A New Bengali Radicalism?

Ashis Chakravarti, in this Telegraph column, wonders if the Nandigram protests in Kolkata provides 'two simple messages':

'One, Bengal at last perhaps wants an alternative to the CPI(M). Two, the search for it cannot end in a return to the Seventies'

I'm not sure if this is true for all Bengalis, but as an analysis of the change in attitude towards violence among the bhadralok (especially those who had openly embraced militancy during the Naxalite period), the column makes for interesting reading. There's also more to the Ghare Baire reference in the piece than Chakravarti lets on, but that's matter for a different post.

Celebrating ad hoc justice

I've been hearing many positive comments about stuff like this, and the public's reaction to the Rizwanur case in general. The middle class Bengali, tamed to within a shade of domestic felinity, now fully occupies himself with illusions of reclaiming the tiger's mantle. I am reluctant to join in the general enthusiasm for the popular reaction in cases like this, for much the same reason as some have problems with celebrating the 'indomitable spirit of Bombay'. I fear that we are becoming a nation of people who seek justice in the details, for whom instances of individuated claim resolution are sufficient to quench the desire for redressal. Instead of diverting our energies towards systemic reforms, to use such tragic cases as rallying points to press for an end to police impunity in general, we pat ourselves on our back for our candle-lit vigils, and our 'hard-hitting' editorials.

We had found ourselves in a great moral moment last month: we had the opportunity to not let the tragic death of Rizwanur go unatoned, and to use the tremendous groundswell of sentiment to actually press for radical change in the way we are governed. Instead, the CBI files a case against Todi, the CM calls on Rizwanur's family, and we are easily satisfied. Come tomorrow, and it's back to business for us, and for the defunct, dysfunctional bureaucracy which holds us in its thrall. Through our callousness, we are all complicit in the deaths of a thousand Rizwanurs. And no amount of lighting candles is going to change that.

Rethinking West Bengal's caste-free status?

Yogendra Yadav calls the Left Front out for double-speak and hypocritical commitment to rights-talk in this Indian Express op-ed today. Pointing out the inconsistency in the CPM's actions, and it's positioning as "a party that swears by human rights and lofty democratic ideals lies vast hypocrisy", Yadav also notes that Nandigram isn't the first time something like this has taken place in West Bengal:

"The story of Alipurduar goes back to January 10 1987, twenty years before Nandigram. On that day, UTJAS had organised a rally of what they estimated to be about 50,000 people in Alipurduar, the headquarters of Cooch Behar district. As the rally started, they noticed something unusual: The police was nowhere in sight. Soon the rallyists found themselves surrounded by and under attack from the armed cadre of the CPM. The rally was dispersed as unarmed protesters were beaten and chased. The police surfaced, only to arrest the victims, once the party cadre had finished their job.

Note the parallels between Nandigram and Alipurduar: The Party faces a political challenge, decides to nip it in the bud and executes an onslaught in sync with the police and administration. The only difference this time was that there was unexpected resistance. And that an anti-SEZ movement makes more news today than a dalit movement did twenty years ago. There were no Gopal Gandhi or Tanika and Sumit Sarkar then to point out that the emperor had no clothes."

Nothing new here for those who've lived in West Bengal, but what is even more interesting is what follows after:

"This gap between the CPM’s preaching and practice did not surprise me. I have been looking at Christophe Jaffrelot’s research on the social profile of MLAs in India. His analysis shows that the proportion of upper caste MLAs is on the decline all over the country since the 1960s. There is only one exception: In West Bengal the proportion of upper castes has increased in the state assembly after 1977, after the Left Front came to power. A coincidence? Not if you calculate the caste composition of successive Left Front ministries: About two thirds of the ministers come from the top three jatis (Brahman, Boddis, Kayasthas). Perhaps you did not notice that West Bengal was the last major state to come out with an OBC list to implement Mandal. You might say, the CPM believes in class, not caste. Fair enough, but then why is the CPM in Delhi so aggressive about championing Mandal? Why does it present itself as more Mandalite than thou?

Or read the data supplied by the West Bengal government to the Sachar Committee. With 25.2 per cent of Muslim population, the state government has provided just 2.1 per cent of the government jobs to Muslims. West Bengal has the worst record of all Indian states in this respect. Gujarat has just 9.1 per cent Muslims and has 5.4 per cent Muslims among government employees. The irony, of course, is that the CPM was the first party to come out with a statement demanding implementation of the Sachar Report!"

Yadav's conjecture is a serious one, in essence arguing that in spite of the pride it takes in its apparent castelessness and commitment to secular tolerance, the West Bengal government is far worse off in respect of increasing opportunities for Muslims and lower castes than other states, even ones which have a proven track record of ill-treatment of minorities. This also turns much of the received political wisdom about caste and religion in West Bengal on its head, for it challenges the commonly held notion that institutional discrimination against lower castes and Muslims in Bengal is hardly prevalent.

Postscript: More on caste in Bengal:

Anjan Ghosh, "Cast(e) out in West Bengal" (Seminar)
Sandip Bayopadhyay, "Bengal's Caste Prejudices" (The Statesman)
VB Rawat, "Dalits Ask for Justice in West Bengal" (Countercurrents Newsletter)
Sukanta Bhattacharyya, "Caste, Class and Politics in West Bengal: Case Study of a Village in Burdwan", Economic and Political Weekly, January 18, 2003 (noting that, based on the study of data in one village in this district, "the numerical strength of the lower castes and lower classes has been established at the level of panchayat and other organisations. But at the leadership level, concentration of power is found in the hands of the middle peasantry", and further, "At the level of the elected village body one would expect a communist party to have a high percentage of agricultural labourers and poor peasants [Lieten 1992]. My findings show an absence of this group in the party level, which does not signify any radical restructuring of the rural power structure.")

Good old-fashioned whining

Two Harvard-educated Rhodes scholars lay out their tale of great woe and deep misfortune. My heart bleeds for the battering they have had to take at the hands of cruel Fate:

Oxford Blues (do read the comments, they are often more sensible than the rest of the piece)

Moral of the story, don't go to Oxford (or any graduate school) if you are:

a. Ill-prepared for independent work, high expectations, a limited income and poor weather (aka "real life")
b. Can't bear to be away from Mum and Dad holding your hand, paying your bills and cooing to reassure you that everything will be alright
c. (from personal experience) Prone to liver trouble, or other alcohol-related occupational hazards

Dalits at a crossroads

The Frontline runs an interesting analysis of why Dalits still have to face terrible atrocities on a regular basis. Significantly, it provides statistics to show how serious the problem is -

"The 2005 Annual Report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs states that a crime against Scheduled Caste (S.C.) communities is committed every 20 minutes in the country. It records that 26,127 cases of atrocities against S.C communities were reported last year. In 2004, the recorded number of crimes against Dalits was 26,887. The 2005 report states that there were 1,172 cases of rape of Dalit women, 669 cases of murder, 258 cases of kidnapping and abduction and 3,847 cases of causing hurt. There were 291 cases under the Protection of Civil Rights Act and 8,497 cases under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act."

The article notes that this happens in spite of adequate legal provisions for the protection of Dalits against violence and discrimination, and in contrast to the otherwise effective implementation of affirmative action policies -

"Successive governments have brought in legislation and programmes to protect the rights of Dalit communities. The safeguards enshrined in the Constitution stipulate that governments should take special care to advance the educational and economic interests of Scheduled Castes, that untouchability is unacceptable and that all Dalit communities should have unrestricted entry in Hindu temples and other religious institutions. There are political safeguards in the form of reserved seats in State legislatures and in Parliament. The Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, are designed to advance these safeguards. But prejudices die hard.
The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, is considered to be one of the most powerful pieces of legislation of its kind. But its implementation is unsatisfactory. The police, whose ranks are filled with members of the upper castes, are often reluctant to file cases under the Act, which provides for heavy punishment not only for the offenders but also officials who fail to take action. Often, the police take advantage of the victims' ignorance and file cases under the milder Indian Penal Code. Only 8,497 cases of the 26,127 cases registered in 2005 came under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, which clearly shows the trend. Instances of the police refusing to register cases or even to accept complaints are widespread."

Perhaps most interestingly, the article puts a large amount of blame for the culture of toleration for Dalit mistreatment at the feet of Dalit leaders -

"The divided Dalit movement appears to be at a crossroads, with many of its leaders across the country losing their credibility. The "leaderless" violence in Maharashtra, many observers said, was a reflection of this reality. Fakir Bhai Vaghela, vice-chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, pointed out that while violence in any form could not be condoned, it should make Dalit leaders study the sentiments that caused it. "The sense I get is that [the] Dalit masses are getting increasingly upset at politicking between the leaders of the community and they want these leaders to come on a common platform that would advance Dalit interests in a united manner," he told Frontline. A number of small Dalit formations work in distant villages to get grievances redressed at various levels and to bring about a qualitative shift in the Dalit perspective about liberation. It is these groups that keep the flame alive."

One area in which the article does not venture is to examine the link between the hawk eye politicians and political activists keep on the enforcement of affirmative action policies, but the relative complacency they display for the enforcement of civil rights legislation (which are intended to help those Dalits who are truly unempowered). Is the problem of victimised Dalits in India today compounded by problems of class, in addition to the historical social disadvantage they have faced?

Letter against Sec 377

Here's a petition signed by several Indian notables urging abolition of Section 377 of the IPC, which criminalizes "unnatural offences" and provides that

"Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.

Explanation: Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offence described in this section."

Look out for the preface, written by Amartya Sen, who draws an interesting parallel

"(1877), as it happens, was the year in which the American Civil War began, which would ultimately abolish the unfreedom of slavery in America. Today, 145 years later, we surely have urgent reason to abolish in India, with our commitment to democracy and human rights, the unfreedom of arbitrary and unjust criminalization."

A little more eyewash

And now for the UPA government's latest instalment of cosmetic lawmaking. After reservations for OBCs, it is now the turn of cash incentives for marrying beneath one's caste. Apart from the moral concerns involved, continuing to perpetrate caste hierarchies by rewarding upper castes, for example, it is also unclear as to what exactly this "incentive" is meant to achieve. Given that such measures already exist (in Gujarat the same amount is disbursed, with little known effect upon caste discrimination), the effectiveness of this initiative is quite dubious.

For those who take issue with my terming reservations for OBC "cosmetic", please see Dipankar Gupta's outstanding article in the Hindustan Times.

Pakistan in the War on Terror

The NY Times calls Pakistan's involvement in the war on terror "a double-edged sword" (registration required). Noting the involvement of the July 7 bombers with Pakistan, and the gratitude expressed by Blair for the assistance extended by the Pakistani authorities in foiling the recent air terror threat, the article concludes that -

"But for Pakistan, success of this kind is a double-edged word. It allows Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to exhibit the country’s importance as a front-line ally in the global war against terror. But it is also a tacit acknowledgment of what a nexus Pakistan remains for would-be terrorists from halfway across the world."

Questioning whether the failure to combat terror operations from its soil is an intentional failure on the part of Pakistan, the article notes that -

"Still, Pakistani officials say they have been reliable allies against terrorism. It is impossible, they say, to keep tabs on everyone operating in difficult terrain in a country twice the size of California. “So there are maybe 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, or 500 people like this — we don’t know,” said a senior Pakistani official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “Whenever we get information like that, we do get hold of them.”"

There's some more about the exact links some recently apprehended terror suspects had with Pakistan, and how terrorists slip easily into Afghanistan from Pakistan. All in all it's not an earth-shatteringly revelatory piece, but a good place for someone unfamiliar with the issue to get an update on Pakistan's role in the war on terror.

"The Myth of the New India" - NY Times Op-ed

An excellent op-ed piece by Pankaj Mishra in today's New York Times (registration may be required). Calling out the foreign media, and sections of our own, for incessantly crowing about India's financial and economic success, Mishra points out that

"But the increasingly common, business-centric view of India suppresses more facts than it reveals. Recent accounts of the alleged rise of India barely mention the fact that the country's $728 per capita gross domestic product is just slightly higher than that of sub-Saharan Africa and that, as the 2005 United Nations Human Development Report puts it, even if it sustains its current high growth rates, India will not catch up with high-income countries until 2106 (emphasis added)

Nor is India rising very fast on the report's Human Development index, where it ranks 127, just two rungs above Myanmar and more than 70 below Cuba and Mexico. Despite a recent reduction in poverty levels, nearly 380 million Indians still live on less than a dollar a day."

Noting that democracy is the only truly effective redressal mechanism which the people (i.e. the majority of India) have at their disposal is the power of the vote, Mishra also reminds us that

"But the anti-India insurgency in Kashmir, which has claimed some 80,000 lives in the last decade and a half, and the strength of violent communist militants across India, hint that regular elections may not be enough to contain the frustration and rage of millions of have-nots, or to shield them from the temptations of religious and ideological extremism"

Go read it.

Visualizing Development

Google has brought out a new tool which allows you to look at how countries of the world perform on various development indices. It's available here. Once you're done fiddling around with the software (and I'm guaranteeing that you will mess about with it, it's very cool), do a comparative analysis of India, Mexico, South Africa, China and Brazil. Note that on almost all of the indices of development (except economic growth, where it's second, and life expectancy, second last after South Africa) India performs pathetically compared to these nations with whom we are supposedly similarly positioned.

Caste in the Indian Media

Siddharth Varadarajan writes about the upper caste bias in Indian English language media here. It tells a sad story, but I had two reservations (no pun intended) about the piece -

a. It limits its analysis to the English language press. It would be interesting to see if this is a pan-Indian media problem, or limited only to this segment of the journalistic community. While still unfortunate and deplorable, it would not strike me as surprising that the English language media reflected the biases of the majority of their viewers (urban, upper middle-class etc)

b. The bias in reportage could also be explained by the real fear of the media's hiring policies being affected by the government moves on private sector reservation. As it would seem hypocritical to protest against reservations in the private sector, yet represent voices in favour of reservations in education, a broad policy of representing anti-reservation views seems to make sense purely from a selfish perspective.

Go read the piece anyway, it makes a vitally interesting argument.

Reservations: A Civilized Debate

Here is Pratap Bhanu Mehta's letter of resignation from the Knowledge Commission, here's Yogendra Yadav's response, and Mehta's rejoinder. As Dilip D'Souza points out, the exchange is almost unique in the exceptionally polite manner in which it is carried out.

Both the letters agree on a single point - that the new reservations for OBCs are merely an extension of the politics of gimmickery which has come to symbolise affirmative action policy in India today. My position on reservations is here, and this latest drama has done little to change my views, except perhaps to strengthen my objection to reservations of all forms.

Is Calcutta Ugly?

A very strange article in the Telegraph, commenting on efforts to create beautified zones in certain sections of Calcutta. The author asks, first -

"What sort of an eye would find Calcutta beautiful? Some would argue that such a gaze would have to be blinded with love. Or else, foreign enough to find in bad taste and dreariness exotic forms of the postcolonial. There is a certain slant of light in which a garbage heap, a roadside urinal, clouds of exhaust, a shopping mall, NRI apartments, or even a flyover might become radiant with beauty."

Thereby suggesting that s/he has already pre-judged the question of Calcutta's "beauty". S/he then claims that -

"At the core of Bengali public culture lies a form of irredeemable bad taste. This is as evident in the heaped-up gaudiness of the Marble Palace as in the ridiculous statues of regional heroes that have replaced the city’s imperial pantheon."

I don't understand how the Marble Palace, originally conceived as a private pleasure house, rather than a facet of "Bengali public culture" proves the argument (later examples include the New Market, designed by a decidedly non-Bengali architect R Bayney of the East India Railway Company). While one may criticise Bengal (and Bengalis) for a roster of vices, poor cultural taste isn't usually high on that list. In the final paragraph -

"It is surely significant that there has evolved no “Bengal School” of architecture worth speaking of, apart from the still-born Tagorean whimsies in Santiniketan. So that beautifying Calcutta is merely an exercise in conserving its colonial buildings — architecturally, the only good things to have happened to it."

Err, as anyone who's lived in North Calcutta would attest, there are some beautiful houses there, as also schools, University buildings and the like, which could do with some government upkeep, and are just as deserving of praise as the "colonial buildings". Perhaps the author should get out more often?

A Giant Falls

John Kenneth Galbraith is dead. Some of the best obituaries I found honouring him are here -

a. The NY Times' highly comprehensive account of his life
b. A students' perspective
c. A view from inside the Beltway
d. A look back at Galbraith's life
e. The Express on a "good man"

And to get a glimpse into his wonderful mind, see the KSG Forum's "The World According to Galbraith", recorded when he was 93.

The Devil in Delhi

Anjali Puri indulges in some very middle-class soul-searching (assuming middle incomers do have such things as souls) about Delhi in the latest Outlook.

"Political mecca, consumerist haven, now Metro chic... Delhi's all that. But it's also crass, crude and callous, a city sans a soul."

The arguments for this are based on oft-repeated standards -

1. The "maleness" inherent in Delhi's attitude to life, reflected in the treatment of the disabled, and of women
2. The power-hunger which plays out at every level in the city, and the culture of power agglomeration which everyone hates and indugles in at the same time -

"This world revolves on who you know and where you fit, and the disease has long spread to the rest of the capital, where name-dropping is both art form and survival skill. From chowkidars to builders, the city is adept at sorting out its occupants by income, social status and professional standing—to work out how they can be used. Yesterday's objects of desire are taken off guest lists within a day. (Ask Natwar Singh or Brajesh Mishra.) Name plates and visiting cards displaying self-generated titles such as Former Minister, Former MP, Former Principal, Former Chief Justice of India and Retired Ambassador abound. Loss of status is the Delhiite's ultimate nightmare, and he'll hang on to it with bleeding nails, if required"

3. The lack of "cultural manners" among Delhi-ites, and the general lack of sensitivity displayed to fellow users of common spaces

4. All this, combined with its nightmareish urban planning, make it a uniquely unliveable destination for most

"But the lasting image of the Delhi neighbourhood is not the park, but the street, clogged with the signs of the city's growing numbers and affluence...cars, chauffeurs, security guards baking under a summer sun...says writer Mukul Kesavan..."Delhi sometimes feels like a crude boom town—like Topsy, it has 'just growed', but with no settled norms for urban living." Would its citizens help each other, you wonder, if the city was submerged, Mumbai-like, by floods, or run for safety while their neighbours drowned?

The comparisons with other Indian cities are fascinating, of course. Compared to Bombay's significant slum population, for example, how many of Delhi's residents have to live above malfunctioning drains and drink contaminated water every day of their lives? Compared to Bangalore's "invisible" poor, how many Delhi-ites have to live a migrant shifting lifestyle, moving from construction site to site with their families in order to make a living? How many of the South's metropolises can lay claim to accommodating people from all over the country, each to his own greed, with equal opportunity? Once established in Delhi, how many inhabitants are in a mad rush to get out, like Calcutta, where only the dogs aren't potential exiles?

Having spent a significant portion of my life in the city of gin-drinkers, I can vouch for how difficult it all seems to the thresholder of India's elite, with our most valuable izzat being threatened and challenged at every stage. Yet, how much worse is Delhi than other Indian cities its size? Bombay, Chennai, Calcutta and Bangalore have spawned and inspired generations of homegrown creative elites, whose imagery has influenced our perception of these cities. Delhi, a city of permanent migrants, on the other hand has rarely been effectively chronicled by anyone native to it in the recent past. Is it fair to judge Delhi this harshly on our own ignorant biases, then?

A tale of two Indias

Randeep Ramesh manages, on the whole, an excellent brief analysis of the impact of globalisation on India in this article in the Guardian. It is effective when he resorts to data to back up his conclusions

"Globalisation in India has been a broad and brutal process, creating a country in vital and vulgar flux. The bigger the gains in India from open markets, the bigger the disorientating changes. And the Indians who count themselves among the losers from this process easily outnumber the winners. More than 400 million farm workers each earn India just $375 (£230) a year in output. The comparable amount made by the million or so software engineers is $25,000 (£16,000)."

As also a comparison between the fate of the residents of Amby Valley and its surrounding villages

"Just a few hundred kilometres from Aamby Valley, in Vidarbha, the farming belt in eastern Maharashtra, are fields of black soil that once reaped a rich harvest of "white gold", as cotton was known. But the crop has lost its lustre in recent years. The arrival of new pesticides, genetically modified seeds and swanky tractors that soak up increasingly expensive petrol has pushed up the cost of the production. At the same time, India dismantled the wall of duties that kept out foreign cotton as part of its liberalisation drive.

Vidarbha's farmers, unprotected by market controls and tariffs, have to compete with growers from the European Union and US who are subsidised to the tune of billions of dollars a year. The last vestiges of Indian government support were withdrawn a few months ago. The result is that Indian cotton farmers have become impoverished in a few short years. Many have borrowed to stay alive - first from banks and then from usurious moneylenders. Chained in poverty by debts they cannot pay, farmers began to sell first their carts, then their cattle, followed by land and homes. Some offer their kidneys for 100,000 rupees (£1,300).

Others have put up entire villages for sale. The 800 acres of Dorli village in Wardha district, complete with accommodation for 46 families, can be yours for 200m rupees (£2.5m), about the same as three plots in Aamby Valley. "I can negotiate," says Sujata Halule, the 27-year-old elected member of the village council who senses a sale in my questions. "We have no food, no clothes ... dogs live better here now." On the front page of the local newspaper there is a grisly running tally of farmers' suicides in the area: the six-month total on the day I arrive is 348."

Though it is perhaps less effective when it resorts to Arundhati Roy as an authority for its claims

"Roy likens the country's progress to two convoys of trucks: a small group that is on its way to a "glittering destination near the top of world", and a more massive pack that "melts into the darkness and disappears". "A section of India has seceded from the nation," she says. "This project of corporate globalisation has created a constituency of very rich people who are very thrilled about it. They do not care about the hawkers being cleared from the streets or the slums that are disappeared overnight." As she sees it, India is not coming together but coming apart because liberalisation has convulsed the country at an unprecedented, unacceptable velocity. In the cities, the hammer and bulldozer are, often, noisily demolishing slum block after slum block, making way for shiny new apartments. Nowhere is this shift more profoundly felt than in the country's villages where, Roy says, "India does not live. It dies"."

On the whole, definitely worth a read and a few comments.

Forget about Ganguly, Save All India Radio

The true scandal in this Test series is not the omission of Sourav Ganguly, it is the exclusion of All India Radio from broadcasting cricket across the country. As David Hopps points out

'Briefly, the situation is this. When the Indian government allowed commercial radio stations, it gave All India Radio exclusive rights to news coverage. Cricket commentary is classified - dubiously - as news, so only All India Radio can bid for the rights. Nimbus wanted £10m over four years, All India Radio offered much less, so Nimbus has decided the airwaves must remain silent. "It is very sad," said Pradeep, "that the history of the first Sikh to play cricket for England cannot be aired to the far corners of the Punjab."'

'But in Nagpur, All India Radio has been reduced to occasional mock commentary because of a commercial dispute with Nimbus, holder of the rights to cricket in India. Rights-issue disputes are dusty affairs, but this is what the Indian parliament should have been debating yesterday instead of posturing over the comments of Greg Chappell, India's coach, about the former captain Sourav Ganguly in the Guardian.'

And not a word of this in the Indian press...

On the India-US Nuclear Deal

I was feeling quite ambivalent about the India-US nuclear deal. While a part of me was proud at America's recognition of India's unique position in the world, and the generally acceptable way in which we've conducted our foreign affairs, the other part of me wondered if encouraging India to make more use of nuclear energy was the right way to go about doing this. Rep Ed Markey's (D- MA) entry on Huffington Post has convinced me of the folly of the deal. The two most pertinent points of his article are that -

a. India does not need nuclear energy as a reward for good behaviour:

"There is absolutely no need for us to start exempting India from nuclear nonproliferation controls - and sell them nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel that can be made into bombs - under the guise of reducing their energy shortfalls when there are much better alternatives available."

I would agree with this, creating the nuclear option for energy production in India may not be the best way to meet our rising energy needs, especially since there has been so little debate and investigation about the feasibility of safe widespread nuclear power in India, and the efficiency of the production methods available to us.

b. While it may be tempting to reward India with this, violating the internationally recognised goal of non-proliferation, though in an ostensible good cause, may lead to far more chaotic results:

"We cannot expect countries like Iran and North Korea to comply with the rules when we help India break them. If we adopt special rules for our friends, we can expect Russia and China to adopt special rules for their friends. "Bilateral Special Exemptions" will replace the standards of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and a nuclear chaos of no rules at all will be the end result."

This too is true. The reason why we have certain international rules (and non-proliferation is not just a treaty-based rule, but also a customary norm in international law) is that a certain order be maintained. Violating these rules, even for a good cause, would lead to unintended disorder (Iraq, anyone?)

Go read it here.

Goan Sunset

Probably the best holiday I ever took was a family trip to Goa in late 2002. The bridge to the north had opened just a couple of months before we visited, so it was really easy for us to cross over to visit Arambol and Tiracol since we no longer had to take the ferry. This bridge was built ostensibly to provide access for the villagers of North Goa to the mainland, and also to help tourism in this part.

David Jenkins touches a bit upon the effects of easy access to north Goa's beaches in the Travel Guardian -

"Well, in Morjim, there's an eyesore of a resort, and the Russian presence is large and rowdy - two sad-eyed ladies from Norway, who were seemingly born to tolerate, told me they found the noise intolerable. (The Russian mafia, incidentally, is said to be moving in on western-owned businesses in Goa; one restaurateur is alleged to have been slapped around; another had a gun shown to him on his premises. Let's hope they don't target the 3rd Eye, whose sign declares its owners to be Shiva and Sharon.) As for Arambol - for all the romance of its lagoon, it has a touch of the Costas about it."

Later -

"most people go to Goa for a two-week holiday. And all of them want (like Alex Garland) to find The Beach. That concept doesn't exist in Goa any more - not at Mandrem, nor even at Kerim in the far north, where a blank-eyed ex-roadie sat in a lean-to cafe, chugging Kingfisher beer after Kingfisher beer as two gaunt Russians chopped onions and tomatoes to make their lunch."

Jenkins does find one pristine spot, what would have once been called the "Real Goa". Where? Go read the article to find out.

The Cartoon Riots: Premodernism or Postcolonialism?

Neely Tucker at the WaPo makes an interesting point in this piece about the history of blasphemy law in America, and attempts to put the reactions to the cartoons in the Islamic world in perspective. Quoting Sayyid M Syeed, Secretary General of the Islamic Society of North America, the article notes that -

"While millions of Muslims may think of America as a pro-Israeli invader of Iraq, it is still true that much of that knowledge is not based on personal experience. European affronts, through a long history of colonialism and exploitation, are more visceral. They've left scars. They've created a different psychological relationship.

"European countries were colonial masters of several Muslim lands, and the psychological aspects of that relationship have lived on and on," Syeed says. "It's difficult for the Belgians, the Danes, the French -- it's difficult for them to believe that these former colonies have a religion that is of consequence. They get a kick out of insulting them." '

The point is subsequently emphasised by Yvonne Haddad, professor of the history of Islam and of Christian-Muslim relations at Georgetown University, who says -

"Of the 57 nations that belong to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, 54 have been colonized by Europe," she says. "That history is well known in Islamic countries, you've got the current war in Iraq. . . . Those things form the context for this sort of response. Devout Muslims are offended by the cartoons, but this is not just a religious affront. It's also political."

This puts an interesting spin on the controversy, and pushes it beyond the scope of the traditional debate on free speech. Assuming that the reaction is motivated not just by religious reasons, but also by patriotic, nationalistic reasons, are we still right to condemn it the way we would if it were purely a religious reaction? Analogising to the 1857 revolt, which many claim was sparked off by the grease used on the Enfield cartridges, does the affront caused to the religious feelings de-legitimise the action finally undertaken?

Hope to hear more about this.