The December Flames & Smoky Future

The fire tragedy at AMRI Hospital at Kolkata on 9th Dec is a grim reminder of how casually our organizations take the issue of fire safety. In India, human lives have little worth and only a crisis or a big tragedy initiates serious thinking on issues that matter. Upahaar happened about 10 years ago. No lessons learnt. Small and medium industrial units in India continue to have fire accidents most of which go unnoticed by the public even if workers die and firemen lay down their lives in the line of service in battling such fire incidents. There are innumerable industrial units in areas such as Udyog Nagar, Ashok Nagar, Mayapuri (in Delhi) and Bhiwandi, Navi Mumbai, Byculla, Vasai, Taloja, Khairani Road, Kurla, Tarapur etc (in Mumbai) where disasters are waiting to happen. Crowded with inventories and equipments, cramped with flammable materials, and designed with inherent flaws and poor egress characteristics, these units can easily convert themselves in infernos if 'right' conditions are triggered. Instead of talking 'big' and debating mega projects and mega manufacturing zones, the government must reform the existing laws and regulations on fire safety and implement them with an iron hand. The errant organizations should be severly and exemplarily punished. You freeze bank accounts of firms that do not pay tax but let off them if they do not meet minimum standards of fire safety or operate without NOC for fire safety. Why don't we have 'compliance officer' for regulations that affect lives of workers and school children and hospital patients? Only economic laws are to be 'complied'? Heavens do not fall if service tax dues are not paid but worlds of many innocent human beings get distroyed if a fire engulfs an office or hospital building. Alas! Fire safety is not a political issue in India. There are no Supreme Court appointed tribunals or SITs to deal with issues of fire safety. You need not have an IOC oil depot or BPCL refinery for a fire catastrophe to happen. An AMRI basement is enough to ravage innocent lives. You went there to live longer..........

Right to Information: A Frankenstein's Monster?

RTI is a radical piece of legislation and a widely used one by the general public. It is a powerful tool to gain access to information from public bodies. The genuine activism and concern over public issues and redress of genuine grievance of the citizen should ideally form the motive for invoking rights under RTI Act. But unfortunately this is not happening in respect of all RTI applications that land in government departments or public bodies day in and day out. Moreover, RTI is also applicable to PSUs which are primarily commercial enterprises and have to take care of issues such as cost, productivity, competitiveness, profit etc. There are also matters which relate to performance apprisals of employees and commercial information such as business stastistics. Decision making in government and public sector is already slow and ineffective and tools such as RTI make the matters worse. An unchecked RTI is not a boon but a bane. Here are a few suggestions:

1) Take the PSUs out of RTI purview: There are industry level regulators, watchdogs, ombudsmen that can do the job of redressing grievances of customers and other parties. Time and resources in a commercial enterprise are important elements in achieving profitability and competitiveness and we cannot expect PSU employees to spend time attending RTI applications.
2) Dilute the RTI substantially in respect of federal level organizations such as a central ministry. The watered down version of RTI Act should empower only respected media organizations (short listed based on readership/viewership data) to seek access to information under RTI and not any Tom, Dick and Harry. There are wheeler-dealers and agents who are out to destabilize government of the day by dropping in an RTI query.
3) In respect of local and state level bodies, empower all citizens to seek access to information. The citizens should primarily concern themselves with basic public services delivered by such local/regional bodies and therefore rights under RTI should be restricted to such grievances only rather than any fancy debate between two ministries of the central government on any abstract policy matter.
4) Cap the number of applications an applicant can make during one year (proxies may be used to bypass such rule but still there should be some bar on total no. of applications made)

Ek Lau

The gory bomb blasts in Mumbai last evening is a grim reminder of our vulnerability and the intractable nature of the problem of terrorism. The hostile neighbourhood, coupled with internal security deficiencies and larger blue prints of international terrorism victimise India time and again. The challenge has been staring in our collective national face since long but little we have been able to do so far to make ourselves safe. Terrorism is a household word in the cities like Delhi and Mumbai. Terrorism is not an alien concept relevant only to the people of troubled areas of Kashmir and North East. Terrorism has come to take roots right in our backyards: The markets which we throng and the places of worship we visit. The railway stations and suburban trains. The offices and shops, where we need to go everyday to feed our families and make both ends meet. The restaurants and hospitals. The list goes on. Lives continue to be snuffed out brutally. No body is called to account. Conspiracy theories are afloat and statements about what could not be done and what will be done are dished out. Soundbytes swirl around and experts make impassioned case on airwaves for not tolerating such acts of terror anymore. And Mumbai, with its special kind of vulnerability to such attacks, keeps humming the tune...Ek Lau Is Tarah Kyun Boozi Mere Maula....

A Pat on the Back

The glitches-free CWG in Delhi and the positive mood which now prevails makes one wonder if the woes of the Games preparations were real or imagined. There were indeed problems and mess was far from being an imagined one. Several city projects are still unfinished. Planning was certainly not inspiring confidence amongst us. Corruption charges are yet to proved 'wrong'. May be the media overdrive made our authorities get their act together and finally pull off a successful and memorable CWG. Or they were ready but the bad press in the run up to the Games was a mere PR or marketing communication disaster which now pundits have to analyze and learn their lessons from. The truth lies somewhere in between. May be we were ready on some counts but were measuring badly on others. There are questions and there will be answers. For a while, India (not only Delhi) can bask in the glory of medals our sportspersons have bagged in the competitions. The last ditch efforts paid off and we again emerged as good crisis managers and damage controllers, if not good planners and administrators. Now, see overleaf for a list of Olympic aspirations and keep debating on if we can....!!!!

Mantriji

He walks past you with a half smile on face and with mobile phone slightly pressed to the ear. He enters the lift and looks at you as if to say 'Hello' to you. He is one of all of us travelling in the lift, hurrying to reach office in a morning hour. No 'khadi' kurtas or Nehru jackets. No Gandhi topi. No assistants or sidekicks. No secretaries or gun-wielding commandos in attendance. His car does not blare loud noice of siren. He holds the rank and status of a Cabinet Minister of India, the world's largest democracy. He need not force down your neck any ideology. He does not need to be a rabble rouser. He does not care what he should do to win any election or woo voters. He is Nandan Nilekani.

He is in lift today. Tomorrow, you may well find him climbing up the stairs to reach his third floor office in New Delhi. Is this a coming of age for India? May be. Let's pray, it is indeed..!

ALL IZ WELL ?

2nd October (birth anniversary of the Mahatma) had a calming influence on the anxious city which was god send considering that the following day the much-maligned Games were to be inaugurated with fanfare. The Games, the preparations of which will go down in history as a case study in poor management and misgovernance, have begun finally. It is generally observed and felt that India does well in crisis like situation. The rains vanished in Delhi and things started looking up under the moderate October sun. Hate them or love them, the Games were there to be there at any cost. Management pundits may call this 'effectiveness': getting things done. Do not ask how and at what cost. Do not ask how efficiently the tax payers' monenies were spent. Do not ask how many hours our labourers could sleep in a day. Do not ask how may abuses rolled down the tongues of our embarrased and worried officials and ministers to get the Village cleaned up. The 'effectiveness' means that you were ready on the evening of October 3 to welcome the world and diffuse the feeling amongst the citizens of Delhi that ALL IZ WELL.

I recall having read something about the handling of Mumbai floods being rated higher than the handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We don't have planners in India, we have crisis managers, fire fighters and damage controllers. Smoke does billow out but it's not a conflagration that you run into eventually.

TAILPIECE

Delhi 2010 are supposed to be 'green games'. I do not know how and why. An event of this scale is bound to guzzle much more fuel and energy than activities of the normal times, no matter how nicely you dress up your city with jute sculptures. Being green can't be just a fad or PR statement.

Delhi's very own "1984"

Delhi is living in typical Orwellian times. CWG is staring in the face and the organizers still not instil any confidence in public and players. The Central Government has entered the scene lately to save face. An individual is brutally subjugated to the whims of the ruling class who was hell bent in organizing the Games in the city (and never took stock of the ground realities until it was too late). People have either empty foot overbridges with escalators (which nobody is using) or demolished subways which are not yet done up. Pedestrians and commuters are having nightmarish experience every day. Construction debris are spawning dengue and malaria and nobody seems to be enjoying monsoon in Delhi nowadays. Traffic is a mega chaos. And at the helm are the people whose ability to run even day to day governance is questionable, let alone organization of such a mega sports event as CWG.

Next time, you want to have Games in any city of India, please conduct referendum on the issue. So, we don't start barking up the tree which turns out to be a wrong one. The Games is anti-Aam Adami except, of course, some 'New Deal' effect on employment generated by building stadia and demolishing and rebuilding roads, bridges and pavements.

New Delhi Times

# CWG 2010 is a leadership disaster. Perhaps no event of national importance has in recent times received such a cold shoulder from the public as the Games have done. In the few days left in the run up to the Games, the patriotism may be rekindled in our hearts and we may, putting a smile on our faces, willy nilly back the Games up. After all, we do not like our country to lose face, do we? Alleged financial irregularity is just one facet of the many sided problem the CWG finds itself plagued with. Delhi is traditionally not known as a better governed place. Day to day governance takes place here at the nudge of High Court or Supreme Court. A democratically elected state government is relatively a new phenomenon here. Plus there are many agencies that keep scrambling for the space of influence and power. On the top of it you have the Big Brother, the Central Government. Add to this a leadership vacuum and moral and professional rudderlessness, and you get a sure shot recipe for disasater. People saw this coming, about a year ago, although the media has woken up only recently.

Still, we will pull it off. But there will be lessons to learn and remember forever.

#The only positive news today in Delhi is Metro. This world class MRTS has done us proud and empowered a common citizen. And surely, Metro did not have leadership vacuum. But sadly, Metro's success is an exception in the city's governance and not a rule: A lone peak in the otherwise flat, stagnant and at times even sliding performance of public systems of Delhi.

The Crusader Lokayukta

Justice Santosh Hegde's decision to quit as Lokayukta is a grim reminder of the state of the affairs in our governments. The BJP government in Karnataka is justifiably facing heat from all quarters of the civil society. But we cannot put only Karnataka government in dock. In other states either the administration is 'clean' or the Lokayukta is not interested in taking his job seriously. The probability of the former proposition being true is 'very low' given India's records in corruption and malpractice. So, it could well be a fact that Lokayuktas are not living upto the expectations of their role as corruption watchdogs in other states. Hence the calm in the corridors of power and feeling of 'all is well' amongst the citizens. Karnataka, I suspect, is not an exception. Justice Hegde chose to spill the beans and we have an 'exposed' BJP government groping for excuses and explanations.

In the meantime, the public can raise a toast to Justice Hegde because his counterparts in other states may well be the people who have simply esconced themselves in this post retirement, super-bureaucratic sort of assignment which nobody (even the media) takes seriously.

Tailpiece:

Like Kafkaesque bureaucracy in other areas of governance, 'grievance redressal' in India is also a bureaucratic jumble of government agencies. The common man is confused as to who will redress their grievance about so many agencies with fancy names: District Magistrate, Panchayats, Ministers, CBI, Police, Anti Corruption Bureau, RTI commissioner, Director of Public Grievances, Ombudsman, Lok Pal, Lokayukta, Vigilance commissioners......(I'm sure the list is long and I have missed out many 'important' grievance redressal agencies of our country)

Travesty of Justice: The Tragedy deepens

The local court’s verdict on Monday did not surprise us. But the verdict did shock many of us. Once again our laws have proved unequal to meet the challenges the modern times and technologies have thrown up. The Bhopal gas leak occurred more than 25 years ago and all we have in the name of legal framework to deal with industrial disasters is Public Liability Insurance Act of 1991. The Act lays down compensation to be awarded to victims of Bhopal-like accident (god forbid if it happens again!). For fatal accidents a maximum of Rs 25,000/- is payable to a victim. Rs 25,000/- is all a life is worth in India in the eyes of our lawmakers. Now, look at the liability limit of international air carriers for death of passengers in an air crash. The airline is bound to pay at least 100,000 SDR (about Rs 64 lacs) to a victim. This compensation quantum, which is stipulated in Montreal Convention, works on the principle of ‘strict liability’. The disparity in liability regimes across the industrial and commercial world is horrifying and shocking. It’s high time the government of the day in India set the record straight.

The story does not end here. See how our obsession with free pricing can play havoc with the letter and spirit of Public Liability Insurance Act. Industries get huge discounts nowadays- there is a price war in the market- in the mandatory Public Liability Act insurance policies as if we are living in a safe world and Bhopal like disaster is a nightmare which is never to be re-enacted again in real life. A part of the premium goes into a Fund set up under Public Liability Insurance Act. Heavy discounts in premium result into poor accretion to this vital relief fund which can come in handy in fighting at least the financial consequences of such environmental accidents.

A gas leak from a pesticide plant has consequences that span generations of human beings. The archaic framework for legal compensation has compounded the problems of our slothful and pliable investigation machinery and there is nobody around (the so called three pillars of our constitution –executive, legislature and judiciary have miserably failed in helping the victims) who can lessen the pain of those who have suffered the consequence of Dec 2-3, 1984.

The verdict has been delivered. We have debated it and lamented the travesty of justice. Life will go on. A new day will break and some government inspector will land in a factory only to be bribed away by the owner. Bhopals are waiting to happen in this country.

Tragedy of Errors?

We are commemorating 26/11. The media are busing crafting fancy theories about how terrorists came, how the Mumbai police and security agencies fared and how much vulnerable we still are to a terrorist attack. Some bravehearts walked straight into a line of fire on that fateful night and some faint-hearted just fumbled in responding to the call of duty. We are taking stock of what actually happened. We are still picking up the pieces. A year has passed since Indian's very own 9/11 played out in Mumbai. Here is a snapshot of the contours emerging from the event that shook all of us.

(1) The incumbent political party at both Centre and State has been voted back to power (Wasn't 26/11 serious enough to be an important poll issue?)

(2) It's not very clear what the government is doing about doing up the intelligence apparatus and fixing the fabled 'inter-agency co-ordination' problem. A new bureaucratic body called NIA has been created which would take time in finding its feet. What about reforms in the existing institutions?

(3) We did not stand our political class when 26/11 happened. If one looks back at the events that happened during last 12 months, our mistrust of our political class has only trebled. (Koda scam, Maharashtra assembly oath-taking ceremony, Shiv Sena's nativism and violence, Spectrum allocation scam, Manu Sharma's parole......). Are our ministers capable of organizing an efficient and motivated security apparatus? Can they lead by example?

(4) America still helps Pakistan no matter how hard President Obama would try to placate and pacify Indian government. We cling on to the N-deal and avoid 'straight talking' with the US while our neighbour continues to plot new designs of bleeding us, motivated by the stupendous success of 26/11.

(5) We do not know if we would be able to thwart another 26/11 in future. This is where lies the singular failure of our governments. Whatever they're doing and are seen to be doing fails woefully to reassure us, the Aam Adami (common citizen) of India.

Mandate for a Strong PM

I would like to reproduce the following words of my blog dated 5 July, 2008:

It is heartening to see our government hanging on to the US nuclear deal. It is not very common to see national governments finding a mission and leaving no stone unturned to achieve it. These are the qualities we usually identify with private sector. Isn't it an example of management by objectives?

Yes, Manmohan Singh's UPA government saw the deal through in a manner one usually associates with the fabled efficient functioning of private sector. I know N-deal is too intellectually hefty an issue to influence results of a General Election in a country like India. But N-deal certainly stands as a metaphor of efficiency, integrity and purposefulness of the UPA government which came to power in 2004. The mandate won today by the Congress led political formation brings the issue of 'performance' to the fore.

Sonia Gandhi did a brilliant job of putting together a team of extra-ordinary gentlemen tasked with executing the liberal socialist political programme laid down in NCMP. Dr Manmohan Singh's role was largely technocratic. May be he was not a heavy-weight political leader but he handled the implementation of the UPA agenda well and at times saw through the difficult decisions in the teeth of fierce opposition. And average Indian anyway hates politics. So we did not mind having a political lightweight but an intelligent, knowledgeable and honest economist as our PM. Also, Sonia Gandhi was never seen throwing her weight around. The Gandhi family, on the whole, has astutely supported the PM during the five year term. This may be the reason the UPA is being voted back to power despite several shortcomings of the previous UPA government. With much political experience gained during the first term of UPA government, we can look forward to seeing a more confident and resurgent Dr Manmohan Singh in the next five years! As someone who lies behind the victory of 2009, as someone who does not just understand economics but also the business of governance.

The Verdict of 2009 should be remembered as a victory of the leadership model Sonia Gandhi has experimented, as a personal victory of a good politician and human being who is not a rabble rouser but an honest and clear- headed leader. He is not and has never been a weak Prime Minister...!!

REALITY CHECK

India is in a state of frenzy. Fumbling to respond to the global meltdown (not knowing fully how much the country is affected by it), India is gearing up for yet another phase of chaos called General Elections. The policy measures are culled from the economic textbooks and thrust upon the bemused public. As the anxious policy makers wait for the results to seep down the various segments of life, problems continue to spring up from various directions and plague the Asian 'superpower'. In the last few years, we had got used to calling ourselves a superpower. The only cues available were a near double digit economic growth and the youthful and brash IT sector which had started putting India on the global map. Acquisitions of foreign firms by Indian corporates only added to make our pride swell. A confident and resurgent India, with its army of savvy and English speaking techies, waited in the wings to dislodge the incumbent superpowers and transform the strategic equations across the continents.


Though the high flying India which ruled the world for the first eight years of this decade was not a flash in the pan, the so called success story had been stretched too far by the cheerleaders. The story fled the realm of reality. It crocked and floundered only to seek refuge in the dazzling and magical world of fiction. Who would not remember the days when the financial papers would headline, in mega bold fonts, the rise and rise of the fabled Sensex? As if there is no life beyond Sensex. And a five figure Sensex meant India's nirvana, a panacea of the all the problems the Indians faced. We were living in a world of inflated expectations and oversimplified postulates. We had started judging ourselves by the yardstick of the salaries IIMA or B graduates would be offered in campus placements. By the unprecedented revenue figures our finance ministers projected in every Budget. By the ultra mega projects the Cabinets or the 'empowered groups' of our arthritis-ridden, hypertensive or diabetic ministers would clear with an unfailing regularity and unflagging pomp. But, for a man on the street, has India really changed? Are we really not a Third World country any more?

Here is the reality check!

1) Governance (Satyam): The fraud revealed once again the gap between 'prescription' and 'description' which is one of main defining characteristics of a developing society. A maze of laws and regulations overseen by an equally complex maze of 'ministries/departments' and 'regulators' is no deterrent at all. One can coolly bypass them and make the agencies look like buffoons.

2) Quality of Life: Just hit a road every evening in a city like Mumbai. There are highways, expressways, sea links and flyovers in the city but streets in a suburb leading to or fanning out of a station make mockery of our tall claims about improvement in infrastructure. You will be enveloped by clouds of smoke and the noise of lound restless honks of the vehicles trapped in traffic hold ups. It's a mayhem one comes across as one steps out of his or her home or office. People are seen standing crammed in crowded buses (which appear not be advancing even an inch) and sitting huddled in rickety auto-rickshaws, groping for a semblance of life which their political leaders promise them every election year. They have a capsulated existence which starts everyday with newspapers and end with saas-bahu serials with a few songs on FM radio or MP3, a couple of hurried meals, a few hours of half baked discussions on cricket, stock market and politics and a few tiffs with bosses and colleagues and neighbours and fellow commuters stuffed in between.
Life on streets is a potentially carcinogenic, high decibel chaos.

3) India is still known for corruption and bureaucratic red tape. The bright and incorruptible social activists manage to influence policies (UPA deserves some credit for this) but we are yet to see them taking the helm at our ministries. The sane, sensible and liberal voice still remains at the margins.

4) Farmers commit suicides in this country. Skilled workers of diamond industry are slogging under the scorching sun on road construction sites. We do not have a policy and action plan in place to address the social security issues of the informal and unorganized sectors of our economy. We are more concerned about pink slips that dread our BPO and IT workers who throng swanky office buildings in Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Gurgaon or Noida everyday.

5) Internal Security: There isn't any area which has been more mismanaged than this since our independence. There is no federal level, pan India strategy or will to combat this menace. The debate still remains lost in 'State List' and 'Union List' inspite of 26/11. A homeland is a homeland. Chandigarh is no different from Chhatisgarh when it comes to dealing with national security.

Can we still say we have left our THIRD WORLD status far behind? There is a long way to go. Is it not?

Save SOUTH ASIA

Pakistan appears to be beyond salvage: A sordid saga of a promising nation going down the path of self destruction it appears to have unfolded now. Pakistan is a nation state whose fanaticism-soaked genesis could not be mellowed out even by the mighty forces of Time. The age old practice of the Western world of turning a Nelson’s eye to the threat Pakistan posed to the entire subcontinent has aggravated the geo-political complications and the subcontinent now stands at the brink of a new and seemingly unending era of instability. It’s not about attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers or 26/11 also for that matter. It is about how the south Asia’s rich history and heritage of values and philosophies that guided the civilizations of the world like a beacon through ages has quietly taken a back seat and made way for the forces of unreason and inhumanity. The world awaits the results of Obama’s Af-Pak magic pill. Countries like India who have been blowing whistles since all these years and continue to face the brunt of having the volatile and hostile pseudo-democracy in the neighbourhood stand at the margin, beleaguered and lonely. India watches helplessly from the sidelines as Pakistan’s creative and imaginative political elite continue to beguile the international community with all sorts of ‘theories’ about 26/11. Our throats have gone hoarse. The gravity and gruffness of our stance has barely made any difference to the way the world looks at Pakistan.

Leave alone a Pakistani, even an Indian may not like this. But one can help drawing this sad and worrying conclusion: Pakistan is in ruins. Before it drags down south Asia, the world has to act. The western powers like US will have to repair the wrongs done.

Just try to deconstruct the whole damn thing called terrorism. There are terrorists who are enemies of civil societies and governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan and neither of the two wants them. Another bunch has these guys who are zealously supported and trained by the Pakistan government to bleed countries like India. And this tribe of terrorists is very much in demand by the Pakistan government and the so called other state and non-state actors in tow. And somewhere in between lies the twilight zone of the ruthless terror machine. Pakistan is the victim as well as the perpetrator. But its fate as a victim does not outweigh its self-appointed role of perpetrator, the one that does not hesitate in using terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

‘What would happen if you try to ride a tiger…?’, says P Chidambaram, India’s Home Minister, very rightly.

The Heroes of Bombay

It has been two long months since 26/11. India’s own 9/11, played out in the heart of the commercial capital for about 60 hours, started on that fateful November night. It was India’s longest nightmare in recent history. The generation that throng swanky glass and steel towers every day for work in suburbs of our cities have barely experienced what it means to be a nation at war. For them, 26/11 was a war. The carnage took place at places where these suave youngsters would hang out on holidays, slushed in the prosperity brought by the booming new economy. The Taj and Trident were not alien to the underclass of the city either. South Mumbai has always been a place to visit for work and a place to leave when the sun begins to sink into the sober waves of the Arabian Sea, lashing gently at the Marine Drive tetrapods. This part of the city belonged to all. It has always been a ‘comfort zone’ for millions who are desperate to snatch their own slice of high life from the jaws of the colourless and exasperating routine their train commute inflict on them.

But 26/11 did not strike Bombay. It assaulted Mumbai. Bombay had long ceased to exist.

The things had already begun to turn sour a few years ago. The city of Bombay lost its identity and this vibrant and free space of human ingenuity and creativity was soon hijacked by irrational and cynical politics. Cosmopolitanism came to be eclipsed by chauvinism. Bombay became Mumbai. And VT became CST. The city did grow physically, adding flyovers, expressways and sea links, but the soul and the spirit remained muffled. As Shashi Tharoor writes somewhere- a story of Bombay is the story of decline. But this was not enough.

When Kasab and his team swooped down on Mumbai on that fateful day, they did not have an inkling that the city would turn out to be such a sitting duck. The city was already battle weary. It proved to be perhaps the easiest prey of the jihadi gunmen.

The city with its hollow core and rusted frame did fight back. It took the entire might of the Indian state to neutralize the terrorists in a long drawn operation. Before India came to rescue, the Bombay had to hold them off. And what the whole world witnessed during those 60 hours were the tales of extraordinary courage and heroism of the ordinary folks and the cops: Call them Mumbaikars or Bombayites. People fought and went down on the streets which until a few moments ago were looking so safe, familiar and bustling. 26/11 is as much a story of terrorism as extraordinary heroism. 26/11 threw up city’s own heroes, those who now can be our new icons and can be remembered in our campaign to reinvigorate the decaying dream of India. Wasn’t it reassuring to learn that heroes are found not only on the rarefied heights of Kargil mountains or jungles of the Naxalite strongholds but also in the ‘comfort zones’ of the new urban India priding itself on IT, BPO and a double digit growth rate?

The dawn of 27/11 restored some semblance of the lost Bombay. The fight was on. The fight is still on.

INDIA: Bruised & Wounded

The current India-Pakistan stand-off is being viewed through the prism of war. But as India has made it abundantly clear, war is not the solution to the problem. India wants to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai 26/11 carnage to justice and seeks Pakistan's co-operation in this regard. This is, in my opinion, still a soft stance on the issue of India's victimhood of cross border terrorism. Why should India consider the terrorist strikes only a handiwork of a bunch of LeT masterminds? If one can ever distinguish between the acts of state and non-state actors, the onus of proof as to state actors' innocence in this episode should rest with Pakistan government. The scale and intensity of the attacks leaves barely anything to imagination. How can such a ruthlessly and accurately planned massacre be executed without state support? India is talking tough. But tough talk or plainspeak would lead us nowhere. The need of the hour is a concrete action which can be regarded as a deterrent to any future adventurism staged against India from Pakistani soil. Even Pakistan's handing over of the terrorists accused in 26/11 would not solve this conundrum. The menace of terrorism is very political in nature and 26/11 is just another sophisticated and brutal version of manifestation of the historical animosity of the two South Asian neighbours.

The Road Ahead:

1. Capitalize on India's clean record in complying with security related international conventions/laws/treaties/regimes

2. Put a stress on the right of self-defence to justify any war-like action/hot pursuit of the terrorists

3. Communicate to the international community that carnages like 26/11 has nothing to do with the Kashmir issue. Publicize India's victimhood widely and use this to get away with a bit of roguishness. Tell the world you are tired of being a nice guy. That the world has paid a lip service to India's cause. That Pakistan is at war with you and you need to act now.

4. Responsibility for terror acts lie not only with a few rogue elements of militant groups in Pakistan but also with the Pakistani establishment that support these operatives or turn a Nelson's eyes to their activities, to say the least.

5. Chalk out a schedule of actions and strategies with clear timelines. Show it to the world powers and the UN. And go ahead. Ignore the noises and murmurs of those who advise restraint. Tell them to assure safety and protection of your citizens or just shut up. India cannot wait indefinitely for the world powers to discipline Pakistan.

A Wednesday

A month has passed since Mumbai faced one of the most devastating terrorist strikes on 26 November, 2008, the date which has gone down in the annals of history as 26/11. The memory has not yet faded. The feelings of trauma, shock and anguish are still green in our hearts and minds. The event is sinking in the collective psyche of our nation. We do not want to forget it. The gun battles played out at some of the icons of the city of Mumbai reminded us of what it means to be a nation under siege.

There are people out there, across the borders, who are hell bent on harming India, bleeding civil society of India. The birth and rise of the Indian nation has not gone down well with these people. Call them anything: state actors or non-state actors. They have a single point agenda. They are terrorists.

You are not a hawk, you are not a maverick, if you are advocating to have them stamped out. You are just a sensible and sensitive human being, who is sincere about saving the humanity from the scourge of terrorism.

Now we get down to pick up the pieces and try to make some sense of how this might have happened notwithstanding our mighty and many-splendoured state security apparatus: the IB, RAW, the Police, the Army, the Navy, the Cost Guard and last but not the least our ever articulate and preachy political leaders occupying the top rungs of governments. One certainly should not tarnish the administrative agencies and the political executive with the same brush. But it is hard to look at the accountability issue in a fragmented manner. For us, the citizens of India, the Indian state (comprising both administrative and political ruling class) has failed miserably to secure safety for us and it definitely was found wanting when a few jihadi youths ran amok on the night of 26/11 and took the southern and the most iconic part of India's commerical hub by a ghastly surprise. The most tragic revelation of this episode is how we have not learnt the lessons and were caught off guard again in spite of being a victim of terrorist acts since so many years. Terrorism is not alien to us.

That said, we must recognize that the challenges to internal security are also formidable. After all, India has banned at least 34 organizations/groups and we can say at any given time India is at war with 34 internal enemies, not to mention Pakistan and other sovereign state actors and non-state actors (if one can ever distinguish between the two) active in our neighbourhoods.

This question sends chill down our spine. But we now cannot avoid posing it.

ARE WE PREPARED? CAN WE EVER SAY THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM IS WON?

Celebrating Change

Barack Obama is now a phenomenon. The President-elect of the world's mightiest nation is not merely a political leader who belongs only to his party and people.

The beginning is somewhat flashy and swashbuckling. But one thing is clear: the Obama-Biden administration means business. There is so much to do and there is no time to lose. A four year term is woefully inadequate to usher in the change Obama stands for and envisages. We can expect the new administration to be packed with change agents and innovators. One hopes the President-elect knows that innovation, if not guided properly, can also wreak havoc with one's plans. You cannot set out to renovate everything around you. Nor is the Presidency a hollywood blockbuster, full of twists, thrills and breathtaking experiments. But it is too naive to tell this to Mr Obama. He has dreamt this dream for many years and he surely knows the best how to put the dream into action and make the world a little bit better than what it is today.

The victory of Barack Obama has overwhelmed the world. Even the frigid Europe (the so called 'old Europe', the continent) has warmed up to the news of his victory. We better refrain from analysing him now. We better refrain from questioning him now. Let him just perform. It may be a great delight to see him perform and deliver. In his success lies the success of everything a liberal global society has alwasys stood for and yearned for.

Let us not be skeptical of this great American moment.

Best wishes, Mr Obama...

Fall from Grace: End of Capitalism?

It is not everyday that you see people talk economics and finance. The global meltdown that originated from the Wall Street is finding grave echoes in Indian financial markets also. The authorities are busy resuscitating the banks so as to enable them to pump-prime the slumping economy. This dramatic fall out of the collapse of a few American investment banks raises many questions about the capitalist system. We saw a socialist system fall away about 20 years ago in the Soviet Union. Now we are witnessing one of the gravest financial crises of recent history in the US, the heartland of free markets and financial capitalism. The man on the street is confused. Both the economic systems are fallible and not without their own share of shortcomings.

The lessons are clear: Shun greed. Keep the markets well-regulated. Employ the smartest and sharpest guys as regulators. Don't write off governments and public ownership. It is the State which is bailing you out now. Punish those severely who play around with people’s money and undertake risky adventures and innovative financial engineering (experts call it ‘structured finance’). The USD 700 billion bail out plan appears to make capitalism a sham. Isn’t it a gargantuan waste of public resources? Far from being an efficient system, the casino capitalism has eaten away at GDP of several nations overnight.

And how about remembering Nehru for a few moments? Isn’t his mixed economy model for India a classic and prophetic answer to the crazy extremes of capitalism and socialism? Remember him, when you get over the anxieties about security of your stocks, ULIPs, SIPs and bank FDs.

Capital (ism) Punishment

The financial market meltdown in the US has shaken the world. The big names of the Wall Street are licking the dust. It all started with the subprime crisis and now the problem appears to have reached its nadir with the collapse of firms like Lehman Brothers. The globalization of financial capitalism and interconnectedness of financial markets mean that the crisis will cast its spell well beyond the boundaries of the United States. A lot of questions hover over our heads. How can everything go so wrong? Is the world of finance so complex and beyond the reach of regulators and governments? It is not rocket science, isn't it? Let us try to decipher how this earthquake happened.

Yes. The world of finance is indeed a complex one. The most worrying aspect is the amenability of financial products to a bewildering possibilities of engineering and re-engineering. An underlying asset may not be a prime one. Or it may be a junk bond which your regulator may now allow you to dabble in. But what if you bundle the prime loans with sub-prime loans and try to offload them to some other lender? This lender might be completely oblivious to the default risk lurking around every such exotic structured product. Worse still, this lender may find some aggressive and smart chaps who provide funds to facilitate such transactions also. After all, your Central Bank has slashed interest rates to help you guys prop up the sagging economy and credit has got cheaper. And who does not want to earn 'risk premium'? You are not here in this world of high finance to dabble in T bills only. You may not like to imagine that real estate boom is not going to be there always. You continue to innovate and repackage securities and loans. You take other decent guys also on board who are sick of doing the mundane job of taking deposits and lending money. Don't banks find their task a 'no brainer'? Why shouldn't they also fuel the creativity triggered by the mortgage market? And who is watching? Most of these innovations are off balance sheet transactions. The Central Banks and governments (if these two entities are indeed considered independent and separate !) are busy reversing the slowdown and burning midnight oil to inject liquidity in the system. And the regulators are still learning the ropes. Let the party go on until, of course, you find yourself at the end of your rope.

The thriller does not end here. Banks are smart enough to insure their exposures with the likes of AIG. You go under. You drag down the system with you. And you look to the governments to pay for the follies which, but for this crisis, would have passed off as creativity and ingenuity. The game starts with a small time home loan borrower who may miss his repayment but stops when the giant insurer finds itself gasping for breath. And you have a government who willy nilly extends an olive branch called a bridge loan worth USD 85 billions to AIG. But the same government, weary of bailing out failed 'innovators' and 'alchemists', turns away, somewhat enigmatically, when it comes to salvaging Lehman Brothers.

AIG has been nationalized. Now we know nationalization is not something which can happen in India only. The state is not in retreat. Governments are still relevant to our lives.

So, that is how the Wall Street has been disgraced. Capitalism does not look confident. Thus, the world of complex high finance, though resting on the foundation of something as predictable and straightforward as mathematics, is still fraught with grave dangers. And here, human inventiveness is the main culprit besides greed and ever expanding desire for netting arbitrage.

Will we learn lessons from this debacle?