Not A Neighbour's Envy

I vividly remember the day in late October 1984. Beautiful, sunny afternoon, with a hint of autumnal breeze coming in from the Bay of Bengal. Our headmistress suddenly appeared in our classroom around 1:00pm to tell us that we would have to leave early because our Prime Minister, Mrs. Gandhi, has been assassinated. Not knowing the importance of the pronouncement, all of us 13 year-olds got into a boistrous mood and started packing our bags. We then heard her deep voice with the following admonishment: "Children", she said, "this is a very sad day for our country. The least you can do is to respect her memory and go out in silence." I have never forgotten those words, and as I have grown older, have used it as the base for an unshakable faith in democracy, for all its faults.

It is therefore with great sadness that I saw the assasination of another leader in our sub-continent, Benazir Bhutto. My earliest memories of her was to see her with Rajiv Gandhi in 1988 SAARC summit, and thinking that a new era was born. I had never bought into the India-Pakistan rivalry thesis - thanks in part due to a wonderful history teacher in school, who made us realize that what we live is what we make of our history, and what we make of our history is what determines our future. So instead of enmity, I always believed that we are two nations with an artificial border, which would one day dissolve into oblivion. We can then take the train anytime from Delhi to Lahore, and have kebabs in Anarkali market. What a mouth-watering thought that is! Years later, crossing the Brandenburg Gate from East to West Berlin, I was convinced that it would be possible.

Every political leader has drawbacks, otherwise they will be saints. In them, we see our own strengths and weaknesses, and identify with one particular ideology or another. We do not believe all they say, because politics is the art of making compromises. But we all make compromises in our daily lives, and therefore we may have differing opinions about the extent of those that our leaders make (see here for a selection on Benazir). It is democracy that helps us make informed choices, to select the benevolent from the tyrant, the patriotic from the self-serving. Fortunately, India provides me an opportunity to do so more or less freely, while my friends from across the border have to struggle to even have an election. I admire their courage in standing up for their rights, while they admire us for the sixty years of peoples' rule that has survived all odds.

As I see Pakistan descend into chaos and confusion, the only thing I can do is to keep up the hope that one day I will be able to share a plate of kebabs in Anarkali market with my dear friend, Rabbani-bhai. Hope he is well.

ABC for Dummies

It is nearly four months since the last post. Only the very ardent fans would still check whether any new letter has been written in the meanwhile. Unfortunately, the set of admirers who would do that is that dreaded number - zero! So I guess one doesn't need to apologize to anyone.

December! The time of the year when somehow everyone seems to wind down, slip into that pensive mood, reflect on the year gone by, and try to look forward to the next one. So today's theme is exactly that - looking back and looking forward. I am hard pressed to find a theme for this year, but then a brainwave came to me - this year was all about ABSTINENCE! And somehow it links up with what I have been doing over the last year or so.

Let me explain.

George Bush wanted to do something to help the people in Africa, Latin America and Asia who were dying of HIV/AIDS. So he put in around $15 billion, and said that every country that wanted a piece of this pie had to follow three simple letters - A, B and C. Now that is what we expect from the great man - simplifying a complicated thing because he does not get it. As one of my co-travellers explained to me in Berlin just after he got elected for his first term - the Great One's library has just one rack, full of "X for Dummies" series. Now if you substitute X for any word, like Iraq, you get the idea. So for HIV/AIDS, he has an entry called "ABC for Dummies".

Don't start trashing him just yet - it is quite a powerful idea, as I found out when I went to the Commonwealth Women Affairs Ministers' meeting in Uganda. (Timeout: just to make sure that you don't think I am gassing, photo attached). After my speech, all the women ministers from sundry sub-saharan countries started to sing praises of the ABC approach, some even going to the extent of calling it the 'only thing that will save the human race'. Later on during the visit to an AIDS orphanage (lower photo), I saw what $15 billion can buy - caring grandmoms, neat houses, schools, nutritional supplements, a future.

So WHAT is ABC? A is for abstinence, B is for being faithful and C is for condoms! Voila! The panacea for AIDS that has eluded the best scientists in the world is there for all to see. Abstain from sex, be faithful to your partner (wife) and use condoms when you transgress the boundaries of indiscretion. Believe it or not, Uganda claims that they have had a lot of success in getting the HIV prevalence down by hitting the message into the brains of promiscuous men (women were not mentioned in the meeting). I was beginning to wonder if it was all true.

The best way to test a theory is to put it into practice. So I decided to become an unwilling guinea pig. My partner and I separated early in the year, she left me to go back to her family in a distant land for the last part of the year, and I was left to contemplate the ABCs of a human relationship. In the meanwhile, I was travelling all over Asia, meeting prostitutes, homosexuals, transvestites, drug addicts and sundry other 'high-risk groups' (including AIDS bureaucrats)trying to make some sense of what was going on. I have become an expert in identifying the occupation of the girl in the corner sofa in the lobby of a 7-star hotel, tendencies of ordinary looking men in the streets of south-east Asia, and delving deep into slums in search of the people who actually have the stupidity to shoot some addictive substance up their veins. But all through this, I managed to 'abstain'! One night the revelation came to me in a hotel room in Bangkok - I had what is called the 'Vagina Monologues' syndrome. The more you deconstruct what is essentially a pleasurable activity, take away the thrill of a covert sexual encounter, or the romance of a furtive glance, you will have no problem abstaining from the carnal pleasures of life. The moment you can deconstruct sex, it becomes just an act....and as George Bush will say, it is good for controlling HIV! Holy cow!

The B and the C are straightforward. If you are lucky enough to have a partner, stick to her. Pamper her, don't let her out of sight, and be a good lover so that she feels contented. But always carry a Durex, it is good for you, good for the condom mafia, good for rubber plantations, good for rainforests, good for humanity at large. So in this age of global warming when even your tiny acts have a carbon 'footprint', you are a good guy, carbon-negative. Win-win for all sides. I have done my bit, a box of Durex sits unused in a corner of my necessaire....

So, on balance, 2007 has been good for me as a social animal. I have contributed to a reduction in HIV numbers as the UNAIDS has belatedly acknowledged, stayed celibate, did not violate any of the 10 commandments, and on top of that, I have helped preserve rain forests in Borneo and Amazon. What more can one ask for?

But hang on...am I happy? Darn, no! So here's wishing everyone a great 2008, full of 'DEF" - debauchery, exuberance and fornication! I don't have to explain that in a "X for Dummies" book, do I?

Cheers!

Retirement for Midnight's Children: India at 60

(9:30pm) At around this time exactly 60 years ago, the Parliament was filling up with the esteemed members, Jawaharlal Nehru was doing some last-minute throat clearing before his momentous "tryst with destiny", and the ruhbarb of the hall would have been quite a thing to experience. India was getting its independence, from the colonial yoke, from exploitation, from subjugation, from illiteracy, from peasant rebellions against unfair taxes....from history. Let us call the people in the Parliament that day as "midnight's fathers". There were others in school or college - the "midnight's adolescents" and others who were born as the leaders of the independence movement were taking their seats - "midnight's children" a la Rushdie. Then there were the tired grandfathers and grandmothers who never thought the day would arrive. But arrive it did.

Fast forward 60 years, that is, today. The midnight's children have just reached retirement age!! Hooray! Let us give them two cheers, because they have shepharded the country to the position it is in today. At least we have a semblance of democracy in an anarchic region, although our legislators are around 30% criminals. But criminals also have a stake in democracy, don't they? Who wants a dictator coming and cleaning up the Aegean stables of Indian democracy? So we have a nice equilibrium, where we vote, elect and curse the people in power. But no, let's put our hands together and give credit to the midnight's children for persevering. Bravo!

The midnight's adolescents and children have also guided our economy through these turbulent years. They stifled creativity and risk taking, but built educational institutions and dams - the "temples of modern India". They brought us into a peculiar position, more of brightest and the best going abroad than staying back after their engineering and medical degrees. They sought to distribute riches without creating enough, and made the middle class pay taxes at 90 percent in the highest bracket. They made India a textbook case of autarky, of centralized planning, of crony capitalism. But like our Chinese bretheren under Chairman Mao, the entrepreneurial spirit remained intact.

So here we are now...globalization, internet, social networking sites, online shopping, retail chains, private equity, inbound and outbound FDI, satellite dish antennas, online gaming, music downloads, e-chaupals, futures market, commodity trading, ATMs, and of course, cellphones. Also, 22% poverty, 50% dropout rate in schools, health indicators worse than Bangladesh, contract teachers paid Rs.500 per month, HIV/AIDS, spurious medicines, school students sitting on the floor, farmer suicides, environmental degradation, crumbling urban infrastructure, female foeticide, police firing on SEZ protestors...seems like two India-s coexisting in apparent harmony. The problem is that midnight's children and adolescents do not understand either, they don't have Orkut profiles and move around in a pampered world of wailing sirens and flashing lights, dark tinted glasses obscuring their view of social inequities.

So move over midnight's children, your time has gone. Encash that pension fund you have, buy a house by the beach and read a few novels and let the grandchildren take over. And by the way, try learning a bit of computer, midnight's grandchildren are on Skype and IM.

C. U. Happy Independence Day!

Highway to heaven

I guess the first thing one notices when coming out of the airport in a foreign country is the way people drive. Not only the left-right stuff, but also the usual driving skills, road manners, speed etc. My hypothesis is that how people drive reflects how we are as a country - whether we respect rules, care about others, give space to our co-inhabitants, and generally how developed we are as a nation. After travelling a bit, I have no doubt in my mind that the level of development of a country has nothing to do with how wonderful the highways and roads are...it is the people that make a country what it is.

Three case studies illustrate this point. First, Japan. Politeness and respect for others is clearly reflected on the road. I remember once there was a 35-km long pileup during one of those long weekends when the national pastime is sitting in a traffic jam. Nobody lost temper, if someone wanted to change lanes, others let them do it, then the person will flash his hazard lights twice to say "Thank you!" and then move on at snail's pace. Not one horn, one glare, one bad word, one finger sticking out of the window! It is too good to be true, one has to really pinch oneself to believe it. Highway to heaven - for sure!

Second, Uganda. The road from Entebbe airport beside Lake Victoria to the capital Kampala is picturesque, undulating and pretty well carpeted. My driver however was a maniac who would drive at the most maddening speed in the uninhabited stretches. I could well imagine what the co-drivers of rally cars go through, they probably get battered more than the drivers themselves. But interestingly, my maniac driver would slow down to 30kmph whenever he was going through a populated area, or where there was a school sign. The Toyota minibuses would invariably pull over to the shoulder when stopping to pick up passengers. The most amazing thing again happened during a long traffic jam - not one of the cars broke the queue and went to the empty side to cut through traffic. I guess that is the spirit of the country - a bit careless about themselves, but gracious when it comes to others, and a collective ethos that makes people not willing to jump the queue. Not quite there, but on the road to prosperity. 

Third, India. The only other country that I have visited where the traffic is more chaotic than India is Yemen. But then Yemen is one of the poorest and most illiterate, backward countries in the world. Surely if I have to compare India with Yemen, there is something amiss - India is now a bric in the global wall, a marauding elephant on the path to double-digit growth, knowledge economy, etc. etc. So how come we are so low down on the driving development index? 

I remember the time in my childhood when going out for a drive beside the river Ganges used to be a very pleasurable experience, albeit a bit bourgeois! People who owned cars drove themselves - mostly the educated upper middle class of the society. Then a sea-change happened as the Indian economy started to move faster. Driving was not a pastime any more, rather an occupation. Education and employment opportunities lagged behind income growth, people without any idea of driving bought cars, got illiterate villagers to drive them around. The fine line between bullock carts and internal combustion engines got blurred. 

So, where do we go from here. Are India or Uganda going to become Japan? Maybe we will, but it will take a long time for us to get there. It all depends on how quickly our education, health, laws and infrastructure catches up. But then, it is all about the people behind the wheels driving on the highways to heaven. 

A.I.D.S. (Acute Itinerary Dependency Syndrome)

Somehow nearly a year and a half has passed since the last post. I have a new name for this disease - A.I.D.S. (Acute Itinerary Dependency Syndrome). Simply put, it is the condition of perpetual movement on work from one country/city to another, one airline terminal to another, one hotel room to another, one cuisine to another, one currency to another, and so on. Frequent travellers reading this post will sympathise with me, people who don't travel will think that this is just another of those boasts of jet-setter, something like "I don't like to travel, but I have to".

But A.I.D.S. is a disease that is afflicting people worldwide at a pace that its namesake is doing, maybe faster. There is still no cure, people will continue to travel more on work as our countries become globalized, will continue to wake up in unearthly time to beat the queues at the morning airport rush hour, and will continue to go on a diet of bananas and cornflakes and airline junk food, taking a toll on their bodies in the long run. But then, like its namesake, A.I.D.S. is addictive because it is pleasurable - the adrenaline rush of a business deal or a corporate meeting or a conference presentation - maybe a bit of testosterone too between them!

So there it is, I have come under the spell of A.I.D.S. while working on AIDS (the real thing). Twelve international trips and a couple of local ones within 9 months, passport down to the last available page for a Chinese visa next week, and then a new one for the Sri Lanka jamboree in three weeks' time. In between, A.I.D.S. has taken me from Delhi to Bangkok, KL, Manila, Jakarta, Washington DC, Uganda and sundry other countries. I now look back at them as a lost opportunity for this blog - how nice it would have been to say "this post comes from a non-descripit 5-star room on the 12th floor in Bangkok"! Maybe more people would read it then, thinking I have something interesting to say from the 12th floor window overlooking a concrete jungle. But alas, that is not to be.

So, blame it on A.I.D.S. - blame it when a personal email gets unacknowledged, a phone call unattended, or a blog posted one and a half years later. But remember, it is not going away soon, so get used to it.

Multiculturalism and Runaiyat

I wanted to address the issue of multiculturalism and spiritualism in the Indian context in today's blog, even before I received this e-mail from a friend of mine, Sunitha. This is her account of a musical concert she went to in Chennai, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, 2500km from Delhi where I live. But the thoughts are the same.

Runaiyat - One Evening of Splendour. By Sunitha Rangaswami

"Last evening went to this beautiful concert. It was on the lawns of the Race Course, lovely pleasant night under the stars and a gentle breeze. We sat under the damask sky with the distant sparkle of stars carried away by the divine music of small village sufis celebrating eternal love of the beloved."

"A 70 year old cobbler from a remote village in Jaisalmer (Rajasthan) clad in a simple white dhoti & kurta and a white turban, with soda bottle glasses singing Kabeer's Lohri accompanied by five young men in colorful turbans playing traditional instruments - one in particular kind of wooden flat claps was an amazing performer! They were preceded by the Qawals from Hyderbad singing a Meera Bhajan! How much more secular can it get! There were the drummers from Kerala and the Buddist monks from Tibet, the Chisti Qawali group from Moradabad who made me yearn tounderstand Urdu: the lyrics were specacular, and the Sufis from Punjab."

"It was a magical evening, the kind that lifts you up and at the same time makes you feel miniscule in the larger scheme of things. The programme was called Runayiat; I later asked two burqa clad women what it meant and they said it meant 'spiritual'! Made me think that this country is so rich in its diversity and all the fundamentalist groups strive for is a homogenous culture - like we were the MacDonald's of the world! And in some way i abett their endeavor, by not remembering often enough to give thanks to this diverse and rich cultural heritage and learning more about it. No my dears, I am not being nationalist or patriotic here. Just thought to myself if these rural men with simple lives could celebrate diverse faith no matter what form it takes, what of me? Instead, here I am aspiring to belong to a global village of lost souls."

Globalization steroids

India is one of the fastest globalizing countries in the world. Simply put, it is on globalization steroids. But the impression is that only a small part of the 1 billion plus people are hooked onto this bandwagon - those who are university educated, have access to the internet, speaks English. I argue that this is not the whole story.

Take education for example. After years of neglect, finally we have some good news. According to the largest independent survey carried out by Pratham, an educational NGO, 93.6 percent of children in the 6 - 14 age group is in school. But that still leaves 11 million children out of school, a number which is larger than the population of Belgium. What I saw in Tamil Nadu in south India recently gives hope that even this task will be accomplished soon. A government school in an interior village has built a new science laboratory, is hooking up to Edusat (the only satellite exclusively for education in the world), feeding a nutritious lunch to its students, and treating its teachers well. But wait, there is something else.

The kids are also learning English from 6 years of age. I had trouble talking to the taxi drivers in Chennai, but had no problem interacting with village kids. We found the common language! Often I am asked how different linguistic groups in India communicate with each other, since we do not understand the other's language. True, but that also gives us the ability to pick up another language more easily than others, and therefore globalize faster. Every person in India now knows that without English ability, they cannot be part of this process. That also makes the job of a Bengali travelling in south India a bit easier! So is globalization helping unify India also? Seems to be so.

Finally, connectivity. The call rates are falling faster than any other country in the world. What it does is to bring the neighborhood grocer and the distant relative in the same ambit. Personal and business relations are getting transformed. If news reports are to be believed, internet connection through terrestrial lines will be ancient in about two years time. In a remote village in India, the kids will connect to the Net from their school PCs using a mobile phone, at broadband speed. Remember, they already know english.

India has been at the centre of globalization processes throughout history, and has not always managed it well. This time it should do better.