Author: Mahendra Ved

How does one survive in a world torn between forces for and against globalization? How does one promote mutual acceptance when even bare tolerance is missing? The only answer is cross-cultural communications.

“Bring it at the centre table”, declares retired Indian Ambassador Paramjit Sahai. Cultural exchange, he says, is all about openness and India with its multiple identities within and of the nearly-thirty million diaspora across the globe exemplifies it the best.

His book on Indian cultural diplomacy is for “celebrating pluralism in a globalized world”. Its strength “lies in the tangible way it works. It opens the doors by changing mindset and creating a positive and friendly atmosphere.”

An official representative in many counties, Sahai insists that cultural diplomacy should, however, be essentially “people-centric” and as far as possible, independent. The government should ‘vacate’ areas like films and Yoga that have “come of age” and can be privately handled. He is right.

Actually, cinema has for long grown out of Embassy environs into theatres to be savored not only by the diaspora but also local audiences, to become a multi-billion business.

I saw Raj Kapoor’s Awaara (1955), dubbed ‘Chavargo’ in Hungarian language, over four decades back drawing full house in Budapest’s niche theatres. Returning to it in 2016, I found the craze for Bollywood even more, for younger Kapoors, along with the Khans and the Bachchans.

The Japanese some years ago demanded Rajinikanth’s Tamil films underscoring the point that cinema has its own language.

This “soft power” yields hard currency. As much as the difficult to-assess export earnings, Indian cinema exudes a mix of nostalgia and brand loyalty that has sustained for generations and is growing. A big draw among the South Asian diaspora, it has become commercially rewarding, enough for Hollywood production houses to set up shops in India and make it global.

It is amazing but Indian TV serials are popular in distant West Africa. “Everything comes to a halt in our homes at 7.30 PM when they start,” says Richard J A Boateng, a film actor-director from Ghana. So smitten is he by Bollywood that he produced, directed and performed the lead in the first Ghana-India co-production titled Mr. India.

Indian yogis and ‘god men’ have for long thronged the Western world. The Modi Government has extended the Yoga foot-fall on the Thames, on the Danube and with Eiffel Tower forming its backdrop.

Yoga’s global emphasis is on lifestyle, health, restraint, fulfillment and well-being. Some Malaysians debated whether it was okay for Muslims, who are in majority, to perform a “Hindu’ thing that requires chanting ‘Om’. But privately-run yoga centres are thriving.  

This “soft power” draws deeply from the past and the present, bolstered by deep cultural ties forged by visitors from and to India.  Few other societies can boast of this.

At official level, it is fostered by Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), the cultural arm of the external affairs ministry. It runs 36 centres across the globe like the one in Budapest, named after Indian-Hungarian painter Amrita Shergill and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Centre in Kuala Lumpur.         

Cultural diplomacy sometimes rubs off on non-diplomatic spouses. Sahai’s wife Neena has published a delectable book on her experiences, good and not-so-good and how she freely imbibed local art and culture wherever she went.

Another example is Hema Devare. While diplomat Sudhir went about promoting India across Southeast Asia, she explored artworks and textiles in that region, discovering and writing about ancient links with India.

Their scholar-journalist daughter Ashwini has done one better. She grew up changing countries along with parents, describing her quest for self-identity in a book “Lost at 15, Found at 50.”       

Ambassador Malay Mishra on retirement is pursuing his doctorate in Hungary, studying Roma or the gypsies, migrants from South Asia, now inhabiting Central Europe.

It is a revelation that Romas or Romanis identify themselves with B R Ambedkar, the Dalit leader who framed India’s Constitution in the last century. Viewed from the human rights prism, Amberkar’s ideas have found echoes among the Romas, 500,000 of whom live in Hungary alone. 

In an apparent blowback, the Romas have found connections with Dalits, the socio-economically oppressed Indians, waging their own struggle in the present-day India. Although centuries and hundreds of kilometer apart, they are conscious of their roots even as they struggle to integrate in societies they feel discriminated.

Contemporary India nurtures these ties, albeit in a limited way, helping run schools in parts of Europe and hosting world Roma conferences.

The important thing is that India does not need to be introduced in many parts of the world. But it needs to be cultivated and promoted. One thing the government can do is to follow up the bilateral cultural agreements signed or updated during almost all visits, forgotten at times.

If basic goal is to make friends and influence people, India needs to “catch’em” young, at universities. Here again, the ethos in Indian universities where foreign students come, needs to be radically changed. Colour prejudice against the Blacks from Africa raises the question: is India spreading culture meant only to blondes and whites?

Sahai’s book is set against the backdrop of India’s ethos of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ (The World is a Family) and its pivot is the “Idea of India.” He has a set of questions:

“Can India give the message of spiritualism in a globalized world that is dominated by materialism? Can India lead in sending a message of diversity and pluralism, as lived by it, when the world is passing through a period of divisiveness and hatred?”

“More important than this,” he asks commenting on the present times, “can it retain its own Idea of India, which is coming under strain? While achieving our political goals, we should not lose sight of our ‘Big Picture’ of an India whose strength lies in ‘Unity in Diversity’ and which has been viewed as a benign power.”

Warning against India being seen as a “cultural hegemon”, he lauds the objective of emerging as ‘Vishwaguru’. But says that India should never move away from Sikh faith’s tenth Guru Gobind Singh’s teaching that calls for end to distinction between the teacher and the taught: “Ape Gur, Ape Chela” (He is both a teacher and a student).

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Blessed with the world’s most complex neighbourhood, what would India have been like had it adhered to the “Gujral Doctrine”?

Inder Kumar Gujral, the 12^th prime minister and author of the ‘doctrine’ – so named, not by him but by his trusted academic aide, Bhabani Sengupta – had unique perceptions about ties with neighbours. They angered the hawks who dominate the Sub-continental discourse.

Chances are that India would have had six friendly smaller neighbours and carried more weight among the world community as an Asian power. More likely, it would have been bullied by those who, after years of accusing India of playing the “big brother”, are now getting close to China, the ‘bigger’ brother.

Conclusion is difficult as two large adversarial entities, China and Pakistan that work in tandem on most issues, cannot be wished away. There was nothing formal or official about the doctrine, a set of five principles based on unilateral accommodation.

One, with smaller neighbours Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka, India does not ask for reciprocity but gives all that it can in good faith and trust. Two, no South Asian nation will allow its territory to be used against the interest of another country of the region. Three, no one will interfere in the internal affairs of another. Four, respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. And five, settle disputes through peaceful bilateral negotiations.

He believed that these five principles, scrupulously observed by all – repeat all – could recast the regional relationship, including the tormented India-Pakistan relationship, in a friendly, cooperative way.

Quintessential Nehruvian, Gujral was an idealist, but not a fool. He wrote in his autobiography: “The logic was that since we had to face two hostile neighbours in the north and the west, we had to be at “total peace” with other immediate neighbours in order to contain Pakistan’s and China’s influence in the region.” That has not happened. South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is almost defunct.

But Gujral believed that for India to become a global power in sync with its stature, it needs a peaceful neighbourhood.

Sometimes this actually meant offering the proverbial other cheek. The response to his ‘doctrine’ was not always reciprocated. But that did not deter him from engaging all neighbours – benign, indifferent, suspicious or hostile.

His political and personal lives, too, were tempered by this approach. His trademark Punjabi jhappi bypassed the conventional handshake, to the silent annoyance of the bureaucracy, but helped strike an instant rapport. Like millions, India’s 1947 Partition uprooted his family. But he bore no rancour. Pakistanis were among his best friends.

In my last interview with him, he shook his head with disapproval at India nursing any superpower ambitions. “It is more important that we live in peace.” He would have been a hundred this month. He died in 2012. He led India for all of 11 months (April 1997 to March 1998), but is remembered 22 years later, as the most affable and accessible prime minister.

A political lightweight, he was truly an “accidental prime minister” long before Manmohan Singh (2004-2014). Born pre-Partition, in present-day Pakistan, both shared close affinity. Without attaching his doctrinal label, the Singh Government reached out to neighbours with two huge grants to Bangladesh and made imports from all smaller neighbours duty-free.

With Musharraf’s Pakistan, too, cross-border intrusions stopped in Jammu and Kashmir. Discussed through backdoor talks, the Kashmir dispute could have been resolved but for Musharraf’s domestic debacles. Hawks on both sides have to this day dominated after the 2008 Mumbai terror attack.        

Gujral was propelled into top post by the quirky uncertainties that govern coalition politics. Other contestants squabbled furiously and pulled each other down. He got it for two reasons: he was the least unacceptable among the contenders, and his good relations with the Nehru-Gandhi clan heading the Congress Party.

Yet, Congress pulled down his government, forced an election, only to lose it badly. As the PM, the sailing was not smooth. He had to cancel Sengupta’s appointment as adviser. His asking the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the government’s external spy agency, to close down a unit dealing with Pakistan hurt intelligence gathering on militancy and terrorism, angering India’s strategic hawks.

As foreign minister, he earned a legion of critics when he hugged Saddam Hussein and visited Saddam-occupied Kuwait. His defence was his concern for the safety of millions of Indian workers in the Gulf region. For them his government organized the world’s largest peacetime airlift.

Along with then premier VP Singh, he ended the Indian Peace Keeping Force operations in Sri Lanka. Delhi lost the goodwill of both Colombo and the Lankan Tamils, but a bad legacy had to end. His 11-month premiership saw the Ganga water sharing pact with Bangladesh. The Left-leaning liberal resisted signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). That helped the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government to conduct the May 1998 nuclear tests.

Member of Indira Gandhi’s “kitchen cabinet”, Gujral was information minister when she imposed Emergency in 1975, detaining opposition leaders and censoring the media. He quietly disagreed and was replaced. She sent him as envoy to Moscow. Besides growing a Lenin-like beard, he also consolidated Indo-Soviet ties. But he did not mince words while telling then Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko that Moscow had seriously erred in invading Afghanistan. From Moscow, he befriended physically and culturally-close Central Asia that he called India’s “extended neighbourhood”.

During his stint, India became a dialogue partner of ASEAN and a member of the Asean Regional Forum (ARF). He was media’s darling, ready with a thoughtful smile and a coherent answer to most tricky questions. He would candidly admit failures.

A democrat, he always sought to carry others along in that coalition era, displaying, in his own words, “the ability to accommodate, iron out differences and even bear insults.” Gujral and his ‘doctrine’ would not have survived the present times, what with critics being asked to “go to Pakistan” and terror-factor compelling India’s muscular approach.

Although he was an ‘opposition’ premier, the Manmohan Singh Government had accorded him a State funeral. The Modi Government, shunning anything remotely Nehruvian, has shunned any centenary commemoration.

He was India’s last of the liberals who made it to the top howsoever momentarily. Such people don’t make it in public life any more.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Associated with Realpolitik that sets pragmatism over ideological goals, the phrase “politics is the art of the possible” entails that “it’s not about what’s right, or what’s best. It’s about the attainable.”

Nineteenth-century German politician Otto Von Bismarck who coined it couldn’t have foreseen events in present-day India, or in Maharashtra. He would have been flummoxed by the way even Realpolitik is played.

It is difficult to say who won in Maharashtra that saw a government ushered in by subterfuge that had to quit within three days. Besides greed for power that comes natural to all contenders, this happened because of abdication by institutions established under the Constitution.

To begin with, the President signed a proclamation revoking the governor’s rule at an unearthly 5.43 AM. The Union Cabinet did not meet to recommend it. (This was justified by the Law Minister, of all days, on the Constitution Day).

Next, the state governor, obviously on New Delhi’s diktats, hastily swore in by 8 AM Devendra Fadnavis and as his new deputy, Ajit Pawar. He did not verify the claim of majority support from among the newly-elected legislators. Even after the dust settles, his conduct shall be debated.

The Supreme Court heard the matter on a Sunday morning, an official holiday. But three honourable judges reserved their ruling when they could have issued clear directions for floor test in the legislature citing well-established precedents. That allowed contenders and their cronies — carpetbaggers all – to abuse all democratic norms in activities from swank hotels and resorts to the streets.

The apex court finally controlled the damage with clear-cut rulings, but after 48 hours. It not only gave the Fadnavis government just one day to get the assembly’s confidence vote but also stipulated that the proceedings should be telecast ‘live’, conducted by a pro-tem Speaker and held by an open ballot.

Without dwelling on the background details that are too many, problems for the BJP ruling at the Centre, always resorting to the jugular to extend sway across the country, began with falling short of majority in both states that went to the polls last month.

It roped in a rival party in Haryana co-opting its chief as the deputy chief minister. But in Maharashtra it reneged on a fifty-fifty pre-poll pact with its oldest ally Shiv Sena (at least Sena insists so).

Despite winning half of the seats than the BJP, Sena, fearing future marginalization from a marauding BJP in the only state it has political base, insisted on the chief minister’s post.

After a month’s stand-off, it broke with the BJP and aligned with old rivals, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress. The latter prevaricated, unwilling to align with an untrustworthy ideological adversary when NCP chief Sharad Pawar emerged as the catalyst. To his credit, he insisted, and secured, Sena’s formal parting from the BJP-led ruling alliance.

The BJP prime movers, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah grabbed the weakest link in the Opposition chain – Ajit Pawar, NCP chief’s controversial nephew. He succumbed, to escape probe for graft charges worth billions instituted by the Fadnavis Government-1.

Having got him, the short-lived Fadnavis-2 withdrew nine of the 20 charges. But the next day, Ajit quit, under severe family pressures. Stripped of perceived majority minus Ajit, in no position to face the floor-test, Fadnavis resigned, with egg on his and the BJP’s face.  

Now, some noteworthy points on the way polity functions. Split verdicts in an election have been creating conditions when political mores and constitutional norms are wrecked. Money flows — the going price of a Maharashtra legislator this time was, reportedly, a staggering Rupees 50 crores.

The “Aya Ram, Gaya Ram” political culture of trading in legislators that goes back to the 1960s has burgeoned. People have got used to seeing those they vote changing party labels and loyalty for power and pelf. Come to think of it, all four parties were brazen and shameless, but BJP behaved with maximum impunity.

No popular movement has been unleashed to protest this trend. India’s middle class scoffs at corruption in general, but is selective on political corruption. The venerable Anna Hazare, the anti-graft movement hero six years ago, hailing from the same Maharashtra, is today silent and ignored.

Maharashtra’s changed political line-up has blurred the secular-communal divide. An aggressive “Hindu nationalist” Shiv Sena is being embraced by the NCP, the Congress, the Samajwadi and others. Keen to beat back a marauding BJP, the secularists (this term is getting blurred) have embraced Sena despite its record of regional chauvinism and its avowed “Hindu nationalism” that is more aggressive and regressive than the BJP.

The BJP-Sena split has raised new worries in influential quarters. The caste factor has always kept a pluralist Hindu society divided. Lord Meghnad Desai, the British peer and an avid Modi fan, laments: “If two Hindu nationalist parties cannot agree on a power-sharing coalition because of the Brahmin/non-Brahmin difference, what hope is there for a Hindu Rashtra?”

The Maharashtra events are a resounding slap on the faces of Modi and Shah. Their template of being the modern-day Chanakyas has taken a hit. Their ‘nationalism’ platform aggressively selling their Kashmir initiative and labeling its critics ‘traitors’ did not bring enough seats. Local issues and regional parties mattered. Besides unemployment, farm distress is a serious issue in Maharashtra.  

The Pawars are a dynasty, the reason why Ajit the rebel, turned prodigal. Now Pawar sups with another dynasty, the Thackerays and the oldest dynasty of them all, the Congress’ Gandhis.

This is Pawar’s moment, thanks to the BJP’s Maharashtra folly. India’s increasingly one-sided political discourse has been seriously breached with Pawar’s emergence. Although ageing and ailing, he has a stature around whom a leader-less Opposition, particularly the Congress, can build its future campaign against the BJP. That is, provided they sink their egos — a big ‘if’ in Indian context.

Road for this has been paved in Maharashtra, the second-largest state that elects 48 Lok Sabha members, next only to Uttar Pradesh. Equally important is the fact that the state, despite numerous flaws, remains India’s richest and its capital is also India’s principal financial/ commercial hub. Losing Maharashtra is the biggest blow the BJP has suffered since 2014.

Maharashtra has a chief minister in Uddhav Thackeray, 59, who has had zero experience in governance. He has remained under the shadow of his father, late Balasaheb, who founded and built a party with a chauvinistic agenda and resorts to strong-arm tactics. India Inc. couldn’t be happy by this development fearing political instability and the resultant damage to an already slowdown-hit economy. 

The new combine will have to battle and rein in their several inner contradictions and with Pawar playing the ‘Pitamaha’, ensure that they do not overwhelm governance.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Kashmir is about Pakistan’s angry campaign at home and abroad to India’s reorganizing Jammu and Kashmir’s territory within its control, ending the entity that is the basis of dispute. It’s a long story, unlikely to conclude anytime soon.

Kartarpur is where Sikhism’s founder, Guru Nanak Devji spent his last 18 years. His 550^th birth anniversary provided a happy aside to the perennially hostile India-Pakistan relationship. Despite mistrust and numerous obstacles, the neighours laid a corridor for the faithful to pay obeisance at the iconic gurdwara.

Pakistan grabbed a great opportunity at peace diplomacy against an India increasingly ready to respond tit-for-tat. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, called it the Berlin Wall Moment. Except for hardliners on both sides, this is universally appreciated.

But then comes along Pakistani film Kaaf Kangna, depicting how Pakistan currently perceives India and Indians, to give them “moonh-tod jwab”.

The film’s trailer, released amidst Kartarpur preparations, has an ‘item’ number showing drunken Sikh characters dancing with an assortment of sadhus, some sporting Gandhi caps, religious motifs – and daggers and liquor bottles. To leave none in doubt, the song begins with ‘India’. It’s poor show, in poor taste.

Actress Neelum Muneer told Dawn newspaper (October 24, 2019) that she did the ‘raunchy’ item number “probably my first and last”, only “because it is an ISPR project.”

ISPR, the Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services Public Relations, defended the trailer, available on YouTube, and the film, declaring it was okay to depict the dancers “since they are Indians.”

Pakistani critic Haiya Bokhari writes that “bank-rolled by ISPR, KK is Pakistan’s answer to Bollywood’s jingoistic movies, a plethora of which we have been subjected to over the years.” (Pakistan has banned them all).

She pans this Indian-girl-meets-Pakistani-boy film as “a celebration of stereotypes… that can only be described as inspired by Ekta Kapoor’s over the top soaps on Star Plus.”

Inevitably, the Indian angle creeps in. Pakistani theatres run on Bollywood films and audiences avidly watch them in relatively peaceful times.

That being so, one hopes, someday, for Pakistani response to Bollywood’s My Name is Khan, Bajrangi Bhaijaan or Veer Zara. The first opposes global Islamphobia, the other two, high on human values, carry friendship messages to Pakistani people.

Contradictions or not, all three issues listed above are a relief, away from Pakistan’s political shenanigans. On them the military-civil leaderships certainly seem “on the same page.”

Indeed, they compel re-working of the old ‘AAA’ theory — that Pakistan is governed by Allah, America and Army – not necessarily in that order. For, neither ‘Allah’ nor America defines the power structure of Pakistan. That power lies entirely with its Army — an Army that has a nation — to tweak another old theory. 

Pakistan’s contemporary history repeats itself. Situations differ, politicians come and go, but the Army is constant.

On December 10, 2000, then military ruler Pervez Musharraf issued a pardon to Nawaz Sharif who he had deposed and allowed him to travel to Saudi Arabia. Earlier, too, in 1993, Nawaz had to resign following differences with then Army Chief.

Last Tuesday, almost 19 years after the Saudi exile, a seriously sick Nawaz travelled out of prison to Britain for urgent medical treatment. The government blocked it for several days despite alarming diagnosis, insisting that he furnish indemnity equal to Rupees 7.5 billion he is accused of having embezzled.

The let-go occurred amidst much criticism. Perhaps, the ‘miltablishment’ as celebrated journalist Najam Sethi calls it, did not want Nawaz’s blood on its hands.

To be fair technically, Nawaz’s third exit is not through a military coup, but by a court order under a civilian dispensation.  

The Army, of course, was not and is not directly involved. But even a child knows it is there. In 2017, Nawaz had to resign after the Supreme Court, without even trying to prove the many corruption charges against him, simply found his ‘intents’ bad and jailed him.

The Army thus engineered Nawaz’s ouster by remote control and then through electoral engineering brought Imran Khan to power.

Another repeat of history is underway in the form of dharna. Imran, who had staged Pakistan’s longest siege, is facing one, organized exactly the way he had done against Nawaz in 2014.

Imran’s had lasted 126 days amidst unseemly sights of thousands of men living, eating and even defecating in that VIP zone. 

On the last day’s afternoon, a mysterious phone call came. Khan’s emissaries rushed to the Army’s General Headquarters. Ostensibly, they were asked to lift the siege. It was all over by that evening.

The National Assembly debated it. On a cue from the Army, lawmakers criticized Khan without naming him and let Nawaz off with a warning.

Post-Nawaz-2 exit had come another dharna by Maulana Khadim Husain Rizvi of Tehrik-e-Labbaik, a hardline Islamic group. Six people were killed in the same VIP zone. When the government ‘requested’ the Army for troops to counter Rizvi, the latter insisted that the government “hold talks” with the protestors. A minister lost his job.      

The current dharna, on since October 27, is staged by Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman, chief of a Jamiat-Ulama-e-Islami (JuI) faction. Again, the VIP zone witnesses water supply by civic authorities to meet the protesters’ biological requirements. Water floods the drain-less roads. And Pakistan boasts of being the cradle of Indus Valley Civilization that had drainage system!   

Always in the military’s good books, Maulana Fazl doesn’t blame the Army, but insists, like Khan did about the 2013 polls, that the 2018 election was ‘stolen’.

Definitely a show of strength, however, dharna is a no-go. Fazl has had to change tack after Nawaz’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and Bhutto/Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) withdrew after marking a token presence. This was after the ISPR chief, Major General Asif Ghafoor, formally warned the Opposition. The Army supports the Khan Government, but with an implied warning to improve performance.

Actually, the League was awaiting relief for Nawaz. And PPP, going by speculation in and outside Pakistan, thinks it is Bilawal Bhutto’s turn to earn the Army’s favour.

Like Nawaz, Asif Zardari, a former President, is also in jail for graft charges. It’s medieval times’ politics.

This is the usual merry-go-round that the Army plays. Make no mistake – each political character mentioned here has been played up or banished, depending upon circumstances and the military’s preferences.  

Nawaz was groomed by Zia ul Haq. He lost when Benazir, too, made peace with the Army after Zia, who had deposed and then got her father Zulfiqar Bhutto hanged, died in a mysterious air accident. Musharraf tried to make peace with Benazir. But opposed to a woman ruling a Muslim nation, Saudis sent back Nawaz to contest 2008 election.

Benazir was assassinated in December 2007, allegedly by a militant group, but also allegedly at Musharraf’s behest. She named Brig Ijaz Shah, in writing, to Musharraf and alerted British media about the impending attack on her. It happened. The officer charged, Brig Ijaz Shah, is today Pakistan’s Interior Minister.  

How the Army, its chief, General Qamar Bajwa having secured a three-year extension moves, will decide Pakistan’s fate.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

While announcing that it was not joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) “for now”, India has rightly indicated that it was postponing the decision. It must join, sooner than later, if it wants to play a leading role in its region, now billed as “Indo-Pacific.”

It had rejected overtures to work with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) due to cold war compulsions and took long to catch up. It cannot now afford such delays.

This month it declined to be part of the 15-nation trade bloc — of the 10 Asean members, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, stating the deal disadvantages its services and agrarian sectors.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has always juggled the domestic with regional and global to stay popular at home and seek popularity abroad. In deciding to keep out of the RCEP, he has achieved the first, but may lose out on the latter.

In explaining the eleventh-hour decision in terms of Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘talisman’, he has not just “helped the poorest” hit by a faltering economy, but also the rich and powerful farm, trade and industries lobbies and the equally powerful conservatives within his political fold.

These very forces that have selectively made reforms difficult have also rallied against RCEP. There is no denying the collective sigh of relief. Even for Modi, as of now, there are no political dividends to be garnered by unsettling the economic community already harassed by the economy’s slowdown. But he must deal with them medium term, if not short, and not wait long-term.

It’s a play-safe. It’s not that the Modi Government has shied away from taking risky, even controversial, decisions. Some have not worked. This is being written, by the way, on the third anniversary of the November 2016 demonetization. Its contribution to the present state of the economy is significant. Unsurprisingly, Moody’s has scaled down the Indian economy’s assessment from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’.

The public discourse in the run-up to the Bangkok meet when RCEP was concluded changed by the day, even by the hour. Confusion prevailed whether Modi would be doing right. In the forefront were his ardent supporters who rooted for RCEP when he left for Bangkok and called names to previous governments. They quickly changed sides when India stayed out.

Indeed, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal was the worst-hit, having stuck his neck out repeatedly as his job demands that. He could have said RCEP is off, for the time being, and saved more blushes in future.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Goyal’s principal target, who opposed joining RCEP, may enjoy vindication of sorts. Protectionism comes easy to all while dealing with India’s complex politico-economic situation.

To be fair, her party’s Manmohan Singh Government had in 2010 pushed through a key Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the Asean despite severe opposition from three Kerala ministers who feared severe economic crises back home.

That FTA’s success, although partial, helped the Modi Government to aggressively re-configure Narasimha Rao Government’s “Look East Policy” into “Act East Policy”. What happens to the AEP with RCEP rejected needs watching.

A difficult decision though, it exposes India’s inability to affect domestic reforms that would make production competitive. It also indicates shrinking of economic space for maneuvering and of succumbing to domestic compulsions, both political and economic.

One can argue that the economic environment isn’t conducive to RCEP. It may result in higher imports in the short term. India suffers a cost disadvantage in energy, logistics and capital.

The Indian economy is really in the grip of a slowdown, and the country’s entry into RCEP at such a time would have caused significant pain. It may have meant more industrial distress. And it could have caused more jobs to be lost at a time when enough are definitely not being created. Manufacturing is in a mess, services sector is not growing fast enough, and agriculture continues to be at the mercy of external elements and internal inherent problems.

But then postponing the inevitable is not the solution. Now that it has decided, India can use this breathing gap to shape up things.

Coming to the brass tacks, China is the real fear factor behind the decision. India is worried at the prospect of being flooded by cheap Chinese imports, some routed through the other RCEP signatories, others through neighbours Nepal and Myanmar.

India is also concerned about the lack of adequate safeguards, some of them justifiable. For instance, the Asean-China Free Trade Area agreement, signed in 2002, has benefitted China much more than it has the Asean countries. India already has a huge $50-billion trade deficit with China, which is two-thirds of its deficit with the RCEP grouping as a whole.

The question is, should India just stall and escape or brace up to take on China? It is out of the world’s largest free-trade block. David has yielded space to Goliath.

By not signing the deal, India has missed the opportunity to be part of global supply chains, and may miss some trade opportunities in the region — a not-so-easy trade-off for a country that has grown its economy the fastest when exports have done well.

Like it or not, rejecting RCEP gives India’s “five trillion economy” and “Make in India” quests a setback, not just psychologically, but also economically and politically. Investors from the new grouping’s members may be wary and traders would need to deal with India bilaterally.

It is a mis-step in international terms in one’s own region that is being vacated by Trump’s America. The Indo-US relations have been marked by closeness that is not always cozy.  India has willy-nilly joined an isolationist U.S. in the last year’s Trump’s presidency. Will it change tack should a future American administration revert to a global approach?

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Why talk of a film made 60 years ago that was a super-flop?

Because it would be trite to measure a world classic in terms of the revenue earned.

Kaagaz Ke Phool (Paper Flowers) was released in August 1959. With all its flaws — and they were many — it remains one of the most admired and discussed in Indian cinema.

In 2002, Sight and Sound, the venerable magazine of the British Film Institute, ranked Kaagaz… 160th among the greatest films ever made. Some others have ranked it higher. In Bollywood, it turns up on all lists as one of the best Hindi films of all time, among the top 10 if not the top five.

It was removed after a week or two after its release in the few theatres it was shown. Impatient viewers, the story goes, pelted the screen with stones in New Delhi’s (now closed down) Regal theatre.

Yet, it is talked about with the same enthusiasm as Mughal-e-Azam, made a year later, the magnificent 16th century love story of Akbar the Great, his rebellious son Salim and the latter’s love Anarkali, a court retainer.

As a student, I repeated seeing ‘Kaagaz…’ within 24 hours, spending meagre pocket money. I remember selling some old books and magazines to pay for a third viewing.

Regarded by many as India’s equivalent of Sunset Boulevard, Kaagaz… became a commercial hit, not when released, not at home, but at its 1984 re-release in Germany, France and Japan.

By that time Guru Dutt, the protagonist and others who had put life into the movie, had passed away. Waheeda Rehman, whom Dutt turns into a star but courts controversy, is the only key player alive. 

Dutt acted, produced, wrote the story and directed it. It is a long flashback about a famous film director, Suresh Sinha. He meets Shanti, played by Waheeda, on a rainy night. By a stroke of creative inspiration, he makes her the heroine in his next film. Shanti becomes a star.

Their proximity causes gossip. Scandalised at school, Suresh’s daughter confronts Shanti. Heartbroken, she abandons her career.

His personal life is a mess since he married above his station. His wife and her aristocratic family of British India’s civil service are contemptuous of his profession.

Suresh turns to alcohol, loses everything. “Self-respect is the only thing I am left with,” he tells Shanti who entreats him to return to film-making. Suresh returns to the grand studio, only to sit on the Director’s chair and die.

I think the film was ahead of its time. Its theme was too radical for the Indian audiences of the 1950s, used to simpler plots and storylines. The underlying tones of the film were complex.

A wife being the villain seemed unacceptable when ‘Kaagaz…’ was widely viewed as autobiographical. Reel life and real life got mixed up in public mind. Dutt’s real-life wife Geeta, a renowned singer and a picture of grace and beauty, received much unsought-for sympathy.

It was a technological landmark, the first to be shot in 70mm CinemaScope. But that was also its undoing. India then had less than 10 theatres with wide screen. With such constraints, commercial failure was foregone. Yet, it was critically acclaimed and won several awards.

In that era of black-and-white posters, it had the two lead actors together, with a rose in red.

Ironically, 51 years after filming Kaagaz… in 2010, the long-forgotten Murthy, at 86, was honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award. This was after film analyst Gautam Kaul projected him as a freedom fighter who had gone to jail before joining films. Murthy remains the only ‘technical’ man to win a Phalke.  

His black-and-white photography wove Kaifi Azmi’s lyrics into sheer poetry. S D Burman’s music, capturing the pathos, was sublime.

Many I know came out of the theatre crying. Six decades on, the impact on one’s sensitivities is the same. Songs “Bichhde sabhi baari baari” and “Waqt ne diya” are timeless.

In the post-War II era of Indian cinema, when stars called the shots, Guru Dutt, like Raj Kapoor, was an actor-director. Ironically, both Kapoor and Dutt, when they made autobiographicals, failed to woo audiences. Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker and Dutt’s Kaagaz… were super-flops initially. Yet, they remain among the most debated films.

Although Hollywood’s impact was huge, Kaagaz… remains essentially Indian. It was unique in an era when, to the world outside, Indian cinema was more about mythology, of endless songs and dances and about social issues for which the West had neither knowledge, nor patience to comprehend.

His transparent concern about his creativity and his total honesty in narrating his personal traumas make his films unique.

Alas, Dutt’s master-touch was missing in its screenplay. Kaagaz… dragged. Late film historian Firoze Rangoonwalla records: “It was shot very lovingly. But the subject and its treatment made it a dismal failure.”

Dutt was so shattered at the failure of his opus that he lost the appetite for experimentation.

His next film, Chaudahavin Ka Chand, was a love triangle in the north Indian Muslim milieu, though alluring, was ‘safe’.

Distributors who had lost money on ‘Kaagaz…” refused to release the new film unless Dutt made advance payments. This hurt him.

A story goes that when he was haggling with them, a telegram arrived from Los Angeles. A copy of ‘Kaagaz’ had been taken to Hollywood by Dutt’s cinematographer V.K. Murthy, who had earlier worked there and earned credits for, among other films, Karl Foreman’s The Guns of Navarone.

Murthy showed Kaagaz… to a select audience that included the legendary Cecil B. DeMille, maker of The Ten Commandments.

On receiving DeMille’s congratulatory telegram, Dutt, defying his financiers, sold the film to a new set of distributors. It was a super-hit that made Dutt solvent again. But he could not salvage Kaagaz.

Abrar Alvi, who scripted both films, called Dutt “the Hamlet of Indian Cinema, a restless man but genuine and sincere to the core”.

Dutt made outstanding films. But after Kaagaz, he did not take chances with technology and themes and did not take the directorial credit.

He died young, at 39, his many dreams unfulfilled, leaving behind the image of a tormented soul, on and off the screen.

Kaagaz… may not move the average present-day audiences used to fast-paced cinema with loud music. But it would strike a chord among the discerning of all ages, particularly the university-going young. It’s a cult film.

Dutt remains an inspiration for many contemporary filmmakers who combine creativity with commercialism and meet the demands of a busy, impatient and demanding audience exposed to world cinema that flocks to the multiplex theatres.

They do make good films today. But minus Dutt’s passion and sensitivities, whether they can make another ‘Kaagaz…’ is doubtful.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Saurav Ganguly, one of India’s legendary captains heading Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI), the world’s richest cricketing body, has raised so much hype and hope that one almost forgets that his tenure will last no more than nine months.

Know a bit about him before coming to what he would have to, or could, do.

Good, elegant left-hand batsman, he earned his place with a century in his maiden test. But his progress in the national eleven was uneven, being dropped more than once, till he steadied himself in 1996. He owed it to Greg Chappell with whom he later fell out.

Handsome, smart and rich, he has clear-cut ideas about cricket and life, says veteran sports writer V. Srivatsa. Ganguly experienced cricket administration as Bengal Cricket Association’s chief for four years. But his new role is national and international. 

Old-timers know him to be a bit lazy who avoided rigorous fitness sessions, including calisthenics. From a well-off family, he would show reluctance to carry water and drinks, an old cricketing tradition and practice, to fellow-players on the field.

Like many other cricket stars with filmy connections, he was reportedly linked to actress Naghma before settling down in life with childhood beau Donna.

An articulate man, he speaks like a cricketer. He has a knack of carrying people with him. Yet, he would have to deal with critics and former colleagues whom he had criticized in the past.

He is ambitious. When elected BCA chief, he had declared that someday, he would head the BCCI.     

Symbolisms about his election include his being the first cricketer at the top of the country’s game 65 years after Maharajah of Vizianagaram aka ‘Vizzie’. He has charisma and clean image.   But that may not suffice when he stares at a tough combination of overwhelming domestic issues and new external challenges.     

“I don’t enjoy the word ‘control’ (in the full form of BCCI). It’s about proper functioning. We have to be in the thick of things because, at the end of the day, the responsibility has been put on us to get things going in the right direction.”

However, there are nagging doubts that it could be business as usual, despite his promise of “a new beginning”, doing things “the way I feel is best for BCCI, with no compromise on credibility and corruption free.”   

Forget the game he played — and he played it well. This is his most challenging hour. He takes over from Committee of Administration (COA). Formed by the Supreme Court, it ran the Board for nearly three years.

The net result of BCCI’s controversial quarantine is that neither the apex court, nor the Committee could eliminate the deeply-entrenched vested interests. This underscores the reality, though not exclusive to India but certainly in excess, that dynasty is the defining principle be it politics, sports, cinema or business and industry.

Ganguly has BCCI’s a new constitution to abide by and a set of fresh office-bearers for a team that is composed largely of proxies of the very people whose actions had invited conflict of interest charges and of direct role in match-fixing, among other offences that had provoked the court to sack a BCCI president and appoint the COA.

Some of these worthies triumphantly entered the BCCI Headquarters minutes after the COA members had left to be photographed with Ganguly.

Feeble hope is being nursed as Ganguly had faced a similarly turbulent situation on the field when he took over the captaincy. Then the game was confronted with match-fixing scandal. But the times are decidedly more complex now.

For one, the political interests were multi-party earlier; today it’s single-party play. Bureaucrats are out, for now, but powerful trade and industry interests remain. Seeking to make it a players’ game is chasing a mirage.

This is because besides immense glamour and power that BCCI and cricket management brings, there is money.  The Board will cross the Rs 13,000 crore-mark when the figures for financial year 2018-19 are out.  

Speaking of money, what India’s Test caps got in the 1950s and 1960s for playing for five gruelling days, drawing many matches, losing some and winning a few, can’t buy even a single meal today. The flavor is single-day T20. The Board earnings are millions of times more, hence the player’s payments are also in eight digits.

There are no princes today, but those who play the game are no less in terms of riches. Endorsements add to their coffers.   The BCCI is a highly corporatized body and the state associations are also rich and thriving. For, India has the players, the infrastructure, large audiences and corporate support through advertising.

Unable to control them though, the governments back up their cricket bodies to the hilt and engage in jostling in boardrooms and tournaments to have their say. The culture is spreading. The gentlemen’s game is no longer gentlemanly.

The lure of the game and the money it brings is spreading globally. Yesterday’s minnows like Bangladesh are significant players. Conflict-ridden Afghanistan has created cricketing oases of entertainment. India is helping the Maldives with a cricket stadium and possibly, a team of its own.

Diplomacy cannot be far behind. India beware — the hitherto absent China factor has emerged. China organized and hosted triangular matches with Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

Dominating the T20 through IPL, India is working to revive the five-day Test cricket that has yielded to the quick single-day matches. To surmount the 13-hour time gap, it is likely to become a day-and-night affair.   

Veteran cricket writer Ayaz Memon notes that while Indian cricket—particularly in the five-day format—is at its zenith, spectator attendance is falling. He wants India to take the lead in making Test “something to be savoured” and made “fantastically worthwhile”. People today have many other entertainment avenues. He supports the “World Test Cricket Championship” that he says India has “ridiculously spurned,” and wants Ganguly to reverse this.

Ganguly’s focus will be domestic cricket. He has acknowledged the overwhelming importance of Virat Kohli, currently having a long victory spell, by declaring that Kohli is the “most important man in Indian cricket.” He has nixed the idea of dual captaincy.  

It is unclear if Ganguly will become BCCI’s representative at the ICC. With Shashank Manohar as the incumbent ICC chairman, egos and ideas could clash. But money makes the mare go. Ganguly wants to ensure that the BCCI gets its monetary due. “India is to get $372 million from the ICC in the five-year cycle,” he says.       

His first task would be to form a Cricket Advisory Committee. But getting credible cricketers has posed a challenge due to the stringent Conflict of Interest rules.

“It (Conflict of Interest) has to change,” Ganguly has said. This has been a major bone of contention for cricketers, both present and former. Ganguly himself fell foul of the norms when he was wearing multiple hats at one time.

Will the rules be tweaked? The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

It is a sign of the present times that jubilations that followed last week’s announcement of Nobel have been the shortest. Criticism began almost immediately after Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee was declared co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Sciences.

Social media critics have called him a fellow-traveller, if not an outright communist, in the best Bengal tradition. Some have questioned his middle name given by his Maharashtrian mother. Others say the “much-married” man got the Nobel for marrying a Christian. Actually, it is his criticism of the Modi Government’s economic policies. Its Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has labeled Banerjee “Left-leaning”.    

Abhijit and wife and co-winner Esther Duflo, a French-American, are unperturbed and hope to continue working with various Indian state governments irrespective of their political orientation, including those ruled by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

They are in the company of the 1998 Nobel laureate, also an eminent economist, Amartya Sen. Conferred Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour by an earlier BJP-led government, Sen also had a prolonged ‘honeymoon’ with the Manmohan Singh Government. But political and ideological battle lines are sharp now.   

Banerjee criticized the 2016 demonetization, saying he never understood the logic behind such a drastic step, adding it was being viewed with “bewilderment” in serious academic circles.

He joined 107 well-known economists to assail the tendency “to suppress uncomfortable data” during Modi 1.0 (2014-2019) and sought restoration of access and integrity to public statistics. Their joint statement in March came after the government had held back publication of job data. The job situation has only worsened since.

Banerjee has advised the current policymakers in cryptic terms: Don’t waste time worrying about monetary policy as the economy is in a “tailspin”. Instead, find ways to revive demand to lift the sinking economy.

Post-Nobel announcement, he told a press conference called by his current employers, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge, US, that the need of the hour was to pump money into the economy “especially in the hands of the poor”.

Banerjee’s comments come in the backdrop of concerns about a protracted slowdown, with India’s GDP growth moderating to five percent in the first quarter and the index of industrial production slipping to 1.1 percent for August. The aviation, passenger vehicles, telecom and banking sectors are facing rough times.

Gita Gopinath, Chief Economic Advisor of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), another high profile Indian-American economist, also gives similar advise to the Modi Government whose political management of the economy has forced out two governors of the Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central government.

Unsurprisingly, Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her US visit took pot shots at critics all-around and unmistakably, at former premier Manmohan Singh who unleashed economic reforms.  

It is politics driving economics. Banerjee and Duflo had devised the “Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY), a poverty-alleviation measure that Singh’s Congress Party had promised during this year’s elections that it lost. Unsurprisingly, again, Goyal has declared that like the Congress, this scheme was also “rejected by the people of India.”

However, the Modi Government continues with many of the Congress’ welfare measures by merely tweaking them and changing labels to its own heroes. Actually, when it comes to anti-poverty measures, all parties are guilty.

To be fair to the Nobel-winning couple, the dole it recommended under NYAY was Rs 2,500 per family per month. But the Congress hiked it to Rs 6,000. Banerjee told a TV channel: “There is always a little bit of a willingness in India to announce policies because they sound good or have a political purpose.”

He told a TV channel that India’s economy is “on a shaky ground” and that the government should do pilots of policy initiatives carefully. He also suggested formulating policies that work rather than “imposing those which the government imagines will work.”

This not-easy-to-dismiss advice comes from those who have not just worked on theories, howsoever realistic and relevant, but have actually worked on development models in India and other countries. The Nobel is for “experimental approach to poverty alleviation” that includes a randomized control trial (or RCT).

Banerjee, with Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan, founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) in 2003. They have  concentrated on researching how policy interventions like de-worming programmes or after-school hours tutoring for first-generation learners can help reduce poverty. Their work on a body of experimental economics work has helped developing countries in Africa, South and Southeast Asia.

Then, why is this criticism? A good part of it, against Banerjee especially, comes because he is too contemporary to be placed on a high pedestal.

An alumnus of Kolkata’s Presidency University (then a college under University of Calcutta) from where Sen had also graduated, Banerjee preferred the vibrant Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) to sedate Delhi School of Economics for his Masters. He shunned all political party-affiliated students’ bodies but was indeed, Left-leaning and did argue, agitate and go to jail. 

At 27, he earned his doctorate from Harvard University. Duflo, his wife, co-researcher and former student, is 47, the youngest and only the second woman to win a Nobel in Economics. She hopes her success will inspire many women.

With Banerjee, she wrote ‘Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty’, which won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2011.

Michael Kremer, the third co-winner, is the Gates Professor of Developing Societies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the economist has similarly worked on health and agricultural interventions to fight poverty. In sum, the trio, with 400 personnel of J-PAL, has done considerable, solid, work on anti-poverty interventions.

That they’ve been awarded the highest honour in the discipline is recognition of the fact that there’s still hope to fight poverty without succumbing to the polarizing debate between Right and Left-wing populism.

This comes when welfare-ism, although essential, has been found to be wasteful, breeding sloth among the beneficiaries and corruption among those who distribute the largesse in different forms. 

Taking the larger picture from them, it is essential to know what causes poverty and how poor behave. For, although the global economy has grown faster than ever under capitalism, millions have failed to reap its benefits. Capitalism’s defence, especially in a democracy, is that it is possible to help the have-nots by making policies directed towards them. Many such policies have been made and implemented. Yet, as the Hindustan Times points out, poverty persists, and so does inequality as growth models are doubted.

There is no quick-fix. Banerjee, for one, favours higher taxes at higher incomes. The tax system should deal with inequality. But higher growth doesn’t necessarily breed inequality. No economic law indicates a tradeoff between the two.

All this may be ‘Greek’ to the political class across the world. But it needs to be understood and imbibed if they genuinely want to “serve the people.”The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com