Swat valley- a turning point?

Recent events in Pakistan make the need for evaluating our long-term strategic interests with some clarity, crucially important. There seem to be three distinct scenarios for Pakistan’s future emerging that one can discern – first is a descent into chaos where the Swat compromise is the first step which leads to a gradual talibanization of the country with the best and brightest of the civil society leaving the country to the mullahs and the wahabis. This leads to an Islamic state run by mullahs similar to that of Iran or Saudi Arabia and perhaps continues to be funded by them as well for geopolitical advantage. A second scenario has the military coming back to power with another version of Musharaff which continues to foment disorder in Kashmir, support the taliban in destabilizing Afghanistan (basically telling them to work outside the country as a deal much as the Saudis did with their madrassas and mullahs) and continues to hoodwink the international community for financial bailouts. Will it work it is difficult to know but presented a drastic choice of nuclear Armageddon and support them it might. A third scenario – based more on wishful thinking than any real political will – has the Pakistans civil society taking the law in their own hands much as the Philippines did in 1986 when they ousted Marcos and continued with a messy, raucous democratic experiment which has lasted till now. So the three scenarios seem like a choice between Pakistan turning into Afghanistan, Iran or Philippines! As Pakistan faces these choices, what should the Indian strategy be? Do we want a failed state on our doorstep or an Islamic military dictatorship or a stuttering democracy?

During the past few years Pakistan seems to have undergone a slow and bloody meltdown of which the latest compromise in Swat valley could be the beginning of the end of the state. Its president, Asif Zardari said as much stating that Pakistan was in danger of Talibanization if events were not handled well. The fact is that in less than eight months, Asif Ali Zardari's new government has effectively lost control of much of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) to the Taliban's Pakistani counterparts, a loose confederation of nationalists, Islamists, and angry Pashtun tribesmen under the nominal command of Baitullah Mehsud. Across much of the North-West Frontier Province—around a fifth of Pakistan—women have now been forced to wear the burqa, music has been silenced, barbershops are forbidden to shave beards, and over 140 girls' schools have been blown up or burned down. In the provincial capital of Peshawar, a significant proportion of the city's elite, along with its musicians, have now decamped to the relatively safe and tolerant confines of Lahore and Karachi. The recent deal, struck between the Pakistani government and a key figure in the Taliban, which allows, in exchange for an end to the internal fighting between the army and the rebels, the Taliban to set up a court system of Islamist, or sharia, law in the Swat Valley, an area of 1.3 million people—a majority of whom had voted for secular candidates in the most recent elections—just 100 miles from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, could become a dangerous portent of things to come.

The defenders of this compromise argue that the key facts are that, at the moment, there is no working judicial system of any sort in the Swat Valley—and that the Taliban militias have routed the numerically superior Pakistani army in their armed confrontations. So the deal imposes national secular authority even more than it legitimizes sharia justice. Also the deal was made not with "the Taliban" as a whole—the term implies a more cohesive entity than actually exists—but rather, specifically, with Maulana Sufi Muhammad, whom the Pakistanis arrested two years ago for leading jihadist raids across the border into Afghanistan. He was released from prison after agreeing to give up the struggle and to work for peace. These defenders of the deal hope that he would strike a deal with his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, who is the deputy to a much more militant Taliban leader—or that, if he can't come to terms with his son-in-law, a wedge might be driven between various Islamist factions, peeling Sufi Muhammad and his followers away from the radicals and thus strengthening the hand of the central government.

Of course there is nothing wrong in principle with trying to negotiate deals with Taliban factions in order to split them or to set them up against each other. However, it's futile to go down that road with hard-core Taliban and secondly to the extent negotiations succeed with any faction, these need to be negotiated from a position of strength to be successful. The so called deal in Pakistan breaks both rules: Pakistan's political leaders are trying to craft a deal, indirectly, with the hard-core Taliban, and they're entering into it from a position of obvious weakness. This is why the deal is not only ill fated but potentially disastrous: It reveals the severe weakness of the Pakistani state. The politicians pursued the deal only because the state cannot control its own territory. Unless Sufi Muhammad can convince his son-in-law to accept peace and obeisance to secular authority in exchange for a parcel of land where Islamic law carries some weight, the deal is more likely to convince the militant Taliban simply to press on for more favors still, and the war will gradually spread to other parts of the country.

And the reason it will spread is that the two things that feed it – new jihadis and money – are still not under control. “ In order to have terrorists, in order to have supporters for terrorists, in order to have people who are willing to interpret religion in violent ways, in order to have people who are willing to legitimate crashing yourself into a building and killing 5,000 innocent people, you need particular interpretations of Islam. Those interpretations of Islam are being propagated out of schools that receive organizational and financial funding from Saudi Arabia”.( Vali Nasr). In April 2002, the former Pakistani Minister of Religious Affairs, put the number of madrassas at about 10,000, with 1.7 million students. Madrassas in Pakistan are financed either by voluntary charity, foreign entities, or governments. The Saudi Arabian organization, Harmain Islamic Foundation, reportedly has provided substantial financial assistance to the Ahle-Hadith madrassas, which have provided fighters to the banned Kashmiri militant group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LET). The fact is that there seems to be no clear identification of the number of madrassas or their sources of funding – both of which need to be controlled if there is to be any long term success in combating terrorism.

A critical element in how the chaos scenario plays out in Pakistan will also be the role of the civil society. Will they organize themselves against this Talibanization of their country as they did when Musharaff tried to ram through an unconstitutional effort to perpetuate his hold on the country or will they rationalize away the Swat compromise as a necessary but evil concession? In a recent interview with Farid Zakaria, Imran Khan seemed to suggest the latter, blaming Zardari but never challenging the Jihadi movement or the pernicious underpinnings of the Swat compromise. The role and attitude of the civil society in Pakistan will be the ultimate determinant of the future of the country. The issue is will they have the foresight to recognize the critical role they can play at this juncture in history with a fledgling democracy still struggling to counter internal fundamentalism and in recognizing that in compromising on fundamentals they may have bargained away their fundamental rights as a country.

Of course the critical issue in Pakistan, has always been and still remains, is the role of the military and its relationship with the constitutional head of the country. The problem is that Zardari does not control the military or the ISI who bear much of the burden of Pakistan’s descent into chaos. As Ahmad Rashid points out “ for more than twenty years, the ISI has, for its own purposes, deliberately and consistently funded and incubated a variety of Islamist groups, including in particular Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba. Since the days of the anti-Soviet Mujahideen, the Pakistani army saw the jihadis as an ingenious and cost-effective means of both dominating Afghanistan—something they finally achieved with the retreat of the Soviets in 1987—and bogging down the Indian army in Kashmir—something they succeeded in achieving from 1990 onward”. Rashid believes that “every Pakistani general, liberal or religious, believed in the jihadists by 1999, not from personal Islamic conviction, in most cases, but because the jihadists had proved themselves over many years as the one force able to frighten, flummox, and bog down the Hindu-dominated Indian army. .. many in the army still believe that the jihadis make up a more practical defense against Indian dominance than even nuclear weapons. For them, supporting a range of jihadi groups in Afghanistan and Kashmir is not an ideological or religious whim so much as a practical and patriotic imperative—a vital survival strategy for a Pakistani state that they perceive to be threatened by India's ever-growing power and its alliance with the hostile Karzai regime in Kabul”.

In the long term, according to several observers, the following factors will determine the region’s future: “South and Central Asia will not see stability unless there is a new global compact among the leading players...to help this region solve its problems, which range from settling the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan to funding a massive education and job-creation program in the borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan and along their borders with Central Asia…The second factor, of course, has to be reform of the ISI and the Pakistani military. The top Pakistani army officers must end their obsession with bleeding India by using an Islamic strategic doctrine entailing support of jihadists, and realize that such a policy is deeply damaging to Pakistan itself, threatening to turn Pakistan into a clone of Taliban-dominated Afghanistan rather than a potential partner of a future Indian superpower. A third factor is somehow finding a way to stop the madrasa- inspired and Saudi-financed advance of Wahhabi Islam, which is directly linked to the spread of anti-Western radicalization. “ A fourth element will be the role civil society will play in defending the fundamentals of their state.

India today seems to lack a strategy in regard to Pakistan that is clearly enunciated which enjoys broad public acceptance. A public debate on this is long overdue.

Why I blog

Blog contains in its four letters a concise and accurate self-description: it is a log of thoughts and writing posted publicly on the World Wide Web and invites its readers to join in a dialogue with their comments. I am often asked why I started blogging and I was searching for a rationale and explanation till I saw this elegant piece by one of my favorite bloggers, Andrew Sullivan. In a short form, this explains the joys and perils of blogging better than I ever could.

It is the spontaneous expression of instant thought—impermanent beyond even the ephemera of daily journalism. It is accountable in immediate and unavoidable ways to readers and other bloggers, and linked via hypertext to continuously multiplying references and sources. This form of instant and global self-publishing, made possible by technology widely available only for the past decade or so, allows for no retroactive editing (apart from fixing minor typos or small glitches) and removes from the act of writing any considered or lengthy review. Unlike any single piece of print journalism, its borders are extremely porous and its truth inherently transitory.We bloggers have scant opportunity to collect our thoughts, to wait until events have settled and a clear pattern emerges. We blog now—as news reaches us, as facts emerge.

You end up writing about yourself, since you are a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world. And in this sense, the historic form closest to blogs is the diary. But with this difference: a diary is almost always a private matter. Its raw honesty, its dedication to marking life as it happens and remembering life as it was, makes it a terrestrial log. A few diaries are meant to be read by others, of course, just as correspondence could be—but usually posthumously, or as a way to compile facts for a more considered autobiographical rendering. But a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public. It transforms this most personal and retrospective of forms into a painfully public and immediate one. Within minutes of posting something, readers respond. E-mail seemed to unleash their inner beast. They were more brutal than any editor, more persnickety than any copy editor, and more emotionally unstable than any colleague. Now the feedback is instant, personal, and often brutal.

To blog is therefore to let go of your writing in a way, to hold it at arm’s length, open it to scrutiny, allow it to float in the ether for a while, and to let others, pivot you toward relative truth. A blogger will notice this almost immediately upon starting. Some e-mailers, unsurprisingly, know more about a subject than the blogger does. They will send links, stories, and facts, challenging the blogger’s view of the world, sometimes outright refuting it, but more frequently adding context and nuance and complexity to an idea.

The role of a blogger is not to defend against this but to embrace it. He is similar in this way to the host of a dinner party. He can provoke discussion or take a position, even passionately, but he also must create an atmosphere in which others want to participate. A successful blog therefore has to balance itself between a writer’s own take on the world and others. A blogger will air a variety of thoughts or facts on any subject in no particular order other than that dictated by the passing of time.

It enables writers to write out loud in ways never seen or understood before. And that is why I blog.

Talking with your children

One of the great pleasures in life is talking with your children. Even when they don’t listen to you. Actually there are only two times in your lifetime that they actually do really listen to you – once when they are very young and then when you are very old!

When they are young, their world revolves around you. This is the time when dad knows everything and mom can fix anything. If there is a question needing an answer, they always go to the font of all wisdom – their dad- who is always – well not always- ready to share his infinite knowledge with them. The important thing, my uncle once told me, is to make sure that you answer all their questions even if you don’t know the answer! A wrong answer, he said, was better than no answer. When their mother protested that their general knowledge would be extremely defective, he said defensively that (a) that it kept them silent on long journeys and (b) they would forget all this anyway and the school would really earn their fees teaching them the right answers.

But as they move towards teenage, doubts in their voices begins to appear. And this uncertainty in their parent’s omniscient wisdom comes into full flower as they become teenagers. This phase is a painful one because now all your statements are questioned indeed opposed. And your wife does not fair any better. Most arguments tend to end with slamming doors or tears—and let me assure you not all the tears are of the teenager either.

The departure to college brings a respite to this off and on again rebellion in the household. The conversation now, alas, tend to become one sided and short. “ Are you eating enough?” “ Why don’t you call us oftener?” or “ When are you coming home?” The calls, when they do come, are usually to complain about lack of money buttressed invariably by how stressed they are with all the work. First is to let you know how hard they are working to reassure you that your savings for the college are being properly respected and the second a hint that perhaps you did not save enough! It is a lovely period that most empty nesters come finally to enjoy – they love having their children at home talking about their college days and they love the silences when they are gone again for the return home is also a return to their childhood days of tempers and tantrums as they revert back.

As they grow older and find their own mates and settle down, conversations tend to become more about the best menus, dealing with inlaws and wonderment about their mates and their habits. And of course about their unreasonable employers and know nothing bosses. While the father pontificates on all issues in the workplace and the world, the mother now becomes the font of all wisdom regarding the rest. Her knowledge, she claims, comes from her having to deal with their father. Almost any problem the child has in her life, the mother can top since she has lived through it all and survived. She is basically telling her children “ Look if I have lived with your father, then you can jolly well live with your new husband or wife- it cant be any worse. And sometimes it does get better”. But the best times are when your children have their own children. Then you can enjoy them and depart when the tantrums start with a chortle “ We wanted to see the day when your children gave you as much trouble as you gave us “.

Old age is the time that your children decide that the time has come to order their parents around. Somewhere in this period, which begins immediately after your retirement, they decide that you have lost most if not all your marbles, that there are few things you remember and none that you can manage too well. Your children are convinced that you are not aware that life has moved on and that “ things are different now than they were in your time” As if you lived in the past century. Progressively they convince themselves that you cannot really look after yourself anymore, that Alzheimer’s is not too far behind and that they need to make sure that you take your medicines in time and listen to the doctors. Daughters are the worse culprits – I wonder if sometimes they do not confuse their parents with their children. Even the voice changes from the loving and concerned to loving and hectoring. It is a period that I greatly enjoy – it is like being a child surrounded by love and having all your whims satisfied when they are there but knowing that when they leave you can revert to your normal adult self!

The Perils of Criticism

Everybody loves to criticize. From the inconsequential to the portentous, everyone has an opinion just waiting to be expressed. And it is generally to point out things that are wrong and need fixing. Most of us start conversations with bemoaning the weather – about which of course we can do nothing—and progress to lamenting the traffic jams, the smog, the difficulty of finding reliable servants and, of course, these “ damned corrupt politicians”. These criticisms are good conversation starters and help to oil the normal cocktail party discourses with no harm being done. The correct response at these times hence is to pitch in your pet peeves too into the conversation.

But there are other criticisms, which, especially when they proffer suggestions for improvement, have the possibility of either enlightenment or embarrassment. Once I was late for a party and launched into a bitter critique of the transport system, the lack of adequate flyovers and managerial incompetence little realizing that one of the people in the party was a transport expert and on the Delhi Urban Arts Commission responsible for setting precisely these things right. During the next hour, he calmly took me through all that had been done, the problems they faced with the politicians and their plans to solve the issues in the future. It was an educative hour and the next time somebody complained about the traffic snarls, at least I had learnt enough to keep my mouth shut. On another occasion, having just finished a book on our neighboring countries, I lit into the author for its pedantic, pompous and generally uninformative piece and suggested that it could have provided new information and some background on the key personalities. In short the covers of this book were too far apart for what it contained. While the author was not fortunately there, another present took serious umbrage at my swipe and proceeded to explain the restrictions and constriction members of this civil service labored under in writing pieces for the common man. “ Those in the know”, he said, “ would have been able to read between the lines and understood the points being made”. Clearly not being a member of the cognoscenti, it was implied, I had missed the point and so had forfeited my rights to criticize. I demurred saying that a book was for everybody and one should not have to come to it with a specific background or need for a higher degree. Later I realized that he had taken the criticism personally as he too was an author who wrote on similar subjects and my criticism of a specific piece was seen as a denigration of the entire genre including his writing which I had not till then read. So a well-meaning criticism of a simple mole can sometimes be misinterpreted as condemnation of the entire body leading to embarrassment all around. My wife too fell into this trap when she criticized the layout and décor of a hotel room we had recently stayed in. Our hostess, who worked for this hotel chain but was not responsible for either the design failure or the art décor, was most offended and launched into a vigorous defense of the artistic superiority of their entire hotel chains art acquisitions. What was meant as an innocent criticism of a specific hotel room with a mild suggestion for improvement quickly became a personalized issue of artistic import covering the entire hotel industry. The response at these times for the critic is simple—quickly change the subject.

Then there are the professional critics who make their living running down eating establishments, bars or the latest books. In the past, the response to these fulminations of Sunday columnists was generally a good rant over the breakfast table. Sometimes the anger could turn into a furious letter to the editor, which may or may not be published. But now times have changed and these critics can be criticized in turn. Since most newspapers now are being carried on the internet, so are the critics columns with a space for responding with your own comments for all to see. Nowadays the most interesting part of these columns are the responses from angry readers giving the critic a taste of his own medicine. You can of course also write your own blog—as this writer is now doing—to vent your own views on the wrongheaded analysis of the weekly pundits on the Sunday papers. But then the critics may not read your criticism!

So while all of us have the right to criticize, and do we exercise it in spades, we may like to remember Disraeli who said “It is much easier to be critical than to be correct” or that “most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood”.

Of course there is another approach that one might follow, as suggested by Eleanor Roosevelt- “ Don’t curse the darkness, light a candle”. If you can find a candle!

Dealing with Fundamentalism – what can we do?

In recent weeks, there has been a major public outcry against attacks by the fundamentalist’s – on the women in the pubs of Mangalore, immigrant workers in Mumbai and on the Muslims in Gujarat. Most newspapers were quick to editorialize on the them as a pernicious evil in the body politic – indeed Outlook went so far as to headline its weekly edition as “The Talibanization of Karnataka”. Others, more moderate like Vir Sanghvi, wanted us to learn lessons from Mangalore, suggested asking questions of all the politicians as to who gave them the right to define Indian culture and realizing that underlying many of these attacks were an unease with the emergence of women in the workplace—remember the pubs were not attacked when only men patronized them. In all these depredations, there were three common elements – they were led by a small but vocal minority, these were done in the name of religion or culture, and they became violent in the presence of the media to heighten their cause. Many commentators compared these outbursts to a virus whose causes have varied – anti Muslim in Gujarat, anti women in Mangalore, anti immigrant in Mumbai, anti Christian in Orrisa. But the intelligentsia were at least agreed on one issue, this was a dangerous virus that needed to be stamped out. Unfortunately few had any specific actions to recommend on what we could do.

Since it was a virus *, I wondered if we should perhaps consult those experts who knew how to deal with viruses. Perhaps their scientific knowledge could provide us with some clues for our actions. So I called on my favorite research doctor and asked:

“ How do you tackle a virus that is infecting the body and threatens to kill it if not controlled?”

“First thing, “ she said, “ was to find out if it was a known virus which had been successfully controlled in the past anywhere.” No luck there I thought- Taliban was still proliferating in Pakistan, anti Semitism was still alive and well and women were still sold in slavery in some African nations.

“ Then if the virus is unknown or there has been no known success in the past, the initial step has to be to isolate it, deny it any sustenance and create an environment in which it cannot flourish.” OK, I thought, that we could do. Let us cut off funds to these organizations, make it difficult for them to continue by continued exposure to sunlight, educate the public of their evil and pernicious impact on the system.

“Then you could introduce some general antibiotics into the system.” Passage of laws could help create an environment against perpetuation of these antics. Unlikely that these laws alone would work but it could increase the probability for success in the long term.

“Next comes the experimental phase where you introduce specifically targeted drugs to attack and weaken the virus”. We could launch public interest litigations in different states forcing these organizations to continually defend themselves, identify specific candidates to defeat in elections.

“Sometimes these viruses erupt and they have to be cauterized by harsh and painful means”. When the next pub attack takes place, perhaps we should send a platoon of women constables to control the mobs, or Muslim troops to disperse the attackers in Gujarat or a Bihari national guard brigade to confront the anti immigrant demonstrators in Mumbai. This may be provocative and dangerous but at the very least, the oppressed will not complain of complicity between the oppressors and the protectors.

“Finally, if all these approaches don’t work, you will need to amputate the limb it is living in.”

“ Amputate it?: I ask

“ Yes”, she replied, “ sometimes you have to cut off the limb to save the rest of the body.” OK, I thought, why should I be surprised- is that not exactly what the western troops did in eliminating Nazism in Germany, the US in exterminating the Taliban in Afghanistan and what Israel is attempting to do to Hamas in Palestine.

“ But”, she continued, “ to be successful, you must act quickly and promptly before it spreads.” So what are we waiting for- let us start.

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* A virus (from the Latin virus meaning toxin or poison) is a infectious agent that is unable to grow or reproduce outside a host cell. Viruses spread in many ways. Some viruses can cause life-long infections, and the viruses continue to replicate in the body despite the hosts' defence mechanisms. The life cycle of viruses differs greatly between species but there are six basic stages in the life cycle of viruses: Attachment is a specific binding which determines the host range of a virus. Penetration follows attachment; Uncoating releases the virus. Following the assembly it is eleased by a process that kills the cell by bursting its membrane.

Epidemiology is used to break the chain of infection in populations during outbreaks of viral diseases. But it is important to find the source, or sources, of the outbreak and to identify the virus. Once the virus has been identified, vaccines can sometimes break the chain of transmission. The body's first line of defense against viruses is the innate immune system. Often infected people are isolated from the rest of the community and those that have been exposed to the virus placed in quarantine. The most effective medical approaches to viral diseases so far are vaccinations and antiviral drugs. When vaccines are not available sanitation and disinfections can be effective…. Sometimes you have to eliminate the entire community to control the virus –for eg to control the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in cattle in Britain in 2001, thousands of cattle were slaughtered. – Source Wikepedia

Voices from the past

I found this article that I wrote almost 40 years ago to be strangely relevant even today....

“Our country is “I wrote, “witnessing a strange malaise – one that Yeats laments in the “ The Second Coming”:

“The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

the ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

are full of passionate intensity. “

There is today a loss of faith- faith in our culture, our country and ourselves- to rebuild this nation and to drag it into the twentieth century; faith that the shaping impulse of a people lies neither with fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but in the work of its own hands; faith that it lies in a people to determine its own destiny. It is this spirit; this excitement that should come from the epic enterprise of building a modern nation out of so many ancient races and civilizations that is missing in today’s India. Lacking this, the pendulum of individual emotions swings wider- from the pious prating of the corrupt to the unreasoning fury of the radical—and there is neither balance nor a sense of challenge and growth. And is it not strange that this should be so. For if there is any period one would desire to be born in, it is in the age of revolution, when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of being compared, when the energies of all men find creative expression by fear and hope, when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era; when the only permanent this is change; and when all things – remaking institutions, creating a new social order, indeed, a new man- seem possible. It should be the best of times to live in, if we but knew what to do with it.

Today our greatest danger lies in the spirit of apathy and cynicism, in the acceptance of corruption and venality as normal, in the abject resignation to social injustice, in the toleration of that which should always be intolerable, and, above all, in the limited expectations of individual human endeavor. Faced with the enormous array of the world’s ills, there is in us an irresistible urge to retreat either to the academia in search of the kind of level Archimedes sought to move the world, or to insulated and selfish personal security. Most men thus live lives of quiet desperation responding to the tendentious and tumultuous transactions of the real world by a frightened withdrawal. But is this withdrawal any response at the personal or public level? Perhaps it may be well to reflect that many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of but a single man. Of course, few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but surely it is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that a nation’s history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or strikes out against injustice, he creates a tiny ripple of hope. If this could merge with others from a million centers of energy and hope, can it not build into a torrent that would sweep away the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance?

But neither hope nor passionate indignation is, by themselves, enough; one must be able to convert this passionate intensity into some constructive form. Words cannot substitute for actions nor emotional rhetoric takes the place of rational programs. It is this spirit which informs all that follows – not to search for what is wrong but to define what needs to be done, and how, - in generating a committed youth and a responsive civil service; in harnessing our best talents to national endeavors; in exploiting our resources to the utmost and in creating a community of concerned and involved citizens. In some, the initiative must come through institutions, in all the creative spark must emanate from individuals. For what are institutions but lengthened shadows of an individual.

This seeks to go beyond mere wishes for an overnight revolution- it believes that revolutions are ultimately made by men as individuals, acting together; and that this individual commitment need to be developed and nurtured. And that these emerge neither through the radical rhetoric of the left nor the sanctimonious preaching of the right- words and emotions have become destructive weapons today, and beyond a stage they will neither excite nor incite. Unreinforced by deeds, plans will have no life. And without commitment there can be no plans. Further, the cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing world will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They can not be moved those who cling to the present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that comes with even the most peaceful progress. We live in times of danger and uncertainty, but paradoxically they are also more open to the creative energy of men in shaping a new world. The future cannot belong to those who are content with today, apathetic towards common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it must belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the building of this nation through new initiatives. There are many in the country that work and despair in isolation but yet do not give up their dreams. For there is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.”

I

I

Ruminations on a death foretold

“ I need advice”, he said, “ I am supposed to be dead by now but am still alive”.

“ It happened like this, “ he explained, “ Some four years ago, I had a massive heart attack which left my heart muscles fatally damaged. The doctors were pessimistic and a second expert opined that there was less than a fifty percent chance that I would survive more than an year. Faced with such direct prognosis, I did what any prudent person would do: I set about putting all my affairs in order—sold my old house, bought a more efficient apartment, replaced my old cars with a brand new one that my wife could easily drive, settled all my debts and allocated my finances to my heirs. Then I decided to take a final tour to visit old friends and family to say goodbye. Clearly the news of my near imminent demise had traveled before me. So during the visit, there was extra warmth in the hugs, reminiscences of joyous times past, louder laughter at the jokes, photos with all and longer lingering farewells—while of course no one mentioned the dread word itself. In our own family, we cheerfully discussed the option of finding a beautiful urn to store the ashes for posterity. But then nothing happened. My doctors were puzzled when not one but two years passed. And they were downright amazed when the third year rolled around and said they could not understand it and refused to give any more prognosis for the future.”

“ So here I am not sure of my future any more. Among other things, I find it harder and harder to visit family and friends who had said goodbye already and who, sometimes, it seemed to me, had reproachful look in their eyes, that I had deceived them. After all how do you say “ So sorry, the doctors were wrong? Can we start again?”

“ Let me tell you about Art Buchwald who underwent a similar experience. Art was a famous humorist who wrote a weekly column for the International Herald Tribune for most of his life. Towards the end of October, he was diagnosed to be under acute renal failure and his doctors gave him less than six months to live. So Art settled all his affairs and moved to a Washington hospice. As you know a hospice is only meant for end life patients and indeed it requires that a doctor certify that any patient they take in has no more than six months to live. Art decided to throw one long party at the hospice and invited all his friends. They dropped by – admirers and long time pals- bringing cakes and deserts that Art loved and which his sickness had long denied him. He smoked his famous cigars and flirted with all the nurses and in general had a jolly good time. Soon six months passed and he was still there. One day the director of the hospice called him and said that according to their policy, since six months had passed, he had to either die or go home. So Art went home, resumed writing his weekly columns and started work on a new book about his experiences. He cajoled his various admirers, and even his daughter, into writing his obituaries so that he could include them in his book “ Too soon to say goodbye”.

“ Moral of the story?”

" Doctors dont know everything. And the end will come when it will come, so live life to the full till then."

The last refuge.....

In the recent past, accountability journalism has become the new buzzword both in the newspapers and on TV. Who will judge the judges, is the question posed often by these crusading journalists, as they seek for the truth on behalf, they say, of the masses. Rarely, however, does anyone ever ask who will evaluate and judge the integrity of these journalists posing as your representatives. Should they not be held to the same standard of integrity and honesty that they seek to impose on others ? Or should their lapses be swept under the rug and all their errors be forgiven under the rubric of all is fair since they personify " freedom of the press".

The Mumbai massacre brought this issue to light in a particularly direct way. The coverage of the murders and the commando rescue operations during the three days of November, with a number of competing cable new outlets in the fray, led to dangerous leaks, hindering effective respones and possibly endangering innocent lives. They may have been born of excess zeal and lack of professionalism on the part of the young untrained journalist but which nevertheless contributed to an atmosphere of panic. In some cases this zeal certainly imperiled the lives of hostages held in the two hotels during the operation. It was widely acknowledged that the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan were monitoring our TV channels and calibrating their depredations and attacks in going after specific targets trapped as hostages based on these reports. Yet even after the event was over, there was little protest of these excesses and lapses in judgment from the other senior journalists or editors. No columns, to my knowledge, were written by any of our pontificating pundits exploring the limits of freedom of press versus the rights of innocent bystanders who could become victims of this injudicious reporting. When asked whether the journalists had a duty to take into account the possible results of their work on endangering the lives of others, many journalists absolved their more aggressive fellow journalists talking of excess zeal born of competition and mumbling about the publics right to information. Others admitted the complete lack of professionalism on the part of both the field journalists and their editors/owners but refused to be quoted on record. It seemed as if all the journalists closed ranks as a fraterinity in refusing to condemn these practices just as doctors do after a botched fatal operation.

A particularly eggrecious example was of a senior journalist from a prominent TV cable network. Her coverage of the Mumbai massacre certainly imperiled lives -- including ours. My wife and I were held hostage in the Trident hotel during this November attack. After the initial flurry of killings in the hotel, we were informed on our cellphone that NSG commandos were planning a rescue operation. But as we turned on the TV, we found this senior journalist excitedly pointing out the launching post of the operations telling the entire world that the commandos would come from that " brown building next to the hotel". This, I understand, led to an exchange of bullets and may have led the commandos to alter their plans. That it was a serious error was clear because a few seconds after this excited utterance, all TV's in the Trident hotel were shut off. ( Of course the live coverage continued for those outside including the handlers and abettors of the terrorists !). Another cable channel announced that negotiations were under way to rescue a retired director of the oil company thereby inadvertently alerting the terrorists to the location of another possible hostage or attack. These were clearly dangerous statement which could have led to additional unneeded fatalities.

But no one from the journalist world condemned these lapse of judgment. Indeed citizen bloggers were the only ones who raised these issues and wanted to discuss the limits of press coverage during a critical operation when public lives were at stake. Instead one citizen blogger, who wrote a critical and mostly accurate account of these journalistic lapses, was pressurized by the TV channel and forced to recant with an apology. So did these defenders of the freedom of press muzzle citizen bloggers -- and there were over 3000 of them- and bury any attempt to bring to light the shoddy journalistic practices to repair them for the future.

The TV channel may have won this battle with that citizen blogger. But as for me, I will refuse to view this cable channel or its senior journalist from now on. This is my response - and should be yours- if we are to preserve the freedom of the press and some degree of integrity and accountability in our public life. No one , not even the journalists, can be absolved from this.

Ageing in two worlds

We were growing old in two worlds at the same time. I don’t know whether as a result we were ageing at twice the normal rate or half but it does make for an interesting and educative experience.

As I reached my retirement we decided that we would alternate between our last place of work- Hanoi and IndiaUS where our children were. But fate intervened, and we had to change our plans to live part time in the US, where my heart doctors were, and India, where my heart really lay. In this process we are learning to live and adjust rather than to choose between the two worlds.

As is usual post retirement, the major burden of adjustment falls on the better half. So Ena, my wife, who had been hoping to finally get rid of her household duties and enjoy a carefree life, with both the children finally out of the house, instead found herself managing not one but two households and those in two different countries. In India she found herself not so much managing a household as managing a revolving cast of servants—she was constantly searching for a good cook, interviewing the candidates, negotiating their wages and then constantly overseeing their work. And just when everything was in control, the cook would leave and she would have to start all over again. Back in the US she was managing no one but herself. It was tedious but she was in full control and there were no personal problems of servant to manage. And she has never quite made up her mind which she prefers…

Of course in India the emotional support system was great and something one looked forward to – with various cousins, aunts, relatives and friend dropping by at all times of day and night. There were problems to learn of and problems to solve. Till after a while, the real problem became that various cousins, aunts, relatives and friends were dropping by at all times of day and night and real life problems became too difficult to sort out with all the past histories of imagined slights and insults. And we then yearned for the formality and structure of the west. Till that too became too cold and distant and we then yearned for the emotional warmth of the east.

In India our conversations were generally focused on problems of daily living and medical issues and of course the extent of corruption. It was invariable depressing and negative after the usual information had been exchanged about all the mutual friends. It reminded me of conversations during the Bush era when the general mood was of depression and helplessness as the horrors mounted in Iraq and the world. There seemed to no light at the end of the tunnel, indeed most seemed convinced that it was not a tunnel but a deep hole in the ground into which we sinking by the day. The focus on India was never on a search for solutions but rather a reiteration of insolubility of all problems, not on what could be done but rather on what was never possible to be achieved. Of course, here our views were listened to with respect by the young because of deference due age. In the west there was little deference if the views were not sound or worth listening to.

All this underlie the essential dilemma of aging in the two worlds. In the one, an infrastructure based on servants provides physical comfort and a family network provides emotional warmth. But this comes at some price of individual freedom of action and a constant need to sustain that very system of support in time and effort. In the other, there is a freedom which makes one feel younger but which all too often felt cold and isolated. Perhaps the true test comes in a crisis say when one is ailing or in hospital. You could get the best physical care in the US in the hospital but at home you were completely dependent on yourself .Visitors were few and helpers none. In India people complained of the cost, quality and availability of hospital care but there were always helpers and visitors around to care for you. I often fretted about whether there would be enough pall bearers here – a worry that never even crossed my mind in India.

A recent book on ageing by Athill, which recently won the Costa Book Award for biography, ends with her realization: "There are no lessons to be learnt, no discoveries to be made, no solutions to offer. I find myself left with nothing but a few random thoughts. One of them is that from up here I can look back and see that although a human life is less than the blink of an eyelid in terms of the universe, within its own framework it is amazingly capacious so that it can contain many opposites. One life can contain serenity and tumult, heartbreak and happiness, coldness and warmth, grabbing and giving - and also more particular opposites such as a neurotic conviction that one is a flop and a consciousness of success amounting to smugness."

Getting old may not be much fun but one can certainly enjoy the end (see Buchwald “Too soon to say goodbye”) especially if you can do it in two worlds at the same time.