Author: Mahendra Ved

Rising COVID Cases In China Is Concerning: Poonawala | Lokmarg

India’s Vaccine Victory Carries A Parsi Punch

By Mahendra Ved

Smarting at China for long over several issues – border tensions that have compelled, among other things, minimizing of economic ties, boosting of “all-weather friend” Pakistan, being opposed at diplomatic forums and being surrounded in the region south of the Himalayas – India has found a sure and significant counter in the shape of vaccine against Coronavirus.

Even if small and short-term, it is smart, and has the world taking note – a world that is suffering from the pandemic. The Narendra Modi Government deserves full marks for launching “vaccine diplomacy” when confronted by a myriad issues. That includes being among the top five nations among the Corona-hit.

Its aspirations to become vishwa guru – teacher to the world – may seem tall and are contentious, even at home. But this one, emerging as vishwa chikitsak – doctor to the world, at least a good part of it, and partly, is eminently achievable and is already underway.

Beginning January 16, countries far and near are benefitting on something they direly need. That brings goodwill – hopefully, also blessings from individuals and families those who get cured. A vaccine is tika or teeka. It also carries several other connotations. The one that fits in here is tilak, the mark on Indian forehead to depict success, with humility. And why not, when India has already been the wold’s largest vaccine-maker?

Five million doses of Oxford University-invented Astra Zeneca vaccine, produced by Serum Institute of India (SII) are being gifted to Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Cambodia and Seychelles. Each of them is in dire need of the vaccine due to high incidence, and each one is hit economically by the pandemic. Inoculation began within three days of the vaccine being flown by special flights.

This has been India’s traditional area of regional influence where China, with its deep pockets and offers of huge projects has grabbed in the recent years.

Predictably, given perennially adversarial relations, India has ignored Pakistan that has yet to get a firm Chinese commitment of Sinovac. It is in queue for free doses while awaiting Astra Zeneca and Russia’s Sputnik for “emergency use.”

ALSO READ: A Vaccine Of Hope

India has raced ahead when China has yet to begin because of the uncertainties attached to its vaccine trials. Indeed, there is also the psychological factor about China being accused – real or propaganda – of causing Covid-19 at Wuhan and as it spread, not informing the world.

This is India’s defining moment. Besides goodwill and prestige, it is good business also, coming when its economy is struggling to recover from the lows experienced long before Covid-19 struck last year. Seven Indian companies are racing to produce vaccines and Covaxin of the state sector Bharat Biotech is already being administered.

Thanks to the virus, the Indian pharmaceutical sector, slated to export worth USD 25 billion by end-March, can expect to export much more.

To some of the neighbours, including Bangladesh that is to get three million doses for free as a goodwill gesture, commercial exports are scheduled to let the SII recover its investment and effort.  

India has contracted to sell SII-made Covishield to Brazil, Morocco, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia. Flights carrying the precious cargo took off to these countries on January 22. Order books are full to conduct exports to more nations.

India plans to export vaccines to the other poor and middle-income countries of Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia as part of an arrangement with GAVI, the vaccine alliance. This should boost its and soft-power on even a larger scale than yoga.

It has not been easy, however. A major pharma producer, despite its growing strength, India has faced an undercurrent of propaganda in the global market about the reliability of its medicines after the US Food and Drugs regulator sent out adverse notices.

Emerging as the pharmaceutical powerhouse of the region has increased the reliability of India’s healthcare sector on which its neighbours are heavily dependent. This could further bolster medical tourism.

ALSO READ: ‘We Moved 1.1cr Vaccines In 24 Hours’

The least-talked part of this vaccine story is the role of the tiny Parsi community of fire-worshipping Zoroastrians, to which SII’s owner, Cyrus Poonawala and his CEO son Adar belong.

A story on social media that remains unconfirmed is that of Cyrus offering the Bombay Parsi Panchayat to reserve over 60,000 doses of Covishield for the community. Ratan Tata, head of the house of Tata, politely declined: “we are Indian first, then Parsis. We will wait our turn in line.”

This is the modesty for which the Parsis are well-known. But there is no escaping some details, even allowing for an element of exaggeration.

+ SII’s Covishield is stored in glass vials produced by a Parsi firm Schott Kaisha, owned by Rishad Dadachanji.

+ They are transported with dry ice manufactured by another Parsi, Farokh Dadabhoy.

+ They are delivered by Tata Motors Trucks.

+ Vaccine batches transported by GoAir of Jeh Wadia and stored in refrigerators made by Godrej, both renowned Parsi family enterprises.

Despite being a miniscule fraction of the 1.3 billion Indian population, the Parsis have never asked for Minority benefits. They have always punched above their class and the numbers.

Literate, industrious and not averse to leaving shores unlike the traditional Hindus, they became indispensable to Britain’s global reach. One of their tasks was carrying opium to China. But they also fought the British: Dadabhai Naoroji, Dinshaw Mehta, Bhicaiji Cama were among them.

They responded to overtures from the Mughal kings and later to the early British settlers, taking up shipping, banking, construction and brokerage. They were the pioneers who built a half of Mumbai.

It would take several pages to list only the names of Parsis who have made an outstanding contribution to independent India’s economy, defence, atomic energy, music, literature, science, sports and cinema. Their reach is now global.

Way back in 2012, a top community official told the Mumbai High Court that its definition of a poor Parsi was one who earned less than Rs 90,000 per month. This is many times more than India’s per capita annual income of $1,876.53 or Rupees 136,794.

Is the community India’s richest? It does have poor members. But then think of India’s Tata, Godrej, Pallonji, Wadia, Avari and Bhandara of Pakistan, Lord Karan Bilimoria of Britain – to name only the industrialists and businessmen.

Almost all of them have institutionalised philanthropy giving billions away. Although all faiths preach piety and charity, the Parsis (“thy name is charity”) lead. It is riches well earned, well spent. It will be tragic if their population dwindles to almost zero by the end of this century.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Will Covid Crisis Create A Better World?

By Mahendra Ved

It is sad that when India is poised to fight back Covid-19 pandemic with the help of a vaccine it has produced in collaboration with the British, it will not be hosting Prime Minister Boris Johnson for this year’s Republic Day celebrations.

The visit was not intended by either nation as a ceremonial, goodwill-good talk event. The media in both countries had painted a bright collaborative picture despite the pandemic and the economic woes that it has accelerated and despite criticism of their respective leaderships in their respective homes and elsewhere.

To the British media, Sean O’Grady of The Independent for one, India was (and remains) an ideal British destination as an economic powerhouse that could help Britain post-Brexit to reach out globally. This has also been the trend in much of the Indian thinking, although Brexit itself is considered a disastrous move.

Much cooperation was in store, on several fronts, and this should continue, visit or no visit.

Going beyond bilateral issues, and the limited impact they would have in both South Asia and in Europe, it is worth stressing on the oodles of hope that the New Year has brought, but without enough effort to apply the correctives that made last year disastrous worldwide.

The New Year has ushered in or reinforced some supreme ironies that are not likely to go away. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, is that of the United States, the most powerful nation with the best of doctors, medicines, hospitals with the support of science and technology –and money to buy anything from anywhere – having the highest number of Corona-casualties.

And Johnson, who could have acknowledged the role of the British-found vaccine in India, had to cancel his visit because of the grim turn Corona has taken at home. The Doctor has failed to heal himself.

Many leaders across the world feel that Donald Trump might have won the US presidential polls but for the Covid-19 devastation. But is the man who threatens to “fight like hell” till his last day in office at all sorry or repentant for his deliberate and conscious neglect, and repeated misdirections in fighting the pandemic? Are other leaders across the world, too, who find scapegoats to justify their omissions and commissions on the Corona front ready to mend their ways?

ALSO READ: A Vaccine Of Hope

Trump will go, but Trump-ism survives. The storming of the Capitol by his supporters on his exhortations was an unprecedented, almost unthinkable, challenge to American democracy. It exposed the depths of the divisions that have coursed through the US during Trumps four years in office. This is how democracy dies.

The incident rang alarm bells worldwide for other leaders. It is gratifying that Johnson and India’s Narendra Modi joined other serving and retired heads of government in condemning the storming of the Capitol, pleading that democratic processes be allowed violence-free.

Having talked of the leaders of the ‘greatest’ and the ‘oldest’ democracies with regard to the pandemic, some observations on the performance of the ‘largest’ are essential because India is also the world’s third-highest for Corona deaths. The shock lockdown ordered on March 24 last year gave barely three hours to prepare to 1.3 billion people. Over 40 million migrant labour were displaced and walked hundreds of miles to seek work or deprived of it, to their impoverished homes.

A bulk of them were from Bihar. After a subsequent election victory in the state, Modi cited them as “endorsement of our policy” to fight Corona. Other chief ministers have also hastened to take credit, while glossing over the failures and miseries they have caused. 

A year hence, the government is to begin a study to examine the impact of this world’s largest mass movement caused by job-loss. If not avoidable, it could have at least been managed better.

India was in an economic mess long before Corona exacerbated it. But the blame continues to be placed at the door of the past government that went out of office over six years ago.

The story is similar to Brazil’s Jared Bolsonaro, the Indian Republic Day’s Chief Guest last year, and quite a few others who have used their electoral mandates to ride the rough shod on political critics and non-government bodies among others, and suppressing popular protests. Sadly, sections of bureaucracy, judiciary and media have played the ball with the politicians in power.

It may sound anti-democratic, but give them large majorities in legislatures, and they run berserk. Does the problem lie with leaders and their parties winning popular mandates with massive majority in legislatures? What tempts them to impose personal/ political agenda with potential to divide people?

The largest functioning democracy, India currently has examples of a chief minister building a 900 million palace (Telangana), another razing an entire city and battling courts that question his decisions (Andhra Pradesh) and at least three chief ministers issuing ordinances that penalize marriages among consenting adults, if they are by a Muslim man and a Hindu woman.

They take their cue from New Delhi that has enacted three federal laws on farming, virtually snatching away a subject that is with the states as per the Constitution. How can there be a single federal law in a country of India’s size with its differing weather conditions, water resources, crop patterns and marketing systems?

ALSO READ: ‘World Is Taking Note Of Farmers Protest’

With millions affected, over a hundred thousand farmers have blocked entries to the national capital for the past several weeks. Three scores have died in freezing cold. Talks are dragging on. Notably, the farmer is the only one to produce record quantities of food when India’s industrial output, the service sector and the commercial activity suffered thanks to Covid-19.

In saying all these things, one cannot be ignoring the strong support base such leaders and their governments enjoy. One is the middle class and the other, the corporate sector – both suckers for a ‘strong’ leadership and the political stability that supposedly comes with a popular mandate. All other things do not seem to matter. Modi, at least, continues to enjoy this support, and his party continues to win elections in one state after the other.

India’s middle class embraced the lockdown dutifully and enthusiastically, lighting lamps and clanging food plates. The fleeing migrant worker was a good riddance till his absence was felt. But to its credit, the middle class also organised relief. The lead was taken, not so much by governments overwhelmed by the crisis, but by the NGOs and charities.

Vaccines, both British-found and Indian, may – and must – raise hopes, although Corona is still not going to go away soon. The larger question is: Will this create a semblance of churning, among the leaders and those who place their faith in them by voting them to power, to work for a better world and may be, leave a few good examples for the future generations to emulate?

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

My Years In Parliament House

By Mahendra Ved

I have never been a lawmaker, but am seized by nostalgia now that India’s Parliament Complex is set to go, replaced by another. A parliamentary correspondent for long, I am aware I am not breaching any rules, traditions or Privileges that govern the temple of the world’s largest democracy. I only exercise my right as a citizen, and a voter.

One assumed that members and ministers, parties and governments, come and go, but parliament’s surroundings and its ethos that have evolved over decades will continue forever. But that is not to be.

Designed by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, begun a century back and completed in 1927, it is set for retro-fitting, whatever it eventually means, to accommodate offices and other facilities, allowing more functional space.

There seems little consulting and debate on why it is necessary to demolish what is existing. It is expected to come up, rather hastily, by 2022, to mark 75 years of Independence.

Something is absent. Bhoomi Pujan or ground-breaking was performed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Neither the President who constitutes the Parliament nor the Vice President who is Chairman of the Rajya Sabha were part of the ceremony.

Times are a-changing in India. The plea that the existing structure is very Indian has fallen on deaf ears. It is based on Chausath Yogini Temple in Morena, Madhya Pradesh that Lutyens visited in early 1900s.

But old is gold in some other democracies. The United States Congress premises like the Senate Hall, are over 250 years old. The British Parliament building, over 400 years old, is under repairs and will reopened after five years. These structures were never replaced; only refurbished. 

There are other, equally modern, ways to accommodate more members and offices. An expansion rather than a hugely expensive (Rs 971 crore or $131 million) demolish-and-rebuild course would have sufficed.

ALSO READ: Foundation Laid For New Parliament

The new complex will be bigger, and more modern, we are told. Compared to the present 545-odd, it will have 888 seats in the Lok Sabha, with an option to increase it to 1,224. When is delimitation due? Granting that India’s is the biggest, which other democracy has such large number of lawmakers?

As plans unfold and get concrete shape, literally, the present round structure supported on imposing Gothic pillars will probably go. Incidentally, their number used to be a ‘difficult’ general knowledge (GK) quiz for students and those appearing for competitive examinations. Why, just walking past them has helped lawmakers and officials in frail health keep fit!

A model of new Parliament building

One is not sure if the new 21st century structure will keep the numerous statues and portraits that abound, from Chandragupta Maurya (321-296 BC) to the sages, saints and social reformers down the ages, to contemporary freedom fighters and pioneer parliamentarians. One can only hope they will be stored away safely, and restored with respect due to them.

For the uninitiated, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, the two Houses are where the real action occurs. Issues are debated and legislations are discussed and passed. Before what media report as ‘pandemonium’ became a rule more than exception, attending it was educating. Opposition extracted information during Question Hour despite ministers’ efforts to hold it back.

I am lucky to have reported some of the most memorable speeches. Like Bikaner Maharajah Karni Singh opposing, and Jammu and Kashmir Maharajah Karan Singh supporting the abolition of the privy purses of erstwhile princely states. N K P Salve attacking incumbent premier Morarji Desai for alleged favours to latter’s son. George Fernandes defending the Desai Government, only to switch sides within hours.

Representing a thoroughly depleted opposition, Madhu Dandavate paid a moving tribute to an assassinated Indira Gandhi, mourning that while country had a new premier, Rajiv will never get another mother.

There was no glory, but certainly grace, in defeat the way V P Singh, Chandra Shekhar and Atal Bihari Vajpayee went down after defending their doomed governments.

There were orators like Hiren Mukherjee and Nath Pai who excelled in English and Vajpayee, in Hindi. Sadly, the era of oratory and orators who spoke without malice is long over.

Equally sadly, Parliament’s new plan does not provide for the Central Hall. It is tantamount to kicking off the ladder on which parliamentary democracy has climbed. There seems no place for such sentiments, anyway.

ALSO READ: Modi Govt’s Contempt For Parliament

Jawaharlal Nehru made his “Tryst With Destiny” speech here at the midnight hour heralding the birth of independent India. The Constitution was debated here. After each Lok Sabha election, Leaders of winning party or parties in alliance were elected here.

If exceptions are to be remembered, Acharya Kripalani and Jayaprakash Narayan chose Morarji over others in1977. Initially chosen, Devi Lal, to everyone’s surprise, put his turban on V P Singh’s head in 1989. And in 2004, Sonia Gandhi received applause and rosebuds, but eventually listened to her “inner voice” and passed on the premiership to Manmohan Singh.

Central Hall was where foreign dignitaries, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama among them, addressed Indian parliamentarians. There is no other place where the President of the Republic opens the Budget session each February.

Central Hall has been the veritable gallery of greats of Indian democracy. Where and how 25 portraits from Mahatma Gandhi to Tagore and Netaji Bose to six of the former prime ministers and many opposition stalwarts will find their places? Will the 21st century Parliament leave behind those hallowed traditions of the twentieth? Is the ‘restoration’ going to be selective, as those opposing the new complex fear, with ample justification?

Beyond these ‘formalities’, Central Hall displaced parliament’s “human face”. Sad, again, that this must be talked in the past tense. Ministers and Members would meet here informally and sort out many things that they would be otherwise rigid about; where delicate issues and even stalled business were resolved.

Dubbed India’s most privileged coffee house – also the cheapest – Central Hall was where the media was allowed to join the lawmakers’ adda, to talk informally, gain perspectives, and gather political gossip.

There was mutual respect, even bonhomie. One could see Mamata Banerjee standing respectfully before Somnath Chatterjee who she had defeated in an earlier election. You could discuss with Sharad Pawar a no-no issue like farmers’ suicide in Maharashtra, or cinema with Sushma Swaraj or cricket with Arun Jaitley – even watch an ongoing cricket match on the two TV sets installed, over coffee and toast-butter.

What transpired there could be reported, but without attributing it to the place, unless one wanted to flaunt access to the high and mighty – and boast, as some scribes do, “Oh, I told so-and-so…”

Perhaps, it is just as well that Central Hall will be a thing of the past. Old world charm and some grace are bound to go with it. Like my witnessing opposition stalwart Chandra Shekhar fondly asking Chaudhary Randhir Singh, his erstwhile Congress colleague, “Aap ko Governor banva dein?” Three days later came the announcement: Chaudhary was Governor of Sikkim.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

The Tale Of Two Punjabs

By Mahendra Ved

Viewed from outside, images of India and Pakistan seem closely intertwined, though not always coming across aptly or beautifully. It is hardly surprising that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly confused the ongoing farmers’ agitation in India with some India-Pakistan clash causing tensions.

Thankfully, his confusion did not spell with ‘K’ (for Kashmir) unlike a former British Foreign Minister David Miliband (2007-2010), who read ‘K’ dispute as the ‘Kause’ for the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai. Perceptions formed from a distance can be horribly wrong.

Images get mixed when it comes to the Punjab that straddles India and Pakistan. Canada’s Justine Trudeau who leads a government with several ministers and lawmakers hailing from either Punjab, has felt politically compelled to comment on the farmers’ cause and has drawn flak from the Government of India. He has stood his ground.

Johnson, in spite of a significant population in UK with roots in Punjab, has not taken sides on the farmers’ stir, so far. But he has another task on hand – an SOS from Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to send back his bête noire, thrice-elected – and thrice-ousted – former premier Nawaz Sharif. The Islamabad High Court has declared Nawaz an ‘absconder’.

Khan wants Sharif back since he is misusing, Khan says, the court-granted leave for medical treatment in London. He is upset that Nawaz has been taking on, via video links, the country’s all-powerful military brass for ‘selecting’ Khan to power.

Imran is edgy now that his battle with the opposition’s Pakistan Democratic movement has entered the key Punjab province, with a rally in Multan and another in Lahore on December 13. Clearly, Pakistan is headed for political and constitutional deadlock.

ALSO READ: Pak Army Can’t Be Confined To Barracks

It is unclear if Johnson will oblige Imran. Britain has hosted another fugitive Pakistani politician, Altaf Hussain, for long years. Come to think of it, the once-mighty colonial power cannot ignore happenings in countries it formerly ruled, even if at times confusion confounds the perceptions.

From far or near, it is tempting to draw at this juncture, even if cursorily, some comparisons and contrasts between the two Punjabs. I must begin with a humble disclaimer – I don’t belong to either. So, please forgive any faux pas.

Sharing the waters of five rivers, both the Panj-Nad or Punj-Abs feed their respective nations. Figures on the Pakistan side are staggering. Punjab covers about 69 percent of the total cropped area, contributing a major share in the agricultural economy of the country by providing about 83 percent of cotton, 80 percent of wheat, 97 percent of the fine aromatic rice, 63 percent of sugarcane and 51 percent of maize to the national food production.

The Indian Punjab is the second largest producer of wheat in the country and the third largest of rice. The state accounted for nearly 18 percent of India’s total wheat production and 11 percent of rice production in 2018-19. Haryana produced 12 percent of the country’s wheat output and 4 percent of rice. By contrast, the Indian Punjab is a medium-sized state compared to, say, Uttar Pradesh or Maharashtra. But it remains the largest granary.

They share seasons, and the plentiful and shortages they yield. So despite everything, they share onion to salt, whatever one side falls short of. They could do more, and not just in farm produce. Both send significant numbers to their respective armed forces – that have clashed in at least three conflicts, numerous smaller ones and stand eye ball-to-eyeball.

The Indian Punjab along with Haryana that was carved out of it, sends the highest numbers to the armed forces. On the Pakistan side, the most populous and prosperous province is also militarily the most powerful. One is not being churlish in stating that the Indian soldier enjoys no political clout compared to his all-powerful Pakistani counterpart.

When they are not fighting on the border, sports are the arena for the Punjabis. In the last century when (field) hockey was essentially a South Asian game, India and Pakistan were the traditional rivals competing in the World Cup Hockey, Olympics and other arenas. The players were largely from the two Punjabs and Punjabis from both sides were clashing. Given the Partition background, it used to be life-and-death affair.

In 1960, Indian sprint legend Milkha Singh was persuaded by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to set aside his memories of the Partition era to race against Abdul Khaliq in Pakistan. That remains his “race of a lifetime,” dwarfing his other achievements. In his post-race comment the President Ayub Khan called him “the Flying Sikh.”

Its birthplaces shared by Sialkot and Gurdaspur, vigorous Bhangra is common to both the Punjabs and Punjabis anywhere. But one reads that Basant festival has become less exciting in the current times. Subjected to restrictions, one reads, Lahore does not have kite flying that goes with this festival. 

Bhagat Singh is respected. K L Saigal and several artistes remain popular on both sides. Pakistan has just decided to renovate the havelis of Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar in Peshawar. This is a matter of pride for Bollywood cinema lovers anywhere.

History, inevitably, has its complexities. Maharaja Ranjit Singh ruled from Lahore. Installing his statue in Lahore Fort recently raised a debate why an Islamic Republic should eulogize a Sikh ruler who allegedly treated Muslims and Hindus unfairly. A few week after installation, one arm of the statue was amputated. The statue was vandalised for the second time on December 12. Sadly, shared history is ignored. Suspicions have only increased with the time. The Kartarpur shrine is the most glaring example.

ALSO READ: Kartarpur Langah – The Road To Peace

On the seamy side, both are on the trail that stretches from Afghanistan to Thailand and via Central Asia to Europe and thence, to the US. Naturally, not just the locals, old and young, anywhere, consume and the societies suffer.

Virtually ignored in the current turmoil, is the clash over Basmati, “the rice fit for kings”, to gain exclusive Geographical Indication (GI). It is big commerce, but also a matter of prestige. Turns out that India has a 65 percent share in the global Basmati market while Pakistan has the rest. But Pakistan’s exports to the European Union have almost doubled over three years since permissible levels of pesticides on imported agricultural products to the bloc were reduced in 2018, while India has repeatedly failed the tests.

Basmati is an export-oriented item for both India and Pakistan. In 2019-20, India produced 7.5 million tonnes, of which 61 percent cent was exported, earning the country Rs 31,025 crore, according to the Indian Ministry of Commerce. According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the country exported 0.89 million tonnes of basmati in 2019-20.

This competition apart, it is said one of its earliest mentions of Basmati is found in the tragic romance of Heer-Ranjha by the Punjabi Sufi, Waris Shah, composed in 1766/1767. Punjab has separated territorially, but can Waris Shah, like Bulley Shah, or modern-day Mehdi Hasan or Sahir Ludhianvi, be separated?

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Pakistan Army Can’t Be Confined To Barracks

By Mahendra Ved

Experiments in democracy interrupted by long periods of military-led rule have shaped Pakistan’s life. The difference in this winter of discontent is that for the first time, the military is being challenged. Ousted premier Nawaz Sharif, addressing protest rallies through video links from his London home, has named serving Army Chief, General Javed Bajwa and other top brass.

Voices of some opposition leaders are relatively muted. But when they call incumbent Prime Minister Imran Khan a ‘puppet’, there is no hiding who the ‘puppeteer’ is. It is tough going for an institution used to playing the umpire among its proxies, selecting and discarding them by turns. Questioning it are yesterday’s political adversaries with deep ideological differences turned allies today. Worse, they include yesterday’s proxies – called laadla (favourite).

With five ‘jalsas’ (protest rallies) through October-November and three more lined up for December, the 11-party Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) is gathering momentum.  Its Lahore rally slated for December 13 is Nawaz’s direct challenge to Imran. The battle in the most populous and powerful Punjab could bring both Khan and the army under greater pressure.

The cacophony is caustic. When protestors chant “Go, Niazi, Go” their target is as much Imran who rarely  uses this surname, but also refers to late A A K Niazi, who led the Pakistani forces in erstwhile East Pakistan to surrender to the Indian Army in 1971.  Unsurprisingly, Khan and his ministers accuse their opponents of taking cue from India.

Analysts say the Army has lost some of its image as the nation’s ‘saviour’.  But it has had a record of bouncing back and regaining control. It had done so after losing the erstwhile east-wing and again, after a mass movement brought Pervez Musharraf down.

Maulana Fazlur Rahman is the PDM’s surprise Convenor. Like most Islamists, he has remained on the right side of the military.  Then, the two mainstream parties, PPP and PML(Nawaz), are forever competing.

At the other end of the PDM’s spectrum are ‘nationalist’ leaders and parties of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, targeted as ‘secessionists’ by the military, irrespective of who holds the office in Islamabad.

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These diverse forces have combined thanks to Imran’s handling of the economy that is in dire stress, his failure to hold the prices of essential commodities and the rising Coronavirus pandemic.  Above all, he has been targeting just the entire opposition with a messianic zeal in the name of corruption. This has made various agencies and judiciary partisan and parliament redundant. 

Support from sections of the judiciary and an under-pressure-media has helped him. But like most people in power, Khan has forgotten that all this support is but transitional and the army’s support, transactional – till he delivers or shows the potential to deliver. He has shown neither so far.

The Peshawar and Multan rallies took place despite the government’s warnings of terrorist attack. Imran also sought to put the fear of Covid-19, like the fear of God, but crowds broke police barricades and milled at the venue. The Islamabad High Court this week refused to ban protest rallies saying it had set the standard operational procedures (SOPs) and now it was for the executive to decide.  

A glance at the military’s role in the country’s life that begun with General (later field marshal) Ayub Khan, shows that rule by the generals — Yahya Khan, Ziaul Haq and Pervez Musharraf –has meant that with bureaucracy in toe, the politician was  demonized — with some justification — in the eyes of the public. They played favourites among the politicians, but at each end, were forced to return the country to elections and civilian rule.

All these generals headed the army and ruled directly or through pliable prime ministers. That script is old, but situation is new. Not formally in charge, the army has an alleged ‘proxy’ in Imran. During the rule by earlier ‘proxies’ of which Nawaz was certainly one, the military was not exposed to attacks like the ones at the four rallies.  It is unrelenting so far and the military has found no answer.

Nawaz accuses the generals of ousting him and engineering the 2018 election through which they ‘selected’ Khan. With his entire family targeted for graft and himself declared an ‘absconder’, he has little to lose. Islamabad is lobbying hard with London to secure Nawaz’s deportation. But the ‘sheriff’ is unlikely to relent.

Nawaz’s apparent aim is to cut off the top few generals from the lower tiers of the army establishment and thus drive a wedge between the military’s leadership and rank and file.

There is dissatisfaction among the top brass at Bajwa’s extension as the Chief that Khan worked out, upsetting the seniority line up. A media expose of graft involving retired general Asim Bajwa is attributed to an insider’s leak. He had to resign recently as Khan’s key Advisor, a ministerial post.  

The PDM has declared a change of government by January next. This is political rhetoric. But then, Pakistan has witnessed many changes triggered by mass movements.

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Post-Multan rally, coming weeks should see more detentions of the opposition leaders and curbs on media.  Alarm bells are ringing over this showdown that neither could decisively win. The Imran government is definitely stirred and on the back-foot, but is not shaken, yet. Professional groups like lawyers and media who had helped bring down Musharraf are keeping distance. The man on the street, used to shenanigans by politicians of all hues, is aware that at some stage, the military could intervene to ‘discipline’ everyone.

Fissures have surfaced within the PDM and within member-parties. Some want to play down the army’s role. While Nawaz and daughter Maryam are blasting the military, his jailed brother Shahbaaz has called for a “national dialogue.”

The situation could change with Punjab becoming as the main battleground. Imran could sacrifice his protégé, Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, whom he has lambasted for failing to block the Multan rally.

If Buzdar is incompetent, critics say Imran is more so. But the fact is a government in Pakistan has never gone because it was incompetent – it went because army said enough-is-enough.

Analyst Zahid Hussain notes that the opposition’s anti-establishment drive has sparked a new political discourse across Pakistan. People are asking whether a new social contract is required to rebuild flagging public trust in the state’s institutions.

On the army-civil relationship, Ayesha Siddiqa, a political scientist and author of the book Military Inc tweeted right at the outset, on October 27: “Each party has an interlocutor with the military but for a meaningful change, PDM parties will have to start a dialogue with the army that can ensure a meaningful negotiation of power for the long run.

But short of that, things need to be done, by the political class, not the military. As Siddiqa says: “A social contract will have to be much wider. It will have to extend to smaller provinces but also religious and ethnic minorities. Pakistan has little chance to become secular but a healing hand will have to be extended to minorities or else it will remain exploitable.”

For the foreseeable future, any notion that the army will simply return to the barracks is naïve. At best, or worst — depending upon the reader’s preference — the ‘laadla’ may be changed.

The writer may be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.om

Kamala Harris Signifies Vibrancy Of US Polity

By Mahendra Ved

Being elected the first woman vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris signals the coming of age of the country that her parents migrated to six decades back. For, the USA, in its 230 years history as a democracy, has never elected a woman to the two top constitutional posts. To contrast this, one would have to trot out a very long list of women leaders who have adorned top offices across the world.

Born of a mother from India and a father from Jamaica, Harris is the first woman, first Indian American, first woman born of a Black father, first South Asian American and the first Asian ever elected as vice-president.

Come January, she will be sworn in in the second-most important post in the world’s most powerful nation. Otherwise, people with Indian roots have been presidents and prime ministers in a dozen countries across the world, from New Zealand and Singapore to the Caribbean, to Ireland and Portugal. Their number is growing.

Carrying forward the democratic tradition back in India or what they may have heard from their seniors, many have been elected to city mayors, lawmakers and ministers. Look at the US’ “Samosa Caucus.” Look at the two Indians holding key posts in Britain or four of them in Canada. These numbers, too, are bound to grow. A head count of the elected leaders conducted some years ago touched 45.

Indian diaspora are growing. The Obama administration had sent out six Indian Americans as envoys. Look at the diplomatic staff in foreign missions, not just of the Commonwealth countries and not just New Delhi.

ALSO READ: Harris Holds Many Firsts To Her Name

Arguably though, this does excite Indians. They are learning, hopefully and gradually, that the loyalties of these persons lie, as they should, with the countries they, or their ancestors, adopted as home. No two things about it. If Niki Haley representing the Trump administration did convey some sour things to the people in the Government of India, Harris, or even President Biden, one whose forefathers married an Indian girl, will certainly do that. This is how it will be, and should be.

The Indian American community was electrified by Harris’ selection. Deeper study of the election results would be needed to know how many of those supporting the Republican Party switched sides. “Harris has mobilised Indian Americans, especially Democrats,” said a survey report by Carnegie. “Harris’ vice-presidential candidacy has galvanised a large section of the Indian American community to turn out to vote. But clearly, her candidacy galvanised the Democratic campaign and presumably helped in stemming any switch by pro-Democrat voters to Republican under the influence of the support Trump had received from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Kamala Harris nurtured the Indian ethos that typically speaks of the family. She spoke of mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris, who came to the United States from Chennai and was a breast cancer researcher, frequently while campaigning. “How I wish she were here tonight but I know she’s looking down on me from above,” she said at the Democratic Party convention while accepting her nomination.

“I keep thinking about that 25-year-old Indian woman—all of five feet tall—who gave birth to me at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, California… On that day, she probably could have never imagined that I would be standing before you now speaking these words: I accept your nomination for Vice President of the United States of America,” Harris said.

Her pride for her mother, of her preferences for things Indian, not necessarily projected for the election, have been talked and written about in a big way, at times more than Biden who was a known person having been the vice president under Barack Obama.

Kamala had accepted Biden’s announcement of her selection with a shout-out to her Chithis (Tamil for a mother’s elder sister) connected with several constituencies at the same time: African Americans, Asian Americans, South Asian Americans and, of course, the 4.5 million Indian Americans, 1.9 million of them eligible to vote.

ALSO READ: Kamala Harris’ Heritage Matters

Once her name was announced, lampooning bean. Her name was deliberately misspelt and mis-pronounced as a tactic usually employed to make Americans of different ethnicities feel unwelcome.

Trump soon realised that he was up against a tough woman who was at once articulate and popular. He had welcomed her as a “fine choice” as Biden’s running mate, but began to target her right away, calling her “nasty” and a “monster”.

One can look ahead, now that it is done and dusted. The redeeming feature, in a manner of speaking, is that Kamala Harris, age 56, is being billed as a potential President four years hence. This is mainly because of the advancing age of the winner, Joe Biden, who is not expected to seek re-election, but also because she has a proven record. Through her long career and through the rough and tumble of the election campaign, she was perceived as a woman of substance.

By comparison, her predecessors – women who contested for the vice president’s post but did not make it – had less to show. Sarah Louise Palin was Governor of Alaska in 2006, a post she quit in 2009 to contest as the running mate of Republican Senator John McCain. Before her was the first woman candidate for the vice president’s post who did not make it, Geraldine Farraro in 1984.

Kamala stood out for an added reason: the success of a vibrant America, despite warts and all. She displayed her multiple roots from a family that arrived in the US and grew by dint of hard work. Essentially a nation of immigrants, the US has in the recent years witnessed resentment against those coming from outside, something that Trump selectively but vociferously encouraged to consolidate his White American base.

Significantly, Kamala had herself sought to contest as the president and had been openly critical of Biden. The latter still thought her worthy of being the running mate and Kamala accepted as yet another point of distinction. Again, this shows the vibrancy of the American polity and its institutions.

Kamala Harris began as public attorney and was California’s Attorney General. As the vice president, she can still be expected to continue her career as champion of public causes.

(The writer may be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com)

Charlie Hebdo And The Laxman Rekha

By Mahendra Ved

A cartoon is “a simple drawing showing the features of its subjects in a humorously exaggerated way, especially a satirical one in a newspaper or magazine.” And a caricature is “a picture, description, or imitation of a person in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect.”

One must be naïve to dwell on dictionary meanings of the two, trying to know why and how religion and politics, crusade versus jihad, blasphemy and blood-letting have intruded into what should be a medium of amusing enlightenment.

This naivety seems misplaced in a world that is divided between the Macrons who want unrestrained freedom to draw and write at the risk of hurting sentiments and the Mahathirs who want to avenge that, even with violence.

Macron’s France is on edge after the republication in early September of cartoons of the Prophet (PBUH) by the Charlie Hebdo weekly, which was followed by an attack outside its former offices, the beheading of a teacher and an attack on a church in Nice that left three dead. The chain of violence and protests continues, worldwide.

While Macron now ‘understands’ and ‘respects’ the anger his calling the perpetrators of violence ‘terrorists’ has aroused among the Muslim protestors, he resolutely defends the “freedom of expression.” Malaysia’s former premier Mahathir Mohamad, who advocated “moderate Islam” in the last century, now says his call for “killing of millions of Frenchmen” was “quoted out of context.”

ALSO READ: Muslims Have Right To Kill French: Mahathir

For them all, the devil lies in the printed/spoken word, and in the cartoons – or is it the mind at work in these highly polarized times?

Mercifully, some moderate views are also coming forth. Canada’s Justin Trudeau defends freedom of expression but says it is “not without limits” and should not “arbitrarily and needlessly hurt certain communities.” But this was met with violence in Quebec.  

Now, Macron, too, says: “We owe it to ourselves to act with respect for others and to seek not to arbitrarily or unnecessarily injure those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet.” Though belated, wise words indeed.

This brings me to India and Indians – warts and all. Muslims in some cities have protested – so also have Bollywood biggies like Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi and Naseeruddin Shah, angering many from their community.

Don’t go by the current phase, or past aberrations — Indians are generally tolerant, even complacent, and do not respond easily, even to something wrong and unjust. For good or otherwise, this explains why so many who do not belong have made it their home.

The government of Narendra Modi, often accused of dividing people, has rightly condemned violence against the cartoons’ publication, but without condoning their controversial content. The underlying message is: why drag in religion (read ‘others’ religion) to show how free a society you are?

I wish all of them observed the “Laxman Rekha.”  Referred to in Hindu epic Ramayana as an impregnable line Lakshmana draws asking elder brother Rama’s wife Seeta not to cross it while he goes searching for Rama. But she crosses that, and is abducted by Ravana. In modern Indian parlance, it refers to a strict convention or a rule, never to be broken.

I am not referring to Ramayana’s red line, but to the modern Indian one that, never really drawn, but was practiced and enunciated by renowned cartoonist R K Laxman.

His lines were indeed, the proverbial “Laxman Rekhas” that told you what is rational. The humour was intrinsic. It stung your mind, but gently. They wove a spider’s web that even the intended target would shrug off. They were not like beehive that a bee-lover or even a bee-keeper would dread to go close to.

They were soft and were minimal – indeed, a few strokes, and it did not require any effort to know which character was being drawn and what was the message.

Press in India has for over two centuries been embellished by numerous cartoonists and caricaturists.     Indeed, Indian cartooning tradition is a positive one, saying the damnedest thing without being venomous. Abu Abraham, O V Vijayan, Shankar and so many others made scathing comments without hurting.

But, arguably though, none has surpassed Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Laxman. Born on October 2, 1921, he died, aged 93, on January 26, 2015.

ALSO READ: Manto’s Relevance In Freedom Of Expression

For over six decades, five of them spent at the Times of India newspaper, Laxman gave those in power a little rap on the knuckles that was no more than a call to correction. It was never a reprimand.

He spoke through his mascot, the battered and bewildered “common man”.  Whatever the changes India has undergone, the “common man” continues to symbolise the quintessential Indian.

Anthropologist Ritu G. Khanduri notes, “R. K. Laxman structures his cartoon-news through a plot about corruption and a set of characters. This news is visualized and circulates through the recurring figures of the mantri (minister), the Common Man and the trope of modernity symbolized by the airplane.”

Friend and former colleague Arun Vardhan says the lines he drew were soft and light and composite in nature. They reflected a southern Indian mind evolved over millennia, at once secular and humane.

That ethos Laxman contributed to is under grave threat. He thrived when the society was not this polarized.  Intolerance has grown, and it is not politics and politicians alone. Social media has ‘democratized’ opinion – indeed, everyone has an opinion — to express and to defend. It has provided a perceived net of anonymity for the person/s to spew venom or hatred. 

Dr Mrinal Chatterjee, Director, Eastern India Centre of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) regularly surveys the media scene, particularly the burgeoning one in several Indian languages. He is pained at the scene all-around but assures me that by and large, the cartooning scene has stayed above the toxicity.  But we both wonder, worryingly, for how long?

People are getting tired. Viral on the social media these days is a collage of old Laxman cartoons wherein the “Common man” and his spouse are asking: why have stopped laughing?

Laxman and his era may be past, but each society needs to draw its own “Lakshman Rekha” if it has to survive and leave something good for the posterity.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Can Socialism Find Its Feet?

By Mahendra Ved

After President Donald Trump, Republican Party candidate for next month’s presidential election has used the term ‘socialist’ to demonize his vice presidential adversary Kamala Harris, it is time to ponder over what has become, and future role of the socialists, and not just in the United States.

It is not that the rival Democrats are pushing the world’s biggest capitalist powerhouse towards socialism. Even Bernie Sanders was edged out of the race for fear of annoying among others, the business and industry, the multinationals and the arms and energy exporters.

Any debate on democratic socialism or such other ideological issues has been overshadowed by a myriad day-to-day issues about the American people and their place in the world affairs. We will know which way they will vote next month, and hope Vox Populi prevails – peacefully and smoothly.

While this is the state of the world’s ‘greatest’ democracy, the ‘oldest’ set the trend earlier with thrashing the Labour under Jeremy Corbyn received in the last British elections. People rejected Corbyn’s democratic socialist platform.

The two powers have, however, often combined forces to thwart the rise of any socialist leader or party with centrist or left-of-centre leanings in the vast developing world. Many nations remain under their thrall, gaining little, and some that they have intervened in, directly or through proxies, are virtually ungoverned, or are ungovernable. Western democratic yardsticks are applied to judge them. But a demagogue/dictator is okay if he is pliable and buys arms and technology.  

To my poser last year about end of the era of liberals, I add socialists, although it’s not that all liberals are socialists and vice versa. And they have themselves to blame. But consider socialist republics that have adopted the capitalist course for economy while retaining political controls. Or, the growing number of ‘nationalist’ leaders who take the democratic course to win elections and then trample upon political opponents, civil society and media. They justify their actions, varyingly, in the name of “popular will,” ‘mandate’, “national security” and call their critics ‘traitors’.

ALSO READ: Trump Is Riding High On Negative Narrative

If the ‘greatest’ and the ‘oldest’ are working on their agendas, what about the ‘largest’? This, again, is pertinent to ask. India has baffled the world with its long tradition of socialists of various hues deeply embedded in its body politic. Even before the socialists, the communists have also held sway for a century now, if the 1920 textile mills’ strike is considered their beginning.

Both are on the back-foot today even as a communist-led government runs Kerala state. The Left Front ruled two other states, West Bengal and Tripura and had 60 in the Lok Sabha alone till only a decade back. They are now reduced to three in the Lok Sabha, five in the upper house and roughly a hundred state legislators.  

As for socialists, the only party flaunting the ‘Samajwadi’ label has five members in the Lok Sabha and eight in the Rajya Sabha, but is out of power in Uttar Pradesh, its only bastion, and its numbers will dwindle.

The rest, their legislative strength ebbing or non-existent, have got themselves embroiled in caste-driven politics. Whatever work on the ground, as with the communists, is being done by dedicated individuals and bodies that are about the last hope for the poor, but have no role and with their cadres fleeing, no say in the electoral game.  

But then, India’s socialists had been a spirited lot, displaying a bohemian streak, living austere lives, wearing home-spun khadi without the laundry-washed starch unlike the Congressmen and interested more in agitating than seeking power.

They had a bright place under the political sun in the early years post-independence. The ‘progressives’ of both the communist and socialist variety held sway over the cultural world, contributing some of the best literature in ink, on political platforms and on celluloid. They influenced the minds of generations of people across South Asia and wherever Hindi/Hindustani/Urdu was understood.  They ignited minds, but as time passed, do not win votes, if that is the yardstick of their success. They failed to offer electoral options or political alternatives in policymaking.

ALSO READ: Upsurge 2.0: Farmers Take To Streets

As a political force, the socialists have always been badly organised and remain divided, often fighting each other. The political lore in the last century was that they cannot stay united for more than two years — and cannot stay divided for over three.

They began as part of the Congress during the freedom struggle against the British, but moved away from it under Jayaprakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia. They became disillusioned, even angry, with Congress’ Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and later Indira Gandhi.  Visceral anti-Congressism became the fulcrum on which much of the socialists’ politics evolved.  

Yet, hundreds of them, like George Fernandes, must be credited for fighting the Indira-imposed Emergency (1975-77). Fernandes’ railway strike call shook India. Chandra Shekhar who could have compromised with Indira, refused and went to jail with fellow-socialists like Madhu Limaye and Madhu Dandavate. They are all gone, leaving behind lesser leaders.

When the Janata experiment failed, those of the right-wing orientation consolidated and are now in power. But the socialists got embroiled, happily, in caste-driven politics. And to survive, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party bandwagon – if only to spite the Congress and bypass the communists.

Mulayam Singh Yadav, ageing and ailing and side-lined by son Akhilesh, is one of the last of this lot. Bihar’s long-time chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav is imprisoned for graft. His wife and squabbling sons are conducting the current election campaign in Bihar.

Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan routinely switched sides to survive and be a minister in most governments in the last two decades. He died this month, leaving the Bihar fight to son Chirag. The common ally-turned-adversary of them all, Nitish Kumar, is fighting to retain his chief ministership of the state. There was nothing socialist about his opposing Modi and then switching to his side.

Although with socialist roots struck deep during the movement led by Japrakash Narayan (JP), none of them is text-book socialist. They are all dynasts who have done well for themselves. Hindi-speaking India remains poor, backward, and lawless – no matter who rules.

Their gambit of forging vote-winning caste-combinations failed in Uttar Pradesh and is now under test in Bihar in the face of the BJP’s Hindutva onslaught. Their wooing other backward castes (OBCs) has also been neutralised. Their Muslim support base also stands impaired, despite vigilante-led violence and government apathy.  

Sharad Yadav who sought to strike a different course is ill. He had scored a shock Congress defeat way back in 1974 and shot to national fame. Today, Subhasini, his daughter and political heir, is contesting on the Congress nomination. The circle is complete for at least this socialist.

Can a Biden-Harris victory in the US or a Nitish/BJP defeat in Bihar bring the socialists back on the track? Perish the thought.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

India’s Tryst With Numbers: Doing The Math

By Mahendra Ved

Call it foolhardy, but I am writing on a subject I have never been good at. This is dedicated to those who excel in mathematics.

How come India has produced more Nobel economists and scientists than in other disciplines? Their journey must have begun with mathematics. How come Indian students in Britain, the United States and even at home, especially in Tamil Nadu, routinely excel in Mathematics Olympiads? At the same time, unless compelled, an average Indian skips figures while arguing his/her point.

My own story remained dismal despite a visit to my school by Shakuntala Devi (1929 – 2013), the “human computer”. The bubbly little lady from Mysuru, defying the cynics, had taken the world by storm. I vaguely recall to my satisfaction that my maths and science teachers were as amazed by her prowess as the students.

Devi, who came way before computer era, features in a Bollywood film released this year, when every Indian home (that can afford) has a computer. She enjoyed visiting schools. Interacting with students she would strive to simplify numerical calculations. A precocious and gifted child, with no formal education, many mistook her performances as miracles – and miracles sell in India even today.

She earned a place in the 1982 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records. Sadly, however, despite setting a world record in June 1980 at Imperial College, London, the certificate came posthumously on July 30, this year.

Recognition is instant at 20 for Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash, who “calculates faster than a calculator.” He won India’s first ever gold in Mind Sports Olympics, the prestigious mental calculation world championships that were held in London last month.  

ALSO READ: 21-Yr-Old Indian Is Fastest Human Calculator

Bhanu holds four world records and 50 Limca records for being the world’s fastest human calculator. He is to maths what Usain Bolt is to running. “We celebrate someone like Bolt when he does a 100 metre sprint in 9.8 seconds,” he told BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat, “but we don’t say: what’s the point of running quickly in a world with cars and planes.”

People like this writer fear maths and one theory is that maths is for the ‘gifted.’ But Bhanu declares maths is a “big mental sport” to be enjoyed. His ultimate mission is to “eradicate maths phobia. “It’s about inspiring people that your body can do something unimaginable – and it’s the same with calculations and maths.”

‘It keeps your brain engaged’. Bravo.

His easy recipe for the uninitiated: “I keep thinking of numbers all the time. I practice with loud music on, talking to people, catching and playing cricket, because this is when your brain is being trained to do multiple things at the same time.”

The fact that the numeral system common today—the closest we have to a universal language—comes from India is well known. The idea of zero and its integration into the place-value system, which enabled one to write numbers no matter how large using only ten symbols, originated in India. At first encounter, it appeared marvelous to West Asians, and “satanic” to Christian clerics in the Europe of the Middle Ages.

In a study for Asia Society, Dr Roddam Narasimha, one of India’s most prominent scientists notes: “The Sanskrit word used for mathematics is ganita, which literally means “reckoning.” What is unique about the classical Indian view of mathematics is that number was treated as the primary concept—and not geometry, as with the Greeks.

“The love affair of Indian culture with numbers has been long. Written at a time when most societies had difficulty handling numbers beyond 1000, the Buddhist text Lalita-vistara (before the fourth century C.E.) not only has no problem with huge numbers, but seems to revel in giving them names (10145, the highest number quoted, being called dhvaja-nis’a-mani.)”

Despite the achievements of Shakuntala Devi and Bhanu, the contemporary Indian scene is not very encouraging. What was built post-independence with Jawaharlal Nehru’s insistence on Indians developing “scientific temper” and setting up of institutions of academic and scientific excellence is getting clouded by a public discourse with its social fallout that pursues religion in politics and encourages obscurantism.

The larger problem that predates the current ethos, however, is of educational system that boils down to teachers, teaching methods and the taught. Older Indians, those 80 plus and still around, if they studied in ‘desi’ schools, were trained to learn their tables by heart up to three-and-a-half – addition, subtraction, multiplication, division — without any help of calculators, and there were no computers. As a result, my nonagenarian family patriarch remembers all his bank account numbers and cell phone numbers of entire family.  

That system of learning by ‘ratta’ went out long ago with the advent of calculators and then, computers. Where mental prowess ends and that of computer/ calculator begins is something only experts can explain.

With more vistas of education opening up and more opportunities available, there’s been a steady decline in the number of students opting for maths higher education in post-independence India. The number of ‘geeks’ and ‘nerds’ as Bhanu describes, is falling. 

Then there is a problem of what is taught/learnt in a classroom and through book and what is practiced. An illiterate vegetable vendor I met in Rajasthan’s Dungarpur pursued studies under the National Literacy Mission. But he needed no help when it came to numbers. He could calculate his business transactions, follow road signs and board the right bus while travelling.

This is “street maths”. A 2017 study found children working in shops solved mathematics problems easily but struggled with a classroom written test. Researchers fault teaching methods for this contrast.

The study is co-authored by Abhijit Banerjee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who with his wife Esther Duflo got the Nobel last year. One hopes that the couple, while working on alleviating global poverty, will also spend time and effort for this knotty problem.

Another study by Tata Institute of Fundamental Research takes a balanced view. “India, with its strong mathematical traditions, may be expected by the world to produce excellence in mathematics. But this may be an unreasonable expectation, since India is grappling with problems of endemic poverty, and even universalising education is a challenge. Despite adversity, India has managed to produce mathematicians like Ramanujan and Harish-Chandra. All this adds up to an intriguing picture.

“In contrast to the expectations of the global elite, one should consider the hopes and aspirations of the Indian people themselves. In a population that is largely poor (by any standards), education is seen as the key instrument to break out of poverty.”

So it’s best to make mathematics money – and money, as the saying goes, makes the mare go.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Jaswant Singh – A Man Of Honour

By Mahendra Ved

Last Sunday’s morning began on a note of grief and nostalgia for many an Indian at the passing away of Jaswant Singh, nine-term lawmaker, a perceptive and an efficient minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government and above all, a good man. All Members of Parliament are supposed to be, and are addressed as, ‘honourable’. Jaswant Singh was “a man of honour.”

That few visited him, or even inquired about him, during the six years he lay in coma after a fall in the bathroom in 2014, shows how cruel the world is, particularly if one is in public life and has fallen out of grace – no matter how graceful a person one has been. And Singh, even to his critics, was a man with old world grace and charm.

He had been expelled from the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) not once, but twice. The first time, because he displayed the courage of conviction of calling Pakistan’s founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah ‘secular’. He had made the same ‘mistake’ as another veteran: L K Advani. The very idea is anathema to India’s Hindu ‘nationalists’ who believe in undivided India and blame the rival Congress Party, especially first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, for having ‘conceded’ Pakistan. Ironically, Advani brought him back to the BJP.

It is another matter that Jinnah’s ‘secular’ approach while founding Pakistan, cited in his August 1, 1947 radio broadcast, is under scrutiny. Portrayed by Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal and held dear by liberals on both sides of the India-Pakistan divide, it has recently been challenged by another Pakistani scholar Ishtiaq Ahmed. So, there is no last word in history.

Although a BJP founder, Singh had been a misfit since he did not come from the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) stable, as is largely the case with the Narendra Modi Government today. Along with Sushma Swaraj, who had socialist background, Singh had faced stiff resistance from the Sangh.

That he handled key portfolios of Defence, Finance and External Affairs despite these reservations is a tribute to both, Singh and Vajpayee, who also resisted pressures with regard to Brajesh Mishra, making the latter India’s first National Security Advisor.

Like it was when Swaraj and another stalwart, Arun Jaitley died within days last year, Singh’s death has triggered nostalgia for the good, not-so-old times at the turn of the century, when the government talked to the media. Today, it is selective with a few powerful and pliable, while the rest are talked at, or, in this era or tweets and social media, simply ignored.

A soldier who resigned his commission while just 27, Singh was erudite and knowledgeable. He never shed his army background, plus old feudal graces typical of Rajasthan, although he was no Maharajah.

He bore the odium, much longer and long before Shashi Tharoor, whose English speaking has these days impressed many – or has troubled many in the current ruling dispensation and some jealous fellow- Keralites. With his famous baritone, Singh spoke both English and Hindi in measured tones. He may have never shouted except when he was in the Army.

A Cavalry officer, his knowledge came in handy when the Bofors gun signed during the Rajiv Gandhi era became controversial. Perhaps the only lawmaker who understood the gun, he examined it and went on record, despite being in the opposition, to say that it was a good weapon system. Some others, reportedly, only felt the gun, and then resorted to the set party line to praise or pummel it.

ALSO READ: A Political Stalwart Of Vajpayee Era

As foreign minister, Singh firmly backed Vajpayee on the 1998 nuclear tests that brought India global sanctions.  He then talked over two years with Strobe Talbott, then United States deputy secretary of state, and paved the way for President Bill Clinton’s India visit in 2000.

Strobe Talbott and Singh got on well.

Ex-soldier Jaswant Singh and ex-journalist Talbott got on well. In his book ‘Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy & the Bomb’, Talbott describes how he and Jaswant Singh met 14 times in seven countries across three continents to lay the groundwork for a new understanding of India. That was the turning point in Indo-US relations, a process that continued under eight years each of George W. Bush Jr. and Barack Obama, not to speak of Donald Trump.

One blot on Singh’s otherwise good reputation and bright political career was escorting three Pakistani militants to Kandahar to rescue the Indian Airlines aircraft and passengers hijacked in 1999. Those were difficult days of public outpourings of panic and anger at the hijack, heightened by the television channels. Some relatives of the passengers stormed the venue of Singh’s press conference. India was at a low ebb.

There is little on record to show how Singh became a scapegoat in a panic-triggered government decision to free the militants as demanded by the Taliban, then ruling Afghanistan. Along with late George Fernandes, then Defence Minister, Singh was in an abject minority in the Cabinet meeting.

But he did the unenviable task of escorting the militants to Kandahar and endured the pain of having to talk to the Taliban, whom India did not recognise. “I had to bring all our citizens back home safely. If that involved talking to the Taliban, I didn’t mind.” He explained in his memoirs that he was executing a decision that was collective. The discipline of a soldier, perhaps?

Singh was a realist. Despite his Rajput roots, he was willing to talk to Pakistan at Vajpayee’s historic Lahore visit. This signalled India’s (under a BJP premier) willingness to acknowledge the 1947 Partition and Pakistan.  And even after the Kargil conflict, he played a key role at the Agra Summit that failed for lack of clear understanding and preparations.

The party hardliners did not forgive Singh’s liberal ways. Even on domestic issues, Singh was an able trouble-shooter whom Vajpayee called his ‘Hanuman’. Like Vajpayee, he was not into Ram temple dispute. After the damage was done, he was encouraged to conduct a conciliatory dialogue with the Muslim community. Vajpayee was, perhaps, nudging his party towards a broader, if not exactly secular, spread. But that was not to be. He lost power in 2004 and retired from public life.

All this seems unthinkable, a far cry today. Ram temple is becoming a reality and so is a mosque a distance away. India’s relations with Pakistan and China are bad and could get worse.

Over 15 years hence, these are but nuggets of nostalgia to cherish.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com