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COVERT (15-30 Sept. 2008)
Fluff-and-bluff can't change harsh truths
By M.J. Akbar
We may have all missed the most interesting point in the kerfuffle
over the Indo-US nuclear deal. Dr Manmohan Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi
have emerged as the greatest advertising team since World War II. They
have sold a personal obsession as a nation's lifeline. The strategy is
not dissimilar to that employed by Germany and Italy in the war:
repeat a lie often enough and it will be perceived as the truth.
High-decibel propaganda has this hypnotic effect on the masses. To use
a term from theatre, there is a wilful suspension of disbelief.
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COVERT (1-15 Sept. 2008)
Three Questions
for the Wandering Indian
By M.J. Akbar
To jaded Delhi eyes, the sky is much more vast in Canada. That could
only be an illusion, right? Wrong. The horizon is not limited by
claustrophobic cement, concrete, stone; the vision is not trapped by
the tensions of road-crawl, or blocked by the arrogance of bullies who
believe that a steering wheel has lifted them out of the demands of
common decency. It is not distance that makes Canada seem like a
frontier, although it takes a while to ingest that London is only a
midway point between Delhi and Toronto. This frontier is not merely
the boundary wall of the familiar; it is also the gateway to new
space.
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COVERT (16 - 31st August 2008)
Why Mumbai is the
heart of Muslim Terrorism
By M.J. Akbar
There
are only two Mumbai Muslims whose lives have been made the subject of
movies that were released commercially. One film was official,
financed by the Government of Pakistan. The other was unofficial, and fictionalised, made by the Mumbai film industry. The film on Mohammad
Ali Jinnah was a tribute to a stalwart whose admirers will not
tolerate a word of criticism against him.
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COVERT (1-15th August 2008)
The
Headmaster of A School for
Scandal
By M.J. Akbar
In the end it's the jokes that get you, isn't it? SMS, that deadly
virus, has been spreading sound bites like "Sting is King". Its first
cousin, email, has been circulating emotional pleas to the heartless
Finance Minister: "Don't you know how old MPs are? They have bad
backs! Can't you print Rs 100,000 notes instead of measly little
thousand-rupee notes??? Do you know how heavy a sack of 30 crores is?"
There are heart-rending stories of MPs breaking down because they did
not know how to take their loot, collected in Delhi, back to the
security of their small towns.
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COVERT (16-31st JULY 2008)
CHECK THE IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND THE POSSIBLE
By M J Akbar
In
times of meltdown,
the great eagerness is of course to get a glimpse of the future. The
tendency, but naturally, is to track the future along the seam lines
of what politicians can do. There is a much surer way of negotiating
such minefields. Check out what politicians cannot do, and you will
get a far better idea of what they will do.
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M J Blog - Post Global Washington Post |
Hugo Chavez's defeat
in the referendum is extremely welcome, not because Chavez was
defeated but because democracy won. A hint from Indian democracy,
where someone in power is defeated virtually every month, given
the number of states in the Union and the haywire schedule of
elections: it is always the one per cent that makes the decisive
difference. It’s that one percent that is beyond the reach of
either oil or any well-oiled state machinery. God is on the side
of One Percent....
-
PostGlobal is
an interactive conversation on global issues moderated by Newsweek
International Editor
Fareed Zakaria and
David Ignatius of The Washington Post. It is
produced jointly by Newsweek
and washingtonpost.com
Post Global:
MJ's Washington Post Blog
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READER'S LETTERS |
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First article of
your series CRESCENTS & CROISSANTS in
TOI really appealed me, only respecting and understanding of
religions of each other is a modern era’s tool to spread
the message of ISLAM or any other. Basically all leads to almighty
or SARVASHAKTIMAN. To club humanity in one chain this has become
must to understand Allah/God/Ishwar, following your message we
only can quote Mahatma Gandhi- Ishwar, Allah tero naam sabko
sammati de Bhagwan.
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Is
Decline to the Fourth Estate here...
Never
let your head stoop as a Journalist
M
J Akbar Shunted Out Unceremoniously!
A
black day for Indian journalism
As
long as the ink flows
How
Free is Indian Media?
M
J Akbar ka Safar
HAVE YOUR SAY! POSTED
ON YOUR BLOG ON MJ? Send your
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FREE SPEECH
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'F*** All Editors'

The hard truth about Indian journalism: proprietors matter, editors
don't
KHUSHWANT SINGH
in OUTLOOK [Opinion] 24/3
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CURRENT BYLINE :
The Parallel Streams of Anger
By M.J. Akbar
|
October 4, 2008
Dr Manmohan Singh said, on his return from France, that incidents in
Orissa had shamed India before the world. That is important, but far
less important than the fact that the violence in Orissa has shamed
Indians in India. I measure what Indians do not by the standards of
France, but by the values of modern India, which strengthened the
spirit of our freedom movement against western colonialism and were
enshrined in that noble document called the Constitution of India. The
Bajrang Dal has shamed India before Indians.
Nicolas Sarkozy lives by French values, which is perfectly reasonable,
for he is a Frenchman. But I am a little underwhelmed by the selective
secularism of France, which permits schoolchildren to wear a small
cross but will not allow a Sikh child to wear a turban or a Muslim to
wear a hijab. One can't complain: if those are the values of the
French, they are entitled to them. If Mr Sarkozy wants to hand out
medals to Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen [now given safe custody
in India by Dr Manmohan Singh] that is his privilege. No one has
accused Ms Nasreen of being a claimant to the Nobel Prize for
Literature, but Mr Sarkozy is entitled to the nuances of his critical
faculties. Dr Singh should perhaps be a bit wary of discussing
domestic problems on foreign soil. I presume he would not mind, now,
if the Saudis raised the killing of Jamia Millia students in Batla
House by the Delhi police, or indeed communal riots in which Muslims
are victims. Or does he have a separate standard for Saudis and the
Organisation of Islamic States — the French can complain, but not
them? The French could not care less about the plight of Indian
Muslims, but Saudis or the OIC might care. France does not even
pretend to hide its bias against Muslims: it objects to Turkey's
inclusion within the European Union because Turkey is a Muslim nation.
[It must be noted that British policy is quite the opposite; it
supports Turkey's membership.] I imagine that Dr Singh forgot to raise
the small matter of French involvement in African genocide. Rwanda has
just published the findings of an enquiry which claims that France
armed, trained and helped Hutu militias that killed 800,000 Tutsis,
and those Hutus who gave shelter to Tutsis, in just 100 days in 1994.
The Bajrang Dal's violence in Orissa shames me because it represents
the destruction of the idea of India as shared space for all faiths,
with each Indian guaranteed equal rights. This too is a form of
terrorism. It has been pointed out that some of the conversion
literature distributed by missionaries — for instance, a booklet
titled 'Satya Darshini', where remarks have been made about Urvashi,
Vashistha and Lord Krishna — is offensive. If that is so, there is a
democratic way of addressing such issues. Who gave any fundamentalist
the right to rape and kill? Governments that have tolerated this will
suffer not only the shame of present censure but also the whiplash of
public anger in the next elections.
There is a sullen mood across India, a sense of lowering clouds before
a furious storm breaks. Every dimension of anger seems to be
clamouring for expression. Secessionists in Kashmir taunt Indians by
flaunting the Pakistani flag while the UPA government watches,
impotent. There is a growing anger among many Hindus against such
secessionist provocation, as well as against terrorists like those of
the Indian Mujahideen who claim to act in the name of Islam: this
effortlessly morphs into hostility against all Muslims. There is the
rage of the Bajrang Dals who convert a perceived threat from
conversions into irresponsible violence and worse. There is deep
frustration among Indian Muslims who feel that they have been
victimised for six decades and are being targeted on all sides now.
They have faced the hostility of Hindutva; now they are dealing with
betrayal by the Congress. The killing of Jamia students has
crystallised this betrayal.
Political parties were meant to be guardians of public morality. That
is too much to expect now. Their only purpose is to sip up votes from
the parallel streams of anger, choosing whichever stream is compatible
to their taste. To calm the nation's anger would be injurious to their
electoral interest.
Evasion and lies come easily to political leaders. Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, who has always advertised his probity, has absolutely
no qualms about using deception. It would be boring to repeat the many
kinds of deception that have characterised the progress of the nuclear
deal with George W. Bush but the latest instance is useful evidence.
Dr Singh always, and publicly, claimed that he wanted to be able to
complete the negotiating process, and would return to Parliament
before placing the final signature on any agreement.
On 30 June Dr Singh told the media, "I have said it before, I will
repeat it again, that you allow us to complete the process. Once the
process is over, I will bring it before Parliament and abide by the
House." On 22 July he told Parliament, "All I had asked our Left
colleagues was: please allow us to go through the negotiating process
and I will come to Parliament before operationalising the nuclear
agreement. This simple courtesy which is essential for orderly
functioning of any Government worth the name, particularly with regard
to the conduct of foreign policy, they were not willing to grant me."
The Prime Minister has walked away from this commitment without a hint
of remorse. If Parliament protests, the government will simply adjourn
the House. The credibility of politicians is not the real issue. The
credibility of institutions cannot long stand the strain of
irresponsibility.
This is a moment when the nation needs courage and leadership. Indians
have, instead, to live with cynicism and misleaders. The disease
stretches across the political spectrum. The country is getting
infected.
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Fuse of self-destructive terrorism gets shorter
By M.J. Akbar
|
September 28, 2008
Governance is the easy
part of being in power. You govern through systems. Systems are
protected by institutions. Institutions grind their way forward on
hierarchy, oiled by memory or precedence. When there is need for
innovation, change is sifted through a time-consuming committee. The
end product may not be brilliant, but it comes with minimal-risk
insurance: it will not do damage, and might even do some good.
India's bureaucracy may not be the steel-frame of old. Corruption
might have left it a brittle plastic. But it serves. Very often the
difference between a good and a bad Minister — the titular head of the
bureaucracy — is no more than his or her ability to leave well enough
alone. Lalu Prasad Yadav has created a favourable reputation by the
ingenious tactic of non-interference. He lets the Railway Board get on
with the job and only appears on the scene when it is time to take
credit. Give him full marks. More has been destroyed by the deadly
combination of ego and incompetence than has been achieved in
Government through genius. As the Railway Board has proved, India
could be much better off if Ministers left Government on auto-pilot
while they concentrated on what they know best: spilling each other's
blood.
The difficult part of power is leadership. Any term of office is
divided between phases of placidity and the roils of turbulence. If
turbulence is not calmed it develops quickly into a storm. Terrorism
has become a raging hurricane. The statistics are well known. There is
no point wasting space on them. But there is no leader who can
challenge this storm, manage its fallout and restore some balm to the
jangled nerves of the nation.
Dr Manmohan Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi have, at best, the most banal
phrases to offer. We do not need a Prime Minister to tell us that
terrorism is a grave threat. That much wisdom is available from any
taxi-driver, the familiar source of political perspicacity sought by a
visiting journalist anywhere in the world. No one has yet written a
speech for Mrs Sonia Gandhi that takes us anywhere near a remedy to
this terrible disease.
An answer must begin with a question: when did terrorism begin? Too
long ago. India is unique. Every faith has delivered its quota of
terrorists. The Nagas who challenged Indian unity were Christians. The
sister-regions of the Northeast gave us Hindu terrorists. Sikhs rose
in Punjab, and Muslims in Kashmir. The overwhelming majority of
Naxalites are Hindus.
And now some young non-Kashmiri Indian Muslims are playing with
dynamite. Some three years ago, when President George Bush visited
India, Dr Singh proudly told his American mentor that Indian Muslims
did not believe in terrorism. As evidence he pointed to the absence of
any Indian Muslim name in the rolls of Al Qaeda.
If this was true, then what has happened in the last three years?
India has not been ruled by any party that Muslims consider hostile to
their interests. Congress has been in power in Delhi. In fact, Indian
Muslims believe that if they had not mobilised to an unprecedented
degree the Congress would never have got enough seats in the last
general elections to cobble together a coalition. Indian Muslims claim
a sort of ownership of the UPA regime. Why have Dr Singh and Mrs Sonia
Gandhi been unable to prevent a spurt of despair within the community?
The Congress will not even admit this question, so it is difficult to
see how it can introspect its way towards an answer. There are two
principal reasons for the renewed rise of Muslim despair. First, the
community has not got the justice it expected from the Congress. One
fact will illustrate. While those found guilty of terrorism in the
Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993 have been, rightly, punished through the
legal process, those found guilty of crimes against Muslims in the
preceding riots have been left untouched. The constables found guilty
of state terrorism during the awful riots in Mumbai after the Babri
episode in the report of the Justice Srikrishna Commission are
wandering around, free. Dr Manmohan Singh, Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Mr
Sharad Pawar cannot "find" them.
The second major reason is a sense of helpless hopelessness. The
history of economic deprivation long precedes the UPA Government, but
its mistake was to believe that it could fudge through its term as its
predecessors had fudged through theirs. Dr Singh should never have
asked Justice Rajinder Sachar to find out the truth if he wanted to do
nothing about it. The truth has become the ultimate betrayal, for the
report is a devastating indictment of Congress neglect of its most
loyal constituency. Muslim youth watched as Mr Arjun Singh reserved
even more jobs for others, and maintained an ultra-secular silence on
reservations for Muslims. As I have written before, other communities
got jobs under Congress; Muslims got enquiry commissions.
This was fuel for a fire that could so easily mesh into an
international conflagration. The memory of riots, particularly in
Mumbai and Gujarat, was equally incendiary. Indian Muslims have had
apostates and middlemen as leaders. In the vacuum, a number of youth
found it easy to drift towards the malevolent attraction of evil. They
convinced themselves that virulent hate mail and unpardonable killing
of innocents was the means to display a destructive strength. This
terrorism, of course, is already hurting Indian Muslims far more than
it damages their avowed targets.
The Congress is twisting this damaged psyche further with its cynical
response to terrorism. There is a suspicion, bordering on conviction,
among Indian Muslims that the Government of Dr Singh and Mrs Sonia
Gandhi has offered scapegoats in the form of students of the Jamia
Millia University to appease majority anger after the terrorist
attacks on Delhi. We do not know the full truth, but there is enough
that is murky in the events of 19 September when Delhi police
surrounded and killed two students of Jamia at Batla House, while two
others apparently escaped. There are questions galore, not least being
the manner of the "escape": if there was only one entrance, how could
the two "escape"? Police have shifted their version after every
question. The "escape" now is meant to have been through the rooftop.
Did anyone see them in the daylit skyline? Nor does anyone believe in
the version offered of the death of Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma. It
was first put out that he had been shot in the stomach. Then pictures
were published of him walking after being shot, with no evidence of a
stomach wound. The latest theory is that he died of a heart attack
following loss of blood. One TV station claimed that the autopsy
report showed he had been shot from the back, hinting at what is known
as "friendly fire". The UPA Government then sought to demonise the
community when they covered the faces of suspects with the red,
patterned, Arab headdress instead of the black cloth normally used.
Who got these headdresses from the market? Home Minister Shivraj Patil,
who claimed that he had personally supervised these operations? Was he
telling India that these suspects were linked to Arab terrorism?
The questions grow each passing day, each one another fuse for anger.
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Plants and Implants
By M.J. Akbar
|
September 20, 2008
You never know what you
can pick up from the shambles of a large edifice, and little could
larger than the financial architecture of American capitalism. Here is
a nugget from Tom Friedman's column as he talks about America's energy
planning and the economy. His particular reference is to Republican
candidate John McCain's idea that nuclear plants can meet America's
energy needs.
Friedman writes:
"McCain talks
about how he would build dozens of nuclear power plants. Oh, really?
They go for $10 billion a pop. Where is the money going to come from?"
Good question.
An American columnist is convinced that nuclear energy is too
extravagant for an economy as rich as America's, but Dr Manmohan Singh
insists on foisting it on the Indian taxpayer. To put the comparison
in perspective, at over $1 trillion, the combined value of around half
a dozen major American companies that collapsed in the last fortnight
was near India's GDP of $1.4 trillion.
As each deception is exposed, the goalposts keep changing. Now that
people are becoming aware that even in thirty years nuclear energy
will not contribute more than six or seven per cent to the energy mix,
at prohibitive cost, a new fudge is in the works. Another energy plan
will be formulated to increase, on paper, the share of nuclear energy.
As for the cost, let those in charge in 2020 worry.
Former Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh has been asking the
government for clarity on the cost to the consumer of this nuclear
energy. He has still to get a satisfactory answer.
Almost every argument used by the government to sell the nuclear deal
has been upturned by revelations. Dr P.K.Iyengar, former chairman of
the Atomic Energy Commission, summed up the American position
in a
statement on 4 September:
"if India conducts a nuclear test, America
will immediately abrogate the 123 Agreement, and take back all nuclear
materials, including fuel, it has supplied;there are no guarantees of
perpetual fuel supply or provisions to stock for lifetime; there will
be no transfer of sensitive nuclear technology such as reprocessing
technology;the US does not consider the 123 Agreement as the only
document governing civil nuclear cooperation with India – its actions
will also be dictated by the provisions of the Atomic Energy Act and
the Hyde Act."
The White House cited India's vote against Iran at the IAEA as
evidence of a pro-US Indian tilt in conformity with the provisions of
the Hyde Act. Under pressure from the United States and Israel, we
have also abandoned the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, which would have
provided much cheaper energy than nuclear power. Moreover, even in the
event of the abrogation of the treaty by the United States, the
mandatory inspections of India's nuclear facilities will continue in
perpetuity.
When such details became public, Delhi argued that we could always
ignore Washington and buy from countries like France. On the evening
of 18 September the French ambassador to India, Jerome Bonnanfont,
clarified that the proposed Indo-French nuclear agreement is going to
be on par with the American agreement – there will be no transfer of
enrichment and reprocessing technologies to India.
The Times of India printed this
pithy comment:
"Certainly, it's
a blow to all those who trumpeted that if the US wasn't prepared to
give things, let's go to the French."
Some long-time supporters of the nuclear deal, who accepted Delhi's
assurances about the negotiating process on good faith, like former
Indian ambassador to Washington Lalit Mansingh, have now advised Prime
Minister Singh greater caution before committing the nation. They have
even suggested that he avoid a visit to Washington during his tour to
America for the United Nations General Assembly session. But facts are
unlikely to deter Dr Manmohan Singh from inking a one-sided agreement.
We might note that Americans, who are so anxious to sell nuclear
plants to India, has not built a single new plant domestically since
1979, when the Three Mile Island accident took place. They do a more
careful cost-benefit analysis when it comes to their own money.
One of the more interesting items lying in the debris of collapsing
business reports is the only economic success story that George Bush
can boast of during his eight years. He has been an unqualified
triumph in arms sales. Eric Lipton wrote in the 15 September issue of
the
International Herald Tribune, which carries
stories from the New York Times,
"From tanks,
helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft
and even warships, the Department of Defense has agreed so far this
fiscal year [March to mid-September 2008] to sell or transfer more
than $32 billion in weapons and other military equipment to foreign
governments, compared with $12 billion in 2005…Deliveries on orders
being placed now will continue for several years, perhaps turning out
to be one of President George W. Bush's most lasting legacies…"
And just in case you thought that Bush was not a good salesman, "most
arms exports are paid for by purchasers without US financing."
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Fluff-and-bluff can't change harsh truths
By M.J. Akbar
|
September 13, 2008
We may have all missed the most interesting point in the kerfuffle
over the Indo-US nuclear deal. Dr Manmohan Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi
have emerged as the greatest advertising team since World War II. They
have sold a personal obsession as a nation's lifeline. The strategy is
not dissimilar to that employed by Germany and Italy in the war:
repeat a lie often enough and it will be perceived as the truth.
High-decibel propaganda has this hypnotic effect on the masses. To use
a term from theatre, there is a wilful suspension of disbelief.
Take the promise of electricity to every village. The claim is arrant
nonsense. The eight reactors the Government wants to purchase in the
next four years — commissioning will be much later — will not increase
the share of nuclear power in the energy mix beyond 2.5%. The
Government's own estimates show that even after two decades and an
investment of perhaps $150 billion, nuclear energy capacity will not
increase by more than three or four per cent. The same investment in
other energy sources would provide a far higher return. Does Congress
propaganda mention either the percentage or the time? Of course not.
A second lie: the Hyde Act has nothing to do with the deal, which will
be governed only by the 123 Agreement. This is astonishing
disinformation. America has repeatedly stated that it will not —
indeed, legally, it cannot — deviate from the provisions of the Hyde
Act, and America is the supplier nation. Our only role is to hand out
hard currency for what America decides to sell.
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On Sharada Prasad
By M.J. Akbar
|
September 06, 2008
His laugh was always a little less than a laugh, and his smile much
more than a smile. This was not uncertainty; it was a discretion that
suited the gentle character of a true gentleman, H.Y. Sharada Prasad,
aesthete, scholar, author, adviser to two Prime Ministers and a muse
to whoever was privileged enough to be friend. His warm heart lived on
his face; his measured tones were a reflection of his temperament. He
believed in understatement, not because he had less to say, but
because neither assertion nor aggression was his preferred virtue. If
you could not hear, he did not have much to say.
That made him a bit of misfit in Government of India culture, where
assertion/aggression between colleagues is matched only by the
competitive degrees of sycophancy displayed towards the boss, no
matter how often the boss changes. I got to know him when he was
working as the senior bureaucrat in the Prime Minister's Office during
Rajiv Gandhi's tenure in the mid-Eighties. Continuity across
generations is not the easiest of transitions. Sharada Prasad had been
Mrs Indira Gandhi's most trusted adviser, joining her in 1966 when she
first became Prime Minister and lasting till 1977 when she was voted
out of office in India's most dramatic election. He had the prickly
[the euphemism was 'sensitive'] portfolio of press relations, not an
easy job at the best of times and self-defeating during those
interminable 19 months of censorship during the Emergency. He was
perhaps the only member of Mrs Gandhi's inner circle to emerge from
that calamity with his reputation unsullied. The first decision that
Mrs Gandhi took on her return to power in 1980 was to reappoint him to
the PMO. That says it all.
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