Mappings

Kissinger and the 'Barrahmundi'

2008-11-20T07:03:00Z

The most interesting food on the menu at the Henry Kissinger lunch read ‘Barrahmundi,' and I wondered how the Oberoi hotel would serve up a twelve-headed monster on fine bone china (with oyster sauce and capers on the side?), but it turned out to be alright in the end. The fearsome monster turned out to be a fillet of fish from Australia; the waiter, probably a Shane Warne fan, helped me with the pronunciation of both food and country. With a little bit of help from the wonderful white wine at hand, we were ready to begin.

Henry K's blue suit didn't look like it came from any of the stores Sarah Palin got the Republican party to spend $150,000, and I noticed the tell-tale marks of someone having hastily wiped off the remainder of something on the lapel.

I warmed to him immediately. Here was someone responsible for the infamous US "tilt" against India and in favour of Pakistan during the India-Pakistan-Bangladesh crisis of 1971 when he was National Security Adviser and possibly one of the most powerful men in the Nixon administration. Someone who never denied that he had called Indira Gandhi a "***" all those years ago (we knew because the Americans opened their archives sometime ago).

Best of all, I can also now relate what K. Subrahmanyam, India's own grand old strategic affairs expert, told me he told Kissinger sometime in July 1971, when the latter was on one of his South Asia tours. This was also the exact time that Kissinger made his secret visit to China, courtesy the Pakistanis, which set the tone for the famous Sino-American kiss-and-make up. Of course, Kissinger was only employing his native German cunning in the service of America : My enemy's enemy is my friend. Since the Soviet Union and China, at the time, didn't particularly like each other, Kissinger knew Mao would reciprocate Nixon's overtures against Brezhnev.

But back to K.Subrahmanyam and Kissinger. As Henry K waxed eloquent about America's need to defend Pakistan, Subramanyam wagged a finger in his face. Shame on you, Henry, for a persecuted Jew who fled Germany and came to America as a refugee, you should have much more compassion for the Bangladeshis fleeing Yahya Khan's tyranny in Bangladesh.

To his credit, Kissinger was very quiet after that, Subrahmanyam said. The two have remained fast friends, since.

Oh yes, as for the Barrahmundi-aided lunch, I can safely report that the conversation was mostly about Afghanistan and the possibility of Hilary Clinton becoming Obama's newest Secretary of State.

She would be outstanding, said Kissinger. (Someone else on the table who shall remain unnamed said she would be "cold-blooded.) As for Obama, Kissinger added a little self-deprecatingly, for someone who has consistently backed the losing presidential candidate maybe I should hold my counsel. I backed Rockefeller three times and McCain this time around. And America voted for change!

Did you ask if the lunch was a success?

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Not trusting your neighbour

2008-11-17T11:56:00Z

The huge trust deficit between India and Pakistan is underlined by a Friends of Pakistan forum which met in Abu Dhabi on Monday, to help bridge the massive economic crisis that Paksitan currently faces. The IMF has given it a $7.6 billion loan so far, but Pakistan needs so much more money to stem several rising tides.

Who were these friends do you think? America and China for sure, Canada (wheat loan, please), the European Union, Japan, the UAE of course, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (from the latter three nations Islamabad hopes to seek deferred payments on $4 billion worth of oil purchases it has made.)

"There are no plans of cash assistance,” Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Muhammad Sadiq told the Pakistani paper, Daily Times.

So where was India? Considering the new President, Asif Ali Zardari, who is going to participate in a video link from Islamabad at the Hindustan Times summit later this week has been making sweet noises about trust and friendship, the absence of an invite shows up the total lack of faith in Delhi.

Let's face it, Pakistan doesnt trust India at all -- and vice versa. Nothing in the world can change that fact. A large part of that mistrust can be put at Delhi's door, considering the bureaucracy in the capital nitpicks on every little thing. Pakistan's bureaucracy is equally adept at returning the compliment. A case in point is the much-vaunted passenger bus across the Line of Control in Kashmir, meant to bridge hearts and minds since it was launched in April 2005, but a place on which is probably dearer than the family gold. And that is because every passenger's name must be cleared by both bureaucracies and worse, by both police services. The list, as you can imagine, gets longer and longer.

Who is the worst victim of this continuing lack of trust? Call it terrorism, meddling by ISI/R&AW (acronyms for Pakistan and India's intelligence agencies, respectively), or the rigid, blinkered view of the monochromatic bureaucrat in both capitals. At the end of the day, the political or economic partition of South Asia cannot be healed if the people are not placed right at the centre of attention.

The bad news continues : Things are so bad that Delhi's offer of $25 million to help people affected by the Pakistan earthquake in October 2005 has still not been accepted.

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The states of religion

2008-11-15T11:48:00Z

If you chanced to watch, on November 11 on Doordarshan, the oath-taking ceremony of Mohammed Nasheed as the new president of the Maldives, then you might have guessed from the “Bismillah” at the beginning of it all that the Maldives is officially a Muslim country.

According to the Maldivian constitution, every Maldivian must be a Muslim. There are only about 300,000 of them – smaller than half of Connaught Place, New Delhi’s business district – and never have you seen a quieter and gentler lot. (It did not prevent the former dictator, Maumoon Gayoom, from throwing several of those who opposed him into prison, but that’s another story.)

And so a quiet revolution took place in the Maldives last week, almost side by side with Obama’s own date with destiny. And although Nasheed defends his brand new democracy, fact is, you cannot publicly practice any other religion in the Maldives, except Islam. Idols cannot be brought into the island and if you are found with one in your luggage, you just might be thrown into one of Gayoom’s infamous jails, where torture was often carried out with the sounds of the sea as accompaniment.

The Maldivian shocker brought to mind how much, in India, we take our own “secularism” for granted.

In all of South Asia, which contributes one-fifth of the world’s population, India – and now Nepal – are the only truly democratic, secular republics, where the Constitution guarantees equality among people of all faiths – among other attributes.

Pakistan, weaned away from India in 1947, to provide protection and succour to Indian Muslims, is an avowedly Islamic Republic. If you read Stanley Wolpert’s seminal biography of ‘Jinnah’, in which he discusses Jinnah’s famous speech to the Legislative Assembly in Karachi on August 11, days before Pakistan becomes independent on August 14 (“You can now go back to your mosques and your temples…), Wolpert asks the question on every reader’s mind : What must he be thinking of, after all the riots and the killings on both sides of the border, did he seriously think that Hindus and Muslims were actually going to continue to live as they used to?

Ironically, Jinnah’s speech was considered much too progressive for Martial Law dictator Zia ul-Haq, who banned it in the mid-80s as part of his Islamisation drive that he believed should become an integral part of every good Pakistani Muslim's being. It was only in the 2000s that another General, Pervez Musharraf, ordered that Jinnah be rescued from deification and his speech reintroduced in Pakistan’s history textbooks.

Then there’s Sri Lanka, a Buddhist nation at heart and totally Sinhala in the mind. Check out Sri Lanka army chief, Lt Gen. Sarath Fonseka’s comments on the rights of the Tamil minorities : “The truth is that this country is ruled by Sinhalese for centuries and centuries. China is ruled by Chinese, England by the Englishmen and Germany by Germans. This is because these countries are ruled by the majorities....What is wrong by saying that this country, which is historically ruled by Sinhalese will be ruled by the Sinhalese?”

Makes you think that DMK leader Karunanidhi has a point : Indians don't bomb their own people, like the way the Sri Lankans are doing with the LTTE.

As for Bhutan, King Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuk has only on November 6 become the monarch of all he surveys, and truth is that Bhutan is lucky to have him. But make no mistake, Bhutan is a Theravada Buddhist country, and shall remain one.

Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of Bangladesh remains a parliamentary democracy, but Islam is its state religion. Fact is, however, Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan in 1971 not because of its faith, but because of linguistic and electoral discrimination – although many would argue that it has simply refused to live up to its own revolution. Since January 2007, the Army has been in control in Bangladesh.

Nepal is the only other country, besides India, which is wholly secular. That too, by the skin of its teeth, after elections in April returned the Maoist guerrilla Prachanda to power, overthrowing King Gyanendra, who believed he was the true representative of the world’s last Hindu kingdom. On May 28, the new Constituent Assembly officially declared Nepal to be a federal, democratic Republic.

Question is, whether you live in a dictatorship or democracy, how truly secular are you?

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Paradise regained in the Maldives

2008-11-15T10:32:00Z

There are so many truths about the Maldives, possibly the world’s smallest democracy – a voting population of 208,000 recently elected Mohammed Nasheed, a former “prisoner of conscience” according to Amnesty International as its newest President a few weeks ago – that I thought I would put down a few I had recently come across.

Truth no 1 : Paradise Lost

For the last 30 years, Abdul Maumoon Gayoom held power in the Maldives with a little help from India, allowing only a “yes/no” vote in all the elections held in this period, just as dictators are wont to do. The rest of the world could hardly care, especially when tourists from the West, continued to throng these atolls of paradise. The money from tourism kept rolling in and with a per capita income of over $1500, Maldives became the richest nation in South Asia.Truth no 2 : Paradise Regained.Even Gayoom, whose prisons are scattered across the islands, couldn’t stop the winds of change from blowing into the island country. Just as 47-year-old Barack Obama was shovelling deadweight back home, 41-year-old Mohammed Nasheed (fondly known as Anni) took to the streets and helped create a real opposition, the Maldivian Democratic Party. To hear my Maldivian friend, Aminath, tell it later : “When the 21-gun-salute went off – a final confirmation that we had a new President, if confirmation were needed – my whole body was covered in goose bumps. The shiver emanated from my toes and coursed down my limbs. I thought of the time Gayoom’s men had thrown me into prison for 32 days in February 2004, soon after I returned from a trip to India, when they threatened to rape me…I thought of all that we had gone through these last few years…I couldn’t believe we had finally won.”Truth no 3 : Climate change Vs Human rightsThe truth about Gayoom’s various prisons will soon be out, as Nasheed’s men slowly open up the archives and look at the police records. The righting of human rights violations, the humane treatment of drug abusers, the education of their youth, this is the new agenda.Unlike what most outsiders – and especially Western journalists think – the Maldivians are not obsessed with climate change; they do not quaver, from lip to lip, over the impending fear that their atolls will soon be drowned by the seas. Sure, that’s a big worry, but there are clearly more pressing issues at hand.Truth no 4 : New beginnings

Like Obama, Nasheed realizes the need to make some big gestures that will symbolize new beginnings. So he will not move into Gayoom’s presidential palace, one of the most beautiful buildings in Male. Instead, Nasheed has announced -- to the Maldivians’ utter delight -- that the building will be turned into a University.

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From Iraq to Chattisgarh, a people's war

2008-11-14T15:54:00Z

From Iraq to Chattisgarh & Jammu & Kashmir provinces in India, via Afghanistan, a people's referendum on the use of force to settle scores and fix governance issues is underway.

In Iraq, the US-led coalition persuaded some Sunni tribes about a year ago to rise up against the Al-Qaeda. These so-called "self-help groups", many of whom served in Saddam Hussein's army and were disbanded when the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, had become part of the nasty insurgency that has threatened the tripartite division of Iraq. Until US General David Petraeus, injecting a few thousand troops into Iraq a year ago, unveiled the Al-Sahwa (meaning, "awakening" in Arabic) programmes. Here, men from certain Sunni tribes who had suffered particularly at the hands of the Al-Qaeda were rewarded and punished in a complex manner of points for succeeding -- or failing -- in either anticipating an Al-Qaeda offensive and busting it.

Now General Petraeus, who has taken over as commander-in-chief of the US Central Command, under which sphere of influence falls Afghanistan, wants to apply the Al-Sahwa strategy in that country. Meaning, it is imperative to open talks with the "moderate" Taliban, in the hope that these men, home-grown and mostly from the Pashtun tribe on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border, will be able to fight the "foreign", Arabic Al-Qaeda. President-elect Obama is said to favour such a strategy.

Meanwhile, right here in Chattisgarh province, which went to the polls today (39 seats in the first phase out of 90), the BJP government's 'Salwa Judum' programme is at stake. Begun in 2006 as a "people's war" against Naxalites or insurgents who want to overthrow the state government through an armed revolution, the BJP government armed tribals with guns to take on these self-styled Maoists. More than a thousand people have been killed in this people's war and the campaign has come under considerable criticism across the country. Incumbent chief minister Raman Singh has said the 'Salwa Judum" campaign will continue if the BJP wins the elections. Opposition leader from the Congress Ajit Jogi, naturally, says it will be repealed.

And so on to Jammu & Kashmir, where a 7-phase election schedule has been announced over the next couple of months, former Kashmiri insurgents who fought the local police and the Army are being persuaded to now contest the elections. Will these fifth columnists-of-a-sort win? Or will Kashmiris reject the long arm of the state and vote for political parties who truly represent them?

Watch this space in mid-December. By then, the mist in Iraq and Afghanistan would also have cleared.

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Outsiders, leave Delhi !

2008-11-14T08:19:00Z

If you havent had enough of Raj Thackeray's goons throwing out Biharis from Maharashtra, then read on...For the last few days, my newspaper bundle has been leavened with thin yellow sheets of paper, typically used for local city advertisements, which say in bold black letters : Outsiders Should Leave Delhi.

Here is what it says : "Delhi belongs ethno-culturally to the middle Yamuna basin, a region which lies within a radius of approx. 200 kms from the capital city. The people of this region constitute the "local people" of Delhi. Awadhiyas, Bengalis, Bhojpuris, Biharis, Keralites, Punjabis...are all interlopers whose presence is illegitimate..."

Our Lands in Our Hands, the ad goes on to give the name of the organisation in Hindi, Hamaari Zameen Hamaare Haath. Luckily for us, President Sanjay Yadav has not yet become a card-carrying member of Raj Thackeray's sons-of-soil party, even though he's clearly looking to get a leg up.

In an age when the Indian diaspora grows from strength to strength, many of them (including at Mint) coming "back home" to get a flavour of the Indian experience, the rise of political groups like Thackeray's Maharastra Navnirman Sena party -- and the covert backing given to it by the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party alliance, in an attempt to tame his uncle, Balasaheb Thackeray's Shiv Sena -- only reflects the total cynicism with which we look at the business of politics.

All those goose bumps that covered a billion Indians when Barack Obama made his own date with history on November 4, what a national sham that must have been. India's Grand Old Party, the Congress, returned to the alleged sale of party tickets for constituencies -- as alleged by senior Congress party leader Margaret Alva, for which she was thrown out -- without so much as blinking an eyelid.

The question of who is a "refugee" -- and who a daughter of the earth -- is an old story. Its also, in many ways, an unresolved one. The Kolis of Mumbai, a fisherman's community, which was uprooted when Bombay was founded, probably lays much greater claim to Mumbai than Raj Thackeray's beloved Marathi-speakers. Delhi's largely Punjabi population, for instance, having dropped roots in the city only after Partition, has only recently started to feel at home. Thousands of Muslims who uprooted themselves to pursue the idea of Pakistan, especially from Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh, are still disparagingly called "Mohajirs" in their city of choice, Karachi. ('Adha Gaon," the seminal story in Hindi of the emigration of one such eastern UP Muslim family and how it finds itself rejected by the Punjabi Pakistani Muslim, still evokes a thousand tears.)

Meanwhile, thousands of "Biharis," or as Urdu-speaking Bihari Muslims who went to East Pakistan in1947 (because it was closer home than the other Pakistan, beyond Punjab and a day-and-night ride on the Frontier Mail), are still called, as they languish in UN camps outside Dhaka (the Bengali-speaking Bangladeshis persecute them and the Punjabi-speaking Pakistanis refuse to accept them).

Of course there are "refugees" and "refugees" -- as the subtle discrimination between the blonde and blue-eyed Ashkenazi Jews and the swarthy-skinned, dark-eyed Sephardim Jewish community from Asia, all of them citizens of the Promised Land, reveals. Although, I might add, things are changing so fast in Israel, it is said that only 20 years from now, Hebrew will be the second most popular language spoken in the country. The first -- since Israeli law guarantees the "right of return" to all Jews in the diaspora if you can prove connections up to maternal grandparent -- will be Russian.

Perhaps Raj Thackeray -- and Sanjay Yadav -- could study the Israeli experience before they makes their next move.

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United Colours of India

2008-11-05T03:57:00Z

Throw out the garbage, empty yesterday's wine bottles, ring out the old...the New World has a new leader and his name is Barack Obama.

Okay, so what does that mean for India?

Like no other country in the world, India is compellingly similar to the diversity of America. Mayawati became chief minister of Uttar Pradesh -- and therefore began to wield real power over a larger population than all of America -- before Obama made history tonight. Her own victory, not surprisingly, was so similar to Obama's campaign. She reached across the aisle and sewed up the upper-caste, Brahmin vote along with her own committed Dalit vote. Just like Obama, who, repeatedly, invoked his own mixed heritage to reassure the White voter that he would not grow horns in the White House, even as he gave new and renewed hope to the Black voter that they were equal inheritors of the idea of America.

Clearly, all the political parties in India should scrutinise the Obama victory, minute by minute, day by day. What should the Congress do to invigorate its tired audience ? (Invigorating its own leadership would be a good start, of course.) How can the BJP look beyond the divisive politics of Sadhvi Pragya and look to expanding its vote? What of the Dalits and the BSP?

Let our political parties reject our collective apathy and stand up for the united colours of India.

The coming six Assembly elections and the general elections next year...If India has to reclaim its future, Barack Obama is the key.

Make no mistake, though. Standing up for the weak and oppressed was an idea invented long before Obama. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru as well as the host of inspirational leaders of our freedom movement led the way. Obama reinvented that message. Now India must learn from him.

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Financing the President

2008-11-04T18:25:00Z

Barack Obama refused the $84 million being offered by the state to finance his election, although John McCain took it. The way Obama widened the net, using the Internet to lobby ordinary voters to sign small cheques, to create a mammoth network of election offices (more than 700 compared to 330 of McCain) has transformed the American election. For the first time in a US presidential election, any candidate -- Barack Obama in this case -- has topped $1.5 billion in promoting himself. McCain, on the other hand, according to www.CNN.com, has spent $924 million.

The way the public financing works in the US is as follows : Each taxpayer pays $3 towards the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, a system created after the Watergate scandal in the early 70s. This time the public finance kitty amounted to $84 million for each presidential candidate.

But what of the Indian experience? While there is no such thing as public financing for elections in India, former prime minister VP Singh tried to bring about legislation which would control election expenditure through cheques only. He was of course targetting the impact of big money on politics and trying to limit the quid pro quos in office.

He didnt succeed. However, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati seems to have taken a leaf out of Obama's book as she recently argued with Income Tax officials, explaining that the crores incurred in election expenditure were the result of small donations by her supporters across the countryside.

Meanwhile, Lok Sabha candidates must declare how they spend their money, not where they get it from. The Election Commission in India closely looks at expenditure accounts, just as closely it keeps a sharp eye on prohibiting the sale of liquor at least 48 hours before the election,. In the US, you can drink all you want all through voting day.

In fact, if you're a presidential candidate in the US, you can continue to hold rallies and processions, even after you' ve cast your vote, just as Barack Obama and McCain are doing.. In India, all campaigning must stop at least 48 hours before polling day.

As for election turnouts, the last election in 2004 witnessed a 55 per cent turnout in America, but what with the long and winding lines in front of the voting centres, a record turnout is expected. Contrast this to the average 59-60 per cent prevalent in every Indian election over the last many years.

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India has an Obama dream

2008-11-04T11:39:00Z

Tonight’s the night, when the world’s oldest democracy makes history. Democrat or Republican, the new US president is certain to change the world. So even as Mint openly endorsed Barack Obama for President a few days ago, several other Indian newspapers used their front pages to plug John McCain, arguing that a Republican president will be much more "hands off" -- and therefore, good for India -- than a Democrat, whose traditional preoccupations have included non-proliferation issues and human rights violations.

Meaning, it took a Republican president -- George Bush -- to pursue the Indo-US nuclear deal with single-minded zeal, and so John McCain will naturally follow suit. As for Obama, these Indian newspapers argue, he will return to the intrusive American approach on Kashmir and Pakistan that have deeply offended Indian sensibilities in the past.

Really?

At the risk of sounding dismissive of these pro-McCain views, or accuse these journalists of refusing to learn from recent contemporary history, let's take a look at the facts. Sure, George Bush was good for India, or at least for the Indo-US nuclear deal, considering the manner in which he went out of his way to dismantle the nuclear architecture forged in Yalta in 1945, after the Second World War. That is why, these Bushies said, even when you cringed at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's remarks to Bush ("we deeply love you"), it was your duty to flag and country to manfully stand up and say, aye.

For a start, however, there is no evidence to suggest that McCain will inherit Bush's gung-ho approach towards India. For a presidential candidate that has completely washed his hands off the current President (Bush remains the US Prez till January 21, 2009), not even inviting him to campaign for him, McCain's strategic world view may not replicate that of Bush Jr.

Moreover, how can anyone in India forget the 2001-2002 years, when a series of Bush heavyweights, whether Colin Powell or Richard Armitage, swung by Delhi to remind India that it should back off from pursuing the hardline approach with Pakistan on the terrorism issue (the attack against the Indian parliament had taken place on December 13, 2001)? When Delhi wanted to open several consulates in southern Afghanistan, a region that neighbours Pakistan, in the aftermath of the ouster of the Taliban from Kabul in December 2001, it was the Americans who told Delhi to go slow.

Barack Obama's views on non-proliferation and Kashmir are well-known. Equally, he has focussed on the need for Pakistan to look within, not at its "traditional enemy, India" as the source of its problems. But in his letter to the Prime Minister in late September -- Obama has spoken affectionately of the need to strategise and partner with India on a variety of issues. Did the PM reply to the Obama letter? Nothing's known on that score, but courtesy would demand assent.

Would it then be fair to say that India, too, has a dream? Cross your fingers tonight...

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Tea-bag tales in China

2008-10-24T00:40:00Z

The tea-bag in my room at the Marriott City Wall hotel, built cheek by jowl next to a remnant of the ancient Great Wall that once ringed Beijing so as keep out the foreigner, is a classic example of the spirit of globalisation that China adopted with such determined enthusiasm 30 years ago. That, of course, was in 1978 when then vice-premier Deng Xiaoping began the reform -- admittedly, the embrace of the world came later -- in the wake of the disgraced Cultural Revolution.

Flying into Beijing from Tokyo must account for one of the most important lesson in international diplomacy. Japan is still one of the richest countries in the world and China, with $200 billion, is its biggest trading partner -- bigger than the US, for example. Japan sources about 40 per cent of its food from China, including noodles and dumplings and other ingredients that make up its "school meals." That is a relationship that goes beyond the Yasukuni shrine furore (a memorial to the Japanese war dead that includes those who died in the conflict with China, 1937-41), and both countries know they cannot let that particular controversy get out of hand.

So even as thousands of Japanese school-children have fallen ill over the last year, as the result of "contaminated" dumplings and other food that makes up its huge school food programme, and the press has gone to town about China's "inability" to take action against the guilty parties, both sides realise that the relationship between Tokyo and Beijing is far too important to be jeopardised over any one issue.

There's another lesson : Japan, with an increasingly ageing population (the last census in 2000 showed the population to be about 122 million people, up only by 1.1 per cent from the previous survey in 1995, and the lowest increase since the end of World War II) has often been likened to an old age home. Tokyo, despite its financial might, is still a small town at heart, with tiny shops on little side streets that appeal to your inward instincts. For an island nation, the Japanese remain among the most insular people in the world, a secret wrapped inside a cultural enigma. We searched in vain for the punch and pushiness associated with Manhattan. (Clearly, that is why Punjabis do so well there.) Sure, the skyscrapers are around, but they dont boggle the mind. There seems so much more self-control in Japan. The lights that fell over the night sky didnt give off the restless energy that New York -- or Beijing -- does.

And that is the point of this blog. Beijing is on such an adrenalin high these days, having conquered the world with its glorious display of the Olympic Games, that it seems unstoppable. Enough has been written about the superbly impressive infrastructure of China's cities, but the mind still boggles when you you return. So many more Chinese are now speaking English. They're much taller and look much bigger and appear so much more confident than they were even a few years ago. As the West struggles to cope with the impending financial global disaster, no wonder they're all looking at China to absorb and neutralise and manage their recession for them.

China is the new big saviour on the block, make no mistake. The seventh Asian-Europe meeting in Beijing on Friday-Saturday will be consumed with Western leaders desperately seeking solutions to the biggest financial mess since the Great Depression -- and as Alan Greenspan, the guru of the free market, has now admitted, the free-marketeers are all culpable. China, all these countries must hope, will be able to bail them out.

That of course is easier said than done -- but that is grist for my next blog. Meanwhile, the Chinese are desperately hoping that the economic downturn doesnt collapse its own economy as it is threatening to do in the wild West, keenly aware that it will have the greatest impact on the political system.

But back to the tea-bag in my room at the Marriott hotel right next to a remnant of the old city wall. The tea-bag is called Japan Classic, although the company that makes it, Ronnefeldt, is German. There are four languages which describe its contents -- Russian right on top, followed by Arabic, then Japanese and finally Chinese.

Did you notice the missing link? English is missing.

The Boston tea-party, when tea sourced from China and sold by the British East India Company was dumped by American colonists as a protest in Boston, happened in 1773. No idea where the tea in the tea-bag in my room comes from, but it firmly puts the English-speakers in their place.

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The East is red -- and bleeding

2008-10-23T16:41:00Z

The East has been red for a while, but these days its also bleeding. The people's anthem during China's Cultural Revolution is taking on new meaning as Asia's markets hit a new low on Thursday even as Alan Greenspan, the former chief of the US Federal Bank admitted that he'd made "a mistake" in allowing the economy to wander off on a roller-coaster, without regulating it or circumscribing it within a 'lakshman rekha', so to speak.

Greenspan's shocking admission exposes the hypocrisy of the so-called free market and almost makes you yearn for the socialist rhetoric of the Cold War years, when the Hindu rate of growth had comfortably chugged along, when less was more and recycling was a way of life. Greenspan, in his defence, talked about his model of forecasting that had been growing strong for 40 years -- but the truth is that free marketeers like Jeffrey Sachs almost brought Russia to its knees as it pressed former Russian president Boris Yeltsin to impose a strict market mantra upon Russia. The result? The rigid command-and-control economy that Russian inherited from the Soviet Union spun so badly out of control that most of the population was completely impoverished.

At the time, though, in the early 90s, the West was on such a high that it had succeeded in breaking up the Soviet Union that the economic collapse that followed in Russia was received by a few clicking noises of the tongue. Back in Russia, though, it sowed the seeds of a real disregard for real democracy and the yearning of a strong ruler, one who would fix their problems and restore their international prestige.\

So is the West going to now say sorry to the rest of the world for plunging it into this financial crisis? A rather unlikely prospect, but you can expect to hear more on this subject from Asian and European leaders gathered in Beijing for the seventh ASEM summit meeting these days. Germany's Angela Merkel is here, as is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. So is the prime minister of Mongolia and the president of Bulgaria and the prime minister of Pakistan, and over the next 48 hours the Great Hall of the People is going to be transformed into an gigantic talkshop.

Beijing is a good place to talk interminably. For a start, the country still seems to be booming. despite the global downturn. The Marriott City Wall hotel that opened only in August is glitzy, with lots of mirrors and full of people in the middle of the night. Economists are now warning that if China also begins to experience a similar economic downturn, it would damage the Chinese Communist Party and make way for real political reform.

Perhaps something good may come out of the financial tsunami yet.

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The Japanese come in 2X2

2008-10-23T00:38:00Z

Prime Minister of Japan, said the gold plaque on the lectern in the media briefing room in the Prime Minister’s residence. Another lectern stood a couple of feet away, and it had an identical plaque on it. Were we seeing right, or were the Japanese still under the Noah Ark spell? The double take didn’t end there : Right behind the lecterns stood four flags, two Japanese and two Indian. Double whammy or double trouble?

So while the Indian press waited, nearly a couple of hours for the two PMs to arrive for their joint media interaction at the end of the evening, the Japanese technical teams checked out every little thing, more than once. The microphone on each lectern, the microphones in front of each of the four journalists (two from the Japanese side, two from the Indian) identified to ask a question. The Japanese journos trooped in just before the briefing began. The air-conditioning seemed to have been switched off, or was it just on low cool. Someone said later the Japanese were on an energy-saving drive. There was no water in the room.

We had already been put through the drill, as we waited. No one was to rise when the PMs walked in. The Japanese journalist would ask the first question, and then the session would alternate with the Indian scribe. Each journalist would be allowed one question. Simultaneous translation would be available on the headphones.

The famous Japanese attention to detail was perfectly manifest.

After an interminable waiting, the two PMs trooped in and took their place behind each lectern. A few seconds before, the official delegation, including Commerce minister Kamal Nath, had seated themselves at the back of the room. Reliance head honcho Mukesh Ambani was the only businessman in sight.

The briefing began. Prime Minister Taro Aso started off with a few opening comments. Then he suddenly stopped short and looked at the PM. But Manmohan Singh looked like he was concentrating hard on the event ahead and didn’t turn to look back at him. Aso looked again, whipped off his headphones and turned to the PM. We have to exchange places, he said.

Turned out that the translation system had been fixed so that the Japanese translation would be available to one PM on one lectern and English on another. But when the PMs had been ushered in, they had been directed to the wrong podium.

Oops ! Aso quickly realized something was wrong and cut his speech short.

Minutes later, all four questions had been asked. To the fourth question, addressed to both PMs, Aso delivered his reply. But when Manmohan Singh opened his mouth to speak, but he was cut short by the Japanese spokesman : That’s all, ladies and gentleman, thank you for coming…

That’s when one of the Indian journalists spoke up. Hey, the Indian prime minister still has to answer his part of the question.

Oops, again! For an impending strategic partnership between two rising Asian powers, this was the second clumsiness of the evening.

I looked at the date on my mobile phone : October 22, it said.

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The Japanese gardener

2008-10-23T00:37:00Z

The Japanese restaurant in the hotel overlooks, what else, a Japanese garden. As you tuck into your miso soup and your sashimi, the idea is to contemplate the perfectly manicured hedge that gently follows the contour of the land, turning an elongated ‘S’ shape and dividing the picture postcard view into two. An artificial stream nudges the hedge at one end. A school of salmon are frolicking in the water.

You can zen along the concrete path that follows the undulating hedge and can’t help but admire the extraordinary sense of calm that it should evoke. Is the man trying to coax some manure out of a sack in the distance the minder of this garden of several senses? Would he have had to go to a zen gardening school to learn his trade?

The miso soup grows cold. A little sign on the table has a picture of a mobile phone with a cross on it. I am here, I am now, a line from the Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh floats into my brain. The global financial crisis seems far away. Manmohan Singh the alchemist, who has single-handedly strategised the Indian partnership with the world’s most powerful economic power, seems to have disappeared into his own smoke.

Blink your eyes hard, and the garden reappears. It is no illusion, just the most perfect manifestation of the Japanese aesthetic. That sense of calm perfection pervades all of Tokyo. You can find it in the way the shower curtain in the bathroom is pleated, in the way the hand towels are perfectly rolled. One city high street has lights where the big fat globe of light is covered with a aluminium sunshade that looks like the opening petal of a flower.

The Ikebana arrangements in the elevator landings are simply stunning : the way the overhead light falls on the single twisted wooden strip and the few sprigs of dried pink flowers, they conjure up a Mount Fujiyama shadow on the wall.

Japan’s single-minded attention to detail has often been cited as the single-most important reason for its rise to super-economic stardom. But the meticulousness also has its downside. It embeds the individual narrative into a consensual framework. Often, it demands obedience.

That is why so many personal revolutions are limited to the clothes you wear and the hair styles you keep. The army of business suits that runs Japan Inc., mostly male, spends so much time in a hair salon, that it’s a wonder much else gets done.

All over Tokyo, then, the immense attention to hair care by Japanese men is stunning. Its spiky and its coloured, it falls all over your face, or the front has been cunningly gelled. The men in this city are clearly giving all the baby dolls in constant imitation of Sarah Jessica Parker in ‘Sex and the City’ a huge run for their money.

Blame it on the financial crisis. There’s so much more time to do what you’ve always wanted to do.

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Renkoji Temple Inc.

2008-10-21T11:54:00Z

On board the PM's aircraft to Tokyo, the question, asked by a Bengali journalist, had to come up sooner than later. What was the government doing about Subhas Chandra Bose's ashes, lying in the Renkoji temple in Tokyo? Was the PM going to raise the matter during this visit?

The Two Officials Who Cannot be Named, because their briefing was conducted on the condition of anonymity, answered -- in the negative.

No, they said, the PM was not going to raise the issue of Netaji's ashes. One of them pointed out that some time ago, the question of identification of the ashes, through a DNA test analysis, had come up. Evidently, though, the ashes were too old or too far gone to be of any use to the DNA. Then different parts of Netaji's family got involved. Some wanted the DNA test, others didnt. Some wanted the ashes back to be brought back home, others felt it was irrelevant.

It was far too difficult to keep up with the various demands and points of views and opinions of so many Bengalis, all these years. Of course, the officials admitted, Netaji's remains had become a bit of a political football, with differences on the matter within the Left Front in Bengal and nationwide. So many inquiries and parliamentary committees had been set up, it was difficult to figure out who had said what at which point of time. So it was decided to let the ashes rest in peace.

Still, the fact remains that when Atal Behari Vajpayee came visiting in Tokyo in 2002, he had visited the Renkoji temple. But then the BJP had always saluted a muscular national vision and Netaji had totally conformed, seeking help from the Japanese as well as from Hitler's Germany to get the British out of his beloved country.

Manmohan Singh's vision of India is deeply embedded in the economic growth story, in the lights, cameras and action that comes from worshipping the temples of industry. That is why the Delhi-Mumbai freight corridor will be peppered with special economic zones on both sides, part of an industrial corridor that promotes the profit motive. Singh hopes the colour of money will help suppress the several atavistic urges of his countrymen.

If it were upto Manmohan Singh, on the other hand, he would surely want to transform the legacy of the Renkoji temple into a heritage pit stop in the heart of the tourist trail.

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Just like Krugman

2008-10-21T11:52:00Z

Trust all the PM’s men to say nice things about him all the time.

Just like Paul Krugman, the economist-***-columnist for the New York Times, said one of them this afternoon on board Air India One to Tokyo, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh predicted the downturn in the global financial markets.

Oh really?

If you did a double-take, you are hereby ordered to do another one. Here are the facts : Seems when the PM met French president Nicolas Sarkozy this January in Delhi – when he came without Carla Bruni – he told him that the economy was in for a bit of a whipping. Seems the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) even loyally put out the information.

No one really paid any heed, perhaps, because the rest of us ordinary mortals were still obsessing over why Bruni hadn’t turned up.

Anyway, what were all the PM’s men trying to say, anyway? That, like Krugman, he should be given a Nobel Prize too?

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