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.