genuinely want to see the guilty among Congress leaders pay for their crimes do recognise that there is a lot more to this premier national party than a legacy of mayhem and massacres. There are times when the Congress party has actually lived up to the highest values of Indian democracy and some of our best contemporary politicians have emerged from the Congress fold.

Due to their ideological predilections and cosy relationship with the Congress high command, most of those attacking Hazare have a history of acting as the fighting arm of the Congress against Modi and the BJP. But to declare Hazare a political untouchable because he is not as ideologically committed to their brand of secularism is to display deadly arrogance. One earns the moral right to criticise only when one has the moral courage to acknowledge the positive aspects or good deeds of those we condemn for specific evil actions. One should be able to condemn Modi for his role in the 2002 massacre and point to his many other blind spots and lapses, without feeling the need to deny his positive role in Gujarat leading the country in many vital areas such as assured power supply to all villages, measures for bringing down the maternal mortality rate by providing financial and other support for safe deliveries to poor women, and a 9.8% growth rate in agriculture while the rest of the country remains stuck at 2-3% growth. It is one of the few states where farmers at large are not at war with industry, where delivery mechanisms for government services have improved dramatically.

The manner in which Maulana Ghulam Mohammad Vastanvi, the vice-chancellor of Darul Uloom of Deoband, was humiliated and asked to resign for stating that the development agenda of Modi is benefiting Muslims in equal measure shows that the 'secular' gang has acquired a vested interest in promoting a siege mentality among Muslims. The man they condemn as the 'maut ka saudagar' seems to have recognised the folly of promoting communal polarisation. He has not let another riot take place in Gujarat, a state which witnessed numerous caste and communal riots under Congress rule. In recent years, hundreds of Muslims have won municipal elections on BJP tickets. Democracy with its one-person, one-vote principle has tamed Narendra Modi. But those who don't need to get endorsement for their political posturing from citizens on whose behalf they speak, are not amenable to such self-correcting mechanisms.

The task of cleansing our polity of crime and corruption is not a battle between demons and angels. It requires taking the entire spectrum of political opinion on board including those who support Maoists or vote for Modi. Such a task cannot be done by those who harbour blind prejudice, and partisan agendas. It is best done by people of compassion, and humility; people who remain fair and non-partisan even when dealing with those they hate.