Sunday, October 22, 2006

America's occupation of Iraq should go on

because it is good for India. See graph below to understand why India is gaining from America's loss.

For those who came in late, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to support a pro-communist government in Kabul. In reply, America poured millions of dollars through the CIA-ISI pipeline (see Taliban by Ahmed Rashid) to militarily support the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. As part of this strategy, the CIA actively encouraged the recruitment and training of radical Muslims from around the world in Pakistani madrassas to provide manpower to the jihad.

After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, these well-armed and trained fighters streamed outwards, a good number of them reaching Kashmir. Thus, apart from creating two future nemeses for itself - Osama bin Laden and the Taliban - the US' misfired Afghan policy kickstarted a decade of violence in Kashmir. Foreign jihadis hijacked and overwhelmed the native Kashmiri initiative, and violence remained at a high in Kashmir across the 1990s. The graph showing violence intensities in Afghanistan and Kashmir during that period.
















Ironically, 9/11 and the events following it - which brought misery to millions in America, Afghanistan and Iraq - brought succour to Kashmir. As foreign jihadis made a beeline for Afghanistan and Iraq, violence tapered off since 2001 to an extent that Kashmir-watchers now tentatively announce that "normalcy has returned" to Kashmir.

In the US, there is now talk that the failed occupation of Iraq has fanned violence and spawned a whole new generation of radical Muslim militants. Arguably, if the US withdraws and Iraq comes to peace, these unemployed fighters will emigrate to look for greener pastures - likely, back to Kashmir. The US occupation in Iraq provides a much-needed respite for India and a space for political processes to resume in Kashmir; the longer it lasts, the better.

Every time the war-mongers in Washington DC say "Stay the course!", Indians should cheer them on.

Note: Dont ask for references for the figures in the graph, because none exist. Call it BS, but dont miss the point.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Zapped, the monkeys

This time of the year about 3 years back, I was in a small town called Parwanoo in Himachal Pradesh, as part of my friend's baraat (I love the lilting sound of the word Par-wa-noo, like the Gujarati word bap-pore). In a brief respite between matrimonial business in the afternoon, me and comrade Choudhary decided to walk up a winding road leading to a community on the top of a hill near the main town. Halfway up, we hear a loud bang and look up to see a flash of light and flame on a transmission pole on top of the slope. Also, in mid-air and falling, we see two fatally zapped monkeys. Once we have trudged to the top, much to Choudhary's disgust, I peer into the brush under the pole to satisfy my morbid curiosity.

Anyway, sometime back I read Red Earth Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra which starts off with a near-death monkey that has been shot by a boy, set in modern-day India. The boy's kind family that revives and cares for the monkey discovers that it is an extraordinary one - it is a story-telling monkey! The monkey's tales form the book, and the way the stories dip and weave from present into the past, and from fiction into non-fiction, make the book extraordinary. The books eclectic list of characters include Yama, Ganapati, 18th century Maratha warriors, 19th century freedom fighters, modern housewives, American teenagers and of course, a monkey.

The style is quite unlike most of English writing that comes from Indian authors. To my distress, most Indian-English writers seem to limit their story-telling to the confines of their own experiences, and consequently those of their urban English-speaking readers. Without discrediting this genre of writing in itself, I would argue that the English writing scene in India does need the gallop of imagination and dash of surrealism that Chandra provides in the style of "wild" Latin American authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa (my distaste for the mundane, familiar style of some Indian-English writers forced me to coin a rather grandiose term to describe what I like - "transcendental fiction") .

Back to the book, with its interplay of fiction and non-fiction, there is much for the history buff in there. One of the protagonists is Sikandar, a Scottish-Rajput crossbreed, who is a fearsome mercenary fighting for the Maratha first and then for the British. Sikandar's character is modeled after Colonel James Skinner, of similar history and lineage, who helped Daulat Rao Shinde (forebear of current Indian MP Jyotiraditya Scindia) fight for Delhi. After joining the British, Skinner went on to form the "Skinner's Horse" cavalry regiment in the British Army. Interestingly, the Indian Army inherited this regiment and it exists today in the form of the 1 Horse Armoured Regiment.

Maybe Choudhary and I should have smuggled one of those poor monkeys back to the marriage hall and tried to revive it...

Thursday, October 12, 2006

P Sainath @ Berkeley

Q. How many hardcore liberals does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. None (a liberal would say: "The rightists and centrists are screwing the world, let'em screw in the bulb too")

Last week, P Sainath spoke at UC Berkeley at a talk event titled "Neoliberal Destructions" (co-talked by Alexander Cockburn, co-editor of the very-left journal Counterpunch). Sainath is a well-known journalist who writes on rural issues, and who shot to fame and into Indian living rooms with his 1996 classic "Everyone Loves A Good Drought". He is the rural affairs director of The Hindu.

The talk was a classic example of how the substance of a talk can be marred by its intent. Apparently, Sainath spends 200+ days in a year out in the field covering villages, and one expected to hear a view far insightful than the juvenile chit-chat of TOI and Hindustan Times. His talk was insightful but was also, unfortunately, much more. The mainstay of his talk was the farmer suicides in Vidarbha, but given the evening's theme of "neoliberal destructions" he made sure that everyone saw the so-called current agricultural crisis in India as a giant corporate-led conspiracy to take over the country.

So what is neoliberal after all, I asked myself? My next-chair neighbor, my very own Bhishmapitamaha, put it this way- "...suppose, in the 1950s, there existed a bell-curve of political affiliations with outliers to the left and right and a populated center. Today, the form of the bell-curve is the same, but the entire bell has slid 30 points to the right". So, today's so-called liberal actually stands where a mild conservative stood a few years back, thus earning the demeaning epithet "neoliberal" from the "real" liberals.

According to Sainath, neoliberalism in India is manifested in the scaling down of government in the social sector, elevation of private enterprise, the shutting-down of manufacturing on a big scale, and displacement of farmers from land to clear the way for corporate agriculture. He proposed rather forcefully that post-liberalisation, India has been following a path of development which has excluded the 600-million or so of rural folks, who have no skills to contribute in the service-heavy growth path. Indeed, he suggested that the recent growth in India is at the expense of India's rural agriculturalists. "What India is facing right now is the worst agrarian crisis since the Green Revolution". One repeated motif in the talk was that of a "ruthlessly engineered" plot against the poor being unfolded supposedly by the neoliberals.

There were parts of his talk I would readily second, for instance, when he spoke of the 'disconnect' that exists between the Indian intelligentsia and the poor. He quoted the Economic Times (?) as saying in a review of the economy - "..the bottom 600 million are a disappointment; they are not buying enough". I find it true from personal experience that there is a whole class of middle-class urbanites in India who are blissfully ignorant and apathetic towards their rural cousins, and then I have also met khadi-wearing development-swearing spawn of Sainaths and Patkars who have equally little idea of what rural India needs or wants.

All that said, I would still give the talk three stars, and certainly attend again if there is another chance. After all, you dont get to see a rural rock star like Sainath, true liberal or otherwise, everyday.

Update: Someone has posted video clips of the talk here

Monday, October 09, 2006

Remember Rafe Bullick

Rafe Bullick was a Scottish charity worker who died in a landmine blast in Darfur, Sudan, in 2004. Today is the second anniversary of that day. Rafe had a special bond with India, being a longtime volunteer at Seva Mandir, Rajasthan, and later working in Gujarat after the 2001 earthquake. After Gujarat, he moved on to Mozambique, then Bangladesh, before going to Sudan to work with a British NGO Save the Children. He was only 34 when he died, but left behind hundreds of friends across the globe.

I only knew him briefly when I was at Seva Mandir, so I asked my friend and ex-colleague Mamta to share her memories of Rafe, and she generously obliged.


Guest entry by Mamta Vardhan

I first met Rafe on a winter afternoon on the Seva Mandir terrace in 1997. Looking back at that sunny afternoon, I remember him talking knowingly about rural development and Joint Forest Management, a program I worked on at Seva Mandir. He was eager to visit a village to see what forests in Udaipur villages looked like. A couple of days later we went to a village called Bada Bhilwara- in a public bus. All through the bus journey he kept asking questions about the local people, the denuded hills along the road and almost about everything else. Rafe loved to talk, I came to know. During the return journey from the village, we were wet from an unexpected rain shower and extremely hungry. The last bus to Udaipur was especially crowded and it stopped all along the way to allow people to jump in and out, but Rafe seemed at perfect ease all through the drive.

My professional contact with Rafe was rather limited as he worked on a different program, but I often ran into him - in the SM library, or on the street. Rafe always seemed busy with an agenda, and at times very annoyed with the way things worked in India in general and at Seva Mandir in particular. Listening to him, I sometimes felt that he would soon quit development. And sure enough one day I saw him retreating hastily from the library, he said that he had donated all his books to the library and was returning to Britain to continue his studies. But he was back after a few months, and it was a surprise to see another Rafe, one who had agreed to question his assumptions about things and also allowed others to question him.

Rafe became a regular at Seva Mandir then, coming year after year and staying for months together. Reflecting upon his work at Seva Mandir, I can now say that although all development work is intangible, Rafe worked on the most invisible part of it: improving work conditions for people who “do development”. He chose to introduce vehicle safety conditions and practices among Seva Mandir staff. In hindsight, it is a very important but often overlooked part of any work environment. Especially in Seva Mandir, people rode or traveled on motorbikes and jeeps on very rugged roads (or virtually no roads) for a substantial part of their work hours. With road safety practices non-existent on rural (and all other) roads, driving poses an occupational hazard. Rafe worked relentlessly to improve vehicle conditions and train workers against a significant inertia to adopt safe driving habits. It was an uphill task all through, and Rafe faced significant challenges across the board. But he steadfastly held on; as he organized follow-up road safety trainings for Seva Mandir workers and moved on to include Vidya Bhawan staff as well. Long after Rafe was gone, substantial number of Seva Mandir workers could be seen wearing a safety helmet or crossing over their seat belts quite as a habit. An achievement indeed!!

I got a glimpse of a gourmet Rafe at the Dewali guest house. To my greatest surprise, Rafe had learnt to cook not only the usual Indian fare of paneer-matar, but authentic Mewari recipes, from dal-bati to lapsi. He loved his food for sure. And he was shopping at the “localest” of places, going all around Hathi-pole bazaar on his bicycle. I still remember the new-year eve’s dinner he cooked for friends after he moved to his new apartment: it was dal-bati (made from home-milled flour!!) served on a red jajam with fluffy cotton pillows for support (all bought at the Khadi mela). He was becoming not an Indian, but a Mewari. So Rafe knew no short-cuts, he lived each moment of his day fully- be it cooking for friends, organizing a match for orphan children or just cycling around the lake on his own.




Rafe with Mamta at his family estate in Scotland







I came to know Rafe as a friend when I went to Edinburgh to stay with Rohit (my husband and a colleague at Seva Mandir). Despite our rather limited interaction at Seva Mandir, it was a revelation for both of us when Rafe introduced us to his family, proudly as his friends from Seva Mandir. Over an Indian dinner, he showed us photographs from Udaipur, and spoke fondly of his days there, as he handed a gift to be carried for chaiwale Nathuji at Seva Mandir. Spending time with Rafe in Edinburgh, it was evident how greatly he valued development work, and cherished deeply his association with people and places connected to Seva Mandir and Udaipur.

I have a memory of Rafe in my mind’s eye: walking over to meet us, one beautiful spring day coming to say goodbye to me and Rohit before he flew over to Africa and to another world.

The Bullick family instituted a foundation at Seva Mandir to carry on Rafe's work. Read more abour Rafe here.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Azaadi or freedom?

A thought-provoking article on Kashmir in this week's EPW [link] claims that an increasing focus on developmental problems within the state and the growth of a healthy multi-party system is taking people's attention away from separatism. Unfortunately, this is happening inspite, not because, of the Centre's Kashmir policy.

The author plays creatively with the word azaadi, maintaining that if freedom of political expression is allowed in Kashmir, the drive for independence will wither away. Funny, as he points out, that the words 'freedom' and 'independence' can both be translated in Urdu as 'azaadi'.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Take the troops back? Sorry, you cant.

A few weeks back, Barbara Boxer, a Democrat senator from California, made a strong argument on National Public Radio against America's needless involvement in Iraq and announced that if a Democrat-dominated Congress gets elected this November, one of their first acts will be to push for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. This argument seems to be flying with more and more Americans - that the Iraq war was a mistake and that Iraqis have to learn to take care of themselves. As Boxer said early this week to an interviewer on Fox News, the Iraqi people "have to step up to the plate and defend their own country just like we did...and should want to succeed, like we want them to."

Apparently, the instrinsic injustice of the proposed direction is lost on Ms Boxer as well as most anti-war advocates in this country.

Boxer's fanciful dream of withdrawing troops from Iraq is as selfishly centered around the American cause as was the original decision to start the war. Whether Americans are happy about the war or not, a few things are very clear - the war has destroyed the socio-political system of Iraq, started a civil war, killed 40 to 50,000 people, and set the country back by 80 years to a point similar to its post-WWI genesis where it is forced to ask itself existential questions. Given that the purported reasons for the war never existed (WMDs), America stands guilty for all of the above. And America should pay.

Indeed, Iraq doesnt need a squawky Democrat to set right things, it needs another Nuremberg (as in the Nuremberg Trials which sent dozens of Nazis to the gallows for war crimes after WWII) . What would a Nuremberg-2, if it started sessions tomorrow, impose on America?

Conceivably, America would lose the right to withdraw soldiers from Iraq (...you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave...) and be forced to send a hundred thousand more soldiers in purely UN-type cannon-fodder role, providing security to individual neighborhoods in Baghdad and elsewhere, pretty much like a Home Guard. No offensive raids, no precision bombings, just sitting there behind your sandbags taking hits, firing only in self-defence. The entire $453 billion US defence budget for 2006-07 (for comparison, Iraq's 2005 GDP is around $50 billion; India's around $800 billion) would be reappropriated as settlement to Iraqis.

Of course, given the nature of the largely apathetic self-castrated world community that America lords over, it is unlikely that anything akin to the Nuremberg trials will ever happen. But just fantasizing what an exercise in international justice would throw up exposes how wrong (not just incorrect, but wrong) the Democrats are. They want to bring an end to Bush's military adventure, but also want their forces back intact. They want to inherit the single most potent arm of the Empire, but none of the responsibility for its past deeds. The Democrats want to have the cake and eat it too.
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