Mauritius Treaty & Financial Shenanigans

Thousands of you have written in asking us to throw light on the recent noise in the Indian media about the Mauritus tax treaty and how it matters. So here goes.

Basically it is a Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement, which says that under certain circumstances, if you tax investors from your country who make a profit in our country we will not tax it here and you will do the same. Sounds fair, doesn't it? India has such treaties with 16 other nations too.

Now as we all know, Mauritius is a very wealthy nation with its vast natural resources including unfathomable oil reserves and phenomenal gold and diamond mines. It generates huge financial surpluses to invest. Also we want to encourage Indian money men to put all their surplus money into the thriving Mauritian economy. And don't forget that Mauritius is a great superpower. Naturally it is in our national interest to remain in its good books.

You don't believe it? You know I am kidding! But the Government of India never knew it when it entered into this treaty some thirty-three years ago.

There you go again shaking your head. And again you are right. The Mauritius DTAA was a device created by the Government, with malice aforethought, for the convenience of rich investors both in India and abroad. Mauritius has a tax rate of 3% on income from profits from sale and purchase of shares. India has a rate ranging from about 15 to 40%, if sold within 12 months. About the same, would you say?

No? You can see the difference? Well so could the money men and, to be fair, women. If you wanted to invest in India in a "tax efficient" way, all you had to do was create a small legal entity in Mauritius at a cost of a few hundred dollars. And start routing all your investments through Mauritius. Taxes saved run into thousands of crores.

It is estimated that nine of the ten biggest foreign investors in the India are Mauritius based. Almost all are housed in ONE 12-storey building in Post Louis. None of the money is, of course, from Mauritius, which is simply a "Flag of Convenience". And, of course, there is no Indian investment in Mauritius worth talking about.

Since this magic box was created, a lot of Indian businessmen have "made" a lot of money abroad and now have investment companies based in Mauritius. It is also generally believed that a lot of the money that comes in from Mauritius is actually illegitimate or black Indian money first sent abroad and then reverse invested back via a now "legitimate" Mauritian entity. All this is no great secret. In financial circles it even has a catchy name, "round tripping".

The media noise is about the fact that Government of India has closed this door. It has been done in a manner that would cause minimal disturbance to our financial markets leaving enough loopholes for those who know how to get around.

There is a lot of verbiage about "tough negotiations" with Mauritius. Don't believe it. Such negotiations are purely internal within the "establishment".

Parting shot: Don't think, Mr Narendra Modi, that you can fool us by saving the country a few thousand crores every year. We know you will find other ways to keep the money men happy. We will never forgive your beef against beef. Or your attempts to offer us optional Sanskrit in IITs. Or you Censor board chief. Or your FTII chairman. Or Rohith Vermula. Or the JNU hero. Our list of beefs against you is endless. And that is without even mentioning the post-Godhra violence. 

Side Show: There is no rumour that any of the tax savings flew back into the coffers of the other political party.

Bombay Films: Hargobind Duggal

Hargobind started his film career as the manager of Gaiety theatre in Shimla, where his family had relocated from what is for now Pakistan in the early 1940s. The theatre still stands in 2015. Now as a home to Himachal Amateur Dramatics Club and hosts occasional music and other cultural events.

He had a very unremarkable career in Hindi films with two very dubious achievements which prompt me to write his story.

First he managed to give a bigger push to adoption of colour in Hindi films than any promotion by Kodak had come close to doing.

Second he managed to make movies with big stars while achieving less financial and critical success than anyone else with similar opportunities has managed to do before or since.

While Hargobind was working his dead-end job in Gaiety, brother Rajinder Krishan who had ambitions as a writer and poet gave up an even more dead-end clerical job in Shimla and moved to Bombay to try his luck in films. Starting with Janta in 1949, he would turn out to be one of the most prolific and most successful writer cum songwriters of Hindi cinema ever. Major early successes were a Suraiya and Motilal starrer Aaj Ki Raat for songs and dialogues, the  popular-till-today Nagin and Albela for songs, and the song he wrote after Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, Suno Suno Ae Duniawalo Bapu Ki Ye Amar Kahani.

A huge factor in his early success was his association with AVM. A V Meiyappan and others in Madras realised that one could sign on Rajinder Krishan and get a complete package of story, dialogue and songs. Casting recommendations and introductions to stars came as a bonus. In turn Rajinder Krishan learnt Tamil and ended up writing for 18 of AVM films. The Madras equation also made him something of a hero among the artists in Bombay. The fact that he won a Rs. 46 Lakhs jackpot horse racing did no harm either.

But he is only a facilitator in this story. Before long mutual need led to Hargobind moving from Gaiety in Shimla to Madras as a co-writer cum dialogue coach for films written by Rajinder Krishan. While many of the stars came from Bombay, some heroines and most of the supporting cast were local and needed help that the directors were not able to provide.

After a few years of this Hargobind decided that he had learnt enough about movie making to produce and direct films on his own. Family of wife and four kids in tow he moved to Bombay. he tied up with nephew Suraj Prakash who was similarly floating around learning film making and had made an inconsequential movie called Beti with Bhagwan and Ragini.

Between them they decided to aim big and remake in Hindi a successful Tamil film as co-producers and co-directors with emerging big stars Rajendra Kumar and Mala Sinha. K V Reddy who owned the rights was happy to hand them over on a handshake. Hargobind landed up at Rajendra Kumar's house with a bottle of scotch and no money but an unstated illusion of a home production with brother Rajinder Krishan. With Rajendra Kumar's consent, signing on Mala Sinha was no big deal. They were then doing the beyond bold for its time, Dhool Ka Phool together and were very fond of each other. Also playing a blind girl was on her bucket list.

The result was Patang, a moderate success. Made enough money and earned enough name to cause a rift between partners Hargobind and Suraj Prakash and they both went their separate ways.

Oops that is a long introduction to two very remarkable though dubious achievements.

The first of these is colour in films. In early 1960s Eastman Colour, easier to handle than Technicolour, was making inroads into Hindi cinema. Junglee was a monster hit in 1961, making Shammi Kapoor a bigger star and Saira Banu a huge huge success on debut. Unfortunately her second film was Hargobind's first solo venture Shadi, shoddily made and poorly shot.

Saira Banu's beauty queen image took a big beating and she declared, very boldly for a new comer, that she won't sign any more B&W films. And true to her word, she didn't. This made it very difficult for other, more established stars, to sign B&W films. Lo and behold B&W was on its way out!

Hargobind's second remarkable achievement was that few have produced films with stars like  Manoj Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra, Saira Banu, Babita without making a single financial or critical success.

In 1973, having made enough personal wealth to retire in comfort, he called it a day.

Q: WTF is the WTO fuss all about?

A: Read on. If you are among the hundreds who have written in seeking enlightenment. Or you would just like to know what the intriguing headlines and confusing verbiage really mean. Or you know but would like to see what I have to say on the subject.

Q: We have had chest-thumpers going "We have shown them!" and breast-beaters going: "What will they think?" about India's veto of the Trade Facilitation Agreement. What is the truth?
A: Neither. It is not about them. It is about us.

Q: What is the TFA or Trade Facilitation Agreement?
A: It is basically a set of mutual obligations the international community has agreed to adopt which will make international trade easier, faster and cheaper.

Q: What obligations?
A: Facilitation will happen along two axes:

• Uniform and simpler procedures, systems and rules for processing imports and exports.
• Improved infrastructure for goods handling at ports, airports and in back-offices.

Q: Will it cost a lot of money to fulfil these obligations?
A: Yes. Billions of combined dollars.

Q: Who will bear the cost?
A: Each country will bear its own costs. The developing and poor countries will bear about 80% because they are more in number and they have more to do to get where they need to.

Q: Will it bring a lot of benefits?
A: Yes. About a trillion combined dollars.

Q: Who will get the benefits?
A: Everyone. The industrialised countries will harvest about 80% of the benefits because at present they have most of the export pie.

Q: Still, if everyone benefits where is the problem?
A: As the great 20th century philosopher Jeeves sagely observed: "God is in the details". Costs are all up-front, so not many will be net beneficiaries in a hurry.

Q: Is it in India's interest to sign the agreement?
A: Of course it is.

Q: Why then is India the villain in this drama?
A: International trade broadly falls into three categories: industrial products, services and agricultural produce. The TFA does not deal with the last two which are currently of prime interest to India. These are also areas where, under the prevailing set of rules, developing countries have got the short end.

Q: Is India the only country in this space?
A: No but it is the face and vocal mouth of G33 which, as the name suggests, is a grouping of 46 developing countries, including some, like China, which have a foot in both camps.

Q: But isn't there already an Agreement on Agriculture?
A: Yes. And it caps agricultural subsidies at 10% of the output of a country. The problem is the cap is calculated at 1986 prices. There are also restrictions on accumulating food stocks. We agreed to all this in a monumental lapse of judgement*, and are now ruing it.

Q: Who are the beneficiaries of India's subsidised food?
A: Mainly some 800 million poor or near-poor. Including 400 out of the 500 million farmers from whom we buy staples at above market prices.

Q: Why do we buy high and sell low?
A: We buy high so the farmers can afford to farm. Sell low so everyone can afford to eat. Even so millions go hungry every day. We are working on more efficient ways of producing food and reaching it to everyone.

Q: But why do we have so many poor?
A: Because we have produced and continue to produce more people than the land can happily support.

Q: What are the rich countries scared of?
A: That we will buy wheat and rice for stockpiling from our farmers at high prices and - unable to store them safely or to sell locally even at low prices - dump them abroad driving prices down everywhere.

Q: Don't others dump?
A: America is the master of dumping.

Q: Why is it bad to give something cheaply to others?
A: The answer to that question is nuanced** and long. Merits a post of its own.

Q: What happens, au contraire, when we have a shortfall and drive up prices of food staples all over the world?
A: The rich lick their chops in glee, rake in the moolah and bless us secretly.

Q: Don't other countries subsidise agriculture?

A: They absolutely do. One estimate is:

• The U.S. provides $12 billion subsidy to its 2 million farmers.
• India provides $2 billion subsidy to its 500 million farmers.
• And Japan! Don't even get me started on Japan.

Q: How did we get painted into a corner then?
A: We were not smart enough.

Q: Isn't there a break from this subsidy cap business and a solution under discussion even now?
A: Yes there is. But we know that once we sign on for TFA, the main areas of interest to us, namely agriculture and services, will go on the back burner. According to how one reads it, this existing break could expire as early as 2017. And at the recent parleys the rich were unwilling to commit to an unambiguous extension till a permanent solution is found.

Q: How important was the 31 July deadline which got missed due to our obduracy?
A: There is no such thing as a real deadline in this business. When the food security issues are sorted out, you will find everyone exactly where you left them.

*****

* We also got screwed by a lack of attention to punctuation. But that is another story. For another day.
** Nuanced: I love this word. Sounds very sophisticated, but is essentially empty. One can read into it whatever one is inclined to.

Modi:Mitta::Opportunity wasted?

Were investigations into Godhra and post-Godhra events shoddy? It seems they were. Were they tardy? Obviously. Were they malafide? Maybe. Did people try to influence and subvert them? Probably.

I am sure Mr. Manoj Mitta's book is well received among people who were waiting to hear exactly what he has to say because it reinforces what they already knew and supplements what they suspected.

He does go on for some 250 pages implying criminality where scores of highly motivated people, whom he admires and who helped him, failed to establish any. He pooh poohs the few successes of the legal and investigative system. By resorting to unfettered exaggeration and malicious implication throughout his work he has lost a golden opportunity to present a credible critique of the events, the people and the processes for a neutral reader.

We expected something more than what the news media, the gossip mills and the "I was there" brigade had already given us. We end up a bit wiser but also less trusting of people who presume to investigate on our behalf. The meat of what he has to say occupies the equivalent of some 50 pages. If there is some earthshaking revelation, it is lost in all the padding.

About a thousand people died. Some three-fourths of them Muslims. Not a small number of them Hindus. The man who accuses everyone of religious bigotry does not find any time for the Hindus. Selective empathy is patently fake.

About the burning train at Godhra, he is surprised that the VHP has never been brought to book for instigating the killings.

We are fed bilge like:
"On the eve of the post-Godhra violence, the Modi regime had colluded with the very group that allegedly went on to unleash mass killings of Muslims..."

and,
"The confidential note bristled with investigative leads as it turned out to be a bare account of all the allegations made before the NHRC...". This along with "substantive recommendations".... "constituted the first ever indictment of the Narendra Modi regime by a statutory body!!!"

and,
a report by Raju Ramachandran, amicus curiae, "Neither the CM nor his personal officials have stated what he did on 28.02.2002. Neither the top police nor bureaucrats have spoken about any decisive action by the CM".
quickly becomes in Mr. Mitta's recital: 
"incisive observation that he had not taken any decisive action".

and, back to the amazing Bhatt, 
"Ramachandran pointed out the absence of any 'indisputable material' establishing that Bhatt could not have been present at the controversial meeting" at which presumably Mr. Modi indicated that the maurauding mobs could be given a free hand.

Tell you what Mr. Mitta, there is also no "indisputable material" establishing that Superman could not have been present at the meeting.

I end with a word to another endorser, historian Ramachandra Guha: Sir, you have developed a reputation as a responsible historian. Be careful what you endorse and make sure it is not used to promote something altogether different.

Notes: 
For those who have not read the book, I would like to add that stuff within quotes is verbatim from the book. Stuff attributed to the book without quotes is a faithful summary rendition.

This commentary is, by definition, not comprehensive. It is a look at a book, not a book on a book. But the rest of the book is in the same vein.

Of course, my comments and queries are my own and I have no religious or political leanings.

If you are interested in the subject do read the book. I did.

Previously: Modi:Mitta::Kodnani:Convicted
Starting post-  Modi:Mitta::Fact:Fiction

Modi:Mitta::Kodnani Convicted

To be fair, for all his dislike of Raghavan, Mr. Mitta does acknowledge that Raghavan managed to get convictions in the Godhra as well as the post-Godhra cases. He also admits that Raghavan made many negative or critical observations against not just the Gujarat government but also against Mr. Modi.

In fact everyone against whom the SIT found evidence that could stand in a court of law was convicted. Now one of those convicted in the post-Godhra cases was Maya Kodnani, a Minister in Mr. Modi's cabinet. A key player and inciter in the post-Godhra mayhem. The highest level hindutva brigadist to be convicted.

But Mr. Mitta is unhappy about something here. You see, Kodnani was placed in and around trouble spots partly based on her cellphone call records. Many pages are devoted to the cellphone call records that appeared and disappeared through the years. Investigators are castigated, rightly, for not promptly analysing them and losing sight of them for long stretches of time. Presumably wilfully; at the instance of the sinister ones.

We learn in great detail about who zipped which file and carried what CD to whom and not finding them there brought it back only to...etc.

Turns out that that particular number did not belong to her. It belonged to the BJP. And there is no record of who in BJP was allocated the number.

Mr. Mitta is surprised that no one thought of verifying that she was indeed the user by simply looking at her letterhead or visiting card or even by asking her friends and foes how they contacted her. He does not tell us, however, how come he did not do so in the course of hunting out thousands of leads and documents and meeting hundreds of people. Just to satisfy himself. And us.

Most of Mr. Mitta's angst, however,  derives from the fact that with unlimited leads staring them in the face, all the government investigators and all the Supreme investigators and all the amicus curiae and all the human rights saviours and all the private lawyers and the private investigators did not even manage to get everyone else charged much less convicted of any crime.

One can feel his frustration for he has unearthed all the lapses in investigative zeal, competence and  motivation as also successful machinations and manipulations of the perpetrators and their protectors that have brought things to this dreadful pass.

Next: Modi:Mitta::Opportunity wasted?
Previously: Modi:Mitta::Investigator Indicted
First: Modi:Mitta::Fact:Fiction

Modi:Mitta::Investigator Indicted

I started this series with a comment about linguistic over-reach of some journalists. Mr. Mitta is no simple over-reacher. He has a very reader friendly writing style. But he plays fast and loose with the language, including legal terms, to suits his narrative predisposition.

He starts out by burnishing his "club of the righteous" badge by letting us know that he was helped by Anupam Gupta to make his book "sharper and more rigorous"; said Gupta being an advocate who was in Ashok Khemka's corner as he "...had dared to thwart property deals of ...Robert Vadra". 

Really? Thwarted? Thwart has specific  meanings: stop, prevent, oppose successfully! Far from being thwarted Mr. Vadra happily enjoys the just fruits of his labours. Mr. Mitta knows the meaning well for he, correctly, uses the exact same word to describe how Vajpayee wanted to act against Mr. Modi but was thwarted by his colleagues. But this is a minor matter. As is his liberal use of "telling" and "tell-tale" to add gravitas to speculative statements and flights of fancy.

Where Mr. Mitta really goes to town is with his cavalier use of the words "indict" and "indicted". In legal parlance indictment means "formal accusation" which must be brought before a judicial authority or, in the United States, before a grand jury, and charges framed or dropped.

Mr. Mitta has a visceral dislike of R K Raghavan, the SIT chief. It is on display all through the book. Raghavan, an Inspector General, was "barely into his last decade in office" when he was "entrusted with the task of ensuring security" during Rajiv Gandhi's visit to Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, in 1991 where he was assassinated. Remarkable observation. Really Mr. Mitta, how many years do you need to be into your last decade at work before being given an important task?

An "inquiry" into security lapses that fateful day becomes an "indictment" of Raghavan which merits a whole chapter. Since there is no actual indictment it is variously described as a "diluted indictment" and an "apparent indictment"; but not as a "non-existent indictment" for that is what the twenty-seven page chapter reveals. There was no indictment. But only, mind you, because the "damaging contents" of Raghavan's "own affidavit" were "glossed over" by SC Justice J S Verma who headed that inquiry commission.

And what, we ask, is the damaging revelation of said affidavit which escaped both the affiant, Raghavan and the inquisitor, Justice Verma? The former because he is an idiot and does not know he is incriminating himself. The latter because he obviously can't read. Well, Mr. Mitta can. He does and goes on to tell us the contents of the hitherto buried document.

Shorn of innuendo and suggestive twists to innocuous facts, it turns out Raghavan is guilty of three major sins. One, he did not escort the PM himself: inexcusable. Two, he looked away at the exact moment that the blast occurred: obviously securing a VIP is no different from surveilling a crime suspect. Three, his subordinate who saw what happened, told him what happened and he believed her: this is ridiculous, how can you trust your subordinates?

As a result, everything he reported as having been told become his "claims", his "insinuations" and his "allegations". The observant lady SI's veracity, however, does not seem to have been questioned by anyone, including Mr. Mitta.

But hey, just because the rest of the world has rigorous standards for usage of legal terms does not mean that Mr. Mitta should be so constrained! So Raghavan forever stands indicted.

However, Mr. Mitta confirms honestly that this manufactured indictment, was triggered by Raghavan citing him for "strategising with" and helping draft the affidavit of the miracle man Sanjeev Bhatt who could recall things he had not witnessed.

Coming up: Modi:Mitta::Kodnani Convicted
Previously: Modi:Mitta::The Post-Godhra Mayhem 
First: Modi:Mitta::Fact:Fiction

Modi:Mitta::Post-Godhra Mayhem

The broad facts about what followed the Godhra burnings are fairly well known. The news spread like the proverbial wild fire. The VHP, whose volunteers were the victims, went into overdrive. It escorted the bodies to Ahmedabad with official consent. It declared a bandh.

The government, on its part declared a curfew in Godhra but not in other cities. Some 300 or so preventive arrests were made in the light of mounting tensions, about two-thirds Hindus and one-third Muslims.

However, there were big-time systemic failures which allowed the post-Godhra mayhem to start and then to go out of control. Over a thousand people died, Mr. Mitta confirms. About three-fourths of them Muslims. All this accompanied by rape, child burning, looting and destruction of properties in what some have called a pogrom or even ethnic cleansing.

While it is happening, the rest of the country watches from afar as if in a foreign country. No emergency intervention from the centre. The number of people, including "people like us" who think what is happening is "not all that bad a thing" is frightening.

The BJP at the centre does not cover itself in glory. Prime Minister Vajpayee makes some appropriate sounds but is seemingly helpless.

The general, and abiding, impression one carries is that the authorities - whether governing, or maintaining law and order or, subsequently, investigating or maybe even judging - were neither quite unbiased nor very competent.

A commission of enquiry headed by a Gujarat High Court judge set up by the Gujarat government is generally seen as a friendly puppet. Subsequent augmentation with a retired Supreme Court judge to head it does not enhance its credibility because the gentleman selected is considered quite pliable too and not very competent to boot. This commission is still ambling along and has submitted a report on the Godhra incident. Its report on the post-Godhra happenings is still awaited. As I write this, it has been granted another extension.

The years between 2002 and 2008 were marked by a lot of media noise; breast-beating about the barbaric ways of the VHP, the BJP and Mr. Modi in particular; witnesses deposing and recanting; claims and counter-claims of evidence tampering, witness coaching and whistle-blower propping; global denouncements of Mr. Modi; and some legal action but very little tangible result.

Finally sometime in 2008, the Supreme Court constituted a special investigation team, SIT, headed by R K Raghavan a retired cop and former CBI chief to sort fact from fiction.

Hey wait a minute, R K Raghavan? How could the SC pick this man? Isn't he the guy who was mandated to protect Rajiv Gandhi in Sriperumbudur and totally failed? Call yourselves Supreme?
How could you?

Next- Modi:Mitta::Investigator Indicted
Previously- Modi:Mitta::Courier of the Dead
First- Modi:Mitta::Fact &amp:Fiction

Modi:Mitta::Courier of the Dead

Last seen there were 58 dead bodies and some injured persons in Godhra by 9 a.m. on 27 February 2002; one of the injured would die later. They had been headed to Ahmedabad. Four of the dead got claimed by their relatives in the course of the day. The Government decided to have the remaining 54 bodies shifted to Ahmedabad.

It is well known, that the decision to do so was taken at a meeting chaired by Mr. Modi in Godhra. Mr. Mitta confirms that Mr. Modi has said so himself to the SIT headed by R K Raghavan.

The other option would have been to keep the bodies in Godhra until their families could be located and ferried in to claim possession per prescribed procedure, presumably after filling the paperwork in triplicate and establishing their bona fides!

The latter option is the one Mr. Mitta says Mr. Modi should have opted for. This is getting interesting. Maybe we will get a discussion on how that might have changed the course of events and how it would have helped cool tempers all round before they got to a boiling point.

No such luck. A whole chapter is instead devoted to the hapless Justice Nanavati commission's failure to pin the blame for the decision to shift on Mr. Modi.

How is Nanavati's failure relevant any longer, Mr. Mitta, after Raghavan's SIT asked Mr. Modi the question and got the answer?

Then there is the VHP functionary, Jaydeep Patel, to whom the dead bodies were released. Mr. Mitta can not understand how, from among the hordes of people he met that day, Mr. Modi does not recall meeting this all important person. Whom he has acknowledged knowing. And who was also present in the same building! Same building, dammit!!

How is this meeting so important, Mr. Mitta? They could well have conspired on the phone! Or through an intermediary! Or through a note written in vanishing ink! Or through a wink and a nod!

Mr. Mitta does not like the fact that the bodies were handed over to the VHP.  Or that a low level factotum of the government signed the release letter. Was it to misdirect attention away from the 'highest levels' that approved the transfer? Much verbiage is expended on the letter. However, in what way this letter being drafted or typed or signed differently would have influenced history remains a mystery.

Why was the VHP involved? VHP was not responsible for the dead or the injured, Mr. Mitta tells us. The fact that the kar sevaks were VHP volunteers is not relevant. That VHP was best positioned to identify and locate their families is besides the point. They should have waited for the families in Godhra, as per the bureaucratic procedure.

Mr. Mitta demands an explanation for this departure from the norm. What were the exceptional circumstances, he wants to know, that warranted it?

Mr. Mitta deserves an answer.

Next: The Post-Godhra Mayhem
Previously: Modi:Mitta::The Godhra Incident
First: Modi:Mitta::Fact &amp:Fiction

Modi:Mitta::The Godhra Incident

Introductions out of the way, early on in the book we get a long awaited confirmation of fact.

Mr. Mitta acknowledges that 59 Hindus were burned alive in a train just outside Godhra railway station on 27 February 2002. He hastens to add that the attack was invited by their chanting provocative slogans like “Jai Shri Ram” and a dispute about payment for tea and snacks they had bought at the station. A "telling" mention of Karsevaks teasing Muslim women at the station is also thrown in.

While Mr. Mitta allows that the response to this provocation was “disproportionate”, he does lament that the trial court held the carnage to be a result of “conspiracy” rather than a “voluntary outburst” provoked by the preceding “skirmishes”, which would have called for gentler punishment.

The fact that the person accused of being the chief conspirator, based on a co-conspirators’ confession, was not convicted for lack of corroborative evidence should tell us that there was in fact no conspiracy or pre-planned mischief.

It must be a common practice in Gujarat villages, at least those abutting railway stations, to buy and store large quantities of petrol of an evening just in case a quarrel breaks out during the night or, if the train is delayed, the next morning. The fact that petrol was bought in advance is neither important nor disputed nor indeed proof of conspiracy.

What is crucial is that the two Hindus who sold the petrol changed their testimony. They lied because they were bribed by the VHP; we knew it all along. They lied at the behest of their employer, a Muslim gentleman; impossible, why would they? What clout did he have, apart from being the giver of their daily bread?

Mr. Mitta, in passing, also quotes the trial court, “For Godhra, this is not the first incident of burning alive innocent persons belonging to Hindu community”. We are not told if previous burnings were also brought on by heavy provocation.

Mr. Mitta follows up on many of the accused in great detail. He suffers for them through their trials and tribulations and regrets the treatment meted out to them by the police and the courts. His heart bleeds right on to the printed page for their kith and kin. There is hope, for appeals to higher courts are under way.

On the 59 burnt to death, he wastes not much of our time except to clarify that this number included 25 women and 15 children; that 58 died on the day, one died later; and that of the dead 59, actually only "52 were Hindus, while nine have remained unidentified till date".

Thank you Mr. Mitta. 

Next: Modi:Mitta::Courier of the Dead
Previously: Modi:Mitta::Fact:Fiction

Modi:Mitta::Fact:Fiction

“The Fiction of Fact Finding - Modi & Godhra” has been floating around the house for some time now.  Enticing with its promise of investigating the investigators and the investigations of Modi 2002.

 “...clear-eyed, unsparing of no one...” is the resounding endorsement of a previous work on the dust jacket of Mr. Mitta’s new book. The endorser is Sagarika Ghosh, one of the shrillest screamers on our journalistic firmament. As with many of her ilk, her linguistic reach exceeds her grasp by a long chalk. That, by itself, does not concern us but it does reflect on the author and his editors.

Finally we pick up the book and get off to a promising start. Mr. Mitta tells us in the very first pages about how he single-handedly stopped the VHP from creating nationwide mayhem shortly after the Godhra incident.

Fact 1: On 13 March 2002, the Supremes rejected a Vajpayee Government request to allow the VHP to conduct a symbolic pooja on the 15th at the Ayodhya site sacred to them.
Fact 2: The rejection order, instead of specifying all 100 odd revenue sites involved in the dispute or using a wider description like “nowhere within 100 miles of  ...”, specified two revenue sites as barred.
Fact 3: VHP chief Ashok Singhal caught on to this error and, interpreting it as permission to pooj away at any adjoining site, proclaimed victory. He was all over the visual media all day.

What followed was remarkable. The whole country heard him. Multiple times. Yet no one understood.  Except, of course, Mr. Mitta, who promptly wrote about it for the Indian Express, to appear the following morning, “pointing out the error and explaining how it had crept in”.

Chief Justice B N Kirpal read Mr. Mitta’s write up and, to his credit, quickly understood that he had slipped. He promptly scheduled a hearing to correct the “ambiguity”.

Mr. Mitta does not share with us how he happens to be privy to CJ Kirpal’s news reading habits. Living as they do in a cloistered world, it is entirely possible that CJ Kirpal, his staff, colleagues, family or friends did not hear, or hear of, Singhal boasting of victory till they heard from Mr. Mitta.

Mr. Mitta does quote jurist A G Noorani who commends Mr. Mitta’s “...mention of an inadvertent error...” for helping the court. Noorani’s early morning or otherwise equation with Justice Kirpal remains unexplored.

Having told us about this singular history shaping act, Mr. Mitta is quick to reassure us that he is not  recounting it “to blow his own trumpet” but that, and get this, he has in the course of his career routinely “sought to expose mistakes, even if by the Supreme Court...” both “inadvertent” and “deliberate”. He has a closetful of trumpets.

To research this book, Mr. Mitta has, apart from poring over thousands of documents, met with a host of lawyers, activists and whistle-blowers all intent on digging up or covering up dirt. His own efforts to assist the whistleblower cop Sanjiv Bhatt are trivial he says in the overall scheme of things, and have been overblown by the investigators.

Mr. Bhatt famously has a clear recollection of some events at a meeting where he was not present according to dozens of other people who were. Mr. Mitta avers that those others do not really count. It is all about credibility and not about numbers. 

We will never know how big a debt of gratitude we owe Mr. Mitta.

Next: Modi:Mitta::The Godhra Incident

Life Insurance - All you need to know to save big bucks

This is for you if you have a life insurance cover. Or have plans to get one.

This blog post emerges from a project I started  to help young professionals with understanding and, I hoped, better management of personal finance affairs. 

I soon realised that countless people of all ages, including hardened finance professionals and clear headed numbers experts, are buying ridiculous life policies which will collectively lose them billions while enriching the insurance companies and their agents.

Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation. This caution mandated by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority leaves me both bemused and amused. I don't understand what they are actually trying to say and I doubt if the author intended to make a tongue-in-cheek allusion to that other profession, dalliance with which also gets you screwed. 

The Simplistic Basics
Everyone who has people dependent upon their earnings needs to get a life cover.

Life insurance works like a mutual support group with the insurer as co-ordinator. Those who survive help pay for those who die early. The cost of such mutual cover plus a reasonable profit for the insurance company is very very small. All in all a brilliant and fair-to-all concept.

Insurers employ actuaries to do precise calculations of what anyone joining the party needs to pay, and they are very good at it.

The Ugly Reality
However, the moment you start talking to an insurance agent, public or private sector, you get bombarded with a sales pitch which has nothing whatsoever to do with life cover. The key words you hear in varying order but without variety are:

• Tax Saving
• Endowment
• Money Back
• Capital Growth
• Profit Sharing
• Unit Linked
• Stock Market Gains
• Bonus
• Insurance Bhi, Investment Bhi

All these are seductive but dangerous ideas. Don't listen. Don't get diverted from your objective, which is life cover in case of pre-mature death. Don't ever think. Their sole purpose is to get you to spend more money than you should. 

 

This is what happens to the premium paid for 90% of the policies:  

• A tiny part goes for covering the risk to your life.
• A largish part goes to agent fees, specially in the first few years. 
• A significant part goes to insurer to cover costs and profit.
• The rest goes to market investments which they are not very good at managing. 

It gets worse when you are sold policies to cover a child's education or marriage. It gets ugly when "life policies for children" are sold.

The fact that very often the person selling the junk to you is your banker makes it contemptible. You trust him. He is out to make a package at your cost, for himself or his bank or both is besides the point. 

The Simple Truth 

• Mixing insurance with savings or investment puts you to great loss.
• Only an earning person with dependants needs a life cover.
• The best life cover is one that pays nothing if you survive. If you want your money back, don't give it in the first place. Insurance companies are no good at managing your money. They are not smart investors on your behalf. They don't know stock markets better than mutual funds, which additionally offer you low or no cost realignment if needed. Plus they have sticky fingers; some of it never comes back.
• If you want full tax savings, get the cheapest life cover and put the rest of your 80C allowance in public provident fund. You will save and earn at least twice as much. Much more than an insurer will pay to cover education or marriage of children.
  
• If you want to get stock market benefits, save money on premium and invest directly into ELSS tax saver funds and realign every three years with advice from a stock market specialist. 
• If you wish to endow anyone, do it directly. Why pay a middleman to do it?
• If you have insured your family members who don’t, in turn, have dependants on their present or potential earnings, cancel such policies, and finally,
• If you have any policy other than a term insurance with nil maturity benefit. Look to get out of it.

What is Term Insurance?

It is a simple contract. You agree to pay the insurance company Rs. X per year for a term of, say, 25 or 30 or so years. In return the insurer agrees to pay your nominee Rs. Y Lakhs if you die before the term is over. If you survive the term you get nothing. The premium for your exact age for different terms should be easy to ascertain.

What Next?

Clean up your insurance act and, using the same amount of money, you have the choice of getting a much larger life cover and  / or putting away the rest into more fruitful savings options.

Get the cheapest and simplest term insurance, or a minor variant, from a reputed private sector life insurer or LIC. Useful add-ons are a. accident cover, b. disability cover and c. life cover to a later age while premium stops with your earning years. Preferably buy online. Update it at least every five years to ensure you have cover for 5 to 8 times your current annual earnings.

~

ps1: For my friends who have public sector / private sector issues, I would like to add that for medical or health insurance I strongly recommend public sector insurers.
ps2: Getting out of an existing policy may involve some costs but in a vast majority of cases is still worth it for the money you start saving immediately. You may need some number crunching. 

ps3: Why the swipe at the Government of India in the title?  While every insurer deceptively mis-sells, the originator, master and the greatest practitioner of the mis-selling art is the LIC. The GOI is the biggest beneficiary of LIC's financial success and muscle. LIC routinely bails out GOI's overpriced share offerings of public sector non-performers. Also invests inefficiently in the private sector. With your money.
ps4: One of key tasks of IRDA, the insurance regulator, is to protect LIC.

Optional Reading:   

1. Actuary
2. Term Insurance 

Madrasis and Other Relations

At a recent family dinner, in response to something said in casual conversation, I made the offhand remark that southern Indian populace was rather more homogeneous than its northern counterpart. This, in the context of serial invasions of northern India from the west and osmotic exchange with the east over the centuries, has been a part of one's subconscious forever.

Alok was appalled by my ignorance and pointed out that the south has had a vibrant maritime exchange of peoples with other geographies and probably hosts as much of a genetic potpourri as the north. What's more, while tandoori chicken may taste the same from Amritsar to Birmingham to New York, sambhar tastes verrry different every few miles if you trouble to go by road from Chennai to Thiruvananthapuram.

His mother-in-law, not to be left behind, weighed in with the observation that for north Indians all southerners are Madrasi and they can't tell one Madrasi from another.

I can't quite recall how we got away from this awkward spot but we must have done for I live to tell the tale. However, I was tempted to look up and see how far wrong I had been.

Way Out West
The genetic make-up of Indians seems to have attracted quite some scholarly interest in the 21st century and some major studies have been carried out during the last decade or so. This write-up is based on my understanding at the time of writing. However, scientific research is an ongoing process and I am sure our understanding will improve as we go along.

Research papers on genetic studies, in keeping with the highest traditions of academia, are awash with jargon and far from unanimous. Most seem to draw conflicting conclusions to suit preconceived hypotheses from similar numbers by massaging them a bit differently.

Hence it is that, in keeping with the lowest traditions of second hand research, one can draw some fairly simple, and simplistic, conclusions:

• There has not been any major influx of Central Asian genes into India for over ten millennia.
• The Indo-European linguistic links are more recent than that and are not explained by conquest or large scale in-migration. 
• Genetically the population of India is fairly heterogeneous and the bulk of it descends from two major genetic groupings which have been assigned the names  
• Ancestral South Indians (ASI), and  
• Ancestral North Indians (ANI).
• The two major streams probably arrived in the sub-continent at different destinations along different routes at different times from Africa.
• There are no pure ASI and ANI lines left on mainland India.

• The ASI line is the older one and has very little presence in north India.
• The purest ASI line is to be found in the Andamans. It is quite possible that the ASI stream landed first in the Andaman islands and 'flew' across to south India.
• The ASI line does not seem to have any linkages beyond the sub-continent and the Andaman islands although some very weak links have been traced to the Australian aborigines.

• The ANI line has a fairly strong presence in south India.
• The ANI line is genetically linked to certain Middle Eastern, Central Asian and  Eastern European populations but not to Western European populations. These links are weak and probably date back to a pre-ice age male ancestor. 

...and Our Relations
The ANI linkages, quite counter-intuitively, do not seem to sit on a continuum but seem to exist at discrete points and at distant locations.

This has created some interesting connections. For example, the R1a1 genetic haplogroup, descendants of a common male ancestor, probably Indian, is strongly marked among Punjabi Khatris of the Indus basin; high-caste brahmins of Bengal and Konkan; certain eastern European populations; and the Chenchu tribes of Andhra.

Who would have thought that

• a certain ageing, Bangalore based golfer; 
• the world's best daughter-in-law,  rooted to a Konkan town better known for sending out terrorists; 
• a certain Illinois based, internationally noted trade economist of Bengali origin; 
• an avatar of Lord Vishnu's consort Mahalaksmi, Chenchu Lakshmi, forever ingrained, in said ageing golfer's mind as the buxom Anjali Devi  from the 1958 movie; 
• and the lithe blonde Lithuanian shaking her booty in a Bollywood number, unknowingly but comfortably ensconced among her kin, as the contemporary take on feminine allure;

are all distant cousins?

Selected Readings:

1. Large Scale Influx from Central Asia?
2. Coancestry of European & Asian Chromosomes
3. Genetic Heritage of Tribal & Caste Indians
4. The Origin of Paternal Haplogroup R1a1   (download)
5. Land of Seven Rivers (Book)

Bhagat Singh

I grew up in the early 1950s in Ferozepur, a small town within walking distance from the Indo-Pak border at Hussainiwala. The border ran along the river Sutlej, the eastern bank being India and the western one Pakistan.

Among the joys of a riverside town are the festivals that involve a dip in the river. On festival days the railways ran a special train for the short journey to an otherwise defunct railway station at Hussainiwala. There the line was blocked and beyond the block lay a barrage over which pre-partition trains used to ply into what was now Pakistan.

The Barrage on the Sutlej

An early childhood spent close temporally to the partition and physically to Pakistan meant that every visit to the river for a festival or for a picnic, incited  speculation among the youngsters about what lay on the other side.

Just across the water, in addition to the sworn enemy of India and all things good, the folklore went, lay what definitely belonged to us, the cremation place of Bhagat Singh, Raj Guru and Sukhdev.

It seemed  like a cruel twist of fate or laziness of Cyril Radcliff's pen which had put it just outside our reach.

Many hangovers from the partition featured regularly in the headlines. But the one closest to the our hearts, never seemed to do. There was heartburn about the apathy of those in Delhi towards, what must have been my first exposure to the phrase, "Punjabi Sentiments".

To our surprise however, it turned out that, away from the public eye, diplomatic negotiations were on. And in 1961, in a low key barter deal, the borders got redrawn. In exchange for a narrow strip of land covering the Bhagat Singh memorial, India ceded some twelve villages elsewhere along the border.

In 1965 and again in 1971, Pakistan tried, unsuccessfully, to  take back by force what had been ceded at the barter table.

My first visit to the cremation point in 1969 was an awe-ispiring moment. Where there was then a rudimentary plaque now stands a massive, if slightly gaudy, monument. I was there in 2011. The pictures can be seen here: The Martyrs' Memorial.

The Man who could make Gold dance

His name was Bobby Randhawa and he was on his way to see me. He had landed that morning in Bombay from Boulder, Colorado. Too late to catch the flight he was booked on, he spoke to me briefly before taking IC605. It crashed that afternoon in February 1990 short of the runway at the Bangalore airport and came to a halt within the Karnataka Golf Course.

Key cause: pilots not fully conversant with the fly-by-wire technology of the recently commissioned Airbus A-320. 

Fellow ISI alumnus Srinivas Bhogle, who was then with National Aerospace Laboratories, recently wrote about the crash in detail here and triggered this memorandum on the events set off by Bobby's death. There are 89 other stories out there.

Around the time of the crash, I was going through the background papers and wondering how to deal with Bobby.

At about 1:30 p.m. the secretary buzzed to say that the flight had been delayed. Two more such calls happened over the next one hour. No official announcements, but rumours of a plane crash had started floating around town and phones had started ringing. 

Background
Bobby was the Technical Director of Vac-Tec, a company working at the cutting edge of thin film technology. I had met him a few weeks earlier when a colleague and I visited Vac-Tec in a four nation sweep to select a 'physical vapour deposition' (PVD) based decorative coating plant for watch cases.

Using this technology expensive gold electroplating is replaced by a coat of gold-lookalike titanium nitrate, a very hard substance. A sparse dusting of actual gold on top creates the illusion of real gold colour much coveted by the human race. PVD thus offers enormous gold savings and phenomenally increased durability.

The alchemy happens in a vacuum chamber where an Argon plasma is created, and in a process reminiscent of sci-fi movies, gold is literally vapourised off a solid gold bar, dances across to the desired object and condenses there in a magically fine and uniform layer.

Worldwide, only four or five equipment manufacturers were then able to achieve the desired results consistently. We adopted an accelerated learning-evaluation-selection cycle by visiting all of them in quick succession. Vac-Tec was our last stop. After a courtesy meetings with top management, Bobby took over for the next two days for a thorough presentation of what they had to offer.

Bobby was from a small village in the Punjab. The only one from his village to have gone to college in a nearby town. He did well and landed in the U.S. on a scholarship for graduate studies. A well built, presentable, cusp-of-thirty young man, he was one of the few Indians then in Boulder. 

And one of the half a dozen acknowledged technology leaders in his field worldwide - he could make gold dance exactly the way it needed to.

By the time we were done in Boulder, though highly impressed by their product and technology, we were convinced that Vac-Tec were not really equipped to provide support and service to a novice customer in far away Bangalore, and we decided to go for one of their competitors.

Back to the crash
Vac-Tec, who had been following up vigorously for the mega-bucks order, were not willing to give up. In spite of our telling them that it was of no use, Bobby embarked on a journey, punctuated by the delayed London-Bombay leg, the missed domestic connection and the not-missed alternate flight that crashed that afternoon.

Around 5 p.m. I was told that the injured, as also the 90 or so who had perished, were being shifted to the Air-force Hospital.

I hauled myself over there. Bobby was not among those injured. Nor among the recognisable bodies, covered in white sheets and lined up on the lawn.

Aftermath
Turned out Bobby had no Indian friends in Boulder. And his family had no phone at home or anyone in the family who spoke english. Our associate Timex, also a Vac-Tec customer, with offices in the U.S. and in Delhi, helped co-ordinate the disposal of his assets and entitlements.

A few months later the phone buzzed and a bewildered secretary announced the unexpected arrival of a Mr.& Mrs. Randhawa. That would be Bobby's brother and sister-in-law. They had come straight from the train station by the simple device of telling the auto driver: Titan office ko le chalo.

They needed some sort of closure by visiting the place where Bobby's life had come to an end. And by talking to the one person they could reach who had last spoken to Bobby. Over the years he had visited them occasionally but they had never gone over and had no idea what he did. They had been surprised to receive a veritable fortune as the proceeds of his estate.

There was not much we could say to each other. They ended up crying inconsolably for what must have been about half an hour but seemed much longer. Later that day we arranged for them to be taken to the very spot where the plane had crashed.

Aftermath
About a couple of years later, Paul, who had been Bobby's deputy in Vac-Tec called out of the blue. The company was liquidating stocks. Would we be interested in buying a coating plant at fire-sale prices?

Our technical people were by now conversant with the technology and felt that if we were getting a great deal we should look at it. I was headed westward on other business anyway, so I landed once again in beautiful Boulder. I was received by the company's Corporate Secretary and taken to the factory.

The empty parking lot had not prepared me for the shock awaiting me in the lobby. What had been a tastefully decorated space abuzz with activity was now bare. Where there used to be an attractive secretary at a glass and steel counter now stood, leaning against the wall and smiling, Bobby Randhawa. It took a couple of moments to register that it was just a life-size, and life-like, portrait.

In the cavernous, dark shop floor stood a number of tall cylindrical systems of different sizes in various stages of completion - looking like a George Lucas movie set. There around a work platform I met Paul and the remaining skeletal technical team.

Over the next couple of hours as Paul tried to sell me a plant, the story of how Bobby's departure had killed a vibrant business unfolded. As he spoke about what they could offer us, Bobby turned up every few minutes in some context, and Paul had to stop to wipe away silent tears. He had lost a boss he admired and a friend he loved; the company an asset it had not been able to replace.

They had tried various people from the academic space but no one could comfortably manage the move from lab scale to production scale. Regular customers, who were used to calling up Bobby directly for help in dealing with problems, or designing jigs and fixtures, or developing new coatings, had peeled off and new ones were hard to come by. Product development had come to a halt. Vac-Tec had gone into liquidation under Chapter 7.

Epilogue
This technology till today remains in a few hands. Out of the ashes of Vac-Tec was later born a new company Vapour-Tec, in Boulder. They do not offer gold coating in their regular line-up.

Filthy Lucre & Indian Media

The invitation, from 'Media Watch', a newly minted penniless outfit of people deeply concerned about the state of media in India, was for a talk on 'MEIDA MATTERS'. (Their spelling.)

The speaker: 
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, left-leaning media maven

A couple of hundred people turned up. Most of them from the host school of mass communications. It turned out to be a master class. In a melodramatic outpouring that lasted about an hour, Paranjoy shared with us some of the things that he said were bothering him and that we should be wary of.

Paranjoy's big concern is the increasing role of money

His erstwhile employer TV18, operator of the channels CNBC-TV18, CNN-IBN, Colours etc., is now controlled by the Mukesh Ambani Reliance group. That is somehow not good for TV18, for media at large and for the country.

The India Today group, operator of the channels Hedlines Today, Aaj Tak etc. is now to a large extent owned by the Aditya Birla group. That is somehow not good...

The ND TV group is independent but highly connected to the establishment - witness Barkha Dutt in the Radia tapes -  and that is somehow not good...

Paranjoy flew business-class to Bangalore

The Pioneer is sponsored by the Sangh Parivar and that is somehow not good...

The Hindustan times is owned by the Birlas and wired deep into the establishment - witness Vir Sanghvi on Radia tapes - and that is somehow not good...

The Times of India is independently owned, but it is also wired deep into the establishment. The fact that Arnab Goswami ceaselessly hounded Suresh Kalmadi and A. Raja, and yells and screams nightly at the hapless Manish Tiwari or the idiotic Digvijay Singh does not fit this hypothesis so we will not go into it. But whatever it is, it's somehow not good...

Paranjoy arrived in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes

The Dainik Jagaran, has succeeded financially beyond anyone's expectations and they are now shamelessly siphoning out money earned in media operations to other businesses and that is somehow not good...

The Deccan Chronicle on the other hand has failed miserably, both in media operations and dumb forays into other ventures, and will now have to be bailed out by injection of funds earned by other people in other businesses and that is somehow also not good...

The list goes on, shareholdings, directorships, matrimonial linkages etc. and finally,

Doordarshan is really the pits for it is a pathetic mouthpiece of the establishment, which controls the purse strings, and dictates content and stance. This can't possibly be good...

Paranjoy stayed at a five-star hotel

Hobbled miserably by success and by failure, and by money - internal, external, too much, too little - Indian media is down in the pits and headed deeper. Unfortunately, and with scarcely hidden glee, even Paranjoy does not have a solution.

Meanwhile, it is all very lucrative for Paranjoy, thank you. A media star, he rakes it in off media twice. First when he makes paid appearances on TV or writes for the press. Second when he makes paid criticism of his paymasters or goes on all-found junkets to do what he does best - talk. 

The problem is real and we do need checks and balances but solutions will probably be found by people who do not feed at the same trough.

The Kudankulam Saga

With frightening ease the establishment has managed to confine the Kudankulam discourse to a local problem that concerns only a few illiterate villagers who have some very personal and trivial concerns. Spiced up a bit by 'foreign' funded NGOs, out to divert us from our shot at greatness and superpowerdom.

Civil society at large, the 'professional' intelligentsia as also the scientific community have been lulled into acceptance of a totally fake assurance that safety is not an issue.

Over the last few years public pronouncements have been of the type where the prime minister says he has full faith in the nuclear scientists of the country. This is followed a few days later by some employee of the Department of Atomic Energy, which controls all activities nuclear, saying he has full faith in the prime minister.

Not to be outdone Abdul Kalam pipes up shortly thereafter to the effect that he has full faith in the prime minister and the nuclear scientists of India, and that he has satisfied himself that all available state-of-the-art safeguards have been built into our nuclear power plants.

Therein lies the rub. State-of-the-art isn't good enough.

As we lathi-charge and fire tear-gas at the Kudankulam villagers, another voice opened up yesterday. In a prime editorial-page piece in the Hindu titled "The Real Questions", one Rahul Siddharthan, employed by a DAE funded outfit, came out strongly against scaremongering and suggesting that 'an independent safety regulator" is needed to reassure misguided, ignorant and ill-informed people.

Siddharthan does not present any personal credentials to show that he knows whereof he speaks. He cites instead an eminent authority on the subject, one George Monbiot, a zoologist, author and journalist. Said George has converted recently from 'neutral' to 'pro-nuclear power' because, hold your breath, no one died as a consequence of the Fukushima disaster.

The fact that radiation fallout forced the evacuation of about 160,000 people surrounding the plant and left about 132 square kilometers as a no-go zone, some of it uninhabitable for decades does not merit mention.

As I finished reading this mischievous work designed to misinform and obfuscate, Sajal Lahiri, the noted International Trade economist and Japophile,  posted a BBC news report that the Japanese have decided to totally phase out nuclear power.

Do we know something they don't or is it vice versa? If we do, we should capitalise on that by selling that knowledge to Germany and Japan.

Snippet: The other expert Rahul Siddharthan cites is Randall Munroe, the creator of the web comic XKCD.

Previous: Nuclear Business Opportunity
First:  The Nuclear Mess

Todd Akin, Crossfire & Arnab

Seeing an effete Pierce Morgan struggling on CNN to moderate a two-woman debate on the Todd Akin instigated "legitimate rape" topic, I wondered if many people remember Crossfire, a faux debate programme that was a keystone of CNN programming for long starting in the nineteen eighties.

The format was very simple. Two loud, fast and ferocious debaters. One liberal the other conservative. One hot political topic of the day. No moderators. No hold barred.

Rather unlike Krishi Darshan

At that time an open debate in a mass medium between extreme schools of thought was unknown in DD land where everything was an extreme grey.

Crossfire ran for over 23 years, with some minor changes, and boasted of a number of eminent hosts, who went on to play key roles in the American political space.

The most striking of these was Pat Buchanan, who later worked with Nixon, Reagan and Ford, as their policy wonk and speech writer.

Others notables were Geraldine Ferraro, the first female VP candidate for a major party and Lynn Cheney, a VP candidate aspirant in 2000 who, in another first, lost the spot to her husband Dick. 

The death of a long distance runner
The 2004 presidential race and its coverage also spelt the death of the 23 year old Crossfire at the hands of comedian Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show.

Invited to the show as a guest, Stewart gently skewered and roasted the show and its hosts mercilessly. The demolition, a TV classic by now, and well worth a watch, can be seen here.

CNN was virtually left with no choice but to cancel the show. Today, American TV is still replete with loud, deeply partisan anchors and speakers, and saner voices are generally drowned.

The birth of Arnab Goswami 
Meanwhile we have landed Arnab Goswami, Barkha Dutt et al who preside nightly over political and social discourse on TV. Louder than early Crossfire, only more shrill.

They are unable to express an informed opinion or take an intelligent stance. Nor are they able to control, far less moderate, their motley crew of often ill-informed, ill-prepared or inarticulate guests.

One wonders how and when they can be laughed out of existence. Also whether we might be better off getting on to a "two able and well-informed debaters with or without an equally competent moderator" format.

Snippet: Krishi Darshan, a DD programme aimed at the farmer marches on as the longest running TV show in India.

Independence Day Exodus

The South-Western Railway yesterday announced that it will run two special trains to Gauhati.

This is to accommodate over 5000 people from the north-eastern states fleeing Bangalore / Karnataka after a recent spate of racially motivated attacks and threats.

One can only hope that there is a writer at the other end to record the travails of this Train From India!

To read the news report click here.

Olympic Hockey & Onset of Cynicism

Nostalgia is not what it used to be. 

This post is triggered by today's last page headlines.

The year is 1960. I am in the 11th standard. The headmaster is a graceful gentleman. Stern but kindly. Tough but fair. Well-built but not over-weight. Taller than the other teachers. Handsome in a Balraj Sahni way, only more so.

He turns up just-about-moist eyed at one late-summer morning school meet. "It is a sad day for India", says he, starting his daily address, "our Olympic contingent will return without a medal."

A youngish know-it-all, not me, chirps up, jumping right into the trap, "But Sir, we won the silver in hockey."

"If you leave behind gold, bringing home silver does not count."

The hockey gold is something we have always taken for granted. Much breast-beating follows all over the country. Pundits propound various theories. Pundit Nehru chips in with his two bits worth. Unanimous conclusion: something must be done.

The Punjab government, feeling guilty as the supplier of a majority of hockey players, announces a path-breaking and Olympics-busting plan to encourage sports of all varieties.

All schools are required to have training programmes. Each will cover at least five disciplines of their choice. There will be weekly competitions for individual and monthly ones for team sports at district headquarters .

The first three in each category will get a "collar pin". Three different colours. The school getting the maximum number of pins gets a rotating shield. The school getting the maximum pins over the year gets to keep the shield.

When the first pins adorn school uniform shirt collars of a few of my fellow students, I am happy for them for I know that they have worked hard to earn them. Not having adequate athletic skills to go up against the best, I also feel a little bit sorry for myself.

The turnaround comes very fast. In no time, the better endowed schools have figured out that if you send different, but able, kids every week, you improve your chances of the annual win. The students, or their parents, have figured out that you don't really have to win it; there is a price for every 'pin'.

Within a few weeks, the city is full of coloured pins. Everyone and his brother is wearing one or more pins testifying to their athletic prowess. The scheme collapses.

Snippets
1. We were to win the gold only twice after that. In Tokyo 1964 when we beat Pakistan in sweet revenge for the Rome 1960 loss. And later in Moscow 1980, when no other team of any standing turned up to play.

2. In short order both Pakistan and India were relegated to lower ranks by the white man who "will never learn how to tackle our wily dribblers". Not qualifying for Beijing 2008 was the nadir. Qualifying for London 2012 merited front page banner headlines; seen in a sports context only when India wins a cricket world cup or Maria Sharapova wins or loses anything.

3. The enormity of what had happened in 1960s became clear to me only in the early seventies when I travelled by road around England and Europe one summer. Over a matter of two weeks and hundreds of kilometres I never ever saw a field hockey ground. Or anyone playing it. Every village I passed through had two or more football grounds, though.

4. The year we first lost the hockey gold, I was a member of my school's junior hockey team. The shortest, slightest and the only 11th standard player in the whole district; most were in the 8th or lower. This lead to much resentment and charges of under-reporting of age. My coach did not let me play a single match for fear that the opposition would go after me with intent. My team won the championship. I still have the certificate.

Dara, The Gentle Giant

I am a student. Probably 8th standard. 1958 or so. Ferozepur, Punjab. Come winter, the school is suddenly abuzz with stories about this new inmate, a giant, in the District Central Jail. 

He enjoys a special status not found in the rule book. Is free to move around. Has a special dietary allowance consisting of kilos of milk, meat, and ghee as also dozens of eggs. Goes jogging, for exercise, around the jail compound twice daily with one fellow prisoner cradled in each arm.

We hear new stories everyday. The stories emanate from a classmate, whose father is the Superintendent of the jail. This high security prison is where Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were kept by the British. The new inmate there is Dara Singh, Rustame-e-Hind, the title named after Rostam, hero of the Persian epic Shahname. 

Although Dara is the proclaimed kushti champion of India, we know that actually he is the world champion. And we know this because the Indian wrestling tour includes a number of foreign white wrestlers. The crowd's favourite whipping boy is the improbably huge Hungarian wrestler King Kong. Many are beaten and sent packing but King Kong is a fixture. 

We know that professional wrestling is not quite real, but we do not care. Dara is not just unbeaten, he is unbeatable. 

Dara is held, we are told, in connection with an incident involving murder. As the tales about his prison stay begin to get taller and taller, some scepticism surfaces and pressure to 'trust but verify' mounts. Our friend arranges a visit one Sunday for a bunch of us.

Bursting with excitement, we land up well before the appointed time at the 20 ft high gates of the jail, where our equally excited friend waits. A seemingly seven-footer guard opens a five-footer door embedded in the gates and we are escorted to the Superintendent's office. He deputes another guard to take us further in and cautions us not to stray far from the guard. 

Another door at the end of a dark corridor opens into a largish open sunlit courtyard. And there is Dara Singh. Seated on a stone platform . Clad in a langot. Getting a vigorous ghee massage from a couple of similarly clad well built blokes. Surrounded by a dozen or so thuggish looking characters. 

Dara looks towards us and smiles. Our friend rushes forward and greets him as one would a favourite uncle. He then proudly introduces us as fans. One by one we all move forward to shake hands. With each introduction our friend grows an inch taller, having earned our everlasting gratitude and friendship. At least for a few days.

Dara has a surprisingly soft grip and delicate shake. To each boy he mumbles something unintelligible. We have never seen anyone so handsome, so well built and so gentle. Dara Singh will never be a bigger hero.

Dara Singh RIP 

Snippets 

• Dara Singh's films basically gave a start to actress Mumtaz's career. His successor as Rustam-e-Hind, younger brother Randhawa married Mumtaz's younger sister Mallika. Randhawa and Mallika were also actors.
• Before there was Dara, there was The Great Gama. Rustam-e-Hind of undivided India. Rustam-e-Zamaan, the world champion. Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif's wife Kulsum is a grand daughter of Gama.
• The Hungarian wrestler, Emile Czaja, professional name King Kong, also acted in a Hindi movie, playing himself. He was known outside India as the "Indian Wrestler".
• Dara Singh's first movie as a lead actor, ironically, is the 1962 film titled King Kong.
• I was about to post this when my younger brother's weekly call came in. Just before disconnecting, he says, "Hey, do you remember...