In My View

Buddham Smaranam Gachhami….

The troubles in Tibet this spring reminded one of another summer forty-four years ago in what was then South Vietnam's capital, Saigon. On 11 June, 1963, a Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, sat cross-legged on a busy Saigon street intersection; doused himself in gasoline and lit himself afire. The picture became a poignant reminder to the world of all imperialist outrages for all times to come.

American news correspondents who were present in the city then had been forewarned the day before by a Buddhist monk. He had told them that a ‘big thing' would happen the next day. Nevertheless, most of the hacks that day had decided to ignore the advance billing. They were bored with the languishing story of the conflict of Buddhist monks with the South Vietnamese government, continuing for more than a month.

The Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, was protesting against the US-backed Ngo Dinh Diem regime's repression of its own embattled people. Eventually though, the CIA staged a coup against the Diem regime; killed him and put another military ruler in his place, only to continue the losing war against the communist north.

Today's American correspondents might not have been informed in Beijing, or even Lhasa about the Buddhist upsurge in Tibet. They would have been busy with then on-going Chinese National People's Congress session. Or their bosses in Washington and New York might have felt harassed by the ever expanding crisis of the American economy, with just the week of the Tibet story being dominated by the American Federal Reserve's panicked reaction. Mortal fear seemed to have engulfed the US central bank with a Wall Street crash of the multi-billion dollar, Bear Stearns, a financial behemoth.

In fact, the predominant story of the past few months had been the economic crisis in the USA. The front pages of the world's newspapers were too full with stories of the American economic woes. The headlines had been fuelled in no small measure by the now unseated ‘demi-god' of high finance, Alan Greenspan writing in the Financial Times that the current US turmoil is the worst since Second World War.

However, the ceremonial lighting of the Olympic torch was also approaching. Moreover, its intended destinantion was Beijing. Would that have made the contrast between a rising China and an USA on the decline starker, under the circumstances? Surely, the path of the torch could have been peppered by demonstrations of embittered Chinese, but that would have garnered, at best, sidebar coverage. Would that have been enough to divert the world's attention from the failing financial institutions – pillars of modern Western establishment – to something else?

For the USA the misfortune lay in the fact that they did not find a Thich Quang Duc. The fiery sense of indignant righteousness that could have propelled a Dalai Lama follower to self-immolate either in Lhasa or in Dharamshala or anywhere else in the world was missing. Instead, what was seen on the streets of Tibet was marauding Tibetans threatening lives and limbs and vandalising properties of Han Chinese settlers in pure sectarian disgrace. Of course, the clapper boys of the international media, including their brethren in Indian national media were at attendance to elevate the same into a great frontier of a battle for ‘self-determination.'

Indeed, the Palestinians have possibly had a laugh at the faint attempts of the Tibetans to register their anger. The former, battle-hardened in the intifada against one of the most armed security forces of the world, Israel Defence Forces, have succeeded on many occasions to turn the face of a media towards their plight. This is the media whose moguls still suffer from the bunker mentality of Holocaust concentration camp victims.

Having said that one has to keep in mind that the Chinese have invested an enormous amount of their face on the Olympic Games, 2008. That is a vulnerability they would now have to live with till end-August when the Games wind down. Beijing should have known better that there were no debutante's balls in Big Power politics. Thus, as a stark reminder to all who care, the Chinese predicament is not born of its scientific socialism but is a product of its emotional nationalism. Yet, the Chinese cannot possibly plead ignorance.

They know that the CIA's decades-long subversion of the People's Republic – in which India also was a willing party at least till the end-1950s – was ended when Richard Nixon showed his desperation for a relationship with Beijing in light of the Cold War. So Beijing should have known that it was astrategic to invest so much in a global sporting spectacle that was susceptible to the machinations of a few.

But be that as it may, Beijing should also know that Great Powers do not leave loose ends. They would have to acknowledge that the Dalai Lama leads a sizable section of the Tibetans as their spiritual leader. China would have to acknowledge his pre-eminence and sit across a table with him to discover what he wants for his former land. A gesture like that would disarm many Tibetans who have otherwise borne the brunt of a lack of economic development in the country's west.

For all of India's fulminations, even New Delhi would fall in line then. Because howevermuch it works under the pressure of the Americans and their fellow- travellers in the country's policy establishments, they could not but read history's lessons: that the USA is declining, and China rising.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in

In My View

Dealmaking in Heartbreaksville

The streets of Lutyen’s Delhi, I believe, are now lined with broken hearts. Ahead of Monday (17 March) coordination meeting between the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the Left parties, the buzz can no longer be heard on the ‘loser takes all’ talk about the Congress staking its claim on national power over the ‘nuclear deal’ with George W Bush’s Washington.

The Indian elite, known for its ‘faido kya?’ mercantilist mindset of framing foreign policy issues, has made it clear that it was not willing to topple the applecart on something as ephemeral as a ‘nuclear deal’ of at best dubious value. The bigger agenda item of pushing India even more close to the USA would have to wait for more opportune climes. In short, one should live for another day.

So one should not be very surprised if the media briefing after the 17 March coordination meet begins instead with a condemnation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) newly found testosterone-driven campaign of violence against the CPI (M). That should define the common ground where the pragmatic section of the Congress, and the Left could meet.

This would be quite ironic after former US deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott revealing another “kiss and tell” story concerning the BJP. The fact that he revealed the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government was ready to accept a deal “50 per cent less” than the current agreement, showed that the BJP is still to pay full wages for its short, albeit chequered sojourn in national political power.

While the BJP’s stentorian Jaswant Singh is surely heartbroken at his friend ‘Strobe’s’ betrayal of trust that underlaid the behind-the-scene deal/s, it would further erode the party’s ability to take an overly nationalistic pose when the ‘nuclear deal’ with the USA finally bites the dust.

Early this month the party must have noted with growing alarm at how India allowed to be led by Cuba in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on a Non Aligned Movement (NAM) opposition to a resolution for sanctions against Iran. This could even be considered New Delhi’s attempt at correcting its position on the country. This is also a clear challenge to the Hyde Act

In this milieu of reduced conflict in its relations with the Congress-led UPA, the Left parties could now choose to delineate their fundamental positions on the nuclear issue, that also impinge on India’s own self-assessment as a nation. Evidently, from the various articulations of the party over the past two years, it is clear that (1) it does not believe that India shares the same strategic imperatives of the USA for it to ally with that country; (2) the CPI (M) also is afraid of the dilution of sovereign authority in India’s foreign and security policymaking; (3) it has serious doubts about how much India would gain in terms of scientific knowledge and technical assistance stemming from the deal; (4) also there are serious doubts about whether this know-how and supply of equipments need to be sourced just from the USA or whether the same could be procured from other countries like Russia and France; and also, (5) the party had grave concerns about the efficacy of emphasising on nuclear power for the country’s development.

But despite all these situational expressions of intent, the CPI (M) still needs to satisfy the questions in the minds of the people about how it envisions India’s location in the global ‘correlation of forces.’ It needs to take the lead in lines of the Chinese Communist Party and articulate its alternative vision of India that steps away from the inherited colonial belief systems of the Indian elite.

The CPI (M) needs to signal to the scientific community that it’s, otherwise truncated, post-colonial resurgence is more important to the country than just in terms of technical accomplishments.

While the primary focus of the party is correctly on the economic dimensions of the Indian society, the discourse of development that abounds in the country’s polity engenders an articulation of the position it seeks for India in the world. It has to be commensurate with the stage of economic development of the country.

By challenging India’s attempt at gaining proximity with the USA, the CPI (M) is seeking to redefine India’s Weltanschauung that was never really rid of the vestiges of colonial influence. For it to embark on a path to rid the people of India of the colonial mindset is seeking to free them from the legacies of bondages they have lived with even after gaining political independence in 1947.

The CPI (M) thus have to make it clear whether their opposition is just tied to the nuclear deal framed within their resistance of the US government’s policies. Or whether that antagonism relates civilisationally to free India for the first time from the hegemony of the imperial metropolitan powers.

That is the debate which needs to be joined.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in

In My View

The America we don’t know

A young American political science researcher, in Kolkata these days to look at the changing Left politics in India, has charged me with great dereliction as a researcher, analyst and a writer. She has charged me with being “value laden” in the way I look at the USA and a failure in correctly reading the objective reality of the country. My new friend would have walked out of a perfectly agreeable meal, had I not smoothened her frayed temper with some alcohol, all paid for by me.

But the charge is too serious for me to douse it in alcoholic fumes. And I am aware many of the hapless readers on whom this column is regularly inflicted might hold the same view as tha ,of my friend. So I take this opportunity to clarify my position on the United States of America. They can be defined as three broad precepts. Each of them would be elucidated here:

(1) The USA has moved far away from the vision of the Pilgrim Fathers who landed at Massachusetts after braving a tortuous crossing of the Atlantic, imbued with the notions of European enlightenment. Their notions were embedded in the American Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the new nation and the American Bill of Rights.

I argue that the seeds of their beliefs, to be buried by the later generations, were implanted at the moment the first settlers had chosen a Bishop as their first governor. That had opened the door for what America would become in the way its religious beliefs shaped its societies and cultures.

(2) Free enterprise capitalism has eaten away the vitals of the nation. It has created an unstated and unacknowledged class system that militates against the basic tenet of the so-called “American Dream” - based upon the belief of equal opportunities for all to achieve economic and social mobility.

I argue with evidence how the decks are loaded against the largest mass of people in America to rise to the same riches and well being depicted by the media, who are in cahoots with the Capitalists. This image management ensures that Capital never falls short of Labour, as immigrants pour in, enticed by the pull of the ‘American Dream.’

(3) The American dichotomy seen in embracing aggressive individualism on the one hand; and encouraging communitarianism on the other is, reflective of its crisis of confidence about the role of the State. While the individual does not find a reason for the State to interfere in its affairs, it still needs the collective for support in crises.

I argue that this phenomenon has made Americans apathetic towards seeking Systemic changes even in moments of great turmoil like in the present.

Moralist idealism had remained the high-water mark of the vision of the New World that the founders of America had sought to propagate. But as Giovanni Arrighi, a leading political-economist and sociologist has suggested the early American settlers were not any different from the dynastic or oligarchic capitalist rulers who ruled their previous homelands.

Lacking in the geo-strategic advantage of a “continent-sized island” – nestling between two mammoth oceans – the European rulers’ commanded capital to gain overseas territory; or commanded territory to gain overseas capital. The American settlers conducted the same process internally.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, the “natives” had to be “removed” to make way for its “own people.” And all that was not just an exercise in crafting lebensraum as the German territorialist rulers expounded. But as Arrighi notes, Max Weber relating Franklin had stated that the latter was in favour of relentless “economising” in Massachusetts so that “more and more” money could be earned.

All this was to be done with an evangelical notion of making the world a better place. Reinhold Neibuhr was a proponent of ‘realism’ in the US politics. He was a pastor and a theologian His worlview was expressed in these words, “The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.”

Slavoj Zizek, one of contemporary times’ most influential philosophers has recently contributed in a book which details how the triumph of political conservatism in America since the 1980s has paralleled the growth of Christian evangelicalism. Hillary Clinton has been quoted as saying to have plans of carrying a copy of the American Constitution to White House if she’s elected as the US president.

Walking from a night-club a few months ago on a wintry Washington evening, I was discussing with a young American colleague of the East West Centre, Hawai’i, poverty in America. She had actually spied on me chatting up a ‘home-less’ (beggar for us Indians) outside the club. Her reaction was a classical exposition of how average Americans saw poverty. She said that the poor people don’t want to work hard; because they were sure of getting regular meals from the Church charities.

A study on the same subject by some American foundations like the Annie E Casey Foundation and the Northwest Foundation draws a picture of utter despair. According to one article, if the current poverty line in America for a family of four is raised from $ 20,000 to a more realistic $ 40,000, the total number of people below poverty would rise to 90 million.

A recent Brookings Institution study under the rubric of its Economic Mobility Project, also favoured by the ultra-right wing Heritage Foundation and American Enterprises Institute has noted, “Many Americans are even unconcerned about the historically high degree of economic inequality that exists in the United States today, because they believe that big gaps between the rich and the poor and, increasingly, between the rich and the middle class, are offset by a high degree of economic mobility.

Economic inequality, in this view, is a fact of life and not all that disturbing as long as there is constant movement out of the bottom and a fair shot at making it to the top. In short, much of what the public believes about the fairness of the American economy is dependent on the generally accepted notion that there is a high degree of mobility in our society.”

This study has concluded that, “All Americans do not have an equal shot at getting ahead, and one’s chances are largely dependent on one’s parents’ economic position.”

One final thought is expressed by the other poverty study that has been quoted here. In a search for solutions to the menace of poverty in the USA, it says, “Private enterprise produces employment wages and wealth, but our public structures are what facilitate the conduct of business, providing framework necessary for markets to thrive. Key public systems also help protect people against the risks of a free-market economy and provide the infrastructure for economic opportunity such as public and higher education systems, tasks that are beyond the purview of any individual.” Gosh! It even says Adam Smith was wrong when he held “that public interest is nothing but the sum of private interests; that government is not a partner in prosperity but antithetical to it.”

I hope my young friend would not call me value-laden in my judgment. I hope she buys me a few.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in

Penblunt & Hogwash

No TAM tabs anymore

Penblunt

I can tell you that over the next two years there will be a lot of changes in Indian news television, and the prime mover are the two key players, broadcasters and advertisers, but is the news TV industry shifting the blame now, or was what happened logical, given the path the industry took between 2005 and now?

Every this or that person who starts a news channel says before launching, “We shall bring you news, the others can go the witching and sexing and beating way.

But as days go by, each channel goes the same way, beating, sexing and witching, and yet keeps bitching about the others.

I once asked a good friend of mine, what is horoscopy doing in a Hindi news channel?

He said with a twinkle in his all-seeing eyes: “Horoscopy is part of daily life in the Hindi heartland of northern India… what will happen makes sense as news for this audience, and besides, just a short half hour is all they are doing, and that is not the main news.”

OK, thought credulous me.

Of course, he knows a few things more about Hindi heartland than I do.

He comes from Marathi heartland in western India, and I come from the shallow pond that is Bengal in eastern India.

After all, he is a news television editor and they keep getting news from each and every part of the mohalla (neighbourhood), town, city, metro, state and from foreign countries as well, so who am I to question their social understanding!

I told Pinaki that at least his own English news channel is not doing so, and Pinaki, as always issued me a smirk, and said “go do to yourself what they are doing to news television”.

But it took just a month for the gentleman to run a horoscopy show on his own channel, and I could well sympathise with him: the English viewer in the Hindi heartland is not born English, you see, and the first things they hear from their suckling moms and awestruck pops is all Hindi cootchiecoo, isn’t it? So horoscopy is in the DNA of Indians and giving horoscopy is the birthright of every Indian news channels, because like cricket, it is a national issue in the country. Or so the editors would like us to believe.

But now major advertisers and broadcasters have reportedly tied up and formed a non-profit company that is going to set up half a million people metres across all regions and across all social strata, urban and rural, to get the real ratings of channels.

They wanted to beat what is now variously called Tam Tyranny, Friday Blues, etc., stemming out of the fact that TAM rates each channel’s each segment, each day and announces the results each week, on a Friday.

So Friday Blues gets some editors to see red, and some junior editors get it back from then in black and white, and often asked to walk down the yellow line, handing over their zip cards at the gate for one last time.

But now the news channels are saying that with the new non-profit company coming in, it can fight Friday Blues, because it is TAM’s weekly ratings that sent the channels chasing what had sold well last week, whether it be sexing, beating, cheating or life on Jupiter.

The entire week, all channels would hunt out stories that had sold gold last week and go to any length to get them, and then… alas, none of them would do well, instead, a horoscopy programme on a particular channel would sell diamonds…. So, hey palmist, here, here….

I remember when we were boys, we would each year celebrate Saraswati Puja, worshipping of Saraswati, Hindu Goddess of Knowledge. There would be scores of decorated marquees in each street corner, and we would have to book a Brahmin priest to get the Puja done as per scriptures. And they would come at the appointed hour and we paid them for the service.

Then as we became bigger boys, with strange things tingling in certain parts of the body, we concentrated on the “Living Saraswatis” in school skirts, and left the Goddess worship to junior boys.

By then though, the number of marquees had run into hundreds, and I still recall vividly, one Brahmin priest was conducting a puja in a marquee and there were three other groups standing for him to finish.

When he did, a fight broke amongst the groups and the most powerful one finally caught hold of the Brahmin and literally carried him, hand and feet, to their own place!

That is what has happened in news television, but we are now blaming the priest, TAM, without which no media puja is complete.

No, we are not blaming TAM, but its system… 6,000 sample base for a 76 million cable TV universe… totally urbanised (that too only parts of major cities)… weekly ratings… we blame these for every news channel turning to spiritualism (the latest phase, with Lord Rama being the hottest selling guy).

Well, I can tell you that over the next two years there will be a lot of changes in Indian news television, but is the news TV industry shifting the blame?

Primarily, one so called news channel started this two years ago, and the market followed suit, and now the media says TAM’s weekly rating system is the real culprit. No news channel has been able to stay put with hard news.

Each of the more serious ones claimed they were not chasing TAM TRPs, but building brands long term.

So why the relief now that a new rating company has come, and why the demand: “No more weekly ratings”?

I rest my case here, Sires!