E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Monsoon melodies
THIS year the monsoon will be normal, and the relief this forecast has produced in this drought-hit season is like that of a brisk shower in a sweltering summer afternoon. This year everyone was looking forward to what the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) had to say.

Evaporated bus spirit
AS pious advice and hope, the US suggestion to India and Pakistan to resume the Lahore peace process is unexceptionable. But when one talks of its actual implementation, there are almost insurmountable difficulties. What the visiting US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Mr Thomas Pickering, has to appreciate is that Lahore bus diplomacy was a mood generator in the two countries.

“Science” of civil services
THE results of the civil services examination have not exactly set any of the rivers in the region on fire. Taking into account the fact that Chandigarh has acquired the reputation of an "academic city" the success of only 11 candidates deserves closer scrutiny. Manpreet Kaur is the lone candidate to have qualified for selection to the prestigious Indian Administrative Service.

ON THE SPOT

Mumbai in state of decay
by Tavleen Singh
IT was over poached eggs that seemed made of plastic and coffee that tasted of dishwater, at Mumbai airport’s Centaur Hotel, that I discovered that Mumbai’s Municipal Commissioner, K. Nalinakshan, had been transferred. My convalescence ended by coincidence that same day and I was waiting to catch a flight to Delhi. It had rained incessantly for nearly two days and along with the news about the Municipal Commissioner’s transfer the front page of The Times of India also reported that this had been the heaviest May rain in fifty years.

NEWS REVIEW

Mexico’s fight against drugs
From Jo Tuckman in Barranca de Guadalupe, Mexico
AN INTRICATE tale of Mexican counter-insurgency billed as a fight against drugs is being played out on the tiny stage of Barranca de Guadalupe. The Indian villagers insist that they know nothing about either narcotics or guerrillas, but they shudder at what the next act might bring.

75 years ago
May 27, 1925
The King’s illness
IT is a great relief to learn that His Majesty has made such satisfactory progress towards recovery that his medical advisers consider it probable that no fresh bulletins will be necessary except a final one announcing his convalescence.

Monsoon melodies

THIS year the monsoon will be normal, and the relief this forecast has produced in this drought-hit season is like that of a brisk shower in a sweltering summer afternoon. This year everyone was looking forward to what the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) had to say. An acute shortage of water — or, to be precise, the television pictures of parched land and dying cattle — in the wake of a scanty rainfall last year has sharpened the popular awareness of the importance of monsoon for a country like India. Then there was the scare story from Bangalore. A CSIR institution, the Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation, had predicted a below average rainfall and stuck to the stand even after the finding was challenged. Ironically, the IMD has not dismissed the Bangalore projection. In fact, it has let it be known that it shared the pessimistic reading but later indicators helped it revise its opinion. In other words, the earlier estimate was not unscientific, nor unreliable; it was valid on the day it was made. This raises a small doubt. The change-over from despair to hope rests on the re-reading of a few meteorological parameters over the past fortnight and a marginal error could produce a different result by September when the monsoon takes the final bow. This fear cannot be ruled out. The IMD has dropped one-fourth of the 16 old parameters and formulated new ones. How effective they are remains to be tested. If the new ones, either by themselves or in conjunction with others, show themselves to be “statistically weak”, the belief in a normal monsoon will go bad. Last year the country was expected to have 108 per cent of the normal rainfall but ended up receiving 96 per cent. Since the margin of error in the statistical model is 4 per cent, the forecast was off the mark by three times.

Last time a drought and water scarcity hit the country was in 1987. Long years of bountiful nature introduced a heavy dose of complacency. The present drought has jolted society to sit up and fill the air with a thousand plans to head off such a situation and install counter measures. Monsoon and post-monsoon period will show how serious are the governments and the people about putting those grand schemes to action. The much-talked about is rainwater harvesting. Except in one or two cities in Madhya Pradesh, the closest the people have come to a viable system is seeing an ugly contraption repeated several times on a private television channel. The Prime Minister has more than once lamented that the country utilises only 6 per cent of the rainwater, allowing the rest to run off to the sea. This is scandalous in an agricultural country where nearly 70 per cent of the people depend on the farm sector for their livelihood and all people look to it for their food and other requirements. Fluctuations in food yield accurately reflect in the economic health of the country. All this warrants better popular interest in monsoon related developments. This year it is entirely because of the drought and the general desire to avoid one next year.

Evaporated bus spirit

AS pious advice and hope, the US suggestion to India and Pakistan to resume the Lahore peace process is unexceptionable. But when one talks of its actual implementation, there are almost insurmountable difficulties. What the visiting US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Mr Thomas Pickering, has to appreciate is that Lahore bus diplomacy was a mood generator in the two countries. The euphoria was dissipated by the foolhardy Kargil intrusion. It is not only the Indian Government that felt cheated; the whole country was livid because the preparations for the adventure were going on right at the time when Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee was riding into Lahore amidst much fanfare. So much was the anger in the public mind that had the Kargil attack not been effectively repulsed, the falling into the Pakistani trap might have cost the Prime Minister his job. It is not only the cartoonists who called the bus journey as being "taken for a ride". This was the general feeling indeed. After what the Pakistani Government did to it, it would be very difficult for any Indian Government to take overtures from the neighbour without a pinch of salt. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has also admitted as much. Moreover, the revival of the stalled Indo-Pak dialogue is impossible unless Pakistan stops its violent activities in Jammu and Kashmir and other states. Such a promise was made during the Clinton visit too but there has been no perceptible change in the ground situation. Moreover, this easing of terrorist activities cannot be a brief lull. Pakistan has to prove over a considerable period of time that it has indeed changed its spots. Interestingly, the USA has confined itself to asking Pakistan to "reduce" cross-border violence. India, of course, would have wanted this to be changed to "stop".

That brings one to the difficulties of the Chief Executive of Pakistan, Gen Pervez Musharraf+. He has so many economic and political problems of his own that he is very much caught in a pincer grip of the religious right and the hawkish military junta. Even if he sincerely wants to engage India in a meaningful dialogue, although that is doubtful, these two sections would make things difficult for him. Any overture would be construed as a betrayal. The pep-talk he gave to his countrymen on Thursday sounded hollow and betrayed desperation. "I am not deterred …. I am not bullshitting … We will correct things. We are not Somalia," he said. The General is apparently jittery. A confrontation is building up with traders. The assertion that all sovereignty lay with Allah and "we are his representatives on earth" reveals the nature of the pressure being put on him by the mullahs. The USA hopes that it would be able to persuade India to consider seriously General Musharraf's repeated offers to meet Indian leaders. Under the circumstances, the moot point is whether he can initiate any dialogue with India with sincerity. There is no doubt that India, being much bigger and powerful than its neighbours, has to go out of its way to avoid the "big brother" tag but given the sensitivities of the Indo-Pak relations and broken promises in the past, it is the latter which will have to display concrete proofs of its newfound "sincerity".

“Science” of civil services

THE results of the civil services examination have not exactly set any of the rivers in the region on fire. Taking into account the fact that Chandigarh has acquired the reputation of an "academic city" the success of only 11 candidates deserves closer scrutiny. Manpreet Kaur is the lone candidate to have qualified for selection to the prestigious Indian Administrative Service. Perhaps, it is the lack of adequate coaching facilities which is reflected in the below par performance of candidates from Chandigarh. The regional picture would become clear in due course. It is a pity that the Union Public Service Commission does not deem it necessary to conduct in-depth analysis of the civil services examination results. It would provide useful information about the region-wise, religion-wise, caste-wise and gender-wise performance of the candidates. For instance, independent studies have identified the Muslim community as educationally and economically most backward. Before 1992 barely two or three Muslim candidates used to qualify for selection to the civil services. But in the year after the Babri Masjid episode the number of successful Muslim candidates shot up to 22. The unhappy incident had fuelled the resolve of most young graduates to achieve success on their own rather than depend on the promises of the community leaders or the politicians for their educational and economic salvation. The resolve to succeed seems to have weakened if the selection of only 13 candidates from the community this year is a fair indication of the working of the Muslim mind. Operation Bluestar and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots had a similar effect on young Sikh graduates. Their justified anger found expression in their improved performance in the civil services.

The only surprise the results have thrown up is the relatively poor performance of graduates from the Indian Institutes of Technology. Their dominance of the key positions in the civil services had become a source of irritation for non-IIT graduates. This year the name of only one IITian figures in the top 10. Surprisingly, he has been pushed to the number two position by Sorabh Babu, a native of Badaun in Uttar Pradesh, who received his graduation certificate from the Motilal Nehru Regional Engineering College, Allahabad. The reason for the sharp drop in the number of IITians can be explained in terms of the IT revolution in the country. IIT graduates are now the most-in-demand professionals in the fast expanding global information technology sector. They have acquired a status in professional circles in the USA which should be a source of envy to the native talent in the land of opportunities. Since the cream from the IITs is in great demand in America and other IT savvy countries what is left for the local market is skimmed milk. Of course, this year's topper from a regional engineering college is not complaining.

Sino-Indian relations

Past prejudices have to be shed
by T. V. Rajeswar

PRESIDENT Narayanan is visiting China this month. He was India’s Ambassador in Beijing in the 1970s and is considered by China as a close friend. The recent publication of a book, “India and China - The Way Ahead After Mao’s India War” by C.V. Ranganathan and Vinod C. Khanna, both retired IFS officers, makes a useful contribution to the complex subject of Sino-Indian relations which have gone through many vicissitudes.

The book deals with events from 1950 after the communists came to power in China and the PLA marched into Tibet soon after. After the fleeing of the Dalai Lama from Lhasa and his entry into India on March 30, 1959, India’s relations with China were consistently on the decline. By 1956 the CIA, in league with the Dalai Lama’s elder brother Gyalo Thondup, had organised the turbulent Khampas in Southern Tibet to resort to insurgency against the Chinese. A recent book, “Shadow Circus: the CIA in Tibet”, by a former CIA agent and his Tibetan collaborator reveals the extent of such activities. From July, 1958, the CIA carried out sorties in C-130 aircraft from a secret base in Thailand to airdrop arms and ammunition to “US trained Tibetans”.

The escalation of tension to the eventual brief war in October-November, 1962, is traceable to certain factors starting from the altering of Indian maps in 1954 to assert Indian presence in the Aksai Chin region. In the eastern sector, the McMahon Line was never recognised by any Chinese government and yet till 1960 China was willing to accept it as the international border in that sector. The extension of the map showing Indian territory beyond the Karakoram range up to the Kuen Lun range in Ladakh was unnecessary and provocative. T.N. Kaul has revealed in his posthumous memoir, “A Diplomat’s Diary”, that during Zhou Enlai’s visit in 1960, Nehru came out of the negotiating room and asked why we insisted on the Kuen Lun range and not accept the Karakoram range. His “advisers” said that India had a cast-iron case and Kuen Lun was better from the defence angle.

As for the construction of the Tibet highway connecting Sinkiang, it was not known to India till the Chinese announced its completion in March, 1957. When Zhou Enlai visited India in November, 1960 and held negotiations with Nehru , only the Eastern sector figured in the discussions and neither China nor India raised the border issue in the Ladakh sector. The Khongka La incident, in which an IB patrol of 20 men was ambushed by Chinese pickets on October 21, 1958, led to inter-ministerial recrimination. B.N. Mullik, Director, Intelligence Bureau, narrates in his book “The Chinese Betrayal” that at a meeting in the Foreign Secretary’s room, attended by Army Chief Gen Thimayya and himself, Thimayya categorically stated that he did not consider that the Aksai Chin road was of any strategic importance nor was he willing to open any posts in the region and the Foreign Secretary agreed with him. When Zhou Enlai suggested in April, 1960, the McMahon Line in the Eastern sector and the Chinese claim line, which was approximately the Karakoram range, India chose not to accept.

In the Eastern sector, the problem arose essentially due to the misreading of the McMahon Line on the ground by both sides. The Indian troops in the Tawang sector and their subsequent deployment in the Nyamkachu valley created a crisis. Earlier, a new Corps had been formed with the flamboyant Lt Gen Kaul as the Commander who flew to the operational area soon after. However, after seeing the situation on the ground Kaul underwent an alarming metamorphosis and returned to Delhi to report on September, 11, 1962, at a meeting presided over by Nehru that the Chinese presence was overwhelming and they just could not be expelled from Nyamkachu valley. Wisdom and statesmanship should have dictated the cooling of tensions and negotiations with Beijing but unfortunately it was not to be. Two days later while leaving for Colombo, Nehru told the press correspondents that he had ordered the army to throw out the Chinese. A thoughtless statement so casually made created serious forebodings in Chinese mind, as revealed in the memoir of Gen Lei Yingfeng published in 1997 and extensively reproduced in the book under review. The General reveals that on October 18, 1962, at an extraordinary meeting of the Politbureau, attended by Mao, Premier Zhou Enlai, Gen Lei, Foreign Minister Chen Yi, Deng Xiaoping and the military regional commanders, Mao ordered, “ a counter-attack in self-defence and that it was merely a warning of a punitive quality only to tell Nehru and the Indian government that it would not do to use military means to solve the boundary question.” The attack on October 20 morning, the advance of the PLA almost up to the outskirts of Tezpur and its subsequent withdrawal a month later, followed by the Colombo Plan proposals need not be recounted in detail. Subsequent events witnessed the mounting of Anglo-American pressure in various directions and freezing of relations with China for many years.

The brief encounter between Mao and Indian CDA, Brajesh Misra, on May 1, 1970, the posting of K.R. Narayanan as Ambassador to Beijing in 1976 and the visit of Foreign Minister A.B.Vajpayee in 1979 were subsequent landmarks. By 1979 Deng Xioping’s era had begun in China and he was all for strengthening China as an economic powerhouse and not unduly getting involved in extraneous matters. When Vajpayee was told that Chinese support to Indian insurgents was “a matter of the past”, it was so. Zhou Enlai’s 1960 proposals were reiterated by Deng to G. Parthasarathy in Beijing in 1982. The complicating factor is an area of about 8200 sq km annexed by China in the 1962 war and whether China would vacate this area in a future settlement.

When Rajiv Gandhi assumed office in December, 1984, with a two-thirds majority in Parliament, he was in a position to sort out the boundary dispute with China. While Rajiv Gandhi went ahead in resolving the Punjab and Assam problems, the Chinese issue did not figure as a priority issue, which was unfortunate. On the other hand, certain events like the Thandrong/Sumdrong pasture incident in 1986 clouded the relations. The Thandrong incident was followed by Operation Chequer Board at Gen Sundarji’s over-zealous initiative when army units moved closer to the Indo-Tibetan border, something which had not happened since 1962 . The Chinese issued grave warnings and one such warning was conveyed by US Defence Secretary Weinburger who came to Delhi and met Rajiv Gandhi. The situation was defused by deputing P N Haksar, followed by Foreign Minister N.D. Tewari. Rajiv Gandhi himself visited China in December, 1988. The visit of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao in September, 1993, was marked by the signing of “Agreement on the maintenance of peace and tranquillity” along the LAC. In fact this was the most important and positive event since 1962.

Sino-Indian relations during the past decades have to be viewed in proper perspective and without prejudice. After Bangladesh was born, Bhutto systematically worked for bringing about a strategic alliance with China, which also suited that country. The strategic partnership with Pakistan, including assistance in the nuclear field, is a firmly estimated reality. Contrary to what is claimed in the book that during the Kargil war Beijing made a special effort to appear even-handed, China did send out provocative patrols in the border areas to test the morale of Indian troops. The future of Sino-Indian relations is now inextricably linked with India’s relations with Russia as well as the USA. Former Russian Premier Primakov had come up with the idea of a Strategic Triangle between Russia, China and India. Recent reports speak of Beijing discounting any interest in such a proposal and in any case in the context of the Indo-Pak tangle, building of any strategic relations with Beijing does not arise. President Putin of Russia is known to attach great importance to working out a strategic partnership with India and his visit later this year is likely to be a major event. There is also a vague talk of a strategic partnership with the USA in the foreseeable future in the Pacific theatre encompassing Japan, South Korea. Taiwan and India. In the context of all these significant developments it remains to be seen how the Sino-Indian relations will evolve in the coming years.

(The writer is a former Governor of West Bengal and Sikkim)

Sino-Indian relations

Engagement through trade
by Arvinder Singh

WHATEVER the popular arguments against globalisation, or apprehensions about the WTO, or the opening up of developing economies, it cannot be denied that these are the times that also offer newer opportunities, and scope for unconventional alliances on the world trade scene. The emergence of China, a communist developing country, as a major international trader is an important development. In the circumstances, South-South cooperation and comparative advantages seem destined to acquire newer meanings and dimensions.

It is a fact that developing and newly industrialised economies achieved the fastest expansion of trade in the 1990s, and Asia was at the centre of their expansion.

There has been a realisation, both in China and India for quite some time that there is a tremendous scope of furthering economic relations between these two nations which can be beneficial for both the sides. With both the economies opening up to the world and with China now sitting on the threshold of the WTO, expectations have risen.

For the first time in years, there is a distinctly favourable political climate. Many Indians read a slightly pro-India Chinese position on Kargil. Both the governments have handled the Karmapa issue with commendable restraint. The Nuclear issue is fading into the background. The border issue, once the biggest problem between China and India, is rarely even talked about. Officially, the meetings of the Joint Working Group (JWG) meant to resolve the border dispute go on, but the focus has been shifting to productive bilateral issues, especially economic affairs.

Comparatively speaking, the economies of both China and India are doing fairly well at present. However, China has gained more market reforms.

Even though the GDP growth rates of both India and China are poised at around 6-7 per cent, India is still behind China as far as the reforms are concerned. True, reforms in China started much earlier than in India, and given the peculiarity of the collectivisation experience in China under Mao, the qualitative context of reforms is also considerably different in the two countries. Nevertheless, China is way ahead of India in its economic performance. More appropriately, they are at different planes of development now. China’s per capita GDP far higher, with almost 50 per cent of its GDP coming from industry as compared to 20 per cent from agriculture.

However, having more or less exhausted the initial wave of foreign direct investments, the ability of exports to pull the economy and the entrepreneurial potential of coastal provinces/cities, China is looking for newer sources to keep up the momentum of economic developments. India, on the other hand is willing to learn from the Chinese experience.

Bilateral trade between China and India has substantially increased during the 1990s. Between 1991-92 and 1998-99, the volume of India’s trade with China increased from $69.54 million to $ 1469.32 million. However, imports grew much faster than exports. The result was that India had a negative trade balance of some $650 million with China by 1998-99. However, the apparently massive increase in the volume of trade and a substantial increase in the balance of trade can, in part, be attributed to the fact that trade between the two countries was very low to begin with. In absolute terms, the volume of trade between the two countries is nothing when one considers how big and geographically close the countries are and the extremely fast growth that world trade, especially China’s international trade, has experienced in the last decade and-a-half or so. Indeed, both the countries are very marginal in each other’s overall foreign trade. While India’s share in China’s foreign trade is about 0.5 per cent, China’s share in India’s foreign trade hovers at around 2 per cent.

Yet, to have gathered a growth momentum during the 1990s, beginning from a very low base, does constitute an achievement and demands a closer look at the composition of India’s exports to and imports from China. While ores and minerals and marine products are the prominent items that India exports to China, major imports include organic chemicals and electronic goods. While the share of manufactured goods as a whole and that of ores and minerals has come down in recent years, the share of agricultural and allied products has risen to 27 per cent from a mere 1.6 per cent. In imports, there has been a marked decrease in the share of raw material and intermediate goods and an increase in the share of manufactured goods.

The increase in the export of agricultural and allied products is mainly due to the increase in the export of marine products and oilmeals. The decreasing share of the manufactured goods is accounted for by the substantial fall in the share of engineering goods. However, the share of chemical and related products and that of textiles, excluding readymade garments, has registered an increase.

Obviously, there is a need to diversify the trade kit. A permanent increase in the volume of trade will depend on how far India and China can broaden the base of the goods traded between them. While a closer look is needed to identify the specific commodities whose exports could be encouraged, in light of China’s and India’s export strengths and their present preferred partners, the stress should be on higher value added items.

At a practical level, Indian business men could target the Chinese provinces directly. China’s provinces have enjoyed a kind of autonomy under the reforms that is almost unbelievable for Indians. The Chinese provinces have their own Foreign Trade Corporations (FTCs) which have the right to keep and use foreign exchange. Besides, border trade can also be intensified. Border trade between north-eastern India and western China, especially through Yunnan can be developed. With the Chinese government announcing preferential investment policies and pumping massive amounts of public money in its so-far-neglected Western provinces, this could be the right time for Indian traders and investors to explore opportunities and for the Indian government to try something complementary on their side of the border.

It is foolish to imagine that India and China are business rivals in the global market, that they compete with each other more than they complement, so there is little scope for increasing trade between the two. This is the kind of mindset that has led back Indo-Chinese relations in the past.

Also, it is easy for Indians to blame the restricted Sino-Indian trade and investment on lack of information about the Chinese foreign trade and foreign investment regime, especially at the lower and middle level of Indian industry. True, to most Indians, Chinese political and economic system is still a mystery despite globalisation. And the language barrier adds to the trouble. Uncertainty is also a problem as the Indians say they are not sure about the ultimate outcome of the Chinese reforms.

What we must understand is that we are not alone in facing this situation. The whole world finds the Chinese system a little mysterious and unpredictable. However, most of China’s regular trading and investment partners have managed to handle this problem. The Japanese investors in China, for example, led purely by a business rationale and unsupported by their government, have been helped by their banks and by the Japanese General Trading Corporations operating in China. The Taiwanese and other South- East Asian countries have used their networks skilfully.

As it is, networks are very important for doing business in China and Indians, at present, neither know much about Chinese networks nor have any of their own. In addition, Indians also face problems on the credibility and quality front. India has to compete with the best in the world in terms of price and quality if it is to increase its exports to China.

China’s likely entry into the WTO will quite likely take care of many uncertainties. With legal and administrative changes, removal of non-tariff barriers and standardisation of custom tariffs, business practices will become more transparent, predictable and accountable. These effects of China joining the WTO will be more immediate than the effects on the particular sectors of the economy, like agriculture, telecommunications, automobiles and insurance, whose opening up to foreign competition has been agreed to by China under a deal with the USA.

(The writer is from the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi)

Mumbai in state of decay
by Tavleen Singh

IT was over poached eggs that seemed made of plastic and coffee that tasted of dishwater, at Mumbai airport’s Centaur Hotel, that I discovered that Mumbai’s Municipal Commissioner, K. Nalinakshan, had been transferred. My convalescence ended by coincidence that same day and I was waiting to catch a flight to Delhi. It had rained incessantly for nearly two days and along with the news about the Municipal Commissioner’s transfer the front page of The Times of India also reported that this had been the heaviest May rain in fifty years. The drive to the airport was enough ‘investigative journalism’ to discover that the city had simply not been able to cope. Flooded roads, whole streams of floating garbage and a general seedy atmosphere of decay and collapse were the predominant images of the drive and this was only the first rain of the season. It was technically not monsoon rain but it brought with it portents of things to come for anyone who has lived through an entire rainy season in Mumbai.

Everything collapses, everything crumbles, everything decays every year and yet more than fifty years after Independence we still appear not to have found solutions to the problem. Why? This is where the story of Mr Nalinakshan’s transfer connects to breakfast in the Centaur’s grubby coffee shop and to this rainy morning.

The Centaur Hotel is a dump even by the appalling standards of government-run hotels. It’s corridors smell of unclean toilets and damp carpets, its restaurants serve inedible food, its shops have government-issue stamped all over and in no other country would it dare to call itself a five-star hotel. Yet, if it was not run by the government there is no doubt at all in my mind that it would do at least as well as Mumbai’s other airport hotel, the Leela.

For exactly the reasons why the Central Government should not be running hotels our State Governments should not be running cities like Mumbai and Delhi. And if they were not running them it would not be so easy for them to push city officials, like Mr Nalinakshan around, the way they do. Having said that, though, let me add that I do not think officials like Mr Nalinakshan should be running Mumbai either not unless they can get themselves elected and become accountable to the people of the city.

From my own brief encounter with Mr Nalinakshan let me also say that if he finds that the city sheds no tears at his departure it is entirely his own fault. My encounter with him took place a few months ago at his office in Mumbai which happens to be in one of the finest buildings in the world. It was built by the the British on a grandiose scale clearly with the idea of striking awe in the hearts of us natives. So, it is a place of magnificent staircases that lead to offices the size of ballrooms which must once have been filled with fine furniture and imposing pictures.

Today, the fine furniture has disappeared (God only knows where) and been replaced by the rexene and aluminium junk that litters most government offices and the vast offices have been hived off into cubby hotels and cabins. The Municipal Commissioner, though, still has an enormous office with a small army of peons and other flunkeys waiting on his every need. On the day I visited Mr Nalinakshan he was in the midst of some kind of conference with a battery of underlings who, while I waited, argued on and on about some minor administrative detail that nobody in the private sector would dare waste so much time on. Mr Nalinakshan, a small, ordinary, little man sat huddled over in his big Municipal Commissioner’s chair and whenever he contributed his mite to the discussion was instantly greeted with approval and assent.

My purpose for being there was to ask him if he would attend a panel discussion on a book I had just written but so depressed was I by the state of Mumbai’s municipal headquarters and the amount of time he seemed to waste that afternoon in futile discourse that I asked if he would allow me to interview him.

“Yes” he said “what about”.

“Well, about the problems of running a city like Mumbai. The strikes by municipal workers, that kind of thing”.

“Sure” he said “call me any time”.

Well, of course, I did and left messages asking for interview time. He never called back and that was the end of our brief encounter but it was a long enough one for me to understand that Mumbai would continue to go to the dogs as long as it was controlled by officials like him. He is not exceptional, by any means, merely the rule and that really is the problem.

What is needed if Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Calcutta and all the burgeoning urban centres across India are to be prevented from becoming vast slums are elected city governments. When are we going to realise this? Mumbai, despite the fact that half its population is believed to live in slums, is still a beautiful city and in many ways better governed than most others but it will be destroyed unless somebody wakes up to the fact that it can no longer be governed by petty officials in big offices who are at the mercy of every state government that comes along.

If you talk to Mumbai’s older citizens they tell you that it was always a city of public-spirited private citizens who did everything they could to make the city better. They build hospitals, libraries, universities, housing for the poor but then along came Independence and socialism and the state government took everything over and gradually destroyed the city. Its wealth was taken for investment in rural areas by politicians eager to keep their vote-banks intact and for the same reason slums were allowed to spread across the cityscape.

Again, for reasons of vote banks the municipality was turned into an employment agency and to this day employs an army of street cleaners, for instance, who do not even bother to come to work. According to one ex-Chief Minister, I talked to, nearly half the municipality’s 30,000 workers come only to collect their salaries.

You only have to drive through the streets of the city to know this. Whatever changes for the better you see in the city are the result of private initiatives and private money. Whatever is bad is entirely due to misgovernance and mistaken ideologies. So, although there is no need to shed any tears for Mr Nalinakshan, spare a few for Mumbai and for all our other cities.

Mexico’s fight against drugs
From Jo Tuckman in Barranca de Guadalupe, Mexico

AN INTRICATE tale of Mexican counter-insurgency billed as a fight against drugs is being played out on the tiny stage of Barranca de Guadalupe. The Indian villagers insist that they know nothing about either narcotics or guerrillas, but they shudder at what the next act might bring.

Mexican troops have saturated the area in the name of combating opium and marijuana production, a war that under US pressure and guidance has become increasingly dependent on the military.

“Before, the soldiers came just occasionally, but now they pass through all the time. There are rumours that they are going to come for us during the night, and we don’t know what to do,” Portonato Flores said during a village gathering to discuss the army pressure that has prompted many residents to avoid sleeping in their houses.

Barranca de Guadalupe in south western Mexico nestles on the steep slopes of the Sierra Madre, in the poverty-stricken state of Guerrero which is Mexico’s prime producer of opium paste and home for two militarily weak but, symbolically, mighty-armed insurgent groups.

“Obviously there is cultivation, but in many areas the number of soldiers deployed is disproportionate,” said Abel Barrera, head of the Guerrero branch of a human rights organisation named after a Jesuit priest, Augustin Pro. “The military is involved in a surgical operation to leave the fish (the rebels) without water (potential popular support).”

Barranca de Guadalupe looks like a textbook case, the kind possibly described in the scribbled copy of the “Manual of Irregular Warfare” that Captain Porfirio Hernandez was studying in the nearby Buena Vista military camp the day he insisted he was a mere cook, and that there was nobody available to answer questions on operations in the area.

When soldiers in February destroyed what they claimed was a clandestine opium poppy field that the villagers insisted contained only aloe plants, the villagers filed a complaint against the army with the help of a local human rights group. That was followed by a series of arbitrary detentions, interrogations under torture and a mysterious murder of an alleged military informer, which was blamed on the community leader’s son.

But what has really frightened the villagers is the news that the security forces are circulating a list of 23 alleged members of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), including 18 people from Barranca.

“I am on the list, but if I were an armed guerrilla why would I be afraid to sleep in my house,” said Rodrigo Flores, adding that he also felt scared to go to the local town, a five-hour fast walk down mountain paths or a two-hour bumpy drive along a dirt track. The underlying counter-insurgency focus of much military activity in Guerrero could explain why the specially-trained units with all their mobility and intelligence skills have had only lacklustre success in destroying poppy fields.

The US anti-drug tsar, Barry McCaffrey, recently lauded the estimated cut in Mexican opium gum production from six tonnes in 1998 to four tonnes in 1999. But the eradication of poppy fields fell by only 8 per cent, compared with more than 30 per cent between 1997 and 1998.

A Mexican military analyst, Jorge Luis Sierra, said: “The military very rarely admits to carrying out counter-insurgency activities. They don’t want to give that kind of recognition to the armed groups.”

Compared with the Zapatistas of Chiapas, with their charismatic leader, Subcomandante Marcos, and their clearly identifiable areas of support among the indigenous population, the guerrillas in Guerrero are far more clandestine, but are trying to build bridges with communities in a state that is historically perhaps the most socially fragile and politically explosive.

“The only effective strategy of contention is to destroy the groups completely. Not only their military capacity but their logistical infrastructure and any support they might have,’’ Mr Sierra said.

Members of a local pressure group, the Coordinator of Peasant and Social Groups, say that Barranca de Guadalupe has attracted military attention because its efforts to set up community projects to improve basic living conditions were viewed as too radical. “Perhaps they (the military) think that at any moment it could all explode, that these people who have so little to lose might take the decision (to link up with the rebels),” said Onesimo Gil, whose name is on the list of alleged rebels.

Mr Gil, a committed believer in “organisation” as the motor of change, condemned the “simplistic logic that assumes that if you are critical of the system you are a guerrilla”.

Looking out over a spectacular mountain ravine that pans out below Barranca de Guadalupe, a grinning Andrea Eugenio (19) mused on her vision of “organising to make things better, to be free”.

But a few hours before she had been far from smiling when the pick-up truck she was travelling in to the village was stopped by a military patrol. “We are applying the federal law against arms and the permanent struggle against drug trafficking,” said Captain Miguel Aredondo. — Guardian News Service

75 years ago

May 27, 1925
The King’s illness

IT is a great relief to learn that His Majesty has made such satisfactory progress towards recovery that his medical advisers consider it probable that no fresh bulletins will be necessary except a final one announcing his convalescence. In the meantime it is definitely stated that His Majesty has been advised, when he reaches the state of convalescence, to take a sea voyage for a few weeks in his yacht in south Europe. As His Majesty’s absence is likely to synchronise with the absence of the Prince of Wales, the question how the affairs of State are to be carried on during the period is also engaging serious attention. It is considered probable, though not yet officially confirmed, that a Commission will be appointed for the purpose.