AAP Ka Kya Hoga?

AS coincidences go, the day AAP was trying to work out a “stalled decision” on forming Delhi government, television was showing 1986 Hindi flick ‘Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (ERHF)’ – a Bollywood remake of 1957 Hollywood classic ‘12 Angry Men’.

The echo of similarity between AAP’s exercise and the movie’s title was not the end of the coincidence however. If one was about crowdsourcing democracy, the other was about crowdsourcing justice. Now I have not seen the Hollywood original and am told that the Bollywood copy was only a poor cousin. More significantly, India does not have a jury system so the idea itself is a little out of place. But this post is not about a movie review.

The sum and substance of ERHF was a caricature. Of what happens when a crowd or a mob is made the decider of destinies.

For those who have not seen the movie, ERHF is centred on a verdict that needs a unanimous approval of a jury. The court has found a young man guilty of his father’s murder and slapped a death sentence. The jury – a dozen men who are a hodgepodge of varying degrees of temperaments, motivations, prejudices, and flippancy – has to iron out their differences and make a choice which would mean life and death for the convict.

The film is a commentary on consensus building by a group and proves the adage ‘too-many-cooks-spoil-the-broth’ rather apt. Most of the jury conclusions are based on assumptions and speculation, not facts. The proceedings amount to a mis-trial looked at from a legal eye.

Now I come to my point.

Arvind Kejriwal swore on his children that he would not take or give support to Congress or BJP. Now following a crowdsourced decision he is set to be Delhi Chief Minister. Kejriwal and his party have made a decision – or rather cooked one – for which they would pay through their nose as soon as the summer of 2014.

Like the jury in ERHF, AAP’s decision might be based on assumptions and speculation that do not go well with hard politics. For one, Congress has bared its fangs even before the oath taking. So for all practical purposes, Kejriwal can forget about any honeymoon period. Two, post results analysis, pollsters are clearly of the opinion that much of AAP’s vote was a snatch from an ill-prepared BJP’s kitty. Come 2014 and a Modi BJP would not be the same entity as a Harshvardhan BJP. Three, Delhi saw over two years of AAP activism, including its IAC avatar, prior to elections, which is not the case in rest of the country. Four, after Delhi government, effectively there are no personalities left to fan out across the country to work the AAP magic.

Am still not writing AAP’s epitaph. But the party might already have seen its best.

Devyani And The Maid: Thousands Years Hence.

IT so happens that not for the first time a woman named Devyani has landed in trouble due to her maid servant. For those who have read Girish Karnad’s play Yayati, it would immediately strike what I mean.

For those who have not, here goes the myth of Devyani.

Thousands of years ago there was a girl called Devyani, daughter of chief priest of demons (Asuras) sage Sukracharya. She was friends with princess Sharmishtha, daughter of demon king Vrishparva. One day while on a forest trip an altercation between the two led to Devyani being thrown into a well by the princess. The damsel in distress was rescued by a king named Yayati who was passing by, and obviously had to fall in love. But she won’t go home till justice was done to her which was short change for an angry guru Shukracharya to wrest from minion Vrishparva. As her comeuppance Sharmishtha was made Devyani’s maid!

The changed roles however did not affect Devyani’s fate. She had to suffer at the hands of the maid, this time with Yayati falling in love with Sharmishtha, and having three sons with her. Devyani had to again fall back on the wrath-making powers of her sage father. Yayati was condemned to turn old in his youth and rest as they say is mythological history.

Thousands years hence, diplomat Devyani is in a soup because her maid got ideas to attain American citizenship (Yayati's love?) and in the process get her boss thrown in jail. Shukracharya’s (India’s) ire is being tested again!

LoL

Shame Of The Long Night

Today marks the 29^th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy – right day perhaps to recall not only how shamelessly the State failed its people before the might of a multi-national, how a duly elected Chief Minister facilitated the escape of the Union Carbide boss Warren Anderson, and how justice eludes the victims nearly three decades after the industrial disaster, but also how it shamed its own judiciary before the world.

It is a lesser known fact from the tragic saga that the Indian government had not only preferred to knock at the doors of United States judiciary but condemned its own judges as incompetent in the eyes of the world.

The Indian petition before the New York district court in 1985 submitted that “courts of India were not up to the task of conducting Bhopal litigation…that Indian judiciary was yet to reach full maturity due to the restraints placed upon it by the British Colonial rulers who had shaped the Indian legal system to meet their own ends!”

It was left to the US judges to hold a mirror before the spineless Indian establishment asking it to have a measure of self-respect. To quote the US Court of Appeal in the Union Carbide vs. Union of India case: “…the Union of India is a world power in 1986, and its courts have the proven capacity to meet out fair and equal justice. To deprive the Indian judiciary of this opportunity to stand tall before the world and to pass judgement on behalf of its own people would be to revive a history of subservience and subjugation from which India has emerged. India and its people can and must vindicate their claims before the independent and legitimate judiciary created there since independence of 1947."

The narrative of Indian government’s farcical conduct did not end with this of course. As is well known now, the Rajiv Gandhi government rubbed in an out of court settlement on the victims, with the Union Carbide having to pay only US dollars 470 million as full and final payment, absolving the company of all criminal liabilities!

It was left to activists and the Supreme Court to get the criminal liability back in 1991. Rest is history as they say. The fugitive Anderson lives out his life in posh Hampton enclave of Long Island in New York, and the Indian government in its latest has maintained they have no documents to prove that Anderson was ever arrested, leave aside that he was bailed out!

The other IM – Integrated Muslim.

 Could Sony Entertainment Television have choreographed it? The first and last winners of the Rs 10 million booty this season of Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) both happen to be Muslims. And like with most KBC winners, Taj Mohammed Rangrez and Fatima Firoz do not seem to have any privileged background.

Do these winners represent a kind of Muslim? Did their achievement ride on the back of any patronage? Did KBC follow any system of reservations or scholarship to assist the duo to win? In the light of the ongoing political debate for Muslim reservations and preferential allotment of national resources to the community, this development comes loaded with a perspective. Let’s elaborate. 

Rangrez, 42, is a history teacher from Udaipur. His surname also suggests he might be from the OBC community. Fatima, 22, is a science student from Saharanpur who had to leave her studies midway due to financial constraints. She also lost her father, the sole bread winner, couple of years ago, leaving behind an all women family, an unpaid loan, and community ostracism.

It is not clear whether either of them is a product of the madrassa system, but what can be said with some certainty is that both must have gone through a very secular preparation for appearing on the show and to have performed to win. Rangrez in fact showcased his understanding of scriptures from multiple religions to audience applause. In case of Fatima, symbolism went the whole hog: her Rs 10 million question was about which Indian woman has scaled highest peaks of all continents across the world.

Do we get a sense then, of what these two Muslims represent? Does merit ring a bell? If yes, then are Rangrez and Fatima representative of something that can be posited as an ideal? If Indian Mujahideen is a certain kind of Muslim, do Rangrez and Fatima present an alternative? It can be abhorrently patronizing to point fingers, but even if partly, Muslims have to find some answers to their ills on their own, does the duo at least flag the direction?

The Sachar panel underscored that not all problems facing Muslims are perception issues; that there are definitely some real concerns that need attention and alleviation. But to make a limited point here, can the prescription be tweaked so as to instill a sense of self-respect among Muslims rather than promote a dependent psyche? Something that has had serious repercussions already in another segment of the Indian society. I shall come back to this issue soon with more.

Debate over Sardar as PM and his health

AS expected, Narendra Modi has raked up the ever latent issue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s candidature for Prime Ministership at independence again. The debate – essentially engendered by India’s right – emphasizes the Patel-Nehru cleavage and Mahatma Gandhi’s role in choosing Nehru as his successor. The argument is that Patel was the best Prime Minister India never had.

In this context some interesting material came my way recently while reading archived communication – exchange of letters – between Sardar Patel and Mahatma Gandhi between 1932 and Mahatma’s death in 1948. It comes out rather clearly that Sardar had bungled up his health and that though not the sole factor, it might have been a contributing cause in Gandhi’s decision to opt for Nehru over Patel.

In 1934 Sardar was actually released from jail on grounds of ill health…there was something to do with his nose. In fact 1930 onwards, a pattern emerges where “improve your health” is a constant nag from Bapu to Sardar. In a letter from Segaon on August 15, 1938, Gandhi chides sardar thus: “…you may be the Sardar to others, but you do not seem to be any better than your own slave. The true sardar is he who has control over his own self.” In 1945, from Sevagram, Bapu wrote that railway journeys causing strain were no longer meant for Sardar. Even from Bombay to Poona he was advised to fly. By 1946 Sardar Patel’s health was poor enough to warrant him to be excused from election work. In a letter of July 2, 1946 Patel writes in his own words: My health is deteriorating and there seems to be no way out.

Nevertheless, the fact that Nehru outlived Patel by a good 14 years reduces the debate over what India’s destiny would have been had Patel taken over as PM rather than Nehru to academic interest only. However, while on this topic, an interesting digression would be to focus on the health of one more important personality of that period. Mohammed Ali Jinnah too was suffering from serious ailments, but it seems it was a closely guarded secret. There is no contemporary record to establish when exactly his harmless tuberculosis turned into life taking lung cancer and became public.

The question then is had Indian freedom leadership led by Gandhi known of Jinnah’s health and impending end, would they have behaved differently over partition? For example, could they have delayed their acceptance of Mountbatten plan by some months? Opens up tantalizing possibilities to be explored for academic purposes, and I shall come back to this topic in near future.

Pakistan: Alice in Blunderland

BEING Indian, calling Pakistan a failed state can get branded as motivated. But a cursory sifting through the leaked Abbottabad report on Osama Bin Laden (OBL) would confirm the thesis in sharp relief. Since other aspects from the report have been illuminated in some measure by the mainstream media, I attempt here to focus on some humour instead. The examples are randomly picked, quotes lifted from the report in its own language, with comments added only to sharpen the pun. Troubles Pakistan faces qualify as gargantuan on any scale. In a situation like this, for anyone there in position of authority to keep a straight face is to look at the lighter side of life. Enjoy.

• "Whenever security is given exclusive priority, the first thing that is undermined is security itself!" How? Then again…currently, we have no national security policy, because we have no national economic, educational, population, health, social, environmental, or any nation building policies…hello, what do you have then?
• In the first flush of news reports the Government of Pakistan actually congratulated the United States in getting OBL! Only after realizing that…errr…the American raid might have just consisted a violation of sovereignty and a slap on their face…a tight one at that…that all talk shifted to betrayal and attack on Pakistan’s asmita.
• A gem from then Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar: Pakistan has been too preoccupied with what’s happening in the world to focus on what’s happening at home. As per Khar if Pakistan is in a mess it’s owing to the myopic decisions taken by US in 1980s! What was Khar’s daddy generation doing, one may ask?
• Then Interior Minister Rahman Malik deposed that the Patwaris and Constables need to be blamed for failing to pick up signs of such a famous fugitive right under the nose of Pak Military Academy in Abbottabad. Really? Not ISI? And what he himself thought of OBL’s whereabouts? Malik responds: Well I thought he must have been somewhere in Yemen!
• In a testimony termed as disarmingly candid by the Commission, the Pakistani Minister of Defence informs that he came to know of the American raid from his daughter in New York. No one from the generals or security establishment thought it fit to inform their boss! When asked how he allowed himself to be bypassed he says “Well, in Pakistan things were different. Information traveled from bottom to top and not from top to bottom!!”
• Another politician questioned, the Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where Abbottabad lay, claims in his deposition before the Commission that the federal and provincial governments were too busy in counter-terrorism operations to bother about finding OBL! Well, finding OBL is not counter-terrorism? Another gem from him: the writ of the government can not be enforced by the government alone. It needs cooperation from all stakeholders. Meaning writ of the government does not run even on its stakeholders?
• Such is the power of the institution called Army in Pakistan that the Commission could not even indirectly suggest that OBL living in Pakistan for nine years without detection had anything to do with it. A typical para reads like this: OBL escaped detection because … of the negligence shown by government departments like NADRA, the Revenue department, the local police, special branch, the Abbottabad Cantonment Board, utility service providers, traffic police, excise department et al…in short everyone but not the Army!
• The DG-Military Intelligence under whose jurisdiction OBL’s Abbottabad holiday home came blames non-responsive behaviour of the society. He laments, people do not inform, the whole system is dysfunctional, and in given circumstances the intelligence agencies had not done a bad job. Dear Sir, you expect common man to fill in where your trained sleuths failed? At least twice in the report two Army generals suggest that the OBL raid happened because the civilians are fools. Once even the Commission had to chide the general for his arrogance. But nothing beyond that.
• Again, the length to which one goes in Pakistan to indulge with the Army becomes clear from this. In a moment of sarcasm perhaps, a rhetorical question is asked by the Commission: Is it official or unofficial defence policy not to attempt to defend the country if attacked by a military superpower like the US? Before generals come clean on this, the Commission itself clarifies, rather indulgently: “Why be despondent if the problem is superior flying and defence technology available with US?” For full three hours four US Air Force choppers were deep inside Pak territory and Army can not be blamed!
• On why Barack Obama’s warnings that US would take unilateral action if OBL was found in Pak, not taken seriously, a general told the Commission, “Well the US never gave it in writing!!!”
• Then again, if you believe the DG-ISI there is mad rush to get a Pak visa by Americans! So much so that if the ISI objected to visa application made in one Pakistan mission abroad, the applicant would get it from some other mission! The DG then laments that no one, including the Defence Minister, has read the basic documents concerning defence policy, that there was simply no culture of reading among the political leadership. Could Defence Minister reading policy have helped prevent OBL from hiding in Pak for nine years? Or stop Americans from raiding Abbottabad? Shhh…its ISI, so the Commission does not counter question. And see the dark humour in the DG when he says that many decent people have been harmed by the ISI, but …errr…we have learnt from the experience. OK, but what happened of those decent people? No answer.
• The Commission was tasked to pin down the responsibility of the biggest-security-failure-since-1971 in Pakistan on somebody. And it does not disappoint. In concluding remarks it asks a question to itself: Who was responsible? And responds: US responsibility is clear…it acted like a criminal thug…!!!

Goa Diary

If one thought some profound business of politics happens at a national party’s national executive, here are some gems from chats with top leaders in the BJP. Mind you, very top so take it seriously: Ninety per cent speeches are repetitive…yawn…so what if only top leaders speak. Ninety per cent attendance is good…so what if those missing include L K Advani, Uma Bharti, Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh, Shatrughan Sinha. One leader is so bored inside that he prefers to read on i-pad than focus on the proceedings. In his words he is physically present, but mentally absent. Conclusion: video conferencing would be better. Well, going by illnesses, it might become the norm.

***

You can not miss him. Not because he looms larger than life, but for his contrariness. Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar presents a refreshing change for a politician. No commandos, no hang ups. Have heard the stories of his aam aadmi-ness. Like he flies cattle class, goes to buy fish on his scooter even now. And then I get to see it with my own eyes. He has come to the airport to receive his party's leaders. His motorcade is only of two cars, but the one for other VIPs creates a commotion at the Airport. Unassuming Parrikar gets down and helps the vehicles move back and forth. No wonder even my Muslim driver Shabbir has a sense of ownership over his CM.

***

Goans, much like our Sorathias, love easy life. The day starts not before 10 am, and then shuts down for an afternoon siesta. Except for the tourism industry they call it a day early as well. In an idea of the kind of weighty issues Goa Ministers must tackle, they are chief guests at cooking contests. Here they make policy announcements like culinary skills need to be improved, err further? Mushrooming casinos show the premium on good life. There are big ads in papers saying Goa against Casinos, but unperturbed, government has brought in a new legislation for even bigger ones! Above, video of a spice plantation.

***

Shabbir tells of how a good numbers preferred to retain their Portugese passports and have in fact migrated, leaving behind their costly real estate, transfer of which is governed by State law. All of it is heritage now lining the uptown Miramar Road. In fact, citizenship is still an issue in Goa. There is a writ pending in the Panaji bench of the Bombay High Court against hundreds of top government officials, including legislators, against their dual citizenship Interestingly, though Indian law does not allow it, the present Goa government is game for it. I ask Manohar Parrikar himself in the hotel lobby while going through the newspaper and he laughs saying he too was born a Portugese citizen! Left, Basilica of Bom Jesus, UN World Heritage.

***

Goa had a culture of bull fights. Called dhirios in Konkani, the traditional sport was banned in 1998, but can still be seen on the sly, particularly in the south. A section of Goans wants it to be revived and a campaign is building up in support. The bulls fight anyway during their mating season, the argument goes. South Goa MP Francisco Sardinha is for it, one of his supporters have filed a petition in court recently.

***

Much of Catholic understanding among Indians is Goan, thanks to Bollywood. On the ground the place is as syncretic as one can get. Two examples of Hindu influence: use of Hindu temple style garlands to adorn deities in churches, and roadside religiosity with crosses put up like Hindu shrines. Extending the example of Goan syncretism is the mosque by Adil Shah. Its architecture (right) would easily pass off as Hindu if one is specifically not told that it’s a mosque. Goa is the only State of India that has successfully running common civil code. Shabbir does not mind. He feels it to be more of an enabler in Goa’s good communal relations than a differentiator. May his tribe increase.

***

Beaches and football in many ways define Goa. So not unnatural to spot football on the beach. We might not hear a lot of the Salgaokars and the Dempos in the post-Doordarshan era but football is alive, and well, kicking in Goa. Mercifully, cricket can take a back seat. After a piece-to-camera at the Miramar beach I join in a bunch of youngsters. I have my own football story, but shall keep it for a later post.

The News Republic of Baroda

HOW many local news channels can a medium sized city like Baroda have? Or should have? Four? Five? Nine? The city boasts of 23 registered television news organizations. To put it in perspective, India has only 14 national Hindi news channels. Add five of English, that’s still four short of Baroda’s tally!

That naturally takes one to the question: why is the culture capital of Gujarat that news hungry? Is it a reflection of city’s intellectual urges? Or is it something else. Its not intellect when the stellar list of owner-editors includes a former Omelet selling hawker, a plastics trader, a former student leader, and a bootlegger. My limited pursuit of this question unfortunately did not lead to a cogent explanation, except for, may be that it is an accident of circumstances.

If for a moment we assume everything to be above board, the business model is quite simple. Keep a camera team on the ground to cover events, mostly accidents and press conferences, turn the contents collected through the day into a half hour bulletin, burn a CD, and give it over to a cable operator to beam it into local homes. In reality, the camera team is actually a half educated boy who is given a cheap CCD video camera and a mike. This cheaply equipped reporter-cameraman is mostly cheaply paid as well. Paying the cable operator for the air time is the only other cost to be borne. Bingo, and you own a news organization!

Two are cheekily named – DNTV (a take on NDTV), and Times News Network (copying TOI’s TNN) – while another is simply called 7.30 as it gets aired in that slot in the evening. In case you thought some of it might be difficult, one is even named Easy. Except for three channels – VNM, TNN, and Easy – seen across the city, rest are actually Gali-Mohalla wonders seen in pockets where they have clout with the cable operator. Many actually are only on paper, giving fake prestige to the person registering it with administration. A sort of arrangement that helps them put PRESS in bold on their vehicles just to avoid a traffic cop’s chit.

My own experience during cub reporter days in Baroda was that lot of hanky-panky also goes on behind these organizations. Not to mention the embarrassment such paparazzi crowd can be at a press conference, bringing down overall level of journalistic discourse with their crassness and conduct. According to some owners who are genuinely in the business to provide a local news platform the scene turned bad when the cable networks decided to get into news for the leverage the PRESS tag would bring. Add a few rotten eggs and the scene went from bad to worse.

I am flagging the issue as it is connected with larger media scene in the country as well. While multiplicity is seen as guarantor of media’s independence – a countervailing force against domination of few points of view – this kind of hydra headed explosion too is not in the interest of both integrity and quality of the profession.

*Baroda’s channels: VNM, GVN, GNN, TNN, DNTV, KTV, GTV, B-TV, BRG News, Katar Sayaji, Times News Network, Tahelka, Raj Kavi, News Plus, Crime Point, Today News, 7.30 PM, Gujarat News, India Aaj, Katibandh, Easy TV, and Vadodara Mitra.

COINS-II

Health

ONGC 50

ILO diamond jubilee

UNO 50

Dandi March 75

Narayan Gurudev

Dadabhai Naoroji

Bhagwan Mahavira

Indian Council of Medical Research

Babu Rajendra Prasad

Millenia of Brihadeeshwar Temple, Tanjavur

Kautilya

C Subramaiam

Shaheed Bhagat Singh

Tagore

Shivaji

Netaji

Sardar

Relax, Let Miyan Nawaz Sort Himself Out First!

AS is its wont, Indian media – particularly the news television – is going bonkers over victory of Miyan Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan, with a commensurate starry eyed pitch for improved Indo-Pak relations. There is already clamour that the low hanging fruit of MFN status to India be served by Pakistan ASAP. The euphoria could be misplaced if we take all tenses – past, present and future – into account.

Let’s take history first. I have not been able to successfully google the famous half-hug that Sharif gave to Atal Bihari Vajpayee at Wagah, but the baggage he brings has been tweeted by former top IB hand and strategic analyst B Raman. It was under Sharif’s watch in 1993 that the Lashkar-e-Toiba infiltrated into Jammu and Kashmir. Fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim was given sanctuary in Pakistan following March 1993 Mumbai serial blasts the same time. And, it was Sharif government that became first in the world to recognize the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and start doing business with them.

Now to the present: Sharif has come to power on the back of a heavy doze of Islamist rhetoric. In a sense his victory is manufactured given the fact that all secular parties by Pakistani standards – PPP, ANP, and MQM – were hounded out by the Pakistani Taliban out of the campaign itself. Their leaders in fact were forced to address rallies via mobile phones and video even as the Sharifs went street-by-street, circus Lions in toe. Much as the Indian establishment would hope that justice comes to Hafiz Saed and the likes of him, Miyan Nawaz is in gratitude of the same men. So our expectations could be misplaced.

That brings me to the future. Sharif would need to triangulate his dynamics with both the Mullahs and the Military afresh. With the former he would need to evolve a relationship in which his policies are not unduly influenced by the religious frenzy that presently engulfs Pakistan. It is going to be a long road for the new Prime Minister to disengage from this embrace which has strong foreign policy consequences in both Afghanistan and India, particularly post American withdrawal in 2014.

So far as the latter is concerned the relationship begins with a level of mistrust given the Kargil backdrop. Thus it might be longer still before a working relationship with Rawalpindi develops, unhinged from recent history. His comment of inquiry into Kargil episode might just prove to be good sound byte for Indian television. It would be easier said than done given that there is no proof that Pak Army has become any less touchy, even in post-Musharraf era, over the issue of civilian control. Ayub protege Z A Bhutto had famously promoted Zia over four generals, as had Zia protege Sharif in case of Musharraf. Yet, we know the history.

Thus, India should wait to see durability of Pakistani transition. After all a change of government is essentially an internal affair of a country and we should let Sharif sort himself out over the next six months, or even a year. Meanwhile, for our strategic and intelligence community, the biggest take away from the just concluded democratic exercise in Pakistan should be Baluchistan. The overall turnout was less than 20 per cent against Pak average of sixty. Average winners have bagged over 100,000 votes in Punjab, 50,000 in Sindh, and a measly 10,000 in Baluchistan.  So as they would say in Punjabi: Thaand Rakh Yaar (take it easy), as also a hawk’s eye on Baluchistan.

Foreign Policy No Mushaira. Bunk Gujral Doctrine

A 2001 novel by then BBC Asia correspondent Humphery Hawksley pictured third world war engendered by a covert Indian army operation deep inside Tibet. China retaliates with its full might, and even for fiction, results are not difficult to guess. I would review the book sometime later. But, here we have a reverse scenario. A deep incision by the Chinese inside Indian territory, and forget war or world war, we talked of pimples, acne, and clearsil! On the western front Pakistan has delivered an Indian spy in body bag for not having a strong enough case to eliminate him judicially. Sri Lanka is routinely lifting Indian fishermen around Adam’s bridge, and Maldives just cocked a snook by jailing its India backed president. And all smaller SAARC countries play the China card rather up our nose. Theek hai? The crux is that India suffers from a Gulliverian image crisis in the neighbourhood. Why?

After the 1962 debacle the intelligence community had realized the importance of the capacity to keep tabs on (and to occasionally finger) the neighbourhood. Thus was born the Special Frontier Force – Establishment 22 in common parlance. The benefits became visible soon in the form of Chittagong (1971) and Siachen (1986) operations that have given India everlasting strategic depth and strength. Then came Inder Kumar Gujral on the foreign policy horizon in mid-1990s and all the good, hard nosed choices made by India came undone.

Gujral’s Faiz poetry influenced mind brought a doctrine the ill effects of which are now becoming starkly visible. The Gujral doctrine, with its premise that India with its intimidating size could be avuncular to its smaller neighbours with unilateral concessions, was per se not wrong. But the problem lay in the way it was interpreted by those it was meant for. With the exception of Bhutan, everyone has cocked a snook at us. Gujral put stifling restrictions on covert operations by RAW and IB in the neighbourhood and reduced the Establishment-22 into an uncertain existence. His successor, another poet Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, continued with sham covert ops and gave it in writing that Tibet was an integral part of the Chinese republic. Just makes it clear that foreign policy is best left to minds that only understand prose.

A Mexican dictator once famously lamented, “So far from God, so near to the United States,” – such is the impression of their big neighbour. It is a view in Lat-Am that USA is like a big dog in a small room. Even if it wags its tail in love, it knocks down a chair or two. China is attaining similar proportions in its neighbourhood. That seems like a legitimate target for India: not to be an indulgent uncle of the neighbourhood but to be a no nonsense keeper of calm.

In another context, on the eve of India’s 1998 nuclear tests George Fernandez branded China, not Pakistan, as India’s enemy no. 1. Another Lohiaite Mulayam Singh Yadav has recently shown the sense to repeat the charge. Let us have an eternal clarity on this – it is China we need to focus on. Pakistan and the rest would be taken care off from that capacity building. After the DBO fiasco the strategic community would hopefully chart out a course with clear cut goals. But in the short term, India needs to immediately roll back the Gujral doctrine and start all covert operations. More specifically, recharge the Establishment-22. In the longer term we need to bury it for ever, for, foreign policy is no Kavi Sammelan, even with smaller neighbours as we have realized.

COINS-I

Thiruvalluvar

Lincoln"s White House

100 years of flying in India

Madan Mohan Malaviya

Platinum jubilee of RBI

Shyama Prasad Mukherjee

Small family in 1993 meant 2 kids

Water crisis in 1994

150 years of Chuk-chuk

Bio-diversity and Food

Aurobindo

Golden jubilee of Supreme Court of India

Homi Bhabha

Asiad 1982

Cellular Jail, Andaman

Sant Gyaneshwar

Tourism Year

60 Years of Democrazy

Freedom 50