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India, Iran need each other
Remedy worse than disease
Killer pneumonia |
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Myanmar after Suu Kyi’s release
All that glitters…
Needed, a reality check
Time to get real at last
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India, Iran need each other
Iran’s
supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei equating the situation in India’s Jammu and Kashmir with that in Gaza in the Palestinian Authority Area, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan is unfortunate, to say the least. The position of the senior-most Ayatollah is such in Iran that no government there can ignore his views. What he says is bound to influence the official policy of Teheran. This is clearly evident from the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei’s ill-informed utterances on Kashmir in July found an echo in the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s statement issued after the incidents of violence in Kashmir in the wake of the reported burning of pages of the Quran on September 18. Such behaviour by a country with which India has been maintaining consistently good relations is unacceptable. New Delhi’s reaction, expressing its disappointment with the Ayatollah not bothering about India’s sensibilities on Kashmir, is perfectly in order. India still has shown equanimity by abstaining from voting on the UN resolution tabled on Thursday to censor Iran for its poor human rights record. It had the option of going along with the 80 countries which voted for the resolution. Iran must remember that friendship is never one-way traffic. If it wants to have friendly relations with India it will have to play its cards carefully when it comes to dealing with New Delhi. Both countries have been part of a trilateral move along with Kabul to develop a mechanism for controlling the situation after the scheduled withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. India has been taking a liberal view of Iran’s controversial nuclear programme. Recently, New Delhi sided with other Non-Aligned countries in taking the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to task for the IAEA’s failure to follow “proper procedures” while finalising its report on Teheran’s nuclear facilities. Despite some hiccups in the past, India and Iran have been confidently on the way to building bridges of understanding. India, of course, needs Iran’s cooperation for safeguarding its interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia. But Iran, too, requires India’s help at various international forums where it has fewer friends because of the US efforts to corner it at every available opportunity. It is in the interest of both countries to avoid hurting each other’s interests for long-term mutual gain.
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Remedy worse than disease
Finance
Minister Pranab Mukherjee has held out hope for the troubled microfinance industry, which is faced with a repayment crisis, particularly in Andhra Pradesh, after the state government issued an Ordinance on October 15 imposing tough restrictions to regulate the industry. Microfinance companies, also known as non-banking financial companies, function under the supervision of the RBI and have been encouraged to replace obnoxious private moneylenders, notorious for overcharging interest rates and exploiting hapless borrowers, in rural areas where banks are inaccessible. The unique experiment of providing cheap credit to the poor came into global limelight after Mohammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Prize and has been replicated in Africa, Latin America and other Asian countries. However, in India the rural finance experiment seems to have hit a roadblock. There were reports that some rogue firms were charging hefty interest rates and resorting to coercive ways to recover their dues, resulting in suicide by some borrowers. This has led to Andhra MLAs raising a hue and cry and the issuance of the Ordinance. Now most borrowers have stopped loan repayments, putting banks at risk. Banks have pumped Rs 18,000 crore in the system and they may lose their money if microfinance firms fail to persuade borrowers, mostly poor villagers, to resume payments. Interest rates are stupendous because collection costs are high. A cap on interest rates is considered impractical. The state should have left it to the RBI to police the erring firms. An RBI committee is looking into the issue and will submit its report in January. Mr Pranab Mukherjee has given the assurance that “a regulatory architecture” for microfinance institutions will be in place after the RBI report is received. “To find a remedy, (one) should not bring harm to the system”, he has observed. Hopefully, sanity would prevail and the Andhra government would not rush to convert the Ordinance into an Act.
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Killer pneumonia
Children
with pneumonia can be easily saved if only they are taken to a health facility in time and receive treatment with antibiotics. Yet, as many as 3.7 lakh children die every year in India. That comprises almost a quarter of the 16 lakh deaths recorded in the whole world. The Indian number of pneumonia-related deaths is the highest in the world. And yet, the authorities are not willing to end their siesta. It is unfortunate that the Health Ministry is yet to introduce pneumococcal and Hib vaccines, which are proven to be the safest for children with pneumonia. The Global Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Pneumonia (GAPP), issued by WHO and UNICEF last year had recommended that all countries should reach 90 per cent coverage of seven simple life-saving interventions by 2015. Yet, India is still stuck at a lowly 38 per cent of the coverage. The 15 countries evaluated in the Pneumonia Report Card released by the International Vaccine Access Centre (IVAC) – including Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania and Uganda – are responsible for nearly three-quarters of all children deaths. Children in these countries are anywhere from 17 to 400 times more likely to die of pneumonia than a child living in the US. What a shame it is for India to be in this bracket! India’s record of preventing diarrhoea-related deaths is also equally poor. Recent data show that approximately 1.2 lakh children in India died from diarrhoea caused by rotavirus – the leading cause of diarrhoea around the world. In comparison, China, which has a larger population than India, lost only 27,000 children to rotavirus-caused diarrhoea in the same year. This neglect is scandalous.
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Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked. — Jane Austen
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Myanmar after Suu Kyi’s release
ON the expiry of her detention term on November 13, Myanmar’s democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released. It was feared that her detention could be extended in view of the pending declaration of the full results of the elections held on November 7 under the new constitution drafted by the military regime. Suu Kyi has completed 15 years of her detention by the military regime since 1989, when she returned from the United Kingdom and won Myanmar’s (then Burma) first democratic elections. There has been more international excitement on her release than within Myanmar. The British Prime Minister hailed her release and US President Obama called her as his “personal hero”. The leaders in South-East Asia have also welcomed her freedom in the hope that this will initiate a process of reconciliation between her and the regime. At home, her release was welcomed by a crowed of more than 5000 people in Yangon who held placards saying, “We Love Suu”. The national radio made a brief announcement of release but the officially controlled television network ignored her address to the cheering crowds. Analysts believe that international pressures and Western sanctions have led to her release. The UN had also actively lobbied for her freedom. But if these pressures had really worked, she would not have spent the past seven years under detention. Nor could she be barred from elections under the new laws promulgated in March this year. She has been released because the regime feels more confident and powerful to deal with her opposition. They have not put any conditions on her release. Her party, the National League for Democracy, stands derecognised, paralysed and fragmented. Most of her senior colleagues have either become inactive and alienated or are living in exile. The broader democratic front forged by her in 1988-89 stands broken as a section of it accepted the new constitution and participated in the election. In a controlled and rigged election, these former associates, who contested by forming a new party of the National Democratic Force, are trailing far behind the officially backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. The official party is led by Prime Minister U Thein Sein, which claims to have secured more than 85 per cent of the seats in all the three elected Houses — the House of Representatives, the House of Nationalities and regional/state Parliament. This has given the regime a facade of legitimacy and popular support. Aung San Suu Kyi, therefore, realises that she stands on a weak political base and the challenge before her is formidable. In order to draw the attention of the new regime, she may have to rebuild her political strength by not only rejuvenating her own party but also by re-establishing links with and mobilising the other scattered democratic forces. Having been battered at the hands of the regime in the managed elections, these forces may be willing to work with her but without surrendering whatever voice they have managed to secure in the new parliamentary polls. All these democratic forces, even after getting regrouped under Suu Kyi’s leadership, cannot pose a credible challenge to the regime unless they mobilise various ethnic groups which also stand politically fragmented. Some of these groups have registered their presence as opposition groups in the new Parliament. In the 1990 elections, they had accepted Suu Kyi as her leader and may be willing to do so again, but she may have to work for that. Much water has indeed flown through the Irrawaddy river since then. Keeping these challenges in view, Suu Kyi has been guarded in her utterances after her release. She has given a call for “working in unison” and promised to work with “all democratic forces”. She said that she would like to “hear the voices of the people” before planning her next moves. In an interview to the Voice of America, she made it clear that we “are not bent on clashing” and urged that the regime would also understand that “clashing is not a solution to Burma’s problems”. Her preference will be for talks and discussions with the military leaders as she has no personal grudge against them. “They treated me well,” she said. She seemed convinced that through confrontation, democratic forces will not be able to achieve their goal. According to her, the need of the hour was “national reconciliation” which “was in everybody’s interest”. It is difficult to say if the regime would respond to her call for “national reconciliation”. The regime would carefully watch how she goes about reuniting her lost and alienated associates and how much popular support she is able to mobilise, not just in Yangon but also in the whole of Myanmar. A critical area in this respect could be Buddhist clergy and various monasteries. It may be recalled that her growing popularity with the monks during 2002-2003 was one of the important factors that forced the junta to curb her freedom of speech and movements. The regime would also watch her approach towards the international community. She in her early statements had suggested that she would be “calling on governments and people throughout the world to find out how to work together” because the “international community can do many things that are practicable and reasonable”. One such thing could be to review and lift the sanctions imposed on Myanmar. General Than Shwe made an offer of direct talks to her in 2007 if she “abandoned” her call for sanctions. In November 2009, she wrote to the General that she was willing to work towards the lifting of the sanctions on Myanmar. She can now pick up those threads on this issue. This was a basic change in her stand as she had earlier been pleading for international sanctions and pressures on the military regime. The Myanmar regime has not been unduly perturbed about the pressures from the “international community”, thanks to the support received from China, India and ASEAN. It is possibly the gentle pressures from these friends that moved the regime on the path of elections and release of Suu Kyi. To what extent Suu Kyi can secure support from the regime’s traditional friends in her call for “national reconciliation’ remains to be seen. The possibility of the new and “elected” government of Myanmar engaging Suu Kyi in talks on the issue of sanctions or otherwise cannot be ruled out. But those talks may not achieve much politically. There is no possibility of any change in the newly adopted constitution in the foreseeable future in view of strong presence of army officers in Parliament. If Suu Kyi could extract concessions on the release of the remaining prisoners, relaxations on basic freedoms like that of speech and association and strict observance of the “rule of law”, these would bring considerable relief to the people in
Myanmar.
The writer is Visiting Research Professor, Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore.
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All that glitters… WHEN I told my wife
about a 4-kg gem-studded gold replica of the late Paul the octopus exhibited at a newly opened jewellery showroom in the millennium city, she suddenly stopped chopping carrots and looked at me in disbelief. “Four kg? Are you sure?” she wanted to confirm, for whatever reasons. As I nodded in affirmation, her eyes twinkled. “What a feeling it would be to just pick it up as an ordinary shopping item without even having to look at the price-tag,” observed my better half with childlike glee. At once, the anti-materialistic activist in me came into play. Like a proficient lawyer, I deftly dismantled the tenets of materialism, condemned the very concept of accumulation, and re-glorified the ideals of simple living and high thinking. “Why do you always get carried away? I am not saying that I crave for these things? I was just doing some loud thinking, and that’s all,” said my lifemate, who has developed some sort of immunity to the essence of my sermons, as mosquitoes have to DDT. Nonetheless, it is paradoxical that my wife, who stands by me in turning away the expensive presents which often come guised as festival gifts, gets keyed up at the slightest mention of the G-word. Though she agrees with me when we talk about the futility of materialistic possessions, she never tries to hide – or even camouflage – her fondness of these. Perhaps she is more honest and straightforward than me in expressing what she feels. Or maybe, it’s just the basic difference between the biologically opposite specimens of the human species. This reminds me of a lady’s wisecrack during a recent group outing, in which I happened to be the only male member – apart from the driver. While on the drive, our conversation veered around the topic of shopping. When I put my foot down on the assertion that it was an obsession with the ladies, this chatterbox friend of my wife Parul ame up with a witty one-liner to sum up the phenomenon. “Sir, ladies ka to dil maangey more,” she quipped, making all of us burst into peels of laughter. When I saw a news item about a daughter-in-law of a multi-billion-dollar business empire who was caught while reportedly trying to sneak out from an international airport without declaring the gold ornaments in her luggage, I could not agree with Parul
more.
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Needed, a reality check The debate around reality shows is far from over. They've been pushed to later time slots so that, of course, the shows don't become dinner-time entertainment for Indian families. Fair. Perhaps the adult vs universal content distinction needs to be outlined. However the issue of reality TV is barely an issue of children vs adult viewership. It isn't even an issue of morality. Instead, it is a symptom of our times. Reality TV is like a circus of human emotions. An ordinary Indian's meteoric rise to fame only to be destroyed by an unkind judge and brought back to life like a phoenix by the tabloids. It dances to the votes of the viewer, who in return is only too happy to finally watch the entertainment regular TV was too embarrassed to provide. In a free market and a democracy, it's only fair that people get to watch what they want. In a world where news networks are business houses first, channels running reality shows are only doing their job. In the business of entertainment, anything is fair as long as the TRPs are high. While the Indian middle class espouses middle-class morality in its hatred for all that is inappropriate, they keep a voyeuristic eye on Rakhi as she renders relationships unrepairable. No wonder then, that reality TV makes great business sense today. With millions glued to every word out of Dolly's mouth, it's no surprise that it's a great place for brands to be. As brand marketers we struggle to find a way to reach out to the maximum number of people. We choose channels and programmes where we think the middle class Indian is likely to hang around. We agonise over the loss of a Kyunki Saas.. because no other show seems to hold women anymore. News channels in a bid to get a brand's attention are turning themselves into reality shows too with programmes on anything but news. A brand would happily invest in a family show with happy healthy messages, but what is one to do when women clawing each other on Splitsvilla do garner more eyeballs. Reality TV wasn't created to corrupt us, just to exploit the corrupt in us. A channel's programming reflects a society's weakness. There was a time when our weakness was Bollywood and cricket, today it is reality TV. Only those channels that really understand the repressed desires of the viewer make good with TRPs. Only they rope in the brands. Only they make the money. On the face of it, it's the most desirable situation for any free market. We have goods we'd like to sell and people willingly seem to buy them (some hiding their faces as they do, but buying nevertheless). However a society's worth is not just in how seemingly balanced the scales seem to be, but in keeping an eye on how the scales may tip in the future. Reality TV today makes a lot of unpleasant things acceptable. Abusive language is the least of the grimacing middle-class' concern. It's the disrespect for a fellow human being, the emphasis on success at any cost and judgement based on little or no evidence. It is this that a society perhaps should guard against. The debate around reality TV isn't about freedom or the right to expression. It's a debate about the society we want to build. No court judgement can curb this. Our schadenfreude is our weakness. It's also only our cross to bear. As a marketer the country can't ask me to stop supporting reality TV. It just doesn't make business sense. I ought to sleep well at night knowing that I'm not arm-twisting viewers. Instead, I toss and turn thinking about how worryingly simple it is to sell reality TV. It's easy to blame the channels and the advertisers that support them, but their world revolves around you, the viewer. You're at the centre of it all. It's a free market. Stop watching and it'll
stop selling.
The writer is a brand strategy planner with Mudra Communications, Mumbai
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Time to get real at last ONE wonders why there is so much of hoopla over reality shows when calling them real is a travesty of sorts by itself. We click our tongues in disapproval, nod our heads bemoaning the lack of decency in the depiction of inter-personal relationships. Yet we discuss them and even put the news of these shameful (or shameless) shows on the front pages of seemingly serious newspapers where they should not figure by any stretch of imagination. Eye candy or cheesecake is supposed to grab eyeballs as the print media competes with itself as well as with the electronic media with its rapid splice images. If viewer or reader attention is the end goal and we do not mind tabloidization of newspapers, then why do we act so sanctimonious when there is tabloidization of television? Who decides what constitutes good taste and is fit for viewing? By all means only a demented viewer would endorse swearing and foul mouthing or sparring. The point is despite more than six decades of Independence, we have the besieged mentality. If a watchdog to monitor tv content is needed let it be debated upon and a sane policy put in place. Let a policy of internal checks and balances be evolved and a limit set as to what is acceptable and what is not. One just wonders if showing so many swamis and reinforcing superstitions in the 21st century when a scientific temperament ought to be the order of the day, is right. But banning them is tricky terrain and even the seemingly prudish Information and Broadcasting Ministry would not dream of foolishly rushing in there. The point is why should we simultaneously discuss, display and then debunk? One gets the impression that all those who are ranting about the unsuitable 'reality' shows have been forced to watch them, subjected to compulsory viewing as it were, without the remote to switch the tv off. One is reminded of a Buddhist tale. Two monks, a young one and an old one, were walking through a forest. They crossed a stream where a young woman was drowning and shouting for help. The young monk jumped in rescued her and walked on. After a long pause, the older monk said: "You shouldn't have done this. You know you should not have rescued her, she was wearing no clothes." The young monk replied, "I left her far behind, you are still carrying her on your mind." The directors have made the shows, sponsors endorsed them and we continue to carry them on our minds needlessly, instead of minimizing them on our mental screens. The repeated clips ensure that we do not forget the gossip and the salaciousness. What more could the makers of such shows, that should have been minimised on our mental screens long back for constituting mindless viewing, wish for? They have got free publicity with more viewers tempted to watch them. So you have an entire new range of viewers who ordinarily would not have bothered to watch these unreal shows. It is a performance and we should leave it at that howsoever good, bad or ugly. We are the ones bent upon making them real. Mindsets have not changed, despite the vast social changes that have taken place. Parents are a lot more liberal these days unlike the Midnight's Children who had to struggle with a lot of baggage on so many fronts. Most parents (of youngsters) who are now in their 40s have themselves been reared on Chitrahaar and documentaries made by the DAVP in the 1960s. They are a lot more liberal than their own parents ever were. Let us accept that at least in the urban areas, the multiplex culture has changed film making and viewing. Similarly, the opening up of the skies in the 1990s, revolutionised tv viewing. Unlike the average viewer who is no longer a shrinking violet, our government agencies carry the baggage of the licence-quota raj and are caught in a time warp and the knee-jerk reaction is always, "off with their head." And to top it all, talk of values and them being eroded is humbug. The values are not worth much if television programmes can sweep them away them so easily.
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Reality
Programmes like Bigg Boss and RKI are audio-visual sewage imported from the West. Perfect for the '100% noise, 0% content" programming eco-system that most channels seem to be moving forward to. In this context, I guess shifting the time band is a welcome step. At least, many children and some sane adults will be spared of this daily dose of gross inanity and obscenity....I would recommend timeshifting to a 3am- 5am slot!!! 
"It is time that someone does something about the Media monkeying around so much in our lives... Ask any middle-class Indian family about this - call back in your home-town and ask you parents / uncles / aunts - nobody wants their six-year-olds to watch vicious and scheming people in a mindless game show. It's only the media owners and their advertisers who are shouting hoarse over a very sane decision of pushing the show by just 1 hour." 
"If someone thinks "Sheila ki Jawani" is okay to be watched at any time of the day, how does Bigg Boss or Rakhi ka Insaaf make a difference? Going by the same logic of I&B ministry, the entire premise of "Emotional Atyachaar" (in its second successful season) is flawed. Censorship of any kind is a mockery when you have 500+ channels beaming into your house all the time.