Thursday, December 28, 2006

Policy clear as mud

India officially voiced its displeasure at the upholding of Saddam Hussain's death sentence. Ostensibly, India doesnt approve of anything that will "obstruct reconciliation and delay the restoration of peace in Iraq".

India's stance in global affairs sometimes baffles me. Obviously, there isnt a single and coherent stream of political/moral/social thought guiding foreign policy, which shows itself in the unreasonable positions and sporadicity with which India shows interest in other nations' affairs (barring Pakistan from the definition of 'other nations'). India's justification of its disapproval of Saddam's sentence - peace in Iraq - is hard to believe. More easy to digest is the argument that India wants to keep the Sunnis (who make up 80% of India's 150 million Muslims) happy, and strengthen relations with the Sunni Gulf nations.

But then, if the opinions of Sunnis are important, how do you explain the cozying up in strategic affairs with Israel and the US? And if Israel is an ally, how do you explain India's soft-pedalling the issue of Iran's nuclear ambitions (Pranab Mukherjee's explanation that he wants to keep the door to dialogue with Iran open because of India's "civilizational links with Iran" is laughable). And how about India turning a blind eye (barring lip service) to the Palestine question? Some might argue that India is only supporting what it thinks is right without taking sides, but that is not true, given India's lacklustre stand on the Tibet issue or her investments in Sudan.

Others may argue that India is only acting in the national interest regardless of how correct the action is. But this [link] article in last week's EPW suggests that it is the political and moral character of the leadership that determines foreign policy, not national interest (the article would have earned 4 stars had the author not polluted it with his apparent bias for the left and had not issued the clarion call to the "struggle" which is very common even in seemingly academic material emanating from the left; it is amazing how these guys dont get arrested for treason), and I obliquely agree. While the author of the article uses the term "political and moral character" depreciatingly to suggest partisanship and corruption, the fact is that there is a disturbing lack of a coherent shared system of mores and attitudes to guide foreign, and also domestic, policy.

Indeed, policy in India seems surprisingly detached from any recognizable schools of thought. I read political mouthpieces from both ends of the spectrum - Organiser from the right and EPW from the left - and find that more often than not, important policy decisions are detached from dominant thought in both camps. For instance, the US nuclear deals as well as recent economic policies have been roundly criticised by both. So does it mean that India is going down a centrist path, keeping radical opinions on both sides at bay? If so, who are these centrists and what do they stand for? Will India's foreign policy take a consistent form that many or most citizens can relate, even if they disagree, with? I doubt so.

Back to Saddam, India's reaction reminds me of something I had read on the Iranian concept of taroof taarof [link], which describes the practice of insincerity, of saying something without meaning it. Italy, Germany, and France reacted the same way as India did, but they categorically explained that widespread revulsion towards the death penalty in their societies was their motive for opposition, which is understandable in light of the EU's policy-level opposition to the death penalty in all cases. India's justification is lame and unbelievable.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Clearinghouse: 1965 war report

In 1992, an official "History of the 1965 Indo-Pak War" was published by the Ministry of Defence. It is a surprisingly candid account of the conduct of the war and the mistakes made by both sides, all the more surprisingly because such analyses are rare to come across even in mainstream media, let alone a government-commissioned study.

I first stumbled upon the report about a year back on bharat-rakshak.com which had borrowed it from Times of India. The report is sheer delight for military buffs but it is also interesting (and, I daresay, essential) reading for any Indian with a national/political conscience. Admittedly, apart from the initial and concluding chapters which deal with the build-up to the war and diplomacy that sealed its end, the report is a lengthy technical account of nearly all the battles that took place in the war which might put some off. There are detailed descriptions of tactical manoeuvers that defined the various battles in the war, of how many companies of 3 Sikh or 5/6 Gurkha captured so-and-so Tekri and with how many casualties, and so on.

One interesting episode is the conditions that led to the formation of the 'Meghdoot force' by Lt Col Megh Singh, the first commando unit of the modern Indian army. This unit led to the genesis of Special Forces in the Indian army, through the legendary 9 Para commando batallion of the Parachute Regiment. Today the army boasts of 7 such SF batallions.

Because of the lack of good maps, the report is painful reading unless you grew up in Chhamb sector of J&K and know it like the back of your hand (I wasnt, so didnt). When I first read the report, I resolved to make a set of read-along illustrations to go with it, but I was in school then and the idea never materialized. It still hasnt, but as a first step, I have consolidated the report and uploaded it in a standard format (the bharat-rakshak upload is in a strange format). Here it is, enjoy!

Chapters 1 to 4 (6.34 MB)
Chapters 5 to 8 (8.25 MB)
Chapters 9 to 14 (7.73 MB)

While on the subject: One of the most striking things I noticed after I started living in the US is the high level of martialness present in everyday society. One frequently sees cars with 'veteran' number plates or POW/MIA (prisoner-of-war/missing-in-action) empathy stickers, a large number of high schools and universities have ROTC (reserve officers training corps) programs, there are special previledges for active servicemen and veterans in nearly all workplaces, there is a plethora of military lingo embedded in everyday vocabulary (AWOL, FUBAR, grunt, ASAP), and servicemen are easy to find (my classmate in graduate school was a serving soldier just back from Iraq, one of my senior colleague was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam).

In contrast, the martialness of society in India is very many notches below. While I wish that India never aspire for the same level as that of the US (with the associated aggression and violence), I certainly do think that Indians in general should advance a couple of notches up - to expand their limited repertoire of military references to beyond Kargil, Siachen, LOC, and the regular great-army chest-beating rhetoric. One way to 'support our troops' would be to remain better informed about things that affect them. Your moral compass may be pointing the other way, but given the geo-political realities, being militarily aware is as much as a necessary evil as, say, driving a (always polluting, to some degree) vehicle so you can go earn your daily bread.

One of the things I fancy is that every individual should adopt a military regiment as a 'home regiment', just like you might have a favorite sports team that you call your own. The regiments of the Indian army are normally created along lines of regional, religious, or social identities, and have very colorful histories, legends and lores attached to them, so one shouldnt have a problem finding a regiment to adopt. There can be a commercial side to this affair in the form of regimental t-shirts, mugs, screensavers, flags etc, but the main objective is to support it, in spirit, by staying informed.

During the period I lived in Mewad, I had shifted my loyalties to the Mewad Bhil Corps, a force comprised of Mewad/Vagad tribals originally raised by the British in the 1800s to suppress local unrest and later incorporated as a paramilitary force in independent Rajasthan; I even realized my relationship by visiting the MBC HQ in Kherwada. But now, over time and distance, I have returned to where I had come from - the Maratha Light Infantry. And with General JJ Singh taking over as Army Chief in 2004 and becoming the first Maratha Light officer to do so, I have had no reason to regret my deserting the ranks of MBC!

Sunday, December 17, 2006

A river runs through it

Salmon are fish that are born in fresh water, swim to the ocean where they spend their lives, and migrate back to the stream of their birth to reproduce and die. The salmon's journey is stuff that legends are woven around - they swim upstream against the flow of the river, dodge predators, jump up waterfalls and rapids, and scale fish ladders on dams, before reaching the place of their birth. All my life, I had read tons of articles on this journey in nature journals, enjoyed glorified accounts of it in fiction, and seen it in picture and film. However, salmon always had a bachchanized quality about them (bachchan [bach-chan] – adjective 1. a condition made possible by the mass media wherein millions of people know, closely study, and have strong emotions for an individual (or entity), but literally nobody thinks that meeting the individual in person is necessary to consummate the relationship). Last Sunday, the salmon debachchhanized themselves to me, and how!

It was an awfully cold and foggy morning when I hiked down to my favorite river-gazing spot on the American River, a few kilometers upstream of its confluence with the Sacramento River. The river runs slow and deep at this point with little visibility inside the water, and once in a while I would hear a loud splash in the water - the Chinook or King Salmon who run up the river like to jump out of the water dolphin-style - but I would barely catch a dissapearing tail or just a fading ripple, what with my rotten luck. Curious to see more, I decided to walk downstream where the river negotiated some shallow rapids and was much clearer.

I was walking eastwards, and I approached the rapids across the cobbly beach, the fog had lifted high enough that the early sun was reflecting brilliantly off the shiny cobbles and the water surface. A few feet away from the bank, I stood still to enjoy the sight and the sounds of the flowing water. At that moment, a huge fish jumped out of the water and suspended itself in the air for few microseconds, enough for the sun to glance off its shiny silver scales, then splashed back in. I was just upstream of where the it had dissapeared back in the water, and realizing that if it was a salmon it would be swimming towards me, I fell on one knee and riveted my attention into the clear shallow water near the bank. Sure enough, a second later the huge Chinook appeared to sight in the water. Quiet apparently, it was struggling against the current; but it only paused for a moment as if to garner a burst of energy, then with a quick quiver of the tail it was gone.


















Sunday on the American River
[more pictures here]


I spent the rest of the day ambling by that section of the river and saw plenty more salmon, but that particular instance in the morning with the sun, the river, and my first jumping salmon was the kind that has the potential of what I can write about as a life-changing moment if I grow up to be some ustaad like Salim Ali or Jane Goodall or somesuch. OK, stop smirking, I only said potential.

Postscript: I was thinking of how amenable rivers are to glamorization, though I would also argue that much of it is well deserved. My textbook in open channel hydraulics in graduate school which was written by Terry Sturm, who also taught the course (and is my all-time favorite teacher), starts off thus:
" Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it, The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words,and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters
."
I never really appreciated the full meaning of this, but it sounds mighty profound so I remain awed. Sturm quotes this excerpt from Normal Maclean's autobiographical short story A River Runs Through It, a classic for river lovers. A eponymous movie was made out of this story in 1992, and I will urge you to see it if you havent. Shot amidst the rolling landscape of Montana, the story of the family that the movie follows it overshadowed by the outstanding cinematography of the river and woods. This story hooked me on to fishing (the opening line is "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing..."), but hopefully it will induce you into less bloody means to enjoy rivers.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Land of milk, honey, and high hydraulic heads

The other day, while taking a shower under a stinging high-flow shower-head, I realized that I have rarely come across such high pressures in domestic water faucets in India. That set me thinking - can hydraulic heads be used as an indicator of a society's level of advancement? Analysts have used nearly every conceivable indicator from per capita calorific intake to per capita dental expenses, so why not add one more? A brief hydraulics class is in order before I make my point.

Hydraulic head, as a layman would know it and feel it, is the pressure with which water shoots (or trickles) out when a bathroom or kitchen faucet is turned on. In physical terms, the water pressure in your domestic faucet is only kinetic energy manifesting itself. This kinetic energy is a converted form of the potential energy (or hydraulic head) that builds up in water when it is pumped up to its perch in the overhead water tank. This potential energy, in turn, is the converted form of the electrical energy involved in operating the pump which forces the water upwards. So, hydraulic head = energy. Which is to say that taking a bath is probably as energy-consumptive as running a light bulb for a certain amount of time, even if it is just cold water. But few people who have had running water all their lives will ever fully appreciate the value of a healthy hydraulic head. My home in Rajasthan for a couple of years had a community hand-pump as the only source of water. In peak summer, when groundwater levels dropped downwards of 110 feet and every drop had to be drawn up manually, one couldnt but marvel at the miracle that a self-flowing faucet is.

The remarkable thing about hydraulic head is that it is an indicator of more than just availability of electricity and water. Much political machination goes in to aid or debar the distribution of hydraulic heads in society. For example, the valley people of Narmada fought for years to not allow the lowlanders of Gujarat to create the dam they needed to build up enough hydraulic head to send water all the way to Kachchh. Urban elite in India whine their heads off about groundwater exploitation when farmers throw in deep tubewells to get just enough head to water a field of rajka. At the same time, most of India's success stories have been built around robust hydraulic heads. The Gangetic plains would never have been the cradle of civilization if Bhagwan Shiv had, instead of tying up Ganga in his locks, allowed her to expend all her hydraulic head in one fell swoop to the ground. Closer in time, the Green Revolution was arguable based on the heads created behind Nehru's temples, and Kurien's brilliant White Revolution in Gujarat was built of the hydraulic head behind the Mahi dam.

Verily, hydraulic head (which is measured in metres or feet) is as robust an indicator of prosperity and wellness as Friedman's Index of Economic Freedom or such. Why not just say "Kerala is 3 feet happy while Bihar is only a few inches happy" instead of parading acronyms to explain simple stuff like the economists do? Furthermore, little is required to survey a population for this indicator. No fancy PhDs, no intricately designed questionnaires, no deligent interviewers, and no patient interviewees are needed. Just a batallion of boys with a bucket and a stop watch to measure faucet discharge running from door to door and reporting their findings to a babu armed with a calculator and the hydraulic energy formula and, lo and behold, you have a barometer of prosperity stuck right into any society's armpit.

But the narrative of hydraulic heads takes a paradoxical twist when it comes to modern Western civilizations, which are supposed to be advanced. True, hydraulic heads are impressive almost universally here. But then what kink of God's work or the Shaitan's mischief is it that Men in this land of ever-flowing water use paper to wipe their dirty hands, and worse?

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Comment: Revisiting why India cant fly

Sarosh has written a response to a comment by Aarjav on a previous post on this blog. It deserves to be read as a commentary in itself and be further commented upon. Here is Sarosh A., on innovation in India:

[For context, read the original post and Aarjav's comment here]

(The workings of innovation in India) is a much more complex phenomenon, and the discussion here cannot and should not be tied down to lack of innovation in the IT sector or even industry, per se. I would like to begin by saying that technology and invention, in the way that we have come to know them broadly have been the bane of western preoccupation since the days of the Rennaissance and the replacement of the project of religion (or God) with the project of science and reason (which may be the 'new' gods). I will furthur speculate that God is not replaced in any form but exists through the ages, in simultaneity, in the East. To my mind this could be one of the chief reasons why, for the past two hundred years, technology has largely flowed from the west to the east, starting with the Industrial Revolution till date. This is obvious when we take a quick glance at any/most of the appliances we use in the east today (and i take appliances only as an example - be they cars and washing machines, or typewriters and computers).

What is urgent and very essential is to recognise that with the birth of the Indian nation, we have to learn to recognise the value of being innovative and inventive in our own realm and on our own terms - but this must not and cannot shortchange for less innovation and or less invention or appropriating existing technologies alone. My problem with appropriation is that while it is inevitable and essential at one level, it is not to my mind, the truest or purest form of innovation and invention (hence Google India, or LG India just dont excite me as much as Grameen Bank and Sewa). To my mind this is something we must address urgently and in all its complexity from the grassroots levels to the big polis'.

You are totally right in your observation that the problem lies in academia, in developing a culture that questions and desires risk in order to innovate. One example for instance, is that there is a total dearth of ground breaking research (at the material level/ semiconductor level) on solar technology for instance, which has vast ramifications for a sun rich nation like ours. Yet I dont know of any Indian organisation that is researching the cell itself. Why should we wait till NASA develops the most efficient solar cell for its space station or an obscure mission to land a man on Mars? We are obsessed with collaborations and in trying to replicate the 'Maruti-Suzuki' model again and again (my marketing your technology). After decades of collaboration with Honda, I dont think Hero (of Hero-Honda fame) can make a decent/innovative motorcycle spare-part. The TATA's are always looking at a mass technology (be it cars or trucks), but it always seems to shortchange innovation at some level - they will rattle at little more, be more tough on your arms, just feel like 'I wish I could buy a Mercedes instead (something that Mercedes recognised and so split quite early on with the TATAs).

We cant say "its Indian, and its the best in the world, and (which is my point here) that none like it exists." With the coming of age of the project of modernity in the country, the opportunities are vast, but we have to start acting at a multiplicity of levels. Projects that seem to come from the NGO sector seem to address far more ingenuity today (for example microcredit and microfinance) than the big enterpreneurs of the Industry. Do you read me Mr Narayan Murthy?

[Sarosh, I used my editorial license to snip at the comment to make it read like a post. Mind not please.]

Friday, December 01, 2006

Sly environmentalism

"It seemed like such a crackpot idea, I had to see the thing for myself — this perfectly working dam that the environmentalists want to blow up. This is a fantasy about an impractical extravagance. Not another taxpayer dime should be spent."

These unflattering remarks appeared in the LA Times yesterday [link, free registration required for viewing] with regard to the proposal to dismantle the dam on the Hetch-Hetchy reservoir and make way for the supposedly beautiful valley that lies submerged underneath. Ever since California's water resource department released positive results of a feasibility study of the dam removal, newspapers in California have flooded readers with stories and editorials about the issue. Very few of them, though, are as staunchly for or against the proposal as the one quoted here. Most commentrators have taken an equanimous stand, arguing that as long as the public is ready to pay for the removal and an alternative water supply for San Fransisco is secured (the reservoir is an important source of water for the city), there is no harm done.

Second-order environmental questions such as this are harder to think through compared to plain problems such as, say, a resort planned in the middle of a tiger reserve. This is especially so when the new order of things has been around long enough (the dam is nearly 85 years old now) to have gained a certain inertia by virtue of the political and natural ecosystem that quickly adapts and develops around the new development.

Another famous environmental issue of second-order complexity in California is the Salton Sea in southern California, which offers a converse conundrum. The Sea (which is actually a lake) came into existence in 1905 due to an engineering mishap, when a broken dyke allowed water from the Colorado River to flood a low lying area of the desert. Under normal circumstances, the water would simply have evaporated; in this case excess irrigation flows from the nearby Imperial Valley farms kept the pool topped up. Soon enough, the lake proved to be a hotspot for aquatic life, birds and tourists. However, the irrigation inflows carried with them the curse of irrigation - salts - and by the 1960s high salinity in the water had started to kill off life in the 'Salton' (called so for the saltiness) Sea. Today, added to the salinity threat, changing land-use in the catchment of the Sea is threatening inflows to the Sea, and there is an "environmental" movement calling for millions of dollars and policy changes to save the Sea (which didnt even exist a century back).

I like to play mindgames conjecturing how the various 'varieties of environmentalism' (Ramchandra Guha's book by this name is a must-read) would deal with the problem. A 'conservationist' would advocate saving the Sea, but would he also pitch to conserve the status quo with the Hetch-Hetchy reservoir? On the other hand, a 'restorationist' would want the dam brought down, but would he support draining the Sea and bring back the desert? Of course, a real tree-hugger will adopt the former approach for the Sea and the latter for the Hetch-Hetchy reservoir. Students of environmental politics should closely follow the course of the Hetch-Hetchy and Salton Sea debates.

Closer to home, one fine example of jugglery of environment concepts is found in Dying Wisdom: Rise, fall and potential of India's water harvesting systems, the trailblazing omnibus on traditional water systems. In the book, authors Agarwal and Narain discredit the contemporary approach to water resource development and make a pitch for revival of the decentralized water harvesting tradition. It took me years after first reading the book to recognize the logical inconsistency within. Many of the examples of "traditional" systems are structures such as the Bhopal lakes (commissioned by Raja Bhoj) and the vavs of Gujarat. You dont have to be a water expert to realize that these structures were hardly decentralized, community-based, or democratic. These structures represented giant public works of their time, some built for the perpetuity of the ruler's fame, involved thousands of workers, and certainly weren't based on any local initiative. Taking advantage of the fact that time erodes the political perception of these works, Agarwal and Narain used them to make a case for community-based initiatives in water. Now thats a pair of real tree-huggers!

To its credit, the book and the movement that followed it has achieved much. When India's water minister Saifuddin Soz said recently that Punjab's needs large-scale water harvesting to reverse its groundwater problem, he was unwittingly playing tribute to the authors' vision. In Indian polity, its not usual for someone who cannot muster a large unruly demonstration or isnt a swami or a film star to influence public policy to this extent.
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