E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Scam & punishment
MONUMENTAL disappointment — that is how one can describe the 450-page unanimous report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), which probed the 2001 stock scam and UTI fiasco. The JPC report, tabled in Parliament on Thursday, has nothing new to offer and is packed with known generalities. In a round-about way, it has blamed the scam on “institutional failures”.

Mayawati’s populist politics
INDULGING in the emotional exploitation of the people does help politicians to enlarge their base, but only to a limited extent. Ultimately, it is the performance that makes all the difference. Thus, UP Chief Minister Mayawati is mistaken if she thinks that she can considerably increase her following in Sultanpur district’s Amethi tehsil by simply according it the status of a district and renaming it after Chhatrapati Sahuji Maharaj.

OPINION

Perils of US-centric foreign policy
Has India realised its mistake?
Sumer Kaul
HAS sense at last dawned on the Vajpayee government vis-a-vis the USA? Has it recognised the character, duplicity and designs of the American regime? Has it realised the disastrous folly of putting all its foreign policy eggs in the Bush basket? Has it understood how demeaning and defeating kowtowing can be?

MIDDLE

“Shift the capital!”
R. K. Kaushik
KING Edward VIIIth succeeded his father, King George Vth, as Emperor of Great Britain, India and British Commonwealth on the midnight of January 19 and 20, 1936, and ruled for 11 months and abdicated on December 10, 1936, for marrying Lady Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee. During his father’s 26-year rule he was known as His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor Prince Edward VIIIth.

ON RECORD

What slows us down is democracy: Gurcharan Das
Gaurav Choudhury
GURCHARAN Das, a columnist, novelist, playwright, management consultant and author of provocative bestseller "India Unbound", has come out with a new book "The Elephant Paradigm: India Wrestles With Change". The book ranges over a vast area covering subjects as varied as panchayati raj, national competitiveness and the sacred and philosophical concerns of the average Indian consequent to India’s entry into what the author calls the "age of liberation".

SIGHT & SOUND

Serials on the blink
Amita Malik
LAST week I watched two of the older serials with a good deal of interest and pleasure. They were completely different in topic and style but had certain enduring qualities absent in the new crop of serials on different channels which are growing faster than mushrooms without a corresponding rise in either originality or style.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Go slow on grape juice
THE same antioxidant compounds in dark grape juice that are noted for their health benefits in fighting heart disease may have a downside, according to a new research. In cell studies, scientists at the US Department of Agriculture and Cornell University found that polyphenols in purple (also called red) grape juice can inhibit the uptake of iron, which could increase the risk of iron-deficiency anemia.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

EDITORIALS

Scam & punishment

MONUMENTAL disappointment — that is how one can describe the 450-page unanimous report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), which probed the 2001 stock scam and UTI fiasco. The JPC report, tabled in Parliament on Thursday, has nothing new to offer and is packed with known generalities. In a round-about way, it has blamed the scam on “institutional failures”. After 360 hours of formal sittings during the 18 months of investigation with four extensions, the Joint Parliamentary Committee has failed to answer the simple question — who did it? — in a simple language. The only one to get indicted is big bull Ketan Parikh and that is no surprise. Everyone wanted to know: who else? The report also names the then Finance Secretary, Mr Ajit Kumar, but that is for delayed action on the information made available to him about the impending UTI crisis. The then UTI Chairman, Mr P. S. Subramanyam, too has been let off lightly. He has been merely accused of “keeping everybody in the dark”. The UTI had shocked the large investing community by announcing a sudden freeze on the sale and purchase of its flagship scheme, the US-64, in July, 2001. Mr Ajit Kumar was informed about the redemption crisis, but he did not bring the serious issue to the Finance Minister’s notice. The UTI lost heavily as a syndicate of the Calcutta Stock Exchange, the DSQ group and the SHCIL manipulated the stock markets. The institutions held responsible for the massive collapse of the regulatory system are the SEBI, the RBI, the Department of Company Affairs and the Finance Ministry. These institutions, which were all supposed to regulate the country’s financial system in the post-liberalisation era, have been found to be playing a weak and ineffective supervisory role.

Such is the administrative system prevalent in this country that individuals running the institutions, departments and ministries involved in the loot of Rs 5,000 crore of public money have managed to escape responsibility. With the “committee” system designed to cover up individual responsibility for any faulty decision-making and the practice of owning moral responsibility having been long abandoned , it has become extremely difficult to pinpoint individual responsibility. The ruling parties take advantage of this systemic loophole. The then Finance Minister and now Foreign Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha, who should have owned the moral responsibility for the massive financial fraud and the UTI bungling, has refused to resign and his party has come vociferously to his rescue. When Harshad Mehta’s securities scam broke out during the Congress regime in the early nineties, the BJP, then in opposition, had created a ruckus in Parliament demanding the resignation of the then Finance Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. Now the Congress is asking for Mr Yashwant Sinha’s removal, while its two members unanimously went along with the JPC recommendations. The report has neither indicted Mr Sinha by name nor sought his resignation. The politics of principles had long ago ceased to operate in this country. For public consumption politicians make some noises. Everything is forgotten after the din of allegations and counter-allegations subsides. If scams of such magnitude are to go unpunished, there is no guarantee that these would not be repeated. The fraud preventive and regulatory mechanism that the JPC is suggesting now should have been put in place when the first Harshad Mehta scam had surfaced.

Mayawati’s populist politics

INDULGING in the emotional exploitation of the people does help politicians to enlarge their base, but only to a limited extent. Ultimately, it is the performance that makes all the difference. Thus, UP Chief Minister Mayawati is mistaken if she thinks that she can considerably increase her following in Sultanpur district’s Amethi tehsil by simply according it the status of a district and renaming it after Chhatrapati Sahuji Maharaj. The idea of creating a new district is, theoretically speaking, aimed at having an easily manageable administrative unit. Government officials in a smaller district are supposed to have a better understanding of the people’s problems. But experience, particularly in UP, shows that this remedy is not helpful at all. Rather it adds to the problems of the people. Take, for instance, the case of Ambedkar Nagar district, which was carved out of Faizabad after renaming Akbarpur, a tehsil town and a railway junction. While this change has made little impact on the lives of those residing in Ambedkar Nagar district, Faizabad has been deprived of most of its revenue-generating areas, making it difficult for it to run its affairs. The industrial scene in the entire area, including both districts, remains as depressing as it ever was. However, Ms Mayawati has a penchant for making new districts. During her earlier stints as Chief Minister she created a number of districts, which only added to the administrative expenses of the state. She is least bothered about the truth that UP, a poverty-stricken state, cannot afford this exercise at this stage. The state falls in the industrially “laggard” category and does not have enough resources even to pay salaries to its employees. Yet Ms Mayawati prefers to play the game of creating new districts and naming them in accordance with her Dalit agenda as part of her populist politics.

So, the prestigious Amethi parliamentary constituency, patronised by the Nehru-Gandhi family, will now be called Sahuji Maharaj Nagar. Naming it after the great social reformer of Maharashtra may gladden the Chief Minister and others in her party — the BSP — but not the poor villagers of the area. Very few of them might be aware of the background of the Maharaj. But Ms Mayawati has her own calculations. This is her way of ensuring Dalit empowerment. The new district will add to the UP Government’s annual expenses by at least Rs 300 crore, but this is not her problem. She is upset because of the widely publicised visit to the area by Ms Priyanka Gandhi, who recently stormed into a police station, championing the cause of the Dalits. Ms Mayawati could have countered Ms Priyanka Gandhi’s attempt to endear herself to the downtrodden of Amethi by launching some development project worth over Rs 300 crore, the amount needed for maintaining the new district administration. This would have been more beneficial for the people in real terms. However, such schemes do not bring quickly as much political dividends as do populist measures. Ms Mayawati should know it better than anybody else. After all, she is one of those leaders who always try to be one up in populist politics.

Iraq under war cloud

IRAQ’S President Saddam Hussein should count himself lucky if his people are allowed to celebrate Christmas and New Year in peace. He has done all that was humanly possible for him to do to save Iraq from the wrath of an increasingly belligerent America. The 10,000 pages that were prepared by the Iraqi authorities, before the United Nations’ deadline for coming clean on the country’s weapons programme expired, do not apparently add up to anything if US President George W. Bush is to be believed. Mr Saddam Hussein has apologised to Kuwaiti people for having invaded their country in 1990. He has allowed UN weapons inspectors access to facilities they may want to examine as the possible source of amassing and making weapons of mass destruction. The voluminous report from Baghdad had given rise to the possibility of 2003 beginning on a note of peace for all mankind. But if President Bush is allowed to have his way, US bombers and missiles should be sending out messages of death and destruction to the people of Iraq as soon as the super power is through with celebrating the birth of Jesus, the messenger of peace revered by Christians and Muslims alike as the messiah. When the super power speaks the only diplomatic option for the “belittled” part of the world is to nod its head in support. Britain has all along supported the US line on Iraq, because it pays to be on the side of the global bully. The scene that is building up is straight out of the Wild West. The bully picks up a fight in a crowded saloon with a weakling. The rest of the crowd simply slinks away. Anyone who tries to make the bully see reason gets the bullet first.

That is what is about to happen in Iraq. The UN Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix has endorsed the American declaration that Iraq has failed to provide details of its programme of weapons of mass destruction. The only way President Saddam Hussein can save his country from being reduced to rubble a second time in just a shade over a decade is by accepting the American charge as correct and lead the weapons inspectors to the facilities where the so-called weapons of mass destruction are being made and hoarded! Nothing less than that will satisfy the super power. The Iraqi authorities thought they would score diplomatic points by allowing the international media a free run of all the palaces and facilities believed to have been used for storing and making lethal biological and nuclear weapons by President Saddam Hussein. The media was everywhere the weapons inspectors went. And yet, Mr Hans Blix has nothing better to say than endorse the American line that has been consistent in demonising the Iraqi leader as the greatest threat to mankind — yes, greater than the America-created Osama bin Laden. Come to think of it even Mr Saddam Hussein is America’s creation for bleeding Iran in a war that lasted nearly a decade. Of course, Mr Saddam Hussein is not a weakling in the Wild West mould. But even then he is not even a complete morsel if the super power decides to make a meal of him. Pity the people of Iraq who are caught between the devil and the deep sea.

OPINION

Perils of US-centric foreign policy
Has India realised its mistake?
Sumer Kaul

HAS sense at last dawned on the Vajpayee government vis-a-vis the USA? Has it recognised the character, duplicity and designs of the American regime? Has it realised the disastrous folly of putting all its foreign policy eggs in the Bush basket? Has it understood how demeaning and defeating kowtowing can be?

Before I set out the basis for raising these questions, we must realise that if things have gone woefully wrong, as they demonstrably have, with this government’s foreign policy, if we feel let down and indeed cheated by the Americans, it is a situation entirely of our making. Ignoring US history of hegemony and high-handedness, ignoring its less-than-friendly stance towards India, particularly in regard to Kashmir, for the last 50 years, the Vajpayee government decided in its mysterious wisdom to follow a policy of subservience to Washington. This was clear from the way our then Foreign Minister put himself from the word go at the beck and call of US State Department functionaries and the way we welcomed, extolled and celebrated the Clinton visit two years ago.

Whether or not Mr Clinton had consciously distanced himself from the anti-India pathology of his first term (personified by Robin Raphael), the fact that he was then in the dying days of his presidency made no difference to the ardour with which the architects of NDA’s foreign policy wooed him. Obviously the policy was to suck up to the powers-that-be in Washington. Thus, when the Republican administration took over we promptly transferred our prefabricated and unconditional loyalty to it.

And we did this with eyes wide shut, ignoring the potential predilections of the Bush regime, ignoring even some early ominous signals. For instance, within days of Bush coming to power, Donald Rumsfeld named India as a country “threatening other peoples, including the USA, Western Europe and countries in West Asia”!!

Instead of seeing this ludicrously outrageous statement as a sign of a congenitally hostile mindset, the Vajpayee government continued to appease Washington and cling to its apron-strings in the belief that such a stance would result in some great good for India. The self-delusion reached its apogee after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Recall Vajpayee’s grandiose statement that “India and the USA will jointly lead the war against terrorism” and Jaswant Singh’s rhetoric about “concert of democracies” and “qualitative transformation of Indo-US relations beyond recognition.” There was no doubt in their minds that the USA meant what it said about waging a global war against terrorism and punishing all those (“anywhere and everywhere”) who harbour terrorists. They were convinced that not only Afghanistan but Pakistan too had it, that Washington would at least make Islamabad abandon its bloody mischief against India. Citing as proof Musharraf’s statements against terrorism at the time (which L.K. Advani joyously described as “pathbreaking”!), the government believed, and assured the country, that the decade-long problem of terrorism in Kashmir would soon be solved for good. Nothing of the sort happened. The terrorist killings in Kashmir continued unabated — but so did the government’s faith in US assurances.

Then, a couple of months ago, during the Prime Minister’s visit to the USA appeared the first sign that the Vajpayee government may at least have seen the reality and, equally importantly, mustered the courage to call a spade a spade (even if only at an NRI gathering in New York, not in his speech to the UN!). He talked about the “double standards” being employed in the “global war against terrorism”, obviously referring to the unspoken American concept of good terrorists and bad terrorists and the obvious inaction against — indeed the warm embrace of — the wily General Musharraf ruling the roost in the motherland of terrorism.

This newly found sense of realism about the USA has been in evidence in recent weeks at other fora too. At the recent environment conference in New Delhi Mr Vajpayee criticised the duplicity of “those who lecture to others” but themselves do nothing about carbon dioxide emissions. In Mumbai last month he admonished “the high priests of non-proliferation” (read the USA) for “targeting countries which have played by the rules” (read India) while turning a blind eye to those (read Pakistan) engaged in “clandestine and illegal development and transfer of nuclear missile technologies”. Witness also the abrupt cessation of those virtually twice-a-month high-level visitations from Washington. Even more tell-tale was the ouster of the “All American” Jaswant Singh from the Foreign Office.

The most recent indication is the attempt to renew a positive and substantial relationship with Russia. The Delhi Declaration and the more than half-a-dozen agreements signed during President Putin’s visit are all significant. What impressed immediately, however, was Mr Vajpayee’s interview to Itar-Tass on the eve of the visit. His reiteration that Indo-Russian (Soviet) relations “are time-tested” may sound like a tired cliche but it reflects the truth. Never has Moscow done anything against the interests of this country. In fact, it has helped us in more ways than one and come to our rescue in moments of crisis. Vajpayee told the interviewer — and thereby the whole world and particularly the sole superpower — that not only are Russians “dependable” but that “we depend on them” and are keen to enlarge and deepen Indo-Russian ties whether others(!) like it or not.

So does all this add up to a serious review of India’s US-centric foreign policy and world view? Do all these indications reflect a realisation on the part of the NDA government that the surface bonhomie of the last few years is all very well but when it comes to concrete policies and actions the USA couldn’t care less about our problems and concerns? That all talk about “natural affinity” between the world’s largest democracy and the world’s strongest democracy is no more than banquet rhetoric. That Indo-US interests do not in fact converge. That our world views are vastly different. That Bush’s global war against terrorism is a ploy to further its own economic and hegemonistic interests.

In the interests of India and our sovereignty and well-being, one wishes that the evidence I have cited does indeed point to a revamp of the government’s policies and perceptions. But one is not sure. It may well be that Vajpayee and his party realise that the people are aghast at the way his government has kowtowed to the USA and are angry about the disastrous consequences of this policy, especially vis-a-vis Pakistan, and that this anger will cost the party dearly come electoral judgement day. Considering that the ousted chief designer of the policy, Jaswant Singh, has been given a charge where he can equally disastrously bring into play his ardour for the big chief of global capitalism, it could be that the apparent distancing from the USA is cosmetic posturing to stem the tide of popular resentment. The “evidence” of change and the renewed warmth towards the Russians may be no more than the usual gimmick of a miffed lover to evoke fruitful jealousy yonder in Washington.

In the event, there has to be other evidence, solid and sustained, to establish convincingly that this government is in fact set on reversing its policy blunders. On the burning question of Pakistani terrorism, we have had more than enough of ambling from event to tragic event, incident to bloody incident. The government must cease making inane utterances about our “eventual” triumph and simply get down to action without further delay and dither. It must evolve an effective strategy to combat and defeat Pakistan’s bloody gameplan — and implement it in all earnest. The other principal area where the government needs to act to regain credibility about its nationalist credentials concerns the economy. It must reject the US-dictated IMF-World Bank prescriptions and review its reckless privatisation-globalisation agenda. Only when one sees policy changes and appropriate actions in these areas can one be sure that this government actually wants to free itself from the clutches of global bullies.

MIDDLE

“Shift the capital!”
R. K. Kaushik

KING Edward VIIIth succeeded his father, King George Vth, as Emperor of Great Britain, India and British Commonwealth on the midnight of January 19 and 20, 1936, and ruled for 11 months and abdicated on December 10, 1936, for marrying Lady Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee. During his father’s 26-year rule he was known as His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor Prince Edward VIIIth. His Royal Highness visited India in November/December, 1921, as a Crown Prince and was received at Gateway of India, Bombay, by the then Governor General and Viceroy of India, Lord Reading (Lord Reading was the only Governor General and Viceroy of India from Lord Clive to Lord Mountbatten who belonged to Jewish community), the then Governor of Bombay Presidency Lloyed George, the Maharajas of Patiala, Gawalior, J & K, Baroda, Jodhpur, Dholpur, Dhar, Ratlam and several others and Nawabs of Bahawalpur and Kalat and several other top military police and civilian officers working in India. His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor was the eldest son of King George Vth.

Mahatma Gandhi gave a call for the boycott of his visit and the Congress leadership directed its state and district units to hold demonstrations/protests wherever the Duke of Windsor went. It was on December 6, 1921, that the Royal Crown Prince was to visit Allahabad. Allahabad at that time was the capital of United Provinces (the earlier name of Uttar Pradesh). The State Secretariat, the State High Court and newly founded Legislative Assembly were located there. One day prior to the visit the then Governor of United Provinces, Sir Harcourt Butler, and the Chief Secretary, Mr Geoffrey F.De. Montmorency, ICS (an ICS officer of 1902 batch who was later Governor of Punjab in late twenties and early thirties) held a meeting with security officers and decided to make tight security arrangements. They also ordered the arrest of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and a large number of his associates. But as matters turned out an opposite effect was produced.

When on December 6, 1921, His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor Prince Edward VIIIth emerged from the train at excellently decorated Allahabad railway station and later started off towards the Governor’s House in the State carriage, he was met by shuttered windows of the houses and ominous silence along the troop (Black Watch Regiment) lined deserted streets. It was a spooky experience for the Crown Prince and he attempted to maintain a rigid and majestic pose in the carriage in order to show that he had risen above the insult.

Whatever Indian crowds were gathered on the streets were herded together into pens like sheep and guarded by police constables. Also most of the houses in Allahabad had black flags on their roofs or doors as a sign of protest against the visit.

The Duke of Windsor was to get civic reception on the Allahabad University campus later in the day. The story was the same there also and instead of students and citizens of Allahabad the policemen and CID personnel were sitting in the campus hall. Perplexed and astounded by the total lack of public participation in the “capital city” the Duke of Windsor asked the Governor, Sir Harcourt Butler, whether this was the capital of his province. The Governor and the Chief Secretary replied in the positive but ventured to add that Allahabad happened to be a citadel of the powerful Congress party which under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru had boycotted the visit. The Duke of Windsor remarked that “if it is so then shift the capital”.

The next day the Prince left for Baroda after attending the lukewarm civic reception at Allahabad University. However, his orders were meticulously complied with and the very next day a notification was issued to shift the capital of United Provinces to Lucknow. The State Legislative Assembly also got shifted to Lucknow the same day. However, the High Court of UP remained at Allahabad and is still at Allahabad though now it also has a Bench at Lucknow.

ON RECORD

What slows us down is democracy: Gurcharan Das
Gaurav Choudhury
Tribune News Service

GURCHARAN Das, a columnist, novelist, playwright, management consultant and author of provocative bestseller "India Unbound", has come out with a new book "The Elephant Paradigm: India Wrestles With Change". The book ranges over a vast area covering subjects as varied as panchayati raj, national competitiveness and the sacred and philosophical concerns of the average Indian consequent to India’s entry into what the author calls the "age of liberation".

An honours graduate from Harvard University in philosophy and politics and an alumnus of Harvard Business School, Gurcharan Das weaves together the varied facets of India’s transition. The Tribune caught up with the former CEO of Procter and Gamble in his home in New Delhi to talk on a wide range of issues.

Excerpts:

Q: In "India Unbound" you wrote about how India embraced democracy first and capitalism afterwards. This has made all the difference and how this explains a great deal about Indian society today, particularly the slow pace of reforms. Don’t you think the slow pace of reforms could negate your thesis that India will become the third largest economy, after the USA and China, in the next two decades?

No, I don’t think so. Even though the pace of reforms is slow, (that’s why I call it an elephant) the rate of growth of 6 per cent that we have experienced over 20 years from 1980 to 2000 is very respectable. And this has happened in conditions of appalling governance. I don’t think this appalling governance is going to last forever. We should expect a little improvement and with a little improvement we should go up to 7 per cent rate of growth. In the immediate years after the economic reform process was initiated our growth rate did pick up to 7.5 per cent and it went on for three years. I think the bottomline is that the industrialised nation, have a rate of growth of 3 per cent (of course it happened over a period of hundred years) and we are growing at 6 per cent. So I personally think (if we did it like China, we would be tigerish), what slows us down is democracy and, to some extent, tradition. We have an ambivalence about money, very religious. But I don’t think anybody in India will have tradeoff among higher rate of growth, religion and democracy.

Q: Considering the number of scams taking place in all spheres of public life, aren’t you affected by the picture of contemporary India where, as you had said earlier, minds are yet to be "decolonised"?

You are absolutely right. It is disgraceful and very distressing. But I think that they are a function of a society in transition. In fact scams occur to an extent in every society. And the question is what you focus on. A cup of tea can be half full or half empty. One can look at the empty half. Those are the scams. I am looking at the part that is half full. The half full part does not make news or exciting headlines. But that’s the part that is making a difference to our society. I would say that reforms are the best solution to scams and corruption. If they are reduced they would reduce the sphere of government in our economic life. That’s how things are. We are a democracy. We are going to have stunts. We are going to be slower. But don’t forget that growing at a rate of 6 per cent for 20 years makes us the six fastest growing economy in the world. Even today, when the world is in recession, it is only India and China who are propping up the global growth rate.

Q: You seem to support Francis Fukuyama’s theory of the `end of history’ which predicted that with the triumph of democratic capitalism and with only one superpower, people will become absorbed in the peaceful pursuit of middle class life. Don’t you think that events of September 11 have somehow proved that line of thinking wrong?

In my new book — "The Elephant Paradigm: India Wrestles With Change" — I talk about both Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington’s theory of Clash of Civilisations. I don’t think one can explain history through monocausal explanations. It is more complex than that. One always tries to make some sense out of history. My own feeling is that Fukuyama’s vision will be the more compelling one rather than Huntington’s. In other words, I think the young people, even in the Muslim countries, will embrace washing machines and VCRs rather than fundamentalism.

Q: You had earlier termed the Hindu nationalism course through the country’s veins as "deplorable". What are your views on the happenings in Gujarat and some other parts of the country? Is this a manifestation of Huntington’s Clash of Civilisation theory?

One can call Huntington very prescient etc.. In the end I think Gujarat and the overall intolerant mood — may be this is wishful thinking— but these are going to lose out to the main preoccupation of people which is going to be to give better schooling to their children and improve the lot of their life generally. Yes I am in the camp of Fukuyama. Certainly to me Gujarat is deplorable and a failure of governance. The BJP is being thrown out in every election. Not because of Hindutva. Not because of ideology. But because the BJP has turned out to be another Congress. It hasn’t delivered governance.

Q: John Rawls is believed to have been a major influence in your psyche. His minimax theory which says that if the poor get rich and a few people get filthy rich, that is better than worrying about the distribution of wealth and no one getting rich. Don’t you think that redistribution of wealth is a significant policy imperative given the level of impoverishment in India?

John Rawls was my tutor in college. He died recently and was a wonderful man. Let me tell you that the best redistribution device in society is growth. If you have economic growth, the whole society rises. It’s a question of ‘first lets bake the pie’ and then let’s worry about redistributing. The growth is ensuring that the pie is becoming bigger and bigger. And growth is filtering down. It has to. It is inevitable. I would just focus on growth and reforms and not worry about redistribution. The other excellent redistribution device is education and health. It is not a question of spending more money. It is about reforms in education and health sectors so that the money we have spent we get better returns for that first. It has been documented for years how in municipal schools and villages teachers do not show up. Now they earn ten thousand rupees a month and yet don’t show up in school.

Q: You had once said that democracy is easier to understand and difficult to achieve, whereas capitalism is easier to achieve (because exchange is natural to human beings) but difficult to understand. How far do you think India has achieved both?

We have had democracy much longer than capitalism. Democracy we got in 1947 but our love affair with capitalism started only in 1991. The irony is that today capitalism is vibrant and is delivering many more goods. It is democracy which is letting us down because we have got these clowns who are ruling us. Just imagine if governance could improve a little bit, how much better the situation would be.

Q: Your new book is "The Elephant Paradigm: India Wrestles With Change". Can you elaborate on the use of the metaphor Elephant?

Fundamentally, I don’t think India will ever be a tiger. The reason for that is our democracy and our religiosity. These things do tend to slow us down. We are not a steady state elephant. Our elephant has begun to move. And when an elephant has begun to move, it moves very firmly and determinedly in one direction. It is very powerful and has a lot of stamina. The tiger, on the other hand, runs out of steam after making a quick bust. We are kind of a lovable elephant, nosiy elephant, elephant with a long memory and there is nothing wrong in that. If we were a tiger, maybe we could have changed about five to ten years in the process. But we have already waited for more than 3,000 years for this moment. So we can wait for five to ten years more. The hope lies in the fact that our middle class is growing very rapidly. Apart from eastern UP and Bihar maybe, by 2020 in most of the rest of the country 50 per cent of the population will be middle class. Then our leaders will also be different. So basically, Elephant Paradigm, is a companion volume of India Unbound. It covers a lot of non-economic territory — intellectual and social in our lives.

Q: You seem to be in support of euthanasia. What’s your argument in its favour?

Personally for me, to be on a support system, particularly if you are brain dead or something similar, it is very humiliating. I would rather give a choice to the individual. In America, 15 per cent of their GDP, which is trillions of dollars, is the result of the last nine months of expenditure on anybody. This is wrong. While I don’t know how one will die, I would give some more freedom to people, obviously with some safeguards.

Q: You are a columnist, writer and a corporate captain. How do you manage to wear so many hats at one time?

I took early retirement from the corporate world. So now I am basically a writer. I still have some interest in the corporate world. I am on a number of boards and also associated with a venture capital fund. I guess the answer to that question is that we human beings have far more capabilities and we don’t really take advantage of that. I think Einstein said that we use only about 15 per cent of our brains. I don’t know where he got that data from. My own point is the reason why we don’t utilise our whole potential energy because we don’t have sufficient passion. We don’t want things badly. But if any individual wants something badly he or she goes on to get it. You need focus to do anything.

Q: You started off as a fiction writer and non-fiction writing came much later in your life. Why is that?

Well, I think as you grow older, you become more and more aware of your limitations. You need much greater brilliance to become a great fiction writer. I think I found a voice and my confidence kept growing in the Sunday columns of a newspaper that I write every Sunday. It is a great place to test new ideas. And I found my voice becoming more confident and you keep doing what you do well. I will be too scared to write a play now. Although I am happy that there is a theatre group that will work with me. Even though I am in my fifties, I may do something in future, because I guess the life span is much longer.

SIGHT & SOUND

Serials on the blink
Amita Malik

LAST week I watched two of the older serials with a good deal of interest and pleasure. They were completely different in topic and style but had certain enduring qualities absent in the new crop of serials on different channels which are growing faster than mushrooms without a corresponding rise in either originality or style.

First there was the inimitable Jaspal Bhatti on DD in an episode of Flop Show where he masqueraded as a doctor. Good basic credible situations exposing the crummy side of our public life with wit but without malice. I recalled an earlier episode where he had a delectable dig at Doordarshan on DD itself and got away with it because of the same lack of malice. Then I watched a late night show of Bhanwar where real life court cases are acted out by professionals and the ways of justice, whether fair or unfair, are pursued with documentary evidence.

Then I compared them with their latest equivalents. I am leaving out Shekhar Suman because his shows consist mainly of rather tired imitations of real-life personalities, the shows themselves being based in format on well-known shows on foreign networks, some visible in India. Sab TV started off rather well with its skilful caricatures of well-known Indian public figures but ran into legal hurdles early on. But its clever take-offs on Veerappan, Jayalalithaa and other public figures has now been replaced by Indian situations rather than personalities and it has lost something in the process. I quite enjoyed the skit on MLAs being given computers and what they did or did not do with them, culminating in a free-for-all in the computer lecture room based on the throwing of microphones in the UP Assembly, But it certainly missed a golden opportunity earlier on when it had a skit on the Ministries of Health and Education. Both Shatrughan Sinha and Murli Manohar Joshi are sitting targets and neither, I feel, would have minded their legs being pulled, certainly not shotgun who has recently done a hilarious play on his fellow politicians which they appear to have enjoyed enormously. Did Sab TV get cold feet after the court case or is it running out of ideas?

Bhanwar is based on actual court cases and might drag at times but does not compromise on facts or add unnecessary fancy touches. Which is why I found disturbing Zee TV’s dramatised reconstruction of the terrorist attack on Parliament. I found it disturbing because for one thing it was entirely based on the police case and also telecast on the day before judgement was to be passed on the accused. This might have been legal but I did not think it ethical. The first pointer was why dramatise things with professional actors when the actual dramatis personal of the attack were readily available to give first-hand accounts? Secondly, with ample actuality footage of its own, which Zee always termed first and exclusive, it could have gone far beyond the police version and done its own thing. In the event, the feature became over-dramatised apart from becoming the police version.

I have been following both Sab TV’s satires on contemporary events and personalities and Zee TV’s Astitva so closely because at least they are trying to be different. Astitva is still holding its own about a woman doctor aged 34 and a young photographer aged 24 who are in love and planning to marry and raising the hackles of their parents as well as most of their older relatives. I hope the denouncement will be as brave as the subject and certainly the two characters are still acting convincingly as is Alok Nath as the woman’s father.

It was good to see what my young nephew describes as “the shikari shikared,” media tycoon Subhas Chandra was interviewed about the present state of Zee TV on CNBC by a sprightly young woman who had certainly done her home work but tended, like most of NCBC’s women anchors, to be pushy and over-bearing. I have long wanted to comment that while CNBC’s men anchors are competent and cheery without being self-conscious and pushy, their women sometimes send me up a tree with their bubbling over-confidence which is sometimes not even matched by clarity of speech. In the event, Mr Subhas Chandra., no mean performer himself, dealt courteously and with quiet authority with questions which came at record speed and not always in proper sequence and kept the eager-beaver properly in place.

Sometimes one misses good performers on TV who also command respect for their expertise. I got a fleeting view of ex-Finance Minister N Chidambaram in a brief discussion on TV the other day and wondered why he was not called upon more often and why other economic experts are worked to death and have become a bore. Also in the field of cinema and culture generally, two people who should space their TV appearances in sheer self-defence are Mahesh Bhatt and Javed Akhtar. Both experts in their line, excellent TV personalities, but when they are called on endlessly every few days it builds up a sub-conscious viewer fatigue which they surely do not deserve. I once asked notable theatre personality E. Alkazi why he did not appear more often on TV and he gave a significant reply.” One should know when to say No”. I couldn’t agree more. Which is why it made a difference when, instead of the usual suspect politicians, a recent panel discussion on Gujarat on Star News had dancer Sonal Man Singh and other non-political Gujarati personalities giving refreshing and humanitarian rather than parochial views on Gujarat. It was also refreshing that after he had done with the political leaders in Ahmedabad Pankaj Pachauri invited Mallika Sarabhai to Hot Line and she had some brave and very different comments, never forgetting her pride as a Gujarati but also expressing what shame she felt when facing questions on the recent disturbances abroad. Similarly, Zee TV, during President Abdul Kalam’s visit to Ahmedabad, interviewed Mrinalini Sarabhai about her late husband’s association with the President as nuclear scientists, and why she had also invited other contemporary scientists to tea to revive their associations with the President. Asked what she had served the President for tea, she replied with a smile. “His favourite iddlis”.

The worst offenders in repeating the same people, especially politicians and journalists, are We The People, The Big Fight, Karan Thapar’s six or is it seven talk shows on different channels and all similar shows. There are endless TV potentials not only in the capital but all over India. Please let us hear them.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Go slow on grape juice

THE same antioxidant compounds in dark grape juice that are noted for their health benefits in fighting heart disease may have a downside, according to a new research.

In cell studies, scientists at the US Department of Agriculture and Cornell University found that polyphenols in purple (also called red) grape juice can inhibit the uptake of iron, which could increase the risk of iron-deficiency anemia.

While reducing iron can be beneficial for adults with certain medical conditions that involve excess iron, the same is not necessarily true for young children. Iron-deficiency anemia can lead to mental, physical and behavioural impairment, particularly in infants and toddlers.

The study looked at the effect of various juices - red grape, white grape, prune, pear, orange, apple and grapefruit - on the ability of intestinal cells to absorb iron. Using a novel laboratory model comprised of human intestinal cells, the researchers simulated conditions of digestion (including digestive enzymes and acidity) to compare the juices.

Dark grape juice reduced iron availability by 67 per cent, while prune juice resulted in a 31 per cent reduction. Light-coloured juices, on the other hand, actually had the opposite effect; they increased iron uptake. ANI

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

So much beauty in nature is at every moment made and unmade — and thou wishest thy ugliness to be immortal!

The living tree says in his heart: “I would not be carved into the image of God.”

If the cedar knew what marvellous countries the ship’s masts visit, would that make it love the axe?

Even the stone, in being broken, cried to me: “How precious was my form!”

Ask of the grass, as you stoop to pluck it: “Is it not your turn?” and it will answer, “Not yet”.

To die also is an inconstancy.

The only constant is the Eternal.

Life and death — two companions who relieve one another in the leading of the soul to its journey’s end.

The living are like actors who become so absorbed in their acting that they forget the real world. It is good that death from time to time takes them behind the scenes.

— From The Scourge of Christ by Paul Richard

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Compiled by Satish K. Kapoor