Rainmaker blues

Harking back to the classic Thoda Sa Roomani Ho Jaaye (1990), Nana Patekar plays a wandering rainmaker who claims he can bring rains during a drought for a fee of Rs 10,000. This is how he introduces himself- "Dhrushtadhumna Padmanabh Nilkanth Dhumketu Barishkar naam hai mera, aur baarish lana kaam hai mera!". While he does manage to shake up his client's family scene, the rains he promised dont come easily and he ends up nearly losing his fees.

Yesterday I came across this historical account of San Diego from the early 1900s which convinced me that Barishkar isnt the only rainmaker with professional problems. Quoting (abridged) from California- An Interpretive History :

"The city of San Diego had often shown desperate ingenuity in its long struggle with its water problems. In December 1915 in the midst of a particularly serious drought it had even signed a contract with a professional rainmaker, Charles M. Hatfield who promised to fill the Morena reservoir for a fee of $10,000. A few weeks later a cloudburst overflowed the reservoir, washed out a smaller dam below it, and flooded a part of the town. The city council refused to pay Hatfield his fee; they pointed out that he had contracted to fill the reservoir, not to flood the community."

:D

Finally

co·ter·ie [koh-tuh-ree] n.
A small, often select group of persons who associate with one another frequently.

A few weeks back I had whined [link] about how the American media is pandering to the government by not using the term 'civil war' to describe the civil war in Iraq. Finally, NBC broken the coterie yesterday [link] by declaring that it will refer to the "ongoing sectarian strife in Iraq" as a civil war.

If they want to be really fair, they should go a step further and start using the qualifier "Iraqi civil war caused by the US invasion" every time they mention Iraq, just like they use the qualifier "caused by Hezbollah which is supported by Iran" every time they mention the Lebanon war, or "backed by Hugo Chevez who is flush with oil money" every time they talk of rogue Latin American politicians.

Goodbye, blue sky

NPR (National Public Radio) carried a story last week about how 'carbon offset' programs are becoming popular with travellers. Travel organisers like Orbitz will offer to nullify the degrading effects of your air-ride for a fee. The narrator interviewed a person who took a vacation in Hawaii - he paid an additional $30 or so when he bought his air tickets to offset the environmental impact of his travel. Supposedly, this money will be invested in renewable energy. In some ways, this is a great leap forward, because carbon trading finally seems to have emerged from the pedantic tangle of global treaties and arrived at the tip of your mouse (Rohit maatsaab, if you are reading this, comment).

But some would argue that it is not enough. Recently, Sunita Narain wrote in Down to Earth [link] that global airlines have had too sweet a deal. She says that airplanes and autorikshaws are similar to some extent - both are polluting and both are (now, to some extent) 'democratic'. But low-fare air travel is growing exponentially in India and Europe, and the ecological footprint of an air traveller is larger than commonly believed. She argues that air travel emits 'luxury' emissions, not 'survival' emissions, thus has to be taxed and curbed. "Simple, yes, but unpalatable?".

Lessons are for losers

Early this week, when asked what lessons the war in Vietnam offered for the war in Iraq, the American president said, "We'll succeed unless we quit". I find myself amazed at this gentleman's ability to turn logic on its head, and then having the brazenness to say it aloud.

Arre sahaab, how about the lesson that the war in Vietnam was a completely wasted effort, like the one in Iraq is turning out to be? How about the lesson that if Vietnam righted itself inspite of a deadly civil war, it surely would have been far better off without the US prolonging it?

Book review: Pity the Nation - The Abduction of Lebanon

I find it distracting to know much about an author's background and credentials while reading his or her work. It seems to alter the reading experience in subconscious ways, so I normally wait till after I finish the book to read the 'about the author' on the back jacket.

But Robert Fisk does not offer the luxury of shutting him out in Pity the Nation, an intense account of Lebanon as recorded first-hand during his years as a newspaper correspondent there during a violent period in the 1980s. As Fisk accidentally stumbles over a hastily dug grave for victims of a refugee camp massacare, feels a gun pushed to his temple by a militiaman, and cowers in the middle of a battlefield, you cannot but intimately know your messenger.

This first-handness turns out to be the fundamental difference between this book and other books written by westerners about the middle east - Fisk doesnt tell the story as it unfolded in the President's palace or militia headquarters in Beirut, rather he describes what was experienced by thousands of everyday Lebanese who he seems to have a comfortable connection with. In some ways, the book is in the style of 'subaltern studies' popularized by Ranjit Guha and his fellow South Asian historians.

But this approach also turns out to be a pitfall of the book - Fisk sticks religiously to writing about events and circumstances that he has covered in person during his journalistic forays, and neglects to inform readers about what was happening beyond his sphere of coverage. A reader without much prior knowledge of middle eastern history will be bewildered trying to make connections between Fisk's grassroots world and simultaneous events happenings in the broader frame of history.

The book paints the political story of Lebanon roughly from the mid-1970s to early 1990, from the Muslim-Christian civil war through the invasion and occupation of the country by Syria and Israel. To say that Fisk looks at events in that period through a neutral point of view is as fallacious as saying that Dominique Lapierre's history of Israel's formation (Oh Jerusalem) is an objective piece of literature. Apparently, Fisk belongs to the club of Chomsky-types with an intense aversion for Israel's actions and he makes his bias pretty apparent in the book. However, if you have been exposed to years of ubiquitous pro-Israel propoganda in American or Indian media, it is only fair to hear some noise from the other side.

Pity the nation was first published in 1990, and like all political literature on the middle east from that period, it presents itself to our post-9/11 hindsight as shockingly ominous. Anyone wishing to get an informed perspective on the causes for the upheaval of the first decade of this century should read it.

Masters of delusion

Some Indians, it seems, have a major 'superpower complex'. Ever since India's economic success has become pronounced, the concept of superpower has been enthusiastically embraced by the types who tend to look outwards for self-vindication.

A few days after I split my sides laughing at the Hindustan Times' article which questioned "Can India ever achieve superpower status in the blogosphere?" (the article wasnt supposed to be funny), Baba Ramdev did the same to me with his claim that Bharat will be a superpower by 2011. According to Ramdevji, Bharat will be a superpower because of Yoga, Ayurveda, and its message of universal happiness - Sarve bhavantu sukhinaha, sarve santu niramaya. But Baba, arent the concepts of world superpower and universal happiness inconsistent with each other?

Cheer up, Narendrabhai

The Indian Express reports [link] that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is upset about the large number of state bureaucrats resigning from their positions to join the private sector.

For someone who is trying hard to promote Gujarat as an industry- and business-friendly place, Modi shouldnt be alarmed. After all, the out-migration of bureaucrats to the corporate sector is merely a testimony to the success of private enterprise in Gujarat.

Which makes me think of the unusual status of babudom in Gujarat. Historically, youth from the state have balked at careers in state and central bureaucracies, opting instead to engage with businesses as enterpreneurs or employees. Newspapers and commentrators in Gujarat continually fret at the nearly negligible number of Gujaratis who enter the 'services'. Governments too have acknowledged this and consequently the Sardar Patel Institute of Public Administration (SPIPA - a Gujarat government institution) runs a special program to train aspiring UPSC candidates from Gujarat.

While there might be certain fringe benefits of having more Gujarati babus, I think that having better opportunities outside Gandhinagar is a cause for celebration, not worry. After all, the millions of young Biharis and UPites who pit their life's worth on IAS attempts do it less out of choice, and more because of the lack of choices. My friend Avinash, himself a Bihari, once related to me the dispiriting story of his compatriots who spend the best years of their lives attempting the UPSCs; after they have exhausted all their permitted attempts, many end up as struggling journalists or lawyers in Delhi (they even have a name for these types - the 'IAS bimar'). While these youth look up to District Magistrates and ACPs with their red beacons and personal bodyguards as role models, most Gujaratis would be looking up to Dhirubhai Ambani (and Harshad Mehta) for inspiration.

Sometime in 1998, I heard Keshav Verma, Ahmedabad's dynamic ex-Commissioner (by that point of time, he had quit the IAS and was working for an international bank), daydreaming about developing Indian cities into 'centers of excellence' and having cities managed by professional managers instead of babus. I dont remember myself agreeing then with much of what he said, but now I think that if matters reach a point in Gujarat when districts have to go out and hire its own managers from the open market, it wont be such a bad thing. Narendrabhai should stop worrying about the flown birds.

Revisiting why India cant fly

Some time back I had lobbed an argument [link] that the lack of innovation is and will be a major impediment in India's blooming. To my surprise, two scholars from Delhi University feel the same way.

Here [link] is an article in the EPW about the lack of innovation in India's IT industry. Quoting from the abstract: "..there has been a systemic failure to promote the emergence of networks of innovation. This, in turn, has impeded the innovation performance of the IT industry. There is a need to direct policy to address this systemic failure and bring in industry-wide innovation."

The researchers have studied a few big IT companies and come to the conclusion that systems of innovation are weak. They dont, however, go as far as speculating what the long-term effects of this weakness can be. Anyone?