It pays to be democracy
FIRST Kargil and then the coup, Pakistan has scored two self-goals to disappear from the super league of special US allies. And the sole beneficiary has been India which can hope to forge strategic relationship with the surviving super power.

The BCG controversy
THE first reaction to a policy, programme or regimen, which is seen as an abject failure, is depressing, if not full of anger. The Indian Council of Medical Research has "conclusively proved" that the BCG vaccine, an integral part of our immunisation programme, is practically useless.

Save Harike, next Kanjli
THE Army deserves a round of applause for taking up the challenge of removing hyacinth and other weeds, which kill water bodies, from the internationally famous Harike wetland near Amritsar.

ARMY TAKEOVER AND AFTER
Will the scenario change in Kashmir?
by A.N. Dar
WOULD the takeover of power in Pakistan by Gen Parvez Musharraf cause a change in the situation in Jammu and Kashmir? Because Pakistan has an influence on the thinking and conduct of the separatists’ activities, the pace of the infiltration, the flow of arms and funds, whatever happens across the Line of Control invariably affects Kashmir.

Market and democracy
by Jeremy Seabrook
THE market economy and democracy are inseparable. These quite distinct phenomena are now presented by all Western governments as though they were more or less interchangeable. This marks yet another stage in the onward march of the market, a triumphal progress that has scarcely been halted by the accession to power of Centre-Left governments in most European countries.

The glitzy side of the star city
by Tavleen Singh
EVERY time I come to Mumbai from the docks I am left feeling that I have come to another country. In China, when the Communist government decided to adopt more capitalist ways they opened up the country in bits and pieces. Certain provinces developed faster because they became capitalist quicker but we in India sneer at this approach and take pride in the fact that we will all either sink with places like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar or swim with them, if they ever learn.

Making haste, but slowly
by Amita Malik
A NUMBER of interviews have appeared with the new Minister for Information and Broadcasting since Mr Arun Jaitley took office. And I think the best was rather aptly on television, a medium which seems to suit Mr Jaitley’s personality — he is young, personable, relaxed and articulate.

Pain — less painful
by J.L. Gupta
THE road to a man’s heart lies through his taste buds. I suspect whether every woman knows this. My wife in particular. Though we have been married for 34 years, she has practised her culinary skills for a longer period. On me. And that, I guess, explains almost everything wrong with me.

75 Years Ago

October 30, 1924
India and Independent Labour
IN the midst of the prevailing gloom the message of sympathy and support which a branch of the Independent of the Independent labour party has sent to Mahatma Gandhi is bound to have a slightly reassuring effect.

It pays to be democracy

FIRST Kargil and then the coup, Pakistan has scored two self-goals to disappear from the super league of special US allies. And the sole beneficiary has been India which can hope to forge strategic relationship with the surviving super power. This is the meaning of President Clinton lifting all but one sanction on India and retaining curbs on all but two minor dealings in the case of Pakistan. The ban on technical cooperation with 200 Indian “entities” (institutions and companies engaged in research and fabrication work in nuclear and missile fields) is in place. And this will continue until India signs the CTBT and stops making fissile material or hammers out an alternative arrangement. Thus the economic part of the post-Pokhran blast sanctions has ended but the technological part stays. This sophisticated differentiation is thanks to a realisation and a recommendation. Washington has come to see the sanctions as unproductive and an irritant in mutual relations. US Energy Secretary Bill Richardson had sent a report after his visit to this country that the time was ripe to shift gears in bilateral ties and make US South Asia policy India-centric.

But the trigger for the big change is the Gen Parvez Musharraf-led coup earlier this month. The USA was outraged that the democratic Sharif government was toppled despite its clear warning against any action through extra-constitutional means. It is a passionate convert to undiluted democracy marking a total break with the past when it actively encouraged military dictatorship to sharpen its attack on the Soviet Union and the creeping socialist tide. The new attitude has expectedly stamped a pariah status on the military set-up. The fact that the same actors set up the Kargil confrontation made the sense of alienation complete. This does not mean that Pakistan has become in American eyes the Cuba of this region; it has powerful friends in key institutions to ward off that fate. Once it erases the ugly stain of dictatorship, the door will open for resumption of old, warm ties.But that will not be at India’s cost, which has impeccable credentials in areas which count.

The waiver signed on Wednesday makes available to India loans from US commercial banks, military training and educational assistance. These are token gestures and acquire disproportionate importance since they are denied to Pakistan, raising doubts that the USA may not support IMF and World Bank loans to it. The waiver also covers activities of the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank, Overseas Private Investment Corporation and Trade and Development Agency. Actually the curb on these three organisations was lifted last year but for one year. It has now been made permanent. Pakistan will continue to get agricultural credit but that is purely designed to help US farmers sell $200 million worth wheat. These days Washington is flirting with an anti-Pakistan, pro-India mood and this came out startlingly in what remained a news for a few fleeting minutes. As the lifting of the sanctions and the pronounced tilt came to be known, a rumour was born that President Clinton would make his South Asian visit early next year but skip Pakistan. That would be a stinging rebuke, even perhaps inducing a damaging breach in US-Pakistan ties. The White House promptly denied the “news” and soothed taut nerves. Talk of change!

The BCG controversy

THE first reaction to a policy, programme or regimen, which is seen as an abject failure, is depressing, if not full of anger. The Indian Council of Medical Research has "conclusively proved" that the BCG vaccine, an integral part of our immunisation programme, is practically useless. A 15-year study is being referred to as the source of the conclusion which, by all accounts, should be taken as an authentic and institutional view in the field of preventive medicine. Where there is no preventive method, quick and effective recourse to curative methods has to be taken. Here a little primary understanding of BCG becomes necessary. It is a vaccine used to prevent tuberculosis. The disease is surely not of 19th century origin, 20th century dormancy and 21st century resurgence. Tapediq and Yakshma are well documented in unani and ayurvedic texts of yore. Over the centuries, TB set in, made one suffer for a few years, spread contagion and killed. It is good that researchers are emphasising the "futility" of prevention expected from a fatal ailment on the basis of a rather long study. But certain facts and circumstances cannot be lost sight of. The anti-TB vaccine was developed not yesterday but about 78 years ago— in 1921 — by two French researchers— Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin. The name (BCG) stands for Bacillus Calmette-Guerin. It was made from specially bred and weakened strains of tuberculosis bacteria. Work was intensified on the basis of the theory that injections of BCG would cause the body to build up disease-fighting antibodies which protect against tuberculosis. BCG was also used experimentally in the treatment of certain cancers. TB was one of the most serious health problems even in affluent countries. Middle-income or poor people, say, in India, Brazil, Iran and pockets of Eastern Europe were among the worst-hit. A ray of preventive hope was seen in the vaccine. In the early years of its administration too it was stated by scientists that "BCG does not work for everyone.... Furthermore, some studies suggest that it is ineffective among certain populations". Total reliance on the vaccine was, therefore, not universally recommendable. Prevention seemed possible. The vaccine was used as widely as it could be.

Someone within the ICMR should go into the history of the inclusion of BCG in the national immunisation programme. Was the step taken impulsively without studying result-oriented data available in France and elsewhere? Why did the "ineffectivity study" take 15 years to show results in an age of quick laboratory tests, simulated trials and confirmation of effects or results? Now, the exclusion of BCG from the list of childhood vaccines is the only thing being suggested. Many parts of the world do without this "safeguard". We too can. But why didn't we allow wisdom to dawn on our public health managers? Quite a bit of TB has become drug-resistant. The Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse (DOTS) has emerged as a way of treatment. But after adding many vaccines to the list headed by the polio-preventer, we have nothing in our armour against a possible attack of TB. Drugs are not reaching the sufferers. Infectious disease centres are poorly managed. The old enemy is on the rampage once again. Will researchers and clinicians like Dr A.S. Paintal (a former Director-General of the ICMR), Dr O.P. Jaggi and Dr S.K. Jindal throw some light on the "discovery" of the total inefficacy of the BCG vaccine? What is the Union Health Ministry doing? Are we going to work on a reliable vaccine after dumping the Camille-Guerin invention in the drain? Remember, TB is a more merciless killer in the era of AIDS than ever before. While trying to provide anti-TB treatment to the victims, let us not forget the strength of foreign vaccine companies and their Indian lobbyists. We would like to hear more about the discarded vaccine from the ICMR.

Save Harike, next Kanjli

THE Army deserves a round of applause for taking up the challenge of removing hyacinth and other weeds, which kill water bodies, from the internationally famous Harike wetland near Amritsar. As far as the response of the state government to the SOS for saving its wetlands is concerned, all that can be said is that it is better late than never. The Punjab Pollution Control Board had submitted a report on the poor health of Harike, and the less famous Kanjli, nearly three years ago. In the intervening period unregulated industrial growth and extensive agricultural activity along the banks of the Beas and the Sutlej have aggravated the problems the two wetlands were already facing. Harike particularly has attracted international attention because of its rich flora and fauna. In 1987 it was placed among the six most ecologically important wetlands in the world. The Harike Lake was formed as a result of construction of a barrage at the confluence of the Beas and the Sutlej. It covered an area of over 40 km which has now shrunk to half of its original size. It must be understood that the Army has agreed merely to remove the hyacinth and other weeds which have been allowed to multiply through official neglect. Once the "save Harike" mission is completed the forest and wildlife conservation wings of the Punjab government would have to ensure its proper upkeep. They may, among other things, have to explain to the state government the need for scientific upstream management of industrial and agricultural activities which, otherwise, are likely to have a negative impact on the health of Harike.

It may not be a bad idea to create among the local people the awareness that swamps, marshes, bogs and other forms of wetlands are not necessarily wastelands. They are an important part of the fragile ecosystem. According to the World Wide Fund atlas of the environment of 1990, wetlands cover about 6 per cent of the land surface and are found in almost every country. Wetland management is not just about creating a favourable climate for the growth of flora and fauna. It is also about taking care of the concerns of local population. Awareness about their importance is only a few decades old. The USA was losing on an average nearly 1,500 acres of wetland before grasping the ecological importance of protecting all forms of wetlands from further degradation. Nearly 40 per cent of Japan’s tidal flats have been destroyed through human intervention since 1945. India has not even begun taking stock of its vast wetland wealth. The Ramsar Convention has somewhat helped create interest in the country in the proper enumeration and management of wetlands. In 1981 only Chilka in Orissa and Keoladeo in Rajasthan were designated as Ramsar Sites. In 1990 Harike, Walur Lake in Kashmir, Loktak Lake in Manipur and Sambhar Lake in Rajasthan too were included in the list of internationally important water bodies. As far as Punjab is concerned, it should also try and save Kanjli from becoming extinct due to negligence. The state government must realise that land sharks and realtors, along with official apathy, too contribute to the destruction of wetlands. They usually reclaim the land with the help of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. And the rate of growth of corruption in Punjab may be a shade above the national average.

ARMY TAKEOVER AND AFTER
Will the scenario change in Kashmir?
by A.N. Dar

WOULD the takeover of power in Pakistan by Gen Parvez Musharraf cause a change in the situation in Jammu and Kashmir? Because Pakistan has an influence on the thinking and conduct of the separatists’ activities, the pace of the infiltration, the flow of arms and funds, whatever happens across the Line of Control invariably affects Kashmir. The toppling of Mr Nawaz Sharif and the change from civilian administration to that of the military dictatorship, came about with such speed that the militants in Kashmir will want quick directions to reorient their activities.

At first they will have to guess what is expected of them. The nature of the chain of command and its views will take time to trickle down. The repeated militant activity in Kashmir after the coup was to send across the message that they are alive and willing to act.

So far as Kashmir is concerned this takeover is different from the coming in of the earlier military dictatorship. When General Zia took over it was the over-all coming in of the military. In the case of General Musharraf, there has been a small split in the top-brass who will rule Pakistan. It is not all the military that has taken over. There is a part, of course a small part, led by Lieut-Gen Khwaja Ziauddin, which was supporting Mr Nawaz Sharif, and this is not a part of the new ruling class. Had General Musharraf’s coup failed, General Ziauddin would have taken over as the Army Chief and supported Mr Nawaz Sharif. General Musharraf would have either been arrested in Pakistan or would have landed in India or have been killed in the crash of his plane which would have run out of fuel.

We do not know how large a support General Ziauddin commanded. In any case, he has failed and is, along with the Sharif brothers, in General Musharraf’s protective custody. At the same time it has affected the Pakistan army for a part of it, however small, is out of power and in custody. More important, the ISI which directed the militant operations in Jammu and Kashmir, will be under a new leadership. The ISI itself must be in a state of radical change and maybe confusion. Its old work style in Jammu and Kashmir could change too. But this will depend not on who will command the ISI but what General Musharraf would want it to do. This is a change that will be crucial.

This would to that extent affect the militant activity in Kashmir. India would have to watch what instructions would come to the ISI from the top — would it be asked to slow down and lessen violence or speed up the killings and the destruction of targets.

General Musharraf’s declarations on Kashmir have not given any direct indications. The questions that sprang at the dethroning of Mr Nawaz Sharif still remain. Are the militants in Kashmir going to increase their activities? Will Pakistan send in more foreign militants with the weapons better in strength than they had after Kargil? Will the General draw increasingly from the manpower available to him in Afghanistan? Will the tempo of their activities increase? Will they go in for choosing selected targets or spread their activities wider as it happened in the years between 1989 and 1998? In other words, will the militants only keep up their presence or will their aim be to cause as much destruction as they can? What kind of a liaison will Pakistan have with the leaders and workers of Kashmir separatism, like those of the Hurriyat, who have never shown any signs of affection for India and are for the snapping of tie with New Delhi. Their immediate difficulty is that they cannot be very sure of what General Musharraf wants. He is a new source of power for them. At first they will not be wholly at ease in dealing with him. New equations will have to come about.

General Musharraf is no stranger to this situation. He knows what he can draw from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the militants in Kashmir. From Kargil he has learnt what went wrong with the Pakistan operation. He has a full idea of India’s strength. He also knows how much he should rile India when he also wants to gain world acceptability. He has tried to hold out an olive branch to India by unilaterally reducing the army strength across the border but keeping the LoC out of this plan has robbed it of any worthwhile meaning. He has told the separatists in Kashmir that he upholds their so-called right to self-determination and has accused India of repression. This obviously was to give them heart and to say that he is not going to disown them.

Though he seems to be a straightforward soldier and no diplomat, he mentioned the international border but forgot about the LoC. One of those who noticed the gap promptly was the Indian security expert, Mr Brajesh Mishra. There was no immediate explanation why the General had done so. He certainly has a separate thinking on the LoC. His Foreign Secretary, Mr Shamshad Ahmed, has explained that the LoC was being treated differently because it has always been “volatile”, with heavy concentration on both sides. This is no reason for not reducing the forces on the LoC. If he wanted to start off with improving relations with India, he should have reduced the troop concentration on the LoC as he has done on the international border. He thought that he would get a good play in the world capitals and the media by his declaration about the border. But India, as well as countries like the USA, saw through it and made the point that first the cross-border violations along the LoC should stop.

In India General Musharraf would be judged by what he orders to do with the violation of the LoC. In other words, what does he want to do with fomenting militancy in Kashmir. This has great relevance. General Musharraf was the force behind the Kargil war and the fact that Pakistan had to eat the humble pie is fresh in the men who now control affairs in that country. Kargil is remembered as a great military humiliation for Pakistan. He is using this against Mr Nawaz Sharif. Would General Musharraf and the men who work his policy like to wipe out memory by trying something else or by forgetting it with the affirmation of friendship with India?

By reducing the forces along the international border, he perhaps tried to send out the message that Pakistan would not go to war, nuclear or conventional, with India. It is unlikely that he will have a repeat of Kargil but he may want militancy to continue. Will he make it more bitter? This will be his major test in shaping his India policy.

At first glance General Musharraf is different from the earlier dictator, General Zia. After he had consolidated his position, General Zia presented himself as a humane, friendly ruler. He invited himself to witness a cricket match in India. He came with his smiling wife. He was a product of St Stephen’s College of Delhi and had many schooltime friends there. Two of them had become well-known journalists in India, Ajit Bhattacharjea and C.S. Pandit. He invited them to Pakistan and feasted them. This was an excellent public relations exercise. He was very good at it. Will General Musharraf try to be like that? Pakistan is excellent at it. It gave a great welcome to Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee in Lahore just when it was infiltrating into Kargil and trying to occupy it.

India has the choice of rubbing General Musharraf in the wrong or befriending him, or at least not being inimical to him, and then form a relationship. Much of this will depend on what he orders the ISI to do in Kashmir. If he sets it off to create more trouble, India and Pakistan will be on a collision course. That is why the course of militancy in Kashmir should be keenly noticed. To watch the new dispensation will be more difficult because winter is coming (Pakistan’s Kashmir operations started at the end of October in 1947) and militancy, under snow and hail, usually takes a different course. Fewer men would come; fewer still would be seen overground. This may make it confusing to study what General Musharraf asks the ISI to do in Kashmir.

Market and democracy
by Jeremy Seabrook

THE market economy and democracy are inseparable. These quite distinct phenomena are now presented by all Western governments as though they were more or less interchangeable. This marks yet another stage in the onward march of the market, a triumphal progress that has scarcely been halted by the accession to power of Centre-Left governments in most European countries.

There are superficial resemblances between them, but how have the free market and democracy come to be seen as identical twins in Western rhetoric? How is it that the financial institutions routinely conflate “market reforms” with “good governance” as conditions for lending to Third World countries?

Of course, what the people want is the supreme slogan of the age. This is the very essence of democracy. It is also encoded within the responsiveness of the market, which is felt to offer a continuous and organic plebiscite on the needs and desires of the people. This readily lends itself to the suggestion that the market, as supreme expression of the popular will, is the most active element in the attainment of full democracy. This is how the perfect marriage was made. You can’t have one without the other, has been the sage sermon on the mount of Western preachings to the world.

What can be wrong with so ingenuous a formulation? The market, after all, responds directly to the need, bypassing the cumbersome apparatus of the State. No more elegant instrument for matching need with its satisfaction can be imagined. Who can object to the innocent proposition that the market economy and democracy supplement each other, indeed, are indispensable to one another, merge imperceptibly as features in a common landscape?

The market is an impersonal mechanism for bringing together producers and consumers, while democracy is supposed to embody the will of the majority.Now it is common sense that majorities — in every country of the world — are not privileged elites; and it will be inevitable that fairness, social justice and equality are bound to be the choice of the majority in all true democracies.

This is where the market is so useful. It prioritises the whims of the rich over the most elementary necessities of the poor. It provides Coca-Cola to the most impoverished communities in the world, which do not enjoy the benefit of safe drinking water. Only those with purchasing power register their wants in the capacious plenty of the market. The market cannot monitor the needs of those without money, which is why so many human beings perish each day within sight of global abundance. In this sense, the market is deaf and blind, responds only with the sensory equipment that can detect money.

The need of the market to expand and grow in perpetuity makes it a powerful and dynamic force in the world. Indeed, its perpetual expansion leads it to colonise society, and its energetic compulsions become more even powerful than the sacred rules of democracy itself.

The dynamism and power of the market are infinitely more vibrant, exciting and responsive than a democracy that has become ossified in electoral ritual. The laws of economics are readily perceived to be more compelling than the laws of democracy, which is why people — all people, including the poor — regularly vote for parties which insist that they will make the economy function better, rather than lift them out of poverty. This is also why in the advanced democracies, political disaffection is growing, voting doesn’t pay the rent.

There are, of course, other objections to the sanctification of the market. Because there are many fundamental needs — even among the most privileged — that simply cannot be answered by the market, these fall into oblivion.

Everything needful which cannot be bought and sold is reshaped by the market, until some marketed commodity or service apparently approximates to it: for instance, the need for community may be created artificially, by the creation of TV soap operas, which scoop up people’s emotions in imaginary communities of fantasy involvement; or a sense of belonging is promoted by some media-led witch-hunt against a deviant group or individual, whether against “extremists”, political outcasts like Saddam or Milosevic or paedophiles.

Then the market itself undermines certain human needs. The need to procure and provide for ourselves, to give, create and invent, to do things for ourselves and each other —all this is subverted by the market since such profound needs cannot be expressed through its crude calculus.

In spite of all this, democracy continues to be assimilated to the market. The secret of this union, of course, is that the dowry brought to democracy by the market is the immense advantages it brings to those who have the most.

Indeed, in the early industrial era in Britain, this was obvious: it was the very shortcomings of free markets — especially the labour market — that led to the development of the workers’ movements, and finally forced the State to set up forms of protection against its most violent ravages. Only as the rich Western societies have become richer has the market been rehabilitated, revarnished, spruced up and touted now as the inseparable companion of a democracy which no longer threatens its hegemony.

This is why the market is the objective of such remorseless Western propaganda in the world. Good governance, freedom, choice — all these are smuggled routinely into the promotion of free markets; even in the face of the burden of human misery, exclusion and social wreckage with which they disfigure the face of the earth.

The point is that market equals democracy is only the latest conspiracy of the rich against the poor.

The market as ultimate freedom: in the presence of so many captives, so much crying need, so much needless suffering! Only by excluding everything and everyone that does not reach the market can this disfiguring of human purposes be projected as the finest ornament of civilisation.

In the past two or three years, with the economic disasters in Asia, Russia and Brazil, it might have been expected that the image of the global market might have been tarnished. Not a bit of it.

Beneath the effort to universalise and remoralise the market, there is a profound anti-democratic intention.

Of course, in the early industrial period in Britain, the ruling classes were terrified of democracy. If the franchise had been extended to a majority of the people, they would have voted away privilege and inequality, and the laissez-faire ideology which underpinned them.

The strategy to avoid this catastrophe was twofold. First of all, the vote was granted only very slowly to the dispossessed, this gave time for the wealth of the country to encompass a sufficient proportion of the people to ensure that when the vote was conceded to them, they could be trusted not to cast their vote in favour of the dispossession of their betters, on whose wealth their own modest well-being depended. The role of the riches of empire in conciliating a threatening and unpredictable proletariat to the reason of its rulers is also well-known.

It is the extension of this doctrine to the whole world that is now at issue. Democracy can scarcely be withheld from the peoples of the earth, but the apotheosis of the market is calculated to guarantee its pre-eminence. Only when the free market has been safeguarded can considerations of democracy and other subordinate freedoms be entertained. — TWNF

Pain — less painful
by J.L. Gupta

THE road to a man’s heart lies through his taste buds. I suspect whether every woman knows this. My wife in particular. Though we have been married for 34 years, she has practised her culinary skills for a longer period. On me. And that, I guess, explains almost everything wrong with me. The ever expanding bulge around the belly. The increasing number of cavities in the teeth. And what not. With the help of the tailor. I have learnt to hide the middle though not the middle age. However, the teeth are a constant source of pain. My fear of pills and needles only adds to my teething troubles. The dentist’s chair scares me. Regardless, I go to her. To whom? Why?

Next to the nails, the teeth appear to be the hardest part of the human anatomy. Sixteen in each jaw. Four incisors. Two canines. Four pre-molars and six molars. Interesting structure. Each tooth has an outer layer of enamel. It is very hard. Then there is the dentine”. In composition, it is said to be akin to a bone. Not as hard as enamel. Then there is the combination of cells, the blood vessels and the nerves. The pulp. To provide nourishment to the dentine. Below the gum-line is the root. All are encased safely in bony sockets. Given a chance, the teeth can tear any article of food into shreds.

The sugar and carbohydrates in food combine with the micro-organisms in the mouth to produce acids. These destroy the enamel. The “enzymatic action” finishes the “protein structure of dentine”. And thus occur the cavities. Consequently, the need to visit the dentist. To have the cavities plugged. To have the teeth restored. And what an experience!

A comfortable chair. Complete with gadgetry. The cutter-grinder with a water jet. The scaler — to remove the unwanted deposits. The polishing brush — to remove the nicotine stains and to give a shine. The air blower to clean the area. The suction unit so that nothing goes in. And what not. Yet, without proper anaesthetisation, even a bit of air sends a shockwave through the system. A shudder through the spine. The pain is really painful. Even unbearable.

The philosopher says — “A man of pleasure is a man of pains”. Truly, pain and pleasure are a rule of life. Like day and night. Light and darkness. One follows the other. Good food gives pleasure. Lack of good care in cleaning the teeth gives caries. Toothache is the price. It has to be paid. Despite maintaining a regular regimen. You may use brushes and pastes. You may use the intra-dental brush. Even the floss. Yet, some particle of food would manage to hide somewhere. The problem follows. Inevitably.

After having suffered for years, from teenage to today, I have reconciled myself to the truth of a toothache. I have learnt to live with it. To feel relaxed about it. Even tried to make it a source of some satisfaction and pleasure. How?

In my search for a satisfactory solution, I have made appointments with all the reputed dentists in town. Visited each one of them. Punctually. More than once too. Even in the adjoining areas. And I have learnt my lesson.

Firstly, I have learnt that equality of sexes is a myth. Young ladies are far superior to men. They are better dentists. They are never stinking of sweat. They are caring, gentle and affectionate. Somehow, even the pain at their hands is less painful.

Secondly, my job requires me to sit silently and listen patiently. It is an unavoidable professional hazard. Even at home the position is no different. Having been married for three decades and four years. I have found that silence is the secret of happiness. Thus, I usually keep quiet. The visit to the lady dentist provides some relief. It is a pleasant change to hear the lady say, “Please open your mouth. A little more please. I hope, I am not hurting you. It is almost done. You are such a sweetheart. You do not fuss at all. See it is all finished. The tooth is yours. It should not trouble you anymore. Eat what you like.”

All in all, the pain at her hands is less painful. So it feels.

The glitzy side of the star city

by Tavleen Singh

EVERY time I come to Mumbai from the docks I am left feeling that I have come to another country. In China, when the Communist government decided to adopt more capitalist ways they opened up the country in bits and pieces. Certain provinces developed faster because they became capitalist quicker but we in India sneer at this approach and take pride in the fact that we will all either sink with places like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar or swim with them, if they ever learn. But, Bombay — everyone still calls it that despite the Shiv Sena’s renaming — seems to have escaped into its own stratosphere.

True, that on its streets, sleeping under bits of sacking and plastic, you encounter some of the poorest people in India, many from UP and Bihar, but instead of infecting the city with their degradation and poverty they seem to get infected by it. Even in the vast, hideous slum colonies, where more than half Mumbai’s population lives, you see hope amid misery —something you never see on the pavements of Calcutta.

On this visit, though, I did not want to see slums or poverty. The election campaign had treated me to enough of those and coming to Mumbai as I did, with images of Rampur and Moradabad still vivid in my head, I wanted to see the city’s more glamorous side.

The Times party at the Taj Mahal Hotel was a good beginning. There were so many people that it seemed as if the whole of Mumbai had been invited. Malavika Sanghvi, the paper’s glamorous editor, had managed to put together an electric mix so there were movie stars, writers, artists, musicians, bit and small businessmen and few ordinary people as well.

Ordinary people like us wandered about gawking at the likes of Amitabh Bachchan, Shatrughan Sinha and other ageing stars of Bollywood. In fact, if the truth be told, everyone seemed to have come not to have fun but to gaze at the stars. Some did so unabashedly. Others, like the wives of big businessmen, did it slyly when their husbands weren’t looking. These wives, themselves were a sight to see. They wore clothes made by the best designers in Europe and diamonds the size of pigeon eggs on their fingers. They talked, with the vulgarity of the very new rich, about the sort of things that made it clear that they were very, very rich indeed, just in case you had not noticed. Expensive names seemed to fall out every time they opened their mouths. So, there was a lot of Cartier, Armani, Bulgari, Chateau la Tour, etc.

This fascination with expensive foreign brand names appears to have filtered into Mumbai’s middle classes as well. My travels around the city took me to its newest, swankiest department store, Crossroad. The friend who took me said that one of its interesting features was that a car elevator could take your car up to a parking lot on the terrace. I did not get to see this because there was enough room for our car in the basement. We then wandered through a food court dominated by McDonalds, bursting at the seams with lunch-time clientele. There were women veiled, Islamic style, who lifted their veils delicately to tuck into their big Macs and there were children in jeans and T-shirts who gorged on French fries and ketchup.

Escalators took us up to the department store. Foreign brand names were everywhere. You can buy crystal made by Swarovski, skincare and hair products made by L’Oreal, Levi jeans, Lacoste, T-shirts and sportswear by Reebok and Nike. By the standards of the other cities, Crossroad is a tacky, little department store. It would be completely ignored in Hong Kong, Singapore or even Bangkok but in Mumbai it is a major attraction because it is the first of its kind in India.

A businessman friend invited me to the annual general meeting of his company. If I had never seen a Bombay AGM before, he said, then I should make it a point to come because it would give me a glimpse into another aspect of the city. The meeting was in a large, air-conditioned hall in the Indian Merchants Chamber building. All around me sat middle-class people who poured seriously over the company’s balance sheet and annual report. There were old ladies in flared frocks and cheap slippers. They carried large bags and seemed to be looking for food. “They go to every AGM in the city” my friend whispered “and they collected the cans of Coke and snacks that they are served”.

He explained that most of the people in the hall were small shareholders but they liked coming to the annual general meeting because it gave them a sense of importance. After the chairman made his speech and gave an account of the company’s performance in the past year several little, old men took turns at going up for the podium to express their views and ideas. They questioned the chairman about specific projects and asked about little financial details that would have escaped the attention of any but the most diligent. One little old lady who gushed about “our handsome chairman, who is like the moon whose light dims that of even the stars”. Then proceeded to request him to pay higher dividends in the millennium.

After an hour of similar speeches “our handsome chairman” duly replied to the questions he had been asked and the shareholders disappeared quietly into the Churchgate crowds to go, perhaps, to their next AGM of the day. I found myself wondering whether there was another city in India where ordinary people played the stock exchange the way they clearly do here.

Later, as I mingled with the crowds on Marine Drive and watched a silver-gold sun set on the rusty grey waters of Arabian Sea I found myself wondering what it was about Mumbai that made it so different from other Indian cities.

Commerce or energy? It’s hard to say but what can be said with certainty is that this city escaped the socialist contagion that made most of the rest of India view money and prosperity with a jaundiced eye. Mumbai celebrates wealth and prosperity in a way no other Indian city does which is probably why there is hope even in its slums. It has been no more fortunate for its politicians as we can see from its slums and shanties but, somehow, its spirit of commerce gives it a special kind of energy. In these days when economic reforms are so much in the air we would do well to learn a few lessons from the city on the sea.

Making haste, but slowly

by Amita Malik

A NUMBER of interviews have appeared with the new Minister for Information and Broadcasting since Mr Arun Jaitley took office. And I think the best was rather aptly on television, a medium which seems to suit Mr Jaitley’s personality — he is young, personable, relaxed and articulate. But it was more than that. Vir Sanghvi, who interviewed Mr Jaitley on Star Plus, knew what questions to ask because he has also been at the media game, both on and off the screen, for some time and avoided the usual cliche approach. In the event, one found Mr Jaitley was not going to make any brash pronouncements, pontificate or even air his own ideas like some of his loudmouth predecessors who seemed to know exactly what to do with the media even before stepping into Shastri Bhavan. On everything, including the Broadcasting Bill, which is very much on the cards, Mr Jaitley was cautious. And one got the feeling, especially when he mentioned that members of the Prasar Bharati Board should not be politically committed people, that within the constraints of election manifestos and conflicting interests, Mr Jaitley believes in freedom of expression and some degree of autonomy for the government media. But he will have a tough job doing a balancing act. The professional staff in the broadcast media need building up of confidence and encouragement, and there are many good people who have been pushed around. While upstarts from other government media, notably the Press Information Bureau, have got all the plums. The recent disgraceful last-minute postings for AIR correspondents abroad by Mr Mahajan, including such esoteric places as Pretoria, seem to have been reserved for people who have in some cases never broadcast news and who are basically hacks with bureaucratic hang-ups from the government print media. I have seen them in postings abroad, hanging round the Indian Embassy for briefs from the press attache, rather than hunting for genuine foreign news of Indian interest. They are in their element when reporting on the visit of an Indian minister, which they report like a PIB hand-out. They have neither the expertise nor the guts for competitive international reporting.They are also totally unqualified for reporting for Doordarshan, although the correspondents for the BBC and other international media usually report for both radio and TV. I hope Mr Jaitley will give a chance to both AIR and DD’s staff, some of them trained in radio and TV reporting and rid the system of the strange monopoly enjoyed by Information Service staff, unless they opt permanently for radio or TV and undergo proper professional training after undergoing audio, visual and reporting tests.

Another peculiar and highly unprofessional practice arises from the handing out of commissioned programmes to outsiders by the government media. While both AIR and Doordarshan are meticulous about getting contracts signed, followed by a cheque for performing artistes, outside producers blatantly rob performers of their fee. Some say: “Oh, we are badly paid in our contract and can’t afford to pay a fee” or they say blandly: “There is no provision for a fee for artistes” (bar the anchor, who naturally insists on a fee). I have checked, and Mr Jaitley’s legal brain will be more adept than mine, that private producers have, or should have, a slot in their contract called “Fees for artists”. I am told that some include this and then pocket the artiste’s fees themselves, while pleading inability to pay them. Others simply do not have a slot and get away with it. I should not be surprised if putting on artistes without a signed contract (there is also such a thing as a nil contract to avoid illegalities) is not illegal and can lead to all sorts of complications if there is a dispute. I have verified that every performer is entitled to fee, so that paying everyone except the artiste on the part of private producers is a form of exploitation. Unfortunately, some people are so thrilled to go on the telly, that they are even willing to forgo payment. But this is their choice. While VIPs and politicians often willingly forgo a fee, they are still entitled to it. Professionals such as Zohra Sehgal and Roshen Seth always insist on a fee, and well they should. Because if people give of their professional time and their expertise, they are surely entitled to payment. I hope Mr Jaitley will ensure that every contract with Doordarshan’s commissioned programmers, at least, will have a proper and permanent clause for fees for artistes. Those private channels which also follow this unfair and undesirable practice will then have to follow suit.

75 YEARS AGO

October 30, 1924
India and Independent Labour

IN the midst of the prevailing gloom the message of sympathy and support which a branch of the Independent of the Independent labour party has sent to Mahatma Gandhi is bound to have a slightly reassuring effect.

“We” says the message “have watched with great interest the efforts of the Swaraj Movement in India to obtain political freedom and wish to assure you that, together with a considerable section of the British public, we have the utmost sympathy with your aims and admiration for your methods.”

The message adds that the party is ashamed of the treatment which the Mahatma and his movement have received from the Government and completely dissociates itself from such misuse of authority.

The utterance has almost the same ring of sincerity as the famous address which certain members of the two Houses of Parliament, headed by Burke, presented to the American Colonists in the hour of America’s trouble.