Three years ago, I delivered a lecture at the Institute of Objective Studies in Calcutta, titled ‘Islamic Banking: An Economist’s Perspective’.
Very few people know what Islamic banking is or what interest-free economy means. Only some devout Muslims who try to adhere strictly to the Islamic stricture against interest follow Islamic economics. We do not find mainstream academic institutions working on this subject. However, this is something that touches everyone’s life, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Hence there is a pressing need for wider awareness among people about what Islamic economics means.
There are three aspects of the subject that merit attention. First, a moral, ethical one, which sees interest as fundamentally unjust because the borrower bears greater risk or loss, or has less security of making a profit than the lender. The lender of money is passive, while the borrowing entrepreneur is active; yet the lender commands a return even before the enterprise yields anything.
Second is the politico-economic or social revolutionary aspect. Interest is the means to protect and perpetuate the socio-economic power of those who represent the past (owners of capital) as opposed to those who seek to become something in future. Credit is the only means through which new, creative economic activity can take place. But the emergence of new enterprises, the creation of new wealth and income, empowerment of the poor and the low income group and the realisation of social justice – are all hostage to the urge of capital-owners to secure maximal returns while bearing minimal risk. Interest breeds speculation, which is the bane of productive economic activities.
The third aspect is the faith-based one, of following scriptural prescriptions.
The vision of interest-free economy has the potential of bringing together under a common movement people of Islamic faith, people of conscience, radicals and social revolutionaries.
One could cite anti-usury thinking in the pre-Christian and early Christian era (Aristotle, Plato etc). One could also highlight the underlying conflict in the American economy and society, between the interests of those with old wealth and those with nothing but their dreams, their zeal for advancement, and their labour. The ‘populist’ movement in the USA, led by Andrew Jackson (President, 1829-37), brought this tension to the fore. The conservative policies of the 1920s and the 1980s Reagan era, with their severely negative social distribution consequences may also be seen in this light.
Islamic banking or interest-free economics means that lenders become risk-sharing business partners. Social ethics, community participation and public accountability are inherent in this vision. A brave new world is waiting to be built, but this cannot happen in isolation, undertaken by one community, in a few countries. It must be a global movement of humanity, seeking to build a just world.
The Economist had recently carried an article on Islamic finance. After summarising some of the technical difficulties involved in "mainstreaming" Islamic banking, the article concluded: "None of these challenges is insurmountable. This is an era of financial innovation where investors delight in exploring new areas of risk. Cultural barriers are there to be crossed. "
Reading this, it struck me that Islamic economics is a conception whose time has now come.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Partnership to privatise public space
Notwithstanding my effort to be blind and deaf to whatever is happening around me that fills me with rage, I can’t help being agitated over some recent developments in Calcutta. They are deeply disturbing, insidious and diabolical. Blinded by power and arrogance, caring a fig for law or accountability, and institutionalising such conduct, the ruling CPI(M) is in great haste to make deals with private builders. This involves handing over of public space, for dubious public ends, but explicit gratification all around.
On the Rash Bihari connector of the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass in south-eastern Calcutta, lies Rajdanga. There is a large park here, providing sorely needed open space for play and recreation for the local population – in an area becoming densely built-up, which used to be green fields just some years ago. The state govt has entered into a “public-private partnership” under which the land would be converted into a sports stadium, as well as a 16-storey residential-commercial complex. A private developer has been favoured for this project. A partner in this enterprise is a local “club” (or kelab, meaning youth association), which is a CPI(M) group, who would own the stadium.
This kelab has other antecedents. They have appropriated pavement spaces along the Bypass, and in the name of constructing bus-stop shelters, given out advertising space from which hefty revenue is obtained. So public land is seized by a private group, protected by the rulers – as its their own boys – and this is the means to considerable enrichment of the private group, even as the public languishes deprived of basic civic amenities.
A couple of years ago, the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) initiated a move to demolish the bus-stop shelters. This was resisted by the kelab, and finally after a meeting with the state Urban Development minister, where the CMDA, ministry officials, police and kelab members were present, it was decided that the matter would be left alone. The patrons of the kelab include a cabinet minister, a former assembly member, and other powerful party members. But strangely, the state sports department is not involved in this stadium project.
The CPI(M) front partners in govt - CPI, FB, RSP – have criticised this deal, as “an attempt to assist a local club backed by the CPI(M) and fill the coffer of a private builder in the guise of public-private partnership.”
And not far from the Rajdanga park, in the stretch between Ruby Hospital and Anandapur, the pavements have been appropriated by the ruling political parties, and let out to vendors. A minister in the state cabinet is behind the (illegal) installation of diesel generators to supply power to these vendors.
Thanks to the complete inactivity in the public domain of the educated and middle-classes and any attempt to define and act on what could be called “public” issues and needs, which are inclusive of all; like scoring a goal in an empty playing field, private / sectional interests are cynically advanced, as the state retreats from public action leaving all to the play of private capital. The distinctions between party and state, between state and civil society, public and private interests - are all blurred, as flagrant loot of public resources takes place. At the same time, genuine grassroots and civic initiatives are ignored, or even crushed.
Something similar is happening with Bedi Bhavan, an abandoned, crumbling old mansion near the Golpark end of the Dhakuria in south Calcutta. Here, a private builder would construct a 4-storeyed guest house and a car park on 22% of the land, with the remaining 78% being used by the builder for commercial purposes against a payment. Given the market value of what is very expensive, prime land, such an arbitrary deal with a particular builder, and the absence of the state PWD department in the project, raises fundamental questions. Again, a number of ministers in the state cabinet have criticised what is apparently the chief minister’s decision. The chief minister has said that as the tender had already been finalised, there could be no back-tracking.
A very public spat is going on between the state cooperatives minister and the principal secretary in the department. The minister has called the civil servant “mad” and accused him of obstructing his efforts to weed out corruption. But the official in question has said that he had merely pressed for verification of the antecedents of individuals nominated by the minister for the annual general meeting of several cooperatives. Now he is apparently going to file a criminal defamation suit against the minister. In the light of the CPI(M) govt’s habitual arrogant, power-drunk (ab)use of power through arbitrary actions, cocking a snook at law and procedure – one can get an idea of what might really be happening here.
The two noteworthy things are: the CPI(M)’s unstoppable momentum in deal-fixing; and the opposition now emanating from within the system. However, one should not read too much in the protests by the CPI(M)'s partners in the Left Front. These opportunists are only airing their grievance at being marginalised in decision-making. If they were genuinely bothered about the public interest and about probity and good governance - they would not have clung shamelessly to power for 30 years.
Interestingly, the Calcutta High Court has directed the state govt to clarify various issues pertaining to land acquisition and discriminatory award of compensation for the oustees from the land in Singur forcibly acquired for the Tata car plant. This followed a petition challenging the land acquisition. Those who agreed to give their land received a "bonus" in compensation, while others received a lesser amount. Here too one sees the couldn't care a fig attitude of the ruling party. It thinks it can do as it pleases and no one can do a thing.
In Bonhooghly in the northern fringe of the city, a run-down refugee housing colony is being redeveloped by a private builder. The people will get tiny apartments in a block on a small section of the land, and for this the builder will get the substantial remaining part of the land for his own commercial purposes.
Land-sharing – is something whose time is long due in Calcutta. But the underlying principles must be: to serve the public interest; to provide decent shelter and basic services for the city’s vulnerable sections; to make good the immense social and human development gap between these sections and the mainstream; to improve the quality of the living environment in the city; to involve people in city renewal; to develop diverse public management capacities in state, civil society and community organisations; and to fill the local and state govt’s coffers.
What we are seeing in places like Bonhooghly, and especially in the light of the deal-fixing proclivities of the CPI(M)-govt – does not even begin to touch this public agenda. More importantly, all this bodes grim portents regarding basti (slum) land in Calcutta, where over a third of the city’s population resides. I fear we are going to see the handover of basti land to private builders, with some token crumb of alternative accommodation for the dwellers. The builders' lobby is very active on this matter. I can see the Calcutta Basti Federation - a CPI(M) front, whose leader has strong underworld links – being the “public partner” in this scam. This will only spell doom for the city’s labouring poor. And for the future of my city.
A proposal had been developed by Unnayan in the late 90s, for comprehensive renewal in the Beliaghata canal-side area. This laid out a model of transparent, wholesome, social-aesthetic market-led intervention, in favour of social, environmental and business interests. Not surprisingly, that proposal did not see the light of day. Squatters evicted from along the city's canal-banks and railway tracks are now being provided small quarters in Nonadanga, at govt expense. But the Unnayan proposal had squatter resettlement as a major goal. The truth is that there is no interest in land-sharing, because there is the option of land-seizing.
Privatising public space - and the gleeful, unctuous participation in this of those who should be the conscience of the city! A few days ago, a heritage mall on the Bypass was the venue of a performance of Macbeth by the troupe of a well-known theatre personality from Bombay. This was an invitation-only event by the private builder who had been given valuable public land for this private mall. A darbar for the city’s elite, by a new maharaja, a maharaja enabled by a communist party in govt, in the democratic republic of India. How great the invitees must have felt, and what esteem they must have held themselves in as they basked in their elite-hood. The theatre man honoured the builder for being “a patron of the arts”. Yes, a kind of art, which necessarily despises common people and their basic needs.
Criminal conspiracies to loot public space, and concerts celebrating privilege! Like the protagonist in the Hindi film Pyaasa, I want to scream:
jalaa do, jalaa do, ise bhunk daalo ye duniyaa
mere saamane se hataa lo ye duniyaa
tumhaarii hai tum hii sambhalo ye duniyaa
ye duniyaa agar mil bhii jaaye to kyaa hai
Burn down, burn down, raze this world!
Remove this world from my sight!
Its yours, you take care of it!
Even if this world is attained – so what?
A clip of this song is accessible here.
On the Rash Bihari connector of the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass in south-eastern Calcutta, lies Rajdanga. There is a large park here, providing sorely needed open space for play and recreation for the local population – in an area becoming densely built-up, which used to be green fields just some years ago. The state govt has entered into a “public-private partnership” under which the land would be converted into a sports stadium, as well as a 16-storey residential-commercial complex. A private developer has been favoured for this project. A partner in this enterprise is a local “club” (or kelab, meaning youth association), which is a CPI(M) group, who would own the stadium.
This kelab has other antecedents. They have appropriated pavement spaces along the Bypass, and in the name of constructing bus-stop shelters, given out advertising space from which hefty revenue is obtained. So public land is seized by a private group, protected by the rulers – as its their own boys – and this is the means to considerable enrichment of the private group, even as the public languishes deprived of basic civic amenities.
A couple of years ago, the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) initiated a move to demolish the bus-stop shelters. This was resisted by the kelab, and finally after a meeting with the state Urban Development minister, where the CMDA, ministry officials, police and kelab members were present, it was decided that the matter would be left alone. The patrons of the kelab include a cabinet minister, a former assembly member, and other powerful party members. But strangely, the state sports department is not involved in this stadium project.
The CPI(M) front partners in govt - CPI, FB, RSP – have criticised this deal, as “an attempt to assist a local club backed by the CPI(M) and fill the coffer of a private builder in the guise of public-private partnership.”
And not far from the Rajdanga park, in the stretch between Ruby Hospital and Anandapur, the pavements have been appropriated by the ruling political parties, and let out to vendors. A minister in the state cabinet is behind the (illegal) installation of diesel generators to supply power to these vendors.
Thanks to the complete inactivity in the public domain of the educated and middle-classes and any attempt to define and act on what could be called “public” issues and needs, which are inclusive of all; like scoring a goal in an empty playing field, private / sectional interests are cynically advanced, as the state retreats from public action leaving all to the play of private capital. The distinctions between party and state, between state and civil society, public and private interests - are all blurred, as flagrant loot of public resources takes place. At the same time, genuine grassroots and civic initiatives are ignored, or even crushed.
Something similar is happening with Bedi Bhavan, an abandoned, crumbling old mansion near the Golpark end of the Dhakuria in south Calcutta. Here, a private builder would construct a 4-storeyed guest house and a car park on 22% of the land, with the remaining 78% being used by the builder for commercial purposes against a payment. Given the market value of what is very expensive, prime land, such an arbitrary deal with a particular builder, and the absence of the state PWD department in the project, raises fundamental questions. Again, a number of ministers in the state cabinet have criticised what is apparently the chief minister’s decision. The chief minister has said that as the tender had already been finalised, there could be no back-tracking.
A very public spat is going on between the state cooperatives minister and the principal secretary in the department. The minister has called the civil servant “mad” and accused him of obstructing his efforts to weed out corruption. But the official in question has said that he had merely pressed for verification of the antecedents of individuals nominated by the minister for the annual general meeting of several cooperatives. Now he is apparently going to file a criminal defamation suit against the minister. In the light of the CPI(M) govt’s habitual arrogant, power-drunk (ab)use of power through arbitrary actions, cocking a snook at law and procedure – one can get an idea of what might really be happening here.
The two noteworthy things are: the CPI(M)’s unstoppable momentum in deal-fixing; and the opposition now emanating from within the system. However, one should not read too much in the protests by the CPI(M)'s partners in the Left Front. These opportunists are only airing their grievance at being marginalised in decision-making. If they were genuinely bothered about the public interest and about probity and good governance - they would not have clung shamelessly to power for 30 years.
Interestingly, the Calcutta High Court has directed the state govt to clarify various issues pertaining to land acquisition and discriminatory award of compensation for the oustees from the land in Singur forcibly acquired for the Tata car plant. This followed a petition challenging the land acquisition. Those who agreed to give their land received a "bonus" in compensation, while others received a lesser amount. Here too one sees the couldn't care a fig attitude of the ruling party. It thinks it can do as it pleases and no one can do a thing.
In Bonhooghly in the northern fringe of the city, a run-down refugee housing colony is being redeveloped by a private builder. The people will get tiny apartments in a block on a small section of the land, and for this the builder will get the substantial remaining part of the land for his own commercial purposes.
Land-sharing – is something whose time is long due in Calcutta. But the underlying principles must be: to serve the public interest; to provide decent shelter and basic services for the city’s vulnerable sections; to make good the immense social and human development gap between these sections and the mainstream; to improve the quality of the living environment in the city; to involve people in city renewal; to develop diverse public management capacities in state, civil society and community organisations; and to fill the local and state govt’s coffers.
What we are seeing in places like Bonhooghly, and especially in the light of the deal-fixing proclivities of the CPI(M)-govt – does not even begin to touch this public agenda. More importantly, all this bodes grim portents regarding basti (slum) land in Calcutta, where over a third of the city’s population resides. I fear we are going to see the handover of basti land to private builders, with some token crumb of alternative accommodation for the dwellers. The builders' lobby is very active on this matter. I can see the Calcutta Basti Federation - a CPI(M) front, whose leader has strong underworld links – being the “public partner” in this scam. This will only spell doom for the city’s labouring poor. And for the future of my city.
A proposal had been developed by Unnayan in the late 90s, for comprehensive renewal in the Beliaghata canal-side area. This laid out a model of transparent, wholesome, social-aesthetic market-led intervention, in favour of social, environmental and business interests. Not surprisingly, that proposal did not see the light of day. Squatters evicted from along the city's canal-banks and railway tracks are now being provided small quarters in Nonadanga, at govt expense. But the Unnayan proposal had squatter resettlement as a major goal. The truth is that there is no interest in land-sharing, because there is the option of land-seizing.
Privatising public space - and the gleeful, unctuous participation in this of those who should be the conscience of the city! A few days ago, a heritage mall on the Bypass was the venue of a performance of Macbeth by the troupe of a well-known theatre personality from Bombay. This was an invitation-only event by the private builder who had been given valuable public land for this private mall. A darbar for the city’s elite, by a new maharaja, a maharaja enabled by a communist party in govt, in the democratic republic of India. How great the invitees must have felt, and what esteem they must have held themselves in as they basked in their elite-hood. The theatre man honoured the builder for being “a patron of the arts”. Yes, a kind of art, which necessarily despises common people and their basic needs.
Criminal conspiracies to loot public space, and concerts celebrating privilege! Like the protagonist in the Hindi film Pyaasa, I want to scream:
jalaa do, jalaa do, ise bhunk daalo ye duniyaa
mere saamane se hataa lo ye duniyaa
tumhaarii hai tum hii sambhalo ye duniyaa
ye duniyaa agar mil bhii jaaye to kyaa hai
Burn down, burn down, raze this world!
Remove this world from my sight!
Its yours, you take care of it!
Even if this world is attained – so what?
A clip of this song is accessible here.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Story
I discovered the following among my notes, written a year ago. I must have been really livid!
The story must be told. Of how a bunch of cretins, burning with hateful jealousy at everything around them, finally had their day, and mounted a project of wanton destruction, now celebrated as progress and revolution.
Perhaps of more interest as a story is the graceful submission of the representatives of intellect and art to this power, and their skilful, adroit and adept forging of ties of privilege, so as never to be left out, out in the cold, out on a limb, out of power.
But perhaps the best story of all would be that of all those nameless and faceless souls - citizens too - who could only suffer the circus of overt-turning that engulfed and overwhelmed all, and hope, until hope too seemed futile.
The mouth-frothing carnage of idiocy by the hideous votaries of revolution; the pride and glee, the smug arrogance and conceit of the lapdogs of power; and the never-say-die struggle to survive amidst extreme adversity; yes, together they brought to life the national tri-colour.
Image: Saturn Devouring One of His Sons, by Francisco Goya.
About the books
Some friends have asked me to elaborate on the books (fiction / literature) I have listed in my profile. So I’m providing the names of the authors, and some links. I've added a few titles, which could not be accommodated in the list within the text limits set by Blogger. The order is more or less according to when I read the book, with the first one read in 1969, and the last one being what I'm now reading.
The Coral Island, RM Ballantyne
Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
The Spanish Gardener, AJ Cronin
Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Book of One Thousand and One Nights
She, H Rider Haggard
Madame Curie, Eve Curie
Vanity Fair, WM Thackeray
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Mahabharata
Cry, The Beloved Country, Alan Paton
Travels with My Aunt, Graham Greene
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
The Little Prince, Antoine Saint de Exupery
Animal Farm, George Orwell
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Don Camillo, Giovannino Guareschi
Ragtime, EL Doctorow
The Importance of Being Ernest, Oscar Wilde
Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell
Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
Herself Surprised, Joyce Cary
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
My God Died Young, Sasthi Brata
The Collected Stories of Guy de Maupassant
Untouchable, Mulk Raj Anand
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Other, Thomas Tryon
Crowned Heads, Thomas Tryon
My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell
Other Voices, Other Rooms, Truman Capote
The Work is Innocent, Rafael Yglesias
The Escape Artist, David Wagoner
Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight?, David Wagoner
The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher
The Nickel Mountain, John Gardener
Face to Face, Ved Mehta
Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow
The River of Blood, Indira Parthasarathy
Because of the Cats, Nicolas Freeling
How Green Was My Valley, Richard Llewellyn
Ruslan and Ludmila, Alexander Pushkin
The Captain's Daughter, Alexander Pushkin
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev
The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass
The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
The Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Bullet Park, John Cheever
Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
Gimpel the Fool, Isaac Bashevis Singer
The Castaway, JG Cozzens
In the Beginning, Chaim Potok
The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder, Herman Wouk
Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe
I, Robot, Isaac Asimov
Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Being There, Jerzy Kosinski
A Burnt-Out Case, Graham Greene
The Narrow Corner, Somerset Maugham
Heaven's My Destination, Thornton Wilder
Look Homeward Angel, Thomas Wolfe
Franny & Zooey, JD Salinger
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
The Dark Labyrinth, Lawrence Durrell
The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West
Falling Bodies, Sue Kaufman
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
Death in Venice, Thomas Mann
Love of Seven Dolls, Paul Gallico
Clear Light of Day, Anita Desai
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Puppeteer's Tale, Manik Bandopadhyay
So Many Hungers, Bhabani Bhattacharya
Gift of a Cow, Premchand
The Journey to the East, Herman Hesse
Life & Times of Michael K, JM Coetzee
Memed My Hawk, Yaşar Kemal
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
The Village by the Sea, Anita Desai
Childhood's End, Arthur J Clarke
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
The Enigma of Arrival, VS Naipaul
The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years, Chingiz Aitmatov
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
Memoirs of a Survivor, Doris Lessing
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Songlines, Bruce Chatwin
Into Their Labours, John Berger
The Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
The Last Days of Louisiana Red, Ishmael Reed
The Asiatics, Fredrick Prokosch
The Man With the Golden Arm, Nelson Algren
The Famished Road, Ben Okri
In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, Tobias Wolf
Ordinary Love & Good Will, Jane Smiley
The Age of Grief, Jane Smiley
In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje
The Family of Pascual Duarte, Camilo José Cela
Stones for Ibarra, Harriet Doerr
Lila, Robert Pirsig
Sita's Kitchen, Ramachandra Gandhi
The Storyteller, Mario Vargas Llosa
Maus, Art Spiegelman
The Prophet, Khalil Gibran
The Conference of the Birds, Fariduddin Attar
Baumgartner's Bombay, Anita Desai
Ramayana
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
The Prince Who Became a Cuckoo, Lo-Dro
The Light of Asia, Edwin Arnold
Old Paths White Clouds, Thich Nhat Hanh
God's Pauper, Nikos Kazantzakis
The Prophets, Abraham Joshua Heschel
Savitri, Sri Aurobindo
The Jataka
An Imaginary Life, David Malouf
The Little Locksmith, Katherine Butler Hathaway
Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age, Kenzaburo Oe
A Quiet Life, Kenzaburo Oe
Women as Lovers, Elfriede Jelinek
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
Blindness, Jose Saramago
All the Names, Jose Saramago
Buddha, Osamu Tezuka
My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk
Calcutta: A Long Poem, P Lal
Monday, February 19, 2007
Movies and Books
The Profile section of this blog has "Favourite Movies" and "Favourite Books". I have listed some memorable movies and books seen and read over the years, from my childhood to now.
My friend Dr Mrinal Bose chided me yesterday for departing from blogging about literature. I am not a scholar of literature. I'm only a reader and a lover of literature. Hence my relationship to a work, or a writer, is a very intense, personal, sensory, cerebral, emotional, experience. The experience of reading something, at a specific juncture, being taken by the work, the insights into and resonances with one's own life - I think a few posts on this blog (e.g. Frog's Song) have emanated from this space.
Dr Bose said he was also interested in cinema and I told him I planned to write about all the films I saw in the year 1982-83, in London, with my friend James. Again, this is as much about my experience at that time of being with James and seeing those films, as its about those films.
How much I have been fed by literature and cinema, from my early childhood, and that supreme bounty still continues, though far reduced in quantity. I invite readers to take a look at the list of films and books (literature) I have shared.
My friend Dr Mrinal Bose chided me yesterday for departing from blogging about literature. I am not a scholar of literature. I'm only a reader and a lover of literature. Hence my relationship to a work, or a writer, is a very intense, personal, sensory, cerebral, emotional, experience. The experience of reading something, at a specific juncture, being taken by the work, the insights into and resonances with one's own life - I think a few posts on this blog (e.g. Frog's Song) have emanated from this space.
Dr Bose said he was also interested in cinema and I told him I planned to write about all the films I saw in the year 1982-83, in London, with my friend James. Again, this is as much about my experience at that time of being with James and seeing those films, as its about those films.
How much I have been fed by literature and cinema, from my early childhood, and that supreme bounty still continues, though far reduced in quantity. I invite readers to take a look at the list of films and books (literature) I have shared.
In London, with James
I had been remembering all the films I saw during the year 1982-83 with my friend James Aboud, in London. Quite incredible, unbelievable, uncommon, yet true, and stupendous. Both of us lived in the International Students House in London (the York Terrace residence), where we had opposite rooms.
The picture above is a view of our hostel, looking out northwards, upon the rim of the outer circle of Regent's Park. Our rooms were on the first floor, we could step out into the balcony. Only a few years ago did I learn that this area was considered one of architect John Nash's spectacular creations in the early nineteenth century. Our building was one of the stunning, stark white stucco terraced houses along the outer circle.
James and I became very close friends, beginning late one evening shortly after I moved to the hostel in October 1982, when after we introduced ourselves, we went out to see a film (night show). That was Altered States, with William Hurt, which I suggested as I had read about it before coming to London. After the film, we walked back to the hostel, talking, talking, and then sat in his room, talking, talking. Thus began our friendship, we were like inseparable buddies, tweedledee and tweedeldum. James was four and a half years older than me, and was studying law, in preparation for the bar. He was from Port of Spain, Trinidad. He was in every way more aware, knowledgeable, experienced, and worldly than I was. I was beginning my studies and training to become a chartered accountant.
James opened a wide new world to me. Wordsworth's words about the French revolution come to mind:
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.
We were companions in life, in thinking, values, aesthetics, feeling, political ideology, in being. He opened himself completely to me. We embraced every kind of enlightened, refined, humane, just, emancipatory, radical ideal. And through James I became friends with some of his friends from law school, like Satyajit Boolel, from Port Louis, Mauritius, and Samir Inamdar, from London. As well as with several of our hostel-mates from the West Indies. In Easter 1983, James and I went for a holiday to Paris, where we were joined by a larger group from the hostel. That shall remain an unforgettable hilarious memory.
James and I saw so many films together. That would usually be on Friday and Saturday nights, after reading the current Time Out. James will remember me screaming-growling to vent all my pent up rage in a desolate underground metro station as we returned after seeing Battle of Algiers, and heard some white bloke saying "We English weren't as bad as the French in the colonies".
Besides seeing films, we also traversed the city together, went for walks, visited pubs and jazz bars, saw plays, attended and gave "parties", went to the disco, watched films and other programmes on tv. And we talked and talked, about anything and everything, usually me taking in everything he said, about his life and experiences, about his family and friends, all that he knew, all about literature, history and politics, all the books he had read, films he had seen, music he listened to, all the places he had lived in (Port of Spain, London-Ontario, Barbados), all about the (Mardi Gras) Carnival in PoS ... He shared his collection of books and music.
Then we went our separate ways, after James moved to a shared apartment in the autumn of 1983, and was busy with his bar exams; and my friend from Calcutta, Rajashi, later to be my wife, arrived to study in Cambridge. James went back to Trinidad a few months later. In 1986, a couple of years after I returned to India, I wrote to him, and we were in touch again. In 2002, I again got back in touch with James thanks to the internet, after having lost contact.
James is now a judge in the High Court in Port of Spain. But he is also an accomplished and acclaimed poet (and connoisseur of poetry). It is my proud privilege to have received from him his two published volumes, The Stone Rose and Lagahoo Poems. A few years ago, I set to melody one of the poems in the former, "Radio Song", and then performed this with bassist Jean Claude Jones and vocal artist-pianist Maya Dunietz, in Jerusalem.
Films
I tried to recall and list all the films James and I saw together in London.
Altered States
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence
Draughtman's Contract
Battle of Algiers
Pixote
Yol
Eraserhead
Identification of a Woman
Sophie's Choice
Question of Silence
Veronika Voss
Zelig
I'm sure I've missed some. We also saw on tv, besides several other films, My Dinner with Andre - in our (empty) hostel tv room. Andre remains in mind, for the Zen quality it drew us into, a dialogue, a timeless dwelling in that stream, something one could have stayed in forever.
Altered States
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence
Draughtman's Contract
Battle of Algiers
Pixote
Yol
Eraserhead
Identification of a Woman
Sophie's Choice
Question of Silence
Veronika Voss
Zelig
I'm sure I've missed some. We also saw on tv, besides several other films, My Dinner with Andre - in our (empty) hostel tv room. Andre remains in mind, for the Zen quality it drew us into, a dialogue, a timeless dwelling in that stream, something one could have stayed in forever.
Sentinel along the sky
On my early morning flight back to Calcutta from Delhi on Saturday, the Himalayas and their icy peaks were my companion on the edge of the northern horizon, which I saw catching the light of the rising sun, the vast mountain canopies aflame in an orange glow.
The words from the great poet Iqbal’s song Sarey jahaan sey achha (Better than the whole world) came to mind:
Parvat voh sab sey uncha
Hamsaya aasmaan ka
Voh santari hamara
Voh paasbaan hamara
I invite any kind reader to translate these lines into English for the benefit of our non-Southasian friends.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Building Positive Peace between Hindu and Muslim in India
Hindu-Muslim conflict
Hindu-Muslim conflict was the cause of the Partition of India (1947), with hundreds of thousands killed in associated violence. Post 1947, Hindu-Muslim violent conflict occurred regularly in different parts of north India. From the mid-80s, a Hindu religious extremist movement gained momentum. This lead to destruction of a mosque in the town of Ayodhya in 1992, and a horrific pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 following the burning of Hindus in a train coach. Even in areas that have been largely free of communal violence, anti-Muslim feelings are strong, and there is a lack of any substantive inter-relationship for the majority of urban, educated Hindus.
In many parts of urban India, there is near complete spatial, social and cognitive segregation of the two communities. But for centuries, Hindus and Muslims have lived together peacefully, and common folk have together built an ongoing “dialogue of life”. Fundamentalist ideologies - a product of colonial divide-and-rule policy - are, however, destroying India’s heritage of communal harmony. From the mid-1980s the divide has deepened, with the growth of Hindu intolerance.
People-to-people relationships are the foundation of real peace. Enduring peace continues to elude this region of acute politico-religious conflict
India is close to becoming the country with the largest population in the world, and is today spoken of as an emerging global economic powerhouse. The number of Muslims in India is second only to Indonesia. Hindu-Muslim conflict is closely related to the strained relations between India and Pakistan, both of which are today nuclear states. The two nations came close to full-scale war in 2002. A serious violent conflict has been raging for a decade and a half in the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir.
But Hindu-Muslim conflict itself is a non-issue as far as the govt. and institutions are concerned, and in mainstream discourse. This silence in turn only works to perpetuate the problem. The future of India, as a secular, democratic, pluralist republic is at stake.
Building Hindu-Muslim harmony
‘Positive peace’ is rooted in shared recognition by Hindus and Muslims of the all-round destructiveness of the communal divide, and the need to act purposefully to address this. Positive peace goes beyond tolerance, to embrace ongoing dialogue, mutual respect, and joint endeavours to build a better future for all citizens.
Grassroots experience reveals real barriers at every level that confront poor Muslims in their quest for a better life. Muslim citizens suffer acute socio-economic deprivation and disempowerment - as the Sachar Committee Report has documented (download the Report here). The conditions in Muslim slums in metropolitan Calcutta are a manifestation and outcome of the underlying, deep institutional and attitudinal barriers faced by Muslim citizens in India to integration with the socio-economic mainstream, and advancement. Apathy is widespread in the social mainstream. Unless the overall environment of social attitudes and practice is improved, grassroots efforts are severely impeded in their impact.
A tolerant society must be built through large-scale, effective public action by citizens and civic organizations. This must build upon past and existing initiatives. A peace / conflict-resolution orientation needs to be infused into to the building of communal amity in India. Large numbers of people across the country must work to inculcate harmony in the new generation. A vital part of this has to be action-education, of children, students and youth, to be able citizens of a democratic and pluralist society.
Education in post-independent India has failed in this task. Negative and bigoted socialization has continued to distort minds and hearts. Education and curriculum emerge as key requirements. Teachers and trainers assume a profound role.
Notwithstanding good intention and enthusiasm for positive change, especially among youth, direction is lacking. Critical social awareness, strategic thinking and action in the public domain – are weak, and are not normal outcomes of the social process. Voluntary action and social movement have decayed considerably over the last decade. A generational change is taking place in society, with weak bridges between the old and new. A ‘culture’ and practice, of aware, strategic social action has to be renewed.
A beginning has to be made, towards catalyzing a wider people’s movement. We have to frontally address the Hindu-Muslim conflict and define the vital and imperative work of peace-building in India. This would catalyze initiatives towards peace, and thus help to generate a people’s movement that begins to transform the situation. ‘Civil society’- in the sense of non-state formations for the public weal - must be built. And a key issues in a civic agenda is harmony.
Prognosis
The outlook, in India, for harmony initiatives now is positive. Peace talks between India and Pakistan are on. Travel links have been re-started. Considerable goodwill is being built at a people-to-people level. Common people feel peace must be realized above all else. Organizations in India are working for communal harmony. While a new-found expression of bigotry is seen, simultaneously many ‘un-political’ educated young Indians are today speaking for better Hindu-Muslim relations. There is also now deep introspection, self-critique and activism in the Indian Muslim community: a growing recognition of the need to modernize, pay greater attention to education and to social reform - particularly women's rights - and to adjust comfortably to an environment of religious pluralism. A young democracy is maturing. The notion of ‘active citizenship’ is emerging. This connotes a citizen-led (rather than state-led) process of enhancing the public interest. Such efforts constitute “civic leadership”.
Harmonious relations between Hindus and Muslims in India are closely linked to realizing enduring peace in south Asia. And peace in the subcontinent, could be a vital force for peace in Middle East as well as in the world at large.
The thinking
Projection of Hindu-Muslim conflict, conquest by Muslim invaders and oppression of Hindus has been a key feature of colonial historiography. As a result, a profound Hindu-Muslim divide exists in India today. In this context, the state can act as both a positive and a negative force, and through its actions effect far-reaching changes. Hence it is important for concerned citizens to work towards achieving such policy change.
But intolerance also resides outside the reach of the state - within individuals, in families, in community groups. Intolerance results from negative socialization, but also stems from an un-well psyche. It is vital to create means for closer communication and mutual understanding between Hindus and Muslims from all walks of life. But it is also vital to effectively and creatively address the underlying psycho-social factors of bigotry, for instance as a vital part of the education of children to live as citizens of a pluralist, democratic society.
Equally, the compassionate, loving and kind aspects of every personality provide a root to building positive relations between Hindu and Muslim, which positive socialization can then nourish. Positive role models of personality and attitude have to be instilled in the consciousness of young people.
The existing divide can be used within a pedagogical context as a base to help individuals and groups understand, (e.g. through workshop training sessions and ongoing communication programmes): what the consequences of this are; the roots of prejudice and bigotry; the nature of the choices one makes; what one can do to build positive peace; and how one can steel oneself against negative provocations and impulses and retain a pro-peace focus.
One could posit a typology of attitude-types: from the dogmatic, to the apathetic, to the empathic, with several intermediate shades. Similarly, the causes of conflict are also various, viz. interpretation of history, political, social, cultural, economic, theological and psychological. There are also subtle links between anti-Muslim prejudice and attitudes to the low castes (or Dalits). Any peace effort must recognize and address this complexity. And a dual focus, of harmony as well as empowerment of historically underprivileged groups must be retained.
Suffering and grief - also unite. Poor women, whether Hindu or Muslim, experience similar suffering, and their religious traditions have also been predominantly misogynistic and patriarchal. Women can be a powerful force of peace-building at the grassroots.
Ultimately, transformations must take place in attitudes (cognitive plane) and in conduct (existential plane). The challenge is to effect this transformation, from intolerance to compassion.
(On the subject of the partition of India, a must-read article is by Ayesha Jalal: "Exploding Communalism: The Politics of Muslim Identity in South Asia". This is accessible here.)
Image: Peace and Harmony, by Stephen Gillberry.
Rights violated
Here's a report from Nandigram by my friend Dr Sajal Basu of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).
The peasants with a holding of 1-3 acres of agricultural land are opposed to any proposal of industrialisation in the form of hub, complex or SEZ. This is the majority opinion of Garchakraberia, a village in Nandigram block I, East Midnapore.
A team of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties visited the village on 24 January to make an inquiry about the violent incidents at Nandigram causing seven (officially) or 11 deaths on 7 January. The PUCL team interviewed the villagers of Garchakraberia. The data provided by Sheikh Harun Rashid, Upapradhan of Kalikapur, and other members of the resistance committee reveal that the villages to be affected are double crop area plus fish and betel leaf areas. Both betel and prawn are export potential products yielding high returns. After paddy cultivation, khesari has been produced with much effort.
Villagers are the least interested in industry as they know from experience that they would not get jobs, whereas their land and homestead would be taken away. The Gangra Jellingham project undertaken by Burn Standard and ONGC on the seaside has been closed, the owners of 250 acres of land are yet to receive the compensation money.
“During the past 30 years, the government hasn’t bothered to improve our villages. Let it install electricity, we will set up cottage industry.” The main contention of the villagers is why are the government and the ruling party forcing them to give up their land without any consideration of their interests and will?
The basic fundamental rights of the villagers have been violated at gunpoint. As our findings reveal, the villagers are vigilant in protecting their land, but armed forces of the police and CPI-M backed goons may soon launch another attack against the villagers of Sonachura and Garchakraberia.
The peasants with a holding of 1-3 acres of agricultural land are opposed to any proposal of industrialisation in the form of hub, complex or SEZ. This is the majority opinion of Garchakraberia, a village in Nandigram block I, East Midnapore.
A team of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties visited the village on 24 January to make an inquiry about the violent incidents at Nandigram causing seven (officially) or 11 deaths on 7 January. The PUCL team interviewed the villagers of Garchakraberia. The data provided by Sheikh Harun Rashid, Upapradhan of Kalikapur, and other members of the resistance committee reveal that the villages to be affected are double crop area plus fish and betel leaf areas. Both betel and prawn are export potential products yielding high returns. After paddy cultivation, khesari has been produced with much effort.
Villagers are the least interested in industry as they know from experience that they would not get jobs, whereas their land and homestead would be taken away. The Gangra Jellingham project undertaken by Burn Standard and ONGC on the seaside has been closed, the owners of 250 acres of land are yet to receive the compensation money.
“During the past 30 years, the government hasn’t bothered to improve our villages. Let it install electricity, we will set up cottage industry.” The main contention of the villagers is why are the government and the ruling party forcing them to give up their land without any consideration of their interests and will?
The basic fundamental rights of the villagers have been violated at gunpoint. As our findings reveal, the villagers are vigilant in protecting their land, but armed forces of the police and CPI-M backed goons may soon launch another attack against the villagers of Sonachura and Garchakraberia.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Outrage
Money talks, and how.
While in Bombay last week, I visited a friend who lives in Goregaon, a city suburb near the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (commonly known as the Borivili National Park). He showed me the outrage that is taking place here. A section of a hillock adjoining the protected forest has been blasted out of existence and is the site of a massive real estate development project by a major builder.
This is completely illegal, and in fragrant violation of the country's forest and environmental protection laws. Yet it can take place, because the power of money in Bombay wipes out anything that comes in its way.
Another vast area of adjoining land belonging to the forest department has been parcelled into small plots and sold - I believe at Rs 20,000 a plot - by the local legislator to migrant worker families.
The future of our nation rests on the people, and if the power of money prevails over people's concern and will on public domain matters - then its a very grim future indeed that's in store.
For what its worth, I e-mailed the link to this post to The President of India, and the Secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Govt of India.
On the top of the picture is the boundary wall of the
Sanjay Gandhi National Park, and the adjoining section
of the hillock has been blasted away.
A view of the builder's project site, where a hillock
earlier stood.
Another view of the project site.
Another view of the project site.
A close-up of a section of the massive project site.
Huts built on land adjacent to the hillock.
More huts.
The hutments in perspective.
The city marches in for the kill.
While in Bombay last week, I visited a friend who lives in Goregaon, a city suburb near the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (commonly known as the Borivili National Park). He showed me the outrage that is taking place here. A section of a hillock adjoining the protected forest has been blasted out of existence and is the site of a massive real estate development project by a major builder.
This is completely illegal, and in fragrant violation of the country's forest and environmental protection laws. Yet it can take place, because the power of money in Bombay wipes out anything that comes in its way.
Another vast area of adjoining land belonging to the forest department has been parcelled into small plots and sold - I believe at Rs 20,000 a plot - by the local legislator to migrant worker families.
The future of our nation rests on the people, and if the power of money prevails over people's concern and will on public domain matters - then its a very grim future indeed that's in store.
For what its worth, I e-mailed the link to this post to The President of India, and the Secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Govt of India.
On the top of the picture is the boundary wall of the
Sanjay Gandhi National Park, and the adjoining section
of the hillock has been blasted away.
A view of the builder's project site, where a hillock
earlier stood.
Another view of the project site.
Another view of the project site.
A close-up of a section of the massive project site.
Huts built on land adjacent to the hillock.
More huts.
The hutments in perspective.
The city marches in for the kill.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Abbé Pierre
Henry Grouès (“Abbé Pierre”), champion of the homeless, died on January 22nd, aged 94. I reproduce below an obituary that appeared in the 3 February 2007 issue of The Economist.
Traditionally most saints are gentle creatures. Those enshrined in French homes, or on prayer-cards stuffed into the missals of elderly churchgoers, are usually St Anthony carrying the child Jesus, or smiling St Thérèse of Lisieux with a bouquet of flesh-tinted roses. Odd, then, that the nearest modern France has come to a saint was a man fuelled and driven by unceasing anger: anger that the poor should suffer and that the rich did not care.
For any man in authority, clerical or lay, a visit from Abbé Pierre was an unsettling experience. First there was the look of him: the coupe zéro haircut under a black beret, the straggling beard, the black cape thrown dramatically across the shoulders, the belted soutane and muddy boots from tramping through slums. Then came the disquieting blue stare, and the surprisingly loud, ringing voice. He was not a large man or a strong one: lung trouble had disrupted his studies as a boy, and he had been advised at 26 to give up the monastic life for his health's sake. His anger surprised even himself; it did not seem in character. But it made him a giant.
Charles de Gaulle summoned him in 1945, after giving him the Croix de Guerre for a brave, clandestine war, to have an appreciative word; Abbé Pierre lectured him on the lack of milk for babies. Almost 50 years later, the elderly priest refused to wear his Légion d'honneur until a crowd of 300 poor African families, sleeping rough on the esplanade de Vincennes in Paris, was given lodging. When Jacques Chirac, hoping to score electoral points, offered to open up empty buildings for the homeless, Abbé Pierre berated him for hypocrisy. With “measured insolence”, he scolded John Paul II for not allowing married priests and for refusing to retire. He would bite people's ears like a flea, he said, and yell, “Wake up!”
France first heard that voice at lunchtime on February 1st 1954. The napkins were tucked in, the spoons poised over the soup, when Abbé Pierre, having seized the microphone at Radio Luxembourg, told his listeners that a woman had frozen to death that night on the boulevard Sebastopol. She had been clutching an eviction notice, served to her the day before. The weather was grim; all over France, thousands more were dying. Abbé Pierre appealed for blankets, food, stoves and money to be brought to his temporary headquarters at the Hotel Rochester. The response was so enormous that not only the hotel lobby, but the disused Gare d'Orsay nearby, were filled to the roof with donations. Army lorries helped distribute them, and the National Assembly voted 10 billion francs for housing for the poor.
The organisation to which the rich brought their jewellery, and ordinary people packets of rice and jars of jam, was still a strangely fluid affair. It was run from a large ramshackle house in Neuilly-Plaisance, a Paris suburb, where Abbé Pierre in 1949 had started taking in the homeless, first in rooms and then, as numbers grew, in shacks in the garden. He had no idea what this project would become. Perhaps it would be no more than a kindly bourgeois gesture, the sort his own wealthy father had made when he went, each Sunday, to wash and shave the poor in the shelters of Lyon.
His colleagues were a strange, quarrelsome band, ex-cons and ex-legionnaires, some of whom had been homeless themselves. To raise funds they picked rags and salvaged furniture, or begged with laundry baskets in the Paris streets. Abbé Pierre called his project “Emmaus”, after the place where two disciples had given shelter to the risen but unrecognised Christ.
Love human, love divine
Emmaus communities caught on and thrived; by 2006 there were 350 of them in nearly 40 countries, 110 in France itself. Abbé Pierre became a thorn in the side of successive French governments, and a year before he died was still lobbying for a law establishing the right to lodging. Yet he did not relish publicity on his own account. After regularly topping the annual poll of best-loved figures in France, in 2004 he asked to be removed from it. Celebrity helped the cause, but it appalled him.
He had little enough to hide: a clutch of Utopian left-wing views, and one dismaying brush with Holocaust denial which seemed the mere misjudgment of old age. In 2005 he also admitted, in a memoir, that chastity was too hard for him. He had decided to become a monk at 15, and had joined the Capuchins at 19; from then on, the pain of living without sexual love was constant. Indeed, he did not always live without it. He occasionally slept with women and would sometimes, wistfully and innocently, fall into discussions of sex with women who scarcely knew him.
Yet those who imagined him deprived of love were wrong. Abbé Pierre was possessed by it. Priest though he was, he rarely preached or mentioned God by name, a fact that only added to his popularity in proudly secular France. The force he invoked was different. “Despite all the evil that men and women suffer”, he said once, “I believe that the Eternal is Love all the same, and we are loved all the same, and we are free all the same.” Love would absorb him in the end, when his “Sister Death” came, as tenderly as any woman, to embrace him. And it was Love, he said, that made him so angry.
Photo: AFP
Indian NGOs
I have written from time to time about NGOs. Today my friend Ajit Chaudhuri (who has worked in the NGO sector for several years) sent me an article he wrote titled "The Decline and Fall of the Indian NGO". I am reproducing that here.
Back in the early 1990s, the Indian non-governmental development sector (referred to hereafter as the NGO sector) was a source of pride to me. In most underdeveloped countries, international donor agencies would have to set up their own implementing operations; this meant that plans were formulated in London, New York, Geneva, Stockholm, etc., that significant sums were spent on expatriate staff and administration, and that local communities were reduced to the status of recipients. Not in India! Here, there was a small, vibrant and independent NGO sector that linked donors and communities, carried the aspirations and requirements of one to the other, and was cost effective in its operations. Here, donors did not work directly.
They still, for the most part, don’t. And it is a strange time to be talking of the NGO sector in terms such as decline and fall – the sector receives Rs. 7,000 crore annually in grants from abroad, a number that has been shooting up rapidly in the recent past, and the number of organizations with governmental permission to receive foreign funds (what is called the FCRA) stands at about 35,000[i]. The sector continues to be a prime customer of vehicle manufacturers and the international travel industry, as well as to occupy some great real estate and provide employment to a large number of otherwise unemployable people (such as me). So what’s the problem?
I’m not too sure, but I do see some disquieting trends.
The first is that I have not come across any great new ideas from the NGO sector for a long time. The business of creating buzz in development is back with the government, with exciting initiatives such as the NREGA and Panchayati Raj that a) have the ability to address root causes of problems and b) have no or at best peripheral roles for NGOs. The NGO sector is not driving the nation’s development agenda or the debate on poverty any more – it is in ‘business as usual’ mode.
The second is that brilliant young people are not coming into the NGO sector. The developmentally inclined among them see NGOs as part of the problem, not a solution, and are looking at other forms of organizations and activities to address matters including for-profits and financial services. The mediocre young, to whom development is a career option rather than a calling, are more inclined towards the various layers of touting organizations in the sector because they are based in cities and salaries are higher.
The third is that, like ideas, I have not come across too many great young NGOs[ii] for a long time as well – and I am in the business of looking. It seems that good new organizations dealing with development, like people, are taking new forms such as for-profits, Internet start-ups and non-banking financial companies. And those NGOs that are being set up tend to have the limited ambition of emulating their role models in the NGO sector – which are either the public service contractors, the fancy infrastructure, lifestyle and talk-wallahs seen making loud sucking sounds in the corridors of power, or the downright venal and corrupt. Nothing original here!
The fourth is that the skeletons in the NGO sector’s collective cupboard – the dirt, corruption and the egregious practices – are finally hitting the public space[iii]. At the same time, the inability of anyone within to see, hear, or speak of wrongdoing (what I refer to as the 3-Monkeys Syndrome) continues unabated. While there has been some cursory action from within the sector[iv], it seems a case of too little too late. Nobody in the NGO sector, it appears, is willing to take a strong stand. The government has no such compunctions, however, and we are slowly seeing a tightening of regulations that address some of these issues but make it difficult for the honest (and silent) minority.
The fifth is that the role of mobilizing people and providing a forum for opposition and protest has moved from the NGO sector to the extreme right and left. A look at the movements against land acquisition for SEZs, or the one against mining in Vth Schedule areas, all of which seem obvious cases for NGO action, and they are conspicuous by their absence. Those that should have been in the forefront, who claim to speak for small farmers and tribals, appear to be on the side of the corporates involved. I wonder why!
These trends point to larger problems within the NGO sector, and while there is much ranting and raving about the obvious ones, government corruption, the lack of dedicated, motivated, etc., people coming in, the lure of the Mammon and so on, some critical internal issues are being papered over, including –
The individuals and organizations that blazed a trail in the 70s and 80s are ageing, and neither is being replaced. The old bosses continue to rule their empires, with cynicism and self-aggrandizement replacing fire and zeal. They also make it impossible for second lines to develop (unless it is their progeny) while simultaneously lamenting the lack of committed and capable people who can ‘stay on to take over’. Most of their organizations are sad and tired, and exist because they exist and not so as to address critical problems of the poor and marginalized. Yet, such individuals are effective at protecting their own short-term interests to the general detriment of their organizations and the NGO sector.
The role and importance of touts within the NGO sector, in the form of resource organizations, nodal NGOs, training institutions, research and documentation setups, development consulting businesses, etc., has increased considerably. There are now layers upon layers of these between the donor and the NGO that actually uses the money, sitting in Delhi and state capitals, knowing donorspeak, writing proposals to formulas, and providing a variety of services to donors on a 20 (or whatever) percent commission. They are the new patrons of the Indian NGO and now claim to speak for and on behalf of the NGO sector[v]. I have yet to see evidence of a mandate for them for this role.
With a now widespread belief in the mainstream that NGOs are irrelevant combined with little evidence to show that NGOs have been more effective than the state (for all its inefficiency and corruption) in providing development, there is a growing move to scuttle the NGO sector through restrictions and controls and let it sink in its own quagmire. But, before you start saying ‘to hell with the whole bloody lot of them’ and before, if you are a young professional within, you start retraining and looking around for opportunities, take a minute to think of the consequences to the country of a dormant NGO sector.
First, NGOs form an important component of civil society and thereby a forum for debate and action that is out of government circles. Without NGOs, the state would become much more powerful. Non-state opposition would move to the fringes. We are already seeing this with the government and the private sector cozying up to the detriment of vulnerable sections of society. And the extreme left groups that are now active in more than 100 districts in the country have an agenda that is similar to that of NGOs (other than the violence and overthrow of the state). Not coincidentally, the parts of the country facing the problem of insurgency are also the parts with little genuine NGO activity.
And second, who will focus on the very poor, the marginalized, etc.? The government? The new genre of development organizations? In both cases, unlikely! The state can pass high-minded laws, but would always require grassroots support and pressure to implement them effectively. And the new guys would be lost in a world without Internet connectivity, where proposed beneficiaries have little education and no marketable skills.
To conclude – most people would agree that NGOs are in a state of decline despite some glitzy statistics on foreign contributions. It is my contention that it is not in the country’s interest that they die out. Can we, on the inside, do something? As a beginning, and at the very least, we need to give less respect to a bunch of has-beens and touts who have built empires on public money raised in the name of poor people. And we need to stop behaving like the 3 monkeys – there is little disconnect between others’ bad practice and our own futures. The impetus for reform has to come from within – let us not merely react to government and public scrutiny. Or else, better brush up those CVs.
Acronyms / Jargon
Vth Schedule Areas: Areas that have a majority of Adivasi (indigenous) communities
Donorspeak: The peculiar language of donor organizations
FCRA: Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act
NGO: Non-governmental Organization
NREGA: National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
SEZ: Special Economic Zone
Notes
[i] “The Noose Tightens”, an article by Neeraj Mishra in India Today issue of 29th January 2007.
[ii] I should protect myself here by mentioning that there are exceptions.
[iii] There have been three articles I have read in the past month in the mainstream press with headlines combining the words corruption and NGOs.
[iv] One such is the formation of the Credibility Alliance – purely voluntary with no checking system in place and no means of expelling members who are not complying with the standards.
[v] A recent example is a meeting that a group of these touts had on behalf of the NGO sector with the Home Minister on the new FCRA bill. They had not done Mr. Shivraj Patil the courtesy of reading the new bill – so when he asked them specifically which passages were objectionable to NGOs there was a flummoxed silence followed by hemming and hawing. You can be sure that the NGO sector’s purpose was not served.
Back in the early 1990s, the Indian non-governmental development sector (referred to hereafter as the NGO sector) was a source of pride to me. In most underdeveloped countries, international donor agencies would have to set up their own implementing operations; this meant that plans were formulated in London, New York, Geneva, Stockholm, etc., that significant sums were spent on expatriate staff and administration, and that local communities were reduced to the status of recipients. Not in India! Here, there was a small, vibrant and independent NGO sector that linked donors and communities, carried the aspirations and requirements of one to the other, and was cost effective in its operations. Here, donors did not work directly.
They still, for the most part, don’t. And it is a strange time to be talking of the NGO sector in terms such as decline and fall – the sector receives Rs. 7,000 crore annually in grants from abroad, a number that has been shooting up rapidly in the recent past, and the number of organizations with governmental permission to receive foreign funds (what is called the FCRA) stands at about 35,000[i]. The sector continues to be a prime customer of vehicle manufacturers and the international travel industry, as well as to occupy some great real estate and provide employment to a large number of otherwise unemployable people (such as me). So what’s the problem?
I’m not too sure, but I do see some disquieting trends.
The first is that I have not come across any great new ideas from the NGO sector for a long time. The business of creating buzz in development is back with the government, with exciting initiatives such as the NREGA and Panchayati Raj that a) have the ability to address root causes of problems and b) have no or at best peripheral roles for NGOs. The NGO sector is not driving the nation’s development agenda or the debate on poverty any more – it is in ‘business as usual’ mode.
The second is that brilliant young people are not coming into the NGO sector. The developmentally inclined among them see NGOs as part of the problem, not a solution, and are looking at other forms of organizations and activities to address matters including for-profits and financial services. The mediocre young, to whom development is a career option rather than a calling, are more inclined towards the various layers of touting organizations in the sector because they are based in cities and salaries are higher.
The third is that, like ideas, I have not come across too many great young NGOs[ii] for a long time as well – and I am in the business of looking. It seems that good new organizations dealing with development, like people, are taking new forms such as for-profits, Internet start-ups and non-banking financial companies. And those NGOs that are being set up tend to have the limited ambition of emulating their role models in the NGO sector – which are either the public service contractors, the fancy infrastructure, lifestyle and talk-wallahs seen making loud sucking sounds in the corridors of power, or the downright venal and corrupt. Nothing original here!
The fourth is that the skeletons in the NGO sector’s collective cupboard – the dirt, corruption and the egregious practices – are finally hitting the public space[iii]. At the same time, the inability of anyone within to see, hear, or speak of wrongdoing (what I refer to as the 3-Monkeys Syndrome) continues unabated. While there has been some cursory action from within the sector[iv], it seems a case of too little too late. Nobody in the NGO sector, it appears, is willing to take a strong stand. The government has no such compunctions, however, and we are slowly seeing a tightening of regulations that address some of these issues but make it difficult for the honest (and silent) minority.
The fifth is that the role of mobilizing people and providing a forum for opposition and protest has moved from the NGO sector to the extreme right and left. A look at the movements against land acquisition for SEZs, or the one against mining in Vth Schedule areas, all of which seem obvious cases for NGO action, and they are conspicuous by their absence. Those that should have been in the forefront, who claim to speak for small farmers and tribals, appear to be on the side of the corporates involved. I wonder why!
These trends point to larger problems within the NGO sector, and while there is much ranting and raving about the obvious ones, government corruption, the lack of dedicated, motivated, etc., people coming in, the lure of the Mammon and so on, some critical internal issues are being papered over, including –
The individuals and organizations that blazed a trail in the 70s and 80s are ageing, and neither is being replaced. The old bosses continue to rule their empires, with cynicism and self-aggrandizement replacing fire and zeal. They also make it impossible for second lines to develop (unless it is their progeny) while simultaneously lamenting the lack of committed and capable people who can ‘stay on to take over’. Most of their organizations are sad and tired, and exist because they exist and not so as to address critical problems of the poor and marginalized. Yet, such individuals are effective at protecting their own short-term interests to the general detriment of their organizations and the NGO sector.
The role and importance of touts within the NGO sector, in the form of resource organizations, nodal NGOs, training institutions, research and documentation setups, development consulting businesses, etc., has increased considerably. There are now layers upon layers of these between the donor and the NGO that actually uses the money, sitting in Delhi and state capitals, knowing donorspeak, writing proposals to formulas, and providing a variety of services to donors on a 20 (or whatever) percent commission. They are the new patrons of the Indian NGO and now claim to speak for and on behalf of the NGO sector[v]. I have yet to see evidence of a mandate for them for this role.
With a now widespread belief in the mainstream that NGOs are irrelevant combined with little evidence to show that NGOs have been more effective than the state (for all its inefficiency and corruption) in providing development, there is a growing move to scuttle the NGO sector through restrictions and controls and let it sink in its own quagmire. But, before you start saying ‘to hell with the whole bloody lot of them’ and before, if you are a young professional within, you start retraining and looking around for opportunities, take a minute to think of the consequences to the country of a dormant NGO sector.
First, NGOs form an important component of civil society and thereby a forum for debate and action that is out of government circles. Without NGOs, the state would become much more powerful. Non-state opposition would move to the fringes. We are already seeing this with the government and the private sector cozying up to the detriment of vulnerable sections of society. And the extreme left groups that are now active in more than 100 districts in the country have an agenda that is similar to that of NGOs (other than the violence and overthrow of the state). Not coincidentally, the parts of the country facing the problem of insurgency are also the parts with little genuine NGO activity.
And second, who will focus on the very poor, the marginalized, etc.? The government? The new genre of development organizations? In both cases, unlikely! The state can pass high-minded laws, but would always require grassroots support and pressure to implement them effectively. And the new guys would be lost in a world without Internet connectivity, where proposed beneficiaries have little education and no marketable skills.
To conclude – most people would agree that NGOs are in a state of decline despite some glitzy statistics on foreign contributions. It is my contention that it is not in the country’s interest that they die out. Can we, on the inside, do something? As a beginning, and at the very least, we need to give less respect to a bunch of has-beens and touts who have built empires on public money raised in the name of poor people. And we need to stop behaving like the 3 monkeys – there is little disconnect between others’ bad practice and our own futures. The impetus for reform has to come from within – let us not merely react to government and public scrutiny. Or else, better brush up those CVs.
Acronyms / Jargon
Vth Schedule Areas: Areas that have a majority of Adivasi (indigenous) communities
Donorspeak: The peculiar language of donor organizations
FCRA: Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act
NGO: Non-governmental Organization
NREGA: National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
SEZ: Special Economic Zone
Notes
[i] “The Noose Tightens”, an article by Neeraj Mishra in India Today issue of 29th January 2007.
[ii] I should protect myself here by mentioning that there are exceptions.
[iii] There have been three articles I have read in the past month in the mainstream press with headlines combining the words corruption and NGOs.
[iv] One such is the formation of the Credibility Alliance – purely voluntary with no checking system in place and no means of expelling members who are not complying with the standards.
[v] A recent example is a meeting that a group of these touts had on behalf of the NGO sector with the Home Minister on the new FCRA bill. They had not done Mr. Shivraj Patil the courtesy of reading the new bill – so when he asked them specifically which passages were objectionable to NGOs there was a flummoxed silence followed by hemming and hawing. You can be sure that the NGO sector’s purpose was not served.
Low budget airline
Another Low Budget Airline is going to be launched in India very soon... The fares are very cheap, even less than the first class train fare... This is its promotional picture...
KERALA AIRWAYS - A New Low Budget Airline of INDIA.
The person going into cockpit is the pilot.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
School prayer
When I visited the Rishi Valley School last June, I was pleasantly surprised to hear during a morning assembly the prayer in Hindi, Racha Prabhu.
This was the prayer sung virtually every morning when I was a little boy at the Hindi High School in Calcutta, 1963-68. I had learnt it phonetically, and now only the first few words remained in my memory. As it happened, I had been remembering this earliest prayer I’d sung. So I was really delighted to hear it sung at Rishi Valley.
But it was only during my next visit to Rishi Valley, in January, that I got down to copying the lyrics from the school song book. Having googled for the words once – and been unsuccessful - I discovered that there are several people who are keen to get the lyrics. So I am glad to share this here.
Racha prabhu tu ney yah brahmand sara
Prano sey pyara, tu hi sabsey nyara
Tu hi bhai-bandhu, tu hi jagat janani
Sakal jagat mein ek tera pasara
In translation:
Lord, you have created this wide universe
Dearer than life, you alone are the most wonderful
You alone are brother and friend
You alone are mother of the world
All the worlds are only your expanse.
Ganges dolphin
A rescued Ganges River Dolphin
In an earlier post I had written:
The well-being of Calcutta can be seen in the light of the highly polluted state of the river Hooghly, along whose two banks the metropolis lies. But the nearly extinct Hooghly dolphin, locally known as shushuk or shishumar - with powerful mythological resonances and identified as a protector of children - still finds cause to leap up from the polluted river, and cheer the onlooker.
I had first seen an image of the Ganges Dolphin as a child in a picture book on wildlife (which someone took and lost). In 1994, I saw the dolphin for the first time when a few of them leapt up from the river Hooghly, as I stood on the river-front with a group of school students from Bangalore whom I'd taken on a tour of Calcutta.
While working on a city environmental management project during 1995-97, I had suggested using the image of the dolphin as an icon of the healthy city. I had been unable to get an image of the creature. Later, while I was working in Howrah during 1997-2000, and taking the ferry every day to cross the river, I always looked out to spot a dolphin. And I did manage to see them several times, and even kept a dolphin sighting diary. Whenever I spotted one - chubby, tubby - my immediate impulse was to jump and hug it tight, like a beloved!
Another companion on my river crossings was a small shoe-shine boy. I wrote a story about how the river dolphins reunited a little girl from a riverside village in Bihar with her brother and play-mate who had gone away to work in Calcutta.
Yesterday I finally came upon an image (on the net) of the Baiji, or Yangtze River Dolphin from China - which looks similar to its Ganges / Hooghly cousin - and thus to images of the Ganges Dolphin.
Baiji
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Travel
I returned on Sunday night from Dubai, and this afternoon I leave for Bombay. Our company is exhibiting at another trade fair there. After I return, I will be going to New Delhi in mid-February, to exhibit at one more fair. Around mid-March there's another fair in New Delhi, which I plan to visit. And in early April, a fair in Dhaka that I might visit.
Travel, travel ... all a bit stressful, especially the getting ready for leaving, and the interregnum of waiting in airports, being careful with one's belongings and things like money, tickets, passport etc etc. Of course, once one is at one's destination, all the fortuitous experiences make one forget the stress.
Though I did have a desire to travel to all kinds of places from an early age, much of my travel has really been occasioned by my circumstances and work, and only a little has been from a desire to travel as such. Though I don't think I've travelled very much - compared to really keen travellers - yet, I should say I am fortunate to have travelled as much as I have. In India, the regions I have not been to are Jammu & Kashmir, Chhatisgarh, Manipur, Nagaland and the Andaman Islands.
I have lived in Calcutta all my life, but I was born in Bombay - where my mother delivered me, while at her parents'. My paternal grandfather came to Calcutta in 1930 to take up a job. He worked in Bombay for a few years before that, leaving Kerala as a matriculate teenager to find a job to support his parents and many younger siblings. My father was born - at his mother's village home, in Kerala - a few months before coming to Calcutta. So Calcutta has been home to me and my family.
The city of Calcutta - has defined my life and work since 1984. I married a Bengali and became a part of my wife's Bengali family in 1985. And I have been part of the social, cultural and political life of my city. But I was born into a Tamil household, attended an English-medium school, and completed my schooling in a military school in Dehradun.
Besides Calcutta, I have also worked in / for some other parts of India; and I have worked in / for the city of Jerusalem.
I have visited or stayed in some 17 countries; the regions I have not visited are South America, Africa, Eastern Europe, China, Central Asia and Australia-New Zealand.
In all my travel, I have by and large related intensively with the places and the people; in turn, I have been formed and renewed through my travels. This morning I realised that I should actually be travelling more, in connection with my business management duties. But now I'm weary of travelling, and a reluctant traveller. I feel saturated.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Dubai Strategic Plan 2015
"... We were in a race against time and we won. But, as I have always said, the race has only just begun. With these achievements come new hurdles, responsibilities, and challenges… It is far easier to build financial capital than it is to build intellectual, psychological and moral capital. Building a road or a bridge may take a year or two, but developing people takes a lifetime..."
While I was in Dubai, the Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, presented the Dubai Strategic Plan 2015.
I was struck by the boldness of the vision. In particular, I was very glad to know about the priority accorded to social development, public policy and cultural affairs.
Read Sheikh Mohammad's speech here.
As a social development and public policy specialist, I wrote to Sheikh Mohammad, offering my services towards realising the vision of Dubai 2015. God knows that despite my best efforts in the last 22 years, all my attempts in my own country towards making a difference in the lives of the poor and vulnerable have remained fruitless.
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