Nandan Nilekani ‘on the bench’

Infosys guy Nandan Nilekani found himself  put ‘on the bench’ right on his first day in Parliament. It was his fault, in a way – Nilekani’s.  He came to the House with a laptop without any reserve power.  Besides a power socket he needed a screen and projector to make a presentation on his national plan to give every Indian a degital identity.

What folllowed is best described in Nilekani’s own words: “The next couple of minutes were a complete jolt for me. I was completely in a tizzy… A Joint Cabinet Secretary Committee was set up to judge the feasibility of my request.  The Under Secretaries for the Ministries of Power, IT and Broadcasting will prepare a Viability Report after scrutinizing National Security threats to my request.  This was because the power socket comes under Power, laptop comes under IT and projector comes under Broadcasting”.

I had this account on Nilekani’s ministerial avatar forwarded by a  blogger friend.  The honourable minister for our digital identity has been given a presentation slot three months from now. Which,  presumably,  should also give him time enough to acquire a wardrobe with kurtha  by an Itallian designer. The Milan-based kurtha designer has been recommended to Mr Nilekani by fellow MP Mohd. Azharuddin.  The new minister in the Manmohan cabinet was reminded, by a fellow minister rising on a point of order, that Mr Nilekani was not at Infosys and the corporate dress code he had followed there, flashy dark suit,’ did not go well with the image of a minister who should live to serve the common man and should be less ostentatious in his habits’.

The next time he shows up at Lok Sabha, Mr Nilekani  better be in kutha.  About his Day One in the House Nandanji reportedly text-messaged Murthy, “You won’t believe it but these guys work just like us. I am on a National Bench for the next three months!’

This kite didn’t fly

Politicians rely on an obliging media to fly their political kites. This past week,  the New Delhi sky over 10 Janpath was overcast with  kites. When the numbers in the Lok Sabha poll made it clear that the coalition this time was going to be Congress-driven, Deva Gowda’s JD(S) swiftly switched fronts to offer ‘unconditional’  support to the  Congress-led coalition, UPA. 

Coalition politics has a way of giving hopes to parties with zero-chance of capturing power to aspire for cabinet seats.  JD(S),  with a tally of three seats , was in the wrong alliance before poll .  The party  was hopeful (or was it wishful thought?) of a ministerial berth at centre,  according to a media report. The newspaper that reported this piece of poor-selling fiction said,  it is more or less certain that H D Kumaraswamy will get a berth in the Union cabinet. 

That newspaper reporters can at times be persuaded by politicians to publish  self-serving fib, in the name of ‘exclusive’ news, was evident from the media report that said Kumaraswamy, camping in New Delhi, was lobbying   ‘to secure one of these portfolios,  namely Railways, Forest and Environment or surface Transport’.  This  appeared on May 18.

Three days later came this  headline,  in the same newspaper.  The Page One story read that Mr Kumaraswamy’s  ‘herculean efforts to get into the cabinet now appears a distant dream’.  And the question now was whether HDK would want to retain his Lok Sabha seat, at the expense of his seat in the Karnataka assembly.

Moral of the story:  The politically privileged can have it both ways.

Shoe-thrower wore size-8

The shoe that newsman Jarnail Singh flung at home minister P Chidambaram at a New Delhi news conference was size-8,  says The Times of India.  The ones  George W Bush dodged in Baghdad were size-10.  Bush, downplaying the incident, said,’ the guy wanted to get on TV and he did’.

Mr Chidambaram was on a forgiving mode;  he urged securitymen to be gentle with the offending scribe. The police let him off after questioning. The Congress party  treated the matter as closed,  dismissing the journalist’s doing as an emotional outburst.  Jarnail Singh himself was quick to express regret for what he did.

Shoe-thrower in this image is being led out of the hall  ‘gently’ ,  as the minister suggested.  I wonder why everyone involved has been decent,  and so tolerant.  It appears as if shoe-throwing is okay,  and media   activism  has just got very telegenic.  Journalists of earlier generation, when we didn’t have live TV coverage,  reckoned a media boycott or walk out on a minister at a press conference was a daring act.

Jarnail Singh and 24X7 news channels  have given journalistic activism a dramatic dimension. I can visualise, in the days to come,  a   ‘jarnailist’  assigned to a press meet asking his colleagues,  ‘what should I wear for the Bal Thakerey news conference?’.

Air Deccan Gopi in the fray

I don’t see Capt. Gopinath in Lok Sabha in 2009. Not because he isn’t a right candidate,  but because he isn’t   winnable as an Independent in the fray. Air Deccan Gopi appears  to  have an enlightened contempt for party candidature. “I don’t want to mortgage my ideas,” he says.  Which makes a smart quote,  but  poor operating strategy.  Ideas don’t  get you anywhere in politics;  cash, caste and  community clout matter.

We don’t associate Air Deccan Gopinath, politically, with any caste or  community,  do we?  He belongs to a class though, the  corporate class. Which isn’t the flavour of the critical  mass of voters in any constituency, even in cosmopolitan  Bangalore. We aren’t yet cosmopolitan enough to get  the best candidate elected.

But the presence in the poll fray, of the likes of  Capt.Gopinath,  is a good thing,  and can go a long way to influence  established parties in paying the much needed  attention to the  innate merits of a poll aspirant, rather than his/her caste/community affiliation,  before doling out the party ticket.

According to a media report,   those who visited  Capt.Gopinath’s place to extend support included  Biotech  Mazumdar, Infy Pai,  civic activist Ramanathan, PR/ad. pandit Bijoor, and fashion guru Bidapa. None of these corporate and social worthies can get candidate Gopinath  much votes.  But  what the corporate/social elite   can do is  mobilise the likes of Gopinath to join the poll fray,  in increasing numbers.  If only because, their presence on the ballot paper give a credible option to a discerning electorate that is disenchanted with the party political candidates on offer.

High-powered media campaigns, such as jagore.com that  seek to get all eligible voters to the polling booth, would have meaning if, and only if,  the candidates in the  fray are deemed worthy of your vote.

Citizen Musharraf talks peace

His folks at Islamabad had tried to dissuade him from visiting India, said Gen. (retd.) Pervez Musharraf.  He knew we would ask him combative questions. That he  chose to come nonetheless, and stood his ground at a Q & A session in New Delhi, Saturday last, earned him a standing ovation.  His audience included our former army chief Gen. (retd.) V P Mallik,  J & K’s Farooq Abdullah,  ex-attorney general Soli Sorabjee, ‘Samajwadi’ Amar Singh,  leading members from the media and corporate India. 

The former Pakistan army general  said  he was here to talk peace. The burden of his piece was that India and Pakistan would do well to bury their past, stop the blame game; and move on with the confidence-building excercise to bring peace to the region. Citizen Musharraf  evidently had problem convincing a sceptical audience.  But then, he noted, anyone from India  facing a comparable audiance in Pakistan would face the same music. Would someone from India want to try ?  Anyway, the Musharraf Q & A, televised by Headlines Today, were moderated by Mr Aroon Purie of India Today. And , thank you, Mr Purie, for a  live telecast without commercial break.

Gen.Musharraf would like to see India stop the Pak army and ISI bashing. And in response to a query, he observed the RAW was doing the very thing India accused ISI of;  and until they both stopped working against each other, India-Pakistan relations wouldn’t improve.  Soli Sorabjee came up with suggestion : How about handing  over Dawood Ibrahim to India? When Gen. Musharraf  wouldn’t agree that such a hand-over would change  ground realities  Mr Purie cut in to quip, “why not try it (handing over), sir?”. To which Gen.Musharraf countered, “What, if it doesn’t work?  Would he (Dawood Ibrahim) be handed back to us?”.

 Gen Musharraf has a way with words. You may recall , during a US visit he was asked by TV guy Jon Stewart, “where is Osama bin Laden ?”

“I don’t know,” deadpanned  Gen.Musharraf, “Do you(know where to find him)?  You lead on,we’ll follow you” (laughter). This was the fist time a sitting head-of-state  appeared on Jon Stewart’s satirical show on Comedy Central. 

Next Q:  George W Bush and Osama bin Laden; who’d win a popular vote in Pakistan ?

Gen.Musharraf:  “I think they’ll both lose miserably”. 

I don’t suppose Bush would have taken it kindly. But then, as the general told a questioner at the India Today Conclave, “I don’t believe in hypocrisy”.   Now that he is no longer in power, Gen.Musharraf  is, presumably, in the process of finding a role for himself;   he would like to do whatever he can to further the peace agenda,  to promote wider people-to-people contact.

Why not make  the general a  ‘peace envoy’  for the Indian sub-continent? He might out-shine Tony Blair , Europe’s  peace envoy to the Middle-East.  Speaking of p2p contact, Gen.Musharraf  could use his  influence to mobilise young  bloggers  such as Mayank Austen Soofi to  network  informed youth in Pakistan and India.  They are the ones who would be more amenable to burying the murky past;  and moving on,  to focus  on the positives. New Delhi-based Mayank  runs, what the Pak media  termed,  ‘the website that teaches you neighbourly love’.

Gaza under ground attack.

After a week of pounding from air Israelis moved their troops into Gaza strip. TV channels,  notably CNN,  kept up  a running coverage,  but their reporting was from the Israel end,  for no foreign journalist has been allowed into  Gaza. TV doesn’t take us behind this picture of  smoking  Gaza.  It takes a  blogger to give us a sense of the misery and hardhip of ordinary Gazans,  whose most normal condition of life  today is its uncertainty.  A US-based blogger Laila El-Haddad,  who has, till now,  managed to stay in touch with her parents in  Gaza,  shares her thoughts on the plight of  Gazans, trapped in their homes and nowhere to go for safety.

Excerpts from Laila’s blog post,  after a call to her father,  a physician in Gaza, soon after the land offensive  started on Saturday night:  He said Israel destroyed 3 JAWAL  centers (the mobile  provider); so many mobile phones, including his own,  are  down,  but his landline is functional.. He tells me that a building behind my cousin’s house in Gaza City was destroyed,  and is now burning down in a voracious fire.  It had an orphanage in it.  My mother says she won’t lie..they are terrified. 

Flares and firebombs are being shot to light up the sky.  Propaganda fliers telling the people of Gaza that  “they chose Hamas and Hamas has abandoned them”;  that “Hamas  will lead them to catastrophe”…and calling on them  (Gazans) to “take charge of their destiny” and to call a given phone number or email with tips and then a warning  to call  “in secrecy” (thanks for the tip). Israel is also  broadcasting on al-Aqsa TV station there.

A sampling of a spate of comments to Laila’s post:

It happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina,  it happened in  Rwanda,  it’s happening in Darfur and what exactly should  we call the mass murder of Palestinian civilians?  Surely not a “quest for peace”.

We are so frustrated,  we go to rallys,  we blog but we feel so helpless. We call our cousins and they sound so scared it frustrates us – Nadia Hammad

I just watched the CNN news interview with you (Laila) and your dad.  I can’t belive how your dad, mashallah,  controlled himself while under attack and you didn’t lose it either listening to him . 

I am a Canadian…non Arab, non Muslim…but a human being and a mother. I cry for the Palestinians just as I did for the people in Lebanon and the Iraqis.

Rahul Gandhi on lal-batthi VIP

Rahul Gandhi has got it right ;  and  voiced it at the proper  place – Lok Sabha. He is cited as saying, public  outrage in the wake of  Mumbai26/11 was really about  prevelant perception  that the country had stopped valuing lives of the commoner ;  India only bothered about lal-batthi VIPs (the type that goes about in cars fitted with revolving red-light).

“We have to change how we view the lives of individuals,”  Amethi MP   said in Lok Sabha,  adding that the powers that be had to decide that not a single life would go  in vain.

Excellent thought;  which is best conveyed to people through official action.  They could decide,  for instance,  to review the system of providing state-sponsored security to politicians and other public figures facing threat to personal life.  Those in the Z category get  ‘black cat’  protection.   If someone were to seek details under RTI Act pertaining to  the number of our politicians who enjoy this privilege,  we can get a sense of how many among them deserve such entitlement, from the security viewpoint.  Z category shouldn’t be seen as a status symbol.  Besides,  one wonders if  those once  given black-cat protection ever think of surrendering the privilege after they retire or the official perception of  threat to their lives is  considerably reduced.

Rahul Gandhi who in his Lok Sabha speech is reported to have said some sensible things would indeed neutralise , to some  extent,  the public outrage  he referred to ,  if only he were to follow up his words with a demand for a case-by-case review of  security-threat status of  lal-batthiwallahs   under black cat cover.  And ensure that the home ministry takes a critical look at the security entitlement criteria.

Laptop is old hat

Laptop is old hat. Keith Bradsher of the New York Times  sent updates on the terror strike in Mumbai from his Blackberry. The newspaper correspondent had parked himself on a rooftop close to Nariman House.

Taking cover behind plastic water tank, to stay clear of  stray bullets, he wrote in a blog post that he found it convenient to keep an eye on Nariman House from his rooftop location and then draw back now and then  behind the water tank to thumb-type on his BlackBerry .  Bradsher’s BlackBerry updates appeared in NYT blog – Lede. The word, spelled this way, refers to the ‘lead’ sentence or paragraph in a newspaper story.

Blackberry came in handy for the gunmen holding out on the Taj , to keep tab on news reports on their strike. The naval chief told a news channel that their round-the-clock coverage picked up by militants impaired the commando operations. Even as he gave vent to his disapproval of 24×7 coverage – ‘it’s not a nice thing to do at this time’- there was cable TV blackout in Mumbai on Day Three.

Times Now anchor cried foul, and went on a rant about how Mumabaikars were being deprived of their right to instant information, while rest of the world was glued to 24×7 news channels.  Our electronic media has a way of exaggerating their self-importance. Admittedly, there is much to be said for round-the-clock news update at times such as this.

But then saturation coverage with repetitive visuals can become a 24×7 drag. Over-zeolous media had penchant for ‘breaking news’ with every gun-shot heard in the background. In the absence of much hard information coming their way, for hours together, news anchors fill in fallow air-time with snap analysis, their instant conclusions and  ‘expert’ comments from in-house security gurus and retired intelligence officials. Talking  heads invited to the TV studio flog their pet peeves against the police, politicians, intellegence agencies and, generally, the establishment of the day.

News reporters outside the scene of action can be so insensitive as to harangue for bytes taumatised hotel guests rescued from terrorists and grieving families of those who couldn’t make it.  A media report on a scene outside the Trident said a few families of terrorist victims took exception to the paparazzi-style of media functioning and had a slanging match with some cameramen.

And then we had TV panel discussions, in between ‘breaking news’, on the burning issue of the day . Panelists on a Times Now show included film actors Farukh Sheik, Arjun Rampal and Sanjana Kapoor. They are entitled to their wisdom on how the nation should respond to terrorist attacks. But to have these Bollywood worthies holding forth on national security issues made an amusing spectacle. Another news channel had its prime-time anchor drawing viewers’attention to a blog post by Amitabh Bachchan, in which the actor gives us his sense of the situation caused by the terror strike in Mumbai.  NDTV viewers were informed that Amitabh, distressed by the developments, went to bed with a loaded revolver (licenced of course) put under his pillow. He had ‘a very disturbed’ sleep Wednesday night.

Of Fahrenheit9/11 and Kissa Kursi Ka

I caught up with Fahrenheit9/11 eventually; at a time when George W Bush has barely a few weeks to go at the White House. Ironically, the film opens with the inagural of the Bush presidency in 2001. Placcard carrying crowds are seen pouring onto the streets of Washington DC to pelt eggs at the Bush limo.

A scathing indictment of the Bush presidency, Fahrenheit9/11 is so provocative that one wonders how the movie came to be screened at all. As I watched film maker Michael Moore taking the mickey out of the Bush administration,  I wondered if such blatantly anti-establishment movie would be possible in India.

Remember Kissa Kursi Ka ?  And the fate the movie met during the Indira Gandhi regime ?  Sanjay Gandhi did not take kindly to the film’s portrayal of politicians. Kissa Kursi Ka was not just refused censor’s certificate; all available prints of the 1977 movie were confiscated and destroyed. More on it, later.

Fahrenheit9/11 is a well made documentary, containing archive footage tracing developments in the Bush White House since 9/11. The pace is racy, the narrative, engaging and entertaining. The political stuff is extensively researched, and for the benefit of nit-picking critics, the film maker provides on the web line-by-line factual  back-up citing the source of film’s script and footage.

In the wake of 9/11 a common question people asked of others was what they were doing when New York’s World Trade Centre got hit by a hijacked plane.  I was then in Mysore,  worried over my travel plans to the US, in the wake of grounding of all planes. I was due to leave for San Francisco, but got stuck at Bangalore for days.

During the shutdown of the US airports, the film points out,  the White House approved Saudi flights carrying the Bin Laden family (of which there were 44 members in the US then). Such special treatment seemed glaring, considering that 15 of the 19 hijakers were Saudi nationals.

Where was President Bush when 9/11 happened ?  In Florida, addressing children at E Booker Elementary School. When an aide conveyed the news the commander-in-chief of the US forces, not knowing how to cope, and with no one to tell him what to do, decided to carry on with the photo opportunity, reading out for the school kids a story from a book,titled,’ My Pet Goat’.

Michael Moore sure can turn political provocation into a fine art. Kissa Kursi Ka  wasn’t known for its production value. Its producer Amrit Nahata was no Michael Moore.  A senior government official,  Mr S M Murshad,  who was among the few who saw the film wasn’t particularly impressed.  He wasn’t in favour of a ban,  for it would give the film ‘notoriety value’. Besides, the film was  so badly made that it would die a natural death at the box office.

Recalling the episode that happened during the Emergency,  Mr Murshad who was then joint-secretary in I & B ministry, wrote,  “The film in question was refused a censor certificate by the Films Censor Board in Mumbai. It came up to me in appeal. I recommended that the film should be granted a certificate notwithstanding that it taunted the Gandhi family in no uncertain terms..”  The official was over-ruled by V C Shukla, ‘Indira Gandhi’s hatchet man in the Ministry’.  Mr Murshad, an IAS official of the West Bengal cadre was sent back to the state. As for Kissa Kursi Ka, ‘all copies (of the film) were allegedly burnt in the premises of the Maruti company by Sanjay Gandhi’.

Nano’s ‘no,no’ to West Bengal

So Tatas have moved on,leaving West Bengal to pick up the pieces in Singur. News is Nano may well roll out of the relocated plant in Gurarat by the end of 2008. And West Bengal may well have its growth clock set back by a decade or more. Can anyone with investment in mind be expected to opt West Bengal after seeing what the Tatas had to go through in Singur?

Mamata Banerjee, by ‘pulling the trigger’ as Ratan Tata put it, may have scored a political point. The Trinamool Congress supremo, unrepentent, and still on a protest mode, is crying ‘state-sponsored terrorism’;she has cautioned chief minister Buddhadeb Battacharjee not to ‘play with fire’.The chief minister, on his part, accuses the opposition of being ‘very, very irresponsible’. He claims his government has lost a battle, but not the war.

Not the kind of political rhetoric that inspires investor confidence, does it? The message Mamata sends out to potential investors is, no matter who is in power, those who wish to do business in West Bengal would need to do a deal with her.

Mamata and the environmental activists promoting, what Alka Sehgal terms, ‘romanticised images of rural life’ would have one believe that the Singur farmers who sold/lost thier small holdings had little to gain from the compensation package, or benefit from urbanised growth the Nano car plant would bring to their area. Ms Sehgal, writing in a web magazine Spiked , cites business columnist Gurcharan Das as saying, ‘the real question is whether Indians want to remain starving peasants or become part of an urban proletariat.’

Not a particularly inviting choice, is it, considering that one could argue equally persuasively against either option. But the immediate question that stares at Singur farmers after the Tatas pullout is, WHAT NEXT?. One farmer, who had willingly given up land for the plant, told the media: ‘Can any of the opposition leaders tell us what we do now?’ He might as well bang his head at a brick wall.

For the way we practice democracy doesn’t provide for politicians’ accountablity for the socio-economic damage they cause by agitations to further their political agenda. Law makers would do well to consider bringing in legislation banning agitations against any project that is past the ‘commitment’ stage. Such ban would however not preclude a judicial review or litigation pursued in public interest.

It is said that West Bengal’s loss is Gujarat’s gain. Neither can be said to be a winner insofar as the Nano pull-out set off an unseemly scramble among states, vying with one another to attract the Tatas. Potential investors, on their part, tend to shop for concessions and privileges in excess of the declared industrial policy of a state. The project goes to the highest bidder, not necessarily the most deserving one. Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi is charged by the opposition Congress with ‘a sell-out’, and making ‘secret’ deal with the Tatas.

Politically motivated ? Sure, but such charges, even if unfounded, seek to create public suspicion and to undermine a government’s integrity. The ultimate loser is India.The circumstances that led to the relocation of Nano project doesn’t enhance the country’s image among foreign investors. They don’t help us project India as a preferred FDI destination.