MB Lal Book 2
14.
Sharing the Best and the Worst: The Indian news
media in a global context – The Hindu
Bangalore
India
26.
Reading the future in Mexico
27.
Understanding
GANDHI
Sharing the Best and the Worst: The Indian news media in a global context
If I were to seek pride in India now it would in a tiny way be
part of my pride; if therewere to be disappointment and regret I must now
sharethat regret, and in some oblique way accept its responsibility…Only now,
after twenty-five years of knowing India, can I make the presumption of claiming
a small share of its rare joys and its frequent sorrows.
-- James Cameron, Foreword to An Indian Summer: A Personal
Experience of India,
Macmillan, London, 1974, page 5.
Macmillan, London, 1974, page 5.
James Cameron, I think, would have got it right – I mean about the
Indian news media as well. I doubt they were part of his pride when he came upon
their front ranks, with their wildly speculative ways, during his first visit to
India in 1946, a time whenthe transfer of power and, in the grim background, the
Partition of India were being negotiated. A quarter century later, he was still
not impressed with India’s newspapers, not to mention All India Radio; he found
the tightly controlled broadcast network preoccupied with ‘the machinery of
government as distinct from the realities of democracy’ and, like the
newspapers, not showing ‘the slightest knowledge of nor interest in the affairs
of other places’ (Cameron 1974: 58). Heknewsome ‘thoughtful and intelligent men,
journalists in their own right (as is evident from the work they do outside)’ –
there were few women in Indian journalism at the time – but these thinking
journalists were ‘enmeshed in a dismal machine, which grows worse every year’
(ibid.: 58). He was shocked by the reporting of the story of the birth of
Bangladesh as an independent nation, when ‘all newspaper professionalism fell to
bits’ and readers were served not verifiable reports from the actual scene of
the happenings, but ‘half-baked Hemingway in an orgy of wish-fulfilment because,
one sadly supposed, this was the Indian line’ (ibid.:174-175). But
Cameron, fair-minded as ever, entered this caveat: his longstanding friends,
‘the core of serious and concerned Indian journalists’, were even more depressed
than he was by this ‘jejune amateurism’ (ibid.:175).
Cameron never condescended; he judged from high standards. This
self-taught journalist – reporter, broadcaster, occasional illustrator and
cartoonist, foreign correspondent – took pride in communicating clearly,
precisely, and meaningfully. He wrote like an angel when in flow, with
descriptive richness, shiningly honest value judgments, and what he called
attitude embellishing his ‘art of omission’ (to borrow a phrase from
Robert Louis Stevenson).
Cameron, the generous-spirited foreign correspondent, who saw
history being shaped before his eyes in Vietnam, Korea, India, Cyprus, Kenya,
the Congo, and elsewhere, had many interesting things to say about journalism as
it was and as it should be. For one thing, he understood it to be ‘a trade, or a
calling that can be practised in many ways’; he was clear it was ‘not and never
has been a profession…since its practice has neither standards nor sanctions’
(Cameron 1967: 69).I think the Leveson Inquiry should be interested in that
insight from half a century ago, not much seems to have changed about the
essential nature of the trade or calling since then.
By the time Cameron was in his middle thirties, a famous writer
and broadcaster, he had formed strikingly original opinions about the craft and
art of being a foreign correspondent. When he started out as a reporter, he had
decided that ‘facts must never get in the way of the truth’, as he provocatively
put it in An Indian Summer(Cameron 1974: 147).His reputation as a foreign
correspondent was made by persisting with this approach.
He was clear that ‘objectivity was of less importance than the
truth’ and ‘the reporter whose technique was informed by no opinion lacked a
very serious dimension’. Journalists therefore were professionally obliged to
present their ‘attitude as vigorously and persuasively’ as they could, to be set
out for consideration, criticism, and debate. Being scrupulous and consistent
about this he held to be a vital ingredient of ‘moral independence’; among other
things, this involved an ‘attitude of mind that will challenge and criticize
automatically, thus to destroy or weaken the built-in advantages of all
propaganda and special pleading – including the journalist’s own’ (Cameron 1967:
72-73).
Cameron’s was an unconventional position. But it was well
reasoned, intellectually honest, philosophically grounded, and nuanced – and
professionally not difficult to grasp for any ‘thinking journalist’
(ibid.: 72), as he pointed out. You will not find this way of thinking
about reporting in The Elements of Journalism and I doubt attitude
and voice are,or can be, taught in journalism schools, although they
can certainly be recognized,encouraged, and rewarded. Self-deprecation, which
can be mistaken for cynicism, came naturally to the very Scottish Cameron who,
as though this were not enough, had been through a variant of French school
education in Brittany.But to the extent his positioninvolves theorizing, it is
free not just from cant but also from its polar opposite, the studied cynicism
that is an element of journalism in many countries, including Britain.
It was this highly original attitudeand voice that he brought to
India as a foreign correspondent in the 1940s and later as a son-in-law of India
(as we say), after he married Moni, my friend, who is here with us today with
her husband, Sir Denis Forman. Cameronloved the country with its enormous
diversity and its ‘warm and generous’ people – and was its most consistent and
empathetic critic among all the foreign correspondents who have covered ‘its
rare joys and frequent sorrows’ over the years. He was a friend of Jawaharlal
Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, whom he rated as ‘incomparably the greatest
man I ever met…and a big influence in my life’ in a 1975 Guardian piece
(Cameron 1981: 309). But there was no question of cronyism for this
journalist,who did not hesitate to criticize Nehru severely for letting himself,
his nation, and his people down.
James Cameron was incapable of compromising what he believed to be
the truth unfolding before his eyes.He never surrendered his thinking
journalist’s attitude and voice, his capacity for admiration as well as outrage,
his moral independence; and not even Lord Beaverbrook could get one past his
apparently nonchalant guard. You can read Cameron, to learn about his life in
journalism, in Point of Departure, or about his tough love for India, in
An Indian Summer, written after a terrible, life-changing road accident
that probably shortened his life eventually. For sheer literary pleasure, you
can go to The Best of Cameron, a selection brought out by New English
Library in 1981 that should find a place in the library of every good journalism
school in the world but is unfortunately out of print.
I believe this great friend of India would have been spot on about
the joys and sorrows of the contemporary Indian news media. I imagine he would
have found his ‘pride’ on the one hand and his ‘disappointment and regret’ on
the other to be in some kind of rough equivalence.
A mixed report
Cut to 2012. I recently asked Mark Magnier, South Asia Bureau
Chief of the Los Angeles Times, how he viewed India’s print media. Here
is his response (Magnier 2012), which I think speaks to that kind of balance:
‘There’s a real vibrancy (and profitability) in India’s print
media that stands in marked contrast to the often depressive atmosphere we’re
seeing in the West. This can be very uplifting, a reflection of India’s general
outlook and stage of development, its strong economic growth, upward mobility,
social possibility and heady embrace of wealth and bling, i.e. the early days of
a growth story (before aging, economic maturity and other problems set in).
‘That said, in my view this enthusiasm and energizing sense of
possibility is not yet necessarily matched by the quality of the journalism.
Many organizations seem to rely on inexpensive, young talent that, revolving
door fashion, leaves after a few years, in organizations relatively uninterested
in building institutional experience or the professional standards that come out
of the careful nurturing of promising journalists over many years.
‘[In an aside, I learned this soon after I moved to India and
followed a story on the front-page of one of the English-language dailies about
an angry village god outside Delhi supposedly killing off residents every 17
days over a several-month period. When I got to the village, in fact the time
gap between deaths was fairly random, as you would find with any population, and
the main point of the story in error. There was no appreciable fact checking and
no attempt to correct it, however, a valuable lesson.]
‘Of course these are generalizations, and there are reporters and
organizations that work very hard and do great work, but I believe the industry
could benefit from a bit more focus on fundamentals.’
This then is the topic I have chosen, in consultation with my
hosts, for the James Cameron Memorial Lecture I am honoured to give at City
University London today. My theme is how India’s newspapers, news television,
state-controlled radio, and nascent digital media share the best and the worst
of traits and practices that we witness round the world – as journalism
struggles to come to terms with profoundly changed and changing circumstances
that have destabilized the game, whatever spin one chooses to put on it.
Key issues and challenges
Let me flag some of the key issues and challenges, after
disclosing that I have addressed them in papers and essays I have published over
the years and especially in a talk to the contemporary history section of the
last Indian History Congress (Ram 2011), and draw from that bit of research and
reflection here.
The first issue is the need critically to reflect on, and rethink,
the implications of the buoyant growth story. It is a well-worn narrative that
draws heavily on the differences in the situation of the news media in developed
countries (‘mature media markets’) and some major developing countries
(‘emerging media markets’).I won’t bother you too much with the statistics; they
are readily available elsewhere. What they reveal is that ‘India is one of the
few places on earth where newspapers still thrive’, as Ken Auletta puts it in an
article in The New Yorker (Auletta 2012), and plenty of professional
opportunities are available for journalists, especially young journalists.
The Indian press, especially Indian-language newspapers, and
satellite news television continue to be in growth mode. Some of that story has
been splendidly researched, analyzed, and told by my friend, the political
scientist Robin Jeffrey in his book, India’s Newspaper Revolution,
published more than a decade ago (Jeffrey 2000) and a series of articles in the
Economic & Political Weekly (1987, 1993, 1997).The key factors behind
India’s newspaper revolution, Jeffrey points out, are improved
technology, steadily expanding literacy, better purchasing
power, aggressive publishing, and, last but not least, political
excitement (Jeffrey 1993: 2007). There is a huge appetite out there for news
and what masquerades as news, for analysis, for comment, and of course for
entertainment and also for that hybrid creature, ‘infotainment’. All this has
spawned tens of influential Indian language daily newspapers, many of them with
large circulations and huge readership. Today half this total readership of
about 352 million is in small towns and rural areas and women account for a
third of the readership (IRS 2011, Q2; IRS 2012, Q2).
But the buoyancy and implications of this print media development,
while ‘uplifting’ when viewed against ‘the often depressive atmosphere’ seen in
the West, must not be romanticized. The social reach of the Indian press is not
impressive – about 85 copies of daily newspapers per 1000 in the population, a
statistic that fares dismally in any kind of international comparison. This
means, among other things, vastly uneven dispersion among regions and states,
between urban and rural India, between men and women, and among social classes.
Such poor social reach and the extreme disparities obviously influence and
distort news and editorial coverage of happenings in society.
The audience for television in India is huge, in the region of 563
million (IRS 2012, Q2), and still growing. However, that is largely for the
entertainment channels. The dozens of 24 x 7 satellite television news channels
that compete with the print media in English and the various Indian languages
account for only about 10 per cent of the total TV market, which means they are
decidedly not the dominant ‘organism’ in the Indian news media ‘ecosystem’ that
they sometimes claim to be. There are also signs that the long-expected shakeout
is beginning to happen in the news television sector.
There are other reasons why the buoyancy of the Indian news media
should not be exaggerated. For newspapers, the huge circulation numbers ride on
the back of extreme under-pricing of cover prices and the printing and dumping
of hundreds of thousands of copies that go straight to the raddhi or used
paper market for recycling. The latter, a sharp practice to inflate circulation
for advertising gain, has become systemic. As though this were not enough, the
Television Audience Measurement (TAM) system has come under widespread criticism
and even frontal attack. NDTV, a pioneer in news television in India, recently
filed a suit in New York to recover about $ 1 billion from Nielsen and WPP, the
world’s largest communication services group, who jointly own TAM in India. The
suit alleges, among other things, gross negligence, false representations,
prima facie tort, and corruption in the ratings system.
What is now clear is that the economics of both the print and
broadcast sector has been hardening, gradually. The advertising market has
tightened in the last few years. The catalyst seems to be the global economic
slowdown: it has taken its toll of the Indian media growth story, leading some
industry experts to rule out any return to the pre-crisis situation, especially
in the crucial matter of advertising revenues.
And how does India fare in the digital age paradox? Let me first
try and define this paradox, which is central to this transformational age. On
the one hand, more and more people are reading newspapers digitally; you have
for the first time in history a live global audience for the best publications;
there are excellent newspaper and news websites offering rich, many-sided,
multi-media content, including long-form features, investigative articles and
thoughtful analysis; there are even success stories, here and there, of
journalism garnering impressive digital revenues; the sky seems to be the limit
to what you can offer in this exciting space. On the other hand, the existential
crisis of the old news media has not been resolved and it continues to take a
heavy toll; the discussions of the ‘future of journalism’ have not ceased; and
poor morale and low spirits continue to haunt the journalistic profession as
well as the news media industry – for the simple reason that all this wonderful
development has not yet yielded a viable revenue and business model for internet
or digital journalism.
The newspaper industry continues to face ‘a double squeeze’: the
print business continues heavily to subsidize digital journalism, which cannot
pay for itself by attracting enough advertising or subscriptions or a mixture of
the two; and the new digital players put increasing pressure on newspaper
circulation, readership, and the business itself (Ram 2011: 3). Broadcast
television faces the same problem, in somewhat different ways and measure. I
rely on the judgment of John Naughton and other experts that this ‘dominant
organism’ in the ‘media ecosystem’ is in ‘inexorable decline’ (Naughton 2006),
with commercial television, in parallel with printed newspapers, ‘losing its
audience, its advertising revenue, and its reporting resources’ (Downie &
Schudson 2009).
There can be little doubt that within this digital age paradox,
both the print and broadcast media in India continue to benefit from the
country’s relative backwardness in Internet use and broadband access – and from
the digital divides that stand out. China’s development in this respect has been
quite spectacular: at the end of June 2012, it had an estimated 538 million
Internet users (CNNIC July 2012), most of them served by broadband, minimally
defined by western standards. India, by contrast, has only something like 121
million Internet users (Internet World Stats 2012), most of them poorly served
by bandwidth. One would think the number would be much higher, given the
country’s fairly advanced capabilities in the software field. But this is
typical of India’s political economy paradox, large swathes of backwardness
amidst relatively high economic growth rates. The most revealing indicator in
the comparison is the Internet’s penetration of the comparable populations:
China’s 40 per cent, which is still only about half the developed country norm,
contrasts sharply with India’s 10 per cent.
What this means is that the impact of the digital revolution on
the print press and on news television is considerably stronger in China than in
India – and that the tipping point is likely to arrive sooner in the former. It
also means that while virtually every Indian newspaper has a website and some
major ones offer informative and attractive digital content to readers in India
and abroad, this is secondary to print content by a long chalk. My friend Alan
Rusbridger, Editor of The Guardian, was recently quoted as saying that
‘journalism is changing at the speed of light’ (that is, nearly 300,000 km per
second) and that ‘virtually every week we are learning new techniques and fresh
truths about the way digital technologies are transforming the media’
(Rusbridger 2012). Within the Indian newspaper industry, there seems to be a
sense that the field is changing at the speed of sound (which is 342.29 metres
per second).
This situation has bred complacency, so there is no real push to
learn these new techniques and fresh truths that are so vital to the digital
age. According to Jacob Mathew, the first Indian president of WAN-IFRA, ‘some
studies predict that, by 2040, the Indian print industry would meet the fate of
the American print media industry’ but by then Indian media publishers should be
in a position to ‘get a good share of the [advertising] revenue’ (Mathew 2011).
). It seems to me that such predictions and the assumptions behind them reflect
a widespread attitude of denial of the proximity, if not the immediacy, of the
digital impact. The just-released top line findings of the Indian Readership
Survey (IRS 2012, Q2) show that newspaper readership has remained virtually
stagnant over the past six months compared with a 35 per cent growth of Internet
users, of course from a very low base. It seems highly improbable that India has
until 2040 for the tipping point to arrive.
The critical challenge here is the need to come to terms with the
convergences observed worldwide, make nuanced assessments of the pace of change,
and prepare for the future, including possibly hard times.
A conceptual framework
In critically assessing performance a clear distinction needs to
be drawn and maintained between the state or fortunes of the news media
and the state of journalism. The point seems obvious enough but the two
states tend to get conflated in public as well media marketing discourse. High
growth rates, with animal spirits rampant across the sector, may offer
opportunities but they do not guarantee quality. I would now like to turn our
focuson the state of journalism in India and some relevance and quality
issues. To do this, one needs a conceptual framework to look at and evaluate
news media functions in society. I have written on this subject and will only
offer some shorthand observations here.
The long-term Indian press experience, set in a broader framework,
suggests two extremely valuable central functions or roles that the country’s
best newspapers have played in modern and contemporary times. These functions
may be termed (a) the credible-informational and (b) the
critical-investigative-adversarial. An accompanying condition – which
evolves over time, typically as an outcome of a democratic or working people's
struggle – is that the political system, for whatever reason, gives newspapers
free or relatively free rein, and a public culture of valuing these functions
develops. Performed over time, the two central functions working together build
trust in the press, or more accurately, in individual newspapers.
There are also valuable derivatives of the two central, twinned
functions. The first derivative is the agency of the press in public
education. A second is serving as a critical forum for analysis,
disputation, and comment, in which different opinions and ideas are discussed,
debated, and have it out. An idealized conception of this is attributed to the
American playwright Arthur Miller: ‘A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation
talking to itself’ (Miller 1961). A third derivative is agenda building.
Socially conscious media can trigger agenda-building processes to help produce
democratic and progressive outcomes; and this they can do best when an authentic
public opinion and a congenial context of attitude, feeling, and critical
democratic values and practice exist.
A third function of the news media is the pastime or
entertainment function. At its worst, it seeks to purvey escapist
entertainment, celebrity worship, vapid talk shows, scandal, and even voyeurism
at the expense of everything else. But it can be something quite different –
engaging, entertaining, delving into life’s small pleasures, covering hobbies
and recreation, pandering to crossword and sudoku addicts, mixing in humour and
satire, lightening solemn, heavy, ponderous journalism, and in general serving
the ‘pleasure principle’ as the French use that term.
Evaluating performance: the good and the bad
What can we say broadly about the performance of India’s news
media within this evaluative framework?
The Indian press is more than two centuries old. It has always
been a highly political press. Its strengths have largely been shaped by its
historical experience and, in particular, by its association with the freedom
struggle as well as movements for social emancipation, reform, and
amelioration.The long struggle for independence; the sharp ideological and
political divides; controversies and battles over social reform; radical and
revolutionary aspirations and movements; compromising as well as fighting
tendencies; and the competition between self-serving and public service visions
of journalism –these have all found reflection in the character and performance
of the Indian press over the truly long term(Ram 2000: 242).Even in the
pre-Independence context, the press learned to act like a player in the major
league political and socio-economic arena, despite its well-known limitations in
terms of reach in society, financial viability, professional training, and
entrepreneurial and management capabilities.This rich history accounts for the
seriousness, relevance, and public-spirited orientation of the press at its best
(Ibid.: 242-243).
The tradition of a strong and assertive political press has
continued into six decades of independence. Today satellite television competes
with newspapers aggressively and often breathlessly in trying to influence the
political agenda of states and the nation. With their expanded reach, these news
media together serve as an effective antidote to any trends of de-politicization
in society. Further, there is significant space for the expression of dissent
and contrary political opinions.
Pluralism in the Indian media can be said to reflect the vast
regional, linguistic, socio-economic, and cultural heterogeneity of the
subcontinent.A positive factor for both the print media and news television is
that over the past quarter-century, their social representativeness has
broadened. For one thing, there has been a rapid feminization of the newsroom.
Alongside this, the composition of the journalistic workforce has become more
inclusive in socio-economic and regional terms. However, the number of Dalit
journalists in the mainstream news media continues to be insignificant.
Tens of millions of Indians are voracious consumers of news about
politics. Daily newspapers in nearly two dozen Indian languages as well as in
English are their primary source, with news television spicing up the fare. And
clearly political awareness and excitement are good for the media business.
Jeffrey speaks of the ‘Crimean War effect’ and makes the connection strongly:
while literacy, basic communications, and adequate technology are a necessary
condition for the development of a daily newspaper culture, it is ‘momentous
events’ that provide ‘the link between these developments and politics – the
link that seems to send circulations shooting upwards’ (Jeffrey 1987: 608).
The progressive south Indian State of Kerala is the classic Indian
case of politicization spreading to large sections of the population, rural as
well as urban, and creating a newspaper-reading culture; and the mass habit, in
town and country, of reading daily and periodical newspapers and tracking major
happenings through them contributing to the creation of an authentic public
opinion (Ramachandran 1996: 206).
The dramatic expansion of the Hindi daily press over the last
quarter-century, partly in response to the political and social upheaval
generated by Ayodhya-centred communal mobilization by the Hindu Right, is a
strikingly different case. The Hindi press has still not been able to live down
the ignominy of the kar sevak,or militant Hindu chauvinist, role a large
section of it played during the Ayodhya crisis of October-November 1990; this
has been well documented and indicted in a study commissioned by the Press
Council of India (1991). The culpability of influential sections of the Indian
media in adopting a respectful, if not celebratory, attitude towards the Hindu
Right’s Ram Janmabhoomi movement and in creating the impression that the
mobilisation that led up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid was ‘a grand
mobilisation without any dissenting voice’ has been criticised by the Citizens’
Tribunal on Ayodhya (1993).
In the case of Gujarat’s anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002, there was
strikingly different coverage by the English language and the Gujarati press.
While `national media’ coverage has justly been applauded for truth-telling and
blowing the whistle on a state-sanctioned genocidal pogrom, it was a sobering
fact that the dominant Gujarati print media in the State performed the
manufacture of consent function with a vengeance, attracting censure from
various fact-finding exercises, including a report done for the Editor’s Guild
of India (2002), for ‘wilful incitement to offence, propagation of hate, and
fuelling disorder’.
Some of the finest work done by the Indian press, historically and
in contemporary times, is its investigation and expose of political corruption,
ministerial misconduct, and government misdeeds. In fact, corruption, in its
myriad forms and tremendous scale, presents limitless investigative
opportunities to India’s independent news media; it also enables them
continuously to win strong public support for the work they do. Here is James
Cameron (Cameron 1974: 139) on the phenomenon, as of 1974 when its scale was
perhaps a thousandth of what it is reckoned to be today:
Corruption in India is almost as leaden a cliche as hunger. It
is sanctified by the oldest of traditions: it is denied by nobody, indeed the
totality and pervasiveness of Indian corruption is almost a matter of national
pride: just as India's droughts are the driest, her famines the most cruel, her
over-population the most uncontrollable, so are all the aspects of Indian
corruption and bribery the most wholly spread and spectacular.
Given such exciting opportunities to investigate independently,
build on investigations done by official watchdog bodies, and do agenda building
on the theme of corruption, the press has done itself proud. The Bofors howitzer
deal scandal captured the imagination of political India in the late-1980s, so
much so that Bofors became a synonym for sleaze and skulduggery in various
Indian languages. The opening shot in this case was fired by a well-informed
broadcast over Swedish Public Radio, which then, curiously, went silent over the
affair. The prolonged investigation and document-backed expose of the scandal by
The Hindu, in which I played a part, is generally reckoned to have
contributed to the downfall of a corrupt government. Bofors featured arbitrary
and opaque decision-making on a major military acquisition, and contractual
arrangements to pay bribes aggregating more than $200 million as the quid pro
quo for the Indian government’s purchase of the 155 mm Swedish howitzers in
preference to French howitzers that the Indian Army brass had repeatedly rated
as a better buy. About $50 million of this amount was paid into secret Swiss
bank accounts before the whistle was blown on the corrupt deal.
In the years since, there might have been no repeat of Bofors and
the way it unravelled. But in the last few years, the press and news television
have aggressively probed, and agitated on, a series of corruption scandals that
have shaken political India and eroded the credibility of the Manmohan Singh
government.
This is the Man Booker Prize-giving season and we have quite an
exciting shortlist of contenders. By the way, I haven’t read all the books on
the shortlist but I can’t imagine how Hillary Mantel won’t do it again. Anyway,
here is my shortlist of India’s choicest corruption scandals.
The 2G-spectrum scam is about the government twisting the rules
under a ‘first come, first served’ (rather than an auction-based) allocation
regime to favour mobile telephony companies through undercharging 2-G spectrum
allocation licences in return for huge kickbacks. The presumptive loss to the
government has been estimated by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India
(CAG), a constitutionally created financial watchdog, to be in the region of
US$32 billion but most of the bribes are yet to be traced by the criminal
investigations.
The scandal around the 2010 Commonwealth Games held in New Delhi
featured massive irregularities such as the award of work contracts at very high
prices, often to ineligible parties, and pervasive corruption in procurement and
the award of contracts for the construction of the game venues.
The Adarsh Housing Society scam in Mumbai, India’s financial
capital, involved top politicians, officials, and military officers subverting
rules to have a massive high-rise constructed at a prime location and corner
flats for themselves at hugely deflated prices.
The mining scandal, spread across several States, has featured the
illegal and corrupt mining of ore, especially iron ore meant for export,
defrauding the state of mining revenues through ministerial and official
collusion, encroachment on forest land, and trampling on the rights of tribal
folk.
The coal block allocation scandal, or Coalgate, promises to be the
biggest of them all – and perhaps one day someone who fictionalizes it will be
in contention for a Booker. The CAG has exposed the fact that by going for a
process of arbitrary allocations, or patronage deals, instead of competitive
bidding, the central government has enabled a ‘windfall gain’ for the allottees
worth US$ 35 billion.
In all these cases, the irregularities and suspicious transactions
were exposed by constitutionally or statutorily created authorities. But the
role of the news media has been crucial in keeping up the heat, contributing new
information or angles, and following up –thus helping to build a democratic
public agenda on the theme of political corruption.
I must add a caveat here. Critics have noted, correctly, that the
energy and motivation Indian newspapers have shown in going after government and
political corruption have been missing in investigating and exposing corporate
corruption. The reasons for this I will go into a little later.
The publication in early 2011 of a series of articles based on the
U.S. Embassy cables on India, made available by WikiLeaks, provided the
reading public and historians of contemporary India a wealth of information on
foreign and domestic policy issues, and on corruption, the cover-up of
corruption, and ministerial and official misconduct. One cable supplied
explosive information on the 2008 ‘cash-for-votes’ scandal, where parliamentary
votes were sought to be bought to help the Manmohan Singh government squeak
through a no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha, India’s House of Commons.
Hearteningly, publication of the story in the press triggered the launch of a
criminal investigation under the watch of the Supreme Court of India.
I have given you an idea of the democratic role played by
influential sections of the Indian news media in the sphere of politics.
Unfortunately, when it comes to economic issues and policies, the mainstream
media’s contribution turns out to be anything but democratic. This was not
always the case. Amartya Sen has commended the historical role of Indian
newspapers in exposing hunger-related facts on the ground in extreme cases and,
in concert with other democratic institutions, preventing the government from
pursuing disastrous policies and thus guaranteeing ‘the avoidance of acute
starvation and famine’ (Sen 1985a: 77).
Today a number of factors operating in the Indian media industry
have virtually shut out news, analysis, and comment that challenge the
neo-liberal economic policies that have held sway over the last two decades.
Mainstream press and broadcast media coverage has tended to adopt a laudatory
tone, keep out or underplay the criticisms and objections, censor the negative
political and socio-economic effects, especially among the poor, and provide
little space to the voices of robust criticism and opposition, including those
raised from the ranks of professional economists.
Critics point out that Indian journalism is facing increasing
pressure from advertisers, marketing personnel, corporate managers, and even
senior journalists to present and prioritize ‘feel good’ factors – rather than
highlight the reality of mass deprivations and what to do about them. In several
frank conversations with the executives of India’s largest newspaper publishing
company, Auletta learnt why poverty, especially rural poverty, was not a fit
subject for news and editorial coverage, why this coverage had to cater to the
‘aspirational’ among young readers (because poverty was ‘not a condition to
which one aspires’), and whya newspaper’s editorial philosophy, which was
derived from its business philosophy, had to be one of optimism (Auletta 2012).
But the problem, which is by no means confined to one or a few
news organizations, goes way beyond this. In an original and unusually
perceptive meditation on ‘Markets, Morals and the Media’, the economist Prabhat
Patnaik (2002) addressed an interesting conundrum. Despite the growing reach of
the media in society, and despite the talent they have been able to attract,
‘the power of the media as an institution’ has ‘gone down greatly in India’ in
recent times.
The key question is: why has this decline in the power of the
media occurred? Patnaik’s answer is that ‘internal’ or media-centric
explanations are inadequate and that a better explanation is that‘the moral
universe of the people’ has undergone a change, engendering ‘a degree of
confusion, uncertainty, and fuzziness’ about what is right and wrong and
enabling communal or corrupt forces to ‘get away with their unconcern for media
and intellectual opinion’. Looking deeper for an explanation, the economist
finds it in such factors as the collapse of dreams of building a society that is
not based on private aggrandizement, the ascendancy of a new kind of
international finance capital based on the globalization of finance, the
spinelessness of nation states and political formation in the face of this
ascendancy, the intellectual hegemony attained by ideas and policies imposed by
globalized finance, and the plethora of institutions and instruments that serve
this juggernaut (Ibid.).
There can be little question that the news media ‘have fallen prey
to this hegemony’. From this, we come to what may be called Patnaik’s Law on
media power in relation to economic issues: ‘where the media are on the same
side as international finance capital, they appear powerful; but in fields where
they strike out on their own, upholding humane values and expressing concern for
the poor and the suffering, they appear powerless’. Such powerlessness, he
proposes, is the outcome of a process, ‘the process of ascendancy of
international financial capital over the economy, which the media,
paradoxically, with a few honourable exceptions, have avidly supported’
(Ibid.). George Monbiot in a recent Guardian column on the
collusion between big business, neo-liberal thinktanks, and the media is on to
much the same trend in the UK – how ‘to free the rich from the constraints of
democracy’ (Monbiot 2012).
Poverty and mass deprivation, basic livelihood issues, the impact
of policies on these issues, the state of agriculture and the countryside remain
massively undercovered in Indian newpapers and the broadcast media. The good
thing is that the honourable exceptions Patnaik refers to have been significant.
P. Sainath’s investigations of rural distress, farmers’ suicides, and mass
migrations, which won him several honours, including a Magsaysay award, are in
the finest traditions of people-oriented, investigative, agenda-building
journalism. Such influential and iconic work, along with the lively
contributions of young idealistic reporters on these subjects in various Indian
languages, suggest a way out of this bind – provided a public culture of valuing
such journalism can be built up.
The business of journalism
In several developed countries, media monopoly has developed in a
big way, eroding diversity, pluralism, and the values of serious journalism. The
situation in India is rather different, as is appropriate to a stage of media
development when ageing, economic maturity, and the problems of maturity have
not yet set in (Magnier 2012).But here too monopolistic tendencies and
aggressive market practices aimed at aggrandizing market share and killing
competition have manifested themselves in the press and, to an extent, in the
news television sector. There is clear evidence of hyper-commercialization,
which takes a heavy toll of journalism.
Auletta’s New Yorker piece, Citizens Jain (Auletta
2012), offers an entertaining glimpse of an exotic world of aggressive and
unorthodox publishing and business strategizing for growing newspapers that
throws out of the window most of the things we have learnt from journalism
school or The Elements of Journalism.
The issue of ‘paid news’ exploded in the public sphere in the
aftermath of the 2009 general election. A section of the press revealed that a
large number of newspapers, small, medium-sized, and big, and also several
television channels had sold promotional news packages of specified size, using
an under-the-table rate card, to candidates in State Assembly and parliamentary
elections. Candidates who could not pay, or refused to pay, were blotted out of
news coverage. There were special rates for negative coverage of the candidates’
opponents. This involved violations of the law, was tantamount to extortion in
several cases, and mocked every rule of ethical journalism. It was every bit of
a rogue practice as the UK’s phone hacking affair was. The scandal of paid news
led to a damning report by a sub-committee of the Press Council and calls for
external regulation of the press and the private television channels.
It also led to some critical debate on a wider phenomenon – paid
news not as a rogue practice but as a deeper and industry-wide phenomenon that
was not confined to election coverage. Sainath offers this handy definition:
‘Paid news is run to pass off an advertisement, a piece of propaganda and
advertisement...pass that as news, pretend that it is news, that is “paid news”.
Paid news does not disclose to the reader that this information has been paid
for’ (Sainath 2010).
To return to the theme of hyper-commercialization and what it
means for journalism. Auletta’s top media interlocutors had no inhibitions in
telling him that ‘we arenot in the newspaper business, we are in the advertising
business…a derived business...of aggregating a quality audience’ for advertisers
to ‘facilitate consumption’ (Auletta 2012: 53, 55). And they had a point,
considering that in this top thriving newspaper league, 80 to 90 per cent of the
revenues come from advertising and only small change from circulation. He learnt
about focus-group-led research that put ‘elitist’ editors, ‘pompous fellows
thundering from the pulpit, speaking in eighty-word sentences’
(ibid.:55),in their place. This was research directed by the marketing
people into what readers, and especially ‘aspirational’ young readers, wanted to
read and the consequent restructuring and re-invention of editorial content.
Auletta was educated in easy rationalizations of the practice of
‘advertorials’ – an ad-sales initiative that opened a section of the newspaper
to promotional or puff pieces paid for by celebrities, brands, and well-heeled
ego-tripsters, and written not by ad agencies but by the newspaper’s reporters.
There was some kind of indication that this section was paid for but a reader
needed ‘a magnifying glass to be alerted’ to the disclosure in small print
(ibid.: 53).
The New Yorker writer, who has written its Annals of
Communications column since 1993, also learnt about another business innovation
originating from India’s largest newspaper-publishing company but now fairly
common in the media industry –‘private treaties’, a programme under which
newspapers offer ads to smaller and medium-size companies in exchange for equity
(ibid.: 54). The conflict-of-interest implications of this initiative for
editorial coverage of these companies by the newspapers have been much discussed
among journalists and critics of the Indian media industry. They even attracted
the attention of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI); in a 2009
letter to the Press Council chairman, it warned that ‘private treaties may lead
to commercialization of news reports since the same would be based on the
subscription and advertising agreement entered into between the Media group and
the company. Biased and imbalanced reporting may lead to inaccurate perceptions
of the companies which are the beneficiaries of such private treaties’ (Sainath
2010).
This brings me back to the point that the two states – the
fortunes of the news industry and the state of journalism – ought not to be
conflated. Manipulation of news, analysis, and comment to suit the owners’
financial or political interests; the downgrading and devaluing of editorial
functions and content in some leading newspaper and news television
organizations; systematic dumbing down, led by the nose by certain types of
market research; the growing willingness within newspapers and news channels to
tailor the editorial product to subserve advertising and marketing goals set by
owners and senior management personnel; hyper-commercialization; price wars and
aggressive practices in the home bases of other newspapers to overwhelm and kill
competition; advertorials where the paid-for aspect of the news-like content is
not properly disclosed or disclosed at all; private treaties; rogue practices
like paid election campaign news and bribe-taking for favourable coverage. If
this is what it takes to have thriving newspapers and other news media, then
there is something seriously wrong with this growth path.
Actually, some of these tendencies, which have grown qualitatively
worse over the past decade, go back in time. They have caused anxiety to two
Press Commissions, to the Press Council of India from time to time, and to a
host of practitioners in the field. The issue has been sharpened and highlighted
recently by trenchant and tireless public criticism of the ways of the press
from the chairman of the Press Council, Markandey Katju. The retired Supreme
Court judge, who came with strong credentials as a champion of free speech on
the bench, began his term in late-2011 by highlighting ‘three major defects in
the Indian media’. He listed them as frequently diverting attention from serious
socio-economic issues to non-issues and trivializing news, dividing the people
by putting out communal or other divisive messages, and promoting superstition
and obscurantism instead of rational and scientific ideas. He also criticized
what he considered to be the relatively low intellectual level of a majority of
journalists, their poor general and domain knowledge, and their lack of ‘desire
to serve the public interest’. He called on the Indian media, print as well as
broadcast, to take the progressive path the print media charted in Europe’s Age
of Enlightenment. He revealed that he had written to the Prime Minister
suggesting that the Press Council Act be amended to bring the broadcast media
under the purview of the Council and also that it be given ‘more teeth’,
including penalizing powers (Katju 2011a). Not everybody agrees with these bold
generalizations and sweeping assertions but, in my opinion, the Katju critique
has been valuable for keeping the focus on relevance and quality issues.
How free?
An overarching issue for the news media in India is the state of
free speech.
Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution guarantees freedom of
speech and expression as a fundamental right. This right, hard won in the
freedom struggle against a highly repressive and censorious British Raj, is
unamendable. Freedom of the press is not explicitly mentioned by the
Constitution but the Supreme Court of India has, through judicial
interpretation, read it into Article 19. It has held that freedom of the press
is a combination of two freedoms – Article 19(1)(a), ‘the freedom of speech and
expression’, and Article 19(1)(g), ‘the freedom to practice any profession, or
to carry on any occupation, trade or business’. The first is clearly the
principal component.
Unfortunately, freedom of speech and expression is hemmed in, and
to a significant extent undone, by Article 19(2). This provides for restrictions
on the fundamental rightby law – some reasonable, most not. Notable among the
unreasonable restrictions that remain on the statute book or in practice are the
law of criminal defamation, the undefined power of contempt of court, uncodified
legislative privilege, the outrageous law of sedition(124A of the Indian Penal
Code), other illiberal provisions of the IPC (especially 153A), the Unlawful
Activities (Prevention) Act, and other draconian laws enacted in the name of
fighting extremism and terrorism.
Further, media freedom in India is considered ‘incomplete’ because
the print media and the broadcast media have not been placed on an equal
constitutional and legal footing (Ravi 2007). The higher courts have not judged
it necessary to confer Article 19(1)(a) protection on radio and television.
Newspapers in independent India have functioned under a legal
regime of registration; since there is no licensing, they cannot be de-licensed.
By contrast, private satellite television channels and FM radio stations
function under a licensing system and can be taken off the air for alleged
serious transgressions of the rules laid down by the Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting. Paradoxically, while newspapers have the Press Council, a
statutorily established watchdog, some would say a watchdog without teeth, there
is no legal regulatory framework for private satellite television channels,
which have attracted growing public complaint that they are a law unto
themselves. Add to this the fact that the huge terrestrial television network
remains a state monopoly and the private FM radio stations are not allowed to do
news and current affairs, which remain the monopoly of All India Radio, and you
have an idea of how complicated it gets.
Free speech has come under serious pressure in India. Consider
these examples from the past quarter-century.
Being the first country in the world to ban Salman Rushdie’s
Satanic Verses and carrying through this policy of appeasement of
murderous intolerance to the last Jaipur Literary Festival.
Criminalizing paintings by India’s greatest painter, M.F. Husain,
from 1996 onwards, the state standing by asan orchestrated Hindu Right campaign
intimidated him with dozens of criminal complaints filed across the country,
vandalized his art works and exhibitions, and eventually forced him into exile
in Dubai, to die, at the age of 95, in London as a Qatari national.
Carrying out several acts of localized violence and intimidation
against journalists, writers, historians, cartoonists, artists, activists, and
others.
Assaulting journalists and sending toughs to stone, smash, and
burn the offices of media organizations, here and there.
Piling on criminal defamation cases against journalists, with the
lower courts hardly applying their mind to prima facie admissibility even
under this illiberal law, thus ensuring that the process is the punishment.
Blocking text or sms services in the name of law and order or
public order. Notifying under the Information Technology Act, 2000 (as amended
in 2008) illiberal rules, especially the notorious Intermediary Guidelines
Rules, which permit blocking of content on the Internet.
Threatening to tame the social media, which, among other things,
shows a complete inability to understand the nature and ways of the sharing
beast.
Using the sedition law against the writer Arundhati Roy.
Imprisoning a cartoonist for sedition, with the result that the
Indian criminal justice system has itself become a cartoon gone viral on the
worldwide web.
As the journalist Salil Tripathi put it earlier this year in a
tweet at the FreeSpeechDebate site: ‘Biggest threat: combination of state
passivity, antiquated laws, and existence of ‘the right to feel offended’’
(Tripathi 2012). The right to be easily offended – genuinely offended or
offended for the sake of an ideological or political cause – he might have
added, had Twitter allowed him more than 140 characters.
This paradoxical situation demands well-considered, progressive
reform. The aim of such reform must be to expand the scope of media freedom –
but also to ensure professional and social accountability. But it is well to
remember that media freedom cannot survive, let alone thrive, unless free speech
can be safeguarded in society at large.
Regulate? If so, how and by whom?
This is a period during which, taking the cue from the critique
and demands placed on the national agenda by Press Council chairman Katju, many
voices within the Indian establishment and the large media-consuming public are
demanding accountability, transparency, better standards, an end to paid news
and other rogue practices, and effective governance and regulation. The more
discerning critical voices make the point that ‘self-regulation’ either does not
exist within the Indian media industry or, where it exists, is not effective.
Self-regulation, the Press Council chairman has proclaimed, is an oxymoron and
no profession can be called a profession unless it has an enforceable code of
conduct and sanctions against those who violate it. So what can be the answer?
It is likely that freedom of the Indian news media will come under
increasing pressure and threat unless they move briskly to set their house in
order. They need to ensure that transparency, accountability, and social
responsibility are more than slogans. With no codes of values or practice
binding journalists and the media industry, and no mechanisms for
self-regulation such as internal news ombudsmen in place within major news
organizations other than one or two, the vulnerability to government and
legislative forays in disciplining the news media through external regulation
going beyond the present Press Council is becoming increasingly evident. Over
the years, a substantial international literature has appeared on templates for
socially and ethically accountable journalism and also on the constitutive
‘elements of journalism’ (Kovach & Rosenstiel 2001). This has yielded codes
of practice or professional ethics privileging the principles and values of
journalism. It has emphasized such disciplines as fact-checking, verification,
investigation, rigorous data sourcing and analysis, providing context and
meaning, and maintaining perspective.
Here a fundamental question arises: what are facts to the
journalist? The New York Times may continue to print on its front page
the claim, ‘All the News That’s Fit to Print’, patented in 1896, but everyone
recognizes this is mythologizing about not just one newspaper but about the
field of journalism itself. Some months ago, I proposed to the Contemporary
History section of the Indian History Congress that an intelligent approach to
the journalist and her facts needed to fall back not so much on C.P. Scott’s
much-quoted dictum, ‘Comment is free but facts are sacred’ (Scott 1921), as on
E.H. Carr’s classic dissection of ‘The Historian and His Facts’ (Carr 1961:
7-30). The approach needed to steer between the Scylla of a ‘fetishism’ of
undistinguishable facts and documents, the most trivial mixed up with the really
significant, and the Charybdis of the wildest and most extreme subjective form
of ‘disputable interpretation’. As for the discerning public, the most sensible
advice must be, following Carr (1961: 23), ‘When you read, or tune in to, a work
of journalism, always listen out for the buzzing’.This is more or less what
James Cameron prescribed to young journalists.
India and its news media can learn valuably from the parallel
discussion of media-related issuestaking place in the United Kingdom, which has
been provoked by the rogue practices of an influential section of its media. The
Leveson Inquiry has been a stimulating learning experience for us, allowing for
the considerable differences in the situations. Many of the testimonies have
been first-rate and the Inquiry has gone quite deep into ‘the culture, practices
and ethics of the press’ (Leveson Inquiry 2011).As a former Editor, I am pleased
that the forward-looking Editor of the Guardian has welcomed Leveson as
‘an opportunity for the industry to have a conversation with itself while also
benefitting from the perspective and advice of others’ (Rusbridger 2011), and
that several other British journalists seem to agree with this. We look forward
to the final report or recommendations of Lord Justice Leveson and to seeing
what legislative or other practical arrangements might follow.
The Indian situation cries out for such an independent,
comprehensive, hard look into the culture, practices, and ethics of the news
media and into questions of what kind of regulatory and governance mechanisms
can be worked out and put in place. The object must be the same: to support
‘integrity and freedom of the press while encouraging the highest ethical
standards’ (Leveson Inquiry 2011).
Nobody knows what the long term holds for India’s news media. It
should be possible, through some kind of regulation, to reform the system to put
an end to the major ethical transgressions, not to mention rogue practices like
paid news. But I have no illusions about what it will take to reverse the
tendencies that put enormous pressure on independent, professional journalism.
My personal hope is that feel-good journalism, focus-group-led journalism,
ad-dictated journalism, journalism that sees no need to take account of basic
realities – the mass poverty and the multiple deprivations in a country where
two-thirds of the population subsist on less than two dollars a day– can be
discredited by good, sensitive, progressive journalism that attracts public
support. My hope is that effective incentives, moral and material, can be put in
place in significant sections of the news media for taking up the basic concerns
of hundreds of millions of ordinary Indians – and projecting them, with social
responsibility, into the public sphere.
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http://www.tehelka.com/story_main49.asp?filename=Ne020411Gilance.asp.
Tripthi, Salil (2012), tweet at FreeSpeechDebate:
http://it.twitter.com/saliltripathi/status/169452257639804928.
UNESCO (2011), ‘Concept Paper, World Press Freedom Day 2011’, 21
Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers (Washington D.C.: pdf).
Venkataramiah, E.S. (1987), Freedom of Press: some recent
trends (Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation)
_____________________
Garbage disposal: HC pulls
up Bangalore
Johnson T A :
Bangalore
The Karnataka High Court
on Friday warned the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) that it could
issue orders for superseding the elected representatives on the city council if
a dispute between councillors and the city corporation authorities over new
garbage disposal contracts continues to hold garbage disposal in the city to
ransom.
The High Court’s
warning and demand for an action taken report on measures taken by the BBMP for
garbage disposal in the city by November 5 came even as the chairman of the top
IT firm Wipro Azim Premji called for a citizen’s movement against the apathy of
the civic authorities.
The High Court in the
course of the hearing of a series of petitions pending before it since July
this year on garbage disposal in Bangalore
Despite the BBMP
giving the court assurances of implementing garbage segregation at source (in
homes and commercial enterprises) from October 1 the garbage disposal problem
has aggravated over the last two months with elected representatives in the
city council resisting efforts to change to new garbage contracts to reflect
the new segregation system imposed on citizens.
Coupled with a problem
of shortage of landfills on the outskirts of the city to dump the garbage from
the city (amid protests by local residents at a prominent site used for the
last 12 years) garbage has piled around the city over the past month even as the
waste segregation at source system has failed to take off amid citizen apathy.
On Friday the High
Court Division Bench headed by Chief Justice Vikramajit Sen said “every citizen
in Bangalore
The Bench said it
would not hesitate to pass an order to supersede the BBMP council if there was
any interference by the elected representatives in the BBMP administration’s
efforts for disposal of garbage.
Premji, speaking at
his company headquarters, said Bangalore
“I think it is a very
serious problem. The amount of viral fever that is going around in Bangalore Bangalore
Aurobindo meets McDonalds
Sudipto Pakrasi : Sat Nov 10 2012 , 03:18 hrs
Book: Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest
Business Case For Compassion
Authors: Pavithra K Mehta & Suchitra Shenoy
Publisher: HarperCollins
Price: Rs 499
Pages: 336
The
story of the Aravind Eye Care System, which reinvented the rules of business to
restore sight to the blind, is a case study for Harvard MBAs to analyse but
this retelling is marked by elegance, clarity, and intimacy. It suggests that
choices that seem naive or unworkable can, when executed with wisdom and
integrity, yield bafflingly extraordinary results.
Dr
Govindappa Venkataswamy, better known as Dr V or Dr Thatha (as his grandchildren’s
generation calls him) was a gifted young man of the lower middle class, from a
small village in South India . After medical
college, he joined military service but was bedridden for two years with severe
rheumatoid arthritis. He returned to medical training, despite the severe pain
that was to be his companion for life. But his dream of becoming a
gynaecologist and obstetrician was unattainable. As his hands and fingers were
slowly deformed by the disease, he could only perform fine, delicate movements
— the skills needed for eye surgery. And so he became an eye doctor “by
accident”.
He
retired from government service in 1976, aged 58. He was entitled to a small
pension and could have retired in peace, like most people of that era. However,
Dr V conceived a project he believed in. He opened an 11-bed eye clinic in a
modest, rented house in Madurai
Dr
V rejected business prudence, preferring to rely on Sri Aurobindo and the
Mother for spiritual guidance. And yet, he had a vision larger than other
enterprises in the field. His mission was to eliminate curable blindness — the
12 million cases in India India
Defying
conventional business logic, the tiny clinic Dr V founded is now the world’s
largest provider of eye care, having done a staggering 3 lakh surgeries in
2009. The incredible model delivers world-class surgical outcomes at a fraction
of the cost in First World clinics and
outpaces their productivity by orders of magnitude. For instance, the average
number of cataract surgeries per year per surgeon in the US
Dr
V took dramatic decisions based on the inexpressible logic of his spiritually
guided awareness. But his critics realised that his intuition yielded
tremendous benefits for the movement. Initially, he staffed the organisation
with his siblings and their spouses. Today, Aravind works with a team 3,200
strong, including 35 ophthalmologists from three generations of his family. Dr
V died in 2006.
The
Aravind Eye Care System encompasses ten hospitals, vision centres, outreach
programs, postgraduate and paramedical training, an eye bank, a research
institute, an ophthalmic product factory (Aurolab), IT services and a
management consulting service for eye hospitals worldwide (LAICO).
Infinite
Vision tells the story of Dr V’s acclaimed healthcare venture. Pavithra K.
Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy spent six years interviewing patients, doctors,
nurses, employees, family members and partners to unravel how empathy and
ethics can drive efficiency, scale and profitability. The depth of scholarship
and insight elevates the narration beyond an enumeration of the success of a
healthcare enterprise. This is a true story of how one man’s pragmatism and
belief healed millions. Charged with profound insights, it reveals the radical
principles behind Aravind’s baffling success. The authors explain the mysteries
of a model that integrates innovation with empathy, service with business
principles, and inner change with outer transformation.
The
book opens with Aravind’s operational model, discussing how McDonalds-style
standardisation, product recognition, accessibility and scale achieved “high
volume, high quality and affordable cost”. But Aravind was not planned in a
boardroom. It was a movement created by continuous rethinking and
transformation which changed mindsets. It could see village women as assistants
working in nursing, optometry, surgery and outreach. The final section on
succession planning is the most impressive. The group has handled the sensitive
issue well, passing on the mantle across two generations and thriving in the
process.
The
authors’ approach, like Dr V’s business model, is underpinned by spirituality.
Mainly a professional biography, the essence of the book is a discussion of Dr
V’s indefatigable spirit and beliefs, of a man whose life was guided by divinity,
compassion and spirituality which, focused on clear goals, thoughtful
strategies and sound management practices, produced perfect results. There is a
continuous sense of wonderment and admiration that leaves the reader hopeful
about trying to make a difference.
Meticulously
researched, the authors have studied every aspect of the running of the
organisation, from the perspective of provider and recipient. What shines
through is the simple principle that compassion and humanity bring satisfaction
to the institution as a whole. The obvious commitment of the entire staff has
been captured brilliantly and stresses its crucial importance in a project of
this scale.
I
have experienced this at first hand. At Aravind, I operated in an
incomprehensible setup. The dedication and belief that the book describes was
palpable. I was astonished at the volumes of patients handled, the facilities
and surgical skills available and the absolute dedication of the workforce. The
extent of employment provided to the local population is a wonder in itself.
Aravind educates people from neighbouring villages and most support staff are
locally procured. This feature, which may never be duplicated, makes Aravind
the world’s largest socially relevant eye care provider.
Infinite
Vision, which leaves you wanting to contribute, is about leadership, service,
institution-building and the power of a model that combines business discipline
with compassion. I have been an eye surgeon for the last 25 years, and it
reaffirms my awe and admiration for the work that Aravind does for society.
Sudipto Pakrasi is an ophthalmic surgeon in Delhi
To:
"Saroj Lal" <saroj_lal@yahoo.com>
Lal Sahab,
Thanks very much for this ! Very interesting. You are right indeed;
it does seem inspired.
Fareed Zakaria is not alone !
Hope you are taking care of your health. I keep asking Sivadas about
you whenever he drops in. The other day Sunanda K. Datta-Ray was in
town and he rang up asking generally about
old colleagues in Delhi. He is now based in Kolkata. Am also in touch
with Maniam Sahab off and on; very thoughtfully he sent me a copy of
his book soon after its release. This is what keeps one going.
Hope to hear from you soon. Meanwhile, best wishes and best regards.
- Y P N
Thanks very much for this ! Very interesting. You are right indeed;
it does seem inspired.
Fareed Zakaria is not alone !
Hope you are taking care of your health. I keep asking Sivadas about
you whenever he drops in. The other day Sunanda K. Datta-Ray was in
town and he rang up asking generally about
old colleagues in Delhi. He is now based in Kolkata. Am also in touch
with Maniam Sahab off and on; very thoughtfully he sent me a copy of
his book soon after its release. This is what keeps one going.
Hope to hear from you soon. Meanwhile, best wishes and best regards.
- Y P N
_______________________________
To:
"Saroj Lal" <saroj_lal@yahoo.com>
Dear Mr Lal:
Thanks for your email.
I am happy you stay active.
I am now almost totally inactive - partly becase of age. I stay in
the United States where my daughters have chosen to settle. Mostly, I and my
wife stay with our youngest daughter in Princeton, in the east.
I did write a fortnightly newsletter from here for The
Statesman for a few years but I had to give it up following some cardiac
surgery. The book, A Life in Journalism, was written subsequently, and
is a kind of Goodbye.
I keep talking to Mr Yashpal Narula, from whom I receive news about
friends.
Do please write when you can.
With best regards,
Maniam
______________________________
November 19, 2012 01:01 IST
Why I can’t pay tribute to Thackeray
The HinduMarkandey Katju.
His bhumiputra theory flies in the face of our Constitution and works against the unity needed to ensure development
Muppadhu kodi mugamudayal
Enil maipuram ondrudayal
Ival Seppumozhi padhinetudayal
Enil Sindhanai ondrudayal
(This Bharatmata has 30 crore faces
But her body is one
She speaks 18 languages
But her thought is one)
Tamil poet Subramania Bharathi
Bhedad gana vinauyanti bhinnah supajapah paraih
Tasmat samghatayogesu prayateran ganah sada
(Republics have been destroyed because of internal divisions among the people;
Hence a republic should always strive to achieve unity and good relations among the people)
Mahabharat, Shanti Parva, chapter 108, shloka 14
Tesam anyonyabhinnanam svauaktim anutisthatam
Nigrahah panditaih karyah ksipram eva pradhanatah
(Therefore the wise authorities should crush the separatist forces trying to assert their strength)
Mahabharat, Shanti Parva, 108:26
Political leaders, film stars, cricketers, etc. are all falling over one another to pay tribute to the late Bal Thackeray. Amidst this plethora of accolades and plaudits pouring in from the high and mighty, I humbly wish to register my vote of dissent.
I know of the maxim De mortuis nil nisi bonum (of the dead speak only good), but I regret I cannot, since I regard the interest of my country above observance of civil proprieties.
What is Bal Thackeray’s legacy?
It is the anti-national ‘sons of the soil’ (bhumiputra) theory.
Article 1(1) of the Indian Constitution states: “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.”
Thus, India is not a confederation but a union.
Article 19 (1) (e) states: “All citizens shall have the right — to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India.”
Thus, it is a fundamental right of a Gujarati, south Indian, Bihari, U.P.ite, or person from any other part of India to migrate to Maharashtra and settle down there, just as it is of Maharashtrians to settle down in any part of India (though there are some restrictions in J&K, and some North-East States, due to historical reasons).
The bhumiputra theory states that Maharashtra essentially belongs to Marathi people, while Gujaratis, south Indians, north Indians, etc. are outsiders. This is in the teeth of Articles 1(1) and 19(1)(e) of the Constitution. India is one nation, and hence non-Maharashtrians cannot be treated as outsiders in Maharashtra.
The Shiv Sena created by Thackeray attacked south Indians in the 1960s and 70s, and vandalised their restaurants and homes. In 2008, Biharis and U.P.ites living in Mumbai (the bhaiyyas who eke out a livelihood as milk and newspaper vendors, taxi drivers etc.) were described as infiltrators and attacked, their taxis smashed, and several beaten up. Muslims were also vilified
This, of course, created a vote bank for Thackeray based on hatred (as had Hitler, of whom Thackeray was an admirer), and how does it matter if the country breaks up and is Balkanised?
Apart from the objection to the ‘sons of the soil’ theory for being anti-national and unconstitutional, there is an even more basic objection, which may rebound on Thackeray’s own people.
India is broadly a country of immigrants (like North America) and 92-93 per cent of the people living in India today are not the original inhabitants but descendants of immigrants who came mainly from the north-west seeking a comfortable life in the sub-continent (see the article ‘What is India?’ on my blog justicekatju.blogspot.in and the video on the website kgfindia.com ).
The original inhabitants (the real bhumiputra) of India are the pre-Dravidian tribals, known as Adivasis (the Bhils, Gonds, Santhals, Todas, etc.) who are only 7-8 per cent of our population today.
Hence if the bhumiputra theory is seriously implemented, 92-93 per cent of Maharashtrians (including, perhaps, the Thackeray family) may have to be regarded as outsiders and treated accordingly. The only real bhumiputra in Maharashtra are the Bhils and other tribals, who are only 7-8 per cent of the population of Maharashtra.
Several separatist and fissiparous forces are at work in India today (including the bhumiputra theory). All patriotic people must combat these forces.
Why must we remain united? We must remain united because only a massive modern industry can generate the huge wealth we require for the welfare of our people — agriculture alone cannot do this — and modern industry requires a huge market. Only a united India can provide the huge market for the modern industry we must create to abolish poverty, unemployment and other social evils, and to provide for the huge health care and modern education systems we must set up if we wish to come to the front ranks of the most advanced countries.
Hence I regret I cannot pay any tribute to Mr. Bal Thackeray.
____________________________
November 19, 2012 23:16 IST
Katju blasts arrest of women who commented on FB
Press Council of India chairperson Markandey Katju on Monday slammed Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan after the police arrested two women who protested on Facebook against Sunday’s bandh over the death of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray.
In a letter to Mr. Chavan on Monday, Mr. Katju, a former Supreme Court judge, said he was forwarding an e-mail he had received stating that a woman was arrested in Maharashtra for protesting on Facebook against the shutdown in Mumbai. She was arrested for allegedly hurting religious sentiments, the letter said. Mr. Katju was going by the email, based on Sunday’s news reports that reported the arrest. On Monday, the police said two young women were arrested for their comments on the bandh.
“To my mind it is absurd to say that protesting against a bandh hurts religious sentiments. Under Article 19(1) (a) of our Constitution, freedom of speech is a guaranteed fundamental right. We are living in a democracy, not a fascist dictatorship. In fact this arrest itself appears to be a criminal act, since under Sections 341 and 342 it is a crime to wrongfully arrest or wrongfully confine someone who has committed no crime,” Mr. Katju pointed out.
He told Mr. Chavan that if the facts reported were correct, the police personnel who ordered as well as implemented the arrest of the women should be suspended, arrested, chargesheeted and criminal prosecution initiated against them. If this was not done, Mr. Katju said, he would deem it that as Chief Minister, Mr. Chavan was unable to run the State in a democratic manner as envisaged by the Constitution to which he has taken oath.
However, over five hours after his first e-mail, Mr. Katju shot off another one to Mr. Chavan saying he had not been informed if any action had been taken. Mr. Chavan had forwarded Mr. Katju’s e-mail to the Additional Chief Secretary (Home), Amitabh Rajan, but this seems to have angered the PCI chairperson more. In the second e-mail, he said: “You have not replied to my e-mail but only forwarded it to someone called Amitabh Rajan, whom I do not know, and who has not had the courtesy to respond to me. Please realise that the matter is much too serious to be taken in this cavalier manner, because the principle of liberty is at stake. The entire nation wants to know what action you have taken. I would, therefore, request you to immediately let me know what you are doing in this matter.”
Does freedom of speech, guaranteed by Article 19(1) (a), exist in Maharashtra, Mr. Katju asked. He told Mr. Chavan that silence was not an option and that the entire nation was furious at this apparently illegal arrest. He has asked for explanations on why an arrest was made for putting up “apparently innocuous material on Facebook, and what action was taken against the delinquent policemen and others involved in this high handedness and blatant misuse of state machinery.”
November 20, 2012 03:39 IST
An authentic Indian fascism
PTIThackeray offered violence as liberation to educated young men without prospects.
The Shiv Sena chief gave voice to a Nazi impulse in Indian politics — one that poses an ever-growing threat to our Republic
“Fascism”, wrote the great Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci, in a treatise Balasaheb Keshav Thackeray likely never read but demonstrated a robust grasp of through his lifetime, “has presented itself as the anti-party; has opened its gates to all applicants; has with its promise of impunity enabled a formless multitude to cover over the savage outpourings of passions, hatreds and desires with a varnish of vague and nebulous political ideals. Fascism has thus become a question of social mores: it has become identified with the barbaric and anti-social psychology of certain strata of the Italian people which have not yet been modified by a new tradition, by education, by living together in a well-ordered and well-administered state”.
Ever since Thackeray’s passing, many of India’s most influential voices have joined in the kind of lamentation normally reserved for saints and movie stars. Ajay Devgn described him as “a man of vision”; Ram Gopal Varma as “the true epitome of power”. Amitabh Bachchan “admired his grit”; Lata Mangeshkar felt “orphaned”. Even President Pranab Mukherjee felt compelled to describe Thackeray’s death as an “irreparable loss”. The harshest word grovelling television reporters seemed able to summon was “divisive”.
It is tempting to attribute this nauseous chorus to fear or obsequiousness. Yet, there is a deeper pathology at work. In 1967, Thackeray told the newspaper Navakal: “It is a Hitler that is needed in India today”. This is the legacy India’s reliably anti-republican elite has joined in mourning.
Thackeray will be remembered for many things, including the savage communal violence of 1992-1993. He was not, however, the inventor of such mass killing, nor its most able practitioner. Instead, Thackeray’s genius was giving shape to an authentically Indian Fascism.
His fascism was a utopian enterprise — but not in the commonly-understood sense. The Left, a powerful force in the world where Thackeray’s project was born, held out the prospect of a new, egalitarian world. The Congress held the keys to a more mundane, but perhaps more real, earthly paradise: the small-time municipal racket; even the greater ones that led to apartments on Marine Drive. Thackeray’s Shiv Sena wore many veneers: in its time, it was anti-south Indian, anti-north Indian, anti-Muslim. It offered no kind of paradise, though. It seduced mainly by promising the opportunity to kick someone’s head in.
Nostalgic accounts of Mumbai in the 1960s and 1970s represent it as a cultural melting pot; a place of opportunity. It was also a living hell. Half of Mumbai’s population, S. Geetha and Madhura Swaminathan recorded in 1995, is packed into slums that occupy only 6 per cent of its land-area. Three-quarters of girls, and more than two-thirds of boys, are undernourished. Three-quarters of the city’s formal housing stock, Mike Davies has noted, consisted of one-room tenements where households of six people or more were crammed “in 15 square meters; the latrine is usually shared with six other families”.
From the 1970s, Girangaon — Mumbai’s “village of factories” — entered a state of terminal decline, further aiding the Sena project. In 1982, when trade union leader Datta Samant led the great textile strike, over 240,000 people worked in Girangaon. Inside of a decade, few of them had jobs. The land on which the mills stood had become fabulously expensive, and owners simply allowed their enterprises to turn terminally ill until the government allowed them to sell.
Thackeray mined gold in these sewers — building a politics that gave voice to the rage of educated young men without prospects, and offering violence as liberation. It mattered little to the rank and file Shiv Sena cadre precisely who the targets of their rage were: south Indian and Gujarati small-business owners; Left-wing trade union activists; Muslims; north Indian economic migrants.
The intimate relationship between Mr. Bachchan and Thackeray is thus no surprise. In the 1975 Yash Chopra-directed hit Deewar, Mr. Bachchan rejects his trade-union heritage, and rebels by turning to crime. He is killed, in the end, by his good-cop brother. The Shiv Sena was a product of precisely this zeitgeist; its recruits cheered, like so many other young Indians, for the Bad Mr. Bachchan.
Like the mafia of Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar — which, it ought to be remembered, flourished in the same Mumbai — the Sena offered patronage, profit and power. Its core business, though, was the provision of masculinity. There are no great Sena-run schools, hospitals or charities; good works were not part of its language.
The fascist threat
Fascism, Gramsci understood, was the excrement of a dysfunctional polity: its consequence, not its cause. Liberal India’s great failure has been its effort to seek accommodation with fascism: neither Thackeray’s movie-industry fans, nor Mr. Mukherjee are, after all, ideological reactionaries. The Congress, the epicentre of liberal Indian political culture, has consistently compromised with communalism; indeed, it is no coincidence that it benignly presided over Thackeray’s rise, all the way to carnage in 1992-1993 and after.
This historic failure has been mitigated by the country’s enormous diversity. The fascisms of Thackeray, of Kashmiri Islamists, of Khalistanis, of Bihar’s Ranvir Sena: all these remained provincial, or municipal. Even the great rise of Hindutva fascism in 1992-1993 eventually crashed in the face of Indian electoral diversity.
Yet, we cannot take this success for granted. Fascism is a politics of the young: it is no coincidence that Thackeray, until almost the end, dyed his hair and wore make-up to conceal his wrinkles. From now until 2026, youth populations will continue to rise in some of India’s most fragile polities — among them, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, and Jammu & Kashmir.
For years now, as economic change has made it ever-harder for masses of people to build lives of dignity and civic participation, we have seen the inexorable rise of an as-yet inchoate youth reaction. From the gangs of violent predators who have raped women in Haryana, to the young Hindu and Muslim bigots who have spearheaded the recent waves of communal violence, street politics is ever more driven by a dysfunctional masculinity. Thackeray’s successes in tapping this generation’s rage will, without doubt, be drawn on in years to come by other purveyors of violence.
India desperately needs a political project that makes possible another, progressive masculinity, built around new visions for everything from culture, the family and economic justice. No vanguard for such a project, though, is yet in sight.
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Published: November 22, 2012 00:00 IST | Updated: November 22, 2012 05:23 IST
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Why Can't
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Today's Paper » INTERNATIONAL
Published: November 22, 2012 00:00 IST | Updated: November 22, 2012 05:23 ISTU.N. calls for swift action on climate
The goal of keeping planet warming in check has moved further out of reach, the U.N. said on Wednesday in the latest of a flurry of reports pointing to looming disaster ahead of talks in Qatar.
Country pledges for cutting climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions could see global average temperatures rise by three to five degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9.0 degrees F) this century, said a U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) report.
The targeted limit is an increase of two degrees Celsius on pre-industrial levels.
In the last four days, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported a record increase of earth-warming gases in the atmosphere, while the World Bank warned of the planet-wide devastation a rise of four degrees Celsius would cause.
UNEP said swift action could still see the world get back on track, but it would mean increasing pledges and slashing emissions by 14 per cent to about 44 billion tonnes in 2020 from an estimated 50.1 billion tonnes per year now. Scientists say global temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 degrees Celsius on average.
More than 190 countries will meet for two weeks in Qatar seeking to draft a work programme leading to a new, global climate deal to be signed by 2015 and enter into force by 2020.
They will also seek to put in place a follow-up phase for the Kyoto Protocol which binds rich nations to greenhouse gas emission cuts but runs out on December 31.
UNEP said the concentration of warming gases like carbon dioxide had increased by about 20 per cent since 2000, picking up after a slump during the economic downturn of 2008-9.
Barring swift action, emissions were likely to reach 58 gigatonnes in 2020. — AFP
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Global Economics
Why Can't India
By Mehul Srivastava on November 21, 2012
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-21/why-cant-india-feed-its-people
It was
1958, my father was still a child, and India India
“It was
this very coarse, red wheat,” says Narsingh Deo Mishra, a childhood friend of
my father’s and now a local politician in Auar, their home village. “We were
told it was meant for American pigs,” says Mishra. “Back then, we weren’t any
better than American pigs. So we ate it. We ate it all, and we begged for
more.”
My
father, Dinesh, grew up during the toughest years in modern India India
And yet,
in places like Auar, malnutrition persists. The vast majority of Indians,
especially villagers, are suspended in nutritional purgatory—they eat enough to
fill their stomachs but not enough to stay healthy. In the early 1970s the
number of calories the average Indian ate began rolling backward. In 1973
villagers ate just under 2,300 calories a day, according to the National Sample
Survey Office, a branch of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
By 2010 that number had dropped to about 2,020, compared with the government
floor of 2,400 a day to qualify for food aid. The mismatch manifests itself in
some of the world’s worst health score cards: Half of all children younger than
three years old in India
During
months of reporting on malnutrition in India New Delhi Virginia
On that
visit he pointed out the few reminders from his childhood. There was the elementary
school built, according to family legend, with the proceeds from a single gold
coin saved by a great-granduncle during years of toil in Burma India
When I
returned this year, I set up camp outside, sleeping on a borrowed cot under the
mango trees my father climbed as a child. Although I hired a snake charmer to
clear the ruins of the hut of its newest inhabitants, I worried that he may
have done a less than perfect job. For the next two weeks I walked the dry,
barren fields of the village, waiting like the locals for the rains that this
year, at least, never fully came. I carried out a rudimentary survey, weighing
children on a bathroom scale I’d brought, and spoke to the oldest people I
could find, asking them to contrast their memories of long-ago meals to those
they ate today. And for those two weeks I ate what the average poor and
landless Indian villager could afford.
In some ways, Auar has kept pace with modernIndia
In some ways, Auar has kept pace with modern
In other
ways, Auar is unchanged from my father’s time. There’s still no running water
in most homes, and it takes dozens of cranks of a hand pump to fill each bucket
of water. Every act of nature requires a 15-minute walk to a field where pigs
root around in the remains of yesterday’s visit. In 38 of the 40 households I
visited, I noted the teenagers’ ribs and the distended bellies and loose,
stretchy skin of the toddlers, the first and most obvious symptoms of a diet
sufficient in calories but lacking in protein. When it was first reported in
1935 in Ghana
I tracked
down Ghanshyam, the son of a laborer who had worked about two acres of
land my grandfather owned. (Like many Indians, Ghanshyam goes by only his first
name.) My father remembers the laborer’s wife picking up scraps from our
family’s dinner and taking them home to her sons. “She would whisper to me to
take larger servings and leave something for her children,” says my father.
“Even now, I feel guilty—I never left enough.” Rakesh, his oldest brother,
would leave as much as he could, my father says. “But I was young, I didn’t
really think.”
Ghanshyam
took me to his one-room mud-and-straw hut in the center of the village. Dressed
in a torn shirt and lungi—a cloth wrapped around his waist—and barefoot, it was
unclear whether he was one of the same children who grew up with my father. He
couldn’t tell me his age. He was too young to recall, as my father did, the
school holiday to commemorate a visit by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1956.
But he did remember the short-lived friendship of India
and China
Ghanshyam,
to me, embodies India Pratapgarh
In recent
weeks, Ghanshyam found only a few days’ work. The monsoon was late, so there
was little to be done in the fields; construction had slowed in anticipation of
those same rains, the life force of rural India
Every
evening, I gave Ghanshyam about 50¢, the amount the government set last year as
the daily poverty line above which Indians no longer qualify for the most
subsidized form of food aid. In exchange, his wife included me in their meals.
Thus, I would eat as many Indians do. In the morning we drank small cups of
watery tea with milk, sweetened with a nugget of jaggery, a hard candy made
from unrefined cane sugar. In the afternoon we each ate three rotis, a heavy,
unleavened bread, dipping them into a thin gruel of lentils and spice called
dal. The rotis were thick, dry, and almost tasteless, made with the cheapest,
coarsest grain available. The dal was watery, with the pulses settling to the
bottom, far different from my mother’s dal, which was thick, rich with butter
and ghee, and spiced carefully.
At night,
before walking to the family’s home, I used a stick to shake a few sour mangoes
from the trees. Urmila boiled them in the dal to add flavor, pouring the
mixture over some boiled rice.
It had
been a year, at least, since Ghanshyam last ate meat, eight months since he was
able to catch fish in the nearby river, and six months since he’d had an egg,
he told me. Later I showed photos of the meals to Rachita Singh, a nutritionist
at the Saket Max
Hospital in New Delhi India
Auar, like most Indian villages I’ve visited, is actually a collection of hamlets scattered around a central body of water, usually a deep well or two. In Auar life centered on what the villagers generously called the river. More of a rivulet, it was too small to show up on my maps. Sluggish and dirty when I visited at the end of the dry season, it served a multitude of purposes along the narrow stretch that ran past the village. Upriver, where the water was thought to be cleaner, children would do back flips into it, and women brought their laundry, the gentle slapping of wet cloth on stones filling the air. Early in the morning, the few households that owned a buffalo or cow would bring them for a bath. Downriver from the village, around a quick bend, the bank was a squelching, stinking open toilet.
Auar, like most Indian villages I’ve visited, is actually a collection of hamlets scattered around a central body of water, usually a deep well or two. In Auar life centered on what the villagers generously called the river. More of a rivulet, it was too small to show up on my maps. Sluggish and dirty when I visited at the end of the dry season, it served a multitude of purposes along the narrow stretch that ran past the village. Upriver, where the water was thought to be cleaner, children would do back flips into it, and women brought their laundry, the gentle slapping of wet cloth on stones filling the air. Early in the morning, the few households that owned a buffalo or cow would bring them for a bath. Downriver from the village, around a quick bend, the bank was a squelching, stinking open toilet.
The
hamlets, called bastis, are segregated mostly by caste or religion. Others are
settlements of five or six huts belonging to members of the same family.
Sixty-two years after India’s first constitution declared caste discrimination
illegal, the system still dictates daily life and constrains opportunities for
hundreds of millions of people.
My first
day in the village, I was taken to the upper-caste basti to meet the village
headman, a tall, broad-chested Brahmin named Vinod Upadhyay. I wanted him to
know I’d be living in the village and asking questions. He offered me a plastic
chair outside his two-story brick house, where a shiny motorcycle stood next to
an electric water pump. A servant brought out tea and biscuits. After my first
sip, I asked Upadhyay why he wasn’t joining me.
“When I
eat with lower castes, it disagrees with my stomach,” he answered nonchalantly.
My
father’s family was of a middling caste called the Kayastha—we had neither the
land nor privileges of the Brahmin but were spared the humiliating poverty of
the lowest castes. Our hamlet reflected that: In old photographs my father took
during trips back to Auar, the mud hut had started to take the shape of a
house—a small brick addition in the early 1970s, another expansion in the early
1980s. Our neighbor was a distant cousin, his neighbor another cousin. Our
hamlet was a 10-minute walk from Ghanshyam’s, where the huts were smaller,
packed closer together, sharing a single hand-pumped well.
My life in
the village quickly fell into a pattern that in many ways has remained
unchanged for centuries. Rising with the sun, my stomach already growling with
hunger, I’d seek a secluded spot to empty my slowly cramping bowels. With
little running water, and almost no indoor toilets, entire fields were open
latrines. Women rose earlier still, defecating in the dark in the hope of some
privacy. Open defecation is a national crisis for some 665 million
Indians; soiled water and food supplies are a major contributor to the spread
of pathogens that kill about 1,000 children a day from diarrhea, hepatitis, and
other diseases.
I’d bathe
under a hand-pumped well, pumping with one hand while trying to rub myself
clean. At Ghanshyam’s home, Urmila would already be burning some dry twigs to
boil our morning tea. Before the sun rose too high, I’d accompany Ghanshyam on
his search for work.
One
morning we hitched a ride to Pratapgarh, joining a group of day laborers
waiting at a traffic intersection to be picked for work. Those with obvious
skills—painters with their brushes and cans of turpentine; carpenters with
their tools—were chosen first. Last were people like Ghanshyam, who had little
to offer but their strength. I followed him to where about 20 men were working
on the foundation for a family home. My offer of labor was refused—my city
clothes, tinted glasses, and well-fed frame betrayed me as an outsider.
I watched
Ghanshyam carry bricks for an hour, his pace slacking as the sun climbed. By
10 a.m. the temperature was 102F. When the foreman yelled at Ghanshyam for
being too slow, I took his place, an unpaid substitute. We dug ditches and
broke bricks to mix in the mortar. It had been a week since I’d migrated to the
village diet, and by noon I was exhausted. The men around me had withered, too,
their movements slower, their ribs glistening in the sun. Ghanshyam opened a
lunch box, and we ate onions and rotis. We had drunk the dal while waiting to
be picked for work.
The
temperature climbed to 118F, and the workers talked the foreman into letting
them rest in the shade a half-hour longer. For two more hours, Ghanshyam and I
took turns laboring. Finally, at 4 p.m., the foreman handed out the wages:
Ghanshyam pocketed $1.75 for both of us; the other men each earned $2.20.
Ghanshyam’s tuberculosis had slowed him down too much; I had done little to
help. In Auar, the cereal-laden meals sat heavily in my stomach, and I felt
less hungry than I’d imagined I would. The most obvious impact was a constant
sense of lethargy. I moved more slowly and took longer to recover from short
bursts of labor like that at the construction site. My weight dropped about
five pounds in the two weeks I lived in the village.
In the evening, my phone would light up around 7 p.m. with
a text message from the Papa John’s (PZZA) in Delhi
Experts have argued about the reasons forIndia
Experts have argued about the reasons for
According
to Deaton and Drèze, economists have seen this trend twice before, in post-Mao China in the 1980s and 1990s, and in Britain
Following
Ghanshyam around, I was less convinced by Deaton’s explanation. Deepankar Basu
and Amit Basole, two University
of Massachusetts
There’s
little data to show that Indians have moved into less physically strenuous
jobs. India has yet to
experience the kind of industrial revolution seen in large parts of China China India
Some of
the causes for the caloric mismatch are clear. Corruption, incompetence, and
official indifference mean record stockpiles of grain rot in warehouses, and
supplies meant for the poor are often stolen. As much as $14.5 billion
worth of food in one conspiracy was looted by corrupt politicians over 10 years
from my father’s state of Uttar Pradesh alone, according to court documents. India Brazil ’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva did in 2003
with his Zero Hunger program, or Ghana
To be
fair, while India India India
Most days during my stay, Ghanshyam didn’t find work. We would lie in the shade, stoned in the heat, stirring only to swat away flies and move our cots with the shadows. Soon after sundown, the darkness was complete, and almost everybody would head to sleep.
Most days during my stay, Ghanshyam didn’t find work. We would lie in the shade, stoned in the heat, stirring only to swat away flies and move our cots with the shadows. Soon after sundown, the darkness was complete, and almost everybody would head to sleep.
I’d walk
back to the ruins of my father’s old house and imagine his childhood. In short
stories he’s published, my father recreates a bucolic life interrupted by misfortune—disease,
the curses of slighted gypsy women, ghosts, and poachers. The stories echo his
own childhood. He survived smallpox; his body is still scarred from the
near-death experience. A sister, born underweight and listless, died of
malnutrition at six months. She had been named Munni, Hindi for “our little
girl.”
In 1964 my
grandfather landed a job as a conductor for the state-owned Indian Railways and
moved the entire family—my grandmother, three sons (two more came later), and
three daughters—to the city of Allahabad India
That urge
was a relic of our caste beginnings. Without large tracts of land to cultivate,
Kayasthas in Uttar Pradesh and the neighboring state of Bengal
became a caste of peons—clerks, bookkeepers, minor functionaries for the local
maharajahs. That emphasis on being able to read and write has left an imprint
throughout my family’s known history, starting with the great-granduncle who
spent his life’s savings to build the primary school my father studied in and
which still educates the village’s children.
Hardship
for my father didn’t end with the move to the city or with the ballooning
shipments of American grain. New to the city, my father and his brothers stood
in lines outside ration shops to get rice and wheat. Often, he remembers, the
shops would run out of supplies before their turn.
At 14, my
father won a National Merit Scholarship, an Indian government program designed
to help poor, talented students in villages pay for their high school and early
college educations. At 19, he read an ad in a newspaper for a job in Mumbai
with the government’s science and research programs. He clipped the ad and
stowed away on a train, in much the same way that millions of migrants seek a
better life in Mumbai, Delhi , and Bangalore University
of Mumbai
For my
father, the years of lining up for food rations were over. His older brother,
who studied engineering, had gotten a job with the government of Uttar Pradesh,
and their combined incomes paid for the education of their younger brothers and
the weddings of their sisters. That final leap, from poverty to the
lower-middle class, was repeated by each of my uncles—the three remaining
brothers also became engineers. My cousins and I were born into families that
could easily afford food, and the deprivation of Auar became a memory, rarely
discussed.
And yet,
at family reunions, it’s clear that childhood hunger stalked our parents and
their siblings into adulthood. My cousins and I tower over our uncles; I am 4
inches (10 centimeters) taller than my father. One cousin was an amateur
boxer in the Indian Navy; another passed the rigorous physical training
required to join the Indian intelligence service and is posted in the Himalayas . A single generation of good nutrition
catapulted us into the top 10 percent of Indians for height and health.
In Auar, I
felt like a giant, stooping through doorways, my feet dangling over the edge of
my borrowed cot. At dusk I’d walk with Ghanshyam along the borders of the
village. With me at least, Ghanshyam was a quiet man, miserly with his words.
He mostly resisted my attempts to get him to share more than his most basic
thoughts. One night, however, I asked him about his favorite meal, and he
opened up. He told me he’d been happiest when planning his eldest son’s
wedding. As the groom’s father, he was the most important guest, and he
described at length the dinner thrown by the girl’s family. “Mutton korma,
chicken curry, fish curry, naan, saag paneer (spinach cooked in cottage
cheese), pulao (rice pilaf),” he listed, along with the desserts—a sweetened
rice pudding called kheer; jalebis, or sweet, fried dough; and ice cream.
On my last
day in the village, I drove to Pratapgarh and had a restaurant pack up that
exact meal. That night under the mango trees, I threw a small banquet for
Ghanshyam’s family and his neighbors. Thirteen of us sat under the biggest
tree, and in the light of my car’s headlights, Ghanshyam and I shared a small
bottle of local liquor made from a flower called mahua that he’d brought for
the occasion. He laughed when I spat out my first sip, and I noticed for the
first time that he had no teeth except for the front row.
About an
hour after dinner, as I packed my gear for the trip back to Delhi
Instead, the beam lit up Urmila. She’d come
back, she said, for the chicken bones I’d thrown away. For a family too poor to
buy meat, even boiled-up bones make a valuable addition to the diet. “With some
spices, it will taste just like chicken curry,” she said.________________________
Lives divided by the border
Nasreen and her father Nazir live in perennial hope.
Nasreen, who was separated from her mother as an infant on the Indian side of the Line of Control, lives in hope of a reunion…
“There is a distance of a few kilometers, a mountain and a heavily militarised Line of Control (LoC) between us”. This is how a 13-year old, Nasreen Qausar, defines her relationship with her mother and two siblings. They are longing for a soiree on the other side of the LoC in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).
Separated from her mother 12 years ago, Nasreen lives with her father Nazir Hussain in a border village called Keerni. It is located on the lower end of a mountain in the north west of the Poonch district, about two hundred and fifty kilometers from Jammu. The upper part of the same mountain is occupied by the Pakistan Army, making the village vulnerable to attacks -- a reality that the village residents have lived with for many years.
One such attack in the year 2000 changed Nasreen’s life forever. The local residents remember this year for the regular exchange of heavy fire at the LoC when hostilities between the two countries saw an unprecedented surge in the aftermath of the Kargil War.
When Pakistani forces fiercely attacked Nasreen’s village, it was transformed into a raging battlefield in moments. “My wife, Naseeb Jaan, along with our two children, Naseera Qausar and Naseer Ahmad, had gone to visit her family in the same village. All of a sudden, there was heavy gunfire, with bombs exploding everywhere. In a state of utter chaos, all of them rushed towards the Pakistani side to save their lives. They have not been able to return since,” shared Nazir, recalling the darkest day of his life.
For security reasons, the entire village was then vacated by the security forces and was referred to as “Barbaad Keerni” during the time it lay abandoned. The Indian forces reclaimed the village and permitted its habitation only last year.
Nasreen was a year old infant then and has no recollection of the mayhem that wrought havoc in her village. The absence of memories and the physical distance do not, however, dampen the strength of the mother-daughter relationship. Over the years, her emotional connect with her divided family has grown stronger, as she listened to her father’s stories about her mother and siblings. Her father did not give a thought to a second marriage. This has further strengthened Nasreen’s hopes of being reunited with her family.
In recent years, the Poonch-Rawalkote cross-LoC bus service started in 2006 has enabled family unions, albeit sporadically, bringing hope to thousands. In Nasreen’s case, the family members remained apart and incommunicado till last year, when Naseeb Jaan, with children in tow, was spotted by a person from her village during his visit to the other side via the bus service. Nasreen’s joy knew no bounds when she heard the news. She was convinced she would finally be reunited with her mother. Along with her father, she was ready to fulfil every formality, cross every boundary.
Unfortunately, the father and daughter continue to struggle with obstacles that have divided families for many years now. So far, they have been refused permission to travel on the bus on the grounds that their stranded family members have been living in a refugee camp as ‘stateless’ people.
According to Nazir, only those persons are permitted to board the cross LoC bus who have blood relations living as citizens on the other side. “My wife and children are putting up in a refugee camp,” says Nazir, who has left no stone unturned in his effort to bring his family together again.
He has pleaded with politicians and ministers visiting his area and has given representations to senior officials in the administration, all to no avail.
Meanwhile, Nasreen calls on every villager who returns after meeting their relations in PoK, hoping for news of her family. “ I am longing to meet them,” says Nasreen repeatedly. (Charkha Features)
November 26, 2012 12:11 IST
When security is in question
APGen. David Petraeus. File Photo
The Petraeus Affair shows that anonymity over the internet is a difficult proposition
There is little doubt that email would not have become as pervasive as it is today if it did not ride on the cloud. But the recent stepping down of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director David Petraeus, following an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the email trail leading to him and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, has revealed that the mailbox on the cloud may be convenient, but not necessarily as safe as we lull ourselves into imagining.
The supreme irony of l’affaire Petraeus was, of course, that the top spy forgot to cover his tracks, using the most basic of techniques in the toolkit of not only spies and terrorists, but truant kids who are keen to keep their secrets away from their parents.
The preliminary (and sketchy) details of the FBI’s investigations show that Ms. Broadwell and Mr. Petraeus had used a technique that is commonly used by terrorist organisations, spies, organised crime syndicates and, not surprisingly, by smart teenagers who guard their privacy with zeal. The duo used the ‘Drafts’ folder of a common Gmail account into which they would put their message, which could be read by either person (obviously, both had free access to the account).
Ironically, the ‘Drafts’ folder is, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s interpretation of the relevant legal provisions, not part of “electronic storage”, as defined by the U.S. Stored Communications Act and, hence, not afforded the privacy protection that would otherwise be available. Indeed, observers have pointed out that the investigators would get access to such messages with a mere subpoena instead of a warrant.
In this technique, one person will write a message and rather than send the message, they will save it to their draft folder. The other person will then log in to the account, usually through a Web browser, and read the message in the folder. The duo probably resorted to this ruse believing that the “exchange” of messages would not leave a digital footprint. But electronic communication is not so simple. Even to access the ‘Drafts’ folder of the Gmail service, one has to communicate with its servers, which reveals the users’ IP addresses. Identifying the user physically is now just a short step away.
Ironically, storing emails in a draft folder, rather than an inbox, may make it easier for the government to intercept the communication. This is because the Department of Justice has argued that emails in the ‘Drafts’ or ‘Sent Mail’ folder are not in “electronic storage” (as defined by the Stored Communications Act), and thus not deserving of warrant protection. Instead, the government has argued it should be able to get such messages with just subpoena rather than a warrant.
For instance, in the case of a Gmail account, it is easy to access the metadata in a message by merely following the sequence of steps mentioned below:
1. Log in to the Gmail account and open a message
2. In the upper right corner of the message, click the down button that is located next to the ‘Reply’ icon
3. Choose ‘Show Original’ in the drop down menu that scrolls down.
4. You can see the data that was part of the original message
The last line on every Gmail account reads ‘Last activity from’ and it gives the time and IP address of the last activity. A click on ‘View details’ would reveal the last 10 IP addresses the user has accessed the account from, while Google keeps a record of at least 18 months of these logs. On the Net are hundreds of ‘kits’ available that can be used to access the metadata that are embedded in emails. For instance, Mediatemple.net offers techniques to access 19 different types of email accounts — email clients such as Thunderbird and Outlook and email services such as Gmail and Yahoo. The metadata, which to most ordinary users would appear gibberish, are critical for tracking the physical location of email accounts that are being tracked.
Again, these techniques are available fairly easily on the Internet. For instance, there is whatismyipaddress.com, an IP address locator, which can give information about where the email account is registered or tell you where it is physically located.
People do have secrets, and every person has a right to communicate with some assurance of privacy protection. While staying anonymous over the Internet is next to impossible, projects like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (https://www.eff.org/) specialise in popularising simple techniques that help users remain anonymous on the Web.
The Onion Router (TOR) project popularises a browsing technique, which employs a relay of inter-connected peer computers to send requests to Web servers. For instance, if a user from India tries logging into a website without TOR, the user’s IP address is logged, which can be traced back to his/her geographic location.
Using TOR, the request from is sent via hundreds of relay computers and the IP that is logged is that of the last link in the relay of computers in the network.
Another method is to encrypt mail content using PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)-like techniques to send communication via commercial links. An encrypted email cannot be deciphered unless the passphrase of the encrypting algorithm is known.
An encrypted email sent to a friend via Gmail about a vacation in Andaman islands will not intelligently show you ads of hotels in Andaman, as is the case with ‘targeted ads’ delivered by Gmail. Even Google cannot decipher the content in the mail!
Hyping one threat to hide another
The U.S. and dominant global Internet companies fear regulation because it will adversely affect their control over the communication realm
A lot of global attention right now is focussed on the World Conference on International Telecommunications of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which will get under way in Dubai next week. This meeting is taking up a review of International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs). When the ITRs were last reviewed in 1988, the Internet was not commonplace and, therefore, did not find mention. In 2012, it is difficult to think of global communication without the Internet. The key question today is whether the remit of the ITU should extend to the Internet or not, and if indeed it should, to what parts and aspects of the Internet, and in what manner.
One summary view, quite popular in many quarters, is that with the Internet taking over global communication systems, there is no role for the ITU anymore. Unlike traditional telecommunication — largely, telephony — global Internet traffic is mediated entirely through commercial arrangements among private players with almost no involvement of a regulator. Free market proponents, having greatly dominated the discourse so far, hold that the free market has fully triumphed, and delivered, in relation to the Internet. This model should not be disturbed. There is, therefore, no need for any kind of regulation of the Internet.
‘Free market’ view
This ‘free market’ view has found a powerful ally among freedom of expression groups, so much so that the debate about the future of the ITU is almost entirely fronted by evocative appeals about preserving the Internet as the ultimate domain of free expression. Unlike market fundamentalism, there are no two views about freedom of expression among most groups and people, and thus such a strategy is understandable. Perhaps for similar reasons, Hillary Clinton has spelled ‘Internet freedom’ as a key U.S. foreign policy agenda. It may, however, need deeper thought and analysis to assess whether the real agenda here is to use the new Internet-based global communication realm — with the unprecedented domination of U.S. companies in it — as the key means for global economic, social, cultural and political domination in the post-industrial world. Any kind of global regulation of the Internet, or even articulation of global principles of public interest, does not serve this agenda.
The issue of freedom of expression vis-Ã -vis regulation of the Internet is of course very real. States are quite nervous about the transformational new means that allow citizens to exercise voice and associational power as never before. They are scrambling to get their hands on some lever or the other to prevent the potential damage. And it is not only the developing countries that are busy in this regard, so are the developed ones, greatly enhancing their surveillance capabilities. Nevertheless, at the ITU very few countries have floated proposals that could increase governmental control over Internet content. These proposals mostly pertain to subverting the current globally managed Internet names and addresses system, and the globally configured Internet traffic routing, to create more controllable national Internet spaces, or ‘national segments’ of the Internet, as one proposal calls them. There is very little support for these proposals. Almost all developed countries and most developing ones, including India, have not supported these.
At the recently concluded U.N. Internet Governance Forum at Baku, a reporter asked Terry Kramer, the chief U.S. delegate to the upcoming ITU conference, what the whole fuss is about when decisions can be taken only by consensus and there is so much opposition to these problematic proposals. Mr. Kramer was disarmingly honest in his response. He agreed that there was not that much real danger of anything happening at the WCIT itself. But, he said, this is a long-haul thing. What is at stake are the principles that will guide Internet regulation/governance in the long run. And in this regard, he continued, Dubai was just one of the many forums/meetings/crossroads, and many more are yet to come.
The U.S. and the dominant global Internet companies, which are at the forefront of the anti-ITU campaign, know their game and objectives quite well. It is important that others do so too. This is about the new paradigm of global governance/regulation of the communication realm. Most hype around the WCIT seems to be missing this point, largely because it is to a considerable extent orchestrated and misled by the dominant powers.
The paradigmatic issue here is whether the Internet, as the centrepiece of the new global communication realm, should be regulated at all. Freedom of expression is just one side of the story. The other, rather well disguised side is about the political economy of the global communication realm. It is about the division of resources within the communication realm, and, even more importantly, the larger global and sub-global division of resources — economic, social, and political — which is fundamentally impacted by the nature of regimes that govern the global communication realm.
Closely regulated
The communication realm — or more descriptively, the information and communication realm, and its technologies — has always been closely regulated in public interest. It is generally understood that it is of vital and extraordinary public interest, and cannot just be subject only to normal commercial regulation, that for instance governs trade in white goods. Every telephone company is obliged to carry the traffic from every other company in a non-discriminatory manner, which is called the common carriage rule. One can well imagine what it would be like if this rule is not enforced. Long back, there was a time when there was no such rule. The telephony revolution was made possible because regulators forced common carriage regulation on big companies in the U.S. and other places. Similarly, the IT revolution began when regulators in the U.S. forced software to be unbundled from hardware, whereby an independent software industry could develop. The rest is history.
There are universal service obligations in the telecom sector whereby every telecom provider must service every person/ household, etc., whether it serves its business model or not. And then there are regulations on tariffs, quality of service and so on. Telecom providers are forced to comply with disability friendly features, and they also contribute to Universal Service Funds that are used to universalise communication services. All of this, and much more, will disappear in an unregulated communication system. In taking a collective political decision on whether the Internet is at all to be regulated or not, we need to understand that we are taking decisions on all these issues, and not just on freedom of expression.
In order to understand the real stakes in the ‘regulation or not’ debate regarding the Internet, it is best to look at what is happening in the U.S. right now. The U.S. telecom market is dominated by two players, Verizon and AT&T. Verizon has challenged the Federal Communication Commission’s authority to enforce net neutrality (the Internet equivalent of the ‘common carriage’ rule), arguing that the Internet is not telecom and thus outside the FCC’s mandate. AT&T went a step further. It claimed that since even traditional telecom services, like telephony, increasingly work on Internet Protocols (IP), the FCC’s remit should not cover even telephony. In essence, more or less, the claim is that no regulation of the communication systems is needed at all. The FCC can close down! Markets have taken over, and are their own arbitrators!
California recently became the latest of many States in the U.S., mostly Republican-ruled, which have deregulated Voice-over-Internet-Protocol, effectively removing regulatory control over telephony service, disregarding the concerns expressed by many public interest groups. There are many deep implications of such changeovers. To give just one illustration, unlike traditional telephony systems that are obliged to have their own power-supply to account for emergency situations, the new IP based systems do not have such obligations. When most ‘new systems’ failed recently in the aftermath of Storm Sandy, unlike earlier times, the FCC found itself unable to question the disaster preparedness of the companies providing much of the communication infrastructure in the U.S. today.
What is happening at the ITU today, in good measure, is this game of freeing our communication realm from all public interest regulation. As mentioned, it is about a new paradigm of ‘complete non-regulation.’ And once the victory is achieved at the ITU, whereby the Internet and other IP networks, which would soon be the basis of all communication infrastructure, are considered out of any kind of regulatory oversight, the game will then be replayed at the national level, citing ‘global norms.’ In fact, during an on-the-side chat at a recent Internet governance meeting in New Delhi, a telecom company representative made a significant give-away remark. He said to an official of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), ‘but isn’t net neutrality about the Internet, and therefore TRAI should have nothing to do about it.’
In presenting a view on whether or not the Internet should be subject to the remit of the ITU and the ITRs, India may be taking a position on whether it seeks to free the Internet from all regulatory control, which logic would then perforce also extend to TRAI’s remit at home. The least one can say, and appeal to the government and other actors in the space, is that this should be a considered decision after thoroughly assessing all sides of the story.
Freedom of expression is not the only issue that is involved here. There are so many other issues, involving significant economic, social and cultural considerations, that are at stake with regard to regulation of the Internet. It may not be wise to throw out the baby with the bath water.
Significance of Gandhi and Gandhism
|
By Dr. Ravindra Kumar*
Email: ravindrawpmt@gmail.com
“I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.”
– M K Gandhi
The above short statement of the Mahatma is itself sufficient enough to elucidate the stature of Gandhi and the spirit in the root of Gandhism besides proving its significance for the present and all times to come. Further, this statement is, despite being short, capable of illustrating the source and basis of his life and ideas for those who are, more or less, familiar with life of Gandhi, and Gandhism. Even though, as I have observed during my continuous visits to various places of the world, people of the present generation, youth in particular, desire to learn more and more about Satya and Ahimsa, the core points of Gandhian philosophy, it is necessary to make a fair analysis of life of Gandhi on one hand, and Gandhism, having this short statement in the centre, on the other.
The word Gandhi is about that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who on the basis of his exemplary and inspiring life and works became an icon and ideal not only for his contemporaries all over the world, but equally for generations to come. The legacy he has left through his actions, which he successfully carried out on the strength of the supreme human value of Ahimsa, in fact, makes him relevant for all times to come.
Gandhism is, in quite clear and simple words, an amalgam of Mahatma Gandhi’s views and practices, actions. It consists of ideas, which Mahatma Gandhi presented before the world, and his actions, which he described as his experiments with truth. We know he to the maximum possible extent treated his individual life in accordance with his ideas, therefore, those who hold merely his ideas to be the Gandhism, they are not correct. In this regard, Mahatma Gandhi cannot be compared to Karl Marx whose thoughts are termed as Marxism. As the Mahatma has simultaneously been a man of action, it is unfair if merely his ideas are named as Gandhism.
Now, after becoming reasonably familiar with the reality of the both, Gandhi and Gandhism, and accepting their indivisibility from each-other, it will not be inappropriate if with the purpose of analyzing the subject in hand in easy manner, we go forward by keeping the word Gandhism as the nuclei.
Gandhism, as is evident from the short statement quoted in the beginning of discussion in hand, is entirely based on Ahimsa, non-violence. Ahimsa is the most ancient, perpetual, individual as well as social, welfaristic and all-timely value. It is a religion in grandeur. It is permanently present in human nature. Moreover, it is an essential condition for existence, the basis of development and the achievement of goal in life. It is a soul force, a virtue of the soul. The soul itself is a part of truth. Hence, being a permanent, eternal and all-timely, and a virtue of the soul simultaneously, Ahimsa is a truth-based value; truth is perpetual, it is permanent. Therefore, the following statement of Mahatma Gandhi seems worthy of consideration here in this regard:
“Truth and non-violence are the two sides of the same coin. Both have the same value. Difference lies in approach only. On one side there is non-violence; on the other side is truth.” [Harijan Sewak: July 13, 1947]
In this very context another statement of the Mahatma also seems distinctive and exemplary. He says:
“My love for non-violence is superior to that for every other thing, mundane or supra-mundane. It is equaled only by my love for truth, which is to me synonymous with non-violence through which and which alone I can see and reach truth.”[Essentials of Gandhian Thought, page 9]
Thus, it is clear that the life, work and ideas of Mahatma Gandhi remained to a large extent in uniformity with his own statement quoted in the beginning of discussion. His actions-experiments remained continue in search of truth. The Mahatma made efforts continuously for the welfare of one and all. Indeed, Ahimsa was the only means in search for truth and to achieve whatever Gandhi could in the larger interest of humanity. Truth remained intact in all of his actions carried out for the establishment of justice, equality and freedom on the strength of Ahimsa in South Africa, or in India.
The distinctive success of Gandhi’s own actions, and triumph of those movements, which were carried out by others in different parts of the world by applying the Gandhian way in its refined form and as per the demand of time and space, well proves itself the importance, validity and significance of the Gandhian way, Gandhism, in current perspective. Therefore, it is inevitable that the Gandhian way should be analyzed properly, with honestly, sincerity and without having prejudice. If it is done accordingly, its relevance will become apparent; the Gandhian way, Gandhism, will pave the way to resolve unprecedentedly.
Nevertheless, some of the points, which can be signified for those from the present generation who have high hopes from Ahimsa-based Gandhian way, Gandhism, or who desire solution of problems through it, are as follow:
 To accept Ahimsa by understanding the basic spirit at the root of non-violence, making intent underlying the act the acid test ofAhimsa in particular; To identify the strength of Ahimsa, realizing its necessity and inevitability in life with sincerity; To have patience toward outcomes of Ahimsa, having full faith and trust in it and to get enough courage produced by non-violence; To accept Ahimsa as a dynamic force, making it the basis of one’s day-to-day practices and to proceed accordingly and continuously; To be ready to resolve disputes, conflicts and struggles through Ahimsa and activities related to it, realizing the fact that non-violence is the only means to resolve problems or there is no other effective means available to accord success in this regard exceptAhimsa [and its activities]; To accept Ahimsa as the basic source of establishing cooperation at larger scale, acknowledging the reality of solution through cooperation and to take the way of non-violent non-cooperation with the purpose of ascertaining cooperation; to persist as a non-co-operator until the goal is not achieved, cooperation is not ascertained, but to be ready meanwhile to absorb success even if it is partly; and To accept the triumph achieved through Ahimsa as win-win state, taking it not the victory of one and defeat of the other as Vinobha Bhave has rightly pointed out, “One man’s victory is other man’s defeat is true in the realm of violence. In the spare of non-violence one man’s victory is also another man’s victory.”
Moreover, Ahimsa is all-welfaristic; it is a means to reach truth, truth is truth and it is for all in equal amount. Therefore, accomplishments made on the strength of truth are for one and all.
This is the message of Gandhi, the Mahatma to the world. In his life he acted himself accordingly, in consonance with his ideas. As Gandhi’s works and views are dedicated to Ahimsa; they are for the welfare of one and all, Sarvodaya, therefore, they are significant in current perspective and will be so in all times to come if are refined as per the demand of time and space, and applied accordingly. Ponder over it and apply it, results will themselves prove the relevance of Gandhism.
*Indologist Dr. Ravindra Kumar is former Vice Chancellor of CCS University, Meerut [India]
|
__________________________
Understanding
GANDHI
|
By Nagindas
Sanghvi*
Email: nagingujarat@gmail.com
Address at Lechayim of Jewish Services Association.
Madison [WIS.] U. S.
I stand before you to speak on Gandhi who was shot dead some sixty years
ago but who is still alive. He is still the most frequently mentioned individual
in the world and is still the centre of the controversies some of which were
raised by his actions and beliefs. Every year at least three or four books are
written about him in some part of the world or other and he is being constantly
discussed at several seminars and intellectual discourses all over the world.
The date of his birth has been proclaimed as the Non-violence Day by the United
Nations Organization. In our terror-stricken world of today, his teachings are
even more relevant than they were when they were preached in the first half of
the twentieth century.
The world to-day hails him as a
Mahatma - a Great Soul - a Saint. Gandhi always resented the title and found it
intensely painful. He never cared for any beatification and insisted that he was
an ordinary man who was trying his level best for the realization of the Divine
Presence.
Gandhi was not born a saint but
chiseled himself into one by intensely agonizing experiments in austerity and
discipline. He chose to call his biography “My experiments with Truth,” It is
very difficult, if not impossible, to project Gandhi in few minutes. Sixty years
after his death, he still remains a sort of enigma. The flood of copious
literature on Gandhi does nothing to solve the mystery.
Unlike most of us, Gandhi continued
to grow and change till the last moment of his life and he never worried about
contracting himself. “In my search for Truth, I have never cared about
consistency.” Like Emerson, he rejected consistency as the virtue of small
minds. He was bold enough to proclaim that ‘If my readers find any inconsistency
in my views, they should reject the older ones and believe in the later as my
views might have changed.’
Gandhi was a multiplex personality so
full of contradictions. He was a shrewd politician who implicitly trusted all
his enemies and who never aspired for any position of power or pelf. Gandhi was
a revolutionary who was very conservative and a man of peace who was
continuously making trouble all around him. He was an intensely religious person
who rejected the rituals and ceremonials of all religions including his own. He
prayed daily for Divine guidance and claimed to be led by an Inner Voice but
that voice was always filtered through the razor sharp brain of a seasoned
lawyer. He was a democrat whose companions often complained about the
dictatorial style of his decision making. He never had any formal authority but
held in his frail hands the fate of 300 millions of Indians who implicitly
trusted his word. For thirty years Gandhi was the face of
India.
He was many men in one. He was a
political leader par excellence, a social reformer, an educationist, a
dietician, a great environmentalist, a naturopath but above all a seeker for
spiritual bliss. Gandhi never hesitated to practice what he preached and
believed and was ever ready to experiment with any new idea. He was ever ready
to meet those who disagreed with him and to carry on a dialogue with
them.
Gandhi often said that his life is
his message and his life and teachings can greatly contribute in finding the
solutions to the problems that plague the world today. There are so many aspects
and achievements of Gandhi but I am going to focus only on one of his
contributions that I consider to be the most significant one.
All through his adult life Gandhi
struggled hard to fight the Evil in personal and public life whenever and
wherever he faced it. The problem of Evil and how to fight with it has been an
age old problem faced by entire Humanity ever since the primordial period of the
human history. The usual answer to the Evil as pronounced in all the ancient
codes of Hindus and also in the code of Hammurabi was to do evil to the evil
doers. Eye for an eye was and still remains the accepted policy of all civil
societies and in international relations. The violence that we use against the
criminals and the violence in war differ only in their quantitative dimensions;
the quality is the same but the volume of violence seems to condone the crime. A
murderer is punished with death whatever be his motive. But a killer on a
massive scale is a hero in war. Ancient Indian texts advise to do evil to the
evil doers.
Buddha advocated a policy of
indifference to the problem of Evil. Do not participate in violence, do not
support or approve of it but keep away from the evil act. Conquer evil with Good
and anger with patience.
Christ chose the path of peace and
reconciliation by tolerating or submitting to the evil, to turn the other cheek
and to give away the coat to those who snatch away our shirt. We all are sinners
and we have to seek forgiveness from God who is a kind and generous father of
humanity. We ought to forgive the evil doer as when he is sincerely repentant of
his evil deeds. Christ would leave it to the divine dispensation to do justice
and he hoped for a kingdom of God where violence will disappear and when the
meek shall inherit the earth.
Mahommed, the prophet of Islam agreed
that God is a loving and generous father of humanity but he insisted that Evil
must be countered with Justice that is impartial but stern and swift. No one is
above justice and none ought to be allowed to escape it.
Hindus believe that good or evil is
the Karma of the individual and will automatically lead to its reward or
punishment. The iron law of Karma leaves no ground for any forgiveness. It is an
inexorable process of nature and just as none can escape or evade the force of
gravitation so also no one can evade or escape Karma. We need to do nothing for
getting the guilty punished as he or she will be punished by Nature
itself.
Gandhi was both a staunch Hindu and a
good Christian. The Archbishop of Canterbury declared Gandhi to be the only
Christian in the contemporary world even though he was a devout Hindu, Gandhi
dared to think out of box and struck a different chord. Arguing that the policy
of an eye for an eye would soon leave the whole world blind in no time and
warning that submission would only multiply evil, he sought to fight against
Evil but to love the Evil doer.
He chose to separate the act from the
actor and the deed from the doer. He fought one without hating the other. He
argued that to fight evil with evil will only multiply evil. The evil must be
fought by love and eliminated by converting the evil doer from the bottom of his
heart. Punishment is only external and physical suffering would not change the
inner mind and heart of the evil doer.
Punishment and retaliation will not
reform the evil doer. So the only way to fight the evil is by non-violence
because violence can never totally eliminate evil from the mind and heart of the
evil doer. What is needed is the change of heart and that can be done by
resisting all evil with love and nonviolence. Even the worst of man has a
particle of good in him and we must appeal to that innate goodness so that evil
is transformed in to good.
Passionately convinced about the
innate goodness of Man, of every man even of the evil doers, Gandhi sought to
separate the act from the man, the evil from the evil doers. He fought against
evil without fear but also without hatred. The evil is to be totally eradicated
even from the heart and mind of the evil doers. Gandhi always laid very great
stress on change of heart and adopted an amazing technique.
The technique was Satyagraha and the
instrument was Ahimsa. He picked up the principle of Ahimsa as taught by ancient
Indian thinkers and converted Ahimsa from a spiritual practice to a weapon of
war against Evil. Though the term is the same, Ahimsa of Gandhi is as sharply
different from the Ahimsa of Buddha and Mahavir as chalk is different from the
cheese. Non-violence for Gandhi is not for the submitting cowards but a virtue
of the resisting heroes. It needs sustained activism and a readiness to
sacrifice one’s all to challenge and fight the evil wherever one finds
it.
This technique- Satyagraha is often
translated as Passive resistance but there was nothing passive in the life or
approach of Gandhi. A Satyagrahi strives to appeal to the better side of the
oppressors and the exploiters. They can be made to see and feel the evil they
are doing by witnessing the sufferings of their victims. Even the worst of the
oppressors is a human being and is never totally devoid of goodness that can be
touched and activated by the sufferings of the innocents. The evil is never and
nowhere to be tolerated or submitted to. But such a total rejection of evil and
refusal to submit to it ought to be accompanied by love, self sacrifice and
voluntary sufferings without a trace of violence. Such is the way and the only
way and the most effective way of cleansing the evil from the minds and hearts.
Such non-violence ought to be total—in deeds, words and thoughts. From time to
time Gandhi prescribed the details of the methodology of non-violence of
Satyagraha which is the weapon of last resort.
Gandhi was never an armchair
philosopher and his theories were the product of his experiences in the battle
field of public life. Gandhi practiced what he preached and was singularly free
from fear and hatred. His enemies turned in to his friends. Gandhi fought
against English Empire and he was one of the most prominent factor in destroying
it but to day he is the darling of the Englishmen. Two prominent Englishmen-
Lord Mountbatten and Sir Richard Attenborough have given him high tributes
though it took a Jew to understand Gandhi in his entirety.
Einstein proclaimed that future
generations will refuse to believe that such a person could exist in flesh and
blood. But Einstein was slightly out of focus in his dating. Because we need not
wait for the future generations because even this generation finds it hard to
believe that Gandhi ever exited.
Gandhi failed against his opponents
and also with his followers. Satyagrah in South Africa and in India ended
without achieving the goals that Gandhi has set up and the successive
Satyagrahas in India—1921-23, 1929-32 and 1942-45 became more and more violent
and more and more destructive.
But then prophets seldom succeed.
Every prophet in the world has failed but they are the glorious failures of
History and it is through such failures that humanity gets a bit more refined
and a bit more ennobled.
*Speech to the Jewish club at Madison U S.
|
________________________
Significance of Gandhi and Gandhism
|
By
Dr. Ravindra Kumar*
Email: ravindrawpmt@gmail.com
“I have
nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills.
All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I
could.”
– M K
Gandhi
The above short statement of the Mahatma is
itself sufficient enough to elucidate the stature of Gandhi and the spirit in
the root of Gandhism besides proving its significance for the present and all
times to come. Further, this statement is, despite being short, capable of
illustrating the source and basis of his life and ideas for those who are, more
or less, familiar with life of Gandhi, and Gandhism. Even though, as I have
observed during my continuous visits to various places of the world, people of
the present generation, youth in particular, desire to learn more and more about
Satya and Ahimsa, the core points of Gandhian philosophy, it is
necessary to make a fair analysis of life of Gandhi on one hand, and Gandhism,
having this short statement in the centre, on the other.
The word Gandhi is about that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi,
who on the basis of his exemplary and inspiring life and works became an icon
and ideal not only for his contemporaries all over the world, but equally for
generations to come. The legacy he has left through his actions, which he
successfully carried out on the strength of the supreme human value of
Ahimsa, in fact, makes him relevant for all times to
come.
Gandhism is, in quite clear and simple
words, an amalgam of Mahatma Gandhi’s views and practices, actions. It consists
of ideas, which Mahatma Gandhi presented before the world, and his actions,
which he described as his experiments with truth. We know he to the maximum
possible extent treated his individual life in accordance with his ideas,
therefore, those who hold merely his ideas to be the Gandhism, they are not
correct. In this regard, Mahatma Gandhi cannot be compared to Karl Marx whose
thoughts are termed as Marxism. As the Mahatma has simultaneously been a man of
action, it is unfair if merely his ideas are named as
Gandhism.
Now, after becoming reasonably familiar
with the reality of the both, Gandhi and Gandhism, and accepting their
indivisibility from each-other, it will not be inappropriate if with the purpose
of analyzing the subject in hand in easy manner, we go forward by keeping the
word Gandhism as the nuclei.
Gandhism, as is evident from the short
statement quoted in the beginning of discussion in hand, is entirely based on
Ahimsa, non-violence. Ahimsa is the most ancient, perpetual,
individual as well as social, welfaristic and all-timely value. It is a religion
in grandeur. It is permanently present in human nature. Moreover, it is an
essential condition for existence, the basis of development and the achievement
of goal in life. It is a soul force, a virtue of the soul. The soul itself is a
part of truth. Hence, being a permanent, eternal and all-timely, and a virtue of
the soul simultaneously, Ahimsa is a truth-based value; truth is
perpetual, it is permanent. Therefore, the following statement of Mahatma Gandhi
seems worthy of consideration here in this regard:
“Truth and non-violence are the two
sides of the same coin. Both have the same value. Difference lies in approach
only. On one side there is non-violence; on the other side is
truth.” [Harijan Sewak: July 13,
1947]
In this very context another statement of
the Mahatma also seems distinctive and exemplary. He says:
“My love for non-violence is superior
to that for every other thing, mundane or supra-mundane. It is equaled only by
my love for truth, which is to me synonymous with non-violence through which and
which alone I can see and reach truth.”
[Essentials of Gandhian Thought, page 9]
Thus, it is clear that the life, work and
ideas of Mahatma Gandhi remained to a large extent in uniformity with his own
statement quoted in the beginning of discussion. His actions-experiments
remained continue in search of truth. The Mahatma made efforts continuously for
the welfare of one and all. Indeed, Ahimsa was the only means in search
for truth and to achieve whatever Gandhi could in the larger interest of
humanity. Truth remained intact in all of his actions carried out for the
establishment of justice, equality and freedom on the strength of Ahimsa
in South Africa, or in India.
The distinctive success of Gandhi’s own
actions, and triumph of those movements, which were carried out by others in
different parts of the world by applying the Gandhian way in its refined form
and as per the demand of time and space, well proves itself the importance,
validity and significance of the Gandhian way, Gandhism, in current perspective.
Therefore, it is inevitable that the Gandhian way should be analyzed properly,
with honestly, sincerity and without having prejudice. If it is done
accordingly, its relevance will become apparent; the Gandhian way, Gandhism,
will pave the way to resolve unprecedentedly.
Nevertheless, some of the points, which can
be signified for those from the present generation who have high hopes from
Ahimsa-based Gandhian way, Gandhism, or who desire solution of problems
through it, are as follow:
To accept Ahimsa by
understanding the basic spirit at the root of non-violence, making intent
underlying the act the acid test of Ahimsa in
particular;
To identify the strength
of Ahimsa, realizing its necessity and inevitability in life with
sincerity;
To have patience toward
outcomes of Ahimsa, having full faith and trust in it and to get enough
courage produced by non-violence;
To accept Ahimsa as
a dynamic force, making it the basis of one’s day-to-day practices and to
proceed accordingly and continuously;
To be ready to resolve
disputes, conflicts and struggles through Ahimsa and activities related
to it, realizing the fact that non-violence is the only means to resolve
problems or there is no other effective means available to accord success in
this regard except Ahimsa [and its activities];
To accept Ahimsa as
the basic source of establishing cooperation at larger scale, acknowledging the
reality of solution through cooperation and to take the way of non-violent
non-cooperation with the purpose of ascertaining cooperation; to persist as a
non-co-operator until the goal is not achieved, cooperation is not ascertained,
but to be ready meanwhile to absorb success even if it is partly;
and
To accept the triumph
achieved through Ahimsa as win-win state, taking it not the victory of
one and defeat of the other as Vinobha Bhave has rightly pointed out, “One
man’s victory is other man’s defeat is true in the realm of violence. In the
spare of non-violence one man’s victory is also another man’s
victory.”
Moreover, Ahimsa is all-welfaristic;
it is a means to reach truth, truth is truth and it is for all in equal amount.
Therefore, accomplishments made on the strength of truth are for one and
all.
This is the message of Gandhi, the
Mahatma to the world. In his life he acted himself accordingly, in consonance
with his ideas. As Gandhi’s works and views are dedicated to Ahimsa; they
are for the welfare of one and all, Sarvodaya, therefore, they are
significant in current perspective and will be so in all times to come if are
refined as per the demand of time and space, and applied accordingly. Ponder
over it and apply it, results will themselves prove the relevance of
Gandhism.
*Indologist Dr.
Ravindra Kumar is former Vice Chancellor of CCS University, Meerut
[India]
|
_______________________
Reading the future in Mexico’s malls
India may soon go the way of the North American country where small stores have vanished from the city, agriculture has declined and unemployment is huge
The driver of the taxi that took me from the airport to the hotel in Mexico city was a computer systems analyst. He was a cheerful English speaking man who talked about himself and his family’s woes in the hour it took to cover the 30 km. He wanted to know about the global economic crisis so that he could figure out why things were bad in Mexico for people like him. He complained about unemployment and his inability to get the right job without connections — a fate his children also face. He blamed the U.S. and its policies and corruption in society. This was a recurrent theme during my week-long stay in Mexico recently.
Big malls
The taxi passed through many commercial and residential areas but I saw no small shops. There were big malls, automobile dealers, petrol stations, restaurants, pharmacy stores and car repair shops. I wondered if the small stores were in the residential colonies. A friend who had been posted in the Indian Embassy in the mid-1980s had mentioned that there were fruit stores everywhere and one could make a meal of fruits in the evening but such shops were nowhere to be seen. I wondered if this was the future that awaited the Indian metropolises.
The absence of small stores was perplexing but more intriguing was the serious unemployment, given that Mexico has been a part of NAFTA since 1994 and which brought in much foreign investment. Many factories have relocated from the U.S. to Northern Mexico to supply the U.S. and Canadian markets and so on. The city was bustling with cars. It is prosperous compared to India with a per capita income 10 times ours. There are layers of flyovers — one on top of the other — but there are traffic jams. During day time, it takes two to three hours to cover a distance that takes 25 minutes early in the morning. The public transport system consists of rail, buses and trams but people are stuck in traffic for a good part of their day. The city has to spread horizontally since it is built on landfill and there is a lot of water below the surface, and multi-storeyed buildings require expensive deep foundations. So, most buildings are one or two stories high, forcing the city of 25 million to spread out.
Old timers remember that Mexico city had small stores until the mid-1980s. Only the organised sector stores survive now, like the Sanborn chain belonging to Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world. Sanborn has a unique model of a restaurant on the first floor and a gift shop, pharmacy and other such conveniences on the ground floor. The young I talked to did not remember seeing corner stores in residential colonies.
From my hotel window, perched eight floors up, I could see malls but no small stores. Sears, Walmart, McDonalds — they were there like anywhere in the U.S. In residential colonies, I did see a few small stores but most of them were American Seven Elevens. And there are pavement stalls and markets where the poor purchase their necessities. It was ironical to see workers in ties from malls cross the street to eat at pavement stalls — perhaps they could not afford to eat in the mall.
On a visit to the charming town centre, it was refreshing to see streets lined with small stores. My escort told me that many people came here to shop because it was cheaper. I went outside Mexico City to Teotihuacan to see the Pyramids. The huge pyramid of the Sun god is apparently a few times larger than the biggest Egyptian pyramids. It was part of an ancient city 2,000 years ago, which was over three miles long and had more than 1.5 lakh people. All this was awe-inspiring but it was tiring because it involved hours of walking and climbing up and down. At the end of it, we went to the neighbouring town to eat. At its entrance was a beautiful arch which said Teotihuacan Pueblo con Encanto. The streets were lined with small stores.
Village republic
The next day, I visited the village Tlalnepantla in Morelos. I counted dozens of small shops for a population of a few thousand. This is a revolutionary village. Alvaro, our host, is an economics graduate who settled down here 40 years ago. He cultivates Nopal, or cactus, with the rest of the villagers. His small garden has trees bearing guava, avacados, lime and lukat. He has successfully experimented with creating a village republic. It was amazing to see the hilly village surrounded by 4,000 hectares of Nopal cultivation. Even more breathtaking was the clear view of the distant volcano from which a plume of smoke emanated.
The village had rejected the corrupt political parties. Villagers selected their own leader and did not recognise the president of the municipality, a party man. The government sent in troops declaring Alvaro and others terrorists and they had to go underground. There were protests all over Mexico, especially in the universities. The government was forced to drop the charges and come to an agreement. The land here belongs to the community and cannot be sold to outsiders. Hearing that an Indian professor was visiting the village, its leaders came with lunch and cactus products — cooked as vegetable, turned into pickle and marmalade, very delicious. Alvero asked me about Gandhiji, his philosophy of non-violence and how it could be applied to a modern society. Gandhiji seems to have a special place in Mexico. A chain of book stores is called ‘Gandhi.’ There are parks and roads named after Gandhiji.
The farmers are upset with the U.S. and NAFTA. They complained that the free market had enabled subsidised food to come from the U.S. and destroyed their agriculture which now contributes only four per cent of GDP. Thus, the two big employers, agriculture and retail trade, have suffered in the last two decades, which is why unemployment is high (5.2 per cent), and underemployment is at 25 per cent. I met a professor who said his son got a job only because of his connections and another said his son doing a Ph.D. was worried about the future. Why is this happening with so much foreign investment? Unemployment has driven down wages. An Assistant Professor at the university complained that he could barely make ends meet with his salary, which is determined by the number of lectures he gives in a month. He thought the taxi-driver was better off than him.
Mafia rule
In Northern Mexico where investments from the U.S. have poured in, the mafia has taken over and there is lawlessness. The state there seems to be withering away. Unemployed youth join the mafia. There is drug trafficking and illegal migration of youth into the U.S. It is this migration that has kept unemployment from getting worse. The migrants send money back home. Remittances along with income from petroleum exports and tourism keep the Mexican economy afloat and prevent the crisis from deepening.
Instead of solving Mexico’s problems, its proximity to the U.S., free trade with it and investments from there have led to deepening unemployment, the decline of traditional agriculture and the end of small retailers in metro cities. I wondered whether what I was seeing in Mexico was India fast forwarded 20 years, when there will be lots of cars and traffic jams in the metros, lots of malls too, but few small retail shops, high unemployment and a crisis in agriculture. Small stores are likely to survive only in small towns and villages.
Our crisis is likely to be worse than Mexico’s since we do not border the largest economy in the world where our youth could illegally migrate. Nor are we likely to get investment in per capita terms matching Mexico. We do not have petroleum or tourism income to prop us either. So, does Mexico mirror a part of our future, if we continue with our current policies?
(Arun Kumar is Chairperson and Sukhamoy Chakravarty Chair Professor, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University.)
arunkumar1000@hotmail.com
_______________________
