The Republic of Dissent

Fury!

Sugary excerpt of the best article I read last weekend, Amy Kazmin's portrait in the Financial times of Arundhati Roy:

(...) her fiction writing has been on the backburner, while she has dedicated herself to political activism, travelling to remote corners of the country, attending political meetings and writing essays on topics from India’s dam-building to its judicial corruption and its abuses in the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir. “You get drawn into a world where people realise, here is somebody who is not frightened of saying something. All of the last 11 years has been unplanned. It’s been a process of deepening your understanding,” she says.
In her political writing, Roy has been scathing in her description of India’s two-decade old economic liberalisation programme – which is widely credited with bringing unprecedented opportunities to many – and seemingly contemptuous of the emerging middle class.
Her diatribes have made her something of a hate figure for many Indian nationalists. There is also a feeling among a number of liberals and left-leaning activists, who have a concern for social justice – and for many of the issues she raises – that her strident polemics are too extreme. “I know I alienate people, but there isn’t any possibility of writing about these things where everybody is going to agree with you,” she says. “I am not scared of alienating the middle class. I am saying what I think. I know the entire establishment obviously disagrees with it, and would like me to shut up, or soften it or be more tactical, but I am saying things in a space that no one says.”
“When I write something, I have to spend a few days filtering out the fury,” she adds. “I don’t do anything to be deliberately provocative.”
Certainly there is plenty in India to be angry – even outraged – about. I ask tentatively whether she really feels that economic reforms have brought no benefits at all. I am thinking of the remote villages, and impoverished slum dwellers, now connected to a wider world by mobile phones. After a moment’s reflection, she answers.
“It’s as though you had this churning,” she says, slowly. “You had a feudal and very unequal society. In this churning, this thin milk separates into a thick layer of cream, and a lot of water that can be just slop. The thick layer of middle class that has been created becomes a great market. Suddenly, there are so many people who need cars and A/Cs and TV, and that becomes a universe of itself. Of course it looks great. Then there is this unseen thing that’s just being drifted off.”

Sexualizing Gandhi

Only an Anglo-saxon, in this case Jad Adams,  would write a book about Gandhi and reveal  details his sex life, Gandhi:  Naked Ambition believing that he is giving revealing and capital information:

Gandhi found it easy to embrace poverty. It was chastity that eluded him. So he worked out a series of complex rules which meant he could say he was chaste while still engaging in the most explicit sexual conversation, letters and behaviour.
With the zeal of the convert, within a year of his vow, he told readers of his newspaper Indian Opinion: "It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian not to marry. In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife."
Meanwhile, Gandhi was challenging that abstinence in his own way. He set up ashrams in which he began his first "experiments" with sex; boys and girls were to bathe and sleep together, chastely, but were punished for any sexual talk. Men and women were segregated, and Gandhi's advice was that husbands should not be alone with their wives, and, when they felt passion, should take a cold bath.
The rules did not, however, apply to him. Sushila Nayar, the attractive sister of Gandhi's secretary, also his personal physician, attended Gandhi from girlhood. She used to sleep and bathe with Gandhi. When challenged, he explained how he ensured decency was not offended. "While she is bathing I keep my eyes tightly shut," he said, "I do not know ... whether she bathes naked or with her underwear on. I can tell from the sound that she uses soap." The provision of such personal services to Gandhi was a much sought-after sign of his favour and aroused jealousy among the ashram inmates.
As he grew older (and following Kasturba's death) he was to have more women around him and would oblige women to sleep with him whom – according to his segregated ashram rules – were forbidden to sleep with their own husbands. Gandhi would have women in his bed, engaging in his "experiments" which seem to have been, from a reading of his letters, an exercise in strip-tease or other non-contact sexual activity.

Why do I feel disgusted by this information? It isn't because I believe that Gandhi was a saint or unlike any other human being, but rather because I feel that sex has become the way to bring people down to declare not that they are misogynistic, but hypocrites, but rather to caste them in a group of people that should be ostracized and are abnormal. However, it's possible  that I'm unfair to Adams and that his book offers a broader context, which explains why Gandhi's sex life matter or rather is essential to dissect today. 

Witchcraft and witch-hunts

Appalling and frightening stuff:

Here is one story. It happened in India's Jharkhand state in October 2009, but might have come from any part of early modern Europe. Five women were accused of causing harm, a suspicion bolstered by local witchfinders and a cleric. A mob dragged them before a large crowd, where they were stripped and beaten until the authorities intervened. They were lucky. Every year hundreds of Indians, mostly women, are murdered by their neighbours, usually in the most atrocious manner.
In sub-Saharan Africa the problem is even worse. The war in Congo (1998-2003) killed millions, mostly through starvation and disease. High child mortality was widely blamed on "night dancers" – witches who steal blood and smear poisons on houses. European witches of the 16th century were charged with identical crimes, for instance the Swiss plague-spreaders known as engraisseurs. In 1999 the pro-government chief of Mwenga fled an advancing rebel army, leaving his wife behind with the town's protective charm; the soldiers publicly buried her alive with the charm. In the province of Ituri, as many as 4,000 may have been killed.

Just one more reason to decry the sacralization of traditions and other old, ridiculous an inhumane beliefs justifying the unjustifiable.

Obama and India

B. Raman argues that Obama or rather his administration hasn't shown enough love to India:

The Obama Administration has been repeatedly kicking us in the back.It did so in respect of Afghanistan. It has done so in respect of Headley. Instead of having the courage and intellectual honesty to admit to our people that we have been let down nastily by the US, we are indulging in more spins to project the kicks as, in fact, bouquets from Obama with love.
(...) India is not the US. The clout which it has over Pakistan we do not have anywhere in the world. At least we could have had the courage to protest--loudly and openly--instead of projecting every stab in the back by Obama as a kiss in the back.

Apparently, Raman didn't get the memo that said that Obama isn't  citizen of the world, but the POTUS, an American president whose role it is to protect the interests of his country no matter how much he may love the fact that the rest of the world loves him for he looks like or appears to be because he isn't 'white.'

The imperial reflex and the post 9/11 world

Pankaj Mishra argues convincingly, I have to say, that the United States and the "West" still have imperial reflexes, which are preventing them from acknowledging the realities of the post 9/11 world, an era where the East and the rest of the world are no longer scared of them and have their own ideas about how things are going to be. Sugary excerpt:

Decolonisation seems to have dented little the sense of superiority that since 1945 has made American leaders in particular consistently underestimate the intensity of nationalist feeling in Asia and Africa. In proposing cash bribes for the "moderate" Taliban, the Obama administration reminds one of FDR's bright idea about the original inhabitants of Palestine: "What about the Arabs?" he once asked the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann. "Can't that be settled with a little baksheesh?"(...)The Chinese, Indians, Iranians and other emerging powers too have an idea of what they owe to themselves: the richness of the world that the west first claimed for itself. But while getting what they want, they won't claim the sanction of a superior morality and civilisation. Indeed, the long and appalling history of European hypocrisy in Asia and Africa may be why Beijing dispenses altogether with talk of Chinese values as its strikes deals with nasty regimes in Africa, and why even democratic India keeps mum about the advantages of regular elections as it tries to offset Chinese influence over Burma's military despots. 

Reading Mishra's article forces me to ask myself whether America's most influential mark on the world was that it made it so cool and often so stylish to be a hegemon that now every country wants to be one and to exercise power in the same way. I'm coming to the realization that the post 9/11 world is one with a bunch of countries who have fallen in love, whether they want to be admit it or not with the American style of power, even as they resents it when it affects them. America is John Wayne and we know that there was a time when every man, no matter where he came from, wanted to be John Wayne even when he hated the fact that he was killing "Indians" and shooting from the hip without much finesse, sophistication or awareness of the sensibilities of others.

The gift of torture

Sugary excerpt of the week from Amitava Kumar, whom I'm liking more everyday:

Each one of us has received an education in the art of torture in recent years. That’s America’s gift to us, through this war on terror, that we’ve learned words like “waterboarding”. We have also learned that torture isn’t only about force: men lose their minds, not when beaten to within an inch of their lives, but when they are placed in solitary confinement with black-out goggles and noise-blocking headphones wrapped around their heads. We have learned that if terror by non-state actors relies on brutal killing of innocents, then state terror proceeds by making torture justifiable and routine.

Expensive speech

I love India, but stories such as this one scare me:

A leading politician of India's ruling Congress party was arrested today and her house set on fire by activists after she suggested that a rival leader be raped so she can better understand the plight of victims.
Rita Bahuguna Joshi, the chief of the Congress party in northern Uttar Pradesh state, was placed under 14 days custody pending investigations for allegedly promoting social enmity, insulting a woman's modesty and insulting a person of lower caste. No charges have been filed yet, but the three offences are punishable by up to 10 years in jail.

Sonia G

Jonathan Power on his meeting and interview with Sonia Gandhi:

I am ushered into Sonia G’s office. She barely acknowledges my presence. “Buon giorno”, I say. There is no reply. I have been warned that she’s cold and she doesn’t offer me a hand. She walks over to me and asks me to sit down.
I look her in the eye and ask my first question to the Italian widow of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was cruelly blown to smithereens by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber.
“Do you mind if I begin with a personal question?” “Yes”, she says. I ask her, as the victorious chairwoman of the Congress Party, whether it was difficult to decide to go into politics, given the toll it has taken on her family. “I am at peace about that”, she replies. “I have thought it through”. Then she suddenly interjects, “I hope this isn’t an interview. I just want us to get to know each other a bit.” I reply defensively that Prime Minister  Manmohan Singh (who fixed me the introduction) had said it could be an interview.
We continue, but without me writing in my notebook, and I lapse into a gentler, more conversational style. “Why did the pull of politics overcome your inhibitions?” “Congress was in disarray. It couldn’t win an election. And we need to keep India as a secular state, encompassing all religions.”
I ask her about her own religious beliefs and, like her mother-in-law, the murdered Indira Gandhi, she replies, “I’m not religious: my parents are not particularly religious although my mother sometimes goes to church. “So on what basis do you make moral decisions in family life or in politics?” “I suppose Catholic values are at the back of my head.”
I push on. “What about nuclear weapons? You are one of those with your finger on the button.” She grimaces. A God-spare me kind of look. Clearly, with her and Manmohan Singh in charge, the Pakistanis must know that the India will never threaten to use its nuclear weapons. Why that doesn’t lead to disarmament is a question that nobody would give me a straight answer to.

Nationality, travel, identity, and writing

Amit Chaudhuri on the new generation of "Indian Writers" and the consequences of exile on their writing:

How does travel shape and qualify writing and nationality (a common enough conundrum), especially when they take on this form - the transcontinental literary event; the book reading in a foreign location? And how do these writers cohere and relate to each other in our minds: what is it, besides the book fair and perhaps the place of birth on their passports or some long-standing enthusiasm, that makes K Satchidanandan and Tarun J Tejpal and Dalrymple all, in some sense, "Indian" writers? One thing we do know is that travel is not only about bringing your particular skills, wares, identity and lineage to a place, but being changed by, and learning from, the act of travelling and facing up to foreignness. In roughly the past 20 years India has changed from being a Nehruvian nation-state - an experiment and ideal in democracy - to a portable mode of existence, as well as a form of self-justification for a curious mixture of free-market opportunism and a slyly conservative provincialism. This means that Indians, as they travel, migrate and resettle, have increasingly begun to deflect the problem - and the rewards - of encountering foreignness, and strangeness, and the notion of "India" has helped them in (has, in fact, been crucial to) this deflection. The so-called Indian diaspora ceased, really, to want either to integrate with, or radically revise, the landscape they moved to in the 1980s and 90s (usually, the United States, succeeding the earlier wave of immigration to Britain); instead, they wished to conform silently and, simultaneously, to continue as themselves. This has led to a unique combination of acceptance and denial.

Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan

Graham Usher has a comprehensive article, which deals with the interrelated ties between the United States, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. It is an informative read, which shows that Richard Holbrooke's job may well be more complicated than the one of Hillary Clinton. Something else that caught my attention was Usher's assertion that the road out of Kabul goes through Kashmir. If he is right, this whole conflict is going to last a while.  Sugary excerpt on what Usher argues is one of the consequence of Obama's new policy on Afghanistan:

One consequence is that three feuding Taliban factions have now joined forces against ‘Obama, Zardari and Karzai’ in an agreement brokered by Mullah Omar. One of the factions is led by Baitullah Mehsud. The other two are pro-Afghan Taliban factions based in South and North Waziristan, which had largely refrained from attacking the Pakistan state and army but may not do so any longer. The army is also worried that the surge could cause a further flight of Afghan Taliban and other militants into the tribal areas. If the army acts against them, retaliatory strikes may follow across Pakistan. If it doesn’t, US and Afghan soldiers might chase them inside Pakistan – as they did last September, killing 20 tribesmen ‘by mistake’. Any such incursion would unite the Pashtun tribes behind the Taliban, deepen anti-American sentiment in the army and stretch US-Afghan-Pakistani co-operation to breaking point.
The removal of India and Kashmir from the strategic review makes clear Delhi’s growing influence in Washington. During his campaign Obama argued that Pakistan would be more likely to stay focused not on India but on the militants on the Pakistan-Afghan border if there was a concerted effort to resolve the Kashmir crisis. In a lobbying push of near Israeli proportions, however, Obama was told that Richard Holbrooke, his special envoy, would be shunned in Delhi if any link were made between Kashmir, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and by January it was announced that Kashmir would not be part of Holbrooke’s portfolio.

The ugliness of dark skin

I don't know what to say about seeing this commercial, which is done by Bollywood biggest stars Shahrukh Khan, I thought that things had evolved and that especially in India, it wouldn't be an handicap to have dark skin. Well, I guess I was wrong.

Africa, money, and inequality

Jonathan Power has an article in the International Herald Tribune, one of the best articles I’ve read today. Its subject is Africa and it focuses on the amount of money from foreign direct investment from China and others that is flowing throughout the continent despite of its so-called poverty. Sugary excerpt:

As Chinese and Indian investors almost pour into Africa one wonders if their European and North American competitors have woken up to the fact that Rip Van Winkle is waking up in Africa.

The fact that a top Chinese banker brackets Africa with Asia is one more sign that the Asians themselves see what is happening in Africa as a repeat of what happened to them 20 and 30 years ago.

They can see the potential while Western commentators, their spurious words tasting of sour grapes, point an accusing finger at China in particular, accusing it of planning to rape Africa as the Europeans did a century ago.

This is not rape, by any stretch of the imagination. This is business opportunity. Africa in many countries is on the way to booming and Africa is looking for marriages of convenience with willing investors in railroads, toll roads, ports, motorbike and cement factories. Already there are over 900 Chinese companies working in Africa.

Power succeeds in demonstrating with his article is that Africa is not a doomed continent that is condemned to poverty and to underdevelopment. The key question remains however whether there will ever be a way to solve the inequality question by enabling more Africans to share the wealth of the continent. The main issue is that very few Africans and too many foreigners are benefiting from the resources of Africa and this fact makes them value stability above everything else instead of addressing more urgent matters through means that may cause instability in the short run, but then lead to more prosperity for all Africans.

Bobby Jindal and Sonia Gandhi, the American dream and the Indian dream

Tarun Vijay has a great essay in the Times of India in which he compares Bobby Jindal’s successful run as the Governor of Louisiana to Sonia Gandhi’s successful ascension into Indian Politics. He argues the point that Bobby Jindal represents the American dream because he adapted to American society by espousing his values and by yes, even converting to Christianity. However, he argues that Sonia Gandhi doesn’t represent the Indian dream because she has never had to become truly “Indian” and has never come to respect and to understand Indian sensibilities. Sugary excerpt:

While being happy seeing Bobby Jindal working so completely to realize an American dream, see homeward and feel how ecstatic the Italians must have felt seeing their daughter reigning supreme in an ancient land of a great civilisation making decisions affecting a billion citizens with many of their leaders prostrating before her for material gains and political space. She is a Roman Catholic of an Italian origin, yet ruling over majority Hindus and gets support from her party and media with a big chunk of Hindu editors, workers, ministers and voters. To understand the importance of it fully, it's like an Indian Hindu lady, sporting a big bindi, born in Bhopal who never had a graduation degree, becoming chief of the ruling Republicans in Washington through dynastic route in such a manner that NYT would write-she is the super President and not the one who has been nominated by her to occupy White House!!
That's what India has done and look what she has done to Indians. Does she represent an Indian dream?
She could get away doing a favour to Ottavio Quattrocchi and pushing the button to demolish Ram Setu, a bridge so deeply revered by the majority and have no remorse on seeing her colleague questioning the identity of Ram in the land where Ram symbolizes the nation and the all inclusiveness and abysmal plurality of the Ram Bhakta Hindus allowed her to come on top through a family Para- drop.
In the land of Statue de la Liberté Bobby can't even dream to do that to any Indian caught in his state for violating US laws or sanction a plan to defile places related to Jesus or George Washington while aligning with Communists, the fountainhead of anti-American hate. He has to prove, at every step, that he is a better person to honour and protect American sensitivities and dreams than those who are 'Americans of American origin'!
That's the difference between a powerful nation and her awakened, conscious people and a weak society living in self-denial so painfully visible from Kashmir to Kohima.

Observing things from a distance, I think that the rise of Sonia Gandhi showed on the contrary that India was even more tolerant than any Western country could be. After all, Sonia Gandhi could never have had the political career that she has had anywhere else without having to wrap herself in the flag and having to espouse very nationalistic views to erase her Italian origins. Once again, I take the example of Sarkozy who had to run a campaign based on the protection of the French identity and on patriotism to be elected to avoid a trial on his “Francité” even though his mom is French. It is always healthy when people follow a leader in spite of her/his ethnicity, of her/his origins, and especially without s/he having to cover their “foreignness” by taking extreme positions so that it can be said that s/he is more patriotic and nationalist than the natives or those with “pure blood.” There is no doubt that Bobby Jindal represents the American dream, but when I close my eyes to forget to be blinded by his origins and to focus on his politics, I don’t like what I see. I don’t like the fact there is no separation between his Christian faith and his politics. Politics isn’t religion and faith when it becomes the center of political philosophy becomes inevitably toxic. What politicians do matters more than the glitz. If Sonia Gandhi is a terrible politician, it is not because she doesn’t represent the Indian dream or doesn’t understand Indian sensibilities, but rather because her politics and policy are wrong (I don’t believe that). In a healthy and democratic society, politics and policy are more important than ethnicity, race, imagery, symbols, and even dreams. The American dream has sustained the challenge of time and of politics, because it is about more than one-time accomplishment and fairy tales ending, but about the idea that at the end, you are what you do which means that in America, you are not born great, you become great, you become an American, you become successful.

Sarkozy envy

Shashi Tharoor lauds the merits of the Sarkozy “revolution” in France. Tharoor laments the fact that India will never have its own Sarkozy who will reinvent bread and make everything beautiful. Sugary excerpt:

The president of France is a small man. Only in the literal sense of the term, though. Nicolas Sarkozy stands about 5 feet four inches, slightly shorter than Sachin Tendulkar. That's not the only point the two have in common. Sarkozy has taken his country by storm the way the Boy Wonder has captured our national imagination. And his impact on his chosen world — in his case, that of national and international politics — is likely to prove just as great as Tendulkar's on the cricket field.
[…] In his first few months in office, President Sarkozy has practically reinvented his country — its politics, its economics, its attitude to government, even its holiday style (he startled his countrymen by taking his annual vacation in, of all places, the US). […] The mood in Paris is one of exhilaration. In the course of a lengthy conversation in French, a senior executive uttered one phrase in English: "France is back!"
[…] As an Indian, it's difficult not to feel envious. The French have exactly what our country needs and we are constitutionally incapable of having: a strong national executive. Instead of a prime minister heading a fractious coalition of 20-odd parties and having to temper his every policy instinct to the whims of the more capricious of his detractors, the French have a president who is secure for five years and is essentially invulnerable during that time.

[…] India would never have a Sarkozy heading our government. Given the demands on India in the 21st century, more's the pity.

And they say that Ignorance isn't bliss.

Happy Birthday to India

India is celebration its 60 years of independence from English rule and the first word that comes to my mind is Wow because India impresses and fascinates me. Last week, Pankaj Mishra (whose latest book Temptations of the West is out in paperback has an excellent essay in the New Yorker on the colonial past and on the Indian partition that led to the creation of Pakistan. In its editorial this morning, the Hindu writes the following about this commemoration:

India can have it both ways: an ancient civilisation that is a confluence of many streams of humanity; and a relatively young independent nation. Its biggest achievement as an independent modern country is its vibrant political democracy. Its biggest deficit is its inability over six decades to overcome the largest mass of poverty and deprivations in the world.

At 60 independent, secular, and pluralistic India finds itself, by any objective yardstick, stronger than it was at 50. It faces major challenges as well as opportunities in the political, economic, social, cultural, scientific, technological, creative, and external affairs realms. ‘Rising India’ is a work in progress. To get a representative sense of how we view ourselves, we invited an exceptional range of participants in, and observers of, this work in progress to give us their assessments and perspectives.

It is difficult not to be impressed with India’s successes even though its future as a superpower isn’t written in stone. In this video, Edward Luce who wrote an interesting book last year on India untitled In spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, talks about India, its achievements, its challenges and its future. It is a long video, but a fascinating one.

India's African heritage

Jayanthi Daniel has a fascinating article in the New York Sun about India’s African ancestry. It discusses the fact that Africans played a role in India’s history. The article is based on the book African Elites in India written by Kenneth Robbins and John McLeod. The book’s thesis is that Africans were not only slaves in India, but also able to become in some cases rulers. Daniel’s article is a must-read and it makes me want to read the book. Sugary excerpt:

The words "Habshi Amarat" translate to "Abyssian nobility" — "habshis," up until recently, referred to Indians of African heritage, although in modern times, habshis are considered to have fully integrated among the South Asian population. Those Africans who successfully rose to some amount of power did so among the ranks of regional empires, including various Mughal dynasties. "India is the only place where Africans ruled over non-Africans," Mr. Robbins said in a phone interview yesterday. "Some were slaves, and some were mercenaries. There was a weird phenomenon in Muslim countries where slaves became rulers in ancient times."

Deepa Mehta, life, film, and controversy

The Telegraph has a great article on Deepa Mehta, which is worth reading. It shows why she is not only a great director, but also a fascinating person. Meetha talks about the controversies behind some of her movies and also about her life in Canada and India. Sugary excerpt:

There was no particular reason to expect trouble when, in 2000, Water began shooting in the holy city of Varanasi. The script had been vetted by the then ruling party, the Hindu nationalist BJP. But the first days of filming were interrupted by chanting crowds, by the phone ringing with death threats, and one man even threw himself into the Ganges in protest. The set was burnt down. Ironically, many of the elements under attack were not even really in the script; the protesters 'were writing their own version of Water,' Mehta says, and most were 'quite illiterate. When did you last see a mob sitting down to read a screenplay?'

[…] She is a determined downplayer, though perhaps the illnesses she suffered - on the first shoot, an asthma attack complicated by exhaustion and serious enough to see her in hospital; on the second, a 104-degree fever - tell another side of the story. 'I remember being really upset but I tried to retain a sense of humour - that's the way I dealt with it. I also knew I was very angry.' But her natural reaction to threat would always be fight rather than flight; in those days, she has recalled, she found her fists and her teeth were permanently clenched.

Fact and fiction are hard to disentangle, since myth was being used against the mythmakers. The Varanasi police told the filmmakers they could not shoot because 10,000 people were protesting on the ghats, the cremation grounds on the banks of the Ganges. The filmmakers sent their own observer, who found only 12. The man who threw himself into the river in protest turned out to be a 'professional suicider', paid to make such gestures.

[…] Does the sense of being poised between two cultures fuel her art? 'I'm not conscious of making it a perspective - after all, everyone is an immigrant these days. And access to both cultures is a distinct advantage. As Salman Rushdie said, "East and West, I refuse to choose."

Bollywood musicals and Indian history

Rochona Majumdar explains the fact that every Indian film is in fact a musical in the sense that they have all extensive dance and music scenes within them by making a link between film and Indian history. She argues that, “the song-and-dance sequences as a mirror reflecting—more or less intentionally—India’s social and political transformations. In the six decades since the country’s independence, inaugural prime minister Jawahar-lal Nehru’s nationalist, populist government, rooted in socialist ideals, has given way to neoliberalism and globalization.”

India and skilled workers

In the New Yorker, James Surowiecki argues that there is a glitch to India’s objective in becoming a superpower and that is its skills famine, its increasing shortage of skilled workers. He writes that on the contrary to the conventional value, which was for a long time that Indians were overeducated, the Indian government has been spending as much as it should have on education and that that failure is catching up with it. Sugary excerpt:

How is this possible in a country that every year produces two and a half million college graduates and four hundred thousand engineers? Start with the fact that just ten per cent of Indians get any kind of post-secondary education, compared with some fifty per cent who do in the U.S. Moreover, of that ten per cent, the vast majority go to one of India’s seventeen thousand colleges, many of which are closer to community colleges than to four-year institutions. India does have more than three hundred universities, but a recent survey by the London Times Higher Education Supplement put only two of them among the top hundred in the world. Many Indian graduates therefore enter the workforce with a low level of skills. A current study led by Vivek Wadhwa, of Duke University, has found that if you define “engineer” by U.S. standards, India produces just a hundred and seventy thousand engineers a year, not four hundred thousand. Infosys says that, of 1.3 million applicants for jobs last year, it found only two per cent acceptable.

The most interesting question is what type of education system Indiais going to have in the next few years. I wonder if its education system will become like the one of the United States in the sense that there will a growing gap between the have and the have-not and that it will become increasingly expensive to get a college education.

Immigrants and sex

Sepia Mutiny has a post on the results of a Columbia university study on the sexual activity of South Asian immigrants and their children. According to the study, the second generation of South Asian immigrants is having a lot more sex than the first generation. That does surprise me because I figure that the second generation has been Americanized has therefore taken to a degree the sexual habits of young Americans.

Gandhi, Rushdie, and holiness

“Gandhi didn't lead a movement that defeated the British because he was holier than them. He defeated them because he was craftier than the British. The idea of demystification and humanisation was a good thing to do. Today we can say he had a love affair, which almost broke his marriage. If it had been written about 30 years ago, there would have been a storm. In the long run, its beneficial to say `this is not a God', but a `human being of greatness'.” Salman Rushdie.

Salaam Bombay

Spiegel has a wonderful article of the contradictions and particularities of the Indian City of Mumbai or Bombay as it is used to called. It is worth ready. Sugary excerpt:

Bombay, or Mumbai as it is now officially called, well-deserves its nickname, Maximum City. It is as avant-garde, trendy and hungry for superlatives as its Chinese counterpart Shanghai, a comparison that Indian politicians are happy to make. The city is home to India's oldest stock exchange, its most important banks, its wealthiest business moguls, its most beautiful movie stars and its most feared gangsters. Mumbai provides more than one third of all taxes the government collects, as well as hoarding vast amounts of illegal earnings. Forty percent of international flights to India land in this city, which already counts more than 18 million inhabitants today. According to a United Nations estimate, it will be the world's second largest city after Tokyo by 2015 -- and will have more inhabitants than either Australia or all of Scandinavia.

The New Brave and multipolar world

Daniel Drezner writes in Foreign Affairs what he believes to be the attempts of the United States to create a new world order in which China, India and itself formed a great power concert with the US of course remaining the leading power. He argues that although the efforts of the Bush administration to create and to mold this new world order haven't been successful, it is in the interest of the United States to persevere in order to avoid conflict and to facilitate not only cooperation, but also the creation of a fairer and more integrated order than the present one. Sugary excerpt:

From a U.S.perspective, it would be preferable for  China and India to advance their interests within U.S.-led global governance structures rather than outside of them. The United States could get something in return for accommodating these states in institutions such as the UN and the IMF and giving them the recognition and prestige they demand: a commitment by Beijing and New Delhithat they will accept the key rules of the global game.

Celebrity culture and Mother Teresa

Stuart Derbyshire reviews Gezim Alpion book “Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity?” The book is about Mother Teresa and the age of celebrity and posits the thesis that she may have been at home in it and may have used it. Sugary excerpt:

For Alpion, celebrity culture is a modern form of religion and Mother Teresa was the ultimate religious celebrity of the modern era. Unlike the many saints recognised by the Catholic Church, Mother Teresa’s apparent sanctity took root and flourished during her lifetime. Her beatification in 2003, just six years after her death, propelled her further towards actual sainthood. Alpion points out that the beatification of such a contemporary figure was as much a consequence of her growing stardom as it was of her devoted religious practice.

My view on the subject is that celebrity isn't bad it in itself and that in Mother Teresa it was actually useful for it was used for the good of many Poor Indians in Calcutta. A couple of weeks ago, l'abbé Pierre, a French priest, who was very popular, died and it was obvious that his celebrity wasn't allow, that he was not famous for doing nothing and that he actually changed the world in a small way by using his celebrity to keep the focus on the poor and the homeless.

Marrying a tree

I find this post by Amardeep at Sepia Mutiny to be fascinating and funny. It is about Aishwarya Rai and her attempts to change her bad luck before marrying Abhishek Bachchan by marrying a tree so that their marriage won't end in a divorce or in his death. For those of you who have no interest in Bollywood, Aishwarya Rai is one of the most popular actress in India.

India, women, and the burden of tradition

The Times of London has a great article this morning about Gender in India, which shows how difficult it still is to be a woman in the world's most populous democracy. Money quote:

Nearly half the women in India are still being forced into marriage before the age of 18 in violation of the law. In states such as Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Chattisgarh, a woman gives birth for the first time on average before she reaches her 19th birthday.

I have always argued that tradition trumps religion and democratic principles. That is not to say that it is impossible to change tradition, on the contrary it is to argue that change, that modernization starts with the realization that tradition may be centuries old and still be outdated.

Class and India's judicial system

I just read this article in the Times of London about the Indian judicial system which points out the fact that too many times in India, the rich are able to get away with breaking the law. The one I wonder is whether the fact that being rich in almost every single democracy gives one a better chance of escaping justice or rather of ensuring that it is done. What troubles is the fact that it is becoming harder for justice to be the same for everybody in countries where equality in front of the law is a quintessential value.

The video du jour: Bollywood + Michael Jackson = a riot

Food for thought

“The Western difficulty in knowing quite what to make of India today is the mirror image of the debates that Indians have with each other. These do not want for passion or sincerity. One thing has not changed: Indians are their country’s most vociferous critics.When a series of bomb blasts ripped through commuter trains in Bombay last month, killing 183 and seriously injuring around 500 more, the teeming city of 18 million earned the world’s admiration for its display of community spirit, the swift response of its emergency services and, not least, that there were no reprisals against Muslims or any other group that might have been thought or rumoured to be the perpetrators. Indians were majestic in this moderation. This attitude must be maintained. [...] unlike China, India does let 100 schools of thought contend; and while that diversity can sometimes appear untidy, even anarchic, it cer-tainly does breed success” The London Times, "Inspiring India"

The Indian Mirage ?

In an oped in the New York Times, Pankaj Mishra argues that India isn't doing as well as some people believe and that even though it is a good place to do business, it is not a good place to live.

1. He argues that,"But the increasingly common, business-centric view of India suppresses more facts than it reveals. Recent accounts of the alleged rise of India barely mention the fact that the country's $728 per capita gross domestic product is just slightly higher than that of sub-Saharan Africa and that, as the 2005 United Nations Human Development Report puts it, even if it sustains its current high growth rates, India will not catch up with high-income countries until 2106."
2. However, in Foreign Affairs, we get a more optimistic view of India, one which focuses on the progress it has accomplished. In one of the articles published on India in that magazine, Gurcharan Das, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble India, writes: "Even though the reforms have been slow, imperfect, and incomplete, they have been consistent and in one direction. And it takes courage, frankly, to give up power, as the Indian state has done for the past 15 years. The stubborn persistence of democracy is itself one of the Indian state's proudest achievements. Time and again, Indian democracy has shown itself to be resilient and enduring -- giving a lie to the old prejudice that the poor are incapable of the kind of self-discipline and sobriety that make for effective self-government. To be sure, it is an infuriating democracy, plagued by poor governance and fragile institutions that have failed to deliver basic public goods. But India's economic success has been all the more remarkable for its issuing from such a democracy."
3. I think that how one views India depends on whether one chooses to see the glass as half-full or half-empty. It is true that it is too early to say whether India will become a superpower, but it is also true that it is a nation which has tremendous potential and which has accomplished a lot since its independence from Britain. In my opinion, India has the fundamentals required to become a powerful country (size, human capital, democratic institutions, stability,...etc), the biggest challenge is governance, that is the way politicians and other members of civil society will choose to solve important problems such as poverty and inequality. If India doesn't fulfill its potential this century, it wouldn't be because  it couldn't become a great country, but rather because its political class made the wrong choices.

Affirmative action Indian style

Violent student protests erupted in India after the Human Resource Department Minister, Arjun Sing announced plans to reserve about 50% of seats in colleges and university for lower-caste and disadvantaged Indians (reservation).

1. India has a caste system and a constitutional amendment passed in December 2005 requires that a certain number of seats be reserved for the people who are part of the lower classes to make sure that there had better chance to overcome history and actual prejudices.
2. The problem is that there aren't enough seats in India's best colleges for everybody and the students feel that it is unfair for the government to decide to use quotas, which would make it harder for many who have the qualifications to have a seat in an Indian college.The Singh government is considering increasing the number of seas in Universities to deal with this issue.
3. India is moving in the right direction when it comes to remedy the wrong of its caste system. The government of the Tamil Nadu state decided that priests of its temple will come from every class ending the monopoly of high-caste Hindus. The problem is finding the right way to do it and I fear that by the use of quotas will divide Indian society and would a policy, which is essential, unpopular. In the US, the Supreme Court decided that the use of quotas were unconstitutional, I wonder if the Singh government is going to be able to go ahead with its plans if the protests continue.

Rice on India

Condi Rice has an op-ed article in the Washington post, which defends the US historic deal with India on nuclear energy. She writes, "our agreement with India will make our future more secure, by expanding the reach of the international nonproliferation regime" and she argues that, Our agreement with India is unique because India is unique." She is right, but two questions come to mind after reading her article. First, is India going to be the only country which gets special treatment from the United States on the Nuclear issue? I believe that the deal with India was a good thing, but I am nevertheless aware of the message that it sends which is the one of inconsistency. It is essential for the United States to address that issue, but clarifying the new rules of the game for it is clear that this deal changed the role. Second, can other countries do the same kind of deal with countries that they consider unique? Can China or Russia have the same type of deal with Iran for example by arguing that Iran is unique (which it is) and that they believed that it deserve preferential treatment too?  The danger here is not only inconsistency, but the disintegration of the system, that attempted to restrain nuclear proliferation. If Miss Rice is going to argue that India is unique and that it is fighting terrorism, she must also answer the central question of what happens now and why this deal isn't a tacit admission that the non-proliferation treaty is dead..