Tag Archive for ‘Politics’ at Asian Window

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Tag Archive for 'Politics'

The Thackerays’ primitive charisma

Published

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on February 20, 2010

in India and Politics

. 0 Comments

Aakar Patel in Mint-Lounge:

Bal Thackeray

Politicians respond to constituencies. Their positions are deliberate.

What is the Thackerays’ constituency? Mumbai’s Marathis, whom the Thackerays speak for.

Congress does not represent Marathis in Mumbai, and they have surrendered this space politically to the Thackerays. This can be seen in their organizational structure

Neither the Mumbai regional Congress committee’s president Kripashankar Singh nor its treasurer Amarjit Singh is Marathi.

Of Mumbai Congress’ 18 vice-presidents, 12 are not Marathi. Of its 19 general secretaries, 13 are not Marathi. Of its 13 secretaries, eight are not Marathi. Of its seven executive members, none is Marathi.

Of Congress’s seven members of Parliament from Mumbai, six are not Marathi.

Of its 17 MLAs, 12 are not Marathi. Of its two housing board chairmen, neither is Marathi.

This surrender hasn’t come because Congress does not want Marathi votes, but because it cannot get them. Congress is inclusive by nature and cannot offer Mumbai’s Marathi what the Thackerays can, which is anger and resentment. More:

Shah Rukh Khan vs Shiv Sena

Published

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on February 12, 2010

in India, Movies, Politics, Religion, Sport and environment

. 1 Comment

Update: Mumbai calls Sena bluff as movie opens to full house

Multiplex chains in Mumbai will have only a limited release of Shah Rukh Khan’s new film “My Name Is Khan” following threats of violence by the ultra Hindu-nationalist Shiv Sena party. As things stood on Friday noon, single-screen theatres will not show the movie.

Bal Thackeray, the leader of the party, has warned that he will not allow the movie to be released unless the actor apologises for opposing the party’s call to boycott Pakistani cricket players.

Shah Rukh Khan is the owner of the Kolkata Knight Riders Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket team. He had said Pakistani stars should be included in the Indian Premier League teams. Shiv Sena supporters say that Pakistani players are not welcome in the city after the 2008 terror attacks.

Thousands of police were guarding Mumbai’s cinemas on Friday.

The movie is a classic love story set in the US after the 11 September 2001 attacks, and the Times of India’s critic has given it a rare five-star rating:

Ok, let’s get this straight from the very beginning. It’s Khan, from the epiglotis (read deep, inner recesses), not `kaan’ from the any-which-way, upper surface. In other words, it’s the K-factor — Karan (Johar) and Khan (Shah Rukh) — like you’ve never seen, sampled and savoured before. My Name is Khan is indubitably one of the most meaningful and moving films to be rolled out from the Bollywood mills in recent times. It completely reinvents both the actor and the film maker and creates a new bench mark for the duo who has given India some of the crunchiest popcorn flicks.

The dupatta: More than a covering

Published

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on January 25, 2010

in Culture and Pakistan

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Aamna Haider Isani in Dawn:

Interestingly, in the early years after Partition, the dupatta’s symbolism was more national than religious. For example, the uniform of the Pakistan Women’s National Guard that was formed during the Kashmir War included a dupatta. ‘Since Pakistan was a Muslim state, the dupatta was naturally part of the uniform. However, it was just a sash across the torso…a starched V-shaped dupatta,’ recalls former Sergeant Abeeda Abidi in an interview with the Citizens Archive of Pakistan. Clearly, this sash was meant to be more of a comment than a covering.

The years that followed saw leaders such as Fatima Jinnah and Begum Rana Liaquat Ali Khan enter politics. Unlike their female predecessors in the armed forces, these women made public appearances with their heads covered with a dupatta, which was deciphered as a symbol of modesty. Since they had set the trend, women who stepped into politics in subsequent decades were expected to follow suit.

In 1966, the uniform for the PIA airhostesses, designed by Paris-based fashion sensation Pierre Cardin, also included scarf-like dupattas over graceful tunics. In this incarnation, the dupatta was viewed more as an attractive accessory than a symbol of Muslim womanhood.

Although a dupatta has always been part of the attire of female politicians of this predominantly Muslim state since the beginning, trends among the masses have been slightly different. It was only in the late 1950s that the dupatta became an integral part of the urban-middle-class woman’s outfit. Before then, some women wore burqas and chadors. But younger women who were looking for some form of covering increasingly opted for dupattas as they proved to be a less stringent alternative. More:

[Image: Dawn]

Following the leader, in this world and after

Published

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on September 12, 2009

in Culture and Society

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At least 60 persons either committed suicide or died of shock after hearing the news of Chief Minister YSR Reddy’s death in a chopper crash. Suicide on the tragic death of a revered figure has a psychological and cultural context, writes psychoanalyst and novelist Sudhir Kakar in the Times of India:

Sudhir Kakar

Two recent deaths Michael Jackson in June from an overdose of drugs and Andhra Pradesh chief minister YSR Reddy this month in a helicopter crash have led to a number of suicides: the pop star’s fans in one case and the leader’s followers in the other. The world had witnessed a similar spate of suicides after Princess Diana’s death in a car accident. Such large-scale suicides are very different from mass suicides in apocalyptic cults where a megalomaniac leader brainwashed his followers into embracing death, elevating the subconscious fantasy of ‘dying together’ into the highest goal of life. Jonestown in Guyana, where in 1978 the cult leader Jim Jones led 900 people into a mass suicide, is the most chilling example.

Suicides following the death of a folk hero or a leader who has attained that status are also different from Indian farmers killing themselves because they found themselves in a hopeless situation. Suicides in the wake of a folk hero’s tragic, and dramatic, death invite us to reflect on the particular nature of the bond between the leader and his followers that lead some of the followers to take the extreme step of ending their own lives.

If i had to speculate about the suicidal followers of YSR, i would say their connection to him had become their most significant attachment, that they had no other human bonds except to the leader. Significant attachments make a fundamental contribution to our sense of identity and self-esteem, their loss plunging us into despair. Attachment to YSR also gave a meaning to his followers’ lives. Someone has said that although the central human fear is fear of death, the fear of having lived a life without significance or meaning may be even more important. More:

A school bus for Shamsia

Published

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on August 21, 2009

in Afghanistan

. 0 Comments

Dexter Filkins, the author of “The Forever War,” in the New York Times Magazine:

Even before the men with acid came, the Mirwais Mena School for Girls was surrounded by enemies. It stood on the outskirts of Kandahar, barely 20 miles from the hometown of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder. Just down the road from the school, in an area known as Old Town, residents had built a shrine to Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban commander with the fiercest reputation, who made his name by massacring members of the Hazara minority. He was killed in an American-led operation in 2007. Also nearby sat the Sarposa Prison, where, in June 2008, Taliban fighters and suicide bombers attacked, freeing more than a thousand criminals and comrades. The area around the Mirwais Mena School is the Taliban heartland. Teaching girls to read was not something that would escape their notice. Across the country, the Taliban have made the destruction of schools, particularly schools for girls, a hallmark of their war.

The Mirwais Mena School – L-shaped, cement, two stories, with canvas tents donated by the United Nations – was built in 2004 with a grant from the Japanese government. A plaque out front gives the date; it hangs on the 10-foot-high cement wall built to shield the students. Kandahar’s Mirwais Mena neighborhood sits just off the national highway. A rutted mud path called Panjwai Road cuts through the center of the neighborhood and up an outcropping of bare rock that rises 500 feet. A single electrical wire runs into Mirwais Mena from a pole along the highway; no one can remember the last time it carried any current. More:

Nepal bans airline staff pockets to fight bribes

Published

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on July 1, 2009

in Nepal

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From BBC:

Staff at Nepal’s main international airport are to be issued with trousers without pockets, in an attempt to wipe out rampant bribe-taking.

The country’s anti-corruption body said there had been growing complaints about staff at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan airport.

A spokesman said trousers without pockets would help the authorities “curb the irregularities”.

The move comes after the prime minister of Nepal said corruption was damaging the airport’s reputation, AFP reported. More

Trouble comes in threes

Published

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on March 17, 2009

in Pakistan

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Huma Yusuf in The Indian Express:

The problem with a love triangle is that someone always winds up with a broken heart. As Pakistanis rejoice at the restoration of the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, I can’t help but wonder who will come away broken-hearted from the sordid entanglement that brought Chaudhry, President Asif Zardari, and Pakistan Muslim League leader Nawaz Sharif together in an ill-fated ménage a trois. Flags are waving in the streets of Islamabad and Lahore, music is blaring, congratulatory text messages are being forwarded, and bloggers are beginning to tire of the words “historic day.”

So, is President Zardari the triangle’s victim?

Bangladesh mutiny

Published

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on February 26, 2009

in Bangladesh

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Update: Mutiny ends

A mutiny by Bangladeshi border guards in the capital Dhaka has spread to other towns, threatening to plunge the entire country into chaos two months after emergency rule was lifted. The Guardian has a Q&A on why are Bangladesh’s border guards revolting and what it mean for the newly elected government.

A revolt has been brewing since the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), the official name for the paramilitary units, first called for pay parity with regular soldiers six months ago. The guards feel they are treated as second class citizens; their officers come from the regular army not their own ranks and they do not get paid as much as army troops. More:

And in The Telegraph, Calcutta: It appears the leadership had no inkling of the gathering storm — Hasina, who rode to power on a landslide in December, had only a day earlier taken salute at a parade at the same base.

Ten myths about Pakistan

Published

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on January 4, 2009

in Pakistan

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Mohammed Hanif, the author of “A Case of Exploding Mangoes,” in the Times of India:

Living in Pakistan and reading about it in the Indian press can sometimes be quite a disorienting experience: one wonders what place on earth they’re talking about? I wouldn’t be surprised if an Indian reader going through Pakistani papers has asked the same question in recent days.

Here are some common assumptions about Pakistan and its citizens that I have come across in the Indian media…

Pakistan controls the jihadis: Or Pakistan’s government controls the jihadis. Or Pakistan Army controls the jihadis. Or ISI controls the jihadis. Or some rogue elements from the ISI control the Jihadis. Nobody knows the whole truth but increasingly it’s the tail that wags the dog. We must remember that the ISI-Jihadi alliance was a marriage of convenience, which has broken down irrevocably. Pakistan army has lost more soldiers at the hands of these jihadis than it ever did fighting India.

Musharraf was in control, Zardari is not: Let’s not forget that General Musharraf seized power after he was fired from his job as the army chief by an elected prime minister. Musharraf first appeased jihadis, then bombed them, and then appeased them again. The country he left behind has become a very dangerous place, above all for its own citizens. There is a latent hankering in sections of the Indian middle class for a strongman. Give Manmohan Singh a military uniform, put all the armed forces under his direct command, make his word the law of the land, and he too will go around thumping his chest saying that it’s his destiny to save India from Indians . Zardari will never have the kind of control that Musharraf had. But Pakistanis do not want another Musharraf.

Profile: Sheikh Hasina Wajed

Published

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on January 2, 2009

in Bangladesh

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From Al Jazeera:

Sheika Hasina Wajed, the 61-year-old leader of the left-of-centre Awami League party, has claimed a landslide election victory following the December 29 general election. A consummate survivor, Hasina has overcome myriad corruption and extortion allegations, jail, violence and security threats to lead her country for a second time. More:

And from BBC:

The life of Bangladesh Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina, almost from her childhood, has been characterised by a series of highs and lows. The highs included witnessing as a child her father’s release from imprisonment in Pakistan to become Bangladesh’s first president and her own stint as prime minister in which she was undisputed leader of her country and her Awami League. More:

Death of a salesman and other elite ironies

Published

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on December 6, 2008

in India

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Tarun J Tejpal in Tehelka:

What the Indian elite is discovering today on the debris of fancy eateries is an acidic truth large numbers of ordinary Indians are forced to swallow every day. Children who die of malnutrition, farmers who commit suicide, dalits who are raped and massacred, tribals who are turfed out of centuryold habitats, peasants whose lands are taken over for car factories, minorities who are bludgeoned into paranoia – these, and many others, know that something is grossly wrong. The system does not work, the system is cruel, the system is unjust, the system exists to only serve those who run it. Crucially, what we, the elite, need to understand is that most of us are complicit in the system. In fact, chances are the more we have – of privilege and money – the more invested we are in the shoring up of an unfair state.

IT IS time each one of us understood that at the heart of every society is its politics. If the politics is third-rate, the condition of the society will be no better. For too many decades now, the elite of India has washed its hands off the country’s politics. Entire generations have grown up viewing it as a distasteful activity. In an astonishing perversion, the finest imaginative act of the last thousand years on the subcontinent, the creation and flowering of the idea of modern India through mass politics, has for the last 40 years been rendered infra dig, déclassé, uncool. Let us blame our parents, and let our children blame us, for not bequeathing onwards the sheer beauty of a collective vision, collective will, and collective action. In a word, politics: which, at its best, created the wonder of a liberal and democratic idea, and at its worst threatens to tear it down.

Burma eats its young

Published

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on November 24, 2008

in Burma

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George Packer in the New Yorker:

In a just world, the names Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi would be as well known as Steve Biko and Adam Michnik. These two leaders of Burma’s 88 Generation students, now in their forties, have spent almost their entire adult lives in prison for organizing pro-democracy demonstrations. After a short period of freedom, between 2005 and 2007, they and their colleagues were jailed again for staging a long walk around Rangoon, in August of 2007, in protest of soaring transportation prices-a gesture that sparked the so-called Saffron Revolution, the largest demonstrations in Burma since 1988, both times put down in blood.

After Aung San Suu Kyi, these two men are the leaders of Burma’s democracy movement, and a source of intense admiration and inspiration among the young Burmese I met on two trips there earlier this year. Ko Ko Gyi is the political strategist of the movement; Min Ko Naing is its charismatic soul. A friend who met Min Ko Naing after his release in 2005 told me how the former prisoner shed tears as he described the death of his only cellmate, a cat. Other Burmese and Americans speak of Min Ko Naing as having a special glow that raises him above the ordinary run of humanity. But because of Burma’s obscurity, the rest of the world has never heard of them.

China, India set to be leading powers by 2025: US intelligence

Published

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on November 21, 2008

in Economy

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IANS report in the Times of India:

China and India are likely to emerge atop a multipolar international system as the US economic and political clout declines over the next two decades, according to US intelligence agencies projections.

Not only will new players – Brazil, Russia, India and China – have a seat at the international high table, they will bring new stakes and rules of the game, said the National Intelligence Council analysis “Global Trends 2025- A Transformed World” released on Thursday.

The whole international system, as constructed following the Second World War, will be revolutionised, said the report based on a global survey of experts and trends by US intelligence analysts.

Click here to read Globa Trends 2025: The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project

Al Qaeda’s Appeal to Falter

From the New York Times:

A new study of the global future by American intelligence agencies suggests that Al Qaeda could soon be on the decline, having alienated Muslim supporters with indiscriminate killing and inattention to the practical problems of poverty, unemployment and education.

While not contradicting intelligence assessments suggesting that Al Qaeda remains a major threat with a strong presence in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the report says that the group “may decay sooner” than many experts have assumed because of severe weaknesses: “unachievable strategic objectives, inability to attract broad-based support and self-destructive actions.”

A tryst with Nehru

Published

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on November 16, 2008

in Books

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Walter Crocker’s Nehru: A Contemporary’s Estimate, first published in 1966, has been reissued by Random House recently with a foreword by historian Ramachandra Guha. A review in Mint-Lounge:

In August 1964, three months after the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Australian scholar and diplomat Walter Crocker, who had spent several years of the Nehru era in India, sat down to distil his memories into a book that he called “a contemporary’s estimate” of the late prime minister. An assessment of the life and career of a man so recently departed, a man whose policies were still current and about whom history had not yet made up its mind, required an unusual degree of confidence on the part of the writer. But Crocker had seen Nehru from up close, both politically and in a personal capacity, and he was confident of the authority he claimed. “The historians of the future will know more of the documents,” he acknowledged, “but not Nehru himself nor the men who figure in the documents.”

And in Hindustan Times,TV commentator Karan Thapar asked Minister of Panchayati Raj Mani Sha kar Aiyar, columnist Swapan Dasgupta, historian Ramachandra Guha and Business Standard editor TN Ninan how much India owes its first Prime Minister.

KT: Ram Guha, there is something that Crocker couldn’t have foreseen but which Indians are only too aware of today – the fact that for many Indians, the most enduring legacy that Nehru left behind is the Gandhi family. Would he have been proud of the fact that his daughter, his grandson, his grand-daughter-in-law and perhaps even his great-grandson have achieved the pinnacle of power? Or would he have been embarrassed and even disapproving?

Ramachandra Guha: I think he would have been deeply embarrassed. As the journalist Frank Moraes said in 1960, “The creation of a dynasty is wholly inconsistent with Nehru’s career and character. The dynasty was created by Indira Gandhi through an accident – the six Congress bosses who chose her as Prime Minister thought they could manipulate her. They were proved horrendously wrong. So it’s important in assessing Nehru to separate him from what followed later. One major difference between Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and so on, is that in Nehru’s time, and with Nehru’s encouragement, the Congress Party was a properly democratic organisation. Nehru could not impose Chief Ministers on states; Nehru could not impose presidents on the Congress. It was a thriving, decentralised, democratic organisation. So the answer to your question is clear: Nehru would have been deeply embarrassed by the fact that his party has become captive to the interests of a single family.

In world’s most corrupt nation…

Published

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on November 14, 2008

in Bangladesh

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Jeremy Page reports from Dhaka in the Times:

The political rivalry between Begum Khaleda Zia, left, and Sheikh Hasina Wajed has polarised Bangladeshi society.

Political rivals Begum Khaleda Zia, left, and Sheikh Hasina Wajed. See story below

How many people does it take to fix a broken lavatory in the most corrupt nation on earth? The answer, according to the Bangladesh Telecommunications Company, is 126.

To move some files from one cabinet to another? It takes 256, to judge by the same state-run company’s accounts. In both cases the workers were paid – even though they never existed.

Just two examples of the endemic graft that earned Bangladesh – condemned as a “basket case” by Henry Kissinger in 1971 – the insult of being rated the world’s most corrupt nation from 2000 to 2005.

Also in the Times: Bangladesh’s mortal enemies prepare to talk – but about what?

Indian newspaper endorses a US presidential candidate

Published

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on October 31, 2008

in India and Media

. 0 Comments

In a first of its kind, a newspaper in India has formally endorsed a US presidential candidate. Mint, a business daily published in partnership with the Wall Street Journal, is backing Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama for US president.

In a front-page announcement headlined “Behind Mint’s endorsement,” the newspaper’s editor Raju Narisetti says:

“On the face of it, some of you might think it is unusual -and maybe gimmicky- for a newspaper whose readers live 11,977km away from the White House to issue an endorsement.

“We are weighing in because we believe that what happens in this election has a critical bearing on India and the rest of the world- for good or bad-in light of the ongoing financial turmoil that started in America.” More:

In its leader endorsing Obama, Mint says:

“We believe the world’s largest economy-and its political, cultural and intellectual capital- still make America the essential nation. The current economic and stock markets crises, we hope, end up being seen as a transformational crisis because what failed us wasn’t necessarily free markets, something Mint has proudly stood for since its own birth, but greed abetted by a failure of transparency. The danger, as some of our columnists have pointed out in recent weeks, is that the very US-led global financial bailout will make some push for a permanent role for governments and bureaucrats in running all aspects of many economies. When those voices become as loud and irrational as those bullish voices that created the crisis, America, we think, will again have to play a vital role in shaping that global debate, just as the US government acted quickly and decisively-while many governments, including that of India, just talked-once the magnitude of the current problem was clear. This is vital because the past few weeks have clearly shown how interlinked we all are, no matter where one lives.”

And it concludes:

“On the day of his party nomination, Obama also said, “It’s time for us to change America.” We believe President Obama has the potential to do just that.” Click here for more:

Asian Window fully supports Mint’s endorsement and choice of candidate.

Ex-prisoner defeats ‘dictator’ president of Maldives

Published

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on October 30, 2008

in The Maldives

. 0 Comments

Mohamed “Anni” Nasheed, a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, defeated President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in the Maldives’ first democratic presidential election. Gayoom has been the Maldives’ undisputed President for 30 years.

Here’s the Reuters story:

Nasheed’s victory caps a remarkable journey for an activist whose criticism of Gayoom and crusading for democracy saw him charged 27 times and jailed or banished to remote atolls for a total of six years.

“This is a happier day than ever in the history of the Maldives. The Maldives will change, it will have a peaceful government,” said Nasheed, 41, who was just 11 years old when Gayoom took power in 1978. More here, and here

The BBC’s Adam Mynott – who has visited the country many times – has this assessment:

I recorded an interview with Mr Gayoom for the BBC in 2005 when he denied a number of allegations that he had suppressed free speech and thrown political opponents into jail.

International human rights bodies point to a catalogue of opposition figures being incarcerated without trial in the dreaded Maafusi Jail. More:

And click here for the profile of Mohamed Nasheed, the new President-elect of the Maldives.

In world’s largest democracy, tolerance is a weak pillar

Published

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on October 29, 2008

in India

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India is reeling from a rash of religious and ethnic clashes, prompting many in the country to ask why their democracy tends to encourage intolerance. Somini Sengupta in the New York Times:

With national elections only months away, India is reeling from a rash of spiteful religious and ethnic clashes, prompting many in this country to ask why their vibrant, pluralistic democracy tends to encourage, rather than avert, the cruelty of neighbor against neighbor.

Tensions are growing in several corners of the country. The latest dispute was set off in Mumbai last week, when an upstart nativist party claiming to represent Marathas, the dominant ethnic group in the state, pounced on Indians who had come from elsewhere to apply for jobs at Indian Railways.

Want to be heard in India? Form a militia

Published

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on October 24, 2008

in India

. 0 Comments

Anand Giridharadas in International Herald Tribune:

MUMBAI: Not long ago, officials in this seaside megalopolis announced plans to retire taxicabs built before 1983.

This was no radical idea: So withered are Mumbai’s taxis that they must often shut the radio when they need the horsepower to climb a hill.

But one union leader here didn’t like it. Last week he ordered the drivers of 55,000 taxis to strike. A few hundred drivers, needing money, defied him. Strikers smashed dozens of their taxis. Meanwhile, a fleet of newer, air-conditioned taxis, unconnected to the striking union, operated as usual, until mobs attacked its cabs, too. Thousands of officegoers in India’s financial capital were stranded.

Five days later, they were stranded again – but for a different reason. A local ethnic-baiting politician was arrested for inciting violence against north Indian migrants. Followers of his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, or MNS, party flooded the streets hurling stones and bottles, and taxicabs were smashed once again, this time because many are driven by north Indians.

Imran Khan’s bakeries fight Pakistan food crisis

Published

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on September 28, 2008

in Pakistan

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Bronwyn Curran from Lahore in The National:

A baker makes roti at a sasta tandoor run by Imran Khan. Photo: Matthew Tabaccos for The National

Imran Khan, Pakistan’s revered cricket hero who has transformed himself into the country’s angriest politician, forfeited a place in parliament when he boycotted February elections. Now he is doing what the crisis-burdened government is failing to: feeding the poor.

In depressed urban neighbourhoods of the Punjab, Pakistan’s most populated province, Mr Khan’s party, Tehreek-e-Insaf, has begun operating sasta tandoors (cheap tandoor bakeries), selling fresh roti and nan from traditional tandoor ovens for less than half the market rates.

15 people the next US President should listen to

Published

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on September 24, 2008

in Leaders

. 0 Comments

Wired magazine has a “Smart List of 15 Wired people” it says the next president should listen to. These 15 are “the best minds” on climate change, the military, space exploration, democracy, global health, terrorism, China and India. They have “big ideas about how to fix the things that need fixing.” The list includes:

Jagdish Bhagwati: As the world’s preeminent globalization buff, Jagdish Bhagwati doesn’t toe standard party lines. The Columbia University economist, 74, who has advised everyone from the Indian government to the World Trade Organization, is a rare nonpartisan in a field dominated by ideologues. A registered Democrat who is willing to face down the anti-free-trade wing of his own party, Bhagwati is also comfortable arguing against what he sees as the compassion-free laissez-faire attitude exhibited by many of his fellow globalization advocates.

Parag Khanna: In his book The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, Khanna, 31, describes a planet dominated by a trio of superpowers: the US, China, and Europe. In this tripolar era, America’s fate depends on tough national choices, not lame historical analogies. If the US wises up – by tightening trade and energy ties to the rest of the hemisphere, pursuing economic innovation at home, and establishing a “diplomatic-industrial complex” – it can grow stronger even as the globe becomes less red, white, and blue.

Ram Shriram: In the face of terrorism, global warming, and economic stagnation, spectrum policy may not seem like a top presidential priority. But it ought to be. Ram Shriram, a venture capitalist who helped fund Google a decade ago, says wireless carriers are hamstringing the mobile industry. He advocates opening the airwaves – and even mounted an (unsuccessful) bid on a chunk of radio spectrum in January. What’s at stake? “The greatest wave of innovation since the PC-platform era.”

In India, the paradox of ‘choice’ in a globalized culture

Published

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on September 12, 2008

in India and Politics

. 0 Comments

Anand Giridharadas in International Herald Tribune:

A worker removing English signage in Mumbai on Aug. 26. (AP photo)

Mumbai: A decade ago, the world hurtled toward a calendrical crisis, and India seized an opportunity.

An affliction called the Y2K bug impended. Thousands of Indian techies were marshaled to repair the software glitch. The rest is outsourcing history.

The outsourcing boom craved English speakers. Hole-in-the-wall “academies” from Kerala to Punjab began to sell English classes for a few dollars a week. A colonizer’s language was recast in the minds of many young lower-income Indians as a language of liberation, independence and mobility.

A decade hence, Indians who have achieved that mobility may struggle to understand the newspaper headlines in Mumbai in recent days. They tell of brigades of young men shattering the windows of shops and restaurants whose signs declare their names only in English, not in the regional language Marathi.

Family feud: The battle for Bhutto’s legacy

Published

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on August 31, 2008

in Pakistan

. 0 Comments

Asif Zardari may have emerged as winner but Bilawal, Bakhtawar and Aseefa are pitched against cousins Fatima, Zulfikar Junior and Sassui. The saga will continue, says Anjum Niaz in Dawn:

Mumtaz Ali Bhutto

There is a background to Mumtaz Bhutto’s fiery dissent. He was a founding member of the PPP. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto made him famous in his 1971 maiden address to the nation on PTV by calling him his “talented cousin” who had gone to Oxford. He appointed him the governor and later the chief minister of Sindh. Come 1984 and the daughter of ZAB (Zulfikar Ali Bhutto) sacks him.

“She felt threatened,” says Mumtaz. “Benazir was power hungry and willing to make alliances with her father’s murderers, opportunists and hypocrites. When I objected, she told me to leave the party.”

During his 18 month exile in London, Mumtaz set up the Sindh Baloch and Pashtun Front. “We had a one point agenda – to set up a confederation according to the Pakistan Resolution.” Sadly the Front fizzled out and Benazir returned to Pakistan as a heroine.

Pakistan waits as Bhutto clan trade blows

Benazir’s husband hopes to become President next weekend, but he faces bitter opposition from within the family. Omar Waraich from Islamabad in The Independent:

Asif Ali Zardari is poised to become President of Pakistan next weekend after inheriting the political mantle of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated last December. But he faces bitter opposition from within the country’s pre-eminent political dynasty.

Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, Benazir’s great-uncle and head of the Bhutto clan, told The Independent on Sunday last week that the prospect of Mr Zardari becoming President was the latest in a series of tragedies to afflict the family – and Pakistan. “It’s unfortunate for the country, and … for the party that a man of his background should become … President,” he said. “He is totally corrupt and utterly illiterate … If he becomes the next President, what will be left of this country?”

Musharraf’s three pluses

Published

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on August 30, 2008

in Pakistan

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Pervez Musharraf was the victim of the success of his own liberal policies, writes Mushahid Hussain, secretary general, Pakistan Muslim League (Q), in Tehelka:

Mushahid Hussain

IT WAS September 2004. General Pervez Musharraf had made a public commitment in December 2003 that he would take off his uniform by December 2004. I was woken by my son well past midnight: “Baba, the President wants to speak to you”. General Musharraf came on the line, and quickly came to the point. I could hear a popular Lata number from the 1960s. He said, “Mushahid, tell me, what is the worst case scenario if I decide not to take off my uniform?” I said I would discuss it over lunch the next day. My meeting with him took place in the presence of Tariq Aziz, his most trusted confidant and his main back-channel negotiator with India. My thrust was two-fold: a lesson from the past and what could happen in the future. While strongly advocating that he take off his uniform – a view endorsed by Tariq Aziz as well – I told him, “Please remember what happened to your three military predecessors – Field Marshal Ayub Khan, General Yahya Khan, and General Zia ul-Haq. In the end, all three were ditched by their own colleagues in the military after the ground realities changed. The institution of the army is bigger then any individual. I do not want this to happen to you – that you outlive your welcome.”

I also told him, if you choose to renege on your commitment, then you will end up making the mother of all deals with Benazir Bhutto to stay on in power. He listened carefully and then gave a list of reasons why his uniform was necessary in the “supreme national interest”, including the peace process with India and the quest for Kashmir.

End of a Beginning

Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, in Time magazine:

Pervez Musharraf

As a Pakistani, pleased though I am by Pervez Musharraf’s resignation as President, I cannot but fear that this week’s celebrations could prove to be short-lived. Yes, his departure will make Pakistan more democratic and was long overdue. But it will not in itself cure the myriad ills facing the country.

Musharraf’s legacy is a mixed one. Like many Pakistanis, I was appalled when he seized control of Pakistan in 1999. Pakistan had stagnated in the 1990s under the bickering and incompetent elected governments of Benazir Bhutto and her rival Nawaz Sharif. But I recalled the damage done by the oppressive dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s and had no desire to see Pakistan revert to military rule.

[via 3quarksdaily]

Long live democracy until the next dictator

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on August 23, 2008

in Pakistan

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What does the future hold for Pakistan? Ayesha Siddiqa, author of Military Inc, spins four different political scenarios which could hold the key to a stable democracy. From Tehelka:

“Ma’am, are you happy with this decision?” was what the makeup woman at the GEO television channel asked me on President Pervez Musharraf’s resignation. The uncertainty in her voice brought home to me the fact that there was no consensus on the future of the country now that the greatest challenge to democracy, as official voices from Islamabad claimed, was gone. She did not even belong to the chattering classes of Islamabad – she was just an ordinary women asking a simple question, answering which in today’s Pakistan is a sobering experience.

Since Musharraf took over in October 1999, he had been claiming that he had turned the country around. In his resignation speech on August 18, he claimed that the economy was in good shape, showing a seven percent GDP growth rate, Pakistan has been declared part of the Next-11 states to show signs of rapid development, and was now taken seriously by international players. His development indicators were the increase in the number of mobile phones, cars and motorcycles. Yet, people were out on the streets distributing sweets and dancing at his departure. Ironically, in 1999 the same people had welcomed the ouster of the Nawaz Sharif regime by Musharraf.

Is something wrong with Pakistanis? Can they not make up their minds about whether they like a military dictatorship or democracy? Are Pakistanis not capable of handling democracy?

After Musharraf, U.S. Struggles to Find New Pakistan Ally Against Taliban

In the New York Times, Jane Perlez analyses the situation in Pakistan:

With Mr. Musharraf out of power, recent visitors to the United States Embassy here say American officials have been at a loss – one used the word “struggling” – to figure out who America should throw its weight behind.

On Friday, the country’s biggest party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, said it was nominating its leader, Asif Ali Zardari, for president, a post he may end up winning in an electoral college vote scheduled for Sept. 6.

That could make Mr. Zardari America’s default ally, though the next president’s full range of powers, and his commitment and ability to fight the Taliban insurgency, as Washington would like, are far from clear.

Musharraf’s long goodbye

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on August 13, 2008

in Pakistan

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The president must recognise that Pakistan cannot afford more instability. Going gracefully, will, at least, bring him some respect. Hassan Abbas in The Guardian:

Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan stands virtually alone today while facing the most serious challenge to his presidency: possible impeachment by the new democratically-elected government.

The potential charges are serious: conspiring to destabilise the government that was elected last February, unlawfully removing the country’s top judges in November 2007, and failing to provide adequate security to Benazir Bhutto before her assassination last December. Allying himself with the Bush administration has increased his unpopularity, especially following missile attacks by the US in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Despite earlier differences over how to deal with Musharraf, Pakistan’s leading political parties are now united against him. Feuding between the Pakistan People’s party, led by Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, and the Pakistan Muslim League (N), led by Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister, had given Musharraf a chance to regain some standing after his allies were defeated in the February elections. American reluctance to abandon Musharraf – together with prolonged electricity shortages, which made the new government appear incompetent – also raised his hopes.

It’s curtains for Musharraf

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on August 11, 2008

in Pakistan

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Najam Sethi, editor of the Friday Times and Daily Times in Lahore, Pakistan, in The Wall Street Journal:

Pervez Musharraf

After months of prevarication, the Pakistani government, led by Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, has finally decided to impeach President Pervez Musharraf. Although a fighting man, Mr. Musharraf is expected to quit within the week. He doesn’t have enough parliamentary backing to thwart the move, and the army and America, his main sources of support, have abandoned him in the face of popular pressure.

The government has been mulling this move for months. Mr. Zardari, of the People’s Party of Pakistan (PPP), and Mr. Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), both hate the president for political and personal reasons.

Mr. Musharraf ousted Mr. Sharif from power in 1999, exiled him to Saudi Arabia, and only allowed him to return last year to contest the February elections because of Saudi pressure. Mr. Zardari was imprisoned for six years, then permitted to leave the country to join his wife Benazir Bhutto in exile in Dubai. Thanks to American pressure, she was allowed to return last October to contest the elections, and he only returned after she was assassinated in December.

Indians’ worst fear: the honest politician

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on August 1, 2008

in India

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For Indian voters, news of a corruption scandal is a sign of a political system in ruddy good health. It’s honesty we distrust. Arvind Adiga, author of The White Tiger, in The Guardian:

When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered; one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter. My mother, giving me my first lesson in politics, explained that the difference between the two parties was that one party took large bribes and usually did the work that it was bribed for; while the other took equally large bribes – and did not do the work it was bribed for.

Corruption, which does for Indian political life what sex scandals do for western democracies, is once again in the news in New Delhi, where the furore continues over the allegations that bribes – colossal bribes, ranging into the millions of pounds – were paid to some members of parliament in a bid to save the Indian government. After the Communist parties withdrew their support to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, because of his decision to push through a controversial nuclear power deal with the US, his government looked likely to collapse. Yet when parliament met on July 22 to vote on Singh’s future, he survived. A few opposition MPs, at the very last minute, changed their votes in his favour. A Communist leader alleged that the government’s supporters had bought these votes with bribes – he claimed that nearly three million pounds had been paid for each opposition vote. To add to the drama, three MPs smuggled in bags containing nearly a hundred thousand pounds in cash into parliament, and waved the money in front of the gathered journalists, alleging that the money was given to them in a bid to influence their votes. The government has survived, but the furore over the alleged bribes continues to grow by the day, dominating TV and newspaper headlines.

Standing up for your country

Published

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on July 12, 2008

in Pakistan

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Samad Khurram, a Pakistani student at Harvard University, on why he refused to accept an award of academic excellence from United States Ambassador Anne Patterson in Islamabad, Pakistan. From The News:

Continuous air strikes on Pakistani territory and repeated intrusions of Pakistani airspace by US-led coalition forces in stark violation of international norms and customs have troubled Pakistanis across the country. These are very similar to US interventions in the political sphere of our country, where elected leaders are constantly bombarded by the Negropontes and Bouchers of this world. A combination of US geopolitical interests in the region and incompetent leaders unable to say “no” to a global superpower, have seriously undermined Pakistan’s physical and political sovereignty.

It is disgraceful for Pakistanis to have their most important decisions being made in Washington and not Islamabad. Pakistanis, for instance, are vehemently opposed to the unconstitutional actions of Nov 3 by Pervez Musharraf and have rejected him and his King’s Party in the Feb 18 election. A recent poll by the International Republican Institute suggested that 81 percent of Pakistanis want Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry reinstated. Already the compromised political process is unable to function properly and the elected leaders are still unable to fulfil their pre-election promises. When the US constantly praises Musharraf, issues statements calling him a constitutional president, or when the Bouchers and Negropontes try and influence every political decision in this country, it becomes obvious to people just who is pulling the strings in their homeland.

Direct US actions have led to the deaths of many innocent Pakistanis, of the country’s constitution, of rule of law and of the political process in Pakistan.

[via 3quarksdaily]

Sherry Rehman: a veteran woman politician

Published

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on April 3, 2008

in Pakistan and Women

. 3 Comments

A profile of Pakistan’s new information minister from The Post, Pakistan:

Studied art history and politics from Smith College, USA, and University of Sussex, UK, Federal Information Minister Sherry Rahman has a strong family background and belongs to an educated family of Sindh.

Her mother Sabiha Hasan was the first woman director of the State Bank of Pakistan (1980). She was recalled after her retirement to serve as the media advisor to the SBP governor in 1995-96. She recently served as consultant of the SBP.

Sherry Rehman’s father Hassanally A Rahman (1909-1986), a barrister-at-law, was the founder, architect and the first principal of the Sindh Muslim Government Law College, Karachi. Known as a social and community leader, Mr Rahman was the first vice chancellor of Sindh University, Jamshoro, where he served twice as the VC.

And on Wiki:

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