GHATOTKACHSERIES

NewsLaundry - Can You Take It? Barkha Dutt? - 1

2012-01-31T07:29:00.000-08:00

Whale

2012-01-21T22:45:00.000-08:00

Are we about to

You Know-

Is there an undercurrent

An unseen movement

Towards-

Are all the lies coming unraveled

Is there a crisis in the making

Supreme Court this Supreme Court that

Caps and gowns and milords

The only ones at the Till, Will, Rudder, Wheel

What's happened to the Executive?

Unwilling maybe-

Mumbling, Bumbling, Yelling, Smelling-

Very upset at this noise about Accountability

Such theoretical nonsense

In the world of real people-

But we people

Are also getting immunised

White noise

Fashion-

All that "breaking news"

Too much pretense

Can make posturing redundant

We're growing posture resistant

Numb, don't care

Beyond outrage

But very malicious-

We are praying for prey

Like the new strain of tuberculosis

Ready to do some old fashioned consuming-

Gasp

Gasp but this is not surprise

Its breathing trouble

Demise times-

It's

Come upon the weaker ones among us

Not so good at

What you need

To ignore impending doom

It's going to be a polite checking out

In orderly queues

You go first

Pehle Aap-

It's

A Lover's Leap without the love

Whales are big

They need lots of water-

Our lies are enormous

Bigger than cyberspace

Bigger than all the zeroes we can imagine

Bigger than that old truth business

Turned out of house and home

And high-rises with power backup

Homeless irrelevance

Ready to catch the new tuberculosis

And the old pneumonia-

Get out truth

Out

Of the way

Embarrassing incontinent fellow

Dribbling accusations-

Talking needlessly of ethics

As if lectures can take the place of manners

Stating the obvious-

No wonder the character is out-of-date

Past his sell-by

If he comes around again

Organise a stampede

And have him squelched-

But be careful to call it something

else

pin it-

Let me see

On tuberculosis

Or bird flu III-

The convenience of disease-

Cannot be overstated.

But even if we do no more than the vulture thing

and wait for polite

Correction-

We'd be

Waiting-

Conducting a vigil

So we can go to the wake

As soon the f-ing truth monger stops breathing

We can open the bottle

tantalising us from the table

And say nice things about him

Gone cold.

See-

Take it back to old times

Truth worries!

Retro nonsense

What next

Tooth Fairies

Instead of the regular kind?

Look, look-

No space for whales here

You're a mother of a mammal

In need of ocean

Here it's house full-

We've filled it all

With lies and positions

and that's the way we like it.

Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright Gautam Mukherjee 2012

Adil Jussawalla

2012-01-06T22:08:00.000-08:00

He taught classes I didn't take

At St. Xavier's

But I went to anyway

He was different, with ringlets of long hair

Young like us then

Not trying to hide it either

My chosen Political Science classes were deep

Taught by a serious-minded Oxford educated Jesuit

Who didn't let his biases creep into the exposition-

Eng. lit. was fun the way Jussawala taught it

He experimented

In small doses-

Jussawalla became a noted poet

With very little poetry put out

But he encouraged many-

Published some of mine in Debonair

Where he was Literary Editor

And where Imtiaz Dharker would draw

Portraits of the poet-

Classy

In an uncaring tumult

A roar

Of dhanda

In Amchi Mumbai ruled by VP Naik

Cleaner greener and steadier than now

For eleven long years...

Adil's written another book at last

His third in some fifty years-

He talks still of his struggles

At publishing poetry

Of print

Why print in 2012?

Welcome to cyberspace biddu.

Google, Shoogle, pad this pad that

And the kindling of Kindle.

For music it's the same story

Download to glory

You Tube it all

And leave the paper and vinyl and whatever it is they make CDS out of

To the bins of history.

Vanity, if that's what it is

Has found comfortable rooms now.

Gautam Mukherjee

If

2012-01-05T07:50:00.000-08:00

Public school redux

means saloon doors to the shitter

You need to sneak up between times to get any privacy

There's endless brutality

Of an emotional kind

Designed to turn you into a brute

With commas and semi colons in your attitude

But you're still hopeless

In counterpoint to a street bred item

What do you really know about deception

In the midst of your training to deal with nuances?

How you long to be tough

Not just physically

Because games are indeed compulsory

But how can you be

With your clean collar

And legacy money paying your way

Through the tailcoats--

Its truly amazing

What a small timer from nowhere can do

In that little exclusive little claustrophobia that belongs to you

He will steal the dumbest broad

And promptly get a licence to belong

And you still gasping

Like some pet carp-

Safe House Wellness Retreat - The Facility

2011-12-28T23:14:00.000-08:00

SAFE HOUSE WELLNESS RETREAT, South Delhi

2011-12-28T21:53:00.001-08:00

Hitch 22 revisited

2011-12-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

Hitchens was an agnostic

He called Mother Teresa names

He called Kissinger names

It's great and good to call Kissinger names

But Kissinger is a kind of rhino

Who enjoys people calling him names-

He's as armour plated, if not so short sighted

Hitchens called Clinton names

And Mrs. Clinton too

He said he was also inhaling or maybe not inhaling in Oxford

Standing next to Clinton

Hitchens drank

Hitchens smoked

Hitchens was gonzo without admitting it

A bit homosexual without being that into fucking men

He was very ethical without acknowledging the presence of God

In his life

In the world-

Still it is difficult to encounter a more Godly man

Even if you've not ever met him

If you look at these things in terms of intellectual honesty

And truth be told.

Gautam Mukherjee

22nd December 2011

Dead Wrong

2011-11-17T21:40:00.000-08:00

There is nobody there to answer

For drift -

Far away from responsibility

When you inhabit sensation

Wearing it like a justification

And purpose.

"Purpose" masquerading where true intent ought to be

Usurping reality

Unable to care about the lie

Does

Not think in terms like that

Truth

Lies

Judgemental stuff

That interferes-

There is no answer

To willful self-destruction

Nobody can touch it

It might be better to inflict pain

Pain from without, to reach out to the pain within-

That should get a reaction.

Gautam Mukherjee

Outpost for Amy

2011-07-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

Outpost for Amy

Those Tibetan prayer flags hung like colour laundry

Talk to spirits

and spread the blessings of Buddha

On the breeze

And down the wind swept cleavage of rocks and stones

Longing for the green far below-

Those stone mounds of the Tibetans

Are not graves, just markers for the spirits to follow-

Soaked in prayers

Like the flags

There is nothing to keep

They whisper-

Only memories and respect

And maybe-

Understanding.

Can we tell when we are straying

Far away from our moorings?

Can we feel the flutter of impending doom?

It's a hair on the back of the neck rising warning

A not another step command

No more pulling-

Or the bag will tear-

Everyone else hears it but not the doomed

It's not in the plan

But when the Amy Winehouse moment of no return

Comes

It comes at the end of time building for seven years.

The past tense came upon Amy like thugs in the dark

Threw its rough heavy blanket of oblivion over her head.

Then its all eulogies and pictures

The heartbreaking songs-

Too few but promising too much

Playing good to her broken doll body

Anima sucked out-

It's

The dead girl, the dead girl, no more defiance

And more flowers and thoughts about the dead girl.

A threshold is crossed

From where

There is

No coming back

From

Where

If you're awake Amy

You know it's

Irreparable.

You stop breathing, you turn cold

And then you're gone

One more step

And you lose yourself

One more

And you lose consciousness

And you leave the room without taking your feet.

The chapter closes

The book is done

Just where you leave it-

On its back or spine-

If there is more

Afterwards-

We don't

Know about it-

Even though we suspect

That you well might.

28th July 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

There is proof that Hess is no longer Hess

2011-07-21T21:00:00.000-07:00

There is proof that Hess is no longer Hess

Water refracting light

Sea shimmering

River flowing in chords of reptile strength

Hissing with foam

Exclaiming with spray

Opaque with silt

and

Cold as ashes-

You can flow away

Or dissolve

And let's face it

You do.

They just dug up Hitler's pal

Rudolph Hess's bones,

Cremated them-

And scattered the ashes at sea.

See

What I mean?

They could be Hindus or Romans

But the German authorities just didn't want a Neo-Nazi shrine

One Third Reich is enough for the psyche

But it's hard to convince the young

Angry with too many Turks-

But any Hindu could have told the German born again Hitler Youth

Even their own departed

Herman Hesse or Max Mueller

Shrines are in your heart-

Not in 93 year old suicidal bones

Or in Hess's tomb.

But when it comes to dead flesh

The Aryan idea is to purify the matter with fire

And Germans, ignoring some of their wilder tribal origins

Like to be seen as Aryans

Blue of eye

Blond of hair

And what a lot of ethnic cleansing this caused.

Even though they don't push their theories

Of the Master Race anymore

Its amusing to think that we Indians

Think we're Aryans too.

And Aryans love their fire

Fire for Havans

Fire to witness marriage

Fire to be consumed in at death.

Christians probably got the burial idea from the Muslims

And Jews

All religions of the book-

And born as neighbours.

And determined to not do as the Romans and Greeks did

With their pagan funeral pyres.

But the proof is in the eternal life of the spirit

That everyone seems to agree on

Even Rudolf Hess's spirit.

Burn or bury as you might.

But the story remains

Of a man imprisoned after the War

For decades in a

Allied prison

Where he was the only inmate

Till he killed himself at

And here are

Neo-Nazis wanting to invoke

His spirit by

Gathering at his tomb.

Let's think of

Boats-

Frail vagina shaped craft

Gentle crucibles

For beginnings and ends

And messages to the afterlife.

Let's realise-

That Hess is no longer Hess

Anymore than Mueller is Mueller

Or the gentle Hesse is Hesse.

22nd July 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

As for reality

2011-07-01T23:18:00.000-07:00

As for reality

It's a cyclorama-

images seguing into each other

moving ever onward

Totally without bias

Probably without much purpose either

Just what you see

And what you feel

Or is the cycle getting larger

A revolving thing, a carousel, that will revisit

the point where you left your keys

On the ledge, amidst a very different piece of music

After a very long time-

It's uncertain whether you'll still be around

By then

And your keys may be rusted through

So enjoy the view-

The lights

The sights

Shining bright

For you.

2nd July 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright Gautam Mukherjee -2011

Who will watch the watcher?

2011-06-30T00:23:00.000-07:00

Who will watch the watcher?

In Latin it is: quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Meaning: Who will watch the watchers themselves? This Latin, like Sanskrit, is a dead language that refuses to lie down quietly. It pops up every time someone tries to get to the root of a thought, and so here we are, bitching about watchmen who can’t be trusted to do their jobs unsupervised, and Latin it is that has already, in the BC period before the AD, put it just so.

The duly elected watchmen meanwhile, nominally led by one aged person in sky blue turban, recently called in a bunch of the most arthritic editors in the burg, and complained non-stop, albeit in a barely audible monotone, that the media acted, he implied unfairly, but then he would, wouldn’t he; as judge, jury and hangman, in an atmosphere of the greatest “cynicism”.

As Head Watchman First Class Duly Elected For Two Concurrent Terms Like Predecessor With Half Bloomed Rose In Buttonhole, Blue Turban was aggrieved; because said arthritic Editors Khap were wilfully refusing to excuse his ilk for non-performance, despite neither blue turban nor any of his band being issued with a “magic wand”.

The arthritic editors did what they do, and put in the blue turbaned one’s observations on the front page of their newspapers with large banner headlines and no complaints of their own. If they had been permitted their TV cameras, they would have done likewise on the box, in a muzac-inspired-elevator-monotonal-loop-without-end, at least for a few 24x7s to come.

This watching of inefficient watchmen is definitely the theme of the season, with the right hand checking up on the left, and both hands trying to adjust a variety of knickers in a twist; and the reason is because there is a general lack of credibility all around. All the truth tellers seem to have gone/long time passing/long time ago etc. Maybe the Pied Piper of Hamelin led them off the cliff or every last one was taken into the forest and shot.

One Pontius Pilate, from those very Latin speaking times, the best known hand- washer of all time, meditated on truth as Christ, of BC and AD and Christianity founder fame, stood bleeding in front of him.

Christ was bleeding from having just been administered a horrific hiding by the trained in the techniques Roman havildars, dressed rather better in scarlet, than our men in wardi, who are nothing to sniff at in the hiding skills department though. They beat Christ for not answering questions properly, for answering them in monosyllables interspersed with unintellible Aramaic, yet another dead language like Avesta Pahlavi in our neck of the woods, topped by some vague superciliousness which suggested Christ had someone looking out for him from the upside of the cloud cover around Calvary that day. (For further information and graphic details, kindly download The Passion of Christ made by Mel Gibson, the award winning Roman Catholic, duly praised by the German Pope. Said film was made moreover, when Gibson was dead sober).

Meanwhile, the Jewish High Priests, Christ’s unworthy Opposition, bayed for his blood in Pilate’s courtyard, because Christ had cleaned out all the shops from the temple corridors, in a spectacular MCD cum men in wardi style operation, while chastising the very people who were thus braying, no baying, for the rest of his unspilt blood.

Now Pontius Pilate, being a fastidious sort, knew he was looking at an innocent man in a crown of thorns when he saw one, and so he passed the buck, in good Indo-Italian bureaucratic tradition, to Herod, who happened to be a Jewish Roman administrator with fetching ringlets and kohl rimmed eyes, (but the cosmetic treatment is definitely another story); so that he could take a call on the called for crucifixion of Christ.

Herod did. Mel Gibson made the gory movie. And crowned it with a drunken anti-semitic rant, much after the fact mind you, but the public put two and two together, made a resounding four, and steadfastly refused to believe old Mel when he said he had nothing against the Jews.

But where were we about the watchmen, and indeed where are we about these guys who won’t do their jobs?

(702 words)

30^th June 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Miracle

2011-06-24T22:55:00.001-07:00

A miracle is a secret unveiled

It's an inspiration

Come timely

To the rescue.

Every eureka moment is not reserved for the Archimedians of this world

Everyman gets his-

But you need to be alert to catch it.

And if you have faith

In a mystery called living

It comes along right on cue

To give you just reward.

Miracles are not for knowitalls

They have to work it out for themselves

Since they believe

If anybody can

They absolutely can!

But to the rest of us

It is given-

This bit of grace

For we be humble, seekers, believers

Virtues all

That we may not be aware of

Preferably-

But since we're

Not afraid to ask for help-

We're protected by the hand of God.

25th June 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Regret

2011-06-13T01:30:00.000-07:00

I don't know how

I can be on a journey with you

When I should have been stopped outside the airport

By misgivings.

But here I am

On the plane in a big wide seat

Next to you-

Bravely going with-

You and me together.

I did it for nothing worthwhile

Unnecessarily-

Apologising for

the long ago

That time years ago

When we were much too young.

Should never have brought it up

Not now anyhow

In this large sardine can with seat belts,

With carpets.

And you

How do you do it

Turn yourself upside down and inside out

like that?

I was just talking about long ago

Just to show good faith now that we're going together

Again, and flying off somewhere together

Like lovers will.

But I've touched a raw nerve

Surprise surprise

With

Almost a forgotten thing.

I think I have no chance at all

Of living with you now-

Not happily anyhow

Everything blighted by yesterday

And me just not the same

I can't be turning cartwheels like you

To me its ancient history

Life is too short to hold grudges like this

But you, you must be joking

But obviously you're not!

How can I endure being raked over the coals again for a betrayal then

What am I doing here looking forward

Unwilling to endure what turns into what neither of us want

So I must get off this plane!

I run, no lurch, to the door

After brushing past your convulsed body

How can you feel so much

It was just so long ago-

But this thing is moving

On its little wheels

Eerie

But

The ground is shifting, the lights outside slipping by

I find the doors are armed

On this very big aeroplane

There-

and now as I stumble back to my seat

Before the Steward or the Air Marshall comes for me

The lamps inside are dimmed for take off.

I don't think there's going to be any leaving right now

So I must-

Must sit by you and be singed by your sorrow

And watch our tomorrows burn.

There's

No place for today, its like I who hurt you then has died-

And I'm just a ghost sitting next to you.

And all this because

I've invoked the past

Like an ass.

Pity though that-

This is not a train

And there is no platform to slope off into

Before this thing picks up speed to hurtle through the air.

13th June, 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Bob Dylan turned 70

2011-06-02T23:37:00.000-07:00

Bob Dylan turned 70

And made nothing of it-

If he celebrated the milestone

He certainly didn't tell us about it...

But everyone else did a review

Of his songs, his life, his peaks and troughs,

This is

The Protest King

The times changing, hard raining, idiot winding...

Teaching the Beatles to smoke maryjane

Before he shed that persona

To try on another

And a few more along the watchtower

But he's been prolific

And we've spent time together

In our little lives, running in parallel

As if, and because-

He is something of a foot-rule

Even if he insists on not being there for any of the labelling functions.

Our pols had it coming-

Never listening to any Paul Revere running through their Lutyens

Bungalows-

What a bungle has them crumbling

They didn't think we had it in us-

Just sheep, sheep

But even sheep can baa baa off in another direction-

If someone shows them the way

Pols can see that sometimes, pols do see,

But they forget

Being very kicked with themselves.

This hubris thing is age old but refuses to teach

Just a virus that hides so well

That a pol, a powerful one mind,

Can't even tell.

But it's true

They see but learn nothing from-

Watching

Nehru fall flat on his face in 1962

From which he never really got up.

Indira Gandhi gone, come back, despatched-

Rajiv Gandhi thrown out, then despatched-

Even Shining India gone, at least the attempt to appropriate it-

And the guy who thought up the slogan

Duly Despatched!

But pols in their dress up spotless white

Like to live in denial.

They've become sleek, sly, too-clever-by-half

Rich, very rich

They have lots of white clothes but no idealism at all

Just a smirk in its place,

And a side-pillow in their beds to make like someone's in it

While they're off playing truant-

Out rooting for opportunities

Opportunities-

They have very gainful work,

But not for you and me-

They root and wallow

In the power trough

And that kind of thing takes money honey

Just that and more of that-

And nothing more-

III

Anna Hazare says

The Public

Will teach them

Sahabat-

This means : The Right Way

Literally

Sounds, or might have sounded

Innocent

But

It actually implies, in delightful Bambaiyya

That there'll be a bit of straightening out happening

Whether they like it or not.

We are the bosses and not the politicians, says Anna

(It's always some old frail guy that sounds strong in this country)

And it also sounds good

It sounds

Like a long lost melody to our ears-

Poor side-lined Anna, they wish,

They've tried to stymie him from the moment he started in Delhi

They wanted to know

From under which rock in rural Maharashtra

He had come forth, and why-

Who put him up to it-

Was it Pawar?

Is that why Anna went after Pawar?

Just to put up a smokescreen.

And how much it would cost to send him back-

Can't be very much-

Penniless old codger like him-

You can probably flatter him flat for free!

And so

The fat cats in dazzling white

They thought they'd done his movement in

Naive little social worker

What was his equipment

To deal with-

With age-old smear, divide, renege, quibble, denigrate-

Worse, can do much worse

Have tools of the trade

Must confuse him under his Gandhi cap

That and make him feel

Insecure, unsure, lost.

Who does the old fossil think he is trying to do a Gandhi cum Shivaji

In this day and fun-filled age?

But the whited ones didn't really work on their homework

Did they?

They just hoped it would all go away

Didn't they?

Because

While they were sniggering up their sleeves

At their own fiendish skill

Enter or is it re-enter

Baba Ramdev.

It's a second coming, the cavalry for Civil Society and the Aam Aadmi, snatched out of the Congress grasp

A round two for the anti-corruption movement

It's definitely Reel 2

With the Establishment reeling

Testy rhetoric and disinformation notwithstanding.

This circus

Has the Government running-

They want to co-opt this one

They want their pet Swamiji, their own in-house

Okay, in-coalition, anti-corruption mass movement

they don't want to have it loose

Or seeking comfort in the BJP's arms

But if that doesn't work

They'll heap ridicule and sow doubt

To try and pry it loose

Civil Society was not meant to be so exacting!

But it it may be already too late

The Pols seem lost

Particularly the ones in power

Rather than Anna

Who can see his way just fine

They might benefit from a spell in Tihar

For a year out of every three

Maybe

To get used to it

Or at least

To keep their instincts sharp-

Sharp or not

This really is a black-bearded nightmare in saffron for them

Ramdev's articulate, folksy-

Apparently celibate-

Still

Much too young, popular, vigorous, risen from the masses-

Listened to by the classes

shudder shudder

What can be done

What can be done.

He's

Not an Anna dissenter-

That kind of simple thing is left way behind -

Anna's on his bandwagon too, and God only knows how many are in the queue.

So there's no room to manoeuvre here

Nothing to do with the myth-making mode

And all that apparatus to spread distrust.

But they need to get used to it

This is

A force multiplier

With lots of grass rooted feed-

From the fields

And the other side of the aisle.

Ramdev might want to show the politicians how to rally-

Having gone to all this trouble and expense

And give them a little instruction

About Ram and his Leela

While he's about it.

We will all watch and listen

Learn

How to

Gather a crowd-

Bussed, trained, housed, fed when they're not fasting,

But still not so much rented as inspired-

It's a Swayamsevak rumble in the urban jungle

Under the TV cameras.

What fun-

Yoga, Alternative Medicine, Politics,Philosophy

Jokes

And lots of undulating solar plexus action-

Athens could be listening- no not today's broke and unionised bunch-

Hanging on to their EU address by the skin of their teeth

But the ones out of the misty past-

In robes and spiral ether-

A bit like Ramdev maybe, seen from 2511.

Supported

Like the Odyssey the Iliad the Mahabharata

By a Cecil B De Mille real cast of thousands

before digital.

Plus plus

Every-

Fed up citizen from the sticks

To force multiply the straw-hatted baseball-capped set-

And their outraged convent school accents-

The Hazare show at Jantar Mantar

Was the show opener alright

But

This might well be the main act.

Besides they're going to use Ram Leela and Jantar Mantar too

As if they were their city residences.

India is on its destiny jag

Which is much better than our politicians would have us believe

Complacent bunch

That didn't even care

When the Judiciary

Took over their work

And disciplined them like delinquents

On probation.

The pols should have woken up then

At least then

But they just kept on doing their opportunities

For more business as usual

But now that the common man's

Got up

Talking about being sick

of being duped-

Its different

From the abstraction

Which

Like a hologram

Was easy to walk through.

3rd June, 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Thought

2011-05-22T06:43:00.000-07:00

E for Endeavour or is it Enterprise

R is for Resolute or is it Regret?

Letters, not just the ones in envelopes

Have gone extinct in a sense-

But still work as

The mere

Hyroglyphics of Communication

It's a kind of costume change

Between sets...

Wave them around like feather boas

As you might

Its a peekaboo concealment game

Still-

But there's

Nothing to keep anymore

But why bother

When nothing sticks

Anyway.

But Nothing has reinvented itself

New Hat, New Coat

Or maybe a new Face-

And grown an Identity

In a petri dish

Actually probably many

But

Nothing means what You

Used to mean when you said it

Of course it didn't mean nothing

even then!

When You said something

Then

Or when you say things

Now

Even when You are not the same You

Not Changed or reinvented

But not You at all!

(Look you can prove it- its different chromosomes DNA everything)

Not counting the damage

But apart from being other people

Altogether

The fact is

There are so many ways

To say Nothing

So many ways to say it

Now

And they are

Those ways, pathways, channels, routes, links, kinks

Which are-

Embedded

Or are they Embarassed

Sniggering with it, giggling like young girls

All over each other

Because they can't go away

Or be separated?

They're in all the lobes now

Sneak capture

Poured in like dye-

Blanketed, smothered

But you can't see it on those MRI scans

Because they're made unseen, colourless

You can't see thoughts

Everyone knows that!

Even in the comic books, where they put dots to reach the thought balloons when you're thinking and not talking-

You've got all kinds of colours alright

For brain activity on those MRIs

Even emotions- Purple for Passion, Red for Anger, Blue for Tranquility, Greem foe Envy

But None, Nada, Nyet, NOTHING

For your thoughts-

You can still say

A Penny for them

Like they used to in 1932

And hope you're handed the right tray

To go around the customers

When the penny drops

But after the Interval

And the velvet goes up

If there is Anything

Private Now

Those are it

Them-

Provided you know

How to pretend

About how You're

Not

Thinking at all.

Gautam Mukherjee

22nd May 2011

Talents

2011-05-06T06:08:00.002-07:00

Talents

Talents like talons-

Some grip success

Some don't,

But-

The ones that propel us to achievement

Are not necessarily superior to the ones

That don't-

A lot depends on fate-

You win only at what is meant to be

And for the rest

You're barking up the wrong tree

Beauty and the Beast may seem interchangeable

If you look at the outside of one

And the inside of the other

But this is facile-

They are what they are-

A lot of fairytales

Are just wish fulfillment

And romance.

It takes quite some time to accept this secret

Hiding there in plain sight

What is your fate?

Don't worry it will come and find you

Even if you're anonymous-

One Bin Laden becomes a top contractor in Saudi Arabia

Another the King of Terrorists-

Don't think Osama

Could have done anything else

Even

If he tried.

No Gandhian conversion was possible here

Not even at the doors of Hell rewritten in his own write as Heaven.

But with all that innocent blood on his hands-

Or what he would justify as historical consequence

The blood and the innocence

Merely incidental

To his big picture jihad

He was

Strong in the stomach

Weak in the morals-

With

Crusading medieval ethics

And a twisted version of

Reality.

Was

Consumed by hatred

Of symbols

Of people

Very much like himself

Reflected in a mirror

Reflecting

Someone he used to know

Only too well

In his affluent Bin Laden contractor's son days-

But the fugitive of Abbotabad

Neighbours of Pakistan's Army Staff College

With some fanciful name-

Was a ghost already

plotting inside his shroud

With shadows

That never left him

Was a chess piece

In a game too big for his sandals-

A golden goose for Pakistan

Worth keeping safe just sixty

Km from the Kapital-

And

Much

Too hot to handle alive

for the

Americans-

Old DNA verified dead man Osama

Can now compare

Notes

With that fat squat Tamil Tiger

Peera what's his name-

That never did get Eelam-

And Peera can recount some of his own social engineering efforts

And

How long they held out

Those years and years

When they couldn't be found

Both

Can talk about the perfection of human bombs

And Osama

can best Peera with references

To plane bombs that take out entire skyscrapers

and symbols they symbolise

And then

They can both compare wounds

Chest shots

Head shots

All the overkill

That befits their status

That lead and more lead

That killed them and their stature

Very very thoroughly-

So completely

That

They could stop being whatever

They were fated to be

At least for this life-

Without any more say so

Than death itself

Without any talk of martyrs

Or the bigtime such as-

Hitler for that matter.

Sometimes

One's talent

And fated affinity

For slaughter

Not only lie in the wrong place

But ignore time altogether.

Gautam Mukherjee

6th May 2011

Vanished

2011-04-13T07:21:00.000-07:00

What has happened?

No, not now

But all through your life

The milestones you cherish

The memories that are too stubborn

to fade

Those events

The nuts and bolts of your life

That's what-

That's what's happened.

It's

Where you've been

The places you've seen

The things you did

Those would have beens could have beens that cling

Like hinges in your head-

But in time they rust

And fall away

Yawning open and shut

And then

They're quite gone

Fallen away

The whole sequence of images

Swept away like autumn leaves

Flown to stick in crevasses

And cracks

Where old memories can live

Cheaply

And unmolested

Out of the blow

Of the winds of change

They can stay there for ages

Like inscriptions in books

That outlive their owners

Even make you wonder

Who they were-

Mister and Misses Memory

Mirrors-

With no reflections

Except what you remember

You can work it back and forth

Embroider

Rewrite

Retrace all you want

Repeat

Rewind

Play

Go where you remember

Revisit.

To go

Go again and stand there

Step to the same spot

Now unrecognisable-

But that's because

That time, that place, that day,

it's, to tell the truth-

Vanished.

Gone.Truly gone. That place is put to another use in another time

That graveyard with inscriptions of dead Scots

Is a parking lot, a playing field,

Different people go to it

For entirely different reasons

Making brand new memories

Your place in time

Changed, obliterated, replaced,

You feel like a fly on the glass from long ago

A two-footed dodo

Vulnerable, mortal, waiting for the axe to fall

And go extinct

You are

Waiting to vanish

Rubbed out like chalk on a blackboard

Marker on a whiteboard

Wiped out

A conclusive calamity

Designed just for you.

You feel ethereal

Bodiless

Alive but almost ghostly-

Because nothing about your presence is engaged

With the present

Of the place

And everything you remember about things you did

In that place

Is in your head-

You are mocked by the indifference-

Your traceless unprovable memory is mocked

Time does that

And so does a place

And space itself-

Space that

Dissolves

And takes you with it

As if you were cream in its coffee-

So you feel like an old madman

muttering to himself

Making funny faces

As you walk down the divider

Between past and present

While the world rushes by you

Both ways

Like so much rushing traffic.

Your delusions speak to you

With words

Sing to you with echoes of lost tunes

That themselves have vanished.

Vanished. All of it. Gone.

Your life of long ago

has vanished-

You

Are still here

Of course

But only you know that for sure

That it's really you

The same you-

Time is not linear and neither does it double-up on itself

It just gets spent

Like life in an hourglass-

You could pass this way once

Or twice

Or a hundred times

Like all these present day people

And still

It can be as if you never did

And just as you can't hear the silence for the noise now

They are, never were

In your waking dream

but-

They're here jostling you.

All that you're on about

has-

Vanished.

The good thing is,

You can shrug it off

Tell yourself that the memory, all those memories

Are not that big a deal-

What value

Do they have

You

Or Anyone

Or Survivor

Can challenge

Them

So boldly-

Cast aspersions

On their

Veracity-

Make your whole life a doubtful

matter of opinion-

A hypothetical thing

A debatable

Proposition?

Since your past can let you down

like this

A toupee blown away by the winds

You must figure

As you look for a solution

That tomorrow

Yes tomorrow

Is more important-

Besides you're alive to look forward to it.

So walk on in

Into the present-

It's like turning a switch-

Blend in with today's crowd

Listen to now sounds

Smile at a pretty girl, young for now-

Speculate about taking her to bed

And how her legs would splay-

And how you would take her for a long long time

Keep that thought-

To let you know

You're still alive

If a little wrinkly.

And then walk on down the road

Till you join in with your memories

embrace them all and vanish.

Nothing really necessarily happened

Just because you lived it, remember it, feel it

And after a little while

And this should make you smile,

It is certain-

That your memory

Can play games

You can make them up

As you like-

And if you don't like what comes out

Do them over

Just

Erase,

Wipe your slate

Clean-

And make them

All-

Vanish.

13th April 2011

Gautam Mukherjee

Back Fry

2011-02-18T07:50:00.001-08:00

Back fry- try it, it is the taste of your disintegration

Fry fack-no kidding!

Far back you could think of spinal support as optional

Then it was a figurative thing -

Like practicing slouches, pouts, introspection, suspended

Animation ( another way of holding back and lasting longer)

Howlers

To elicit sex, means

yes, exactly the same as solicit,

Without the money

To intrigue and provoke

By non verbal means

Old as time and the creatures that

Can't talk as in conversation

Cry and posture yes

Good precedents

Get you understood anywhere.

But not if you're in the skillet fillet

Turning into back fry.

So keep the tumblers clicking

Supple couples

Are less afraid.

Gautam Mukherjee

18th February 2011

Honest by Dawn

2010-10-16T01:33:00.000-07:00

Dawn- Pollock

Honest by Dawn

Space age India

Lives in its villages

Truth and salt

Of the earth

Resides

Outside the taint of new-fangled corruption

New fangled because-

It's exploiting anonymous victims

And not raping the village belles

From the inexhaustible pool of outcasts.

That is like a contact sport

Or killing with a knife

Or bare-handed.

There's involvement in it,

And deliberation.

Everyone knows who is doing what to whom

In our small places-

But city anonymity can help one turn monstrous

Plundering, condoning, complicit, impotent-

Hypocritical

Foolish

Helpless-

Contemptible-

And not even show up on anybody's radar.

That's space age India for you

Corruption has become untraceable.

We know it is there, here, everywhere

But we can't prove whodunnit?

What to do?

What to say?

When everyone knows the answers-

But no one knows whether

Knowing can work even the smallest lever of justice.

If it did

Then the corrupt would be afraid-

But clearly they are not

Even smirking there in front of the world

In plain sight.

Maybe we worry too much about proof and due process

And wear our jack boots too lightly-

If corrupt people were to disappear in the middle of the night

They would surely turn honest by dawn.

Navami, 16th October 2010

Gautam Mukherjee

Dorothy Parker

2010-09-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker had rhyme, wit, sauciness

She was sexy and sad

She had taste,

If not in men-

Wherein she was a little like a sailor

Any port in a storm - you know what I mean-

And for her

The weather report rarely said blue skies-

Then in matters.

Miz Parker she had acuity

She could see

Feel

Articulate-

Without pity.

But all that smartness, that irony, the attention-seeking self deprecation

Gift-wrapped in that terrific understanding of human nature-

Particularly of

Weakness

In a nice self-indulgent way

Guaranteed to engineer dissolution in the end

And deliver

What we might delicately call

Secret pleasures.

But in time they were

All lost at sea

With all hands aboard-

Traceless on the surface

Down into the deep

Lost.

To drunken despair and loneliness

And the ravages wrought.

It is-

What it is.

You can't have her poetry without it

Nor her sensibility.

Ordered reasonable lives

Don't make for something to say

We know that-

Though they do

Rather well.

But and then again, what

Can you properly say-

The Parker magic had class

Her laconic work

And pomaded, fragrant, rich friends

Did give birth to The New Yorker

For New York to determine its taste in things

And

For blind Ved Mehta to write in.

Gautam Mukherjee

Janmashtami.

2nd September 2010

Cheap Enough

2010-07-16T00:07:00.000-07:00

Cheap Enough

Life here is cheap-

Too many to worry about-

Look after yourself

Because if anything happens

You're on your own.

The rich will have a better class of obsequie

Bigger hospital bills-

More fuss and flather

Bigger crocodiles about them

But that's about it.

They're no more precious

Than any anonymous nobody

If they slip on life's slippery slope

And slide off the mortal coil.

Alive and kicking

Rich folk

Are generally-

Useful.

But dead

We need to look for

Who's taken over

Or going to-

You can't afford to be slack about this

In a country with no Welfare

And subsidies melting away.

And this becomes more true

The fatter of a cat

You are.

The poor make busy

Populating pavements

Copulating for comfort

Three hundred million f'ers

And another three hundred million

Trussed up

Piggies in the middle

Middle-class

Wedged and squealing

Of despair and hope

Slavering

With ineffectual anger and frustration

At their insignificance

They're comical to

The sensibility of George the Beatle Harrison

Reactionaries to the Commie

Given no credits for their humiliation or fortitude

By Lenin or Stalin or Chairman Mao

Who each

Exterminated millions

Of the "starched white shirts".

They

Wannabe

Everything

Everywhere

That they are tolerated

Backs

De-boned-

Manipulated, betrayed,

Vocal

But voiceless-

Damned if you do and damned if you don't kind of coves.

Self-important

Leave them this fig leaf

Because no-one else gives a damn

Middle middlings

Brackets, parentheses, asterisks, footnotes

Explaining, explaining-

With no say-

Though they're loathe to admit it.

All these people

The Jana Gana

Even the Mana

Of our Republic-

Up and down the poverty line

And over the barriers and constraints of middle class dignity

Might be 950 million

Could be more-

Cannon fodder for the Republic

Is plentiful.

Home truths come home-

Only when

Or actually just then

Not

Until and Unless

The deaths

Help some neta's political leverage-

In a diffused

Seva-sucking kind of way.

Truth is the

Convenient dead

Must know that-

The price of potatoes and onions

And rice, wheat

Salt-

Matters more

Than a thousand Bhopals

And terrorist attacks.

That's true for all of us

For over 90%

And the others up top

Are instrumental

In the power play

But only while they're still breathing-

Mind over Maya

Going around coming around karma

Makes you blaze.

We all are handy-

Pawns,

Consumables,

Collateral-

Collectively

Jointly, severally,

Pushing, pulling,

Smelling the rot

Equally.

But we, meaning

Mostly they who survive best

They who can't read this

Can

Be useful

They!

Hail the numerous!

Trumpets

Tamasha time

For votes

For rallies

For panic

For parry

Okay a little thrust too

For pressure

For pleasure

To carry

Insinuate

Steal

Squeal

Bribe shibe.

If you

Want to make something of it

A career-

In the name of nameless people,

Call upon the aam aadmi

But only in the abstract.

But when the

Aam aadmi

Sickens

And dies on the vine

Blight

In untimely, unnecessary ways

Again

And then again

They're what they are-

Random casualties.

Then

Just muddy the water

And grandly announce

Compensation

Those

Amounts that don't get paid

Ask anyone

Who lost someone

Or part of someone

In any Accident/Blast/Terrorist shooting

Or Encounter.

It takes years

And needs speed money-

And oodles of proof that the intended recipient is indeed the intended recipient!

This is a billion plus game

With fifteen million new counters every year

You can't expect so many

To count

Or be counted.

So enumerators sweat

Pencils at the ready

On foot from house to house

With unreformed forms the size of bedsheets-

Like the old votes

Pencils and erasers

Nothing is final.

Cut corners

Right at the source-

Then compound inaccuracy upon inaccuracy

All the way down the turnpike.

We talk about things

We Indians-

Talk a lot but are

Never able to acknowledge the elephant in the room

That huge elephant of callous incompetence

Of a dehumanised, depraved, desensitised reality

That we have made of it

For ourselves, with no help from anyone

To park cheek by jowl

Alongside our 9% growth

To mock it( and put it in parentheses).

Censuses are out-of-date

Probably always have been

Those Romans know

Who invented them.

They liked to count

All the people they could squeeze for tax and tithe-

And it worked after a fashion

Particularly with broadswords handy and plenty of conquered subjects to bully.

But certainly,

By the time the citizenry is enumerated

In India

We will have to conclude

That Nilekani's mess is no worse than Seshan's

Or Chidambaram's

Before him-

Think of it

UIN, PAN, Election Card,MAPIN

Other aborted dog-tags-

Some of us with five PAN cards

And none of us any the wiser!

Nilekani's has had his apprenticeship

Good

Why not move him up to Minister!

So that he's not holding the can

When the failed truth comes back to bite him.

Fact is

He means well

But you can't find a desibhai in Government records

He is many people with many names and places to stay

Plus the great Indian Railways

Hell you can't even find a nasty

Even he has faces and disguises

And instant relatives & friends

Our addresses

However

Are solid enough

Provided we don't move

Migrate

Where our work, needs and stomachs

Take us

Leaving our perfectly solid addresses right where they stand.

Houses are valuable

More so in India

They are reliable

They stand still

To be counted

They are "Property"

Which appreciate

And keep appreciating

Because of cost-push

Pressures from our ever expanding people tree.

But not us

Who live in them

Depreciating with every tick of the metronome

Just fragile bits of flesh and blood

bits and bobs-

For blowing up

Or casting shadows and darkening doorways

For a spell.

Owners or Tenants

No matter-

Because we're all

Not for very long-

Besides, we know full well

There will always be too many

For us

To ever grow

Scarce.

Don't feel bad though

Even as you watch your hide-

Just look at Europe and America

Where everybody looks anyway-

See how they've outsmarted themselves

They're few alright

They're advanced too

They're organised and disciplined

They're free and strong

But most of them

Over 90% just like us

Are broke and bewildered

And just as powerless

At least we,

Are patched up with resistance and dirt in our veins

disease proof, starvation proof, cheat proof, GM food proof,

God fearing, curse proof,

Plentiful, undaunted,

Profuse as cockroaches

And

Cheap enough

To survive.

Hell if this were Bikini Atoll

Turned sub-continental

You'd have yourself nuclear-proof Indians

Perhaps a little worse for wear

But still talking in fourteen languages.

Gautam Mukherjee

And down came the spider

2010-06-10T05:49:00.000-07:00

Notebooks are good for writing poems
You need to write with a pen
And imbue the words with the peculiar signaturing of your handwriting

Like a spider weaving its web.

Poems and love letters,
There's no way to type them
Till afterwards -
When the personal leaches out
With a little time

And the meaning becomes universal.

It's fine then, type, print, make handbills, annotate, discuss, titter -
They've put on their street clothes by then.

But when you write poetry, profess love in writing -
You've got to strip it naked
And feel around inside

For meanings and things you have to delve for.

Things you won't necessarily find
Like muses
That make you write poems -

But don't like being caught at it

And Love- obviously
That wants you to write love letters
To explain a unique feeling that is not
Without caring for such home truths -
Or being exposed, vulnerable, more than a little ridiculous

And leaving a soggy trail of moist heartbeats.

Smudges -
Nobody writes either anymore come to think of it
Hardly.

Except literary types
Who like being obscure
And poems just fit their bill.

Most lovers looking to express their feelings
Use text messages now
To rendezvous, tryst,
There's no serious time apart-
No need to pine and long, and hide, pretend, feign -
Fox society, prepare ground
So sms and rub it out quickly after pressing the send button
From the sheer embarrassment
Of technological riches
And impermanence fleeting as obsolescence

Even if the service provider reads your messages.

Love fast forwards automatically
Now
So who has the time?
Unless you're a killer

That needs to be traced.

Besides what does the spider think about
All the work it puts into the webs?
If it thinks in that fuzzy little arachnoid head that is -
It's worth it for the food it catches
Surely,
But I don't know -
It's natural to it to keep weaving webs -
Walking up and down the spirals and dive bombing on its silver threads
It has fun -
Even if it catches nothing except the fleeting morning dew -

And poets and lovers to admire all its legwork.

Gautam Mukherjee
10th June 2010

Hand-Pumps & Highways

2010-01-21T02:24:00.001-08:00

Hand-Pumps & Highways

With the departure of Comrade Jyoti Basu, a person that may have better merited Nirad Chaudhuri’s description of The Great Anarch; it brings to mind, partly in reflection of the spew of commentary on the subject, that there is a tiresome and pointless dichotomy between broadly Leftist and Rightist world views. It hogs public debate and reams of newsprint with its either/or dichotomy without once embracing both. And without once coming the slightest bit closer towards convergence.

All practitioners of ideology prefer to leave the matter of practical resolution to those who don’t possess, or perhaps refuse to wear on their sleeve, their own invigorating blunderbuss of idealism and ideology. The Left/Right badge-wearers give these doers no marks for their usefulness. Instead, they look down on them for their pedestrian preference for the expedient and the practicable. They are considered to be craven opportunists without principle, mainly for their flexibility, with scant regard for their solid contribution to all that works and is accomplished in our lives.

Meanwhile the pointless debate amongst the mandarins of ideology rages on. The Left-leaning ask what is the point of jobless growth? The Rightist says all growth contributes, and a richer polity can provide better facilities, even for its jobless. The Leftist asks what is the use of young, malnourished, and uneducated youth? The other points out that it is better than the same number of old, unhealthy and ignorant people, typically lacking in focus or interest about anything beyond their own navels.

The Left/Right armchair debate cliché indeed runs the gamut. Why should the rich indulge in paroxysms of conspicuous consumption- arguing just one big fat Indian wedding could pay for a thousand hand-pumps, or is it a lakh of them, to provide drinking water to the rural poor. The other face of the same cliché is depicted in the celebrated Mira Nair film Monsoon Wedding- the beneficiaries of a big fat Indian wedding are also many both near and far.

The paradox though, in failing to recognise the contribution of both leanings to the progress of the nation, is beyond sensibility and preference. It is as if the moral victory is intertwined somehow with its ideological underpinnings in whichever distorted or diluted form may ultimately obtain. And without this ideology to give a matter its tone, the suggestion is that it is somehow not worth having.

It’s especially interesting and not a little comic when the Left and Right seem to swap positions. Take the Nano versus BMW debate for example. Because, now suddenly, it cuts both ways. It is the Left that says the Nano will choke the roads and their own poor- loving breathing; with scant regard for its dramatic affordability for the many towards the bottom of the pyramid. And to justify their selfishness in this regard, they call for better public transport instead, including more like the bewildering BRT corridors in New Delhi, because the elitist traffic in cars be damned!

The Right, on the face of it, couldn’t care less, as long as there are enough highways being put in for it to glide around in said BMWs; and there are no Nanos clogging up the fast lane. There is also no Right-leaning guilt about paying the cost of which set of wheels could, theoretically, provide infrastructure for a small village. After all, one has to earn one’s BMWs.

One could go on with the examples on both sides of the fence, but in the interests of synthesis, it’s best to recognise that there is no case for a country on the way to prosperity with millions of poor people living in misery. But then, by the same token, there should be no debate on the righteousness of poverty alleviation. While theoretically and ideologically the Left and Right can agree on this, the irony of the process is that poverty reduces via the acquisition of riches involving a number of non-populist moves.

A no-growth poverty alleviation programme is impossible. An attempt to do so turns one into the Marxist ruled state of West Bengal; where the state has preserved its power edifice despite its general decrepitude, by looking after its thugs, those cadres of on-street and hands-on enforcers.

But then Stalinism and Maoism both resemble the Fascist Right. And no kudos for fascism Hitler and Mussolini style, despite the former’s autobahns and volkswagens, and the latter’s emphasis on running the trains on time. But sometimes, one professes the one while being the other. Take Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, a good example of a “Socialist” right winger, and you should see pictures of his palace.

In the interests of resolution therefore, there may be great merit in seeing things the other fellow’s way. Because then, hand-pumps and highways don’t seem so mutually exclusive. Besides, all practitioners of power are not as easily bamboozled by the contradictions and paradoxes of deviating from ideologically pure moorings.

It is therefore all the more necessary for the theoretical debaters to puncture their own ideological balloons. Otherwise, the gap widens between how it ought to be and how it really is, without enough effort going in to update, and thus narrow this divide.

We albeit get the Government, indeed the country that we deserve. So if nothing seems to be working like it should, the answer may lie in large doses of pragmatism and efficiency rather than in the arcana of ideology.

But while we split hairs, India’s politicians have been feeding off the dividing line between so-called communal parties and those which are purportedly secularist. But the fact is, neither are quite what the other side says they are, nor are they quite what they themselves profess to be.

To move on, it is necessary to rededicate ourselves to a new work ethic that judges efficacy by the results. Otherwise, like Jyoti Basu’s Bengal, we are in for an ideologically induced twilight that does not protect or satisfy even as it strangles progress. All that takes its place is a cynical calculation of raw power of absolutely no benefit to the masses.

At the end, we should come away with something better than the pointless mantra of Bihar born George Orwell’s satirical novella Animal Farm, in which the celebrated “Four legs good, two legs bad” commandment was not quite enough to plough the field of the proletariat’s dreams.

(1,055 words)

21st January 2010
Gautam Mukherjee

Across the Wall

2009-11-08T21:54:00.000-08:00

Roy Lichtenstein

Across the Wall

It's the Wall
That says it all
Grey, dark, wired, shut off-

And we behind blocked off windows
Like the denizens of a cursed castle.

We wondered how the Sun
Stopped shining on our side-

We wanted
For a place in the sun
And being unblocked.

Plate glass shatters well
Into harmless pebbles
We know
They make it like that
No shards-

But in East Germany
They only had the old kind
That you can't see
Before it cuts through your jugular.

Getting across that Wall of fear
You had to be sheared off
Like a butcher's abortion-

Because if you did-
You had to be torn out of a nurturing womb
That you knew well in the gloaming
And flung out like bleeding offal
To pollute the sunny side.

What could they possibly see
In a penniless refugee
Except unwanted trouble?

Know that it is very bad to be less
Even less
Least-
But with so many promises for pillows.

But we did have for plot
One stained truth
To repeat after ourselves-

If you fly, I fly with you
If you grow, I grow too.

It meant nothing
If you stayed on our side of the Wall
But it gave us hope
And made us smile.

We had heard
Across the Wall
The sunlight was strong

Besides it always glowed
From our side-

Maybe we could
Will
Energy
To harness

We thought-

And gallop to our purpose
Straight through that Wall
Like antimattering miracles!

Maybe we could bound over hedges
That only posed
As Walls
And what can Stasi watchtowers
Do to celestials?

On that grey side
We knew all about how to
Stop dead
And turn immortal.
So how could they catch a running immortal?

But like a guilty secret
We grew that Wall together
Erich and all us friends
To protect ourselves-
We grew it
Brick by brick
To shut ourselves in.

And then it came down
Like Honecker's pants
And we were just as free
As Charlie and Coca Cola.

And now we're out here
And Out Here is part of There!

We eat sausages, drink beer,
Drive BMWs with spin

We pay with plastic and Euromoney
Being rich is no sin

We spend time, make music
Walk now and then on stilts-
And look across that phantom Wall
Without the slightest bit of guilt.

9th November 2009
20th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came down.

Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright, Gautam Mukherjee 2009

Echo but it's ridiculous

2009-11-04T01:36:00.000-08:00

Clover Box

Echo but it's ridiculous

That face was thinner
It was tight
With features
uncluttered
if stupid.

That belly was a stomach
not a disobedient overhang-
those arms were sinuous-
Not sticks borrowed from Olive Oyl.

it's ridiculous how
Every one of your vices
Etched themselves on you
Scoring lines
blighting your beard white
Stooping you
When you intended no particular respect
For anyone.

Like Killjoy the vandal-
Carving I was here
I was there
I will remain
Gouging and scooping
But boo to you
You old ghost.

Old faces look manic animated
But you must expect consequences
Like a vintage car being taxed
You expect the oil to blow-
Veins to pop-
Candles to gutter

It's ridiculous
You can't be hearing ticking
Bombs, time,imagination,
Hell what's the difference-
It's Heavens every time.

Mutter mutter mutter,
Talking to yourself is good when you're old
You hear perfectly-
You like what you hear and like what you don't.

But imagine muttering at people
Complaints,longings,bewilderment
Why would it matter
About you-

That you carry these extra enthusiasms in you still?
Silly old fellow.

But tell yourself good things anyhow
Appreciate yourself because no one else will
Shake your head at how clear it all seems
Now-

When it is much too late-
And your life events are a bore
What a joke to have kept you up nights smoking.

Grace your thoughts-
Clothe it in the shreds of your old self
Ignore the frays and tatters
Because you can see them anew anyhow.

You may have turned into a cardboard box do you know?
To pack things or find meaning in-
Not quite like Kafka's giant spider
But
Either metamorphosis
Would have delighted you at ten
When everything is naturally delightful-

You cadged the big Carnation condensed milk box
Remember
From the back of the provision shop
For your den then-
And now you've turned into one yo'self!

You've worn so thin and flappy
And become boxy too-
And yet no one wants to huddle inside
For a giggle.

But its still free
And freeing-

When no concrete can hold you
And the brown paper thing metamorphosis
You've become-

Corrugated, edges soggy,
Dead as a pulped tree
Heavy with nothing
but facsimilies
Of your life

It still makes a cozy home.
And you're hopeful
Like a lover awaiting
Call mail or text
Waiting for the huff,
The puff,
To breeze into you
Puffing out your sail
Or even
Sailing your upended boxy boat
All the way to the sea.

4th November 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright Gautam Mukherjee, 2009.

Come closer to wet my lips

2009-10-19T21:52:00.001-07:00

William Blake- Jacob's Ladder

Poetry

Come closer to wet my lips

What’s scaring you rigid my love?
Is it the thundering rain in the forest?

What’s making you hold your breath?

Is it a deep thirst?
A parched thing
You cannot quench?

That noise you hear-
Are the Masters and Slaves calling to each other
From the water’s edge.

That river is Styx, The Jordan
It’s next to Jacob’s Ladder
And that poor unemployed sweet chariot

All this is for those who can see.

They call to each other
Kindred spirits mauling
Each other for all time-

But what's it to you
You don't want to go.

See how you cling my love?
So hold fast-

Those shots you hear
Are barking deer and their sighing after-
That laughter-
Is the mad call of jackals.

That disturbance in the thicket
Is owl flap in the dark.

There is no one with a scythe in the shadows
That sharp moonlight
On the courtyard
Is clean.

There are no pounding hooves
coming for you across the cobbles
That is blood in your temples
Yes but
No one’s coming to get you!

What you hear may be rumblings
Just me stumbling-

That crackling is not from a fire
No blaze here-
No pyre.

That tumbling pine
Is not going to a carnage
To build it higher

And that pine scent-
Is not from its destruction.

You can pull this fear apart my love
And in its folds
Find bliss.

There is no call to hurtle
Twisting around corners
Myrtle Myrtle-
Your dead grandmother named you.

You can put your small hand
On my heart
See-

There is nothing
Nothing breaking out of its cage
Beating steady as a sage.

You can make it pound Myrtle
Anytime,tonight-

But come to me together
And come closer to wet my lips.

20th October 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright Gautam Mukherjee 2009

All things are not for keeping

2009-10-14T00:07:00.000-07:00

Poetry

All things are not for keeping

All things are not for keeping
Few things belong-

All things are not for touching
Out in the world-

Who is great?
What is small?
When is it a solid wall?

Me, I just want to know-
When this postman can call.

October 14th, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright Gautam Mukherjee 2009

Console Me!

2009-10-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

Roy Lichtenstein- Green Face

Poetry

Console Me!

Console me I have sinned beyond the pale
In bramble bushes wildwoods dripping rain
Cascading flowers junipers flood my mind
Who can see that noose down the line?

Console me it was a wicked deed
Winged archers rode with arrows of naked steel
My heart wept heavy when I heard you call
This rankling thought years later still appalls

Console me when dew thoughts catch the night
In moon glow aching nerve me to a fight
Lax flesh begs off by going limp
Bobbing strength and faux pas’ grown to imps
Thing in time done now recall a scent
Of Narciss bloom that never really went!

Silver furrows slick and dry on cheek
Crying out for phantoms to find and wipe and seek.

Console me when the shudders come on deep-
It’s a way to climb, a yawning kind of leap-
That umbilical cord still not cut away
In windy rain I can hear it sway
Ghostly white, moaning as it whips
That fruit of ruin, a wolf among the sheep-

It’s leaping hurdles hurtling through the night
Catching it’s breath before it heaves to sight!

Console me, I need help to fight this fright-
This flower smelling dew of still-papered night
I raise a cornucopia and drink a draught of dreams
On my stony perch entombing remembered screams.

Console me, I have sinned beyond the pale
In bramble bush, in heather moors, in rain-

A cloud now clears and I can see
A spectre raises and legends are set free
The stories grow and I watch them bloom
The clouds come back and hide them in the gloom.

II

Cremate me on the mountain top
Plant saplings in my name-

Whisper your forgiveness
And burn away my shame-

A fire to our memories
Shorn pine and sandal paste-

And when your face is hot and flushed
Get up and walk away.

14th October 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright Gautam Mukherjee 2009

Welcome Back!

2009-10-07T03:10:00.000-07:00

Short story

Welcome Back!

It is stamped on the face. Shakal shareef! You can tell just by looking at someone. I can. I can tell rich, poor, thief, murderer, cheat, power man, by just looking at face, and maybe also from walk, talk, clothes, rings, bags, necklace, such things. How is the smell? Smell is very important. And reputation. Can be scared of people you can lift and throw. Sometimes scared of even cripple fellows in wheelchair. And sometimes, fat people you cannot shift.

But when someone look at me he think here is a dukhi bunda who has been knock around a lot and truth be told wallahi is looking like he like to be knocked around some more. So why not oblige and give him a new kick. But maybe they don’t see like this. They maybe see a tough guy instead to give respect and take care near about because sure I give more beatings than I take in my life.

And so who knows, it might be, like rubber stamp on my face also. This man will beat you if you don’t do what he wants. Both ways it is true. Either side entrance and open like a bamboo flute and all places, upside, downside, seaside, backside, everywhere this man is tough guy.

Actually both are me, one part crying inside my chest like a baby from when I actually was hungry baby, and the other with all markings and nishani. Face scar, body welt, as girl say “on my adult pelt” because she like to play with my markings in the bed. But otherwise, the public can see some marks but not me unless I look in the mirror. And they see one fighting man to make pulp. So watch out. Danger man. Do not disturb.

And both these fellows live next to each other inside my skin. And till recently, before the girl found me a PG room in high-rise flat in Colaba with separate entrance so she could stay all night.

Before my two fellows lived in a chawl in Gamdevi. Lived meaning where I kept my mat. No, not like exercise mat, but cotton mattress, bori bistar type. I roll up and keep under one table in the day, and spread it in room with five other people if raining or out in the veranda if good weather. I have nothing else.

But now my expense high. I not steal now but much spending and spend I must because I can’t let girl spend for me all the time. How does it look? So now lunch dinner movie ghoomna ghamna, taxi, rent. I am now ex-thief. I am ex-collection agent also. I am now mechanic in garage but girl wants me to work in office of advertising as model and also model coordinator if I promise not to fuck the models. I promise. She say she will arrange. Who wants fuck me. I have no knowledge. No money. Only this one pari likhi mad girl.

An ex-thief is working in a garage of thieves. If you want to make money there you have to cheat the customers. Break it some part and then buy it local at half price and charge the car owner full price for original part and write false bills and pay the supervisor a little to keep quiet. All thieves but not called thief. And car itself never fix too good so that it comes back and we say that part which I fixed is good but now new this part is bad.

So before forget want tell you about inside my skin, in my head and heart, the crying baby and the fighting man mixed up so much. Too much. You can’t make out which is which and what is what. You can’t get it out because you can’t remember how it got in. And everything is sealed. No joints, no rivets. Only hole for mouth, eyes, ears, nose and those other parts underneath.

And because it is two opposite things, it build steam inside. That is why the bhai gave me the work of collection. Itna gussa? Accha hai. “Beat someone everyday and guaranteed you feel better,” he laugh. I did a lot of that collection work for him and everybody would give me respect.

But this girl here now. I can’t tell her I beat people for collecting rent money. Cannot reveal about thief. So I tell bhai and he sent me to the garage of his friend. “See and if you don’t like it come back to me”. That bhai is really like true brother. He is taking his pick from the young rundis just come new send to him straight but bhai or no bhai you have to please the chokris if you want them to be good to you. They like it when you give money but like it more when you listen to them. Importance. Good for sex.

But right now it looks like my luck is changed or I am dreaming even in the daylight. Think of this girl. High class. No unpur rundi. Never even been to places I come from go to. So why she is acting like she is engaged to make marriage with me?

Suddenly, a man whose mother can’t remember properly when he was born is having a big birthday party. She is doing all this. Why for? I am not habitual for so much taarif pampering in social public way. In the arms of a simple woman in the dark yes, but out in front, with so much high society, no, never before in this life. Girl is not ashamed. I am.

Party can only be full if her friends come because mine are more in lock up, jail, these places. I don’t think I’m worth to show off. I look like street person with new clothes. I am a street person with new clothes. She make me buy because she pay anyway. She choose pant, shirt, jeans, shoe, get Rs. 750 haircut, Rs. 1000/- to clean nail, hand, feet. I am ready for dulha but I refuse chest hair shaving like Sharukh Khan.

I don’t know why she change me so hard because I still look like better stand outside
don’t come inside. But girl very happy. She live with me in Colaba room and wants everybody to know. This party, what it is for? I am afraid to go. I might get angry if rich people insult. I am pick up from street and they will see. They will laugh.

But this girl, who is she tumbling into my life and chipkoing there. I am not used to having things so easy. Someone sending for spy? Why? Nothing to hide. Ex-thief, ex-collection agent. Garage mechanic in garage of thieves. But cannot catch. Not educated but smart.

Party is in penthouse of my girl building in Sindhi businessman house. More crystal glass, less gold and silver. All girls with short dress and creamy thigh. English music very loud. Big drinks table. English food. I am happy I don’t have to talk. Sea view but no smell from high up. Dance floor with light red, green, blue, strobe. Kissing. Feeling. Bumping. Going together couple to bedroom. Girl took me into bathroom. All bedroom occupied. Standing up for happy birthday. Not so difficult. Back to Colaba room before morning but girl said she stay back to help host. I don’t know more till landlady tapping on door. Phonecall to her house. My phone on silent. Inspector Shinde. Friendly like. Call me to Crime Branch.

When I go he beat me. Punch in the kidney. Kick in the leg. “Saala kanha chupaya hanh?” Jewels. From the party. I did not take. So now I understand about the girl. My reputation. Her profit. Shakal se kuch nahi pata lagta.

I go back to Gamdevi. In the evening we sit outside looking at wall. Rain pattern. Election poster. No paint. Little breeze. No electricity. "Arre you come back? Good. Gamdevi best for you. Tu aa gaya saala. Marwah ke aaya? Koi Nahi. Welcome back!"

(1,352 words)

7th October 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
Copyright, Gautam Mukherjee 2009

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2009-10-06T02:56:00.001-07:00

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See You At Auntie's Joint

2009-10-06T01:51:00.000-07:00

See You At Auntie’s Joint

The photographs along the wall lead you into the heart of the homeliness. Here, that’s a Catholic “confirmation” picture of an angelic child with side-parted and neatly combed hair, that’s a college graduation picture with everyone in square hats and black gowns, that one’s obviously a family group gathered for a wedding with all the men in suits, another is of a company of men in uniform, and here, some studio formals, angled and lit and timeless.

This is the charm of the place. Being able to come in for a drink into Auntie’s home like this. And the brew might be illicit but it's safe. And there are fresh snacks all the time. Little boys in shorts and sweaty singlets run up the wooden steps from the alley below and along the veranda with papad now, chana then, and sometimes fried Kingfish or shrimp in sal-leaf
katoris from the Sardar’s tandoori stand at the mouth of the alley.

The serving, coming in and out of curtained off back room with glasses and soda and drink, is done by Auntie’s “niece” in the buttock hugging skirt. She isn’t really her niece but calling her that keeps the drunks from making passes. Filoo’s very good for business because looking at her makes you thirsty. And she doesn’t mind being looked at even though you’re dying to pat her on that butt. Filoo must know that also and about the other fantasies she inspires. But what we can say for sure is she definitely doesn’t mind you looking because she’s always smiling back.

The servings come in nips- those quarter bottles that hold about 175 ml. and encourage you to finish it at the rate of a drink each. So four drinks with a friend would account for a bottle. It is very hard not to get drunk at Auntie’s.

We sit on little wooden stools and drink off one placed in the middle. It is the only way to accommodate the clientele in the tiny front room with the pictures and the spillover on part of the narrow veranda outside. At a pinch, you could stand up and rearrange things quite easily. Especially when there is a runner down the alley with news of a police raid.

“You can imagine my plight”, says a podgy chap in a bush shirt at my right elbow, wagging his eyebrows. And his friend on the stool opposite nods in rapt comprehension. “No more than a little girl”, he continues, and I suddenly rear back because I don’t want to eavesdrop on a tragedy. “Snaps, snaps everywhere of her family, her wedding, her husband, but her hands,” and he strokes his podgy thigh.

Filoo comes though the curtain to flash her smile and tight buttocks at us. The joint is filling up. More glasses and nips for her to bring. More toing and froing for us to watch. More voices and laughter. Warmth suffuses my papad.

“Not dead a week mun”, drifts to my ear next. Oh God! “You have to feel my shock. Also joy, yes, definitely, can’t tell lies. I was very happy I tell you. A little humanity. Caring for each other. Comforting each other. What’s wrong? You can’t condemn it,” and my podgy neighbour makes this little hugging motion for his friend.

"Crying out for him she was obviously and I was not there at all. I mean my sitting with her, holding her, didn’t matter, didn’t matter one bit; she was mourning Him,” said with emphasis and a glance heavenwards, but he holds out his sly podgy hand for his friend to slap.

Filoo smiles at me going past and so I have to order another nip. “It is just a moment of human weakness. That’s all. For her I am actually nothing.” But you did alright for being nothing my podgy friend, didn’t you?

“I met her today again outside my building. Means, saw her. Wished her of course. Blushing. Pretty as a picture. So good to see. You can imagine my plight”.

But that’s the drink talking all by itself. It does that. It always takes you to “Rewind” and then, what else, it takes your podgy finger to “Play”!

(699 words)

6th October 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright Gautam Mukherjee 2009.

GEOTOOLBAR

2009-10-05T05:01:00.000-07:00

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The Critic

2009-10-05T01:47:00.000-07:00

The Critic

sketch

The auditorium was already darkened but the footlights were still on. Some of the audience was straggling in as the bells rang in the corridor and lobby. We were sat down and watching the late arrivals, the fat, the thin, the pretty and ugly, the purposeful and aimless, the airy-fairies, sandal-clad jholawalas with no deodorant smelling pretty aggressive, some still talking on their mobile phones. Clearly there were people who lived lives much busier than ours.

That’s when the critic arrived, excusing himself loudly, bumping into knees, bustling in without embarrassment. He had one of those voices. I had to turn around to look even as he settled just behind us. But as soon as the scuffling stopped because it took him a manoeuvre or two, no more, to sit down properly; he was talking again: “Why come to such a third class show? Local production. Local. Airtel sponsored. Rubbish. Should have stayed back and had a drink Tscha”.

And as the curtain went up he said “Why don’t they off the footlights. Footlights. Arre Lights. Where is the lightwala?” He was just broadcasting because the commentary wasn’t directed at a companion. He thought it best to interpret things for us all within earshot. But nobody took his bait.

Instead, we looked at each other and sighed. Why has this man come to a Shakespeare play? Did he know what he was letting himself in for?

We didn’t have to wonder long because he was soon off again: “Didn’t even do the make-up properly. Look at those pouches under his eyes. Damn debauch fellow but why not cover up? The Moor is not a drunk. Meant to be tough guy. Warrior fellow Tscha! Who did the casting? Just see. Look at him. So weak. Half dead like. Might fall right now. So what to do with a young wife? And ….Iago that is? Arre Baa!He is keeping so serious? No laughing, leering, nothing. What kind of Iago is this? No good villain. Fail ho gaya. Cannot believe. Stamping foot like girl. Tscha…Who is directing this? Fellow looks like medical orderly. For cleaning bed pans….bas. Arre see that! Is that Desdemona or Madonna? Maybe Mona darling I think so. What bra lifting!Conical. Excuse please. But pointing! Merciless! O heaven Ma God!”.

Maybe I should have been watching the play instead of listening to him but it was too late now. I found myself waiting for his next comment or for a scene to erupt. A fight maybe and the critic being thrown out. So who can watch the play like this?

But nothing happened. Perhaps the critic had done this loud number before and knew how to walk a fine line. Or maybe he had begun to genuinely watch the play. Because though nobody shut him up, no one encouraged him either.

No lift for the critic. One might say that and so he said nothing more. Not even during the big scene- Othello strangling Desdemona. And considering the critic thought Othello weak, about to drop dead, the man with the pouches under his eyes did pretty well and yelled and shouted about his anguish without discernible health problems.

When the lights came up at the end there he was again, off clapping louder than all of us and letting out the odd piercing whistle - particularly when Desdemona came out to take her bow. He really liked her heaving chest and that uplift bra. Maybe it made it, the whole play, right for him.

And then he was off, determined to get out first and go to the toilet or into the parking lot before everyone else. And before the ovation had properly subsided. Oblivious as a minister he went, down the row, crushing feet in his way, deaf to all the cringing protestations. He wasn’t looking where he was going anyway. No, he was watching the stage over his shoulder yelling “more” as if it was a mujra he'd just been to. And what is a mujra without a heaving chest or two meri jaan?

(675 words)

Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright, Gautam Mukherjee 2009

The Ballad of Candida

2009-10-04T23:43:00.001-07:00

Poetry

The Ballad of Candida

Candida is a natural
Things
Come to her
And send her into
Whatever they call for.

Candida never swears love
To her it is a living breathing thing
That surrounds her.

She sees herself as a beautiful innocent
The mud
On the heels of reality
Is brushable
Washable

So Candida never swears love
Love too is her lover
She knows him too well
To advertise.

Candida gives out her thoughts with a sure touch
Not caring of doubt
Doubt is her slave
Kissing at her hem
Breathing in her smell.

Candida never swears love
Time is lost
With such analysis.

But Candida suffers
A raw fate
Every day
And every night
In a crucible
With a self starter.

No wonder she smiles
When the wags begin to wag.

Candida makes light of pain
Pain is her companion.

Candida sees a world of derived logic
Second hand
Thrust at her.

Candida thinks they want me
Anyway.

They want me for being a natural
But little do they know
About my being a measure tottering
On the brink.

How can they-
When Candida smiles and smiles.

Candida loves darkly
With insight
She sees the frotting envy
And holds it.

Candida loves a collective
Like a Queen Bee
Pollen here
Stigma there
Knowing repose
Is not for the free.

Candida always wants to climb higher
But look at that sorrowful trail
That disappointing smudge of imitation love
Those posturings and their thermal signatures
That rankle in her still.

But all those jailers, wardens, worms, carrion
Still claim Candida.

But Candida washes clean
And dreams of sunflowers
Bursting in fields
Nodding madly.

Candida cares and cares
But the plastic stares
The electric saw
The bell
Is a tinkling hell
But Candida blinks it away
Stubbornly.

So what about this being a natural?
Did fate have something special in mind for her?
Or was she just God’s whimsy
Appearing and disappearing
Like a whorl of dust.

Candida knows
She glows
The plastic loves her
Worms lover her
The heart within her
Loves her.

So Candida puts her feet on the ground
And launches into her magic.

Gautam Mukherjee

Copyright, Gautam Mukherjee 2009

The Underdog's Prayer

2009-08-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

The Underdog's Prayer

God you granted me a tail-bone
To sit on and sit-

But here I go to wag it
With all my residual strength.

I wouldn't of course,
If left alone to source-
But I must fear my work
Extracted by Turks
Will turn into flowing waste.

I'd see it all blown
Down the drain, its flown
Shown dry-
Like unshut taps.

So Lord, who's been so clever
Admiration, and my compliments-

You've kindly allowed for an inch or two of movement-
Would've wanted to give us wiggle-room-
But for expansion, not escape-
It's very good sound tailoring-

But there's no way I can
Take any measures of my own
Because I can't plumb
The bottom or the top
Clever-
You must want it that way...

But here in my head,
The sirens of frustration
Sing out in morning harmony-

From a humming now, to a rumble then
Their perfectly inane cacophony.

Then you God Sahab, you must like inspecting your men-
And managing them so very well,

But I mere mortal will have to unionise-
And make surety sure I don't slip.

Knowing of course
There's nothing casual about leave
And sickness is most unwelcome!

But privileges to yon yonder world
Are only voluntary for you and the dear departed
O God.

So pay me right here right now,
Throw some gold down here
O mighty God
Up there.

You who contracted my birth-
Owe me.

(My mother gave in
To your sweet will
And popped me out like a pill).

But biggish mortals in those heavy chairs
Don't give a damn about me-
Small I am-
But sometime here-
I wonder whether they know I'm there
Or am I just imagining it!

But that makes two of you,
God, and them over there,
Who've forgotten all about me
In different ways.

But Sir, you could,with a flick of your wrist-
It would tell your angel there-

So just requisition a fat bonus
Just cash, not kind-
I have absolutely no mind-
For metaphor.

And before I go, O God above,
Close in on my boss-
Lean on him-

There's more to life than
Incessant cooing,cooing-
And coughing from his cigar-

Coz he's no dove!
O God above
So turn him over please-

Butter his arse
To harps and harps
And winged women attendants

Just so long you make him think
Tossing him whatever nods and winks
That you God love him still.

But just when his sump
Is ready to jump
Slide the bum
To Hades' hump.

1st August, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

Revolt

2009-07-25T05:41:00.000-07:00

Poetry

This time when I revolt
Your blood will not rise.

You will redeem yourself,
Extricate your little gifts
Like ticks from my flesh.

This time when I invite you in
You'll smile widely-
And sit down to eat in all conviviality,

The food proferred will slide down your throat,
Like pickled herring,
A practiced thing,
What poise!

And yes, the bones will crackle.

The cereal will serially allude to its advertisement
Snap, crackle, popping the morning awake-
Colluding in saliva like the night before,
For me, still in front of you,
But really for Salvatore-
Absent certainly, but you can't write him off!

These unknownable names rear up in my head
Like suspicion,
And flesh out an accusation
For me to use,
To abuse,
To lose,to look bad.

But when I flood the bund,
I want to drown out all trace
But that's just ambition.

My sap will be rising, again,
Full of life at the death of our love,
Seeping out like tears,
Hopeful still,
Refusing to register the change
Reacting like a habit,
Pulsing for my lost corner,
My truncated love,
My coveted touch,
My elusive fears,
My tomorrows.

I will have to romance the rubbish out of the door
That will make it near enough to a new beginning,
A fresh try in the sunlight
Just around the bend from the end.

I sigh as my manhood throbs
With a mind of its own
Pulsing true against the lies
Like a gallant.

So I let it go-
Remove this talk of love
Where it is not wanted.

Take off its stays & ties,
And float it on the breeze,

Who knows what it'll catch next.

Gautam Mukherjee
25th July 2009

Once the moment passes

2009-04-22T04:31:00.000-07:00

Since my other blog GHATOTKACHSERIES II is all about economics, politics, current affairs, defence...I have decided to revive GHATOTKACHSERIES herewith. I find there are still a lot of readers for this blog about a year on if my visit tracker is to be believed.

But now, instead of earnest essays, I'll be putting down short stories,poems, sketches, and other bits of fiction. Don't forget to email or leave your comments as you like. Best, G

Short Story

Once the moment passes

She still had her pretty face and those limpid, kohl-rimmed eyes. It was a peculiarly ethnic way to make-up, after so many years abroad, but it suited her. The dark hair, the no-grey gloss, was styled into a dolly-bird helmet, close, with a series of contrived bangs across her upper forehead and others that meandered down the nape of her neck. It was a look frozen in time. Perhaps, in her neck of the woods, amongst the émigré Sri Lankans she lived with in North London, it was fine to look like a yesterday from a long time ago. It was an easy maintenance hairstyle, evolved in the “Prudence and the Pill” Sixties, captured by the Giles cartoons of working class English people in Swinging London of the time.

Her hair was like the one on the young bird, whom Giles often drew in a skinny-rib roll- neck sweater, with those slight, slightly saggy breasts, a peace sign pendant, a toothy smile and moderately heeled go-go boots. But this, after all, was 2009.

I had to admit she was still slim, held herself erect, and was much better preserved than she might have been, even with her fuller breasts sitting heavily in her bra. After all, thirty years had passed incommunicado.

For the rest, she was wearing black trousers, straights, with heels under the straights so that she looked a little stilted, taller than I remember her, unlike herself in bare feet. Her arms, displayed unnecessarily, were fatter and had no muscular definition. She had mum arms now. And in a time when she might have aspired to ones like Madonna.

Particularly, since I knew she liked to exercise. That would account for the flat stomach even after two children. But those soft arms told another story, of helplessness and defeat. Apparently, her housework didn’t involve any lifting and carrying and she probably didn’t do weights.

Looking at her now, with her pretty face and dated hair, there was definitely a problem of taste. She wore a peek-a-boo cut-out in her black blouse that showed a bit of dusky cleavage. The effect, in league with those arms and the trussed-up breasts, was not alluring. But she didn’t seem to know it, or perhaps liked projecting this mild vulgarity, in a kind of shop-girl insouciance chic. But at least she wasn’t wearing tiger or leopard print stretched across her buttocks like the young bird in Giles, and spoke in a well modulated voice, shades of Thatcherism, middle class effort at loggerheads with her professed Left-Activist views and their old, largely discarded, have-not Labour Party underpinnings.

But having taken it all in, these multitudes of non-verbal signals, I was ready to go already. I had seen her and where she was at now. I was even a little angry with myself for being disappointed in my right-of-centre sensibilities, my little bit of prosperity that I wanted to show-off. I couldn’t really brag, nor could I leave. I couldn’t just amble out, moments after arriving, without being ostentatious, without betraying emotion that I certainly didn’t want to put on display. But really, I had nothing to ask of her and even less to tell her. It would only lead to sniping, guilt-mongering and resentment.

But still I stayed and talked to her in the shadow of difficult, irreconcilable memories that refuse to match, and was introduced, once more, to her now decrepit, near-deaf father, shambling about on his walking stick. This sorry creature was the very man who had caused me grief with his relentless opposition, his telling innuendo and subversive condemnation those very many years ago. And here he was, like a knackered creature. I was surprised and a little annoyed to see him, indecently alive, lurking around his indulgent fifty year old offspring. He looked like a revolting, geriatric, superfluous relic of his former self. Of course, all I did was smile at him and then at her, nodding my apparent pleasure at them, unwilling to let them know, or surmise, anything of the bitterness they both evoked.

I felt trapped though, like a man tricked into a straight-jacket. I wanted to leave but propriety called for the room to fill up a bit and someone else to come up and talk to her. In the meantime I tried to look happy as I drank my black coffee and made small-talk. But yes, she had smiled happily, with real joy in those kohl-rimmed eyes, when she first caught sight of me as I came into the room. That was real and I recognised the old smile that I once dearly loved. So I clung to its memory as the only familiar in this arid reunion of lovers once, now strangers, circling each other to find vulnerabilities to wound, pain being the only intimacy left to us, now that the moment had passed.

(811 words)

22nd April 2009
Gautam Mukherjee

GO NOW TO GHATOTKACHSERIES II

2008-06-11T01:03:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

I have written and posted 80 essays on GHATOTKACHSERIES between June 2005 and May 2008 and they are all here for your reading pleasure.

The monthly archives however, have grown a little long in the tooth, somewhat unweildy.

So, I have opened a successor blog GHATOTKACHSERIES II http://ghatotkachseries2.blogspot.com/

In the beginning, till the search engines pick up on the new blog you will probably need to use the full address to access it. But,please do visit.

At present GHATOTKACHSERIES II has just one essay on the recent oil price surge on it, but, I expect to populate it soon enough.

I've been asked about the long title on the masthead to this blog.

Well,the name GHATOTKACHSERIES was inspired by a reading of Menon's The Mahabharata when I realised that GHATOTKACH was brave and immensely strong, a giant, if he chose to be. And he was genetically part Manushya (from father Bheema of the Pandavas), part Deva(from Bheema's blood father, hence G's grandfather VAYU, the Wind God), and part Rakshas(from his mother, spirit of the forest, Hidimba). A product then, as it were, of all three realms.

I found the name,the parentage and the character in the Mahabharata with his one great day in the sun during the epic battle, immensely inspiring. It was the turning point at Kurukshetra, when Karna had to use his infallible but one-trick weapon, to kill GHATOTKACH, to stop him decimating the Kauravas. The great weapon, Karna's potent boon, went, in desperation,to fell GHATOTKACH, rather than being held in reserve for Arjuna. Lord Krishna smiled and the rest as they say...

And so, dear reader, we have come to the end of this line. I thank you for your patronage and wish you well in the future.

GHATOTKACHSERIES does end here.

But please do come and read me on GHATOTKACHSERIES II.

Gautam Mukherjee
11th June 2008
New Delhi

Change is coming to America

2008-05-22T01:17:00.000-07:00

Change is coming to America

On the day Barack Obama won the Oregon Primary, he didn’t stick around for the traditional victory lap. He chose instead to be in Des Moines, Iowa, back in the first big, largely “White” state he won, early in the primary season. That was the win that converted him into a serious presidential candidate and contender for the Democratic Party nomination. So, it was fitting that Obama returned to Iowa to launch his presidential campaign with his presumptive nomination all but sewn up.

In Des Moines, on Tuesday 20th of May, Obama made the second of his trade-mark “vision” speeches during the long primary campaign; moving, lump in the throat inducing, like those of JFK’s from 48 years before, ringing with calls for change. The first was, of course, his exquisitely balanced “race” speech made at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia already being compared by academics to Abraham Lincoln’s, given at Cooper Union in New York on February 27, 1860.

May 20th was also the day, poignantly, that the world found out that the 76 years old Senator Ted Kennedy, was gravely ill with a malignant brain tumour. JFK’s last surviving brother, the venerable senator from Massachusetts for 46 years, a “liberal lion” and democratic party royalty, endorsed Obama, along with JFK’s daughter Caroline, just a few months ago. They too were inspired, they said, by his youth and idealism and call for change that reminded them of JFK.

Obama’s recent Iowa speech was cadenced, alliterative, soaring, concerning matters home and abroad; on the unfinished business in Afghanistan and the unnecessary goings on in Iraq; on health care, employment and bringing American jobs home; and elegantly, on opportunity for his daughters, thanks to the path opened up by rival Senator Hillary Clinton.

Obama’s new war cry had something of Reverend Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” intensity about it. It also had echoes of the Gettysburg Address, those stirring written words of Abraham Lincoln, resonating still, because the American Civil War was indeed the first blow struck for civil rights in America. It also incorporated a fleeting touch of his turbulent Pastor of twenty years, Jeremiah Wright, for its passion if not its tonality. And, in this one Ohio speech, Barack Obama used the word “change” no less than 17 times.

Of course, in the most visual of telegenic ways, the 46 years old Obama, both Black and White, a product of an American and Indonesian upbringing, and a Kenyan blood-line too; embodies change. But Obama embodies change in much more substantial ways too. His previous “race” speech, had made it clear that Obama was a new kind of 21st century Black, unwilling to be bitter about the burden of racial differences, determined not to exploit race for political gain and its polarising consequence.

The older Reverend Wright, like others of his generation, couldn’t make this crossing, despite his three-decade long Ministry as a man of God. Nor could the earlier era presidential pretender Reverend Jesse Jackson. But Obama, the pragmatic African-American of today, determined to play his part in the political mainstream, could, and can. Obama is neither Black “enough” for the bitter men of colour, nor White “enough” for the bigoted and fearful. His ancestry is however a sorely needed bridge, that can not only heal dangerous rifts in America’s soul but change the resentments many around the world feel towards the predominant power. And exasperating as this hinging on racial cheeseparing may seem, this talk of “enoughness” or its absence, may be the very key to Barack Obama’s inclusiveness.

Change is the metaphor Obama has brought to the public imagination, and he wants to sweep clean, changing Washington in the process. The time has come for Change to become the theme for this Democratic Party presidential race, the two rivals only debating what it means to each, and may well prove to be that of America’s going forward.

It is implicit change that has made possible the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama and his feisty Democratic Party rival Hillary Clinton. Despite a tantalisingly close race, Clinton’s delegate tally remains stubbornly short of the necessary. With just three states yet to be polled, Clinton knows she cannot catch up, not even if the delegations from two early-polling and curiously excluded primary states, Florida and Michigan, are seated. She is nevertheless determined to battle on, waiting for a miracle, a main chance, fate or the closing bell.

This bruising primary has so polarised the democratic voter, between the young, the highly educated and the Black – largely Obama supporters all; and the older, White, working class men and women who are staunch Clinton supporters; that the future script is under pressure. The traditional democratic party constituency has been cleaved in half because there are two winning candidates when there is place for just one winner.

It seems obvious therefore that Obama has little choice but to invite, and persuade, Hillary Clinton to become his Vice Presidential running mate. The Democratic Party on its part, and its remaining uncommitted super-delegates, may have to weigh in to force this outcome, unless they are prepared to watch the prize slip away to the Republicans by default.

We shall all soon see what we shall see, but if this “dream ticket” forged in the imperatives of voter logic, does emerge, it will, most probably, result in the pair going on to win the White House in November. It will be a revolutionary development for America, simultaneously creating a great leap forward in both race and gender equality after months of damaging pot shots at both conditions.

But, even if Clinton isn’t on the Obama ticket, either because he won’t ask her because of the considerable Clinton-era baggage she carries; or because of the primary season acrimony between the candidates; or because she refuses to play second fiddle, even if Obama offers to beef up the content in a largely ceremonial veep’s post; all may not be lost. Obama is, after all, a hugely inspirational figure, and there are many experienced and electorally attractive Democratic senators to choose his running mate from. The challenge then will pass on to reveal the maturity of the Democratic Party voter to put the primary behind them and vote Obama to office.

(1,050 words)
Gautam Mukherjee
Thursday 22nd May 2008

Here comes the Cavalry!

2008-05-16T01:22:00.000-07:00

Here comes the Cavalry!

In the formulaic but once popular “Western” genre, produced by the Hollywood Studio System, the last reel of the film often had heroic “Cowboys” beleaguered into a last stand. There they were, too few by far, confronted by cohorts of face-painted and whooping Red Indian Braves, riding horses bareback, and licking the living daylights out of them. But, just as all seemed lost, along came the blue-uniformed United States Cavalry. The Cavalry looked marvellous; galloping to the rescue, tooting whistles and blowing bugles, with their not-a minute-too-soon timing, and their highly effective aggression. The unerring moral of the classic Cowboys and Indians story is-- the Cavalry always turns up to save the day.

But here, in a country with Indians of a decidedly different sort, what do we do about the disgust we feel as witness to yet another horrific terrorist attack? We watch innocents being routinely slaughtered, and wonder at the inept attempts of the government and security agencies. They cannot seem to either anticipate terror or be able to catch very many of the perpetrators!

We have no Permanent Account Number (PAN) system to map terrorists. We seem more intent on finding out “sources of funds” than we do about threats to human life, notwithstanding our almost parallel “black” economy. We have only the haziest notions about who our citizens are, where they live, what they do, where they go, whom they meet. We know even less about our “guests”, both welcome and unwelcome. So how is a blind-folded Cavalry meant to save us? They are, our men in khaki, just as vulnerable as the rest of us!

But, fortunately, in matters economic, not everything that we do is so inept. And a great deal happens globally that influences and shapes our macro outcomes, and over which, thankfully, we have little or no control. A careful reading of the tea leaves seems to suggest that things are about to get decidedly better. This is most welcome, of course, after months of unrelenting pressure that was drawing us closer and closer to the negative tipping point.

The energy consuming world’s No. 1 economic threat, and ours, since we have a 70 per cent oil import scenario, is that of spiralling crude prices. This one threat has overtaken the global credit crisis, temporary food shortages, insurrections, pestilence, natural disasters, political instability and climate change. Crude prices have risen 30 per cent in 2008 alone, and nearly 100 per cent since 2007. Expert estimates suggest that a fair “value” price for crude, inflation-adjusted, is about USD 75 per barrel, and a further USD 10 to USD 15 can be tolerated for demand and supply imbalances. Anything above that is being driven by sheer speculation.

Nevertheless, the situation has grown so acute, that the maximum estimates of a trillion dollar global credit crisis and the five year-old, three trillion dollar Iraq War, pale in comparison. The war can be brought to an end, and may well be, soon after the US general election. And the credit crisis is a mess of sins past. It is the outcome of a bill being presented for a ten-year-long party. But the excess of lending to undeserving candidates, once discovered, can, and is, on its way to being remedied.

But crude oil prices, that crested at USD 127 last week before edging reluctantly downwards to a low of USD 120 plus in intra-day trading on the 16th of May, are another matter altogether. Recent nightmarish projections of even USD 150 and USD 200 per barrel by certain “mad pride” analysts, albeit over the next couple of years, have the potential to derail the world economy, and bring about tectonic shifts in the way it runs itself.

But fortunately, the “Cavalry” of self-correcting market forces is galloping to the rescue. Oil prices are headed downwards at last. In the near future, by the end of 2008, or sooner, they may be nesting at an acceptable figure of under USD 100 a barrel. More and more commentators are now inclined to think, like Peter Morgan of HSBC and Sandeep Sabharwal of JM Mutual Fund, that crude oil prices have peaked. Moreover, says Peter Morgan, the US economy will see revival, not recession, in the second half of 2008.

Others say, it won’t just be oil that is headed downwards but the whole raft of cyclical commodities that have had an excellent bull run after decades of depressed prices. They have seen unprecedented price levels, much above fair value and the demand supply axis, pursued by very large sums of speculative money. This money, from Hedge funds and Private Equity alike has been engorged by the series of interest rate cuts forced on the US and other nations by the threat of recession after the sub-prime crisis.

But now, the speculators are sniffing a change in the wind direction. There is a consolidated resistance from all the real economies of the world, unable to digest such high prices. It is too much and too soon. So the speculators are taking their profits off the table. This process will gain momentum in the coming weeks and bring much needed relief to the world economy. It will stabilise the fast depreciating rupee and the now strengthening but deeply beaten down US dollar alike. This benign development will also arrest most of the remaining recessionary trends in the United States.

The net effect on India, as well as in all the other fast growing economies of the world, will be a revival of GDP projections, a much needed reduction in inflation, a modest appreciation of the rupee, and perhaps a growth inducing cut in the interest rates as well. India can contemplate 8 per cent plus growth rates for fiscal 2008 once again. This reversal of an unhappy trend will also raise all boats including the equity and realty markets in India, with both likely to go up in anticipation.

Sandeep Sabharwal, well known for his often contrarian but spectacularly accurate forecasts, expects a hearty 30 per cent decline in most commodity prices including oil, going forward. He also expects a 10 per cent rise in the equity markets over the next six weeks. Thank God then for the Cavalry because we couldn’t have held out much longer.

(1,050 words)

Gautam Mukherjee
Friday 16th May 2008

Published on Edit Page of The Pioneer and online at www.dailypioneer.com as "The Cavalry's here, so relax" on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

Why cooperate when we can have it all?

2008-05-07T03:06:00.000-07:00

BOOK REVIEW

COMMON WEALTH Economics for a Crowded Planet
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
Published by ALLEN LANE, UK, an imprint of PENGUIN BOOKS, 2008
386 pages, Price: GPB 22, Rs. 695/-

Why cooperate when we can have it all?

The “neoconservative mistake”, says Jeffrey Sachs, is the proposition: “Why cooperate when we can have it all?” It is this kind of predatory thinking that has been at the root of imperialism from the days of the Roman Empire and the conquests of Genghis Khan. But today, when the very air we breathe and the water we drink is threatened because of what Sachs calls “the anthropocene” effect --that of humans, “clearing the ecological playing field to satisfy human desires,” albeit in an unequal way; we had better think again.

This is the central message of Jeffrey Sachs’ second book, in which, this distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University, makes a lucid and passionately argued case for global cooperation. At stake, as he disturbingly makes clear, is the very survival of our planet, the human race, and all creatures great and small we share it with. Sachs is convincing when he makes the case that we cannot go on as we are and expect to have an unfettered future much beyond 2050. We must make urgent changes, says Jeffrey Sachs, unless we are determined to court certain and irrevocable disaster.

While it is not difficult to agree with this prognosis, the sticking point, as always with the “greens”, is in agreeing on what will be the lever to force the changes necessary. Traditionally, the environmental Left presents its case in lofty moral tones, probably expecting to prick the conscience of the world into righteous action. But this has never worked. No voluntary good sense has ever prevailed. America won’t, as yet, sign the Kyoto Protocol for example. And the Protocol only calls for a modest, some would say miniscule, reduction of 5 per cent in “green house gases”! And none amongst the entrepreneurial classes worried at all about environmental degradation during the substantial growth century or more of the “billowing smokestack” Industrial Revolution.

What became the “game changer” over the ages was always technology. In energy terms, mankind went from wind to steam to coal to petrol--and now, as petrol becomes increasingly scarce and expensive, technology must come to the rescue once again. The imperative, as always, is economic necessity, and profit, not idealism. But thanks to the awareness generated by advocates such as Professor Sachs, the by-product of “progress” might well slow, halt and even reverse the rapid environmental degradation wrought thus far.

The entire set of issues may also have achieved mainstream status at last. In 2006, the Hollywood establishment recognised An Inconvenient Truth, the largest grossing documentary film of all time, starring Al Gore, with an Oscar. Former Vice President Al Gore, cruelly and controversially deprived of the Presidency of the United States, has taken up the gauntlet of a much greater mission. In 2007, the august Swedish Academy awarded a Nobel Prize to Mr. Gore for his activism, jointly with India’s own Rajendra Pachauri, representing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The fact is, depleting oil and gas reserves won’t last beyond the 21st century. “Clean” energy development, therefore, may result as a most welcome side-effect of the search for alternate energy sources, including, perhaps, self-replenishing electrical energy. Similarly, water scarcity from the demands of a population of some 7.5 billion people, or more, by 2050, may eventually be solved by efficient reverse osmosis based desalination of sea water. But the desalination needs to be carried out using vast quantities of renewable energy. It will also have to pumped, and piped large distances, just like gas might be, at present, and in the near future.

While the technological leap of faith looks the most promising solution, most of Sachs’ book concentrates on a Utopian idealism involving cleaner manufacturing, eco-friendly agricultural practices, less rapacious fishery, scrubbed energy generation and a clear cut commitment to alleviate poverty, ignorance, hunger, disease, under development and ignorance in the poorest parts of the world. Sachs wants a sustained commitment of intent. And he wants a small proportion of managerial and financial resources available to the richer nations of the world. He presents all this in terms of good economics because problem areas in a globalised, and interdependent world, affect the affluent too and restrict their topside growth potential too. But mostly, Sachs presents his views in the ethical context--laying out the responsibilities of the rich towards the poor.

But will altruism ever become the animating spirit of the rescue? The poorest parts of Africa, such as Darfur, pose the greatest challenges. But help and succour has and will certainly come. Some of it will come from China and India, both busy courting the “dark continent”. But they are doing so with a definite eye on Africa’s plentiful natural resources; its oil and uranium, its minerals and diamonds, the vast potential for enhanced agricultural production to feed a hungry world, and its lucrative 5 per cent plus a year growing markets. Human nature will certainly prevail. But Jeffrey Sachs may not be happy to acknowledge the notion that saving the planet will be its happy by-product.

(850 words)
Wednesday 7th May, 2008
Gautam Mukherjee

Published in print and online on May 25th, 2008 as "A case for global cooperation" in The Sunday Pioneer, Agenda Section under BOOKS and under BOOKS online at www.dailypioneer.com

Reprieve for the confidence sensitive

2008-05-02T10:43:00.000-07:00

Reprieve for the confidence sensitive

Tim Condon from ING Barings, recently revealed great insight about the Indian Stock Market, calling it, smack-dab, a “confidence sensitive market”. It sounds innocuous enough, like a type-written label - to a bottle of TNT; because there’s a hair trigger concealed in the cotton wool of the insight. Condon has put his finger, willy-nilly, on a profundity. But let’s see, Bhajji and Sreesanth will agree, certainly if they’re put under hypnosis. It’s self-evident after all, we Indians do tend to over react. And so, by implication, the FIIs trading in India should factor in this local characteristic, this natural excitability of temperament that makes us lurch around somewhat more than is necessary.

I suppose a touch of melodrama in Dalal Street is inevitable. We are what we watch. And Bollywood and its Southern equivalent couldn’t be themselves, if we didn’t like our emotions exaggerated. So overreacting to global cues is natural to us. We can be depended on to do this, and no amount of near double digit growth at home can assuage matters. But, it is also true that once we’ve wailed, wept, beat our breasts, separated, reunited, and lost trillions in market value; we will suddenly calm down and reinstate our natural optimism. A storm followed by the abrupt all clear is characteristic. Naturally, it catches out most market analysts. They flounder about, atop the contents of their laptops, desperately trying to apply international analytical models to this phenomenon. But what can they do: it’s science versus “confidence”, not to mention “sensitivity”.

The bipolarity is between “confidence” and “sensitivity”. So, no bad news goes down without vigorous lamentation. Conversely, no amount of CRR hikes, 42 month high levels of inflation; darkest pessimism from TV and print borne experts displaying impressive logic, can put a kink in our optimism. Of course, this time, for once, the Indian Government has played its part by showing policy sagacity by plumping for growth even as they set about fighting the inflation by monetary, supply-side and fiscal methods, working, one hopes, in concert.

But it is undeniable that RBI Governor Reddy definitely turned Indian Stock Market sentiment for the better. He provided a much needed domestic “trigger” by choosing not to raise the Repo and Reverse Repo rates on April 29th. This well received action was followed by the US Federal Reserve cutting interest rates by another 25 bps on April 30th taking it to a very attractive 2 per cent compared to our high by comparison 7.75 per cent! But, at least the RBI didn’t hike it to the widely expected level of 8.25 per cent.

Indian business and industry has been coping admirably with 7.75 per cent so far, refusing to go slow on its investment plans; but another 50 bps in the midst of high raw-material, input and energy costs, would probably have been the proverbial last straw.

US Fed Chairman Bernanke not only cut 25bps as expected, but pointedly left out his cautionary line, used every time he cut interest rates, this being the seventh time, about expecting continued challenges to US growth. This is a happy departure, because it has been taken to mean, in the arcane way central bankers indicate things, that the Fed thinks the tipping point for the revival of the US economy may have come.

There is evidence in America and elsewhere to support this idea. The commodity and oil prices are heading downwards. The US dollar is getting stronger. Job losses are moderating. Foreclosures are down. The Dow 30 Index has closed once again above the 13,000 mark.

Across the water, the United Kingdom is thinking of recommencing its lending programmes to revive the UK Housing Market. Down under, the Australian Stock Market is at its highest number for the year so far. Japan is doing very much better and announcing profits in some of its major corporations. China has retraced some 15 per cent of its 50 per cent fall after a 200 per cent rise. Brazil is having a distinctly good year. Let us wait and see how things go over the next few weeks in Germany and France

And in India, we are within sight of the 18,000 level on the Sensex, and above 5,200 on the Nifty once again. The majority of stock market commentators, both Indian and foreign are still reluctant to call this move up from 14,500 to near 18,000 on the Sensex, a resumption of the five year Bull Market. Even the renowned Bulls like Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and Ramesh Damani are Bearish as yet. They call the revival so far all sorts of things yet- a “relief rally”, a “bear market rally”- an adjustment to the “oversold” state of affairs and talk of a “cap” about to resist all attempts at a “breakout”.

But another school of thought thinks the local and global turn in the Wheel of Fortune happened that weekend, just a few weekends ago, when the much maligned US Government under G. Dubya Bush put together a USD 30 billion guarantee package, in less than 48 hours, to save Bear Stearns from collapse. US Treasury Secretary Paulson, ( previously CEO of a highly profitable Goldman Sachs), working in tandem with the Federal Reserve Bank Governor Bernanke, pulled it off. Like well-rehearsed precision dancers they underpinned the audacious J.P.Morgan Chase takeover of Bear Stearns. By this one impressive action, one of the five main pillars of Wall Steet was saved, and with it, so was the rest of the financial world globally.

So, maybe it is time we developed confidence amongst all our sensitivity. We might also do worse than recognise that what Condon said about the Indian Stock Market may well apply to the nation as well. The Economist, of April 12th, reviewed the report on Indian Financial Sector Reform submitted recently to the Planning Commission by Mr. Raghuram Rajan, an ethnic Indian, former Head of the IMF, and praised much about it. But the magazine didn’t expect very much to come of it, because in India: “regulators get blamed only for mishaps, not for lost growth and wasted opportunities.” Ours is a system that “prizes stability over vigour”. But maybe it’s beginning to dawn on us that without vigour what we achieve is a crisis of “confidence”. And that we can’t afford to condone.

(1,050 words)

Friday 2nd May, 2008
Gautam Mukherjee

Appeared in print and online as "No doubt we overreact" on the OP-ED Page of The Pioneer www.dailypioneer.com on May 7th, 2008

Contention & Missed Opportunity

2008-04-18T03:32:00.000-07:00

Contention & Missed Opportunity

Jon Fine, presently a Columnist with BusinessWeek, wrote, earlier this month, on the art of contention, defined, but not quite described, as a “heated disagreement”, by the Oxford Concise English dictionary. Fine wrote: “The opportunities you eye and ignore, can one day end up eyeing you…from a much different perspective.”

Putting it more plainly, the smouldering young Marlon Brando, as Terry Malloy in the 1954 classic On The Waterfront, reprised brilliantly in India as Parinda, (1989), summed up the poignancy of missed opportunity: “I could have had class. I could have been a contender.”

In other, more economic, words; if India ignores the free-market growth option, that is staring her in the face, in favour of a futile and out-of-date monetarism; then she is destined to lose control of her vital economic parameters. We must realise, and learn to accept, that our localised financial policy manipulations will be swept away by global macro whirlwinds beyond our control.

Monetarism, as in cash-reserve-ratio (CRR), tweaking, to reduce money supply or “liquidity”, and raising of inter-bank and borrower-lender interest rates, to suppress “demand”, and hence growth, is out-of-date; now that the walls of national economies are breached and porous to each other. Money flows from any “cheap money” environment around the world, with low, or lower, interest rates, to a “high interest” haven in a manner akin to the law of magnets. So our quaint, old-fashioned monetarism ends up attracting suitors without intending to. After all, just how much “liquidity” can the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), suck out of the economy at the local banking end while attracting ever more and more at the foreign exchange end?

The RBI’s other yesterday-brand trick, of using some of these burgeoning foreign exchange reserves,(over USD 300 billion and counting), to artificially weaken the rupee, is not only wasteful but backfiring in the face of a sharply rising import bill, particularly for petroleum at an all-time high.

It is true that China does use part of its USD trillion plus reserves to keep the Yuan down; but this is because it is a largely export dependent economy. Conversely, it makes no sense for India to subsidise some 12% of export economy, using up dollar reserves to no gain, at the expense of the rest of our economy which is firmly “domestic” in nature.

Also, toy as we may, with the notion of a Sovereign Fund of the type that petro-dollar rich economies have created, or indeed China has; to also strategically deploy our dollar reserves abroad; we need to be mindful of a few items of urgent business to take care of first, before realising this particular ambition!

Impossible as a dream as it may seem, particularly in terms of present government think; it is better by far to increase income; build infrastructure; create jobs and spending money in millions of hands. Rural India, that 60% of the populace that every government cynically invokes whenever it suits, needs infrastructure, not handouts. It is infinitely better to boldly reach out to double-digit gross domestic product growth (GDP). Much better than trying to control expenses and demand to force a drop in antiquated wholesale price indexes.

It seems impossible to dream like this, because, true to our malingering ways, we “liberalised” only when forced to do so, in 1991, under IMF and World Bank dictation, rescued thereby from the brink of national bankruptcy. And once again, by a fortuitous circumstance, happily, well beyond empty dreaming; we may be forced to take a different view on the management of our economy by the growth forced by infrastructure development. And even the most bristle-moustached Stalinist can’t have anything ideological against “development to benefit the people”.

It is a sneaky little Trojan Horse still, but thank God for it. Consider, that our economy, as it stands, develops wobbles every time it nears the 9% mark of GDP growth, because any acceleration beyond this gets choked off by inadequate infrastructure to support it. The Socialists and Red elements in the government, or outside it, are unable to come up with a good enough argument against better roads, ports, power, bridges, railway and aviation infrastructure etc. etc. And hence the Union Cabinet has passed billions of dollars worth of infrastructure projects and many of these are already under implementation.

We may have taken the last bus to infrastructure development, but at least we have managed to board it! We will spend over USD 500 billion over the next few years, in formats including a Public Private Partnership (PPP); the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) mechanism; and the one with the greatest potential--that of “market finance” involving diverse groups of investors. These will include Initial Public Offers (IPO’s), and other return visits to tap public finance, via stock exchanges, both here and abroad.

Since over USD 100 billion worth of infrastructure spending is in the works already, the government, the impending election watching element in it, that is, can’t stop growth in favour of a moribund, low inflation regime, akin to the Nehruvian and Indira Gandhi years; even if it wants to. Further, it is increasingly doubtful if even short term inflation control by monetarist measures is possible beyond a few weeks.

Besides, the murmurs about how unrepresentative the Wholesale Price Index (WPI), really is, are clearly audible to all those who want to hear. But the UPA Government seems to think forcing a dip in the WPI will make everything well, even though the inflation rates on the high street and in the mandi tell us a very different story. Let us remember that the last round of interest rate and CRR hikes caused a very temporary dip in the WPI index before inflation came back with a vengeance. So why are we trying a recently failed strategy yet again?

If I were an Aborigine, I’d lie on my back, the better to go into “Dreamtime”. I’d imagine the RBI Governor, the Laughing-Buddha-like YV Reddy, was something of a Lee Kuan Yew modernist; instead of a genial, clean-shaven Stalinist, with hawkish but mistaken ideas of “action”. But I’d be smiling anyway, dreaming past government folly to contemplate the inadvertent good it does. I’d dream of better roads, and ports, and trains, and planes, knowing Dr. Reddy can’t stop this dream even if he tried.

(1050 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Friday, 18th April 2008

Published in print/web on 19th April 2008 as "How not to fight inflation".Leader Edit on Edit Page.The Pioneer. www.dailypioneer.com

Comrade Wolf Knows Whom To Eat

2008-04-16T05:04:00.000-07:00

BOOK REVIEW

Blood of the Earth- The Battle For The World’s Vanishing Oil Resources
Author: Dilip Hiro. Pages 427. Flexiback. Rs. 450/-

Published by Penguin Books India 2008.
Originally published in the USA by Nation Books, an imprint of the Avalon Publishing Group, 2007.

Comrade Wolf Knows Whom To Eat

Distinguished London-based journalist, author and TV commentator, Dilip Hiro, has written an engaging and thought-provoking account on the world’s petroleum geopolitics. Of course, Mr. Hiro wrote Blood of the Earth, implying the finite nature of the resource, when prices were at a seeming impossibly high of USD 78 per barrel. But perhaps Hiro, despite his admirable desk research and travels to the various oil-related “hot-spots”, could not have imagined the 80% spike in crude prices over the last year, some 16.8% of it since the start of 2008 alone.

Crude prices have indeed climbed to USD 114 per barrel already, with some commentators expecting USD 120, even USD 125, shortly. That, it is necessary to view the runaway oil prices in the context of a golden run in commodities and metals of various kinds, after a prolonged, if cyclic, period in the doldrums; exacerbated by a particular weakness in the value of the US dollar in its role as the global currency for all oil trades, is, in effect, another story.

Hiro likens the global quest of oil-deficit nations to secure access to ever larger tranches of oil and gas resources, to an imperative of 21st century survival, growth and dominance. He dwells on the muscularity of attitude of the leading oil producing nations; the knowing “indispensability” of Iran, the “strategic value” of Saudi Arabia, the usefulness of Iraq as a “swing” state to influence oil prices, the “aggression” of Venezuela. He quotes Vladimir Putin, buoyant atop Russia’s oil revenues, speaking of “Comrade Wolf”, without naming names, but America does consume 25% of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and has the highest per capita carbon footprint. American appetite is backed by its overwhelming military superiority. Hiro tells us the US Navy is larger and better armed than that of the next 17 countries combined!

Hiro also points out that spikes in present and future demand for hydrocarbons feature China and India among the new culprits as the fastest growing economies with their present demand dwarfed by the potential demand in years to come. China already consumes 15% more oil and gas year-on-year, and India likewise sucks up 6% more every year.

However, writes Hiro, global oil production will peak by 2017, and then go into a terminal decline. He discounts the probability of substantial new discoveries and says the world’s petroleum reserves will not be able to meet rising demand. And this may be the basic Malthusian-style flaw in Dilip Hiro’s argument. Because, to discount the possibility of substantial new hydrocarbon finds absolutely, and construct an alarmist thesis in its place, may be highly premature. For illustrative purposes, consider the latest news of April 15th 2008 about the probable third largest discovery of oil ever, off Brazil’s Atlantic coast. Of course, it could flatter to deceive, like earlier finds that Hiro mentions, in the Caspian region of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. But, present news nevertheless announces that the Carioca field, in the Santos Basin off the coast of Sao Paulo, could have reserves of 33 billion barrels. This, if proven, would rank it most respectably at No.3, behind the No.1 Ghawar fields of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait’s bountiful Burgan fields at No.2 -- and change the geopolitical picture on hydrocarbons, yet again.

Going into the particulars of energy demand --Dilip Hiro says about half of the world’s hydrocarbons go to fuel its transportation needs, and this is where the greatest dependency on petroleum, via its marriage to the internal combustion engine, lies. So to bring about any substantial change, the world will have to climb the technology ladder to other energy sources and other types of engines. Possibilities include Hydrogen Cells, enhanced electric and hybrid technology, and so forth. He also advocates revisiting coal, but converting it to a more efficient, almost non-polluting, gassified or liquefied state for usage.

And as if to echo Hiro’s vision, Reliance Industries announced, as recently as the 16th April 2008, that it seeks to set up an 80,000 barrels per day coal-to-liquid plant using 30 million tonnes of coal annually from three blocks in the Talcher Coal Fields, each with reserves of between 500 and 600 million tonnes.

The other half of present and future global hydrocarbon demand comes from a requirement for electricity and cooking medium, mainly LNG, as the world’s largest populations in India and China begin to grow their economies and prosper. This, even as the energy demand from the West, though high, remains more or less constant.

Hiro calls for a pooling of all energy generating resources going forward. But he does not think nuclear power is a singular panacea, not least because the world, according to Hiro, will run out of Uranium too, as early as 2050. Strangely, Hiro makes no mention of Thorium. Nor does Hiro think non-polluting energy alternates like solar, wind, or water power can make any appreciable difference to burgeoning energy demand.

And lastly, Hiro’s book, quite rightly, attaches the depletion, and over-exploitation, of finite hydrocarbon reserves, to the growing problem of global warming and unsustainable carbon footprints. Comrade Wolf may have to watch his diet.

(850 words)
Gautam Mukherjee
16th April 2008

Also published in the BOOKS page of The Sunday Pioneer on 27th April 2008. "Comrade Wolf Knows Whom to Eat". www.dailypioneer.com

If Bump comes to Thump!

2008-04-04T06:57:00.000-07:00

Bump!

Things that go bump in the night
Should not really give one a fright
It’s the hole in each ear
That let’s in the fear,
That, and the absence of light!
Spike Milligan

If Bump comes to Thump!

There’s Tibet, the now septuagenarian Dalai Lama and his band of 180,000 restive refugees, and there’s China; and let it be admitted-- we are scared of China. We are afraid of China’s Han temperament, its military might and economic dynamism, and the fear psychosis that has haunted us since they beat us up, without much ado, in 1962.

But for China, having spent USD 40 billion on an Olympic Games makeover, being put over an inconvenient Tibetan barrel feels like its being held to unfair ransom, and brings out the steel in its Maoist soul, along with its army, the secret police, the censor board, and the light persuasion of electric-shocking cattle prods.

But even without the current Olympic overhang, China casts a sinister shadow. She does not accept the existing colonial borders, in either the North East or the North West of India. And let us remember that she made quick work of snatching Akshai Chin from under the chimerical Chatra Chayya of Hindi-Cheeni-Bhai-Bhai and Nehru’s naive nose. That is how China gained land access to Tibet in the first place and we only woke up to a Chinese built road in 1957.

The Red Dragon is not willing to adhere to the Johnson or McMahon Lines, drawn, quaintly, if painstakingly, with a blunt red pencil by the Empire’s designated Cartographer cum Politico of the time. Instead, China asserts, with vomit inducing regularity, that modern countries cannot be bound over by colonial inheritances. What counts is traditional hegemony, calling Arunachal Pradesh-- South Tibet; and Ladakh an integral part of Tibet too. In short: Might is Right.

But on our part, we never seem to let Indian Might or Right or even Potential enter into the equation. Perhaps it’s a Gandhian hangover, but we should not expect a World War, with its third-party decimation of our oppressors and overlords, to come to the rescue of our peace-loving souls every time!

But who will explain this to Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, speaking for the Government of India, after the 300,000 Chinese troops worth of pogrom unleashed in Tibet? We cautioned the Dalai Lama and earned a pat on the back from China. So, as the French say; the more things change the more they stay the same!

But France, under its new President of Hungarian extraction, does have the guts to threaten non-participation in the Beijing Olympics. As does Germany, ruled by a woman. This, even as Britain, mindful of its desire to be Olympic hosts in 2012; and the United States, looking to cheap Chinese goods and Chinese money in their Treasury Bonds, do not. Of course, if India refuses to go to the Olympics, we can’t expect to be missed as a sporting entity.

In 1959, the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan refugees came to us. China wasted no time in asserting that Tibet was an integral part of China with no ifs and buts about autonomy, let alone the independence the younger Tibetan people still aspire to! What a far cry from our perpetual dithering over Kashmir!

We acquiesced in that first show of strength, influenced by our Left leanings; a Fabian Socialist Prime Minister Nehru and a China admiring Defence Minister Krishna Menon; and probably, the romance of playing post-colonial, non-aligned statesmen on the world stage. But Mao and Chou-en-Lai saw our vulnerability, and, they couldn’t, with their peasant cunning, see why China should not push her advantage in 1962.

We pandered shamelessly, over a half century ago, and we are doing it again now, little realising that we are setting ourselves up again both in the North-East and North- West. For we are displaying the same lack of resolve and tacit declaration of military inadequacy, and refusing, on ideological and obscurantist grounds, and hopes of trade considerations outweighing hegemonistic ones; to strengthen our hands while we can.

In 2008, as a nuclear power ourselves, albeit an inferior one, this refusal to even mewl a political protest in support of the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet makes us unfit to assume our place in history. Every day we seem to make it clear that we are not ready yet. We advertise our self-assessment as a second-rate power, in Asia, let alone the world! We lack “moxy”, even in comparison to a feisty, failing, Pakistan, a destroyed and civil-warring Iraq, a resolute Iran, or a re-talibanising Afghanistan -- undaunted for having been pounded, just recently, into the “Stone Age”.

But let us see what we, an ostensibly “soft” state, could do if we want. Militarily, should we mean business, we can have America’s help backed by NATO and the Western Alliance, and that of our traditional allies Russia’s too. If we stop dithering and actually take sides, we can have access to all the nuclear know-how and uranium we want, along with the most sophisticated military equipment globally available.

Economically, though coming up from a long way behind, we are now the second biggest success story after China in the world today. If the Chinese financial market has lost 35% after a 200% plus rise recently; India has lost 25% after a 100% plus rise too. If China has a trillion plus US dollars in financial reserves, India does have over 300 billion dollars as well, well up from less than the ten we had in 1991.

And, after all is said and done, India is a thriving democracy, with large helpings of political, as well as economic freedom to choose the pathways to our destiny. Our institutions, antiquated and creaky as they are, do work after a fashion. Our checks and balances, crude and unsophisticated, subject to subversion and fraud, do nevertheless keep India more honest than many a developed economy. Our banking system, while much smaller than that of the Chinese, is stronger, better regulated, less likely to be riddled with non-performing assets (NPA) under the eiderdown. We have no need to be so pessimistic about our chances if we look China in the eye. Unfortunately, we are innately timid, and China knows it.

(1,050 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Friday, 04 April 2008

Published also in The Pioneer www.dailypioneer.com on 9th April 2008 as "We're Timid and China Knows It" in Leader Edit slot, Edit Page

Destiny Dynasty & Stagger Lee

2008-03-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

Destiny, Dynasty & Stagger Lee

The Legend of Stagger Lee, slyly beloved of Black Bluesmen and colour-blind, cross-over White musicians; is about the White Man’s waking nightmare; that sort of Black Man, who refuses to bow down to a self-evident, all-powerful, call a spade a spade, White Supremacy.

The Stagger Lee legend was launched in the 1930s, when a Black Labourer killed a White Cab Driver for insulting him, in a New York Bar; and for spitting into his Stetson Hat! It made for small news items in the inside pages about how the Black Man shot the White Man, three, four times, unmoved by his pleadings, caring nothing about a po’faced wife and hapless children three!

But this, in itself, the triviality of the provocation, the unjustified and fatal outcome, for victim Billy Joe; did some kind of macho trick to enhance the legend of Stagger Lee. He’s been immortalised ever since, in song, some 266 versions and varieties. Stagger Lee has been nuanced by Bluesmen and turned into a recurring favourite on the R&B (Rhythm & Blues) Charts.

But it didn’t stop there. Stagger Lee, for all his innate menace and Black swagger, crossed over, to the other side of the street; grabbing the sensibilities of main-stream Rock & Rollers; who don’t, we know, hesitate to come in White, Black, Chocolate, Yellow and Tutti Frutti topped with Ostrich feathers. But then, Rock n Roll is a confluence. It was begat by the fortuitous and decidedly joyous coupling of White Country Music and Black Blues. That’s how it got its vitality, and did a world of red-blooded, cross-fertilising good, to both.

Rock n Roll was, is, integrating, nation-building, anti-racial--a spontaneous phenomenon, in America, aided and abetted by the forced proximity of the races in WW II, The Korean War, the Vietnam War and the bits and pieces since. The Indian nation-building parallel would have to be Cricket and Bollywood; Sachin, Saurav, Dhoni, Bhajji etc. as much as “Bharat” Manoj Kumar and the current Khan series.

But Stagger Lee, the spirit in the song, didn’t leave well enough alone. He wouldn’t stop, gliding like the ghost he became, beyond those decidedly unromantic gallows he went to in real life. Stagger Lee was resurrected, and lives on still, seventy, eighty years on, too bold and proud to be constrained by the Devil that took his misguided soul.

The legend of the Black murderer, who killed a White Man for spitting in his Stetson Hat, has gone decidedly walkabout: it fraternises with exclusionist, conservative, segregationist, “Aw Shucks” do se do-ing , square bashing, Baptist Whites. It moves Dylan/Baez originally “folk” Jewish. It moves on to other points improbable and bizarre. Such as the genetic impossibility of expressing Black Anger in the All-White Country and Western (C&W) idiom!

Stagger Lee made it to C&W Country, and has been sung about in the Grand Ole Opry, as if he were one of their very own. How the heartless, merciless, borderline sadistic Black Labourer, with zero by way of social graces did it; is, was, and will be, a mystery, as dark as Stagger Lee’s sexy, black, transmigrating, soul.

In any case, he is enjoying another turn in the sun; in the midst of the thrust and parry of a struggle between a White Woman with an offensive sense of entitlement, almost dynastic in its hubris, and a suave Black Man challenger, hugely inspirational and attractive, articulate as only a Harvard educated Lawyer can be. One witty commentator word-painted the Ganga-Yamuna Obama and his engaging smile with the perfect teeth as, “The Halle Berry of Black Politicians”.

But lurking in the equation, like an unmentionable elephant in the room, is the Stagger Lee matter of his colour, his look-you-in-the-eye attitude, his integrity, his well-fashioned conservative suits, his maddening, atypical Blackness. And since all of this is underpinned by his “God Damn America” spouting Black Pastor; his Canada trade gaffe; his sometime dubious Black financier; and other potentially threatening baggage; life for Candidate Obama could yet come to sudden death in a predominantly White America.

But Barack Obama, with his genetic reality of a bridging conjunction, could also shine on for the majority of Democratic voters, but is he still just fit to be hung in the end? Is his attitude of refusing to be relegated to second place, or oblivion, just one more twirl in that spat-in Stagger Lee Hat all over again?

There is no dead and unfortunate Billy Joe victim in Obama’s life, it is true, but is the “Yes We Can” daring of Obama as good as an insult? And is his basic stand-uppishness just so much offensive effrontery as bad as spitting in White America’s Stetson Hat?

The educated White Man, the University Man, the Young Woman and the Young in general, do not, thank God, think so; and neither do almost all Black Americans, 13% of the US population, and a far more potent percentage of Democrats; without whom, no Democratic candidate can win the Presidency. Hispanics too are warming to Obama, particularly, after the only sitting Hispanic Governor, (of New Mexico), endorsed Obama recently.

But sadly, we can see Hillary Clinton and her two-terms former President husband, once indulgently called America’s “First Black President” by Black Literature Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison; attacking Obama’s Blackness. But is this former President, with his office situated in the Black district of Harlem, in New York, justified in abusing the trust, affection and faith long reposed in him by millions of Blacks?

Because, despite the innuendo, Barack Obama is no casual murdering Stagger Lee Black Labourer; Black Pride to Obama is not a hidden agenda of hate and bitterness like his Pastor. Obama can be trusted to preside over White, Hispanic, Brown, Yellow, Native American and Black America. So, will the Clintons succeed? No they won’t.

Stagger Lee may be a mean metaphor for a Black Man’s bid in today’s Presidential Race. I would wager Stagger Lee never expected a Black Man to be a contender, let alone a better, visionary, Black Kennedy-grade prospect, so early into the 21st century. But those dark Blues notes, that first lyric about a Bull Dog’s baritone warning bark; the song’s amplifying psychosis, irrational as the fear of night’s darkness, is definitely, if sadly, part of the opposing pitch.

(1,050 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Tuesday 25th March 2008

Moral Hazard

2008-03-19T04:39:00.001-07:00

Moral Hazard

There is a much-aired notion, particularly in “liberal” circles in the United States, that those who have been financially reckless should be held to the fire in order to suffer the “moral hazard” of their actions. This Bible-thumping “fire and brimstone” idea must be working in their craniums at a subliminal level. Because, otherwise, it is of a piece with such out-of-date nostrums as: “from each according to his ability and to each according to his wants,” and other such Marxist babble.

While it is abundantly clear that the US financial sector and that of the developed world has been revealing gut-wrenching bad news with sickening regularity; it is equally true that the governments of all the affected countries are doing their utmost to stem the bleed. So far, they have been forced to write down more than USD150 billion in assets. And the International Herald Tribune estimates that the total write-offs to come, may yet amount to USD 600 billion. Still, to put it in perspective, the contemplated cost of this economic tsunami is trifling when compared to the cost of a war, even a limited, one country adventure, as one-sided as Iraq.

India’s financial markets, struggling suddenly with Sensex and Nifty levels of a year ago, brought about in 60 days from an all-time high; was thought to be decoupled from much of the carnage in the linked economies of the West. We are not in very deep with the convertible currency world’s banking systems. Nor do we mostly partake of its dominoes-style credit risk sharing ways. Also, we are not so dependent on exports except for the prominent IT sector and our domestic economy is in comparatively good shape. However, we have been psychologically feeding on Foreign Institutional Investor (FII) confidence to drive our markets. Our local conviction in the India story suffers from a typical, if sad, post-colonial inferiority complex. India is only good in Indian eyes, if the foreigner, especially the Western foreigner, says it is so.

So, since the Western foreigner is a little busy putting out his own economic fires, we are left rudderless and panicky. We are also further disheartened whenever the FII is forced to sell to make good losses elsewhere. In a matter of days, from a state of mental buoyancy, we find ourselves unable to take any succour from our plusses, as sentiment, such as it is, is ravaged. Witness, most recently, Bear Stearns, the erstwhile 5th largest investment bank on Wall Street, fire-selling Rs. 900 crores worth of Indian equities, catalysing a 950 point single day plunge in the Sensex.

But perhaps the tide is turning. Bear Stearns has been swiftly bought over by Morgan Stanley, albeit at 10 cents on the dollar, but backed by promptly provided American tax dollars. Also, two others, namely Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, among Wall Street’s big five investment banks, have actually beaten performance expectations in their first quarter results. This, on top of yet another rate cut from the Federal Reserve, this time of 75 bps, is great for sentiment, and possibly growth, in a global marketplace cringing from one body blow after another.

But the true long term significance of every fresh piece of bad news and its aftermath is that a USD 14 trillion real economy (backed resolutely by its Western Allies and a few oil-rich Sovereign Funds), and a USD 23 trillion financial economy, similarly backed, is willing to stand up and be counted in every one of its critical hours. Thanks to this fact, the beleaguered economies of the world will be saved in 2008.

The rest of us, the emerging ones, should not complain, because we have someone to answer the ‘phone at 3.00 a.m., as we sleep. But perhaps Desi Dalal Street “Tigers” need to show some grit for a time. We have benefited shamelessly from five growth years on the trot on the back of FII exuberance, and should not grudge a limited period of pain. Since we manifestly cannot pull our own wagon, let us simply wait for the great FII driving engine to return.

But let us hope, meanwhile, that the advocates of the moral hazard line of economic thinking in the US do not gain any traction. They tend to be mercilessly unrelenting when it comes to the rich, the font, it is thought, of financial excess. The implication is that these well-heeled people are driven to diabolical excess by their insatiable greed and deserve to be brought down. That this category of “indiscriminate” lender to the “dodgy prospect” include transformational entities such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is, of course, conveniently ignored.

These economic fundamentalists resent institutional and government action to shore up troubled banks, securities firms and lending institutions, oblivious to their enabling function. And now that they appear to be stumbling, and in some cases tumbling, in the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Japan and the United States alike, their antipathy only seems to grow. They demand that these banks and lending institutions should be left alone to stew in their own retributive juices. They want government largesse to flow “directly” and waiver-style to the hard-pressed defaulting borrower and the individual or family facing foreclosure.

These righteously indignant personages seem to have no fear of what can happen to an economy, indeed all the leading economies of planet earth, if its financial institutions are allowed to collapse. These latter-day keepers of the “true” economic faith have clearly chosen to ignore the Great Depression of 1929 which threatened the very anchor bolts of Capitalism, that too just twelve years after the Russian Communist revolution of 1917. They ignore the copious retrospective analysis that suggests that the Great Depression could have been totally avoided with a timely series of affordable bailouts to a small clutch of beleaguered banks on Wall Street.

The fact is the moral hazardists are resolutely against the kind of action that the US Federal Reserve Bank and the Treasury Department is taking now, again and again and as often as need be, to help the institutions survive and work to stimulate the economy afresh. But it makes you wonder which anarchist’s version of economics moral hazard expertise draws its inspiration from, and whether such apparent friends of the poor aren’t actually their worst enemies.

(1,050 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Wednesday, 19th March 2008

Also published in The Pioneer in the Leader Edit Slot on March 26th 2008 as"Moral Hazard? Ah Well..." see www.dailypioneer.com

Promises and piecrusts

2008-03-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

Promises and piecrusts

In the chilling way that Communists manage to look at conventional, what they call “bourgeois” morality, Vladimir Illyich Lenin is attributed with likening promises to piecrusts--made to be broken! In Mother Russia, the European part of the Tsarist Empire, and the succeeding USSR, baked dinners were commonplace; and so, Lenin’s meaning was not lost, even on the most prosaic mind.

However, the metaphor turns into the soggy pathos of a suet pudding if the promise is not intended to be broken, as in, say, Finance Minister(FM) P Chidambaram’s 2008 budgetary main plank, namely the waiver of Rs. 60,000 crores worth of bank borrowings by small and medium scale farmers. The waiver, such as it is, will provide only crop loan relief, which is not the main source of rural indebtedness anyway. People borrow for weddings and feasts, home improvements and medical emergencies in the villages, just like in the cities. But still, this proposed waiver will help some 4 crore small and marginal farmers with landholdings below five acres, averaging out to a paltry Rs. 9,000 each. Additionally, it will help 1 crore large farmers. All the farmers have loans which were due to be paid on December 31st, 2007.

But, this populist little waiver is hardly enough to scratch the surface of the hefty rural indebtedness problem. After all, there are some 60 crore people living in rural India. But it is nevertheless hoped that it will carry the UPA, probably on the back of the imaginary winged steed of political momentum, to a sweep of the forthcoming Assembly and General Elections. But, as a classic opportunistic move reminiscent of VP Singh’s Mandal Commission debacle; the waiver has the potential of backfiring because it is far too little in the face of far too much! The aam aadmi does not like to be mocked as the now infamous “India Shining” poll campaign of 2003 will also bear out.

Proposals such as this have a way of stoking appetites that cannot be readily sated, and in the event, history tells us, they can turn into unintended nightmares. And this one may be getting itself off to an early start with the farmers and their mouthpieces starting to grumble already. This, even as the Congress Party and its President begin to highlight the “farmer-friendly” move in the first of a series of political rallies.

But the negative murmurs are growing, partially because the analytic classes are unable to explain how the waiver will be funded, even over the three years indicated by the FM. Or indeed whether it is really just a spin being put on writing-off unrealisable PSU bank farmer debt. Could this be just the Indian government variation on the sub-prime crisis that is exercising so much of the world economy?

Nevertheless, the government does not see why it should not attempt to turn the deed of accounting adjustment into a virtuous vote magnet at the same time. But let us remember that VP Singh also wrote off farm loans amounting to Rs.10,000 per farmer in 1990 without making good the monies and caused the collapse of numerous co-operative banks as a consequence. Likewise, if this government, or its successor, because this waiver will reach out for at least two years after the end of this government, fails to make good the monies to the PSU banks, there could be a palpable weakening of the country’s banking system as a whole.

Also, none of this waiver money will go towards the creation of productive assets for the farmer or any useful mechanism for tomorrow. Its clearly short-term political thrust as a sop to garner the farmer’s vote is borne out by the fact that it was announced separately a couple of days before Budget Day by UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh; both photographed wearing their most delighted smiles.

Some commentators have started pointing out that Rs. 60,000 crores is not a whole lot of manna when you apply it to some 60 crore farmers and other rural denizens in varying degrees and types of debt. These farmers and rural folk are in debt not just to PSU banks, whose irascible, often bored, sometimes bitter officialdom, they allegedly have to “induce” and “motivate”; but also to the less red-tape ridden traditional village moneylenders.

The PSU banks, in fact, are accessible mainly to those who have the wherewithal to “induce”. The traditional moneylender on the other hand knows you by name and descent, is a fellow village resident, more personalised, flexible, innovative, responsive and immediate. But both sources of rural finance have a way of exchanging the sorely needed cash for the land deeds as collateral. And this makes it very difficult to arrange for an encore in the face of inclement weather, crop failure, pestilence, unexpected developments, family celebrations or crises and so on.

This waiver, being offered ostensibly in response to a persistent wave of farmer suicides, is nevertheless unproductive, no more than a populist gesture that does nothing to tackle the root causes of the phenomenon of rural indebtedness. It is, however, of a piece with the long-standing and prevalent practice of providing the farmer with free electricity, free water, subsidised fertiliser, controlled, if inadequate, crop off-take pricing, and, of course, zero income taxation.

None of these measures, practiced now over sixty years of independent India, have helped in developing widespread rural prosperity among the medium, small and marginal farmers. In the absence of decent state created infrastructure, including adequate and consistent electricity, water, roads, cold chain, mechanised inputs and other value addition facilities, it is difficult for the Indian farmer to derive the benefits of modernity. But instead of tackling any of the substantive issues of rural India, this waiver proposal does no more than blunder its way behind the Bharat Nirman programme, which is limping along in shambles owing to woeful implementation.

The 2008 Budget also hints, a little unconvincingly, given the strangle-hold that the Left has over this government, in the direction of listing valuable PSU firms on the bourses and even a new wave of disinvestment. There is little hope of this being implemented in the remaining time left to this government and practically no chance of unlocking any value that could contribute to its coffers from this source.

(1,050 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Tuesday, 11th March 2008

Also published in The Pioneer on 14th March 2008 on the OP-ED page as "promises and piecrusts" www.dailypioneer.com

Pristine Glory!

2008-02-28T11:27:00.000-08:00

Pristine Glory!

The time has come for minnows to prove the case for whales. The case in point being the old game of “divide and rule” being taken out for a new turn in the sun. This exercise may suit the whale and the minnow but will probably jeopardise the future of many a mid-sized carp! Otherwise, the audacity of Kosovo, just 10, 887 square kilometres of land-locked territory, would not be as significant as it is. Kosovo is also dirt poor by European standards, with a population of just 2.2 million, and a sweet sounding capital called Pristina. Since 1999, Kosovo has been under UN administration and NATO protection, following on from a couple of years of alleged persecution of its Albanian Muslim populace by brutal ethnic-cleaning Serb overmasters.

But, by the time the paint dries, this unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo on February 17th 2008 may end up owing a great deal to years of self-fulfilling public relations and media overkill. Because, under the UN umbrella, when the world got a chance to sift through the evidence, no more than a couple or three thousand shallow graves came to light; not exactly genocide proportion attrition during two or more years of “civil war”.

The logic being advanced by America to justify its support, may be predictably overblown; even reminiscent of the outright falsehood of the infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) argument applied to beleaguered Iraq. But even this would begin to make sense if the liberation of Kosovo from Serbia offered a strategic gain on par with control over the oil fields of Iraq.

But the gains in Kosovo seem more diffuse and political in nature. One objective on America’s part may be to poke one in the eye of erstwhile overlord Russia and put the stump of the USSR in her 21st century place. Another may be to ensure the permanence of its geographical perch in the Balkans via an invitation in perpetuity from Kosovo. Or is a free Kosovo a form of American atonement, a kind of back-handed apology to Muslims, very much the enemy elsewhere, in a tiny, laboratory experiment sized place, on the wrong side of Europe?

But what is India thinking? Because she has chosen to duck the recognition question and play for more time. With her large Muslim population, second only to Indonesia, India, may be loathe to condemn the unilateral breakaway in no uncertain terms. On the other hand, the government might be fearful of upsetting Indian Muslims by not finding for Kosovo. But the UPA government seems equally afraid of upholding the principle with an eye on restive, Muslim majority Kashmir. And one fear probably outweighs another because otherwise India would have liked to have agreed with America.

Meanwhile, independent Kosovo has been quick to declare itself moderate, eschewing jihadi violence and any truck with terrorists. This has already garnered recognition from some 21 countries for her.

But, even though Kosovo’s survival in her independence is a foregone conclusion, thanks to her powerful friends, India still needs to raise an eyebrow in its own best interests. Let us recognise America and her best friends have moved on from unilateral invasions to supporting, if not engineering, unilateral secession.

To Indian contemporary history buffs, it brings back the spectre of balkanisation in the early days after the British finally quit India, leaving us to amalgamate 565 nominally independent princely states into the Indian Union. We succeeded in this, thanks to Sardar Patel and VP Menon, but, since we know where the shoe pinches, we should have denounced secessionism in Kosovo; also since we have excellent relations with Yugoslavia/Serbia from the Nehru-Nasser-Tito days of early Non-Alignment.

Further, let us note that support for Kosovo is coming, not just from the US and the Western Alliance, pushing their own neo-colonial agenda, but also from the breakaway Tamils of Jaffna in our immediate vicinity, and the republican Chinese in Taiwan.

The question now is, who’s next on the “credible” unilateral path? Unhappily for us mid-size carp, if it is possible to secure independence with the support of powerful friends from half a world away in one instance, it will be equally possible in another.

(700 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Thursday, 28th February 2008

Also published in The Sunday Pioneer on 2nd March 2008 as "What Kosovo? It's Serbia" in the AGENDA Section DIALOGUE column www.dailypioneer.com

Karma Yogi Krishna Kumar Birla

2008-02-24T04:00:00.000-08:00

Brushes With History An Autobiography
Krishna Kumar Birla.
Hardback.Rs. 650/-
Published by Penguin Viking

BOOK REVIEW

Karma Yogi Krishna Kumar

Industrial Titan Krishna Kumar Birla’s autobiography, released in 2007, in his 89th year, evokes a deep respect for the author, born on Armistice Day, the 11th of November 1918. There must have been something intrinsically gentle and cultured about the day that heralded the end of WWI.

“KK’s” memoir is imbued with a towering humility and sense of discipline which strikes one as all the more impressive in the context of the House of Birla being an inextricably interwoven part of the success of the Indian independence struggle and the formative evolution of our young nation state.

But for such a significant life, spent on cordial terms with eminent men and women, in business, industry, politics, spirituality and the arts, “KK” demonstrates, via simply narrated anecdotes supported by admirably archived correspondence, that it is not easy for anyone to advance his agenda; not even if one is a Birla scion and born to taking risks.

The bulk of KK’s distinguished industrial career unfolded in an era when a: “fair mix of capitalism,” functioned, it is true, but, “under the garb of socialism, in the brew called the mixed economy, which Panditji prescribed for India”. To navigate such heady ideological waters pulling distinctly Left, and to do so successfully, was, in itself, no mean achievement. But to thrive in such a restrictive policy environment, full of licences, permits, tariff barriers, much higher taxation, militant trade unions, infinitely slower GDP growth, quotas, intrusive inspections, and a general suspicion of industry and business, as KK did, was indeed a formidable achievement.

KK isn’t shy about describing his intense public relations gambits, his copious petitioning and lobbying efforts, conducted personally, to keep the all powerful politicians and bureaucrats on his right side. He implies that this is the real work that falls to the head of business houses. The trials and tribulations he encounters in the process, with occasional bouts of harassment at the hand of inimical authority, particularly when there are changes in the political wind, reveal KK’s tenacity of purpose and steadiness of resolve. Through all this, KK comes across as a man who has earned his place in the sun.

The proof of the efficacy of KK’s leadership is in the strength and stature of almost every industrial venture he established, supervised, nursed or nurtured, beginning decades ago. They have all grown manifold under his ministrations. Not only this, but KK managed to catalyse and guide his thicket of industries and businesses in various fields ranging from textiles, heavy machinery, fertilizers and the media, without ruffling the sensibilities of his deeply conservative immediate and extended family, his tradition loving community of Maheshwari Vaishyas, his management or labour forces, or indeed the political and bureaucratic authorities he had to work with in various parts of the country.

In addition, KK’s abiding commitment to the nurturing of the Birla family educational institutions, such as a large number of schools and famed engineering college BITS, Pilani, is deep and enduring. The beautiful Birla temples that KK caused to be built or improved, in Kolkata and elsewhere, reflect on the family’s deep religiosity. The well known Birla specialised hospitals and community relief programmes in times of natural calamity and drought, not just in his native Rajasthan, underscore the broader dimensions of the House of Birla’s social commitment.

It is also evident that KK’s guiding principles are infused with the spirit and tonality of trusteeship in his various endeavours including his terms as a Rajya Sabha MP. Trusteeship, as a concept, was very close to the Mahatma’s heart. It is therefore most heart-warming to see that it has been given great succour by both the great foundation-building business houses of the Birlas and the Tatas—not just in the first flush before and just after independence, but in an enduring manner, till the present day.

In acknowledgement of this and other similarities of approach, KK makes several references to serving on trade bodies and committees with his senior, J.R.D. Tata. The difference in ages between JRD and KK has made it possible for KK to witness the surge in India’s economic development since liberalisation in 1991 and the exponential growth of the Birla empire alongside. He has also had the good fortune to see and record with pride the competence of his succeeding generations, his daughters, their eminent industrialist husbands and so on.

But there is not a single boastful or smug moment in this book rich with impressions, sketches and vignettes of various eminent personalities. He dwells at length on his warm relationship with the Nehru family, from Jawaharlal Nehru to Sonia Gandhi, illustrated perhaps by the fact that she has also written a foreword to this autobiography.

Is there a defining statement that lays bare the animating spirit of Krishna Kumar Birla? Yes there is. It is when he writes that he declined to receive the Padma Vibhushan because it had been conferred earlier on his father Ghanshyam Das Birla. Is there another? Yes. It is KK’s surprising capacity to endure the foibles of politicians in his desire to participate in the political arena.

(850 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Sunday 24th February 2008

Also published in The Sunday Pioneer on 9th March 2008 in the BOOKS section as "From socialism to capitalism" www.dailypioneer.com

Pawar, Badshah, Maa Ki, Dhani Dhoni, Bhajji and Friends

2008-02-22T02:40:00.000-08:00

Pawar, Badshah, Maa Ki, Dhani Dhoni, Bhajji and friends

There’s enough stardust, lucre and pizazz in the BCCI begotten launch of the Indian Premier League (IPL) to light up the International Space Station—let alone the night matches the League plans to hold. How? Go, get your black satin top-hat, your silver-knobbed ebony cane, your cape. Strike a pose, stand firm, and yell: Hey Presto Alacazam! No? Alright, substitute the Maratha-strong-man-equivalent of Gili Gili Bicchhi, and you’ll have yourself an instant procession of Badshahs, glamour pusses, platinum-plated glitz barons, moustaches, beards and mind-its.

Be pleased to meet the brand new owners of eight city based IPL teams. There they are, still gasping from what they had to cough up for the privilege. But be undaunted. Add in Pawar-packed TV rights, tie-ons and try-ons, and then, gilied or not, there’s 7,000 more of those crore things you need to find a new war chest for.

Now call in Muhammad Ali, the “sting like a bee” boxing heavyweight champion of the world, who’s known all along that “your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see,” as patron-in-chief. He’ll teach you how to upstage pundit, punter and any maa ki puttar alive. It’s Ali in the know-how. Muhammad’s been there, predicting which round he’d kayo his opponent in. He got it right 17 times in a row- a veritable match-fixing bookies’ nightmare, but think of the certainty!

Meanwhile, lay on more of the Pawar-play. Set Andrew Wildblood Houdini of international sport management firm IMG/TWI to work. Have him unlock them jars of brand value, polish up those Alladin brand monetising lamps, get him moving around to spark a controversy here and rub up a spot of frisson there. Package the whole thing in the pheromones of youth, talent, promise and satellite TV exposure. You’ll see, whether Bob’s your uncle or not, a humdinger of a show under the arc lights, not just once or twice, but night after night.

Back on the tour bus you’ve got interesting people too. There are actors who are owners, the aforementioned platinum plated ones, moustaches, beards, mind-its, but also players who are dream merchants in their own right, absolute saudagar khiladis; and damned if you can tell them apart for the excitement! Houdini Wildblood knows his business. Pawar picked him because he too knows his. Wildblood got Chennai to pay the biggest bucks for a young wicket keeper cum batsman cum fielder who won the first Twenty Overs World Cup just the other day. Just like that he did it--in between super-biking around Jharkhand and thinking up what-else-cum-what he can become, especially on the advertisement circuit.

But since a little comic relief amongst competence never hurts--the next prize bull in white lip-gloss, is the most successful maa ki since Darwin demystified species homo-sapiens with evolutionary and scientific highlights. Additionally, you’ve got plenty of other shiny apples in the eight-city barrels. How’s about one fast, correction, fastest, young Brahmin bowler since Bharat turned into India? Or a lovable, motor-mouth spinning bhajji on Bondi or any other beach? You can also take your pick from an entire drawerful of oldies but goodies, in black, brown, blond and variegated. And in the middle of all this excitement, you probably can’t help feeling sorry for the rival Indian Cricket League (ICL), made up almost exclusively, of retirees, inclusive of Paaji, Inzyji, Laraji, Yanaji, and most of all for the poorly penetrative Zee-ji.

So much for cricket, but before too much red and white flows by the banks of the Baramati, one might spare a thought for the many me-too and wannabe birds beyond sport who might set about unlocking value, as if it were as simple as taking your clothes off. There they’ll be, branding away in a way that has nothing to do with tattoo parlours, monetising themselves, even bits of themselves, such as Mayawati’s wagging finger, Prakash Karat’s frown, Amitabh Bachchan’s growl, Bipasha Basu’s err best wishes.

Indeed, the era of unlocking value may have come to overtake Lalu’s Indian Railway presentations to Harvard students and Ambani-Bharti type megadreams. And for this, let the historical record show, we have the Baron of Baramati and a game involving bats, balls, wickets and sundry logos, to thank.

(700 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Friday 22nd February 2008
Also published in The Sunday Pioneer in the AGENDA section DIALOGUE "Money, money, money..." on Sunday 24th February 2008 www.dailypioneer.com

Devil's Radio

2008-02-21T03:03:00.000-08:00

Devil’s Radio

Gossip, they say, is the Devil’s radio--so what does that make government propaganda? Going into the last few days before the UPA government submits its last full budget on February 29th, this leap year, the overall feeling is one of economic slowdown and drift. This budget, of course, will be dominated by considerations of the general elections coming up, perhaps later in 2008, or, on schedule, in 2009. Meanwhile, industrial growth has slowed, high-interest credit off-take is down, sale of white goods, automobiles, housing, has slackened, business returns have moderated, foreign investment is pausing and the stock market is listless.

But you wouldn’t think so, to listen to the official interpretation of the situation. Fiscal 2008, it is true, is likely to close with at least 8.5 per cent growth of GDP despite progressively slowing quarterly results, and the prime minister himself assures us we can look forward to another year of 9 per cent growth in 2009. But, while this may be true enough and is commendable in itself, is it sufficient, given the relatively modest overall size of our economy, to tackle the burdens it is forced to carry year after year?

The answer is probably no, but you can’t get this government, probably any Indian government in power, with its democratic and populist pressures, to admit to it. There is a good explanation for this outlined by psychologist Annie Jia: “What happens when your behaviour and your beliefs don’t match up,” she asks, and goes on to say, “you can’t change what actually happens to clear up the cognitive dissonance, but memories and opinions are infinitely malleable”. So our government, run by learned denizens who are all too human, may well be busy spinning their memories and opinions into the economic data available to them.

The pity however lies in the fact that the more the economy slows owing to avoidable government policies that curb growth to contain inflation; the more onerous do the burden of subsidies, sops and badly executed government relief programmes become. It must be hellish difficult for the finance minister to find the funds for all the populist programmes being demanded by the constituents of the UPA at this time. Ironically, this cannot be lost on the phalanx of eminent economists currently at the helm including the prime minister, the finance minister, the reserve bank governor and the deputy chairman of the planning commission. But, singly and collectively, they seem tired and dispirited when it comes to reform or fiscal probity. Perhaps they are worn down, in this fourth year of their five year term, by the effort of running a coalition with Left support. The finance minister might yet pull a rabbit or two out of his budgetary hat, but it will be hard to be magical given hardly any room to manoeuvre.

Look at the facts: The Economist of February 16, 2008, quotes a recent International Monetary Fund Report (IMF) to contrast the economic health of the two Asian giants China and India, though one is infinitely better placed than the other. China “has the best fiscal position of any big country”, giving her plenty of room “to cushion the economy if demand suddenly falls”, whilst India, “has one of the worst fiscal positions in the world”. China too has a vulnerability, being highly export led; but she is in robust financial health to defend her economy, whilst India, despite being domestic consumption based, is not.
China’s public debt stands at 17 per cent of GDP while India’s stands at 75 per cent. This is comparable to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average for public debt at 77 per cent, if that is some consolation. China has a budget deficit of just 1 per cent of a much bigger economy than ours, which could morph into a surplus of 3 per cent if you add back the profits of their state owned firms. India, conversely, has an actual budget deficit of 8 per cent, though the government says it is a mere 3.3 per cent projected up to March 31st, 2008, down from 6.5 per cent in 2001-02. Our union government, however, does not add the state government deficits and various off-budget items such as the oil bonds to help offset PSU petroleum company losses. Nor does it add on the losses of decrepit state electricity boards. These are intractable haemorrhages that are getting more and more difficult to carry but happen to be political hot potatoes.

Still, you can’t fault the IMF for telling it like it is, and inevitably, suggesting various fiscal remedies that they know will fall on politically deaf ears. However, it does set up a certain Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware) quality to the India Growth Story underpinned by the positive of our robust democracy. Conversely, China may be doing very well economically but politically it is opaque and authoritarian and that is potentially unstable. The world can therefore take six of India and half a dozen of China and they actually tend to!

But because it is politically hazardous to tackle many of the long standing issues that burden and drain the Indian economy; it is all the more important for the government to do everything in its power to stimulate growth everywhere they can. The odd thing is, knowing what they know, they still don’t do this! But if we could grow faster, strongly aided and abetted by the government, we too could develop an economic cushion, eventually, of the kind that China enjoys today. This, particularly, if we hold the line for a coming decade of high single digit or even double digit growth.

Removing infrastructure bottlenecks will prove crucial, as will sustained growth of agriculture and related value addition in the hinterland. We must allow more competition and let in more foreign investment and technology. Of course, a classical economist’s approach would have us do away with subsidies and sops but this would not be fair in a country like ours. Nor can we stamp out the very real threats posed by breakaway movements and internal insurgency if we promote an oligarchic model of growth. But, having said this, we do need to become more efficient in our governance. Implementation, as always, has been the Indian Achilles' Heel.

(1,050 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Thursday 21st February 2008

Also published in The Pioneer www.dailypioneer.com as "Pinch of mirchi on devil's radio" on Wednesday 27th February 2008 in the Leader Edit slot

Waive the Hyde Act

2008-02-18T06:36:00.001-08:00

Waive the Hyde Act

US Secretary of State Rice’s recent assertion that the 123 Agreement signed with India will certainly be subject to their Hyde Act, flies in the face of the assurances given by the UPA Government that it would not. Coming in the midst of our negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), and in the face of considerable learned debate in India, this should give us pause.

The strong objections to the nuclear deal spelt out by the Left , others in the UPA, the Opposition NDA and some commentators, seem justified after all. In context, the constant “now or never” urgings from the US Ambassador to India to accept the agreement, as is, and without demur, because India is unlikely to be offered a better deal in future, is not convincing. US Undersecretary Nicholas Burns also points out that a general election is looming large and further delay will render US legislative ratification of the deal impossible.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Mulford glosses over the difficulties occasioned by the subordination of the 123 Agreement to the Hyde Act. He points out a Machiavellian subterfuge. He says that even though the US is legally bound to cease nuclear cooperation if any provision of the Hyde Act is breached, India could still transact with others in the forty-five member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). In the real world, this suggestion seems far-fetched, when these very countries, France, Russia, China, Australia, are on record that they are unable to go ahead with any operational cooperation with India in nuclear or “dual-use” technology, without America’s explicit nod.

But is the snail’s pace just a matter of India going slow? If so, why have the parleys with the IAEA gone into five rounds? The Indian negotiators, it appears, are having a difficult time on the crucial issue of guaranteed and uninterrupted nuclear fuel supplies. The United States has overweening influence over the IAEA, but is obviously not using it to get a rubber stamping done in India’s favour. So how can India afford to gloss over the imperative of uninterrupted nuclear fuel supplies? We’ve been there before with the Tarapur facility starved of fuel and parts with the unilateral abrogation of the 1963 Indo-US bilateral Agreement straight after we carried out our first nuclear tests in 1974. They didn’t even wait to enact replacement legislation which came only in 1978 in the form of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Act (NNPA).

In 2008, there is indeed a de facto acceptance of India as a nuclear weapons state. But this is not tantamount to parity. The reasons for this are manifold, and not all of them are limited to India. Nevertheless, this may be the root problem. India has been granted an “exceptional” status and gains marks for non-proliferation. But she still can’t be trusted to conduct herself unsupervised!

India may have negotiated a separation of her civil and military nuclear programmes, both existing and projected, with only the civil ones subject to IAEA inspection. But there is a great deal being left to future interpretation. And the main sticking point always boils down to the threat of fuel supplies, technology, spares and so forth being cut off. There is a sword of Damocles quality to the fine print and ongoing negotiations that suggests loss of sovereignty, being forced to participate in future US hegemony, and curbs on our nuclear weapons programme by the back door.

So what is the way out? Who will cut the Gordian knot? Because, despite all the thunder and lightning, a nuclear deal with the US and friends, will probably be concluded in the end. This likelihood is because India has been identified as a strategic and geo-political necessity in the global balance of power. Perhaps, in the light of this compulsion of realpolitik, the time has come for India to negotiate harder, to “negotiate without fear”, and negotiate, taking the greatest care not to compromise our future freedom of action and manoeuvre for the sake of “honorary” gains.

At home, we must strive for unanimous all-party backing to the final form this nuclear cooperation takes. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee is right to want to end our “isolation”, but inclusion should not be bought at the price of a one-sided commercial exploitation compounded by loss of sovereignty.

India needs to be truly treated as an exception to the rule. But for this to happen, the United States has to ensure an equitable safeguards agreement at the IAEA, an unconditional waiver at the NSG and follow through with a special waiver from the provisions of the Hyde Act as well. There may not be enough time to do this in the remaining tenure of the present US government. But, the new US government, post November 2008, could, theoretically speaking, do so.

If India is needed by the international order for its merits and geo-political advantages, she should be welcomed by treaties that do not seek to subjugate her with neo-imperialism, discrimination and neo-colonialism. If we cannot have a proper nuclear deal that guarantees an honourable future, then it may be best to take recourse to our own R&D and the considerable reserves of Thorium we possess. It will take us years longer, but we are well used to it.

(875 words)
By Gautam Mukherjee
Sunday 17th February 2008

Forward Motion

2008-02-15T07:45:00.000-08:00

Forward Motion

To think of paying for a mistake or a wrong doing with penance is the norm. I suppose if it’s a criminal grade act, being punished and made to suffer is entirely appropriate--though you wouldn’t think so if you count the numbers of such persons swaggering about the place.

But supposing we do own up--we say sorry. We humble ourselves. We do “kar seva” at mosque, temple, church, gurdwara or Witch’s Coven. We make, or try to make, sincere amends. We strain to be sensitive this time around and lean forward with eagerness to understand the wronged one’s point of view. It is hellish uncomfortable and abasing to do all this, and we long to be shot of it as we struggle with the rising bile. But supposing we ignore this personal discomfort and fix our minds on the intended outcome, fast forwarding to the part when the wronged party is smiling approvingly and we’re over the hump and off the hook.

Yes but we should be so lucky! Most of the time, this trying to put things right comes horribly unstuck. You begin to understand the brigade that says never apologise, never beg, with some degree of fervour and passion. Because, far from appreciating your haloed efforts, the aggrieved party seems catalysed in the wrong direction, like dodgem cars jumping their moorings in the direction of pensioners, not feeling good at all, but reliving the hurt and humiliation, amplified and exaggerated far beyond anything you remember inflicting. And you, in your misguided zeal to set things right, start to see the whole ball of twine unravelling into an unintended mess, gorier and crazier than the first time around. So much for imagining that the proffered apology would be accepted with good grace!

So the thing to do is put on a burst of forward motion and help the wronged--in a generic sense, via their successors, via intended consequences. By putting an African American in the White House for example, or a Woman, even a White one. Nearer home, elevating a Dalit to the Chief Justiceship couldn’t be more poetically just. And watching the Supreme Court he runs make it possible for small traders to get off the pavement and back into their desealed shops is just too. Atonement works much better than apology. Ask any Aborigine.

(390 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Friday 15th February 2008

The Opposite of Shame

2008-02-12T04:20:00.000-08:00

The Opposite of Shame

Is India psychologically ready to join the league of leading nations? Or have years of pressing her nose against the glass, from the outside looking in, stunted her self-image irrevocably? Do we, as a nation, understand that the opposite of shame is not a parochial shamelessness, but perhaps an assessment of how and why we are viewed favourably by other countries. Divining this properly, says American psychologist Dr. Nando Pelusi, helps one feel a glow of pride. Ergo “shame” and “pride” are two sides of the same emotional coin. If we confuse the issue, with what Pelusi delightfully terms “neanderthink”, we could end up over-generalising and tarring everyone with the same brush.

Nevertheless, the conduct of Indian economic policy for example, with its hesitant, two-steps-forward-one-step-back gait, suggests that our policy course, no matter which government is in office, keeps flipping this shame and pride coin. Currently it might be shamed at being unable to contain inflation and the effects of a stronger rupee, and proud of achieving GDP growth rates of over 8.5 percent. But, in this heads-and-tails-game, our e-handlers can’t seem to decide how to curb inflation and keep growing at the same time. So we end up ashamed of this upwardly mobile inflation. We are also ashamed to grow when the poor have to pay more for food and the middle class have to fork out fatter EMIs.

But maybe we are missing the essential point and refusing to take a risk. Growth has a way of blowing away all obstacles in its path and provides opportunities and options that its absence does not. Let us note that the outside world has been attracted to India primarily for her growth story, her size of domestic market, her conversely low dependence on exports when all the rest of Asia is export driven, her considerable human resource, her relatively mature institutions, her judicial system, her vibrant democracy, her impressive electoral system. And this despite huge disparities between the haves and the have-nots.

But, even the most ardent Indophile must be exasperated at the pace of progress on the ground, the ponderous rate of implementation and the hesitation that marks every reform. Maybe we need to take a risk, but in a way described by comic actor Mel Brooks: “Risk means guessing at the outcome but never second guessing,”he said.

(390 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Tuesday 12th February 2008

Dreams that you dare to dream

2008-02-01T05:07:00.000-08:00

Dreams that you dare to dream: the relevance of the Indian Stock Market

“Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true,”

Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919) in The Wizard of OZ

Upendra Kachru reveals in his recent book Extreme Turbulence: India at the Crossroads, (Harper Collins), that only one publicly traded private sector company in the 1970s “top ten”, based on market capitalisation, figures on his 2005 list. The sole survivor is Tata Steel, then at No.1 and in 2005, before its audacious Corus acquisition, at No. 7. Public sector navratnas such as ONGC, Indian Oil, SAIL, GAIL and BHEL were not traded at all in the 70s. Reliance Industries wasn’t on the first list either but is seen at No.1 in 2005.

This is not surprising when you acknowledge that the first dreamer of waking dreams about the Indian Stock Market, and the most successful of them all, was, in effect, Dhirubhai Ambani. When he first tapped it, you had to be rich and powerful in the first place to obtain bank financing. Dhirubhai turned to the general public instead to realise his vision. And with his mass market manoeuvres and daring innovations to attract shareholder wealth, a sea change in the reach and dynamics of our bourses came about. The phenomenon has since been referred to as the “cult of equity”.

It is a pity therefore, that even in 2008, only some 6% of India’s billion plus population, is in any manner or form associated with the stock market. But, there may be consolation in the fact that this figure has risen, from an even more pathetic less than 3%! Compare this with 48% or so of stock market participants in the US and you start to realise why their market capitalisation is at USD 23 trillion.

And yet, the goings on of the Indian stock market sustains two full time English TV channels and one prominent Hindi one. In addition, all our pink dailies and nearly every broadsheet, tabloid, magazine and general news TV channel, in several national languages, allocates a significant amount of time and space to the bourses on a daily basis.

Besides, percentages do not reveal as much as they conceal. It has already become an item of popular culture that Dhirubhai Ambani not only succeeded in attracting the investment of millions of ordinary investors, but, for the first time in the Indian experience, turned lakhs of them into millionaires; just like he said he would.

Ambani created investor confidence of unprecedented magnitude. The latest posthumous manifestation of the adoration his name evokes in the investor community albeit bolstered in 2008 by institutional investors, mutual funds, insurance companies and so on, was during the Reliance Power IPO last month. The flotation, by the late Dhirubhai’s younger son Anil, was a frenzied phenomenon. Anil, without taking anything away from his own considerable business acumen, wanted an impressive Rs. 11,700 crores, (about USD 3 billion), making it the biggest ever primary market issue in the history of the Indian Stock Market. But he received as much within a minute or two of gates open. By the time he pulled down the shutters, the over-subscription ran to a whopping Rs. 7.52 lakh crores or USD 188 billion! Compare this flood tide of money, raised in a jiffy, with the entire, and let it be said, enhanced, and unprecedented, foreign financial investment (FII) for the whole of 2007, which stood at some USD 17 billion.

And as India keeps growing her “real” economy at 8% plus rates year-on-year, and is expected to do so for the next decade or more, the capitalisation in the stock markets, which currently matches the gross domestic product (GDP) one is to one, at USD 1 trillion, is slated to double in the next five years.

Official India too, has over the last few years, been encouraging, by making investment in equity virtually Income Tax free except in the short term, defined as less than a year. But even then, it contents itself with a flat 10% on the profits realised.

Aggregating all these taxation related bells and whistles, the relentless increase in the number, style and substance of financial assets under management (AUM), backed by the great Indian domestic savings rate, one of the highest in the world, hovering at over 30%; it is only a matter of time before the stock market participation assumes centre stage. All we have to do, millions more of us, is dare to dream like the Ambanis.

(750 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Friday 01 February 2008

Also published in The Sunday Pioneer on 3rd February 2008 in AGENDA section DIALOGUE As "Helps us dream big".

Bully for the Bull

2008-01-29T03:26:00.000-08:00

Bully for the Bull

In the preceding trading week and the last hour of trade on Friday the 18th, we witnessed the destabilising spectacle of a bungee-jumping Sensex, Nifty, Midcap, Smallcap and indeed every single sector index on the Indian Stock Market.

Amongst the consternation this spectacle wrought, we could only console ourselves by remembering that plunges and recoveries of this sort have happened before. But, each time it happens, it is occasioned, to a lesser or greater extent, by the inept actions of an over cautious government quite clueless about the impact of their nostrums on market “sentiment”.

This time, it was to do with an unreasonably tight credit policy as the steerage class of futures and options punters cried out for more margin money from brokers who couldn’t pony up because they were in turn refused further limits by banks because of the RBI guidelines. So, some poor wretches “drowned” in their financial puddles, victims of the kind of “collateral damage” that former US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld was fond of citing.

That this government is uncomfortable with the pronounced risk-taking abilities of traders and investors who live and breathe “greed and fear”, is self-evident. But the basic thing that our politicians and bureaucrats do not properly understand, is that a stock market works as much on fundamentals, liquidity and logic as it does on sentiment, and let it be plainly said – rank speculation.

It is speculation that feeds most heartily on sentiment, and no bourse worth its salt can call itself alive and well without it. To try and stamp out speculation in the bourses is like trying to stamp out sex in the bedroom. And any action that works to wilt this ineffable sentimental aspect tends to produce very strong adverse reactions. And this means in everyone, from the Colonel’s Lady to Judy O’ Grady: all those institutional players, mutual funds, insurance companies, the foreign institutional investors, the hedge funds and futures and options traders, the newly arrived sovereign funds -all these research driven big-hitters. But even these blue-chip organisations share an inordinate attachment to “sentiment” with the superstitious learn-on-the-job punters, well-advised high-net-worth individuals and those discreet but powerful private equity players.

But whenever, in recent times, our bourses have taken a grievous tumble, we have seen Finance Minister Chidambaram come out to reassure us on market “fundamentals” and our high “GDP growth” rates, using a tone of voice one might best use when addressing the mentally challenged. But, Mr. Chidambaram and the entire posse of politicians, bureaucrats and sarkari economists, stoutly refuse to acknowledge, out of some robust if inexplicable arrogance, that “fundamentals” do not, by themselves, determine the performance of stock markets.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, and in the cities and towns of America, we are witness to a tremendous manifestation of change. We see a black man battling for the Democratic Party presidential nomination with a woman. In watching these two archetypes duking it out, breaking taboos like a Greek might break dinner plates, we are treated to something never seen before. But America has always been good at handling change, despite its more recalcitrant and reactionary elements.

This same America wants to acknowledge that India has arrived and is willing to give us time to adjust to the implications of our new found prominence. Perhaps then, there is a parallel here, between how India should be handling its economic emergence and the way America is contemplating the election of its first black or woman president.

In the December 2007 issue of The Atlantic, the cover story is on Barack Hussein Obama’s candidacy. In it, Andrew Sullivan writes, “Sometimes when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution”.

Today, Tuesday the 29th, of the week after, we are no longer plumbing the depths of the financial market abyss. But, if we have anyone to thank for this state of relative stability it is Ben Bernancke, the US Federal Reserve Bank Chairman. Because, it is Mr.Ben who turned the tide on the global market crash by cutting US interest rates by an unprecedented 75 basis points, from 4.25% to 3.5%, in the middle of last week.

It is true that Bernancke, like our own RBI Governor Reddy, has erred too much on the side of controlling inflation, to the point when the US bourses went into a free fall. But, still, we must be grateful because it is Mr. Ben’s 75 bps cut that saved the bacon of the Indian markets plunging at nearly 10% a day!

But have we learned anything from the US example? Not if you go by Governor Reddy’s monetary policy announced today. In it, he uses the inflation word ad nauseam to justify his standing-still on the cash reserve ratio (CRR) limits, the repo rate which stands at 7.75% as well as the reverse repo rates.

But, in the end, especially if Bernancke feels compelled to cut the US interest rate by another 50 bps tomorrow night, we might see a flood of foreign investment coming into India to take advantage of our “conservative” fiscal management and the great arbitrage opportunity. We could also see a surge in the indices from the money that will come back into the markets from the excess captured by the Reliance Power IPO and the large collections made from a host of new mutual fund offerings.

Governor Reddy, Mr. Chidambaram and Mr. Damodaran might have to come up with some new ways to strangle growth before the ink is dry after all.

(935 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Tuesday 29th January 2008

Also published in The Pioneer www.dailypioneer.com on the OP-ED Page on Wednesday 30th January, 2008

Merchants have no country

2008-01-08T06:44:00.000-08:00

BOOK REVIEW

EXTREME TURBULENCE—India at the Crossroads
By Upendra Kachru
311 pages. Rs.395/-
Published by Harper Collins Publishers India in joint venture with The India Today Group

Merchants have no country

Upendra Kachru, author of this gentle management book, teaches strategy at a leading business school in India. He quotes Thomas Jefferson to assert that, “Merchants have no country”, in the context of globalisation, helpfully informing the reader that Jefferson was “one of the early US Presidents”.

The professor in Kachru is prominent in the book. It is rich in case-study like anecdotes from well known socio-political figures of the 19th and 20th centuries such as Malthus and Maslow and great Indian corporations including Wipro, TATA and ITC. Kachru uses anecdotes to illustrate his various points of emphasis, such as, the need for innovation, anticipation, vision and change. However, Kachru’s version of “extreme turbulence”, does not, on examination, frighten or alarm, as I was hoping it would, because he refuses to pick out any threats for special mention, and, his proposed remedies on how to better anticipate the future seem familiar, genteel and tame and reminiscent of blind man’s buff.

What is interesting is his narrative on how to manage uncertainty and complexity, particularly with regard to the future, and in the context of large, well-established corporations prone to complacency. But in exploring this, all Kachru is able to offer are anecdotes on the many ways to skin a cat but no longed for pattern, formula or panacea emerges. There are, it appears, many ways to manage the future but none that you can hang your hat on till after the fact. It is the sort of clinging to the known facts that one might have expected from a cost accountant.

So this is most certainly not a how-to-manual to brave the “turbulence” to come. But the book still makes for a reasonable catalogue of the doings of innovative, look-ahead folk who had what it takes to get it right. So perhaps, the subliminal suggestion here is to imitate these and other such masters of survival, and who knows, some of us might be able to add a point or two, or even a whole chapter, to future such catalogues on innovation, change management and so forth.

A lot of this book is comfortably paced and sometimes strongly historical, going back, without embarrassment, to the Stone Age, but it is always well-ordered and chronological in its approach to progress. This sequencing, however, seems to elude the accelerated nature of the challenges that confront the modern Indian business environment. After all, India’s one trillion dollar economy that took 30 years in the making, is set to double in the next five years, according to Economic Times 2007 Award winning brokers Motilal Oswal. So, by implication, probably anything that happened over five years ago, and certainly prior to 1991, is unlikely to shed any light on the road ahead. If Upendra Kachru had taken this somewhat pitiless premise on board, he might have produced a far more compelling book on the future of the Indian business landscape.

But perhaps, Professor Kachru does not quite see it this way. Nor does he feel like dwelling on the inequities of the Indian condition circa 2007, when this book was written. He glosses over its non-inclusive growth, its smugness, its too-little-too-late ways, the dangers and stress points occasioned by its lazy polity. Upendra Kachru does not quite see the Titanic metaphor as appropriate – India is not that ship heading for a nasty Arctic iceberg at full speed.

But even in this sometimes optimistic vein, some of Kachru’s extrapolations are a little blinkered. He quotes an unattributed publication called Beyond Economic Growth 2007 on page 59 of his book to rank sub-continental India at 25th in the global GDP growth sweepstakes and 43rd in terms of overall global competitiveness. What, you are tempted to exclaim, no BRIC ascendancy, no Emerging Market buzz? However, we are in good company in report anonymous, because, China, is ranked only at 12th on the GDP growth list and shares the honours with Taiwan at 13th on global competitiveness!

Evidently, such statistics can be misleading when taken out of context. Witness, also, that it is Azerbaijan and Mauritania that have secured the first and second positions in terms of GDP growth with 32.50% and 19.40% respectively. And it is Switzerland that tops the global competitiveness rankings with sparsely populated Welfare Valhalla Finland at number 2.

It makes you want to sink to the bottom of your 43rd ranked shoes, particularly when Kachru sees nothing bizarre in this, even calling economies such as those of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania “tiger economies”, praising them, for their “macroeconomic stability, especially low inflation and low budget deficits”.

Fortunately, Kachru does not ignore the better known studies by entities such as the IMF, Goldman Sachs and GE wherein India can look forward to a bright future. This even as Kachru’s all-bets-are-off rendering on “long-term projections” don’t quite ring true. At the end of the book, and indeed in dribbles and drabbles throughout, Kachru gives the impression that he thinks the more pessimistic projections on India’s economic future are the ones that might turn out to be right.

(850 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Tuesday 8th January 2008

Also published in The Sunday Pioneer on January 20th, 2008 in the BOOKS section under the title "Blind man's bluff".

It was a dark and stormy night

2007-12-20T11:23:00.000-08:00

A year-end musing on masala-fry taste

It was a dark and stormy night

The obscure 19th century writer, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, has left behind at least two lines that have notched him a couple of cuts on the scratching post of posterity. They are both acute masala-fry lines with instant appeal to people such as ourselves who can’t, or more correctly won’t, make up their minds whether their films are thrillers or dramas or musicals or comedies or tragedies or all of the above and then some.

The first Bulwer-Lytton line is lampooned by fashionable creative writing courses on both sides of the Atlantic. It is the tagline of the annual Bad Writing Awards handed out in the UK and named after the poor man, no less. It is this innocent little phrase: It was a dark and stormy night.

Personally, my Indian heart can’t see what’s wrong with it. It may indeed be a little opaque but conveys the moot point perfectly well. It has also turned into a fashionable cliché or was it already one when Bulwer-Lytton inked it in at the start of his novel Paul Clifford in 1830?

In point of fact, the phrase was actually the start of a reasonably long compound sentence; one that ran to the size of a short paragraph. But, if the objection is to the turgidity of long compound sentences and their stretch-limo style construction, then why not say so instead of picking on the opening line?

But, like Charles M Schulz’s star Beagle Snoopy, who loved and made this melodramatic opening line famous, yes, in all of Schulz’s syndicated glory, I like it too.

The world’s most famous Beagle used it whenever he worked his iconic Olympia Traveller, pounding on it, Schroeder-like, playing the novelist, atop his dog-house, starting, but alas, never finishing, a series of books with it.

For Snoopy’s ever attendant friend, Woodstock the bird, even this act of borrowing Bulwer-Lytton’s resounding line was an act of considerable genius, worthy of fulsome applause.

But the modern day Western literary critic is a bird of a more dyspeptic hue. For him, repository of smart 20th century literary opinion, English-speaking, white, upper class, understated, tweedy, Baron Bulwer-Lytton can’t write.

Ours may truly be a different sensibility,Hindu,having been reared on 40,000 Gods, the Ramayana and Mahabharata rather than The Bible, The Illiad and The Odyssey; at least in terms of one’s diet of myths of childhood; but one feels oppressed, stripped, as if, of aesthetic sense. One feels like calendar art, lurid, or a two dimensional cartoon character, unable to discern a bad line from a good one.

But to be fair, the trans-Atlantic pundits weren’t thinking of us, our temperamental differences, our polytheism and so on, when they set out to mock their own dark and stormy to a man, inclusive of those long, run-on Bulwer-Lytton sentences aforementioned.

Perhaps it has something to do with the Western urge towards order and homogeneity, the unitary, that One God principle, but if these litpundits had their way, they’d have every writer and aspirant turn into the literary equivalent of late method actor Marlon Brando - and the more contending incoherence the better; particularly when filled out by the beauty and length of eyelash on Marlon!

Or, if writers must be compared to writers; like apples to apples: to Ernest Hemingway; never mind that he spent most of his sentient years battling erectile dysfunction and outright impotence. What counts is that he did it with macho hunting escapades and yards of drink! So what if all this heroic effort caused no more than desultory twitches in his urge to penetrate. What matters to the litpundit in his lair is Hemingway’s spare, whittled down, implication-laden short sentences! The suffering, the big man’s-man impotence, is so much grist to the mill, but Papa never let it lead to over-writing like dear old Bulwer-Lytton, did he? So fecundity be damned and do not mention the millions of Victorian London whores. Creativity must, if it is to be applauded, run along neat pathways of well crafted words and well bred emanations of emotion.

Still, persuasive as this sounds, I’m not ready to buy this line.I’ll take my emerging Asian market chances; possessed as I am of the effrontery to find dark and stormy still fresh and evocative! To me, it has a pregnant and suspenseful Mary Shelley style Prometheus or Frankenstein about it. It raises expectations. It makes you look forward to what comes next in a lip-smacking ketchup and Tarantino sort of way. Honestly, it is a classic- a Shammi Kapoor “yahoo” of a ham-fisted offering, an ingredient for a hit, redoubtable and reassuringly familiar, dear old masala –fry bubbling on the kadhai.

The other line, used so often that you’d think it came from folklore or the editor of the newspaper with the weakest circulation in the land, is this: The pen is mightier than the sword. There it is, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote that one too!

This sentence, sometimes turned caption to a cartoon on a self-important scribe, is not otherwise derided at all. It might remind an idle mind of the Fall of the Roman Empire, complete with campy centurions in skirts brandishing short and shiny jabbing-swords; but it too succeeds in running to just as much of a cliché!

Bulwer-Lytton’s body of work, prose, poetry and letters, is obscure but not negligible. He didn’t exactly lack readership or critical acclaim in his time. A time, let it be remembered, when pianos wore drawers and the prostitute population of London outnumbered other women four is to one! A time perhaps, when melodrama was not entirely disliked, particularly behind closed doors when the stays could come off and Victorian rectitude be rested on the brass bedpost for a spell.

To wit, Bulwer-Lytton’s letters to his son and others betray a certain self-satisfaction. But, all in all, it was just as well that he was a bona fide aristocrat, a Baron with an independent income, the sensibilities, friends and connections. This worked in an era when a pint or two of Anglo-Saxon/Norman blue blood, a family seat, and a genuine title affixed to your moniker ensured you were part of the flotilla that ruled those Britannic waves.

But as far as I’m concerned, it is just good to know that Bulwer-Lytton, rather like our less than “A list” Bollywood actors, felt no pain during his lifetime, notwithstanding the ridicule heaped on his literary name today.

And for us, for those of us who might want to take this linemeister to heart, there is an India connection too. It came via his child and grand-children and it is this: Bulwer-Lytton’s son, after turning down the proffered Governorship of Madras, became Viceroy to India.

Robert, Lord Lytton, Viceroy, 1876-1880, presided over a humdinger of a famine, the first Afghan War and the “Empress Durbar” in 1877 which proclaimed Queen Victoria Empress of India. He also designed various protocols and intricate gun salutes to calibrate the relative importance of each of the princely states, all 558 of them! Lytton enjoyed himself over this - some kings with kingdoms the size of football fields got no guns at all, several middling ones got 9, the biggest and the best got 21, and the Viceroy gave himself a chandelier rocking 31- so that no-one was left in any doubt as to which tribe, in effect, ruled India!

Drama, like mousiness, can, and does run, in one’s blood.

But all this high-dudgeon was not what Robert the Viceroy was all that keen on. What he wanted, was to be a writer, just like papa. His letters refer to it time and again, pining, and sentimental yearning that indicated that he wanted to match up to his father’s perceived literary stature. Robert did write furiously in his youth, stacks of poems of indifferent quality, using the foppish pen-name Owen Meredith, only to wilt gradually, damned by faint praise and stymied by neglect. His novel- in-verse Lucile was probably the high-water mark. It was made into a film too, in 1912, more than a decade after his death in 1891, but nothing much came of that either.

Fortunately, goaded by his father, who probably suffered the pitfalls and pangs of the literary life even if he didn’t plumb its depths; Robert did take up a parallel career in diplomacy. He began as the Ambassador’s dogsbody at the British Mission in Washington, working for his Minister uncle; served happy years in Italy and various spots in Europe; and reached the zenith of his career in India. And later, after some years in the wilderness, he was appointed Ambassador to France. Interestingly, Robert Lytton even died in the act of composing a poem.

His son, dark and stormy’s Simla-born grandson, was briefly Viceroy in the 1920s too. It was a short stint in between holding down the seat as Governor of Bengal between 1922-1927. The grandson, all Victor Alexander George Robert of him, ran into quite a few dark storms of his own trying to contain the burgeoning freedom movement- scrapping with Sir Ashutosh at Calcutta University one day and working out how to keep the non-violent Mohandas Karamchand at bay on another!

There is more. The first Lord Lytton’s daughter Emily married one Edwin Lutyens, the talented arch-imperialist who designed Rashtrapati Bhavan and a good deal of New Delhi besides. Lutyens laboured away, anchoring his thoughts on the belief that it would all endure. It was an Albert Speerish notion, as it turned out, because the Raj lasted just twenty years after Viceroy House was built.

Perhaps Edwin should have taken a cue from his wife Emily who became the most ardent follower of Jiddu Krishnamurti. She also befriended the young and promiscuous Annie Besant and the growing Indian Freedom Movement. Edwin didn’t pay any heed to Emily’s native infatuations, of course, and probably didn’t need to, because imperial and obtuse to the last as he was, cursing Indian architectural traditions even as he stole from them, it is Edwin Lutyens, and not India loving Emily, who is remembered today.

Going full circle to grandfather Bulwer-Lytton, it must be understood that there is something of the genesis about this pen and sword business, not to mention the dark and stormy sally. They both have oodles of a certain je ne sais quoi fanfare about them. Bulwer-Lytton probably wrote like that all the time, with a touch of Victorian drama verging on the mawkish.

It was probably in his blood because his son picked up on it, wielding both pen and sword, and so did the grandchildren, and who knows, perhaps the great-great and the great-great-greats - are still doing it!

But if Bulwer-Lytton were alive today, and if he cared to put his quill to it, he’d go down a Salim-Javed-treat in Bollywood. After all, as his progeny realised soon enough, when they were here, we take our melodrama very seriously and see absolutely no reason to laugh at it in the interests of taste.

(1,855 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Thursday 20th December 2007

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2007-12-10T03:17:00.000-08:00

No good deed goes unpunished

No good deed goes unpunished- it’s a strange and mysterious thing to say, and coming, as it does, from a Protestant priest, one William Sloan Coffin, sometime Chaplain at Yale University and the presiding minister at Riverside Church in New York City; it is doubly intriguing and enigmatic.

I came across it again, this phrase, glibly tossed off by the Irish film star Pierce Brosnan, delivering a line in the film version of The Tailor of Panama based on a book by John Le Carre. It’s a spy story, but it is also a squirmy tussle between moral turpitude and redemption, subtle and masterfully evocative, fuelled by guilt and underscored by a hard-defended integrity. You might call it all so much classic grist to the mill for the inevitable suffering induced by do-goodism of the kind Mr. Coffin had in mind. No wonder then, that Brosnan used Coffin’s fine line in the film. It was, as they say, a damn good fit.

But even in isolation, the phrase intrigues- you can’t readily decide whether it’s just unwarranted cynicism, or quite true; specially, if you think about it a bit. And when you do so, you feel a cold and heartless finger prodding you in the ribs bringing you just a touch of despair. You have to ask yourself - isn’t the well-lived life about performing good deeds? Whatever am I meant to make of the boy scout ethic now?

But immediately after this rather destabilising thought, another one, even worse than the first, quickly follows. It’s a dark notion, this one, but it brings relief, as apparent solutions to puzzles often do, even if the accompanying logic seems a tad woolly. It is simply this-good deeds somehow provoke the environment and invite retaliation.

This is because doing good is rarely selfless. If it were, it probably wouldn’t concern itself with outcomes and certainly wouldn’t care two hoots about credit. But truth be told, do-goodism, more often than not, is shot through with lesser or greater measures of ambition, self-aggrandising ambition to be precise. So, this proverb-like statement of Mr. Coffin’s, refers to just desserts for hubris; for sneakily seeking recompense for your immortal soul; for playing at mahatma as if the business of developing a great soul was some kind of plug-and-play device.

But what has this priestly philosophy got to do with Narendra Modi’s impending re-election in Gujarat? Apart from the Party with the lotus symbol projecting him as The Saviour you mean? Well, in the alleys and the gullies they are saying that if he wins, it is a sure fire beacon of hope for the Hindutva fuelled Right and all its Modi-mask wearing acolytes. Some others are saying that like Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, the home state of Gujarat and the gaddi at Gandhinagar may not be able to contain Mr. Modi’s ambition for very much longer. And that he will shortly be vying for the prime ministership, maybe as early as 2008 or 2009 along with Behenji from Lucknow.

Interesting possibility certainly. Consider that both are as yet state politicians, but politicians of daring and rare conviction, not ashamed to push and promote the cult of their own personalities; and newly arrived at their eminence as possible contenders for national power.

Consider also that they have both demonstrated spectacular dynamism and vision. In Modi’s case, the achievements are economic and in terms of social upliftment, even as his failure to take all people, particularly the minority community along for the ride, is the biggest black mark against him. And in Mayawati’s case, it is the spectacular forging together of a rainbow coalition encompassing disparate castes and creeds that happens to be her crowning glory. For both contenders, it is likely, that the road ahead is going to be even more spectacular than the distance already travelled.

And who knows, they might make for natural allies in future. They both have the requisite audacity and intelligence certainly.

But all this street talk is worrisome, even alarming, to all those other do-gooders who run some risk of becoming redundant as the situation evolves along these lines. What will become of the stars of the present firmament at the centre, communists and anti-communalists like Messrs. Yechury and Karat of the frequent threats for example? And what of old war-horse LK Advani and tyagi Sonia Gandhi and the great dimpled white hope of the future generations who populates only teasers and trailers as yet? What fate will befall his Blackberry flaunting brat pack? And what about all those hoary old loyalists heavy with experience and know-how? And what of those dark glass clad regional satraps in their capes and cowls, their jaunty moustaches and gigantic tilaks? These too, after all, are all considerable do-gooders in their own right.

Apparently, the days of outright wins at the centre are over. But that’s what everyone said about Uttar Pradesh till Mayawati showed them how it’s done. And they say Modi is too dictatorial to form a coalition at the centre if he needs too. But that’s exactly what they used to say about the Defender of the Dalits too till she started defending Brahmins and Muslims and the in-between castes as well. Circumstances change and the real Modi without the mask is likely to change right alongside. I remember Narendra Modi well from his days as a BJP spokesperson making reasonable comments on all the news channel talk shows. And now the same man is a demagogue with a 56” chest. Tomorrow, if it is statesman time, Narendrabhai, like Soniabehn, will not be found wanting.

But what if Modi loses. What will it mean? Will it imply that he’s been too good for his own good? Will all the collective good he has done so far, so thoroughly outweigh the good done by his adversaries, that he is fated to be punished as per Coffin’s aphorism?

Happily for Modi, the converse might well turn out to be true.He might survive because it is revealed that he really hasn’t done as much good as he thinks!

Whatever the electoral outcome, if Coffin’s right, do-gooding is a hazardous business better left to the Opposition.

(1,042 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Monday 10th December 2007

Also published on the EDIT PAGE of The Pioneer on Friday 21st December, 2007

The Greasy Pole of Power Politics & The Slippery Slope of Reform

2007-12-09T19:39:00.000-08:00

Book Review

The Politics Of Change, A Ringside View by NK Singh
Published by Penguin Viking/ The Express Group, 2007
254 pages,Rs.395/-

The Greasy Pole Of Power Politics & The Slippery Slope of Reform

NK Singh’s new book The Politics of Change is a selection of 63 of some 125 articles contracted for by the Indian Express Group, appearing from June 2004 onwards. The first one in the series, in a column entitled Ringside View, which also forms the subtitle to this book, was penned shortly after Singh retired from the IAS to become Deputy Chairman of the Bihar State Planning Board.

The articles in this book are grouped into sections such as Globalising India, India and China, Multilateral Relations, Infrastructure, Energy, Reforms, Political Dynamics, Managing the Economy and States Of The Union. But such compilations, particularly on matters of sonorous economic policy, do end up frustrating the interested reader owing to the necessary brevity of the newspaper format, carried over, unnecessarily, into a book.

It would perhaps have been more rewarding, also less dated, and more representative of the writer’s abilities, if the topics and sub-topics had been explored at greater depth in an integrated continuous narrative. This particularly, as in the India of today, as Singh points out himself, yesterday is clearly no indicator for our tomorrows. So much so, that the economic perspectives of 2004 and 2005 seem insufficiently robust and confident, as if haunted by the years of moribund socialism that preceded them.

In all the articles, too short to be called essays, Singh bears witness to a plethora of conferences, some symposia and a sheaf of studies and reports, both national and international. And throughout, he makes consistent, if mild reformist noises, averring repeatedly that government policy must change towards greater openness, transparency and hold a brief for competition. This careful balancing act is designed to nudge our political masters towards a more modern and confident polity, rather than criticise, beyond, that is, a flutter or two of frustration at the slow pace of progress. This positivist stance is understandable in its desire to commend the glass as half full, but makes one wonder whether senior bureaucrats, with a stake in continuance and keen on being palatable, are able to do justice to their independent thoughts, particularly when they are aired in the public domain.

While none should quarrel with Singh’s reasonable and forward looking views, though Mr. Prakash Karat & Company will disagree, with even this measured tread; it is Shekhar Gupta of Indian Express, in his foreword to the book, who credits Singh with the quiet and extremely successful privatisation of ICICI Bank. It is this not widely known revelation which rescues “NK’s” reputation as a doer. It also allows the reader to veer away from the suspicion that here is yet another semi-retired bureaucrat/soldier/diplomat/politician who’s turned armchair theorist - now that he is substantially beyond harm.

Singh on his part, gamely hints both in style and substance throughout the book at salutary contributions that he has made throughout the agonisingly slow reforms process initiated in the nineties, from each of his various positions of bureaucratic power in the Ministries of Commerce and Finance, in the PMO and the Planning Commission at the Centre.

He also candidly acknowledges that there is much yet to be done and warns that the work that lies ahead has the potential to choke off the growth we have been enjoying of late, unless infrastructure and other bottlenecks are speedily removed.

But in the end, it is clear as a subtext in all the articles, that bureaucrats are able to implement only what the politicians let them. The bureaucrat, however exalted, cannot force the pace of change, for better or worse. He also cannot do very much about the adoption of particular policy directions over others.

But then it is the politician that faces the electorate and enjoys power only as long as he wins his election! So, it is he who decides what to do, in his elected-representative- laced superior wisdom, or lack of it!

So, to fulfil his policy making ambitions, now that NK Singh’s file pushing days are
nearly over, it might be noted that his relative youth marks him out as a good prospect for the
political arena. But if NK Singh does join active politics, there may well have to be changes made, in tone and tenor, like Yashwant Sinha and Mani Shankar Aiyar, civil servicemen both, who took the plunge before him.

We will then have to contrast the dulcet silk and Saville Row semantics of NK Singh’s current pronouncements with the media reported thunder and lightning of the impending state election in Gujarat - to illustrate this point. But then, it may be more appropriate to liken NK’s political profile and chances, should he want to take them, to our current reformist Prime Minister, who is not doing half badly as a former academic and Wold Banker turned politician. All NK needs is a political mentor or two like Prime Minister Singh and Bob’s your uncle.

(850 words)
By Gautam Mukherjee
Sunday, 9th December 2007

Also published in the BOOKS section of The Sunday Pioneer on December 23rd,2007

This and all other essays on GHATOTKACHSERIES are copyright 2005-2007 by Gautam Mukherjee. All rights reserved.

Being Destitute Does Not Preclude Aspiration

2007-11-22T01:34:00.000-08:00

BOOK REVIEW

We are like that only-Understanding the Logic of Consumer India
By Rama Bijapurkar

Published by Penguin Portfolio,
281 pages, Rs. 495/- in Hardback.

Being Destitute Does Not Preclude Aspiration

In chapter after chapter of this lucidly written and highly readable book, eminent management consultant Rama Bijapurkar makes the point that gives ants their collective strength and efficiency – namely, and to mix metaphors, that mighty oaks do from tiny acorns grow.

Ms. Bijapurkar makes clear, that in India, the small percentage of the rich consume a third of the pie, even if they do tend to nibble on those items and services that meet with their sophisticated approval. The more numerous middle classes, quantified variously by different experts, consume another third of what constitutes the “value proposition” to them. And the teeming masses consume the last third, albeit in bite sizes and sachets and one-at-a-time open packs; but their contribution to the marketers coffers adds up to just as much as the other two broad classifications. Therefore, foreign marketers beware, says Ms. Bijapurkar, please do your homework and gear up to serve all three sections and their sub-sections including the rural/urban variations. And do so appropriately, not in a one-size-fits-all manner. Also, says Bijapurkar, foreign brands and multinationals should take care not to underestimate the choices that the Indian consumer, a predominantly young consumer at that, routinely insists on making. The Indian consumer, she says, at all levels, tends to display strong opinions that sometimes baffle foreign marketers who expect the same sauce to suit both goose and gander while making no strategic differentiation between the western creatures and their desi counterparts.

And even though we have a large number of rich, middle class and poor people, adding up to over a billion souls, we are essentially different, even within such classification. Our rich are often richer than their western counterparts. Our middle classes are, on the other hand, considerably poorer than their opposite numbers in the West. And our poor are indeed very very poor. But this does not stop us exercising great exuberances of free will that makes us likely to reject goods and services that have not been customised to suit Indian demographics, preferences and plurality.

But, while I found myself nodding in agreement with most of Ms. Bijapurkar’s propositions, it does occur to me that perhaps the contents of her new book ends up preaching to the converted. For example, the preface to the book is by CK “core competence” Prahalad and the afterword is by NR Narayana Moorthy, eminent global Indians both, but still from the “we are like that only” brigade after all.

The western mind, on the other hand, as we all know, tends to proceed along more cut and dried lines and finds it difficult to comprehend our oriental subtleties. But, I’m hoping here that there are some eminences amongst them who do and will “get it,” and contribute suitably encouraging blurbs to the international edition. In this Indian edition, strangely, because the content suggests that Ms. Bijapurkar advises a large number of international clients, you have praise, adornment and encomiums exclusively from Indians and ethnic Indians such as Kishore Biyani, Ruchir Sharma and Jagdish Seth. The white men, or for that matter the Chinamen or indeed the Japanese and so on, are conspicuous by their absence. In addition, Ms. Bijapurkar’s latest book has already been reviewed by finance minister P Chidambaram, social, theatrical and communications gadfly Suhel Seth, and the economist cum journalist Bibek Deb Roy.

Everyone likes the book but then every Indian knows what the traditional Marwari businessman has long known and practiced – go for the turnover, even on wafer thin margins, because the total take will more than warm the cockles of your heart. But the western businessman, by way of contrast, tends to obsess over unit value and unit returns thereon - from each item of a good or service sold. They tend not to find it worth their while to build bottom lines by catering to the many, at next to nothing, particularly when the many are not even homogenous in their preferences!

But, having said that, what goes in India’s favour is that the world has, in fact, changed. The growth from now onwards indubitably is in the emerging markets. So, foreigners who are forced to look at doing business in India for the first time, and also those who are now determined to grow what they may have neglected in the past, will perhaps end up paying close heed to the very worthwhile arguments put forward by Ms. Bijapurkar.

And happily, Rama Bijapurkar’s latest book forms part of a welcome and growing list of books on the economy, marketing and business being written by Indian experts on the Indian situation, not only for the academic, but also for the general and interested reader. Together, as a genre, such explorations make for an insightful, authentic and realistic take on subjects that have too often been served more in the breach than the observance by sometimes bizarre attempts of foreigners intent on doing their “India book”. And this, after a mere stint in this fascinating if hard- to-comprehend country and its mysterious DNA.

(850 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Thursday 22nd November 2007

Also published in The Sunday Pioneer on December 2,2007 in the BOOKS section

Safe Harbour Incorporated

2007-11-01T04:19:00.000-07:00

Safe Harbour Incorporated

Dalal Street, populated by people with money in their veins, is not renowned for its sense of irony. Still, notwithstanding volatility, ham-fisted government intervention and the occasional devastating rumour; it could, for 2008 and beyond, hang out a shingle bearing the legend “Safe Harbour Incorporated”. And, supported by a real economy growing at 8.5% to 9% per annum (p.a.), Dalal Street can do it with a straight face.

India is currently benefiting from a number of local and global currents that will see the Sensex and Nifty 50, representing as they do, a relatively narrow base of operations at around $1.5 trillion total market capitalisation, scaling much higher levels than the current 20,000 and 6,000 levels respectively.

That the Indian bourses have been receiving unprecedented amounts of foreign exchange from America, Europe and Japan for over three years already is old hat, although, the flow has intensified significantly of late. This is because these developed markets, though much bigger than ours, have their prospects of growth restricted to around 2 % p.a. for the foreseeable future. And while India was long seen as a relatively risky Emerging Market (EM), realization has since dawned, particularly after the “sub prime” contagion spread all over the developed markets, that the EMs were perhaps safer than the home markets! We were not unknown by then, thanks mainly to the older FIIs and intrepid Hedge Funds showing the way. And then, when comparisons were made within the celebrated EMs of Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRIC), it emerged that only India and China have the depth and size to deliver large quantum real profits in addition to impressive looking percentages.

In the meantime, the Indian domestic investment scenario too has also put on some heft and is exerting its own influence, buying when the foreigners sell and vice versa, thus imparting stability and a measure of perceptive balance. With the sharp growth of Mutual Fund investments and the Unit Linked Insurance Plans (ULIPs), this trend will only strengthen. In addition, domestic savings, rated amongst the highest in the world at some 32% of household income have also deigned to get involved with an inflow of some 6% of its corpus this year. Domestic government administered pension funds too are making a tentative beginning.

Apart from the traditional West and gradually enlarging domestic kitty, we are also increasingly seeing financial flows from the oil producing nations. These have, of course, benefited hugely from a 54% and counting appreciation in oil prices this year alone.

In addition, we are now also attracting monies that were earlier earmarked for China and even arbitrage and hedging investment funds from China herself. This is because China, which is growing at 11% p.a. currently, has already seen an over 100% rise in its Hang Seng Indices this year. But, with the sharp run up, China, which attracts $60 billion p.a., now posts an average price-earnings (P.E.) ratio of 38. In comparison, India with a P.E. ratio of 22 seems relatively cheap, particularly given the robust results of between 25-30% earnings declared by most companies in the second quarter recently.

This particularly because it is anticipated that China and all of South East Asia could see a down turn because they are all export based economies dependent on the somewhat beleaguered US economy. But India, uniquely among the Asian and BRIC economies, has only some 12% dependency on exports on an 8.5 to 9% p.a. growth path. This makes it a particularly convincing safe haven for foreign investment.

But even at 20,000, the Sensex has only appreciated some 40% this year, so far. For the rest of this fiscal, another $ 10 to $15 billion could still arrive in addition to some $16.5 billion that has already come in. This, if it happens, in part or full measure, will push the rupee higher; to 39 to the US dollar or beyond, and end up attracting yet more funds!

Having said all this, one cannot underestimate official India’s capacity for being party poopers. Short term dampeners can also come in the event the present government falls and a new one takes time to find its feet and policy bearings.

(700 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Thursday, 1st November, 2007

Also published in The Sunday Pioneer in the AGENDA> DIALOGUE section on 4th November 2007
This and all other essays on GHATOTKACHSERIES are copyright 2005-2007 by Gautam Mukherjee. All rights reserved.

When Ziggy Stardust came a calling!

2007-10-09T12:16:00.001-07:00

“For here am I sitting in a tin can, far above the world
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do.”

Lyric from Ground Control to Major Tom by David Bowie

When Ziggy Stardust came a calling!

David Bowie, the androgynous rock superstar, a contemporary of Mick Jagger, just as fully-automatic still as his wizened but sexy pal, long dined out on his interest in space, aliens, “peoploids”, “diamond dogs” and spacemen cast adrift. His fans called themselves Space Cadets and dressed in clothes with see-through plastic bits got up as Star Trekky as possible. Bowie himself was all spandex and glitter, sporting that impossible bulge of a cod-piece, the lipstick and lashes, the layered shag - clearly the oh so masterful, if sexually ambiguous, Commander!

It was a hard act to follow, even for the latter day Bowie. But the music press of the time was most laudatory. And even the “perspective” press, later, as in Time and Newsweek, saw Bowie’s alter ego Ziggy Stardust as something that gave voice to the pent up romance and glamour of space exploration. It made of the Kennedy Space Centre and NASA and HG Wells and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World something wondrous and great. Bowie’s space fantasies struck a chord, locked away in every timid breast watching the flickering images of countdowns and the unknown as they worked their way from 10 to liftoff and beyond.

So perhaps it’s understandable that the Indian media should also hanker after extracting a smidgen of second-hand satisfaction from the visit of US astronaut Sunita Williams, via the tenuous hold on her Indian origins. Our journalists are probably animated by an unspoken romanticism about the heavens that has been knocking around in our breasts since Aryabhata. More so, perhaps, because our indigenous space programme has not graduated beyond hurling unmanned weather-sensing satellites and the like into space.

So naturally, when we light upon a live astronaut of Indian origin in the person of the tall and willowy Sunitabehn, the spirit of appropriation gushes forth and spills over in a profusion of electronic bytes and printing ink. We want to know, with that unblinking, staring curiosity, so dear to Indian notions of scrutiny, how Sunitabehn felt while she was coping with the solitary confinement and zero gravity for six and a half months. And we so like her references to Lord Ganesha in space.

But before we can carry on much further down this path, we are thrown into a neat twist in the bland flag waving PR plot scripted by the US State Department and the impressively well groomed Ambassador Mulford. Without prior warning, and amongst all the spacey talk of silences and deep blueness, we find ourselves, man and boy, transported to Pandyaland.

And there, in Pandyaland, Williams meets a Modi and glosses over, with handshake and smile, a not so ancient killing of her kinsman, in 2003, by alleged terrorists retaliating against Pandya’s rumoured involvements in the Gujarat riots. We also learn how Hiren Pandya, a former BJP State Revenue Minister and Sunitabehn’s cousin, was; and how he suddenly wasn't; and how Narendra Modi had denied him a ticket in the 2002 elections, a year before Pandya was tragically assassinated.

Pandya is a dead rival now, killed through no fault of Modi’s. Still, here was a Space-given opportunity to deftly bury the hatchet about that denied ticket! Modi did this with rare aplomb and much adulatory speechifying, and even showed every inclination, though he managed to exercise a restraint fuelled by good taste in the end, to top off the very successful photo opportunity, with a hug for Sunitabehn. This hug, had it taken place, would have been no ordinary hug because it was intended to encompass the Pandya tribe, the American nation by proxy, and India’s manned flight aspirations in space. And probably one or two hidden agendas as well.

But as reckonings go, two birds with one stone is a good enough tally. And as for the inadvertent human interest story and the blatant Gandhigiri on camera- it’s a bonus if you want to see beyond Ahmedabad. After all, as Sunitabehn kept saying, in Washington and New Delhi alike, things do look so peaceful down here from up there. It’s enough to inspire Man and Martian to do just a spot of stardusting.

(721 words)

Title: When Ziggy Stardust came a calling!

By Gautam Mukherjee

Wednesday 10th October 2007

Also published in The Sunday Pioneer, Agenda Section, "Dialogue" on 14th October, 2007

This and all other essays on GHATOTKACHSERIES are copyright 2005-2007 by Gautam Mukherjee. All rights reserved.

Fear Not the Raging Bull

2007-09-28T11:43:00.000-07:00

Fear Not the Raging Bull

Surjit S Bhalla, Managing Director of Oxus Research and Investments, an economic research, asset management, and emerging-markets advisory firm based in New Delhi, and a former economist with the World Bank, Brookings Institution, Rand Corporation, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank - expects a 10% increase from the current 17,000 plus levels on the Sensex in short order. He also gives a 60% probability on the Sensex reaching 20,000 by March 31st 2008.

This forecast, coming as it does after a 1,600 point plus break-out that began only on the 19th of September, is so bracing, that it makes the sceptics reach for the Panadol as they point to it as yet another example of the jingoistic “myth-making” that seems to have seized our deluded souls. But the facts, even if they appear to be on “steroids” cannot be ignored for the pointers they give us. On the 19th instant, the Sensex notched up 654 points, posting the largest jump during a single trading session in Indian stock market history. The Sensex was catapulted from 15,668 to 16,322 in one fell swoop. Since then, in a mere 9 days with just 7 trading sessions, the Sensex has scaled a pinnacle of 17,291 as on Friday, 28th September 2007 - backed by USD 1.5 billion of fresh foreign investment over just one trading week.

Is this kind of rise sustainable in the future? Yes it is – even if the particulars of a given trading week change to reflect the dynamics of an ever deepening and widening market. We can look forward to reduced volatility in absolute terms as this happens, the process being akin to gradually transferring from a frigate to an aircraft carrier.

Consider the immediate facts: the inflation rate is down to a five year low of 3.23% owing to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor YV Reddy’s conservative management of the liquidity situation and lending rates. Dr. Reddy has avoided a housing loan crisis here while strengthening the banking system and stopping inflation (as per the wholesale price index) in its tracks, halving it from a run-away near 6 per cent -and this, without, as is evident, harming growth. It may therefore be an indication of the momentum that has seized the Indian economy that the second quarter figures to come around the 10th of October 2007 are expected to show continued healthy growth percentages despite higher interest rates, more stringent lending norms and high oil prices.

The erstwhile humble rupee is at its strongest in nine years against the US dollar, with every chance of strengthening further despite the RBI’s attempts to slow its appreciation. And the more the rupee appreciates, the more the foreign money pours in, chasing both the arbitrage opportunity on top of the already healthy portfolio investment returns. Likewise, the long-term money flow seeking healthy returns on equity against project investments is also accelerating. All this, of course, in the backdrop of a gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of over 9 per cent per annum tending towards year-on-year double digit growth.

So not only are we headed towards 20,000 on the Sensex sometime in 2008 but we are also headed towards 40,000 in a matter of just a few years, perhaps by 2010 or 2012. In the meantime, it is entirely likely that the strong rupee will turn convertible sooner rather than later as the RBI gives up trying to stage manage its value.

This is most definitely a momentum market underpinned by the fundamentals of good performances from corporate India, a strong rupee and high real estate values. With a measure of determination to ease physical infrastructure bottlenecks and financial market structures, further growth is assured. In addition, we can expect a boost in the near term, from a flood of foreign investment to come post the signing of the final set of papers that turns the nuclear power deal with the US operational.

Much of the growth we are now experiencing however owes its success to the policy decisions taken in the early days of economic liberalisation. There is an urgent need now to ease various bottlenecks in physical infrastructure as well as in our financial structures so that we don’t choke on our own success. This will be the key to a re-rating of the Indian stock markets so that they can take their place among the premier bourses of the global marketplace with a market capitalisation appropriate to its status.

(748 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee

28th September 2007

Also published in The Pioneer on Sunday, DIALOGUE in the AGENDA section, September 30th, 2007

This and all other essays in GHATOTKACHSERIES are copyright 2005-2007 by Gautam Mukherjee. All rights reserved,

No Wonder!

2007-09-17T04:19:00.000-07:00

Essay- a tale of trillions

“If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”
Jack Welch

“Control your own destiny or someone else will.”
Jack Welch

No Wonder!

Jack Welch, prescient as ever, identified the India opportunity for GE in 1992, pointing also at China and Mexico at the same time. Till then, GE in India was puttering along peacefully, ploughing the conventional furrow along with a dozen or so global giants who thought it was as well to have a look-out, a Nissen Hut operation on Indian soil - just in case the mahout decided to unshackle the Great Indian Elephant when they weren’t looking.

It was prescient of Jack Welch to ring the bell on India, but also alert, because the elephant had been quietly unshackled in 1991 already, thanks to a near default on our foreign debt, dramatically assuaged by the Chandra Shekhar Government. It was that minority government that put our gold reserves on a plane to Switzerland to avoid the ignominy of just such an outcome. Then, it was Manmohan Singh’s turn to take things forward as the FM in the Narasimha Rao Government. And gradually thereafter, the economic liberalisation process unfolded.

In 1992, GE’s India operations turned over at just $100 million per annum. Scott Bayman, GE’s satrap in India for 14 years, till he retired only this summer, came in 1993. This makes Bayman the longest serving expatriate country boss in recent times, a kind of evangelical Jesuit of the firangi boardroom. For GE, to keep him here this length of time reveals a surprising, European style orthodoxy, a country-experiencing-policy more often associated with the imperial designs of the white nabobs in and around the fabled John Company in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And Bayman, rather like those nabobs of yore is now widely regarded as an expert on how to “deal” in and with India.

Scott Bayman who, in his own words, “survived two GE Chairmen; six (Indian) governments and five prime ministers,” has also left behind a creditable legacy at GE India, now turning over at $3 billion p.a. via the labours of 13,000 employees and with the many GE global businesses all represented in the country.

Jack Immelt, Welch’s successor at the global HQ corner office, says GE is on track to reach targets of $8 billion for both turnover and assets by 2010. But, you know, these days, awe is not so easily inspired in the desi heart. General Electric, despite being No. 6 on the Fortune 500 list (Wal-Mart Stores is No. 1 in 2007), sounds like yet another good size MNC doing well in India. We feel good that this is so but there is a sense of “No Wonder” smugness about it.

“No Wonder” smugness, in the sense that how can any corporation worth its global salt afford to stay away after all? Just because we Indians are none too aware of our impending greatness does not excuse a Wal-Mart or a VW or BMW, to name just a few, to wake up to the opportunity we present - late. They insist they are here at the right time of course, out loud that is. After all, they’ve scurried into the big tent well before the banned high technology and nuclear power floodgates are thrown open. So maybe they have a point after all.

Scott Bayman, with his 14 years on the ground, has had an impressive India career. When he came, in 1992, Indian industry was worried about being swamped by foreign competition, but now, as he put it at a farewell dinner in June this year, Indian industrialists “no longer worry about multinational companies; they are or want to be MNCs…..They no longer talk of level playing fields. They argue for open markets, free trade and view the globe as their marketplace.”

Still, Bayman concludes with a familiar line: “You need patience and persistence. This is a difficult place to get things done quickly.”

This may be so in a comparative sense, and fair comment too, particularly if you come from the US which is some 200 years old and has been wealthy for just 70 of those years. And if you come at a time when a young republican India is struggling yet with the rigours of its parliamentary style democracy and universal suffrage too. But the fact is, we’ve seen it all. From Ram Rajya to Colonialism. It’s taken us elephantine types through at least 3,000 years of being everything from fabulously rich to abysmally poor, from ruling, being ruled, ruling again. We may therefore be permitted a mere moment or two to adjust to changed circumstances, particularly if they are for the better.

It is therefore entirely appropriate for a desi bhai to be taken aback when the morning papers quote another American icon, IBM this time, from its Institute for Business Value’s recent study entitled “Get Global Get Specialised or Get Out” echoing Jack Welch’s famous aphoristic prescription on corporations that ran “fix it, close it or sell it”. The Study predicts that the Indian stock market, currently capitalised at just under $ 1 trillion will grow to $17 trillion by 2025! That’s 17 times in 18 years! It is hard to imagine such a gut wrenching, dizzy ride to the stratosphere. If this is our destiny going forward what chance do we have of being ponderous at all?!

The Study, conducted in collaboration with the Economist Intelligence Unit, developed a model to trace the effect of globalization across 35 of the world's largest economies. They also surveyed 848 financial markets executives from around the globe and 107 of their corporate clients. The findings include the insight that the worldwide opportunity is large – but the goodies won't necessarily be found in the same old places, meaning, in the main, the US, Europe and Japan, though these developed markets will still account for 40 percent of projected growth and keep their places at the table.

This, even as worldwide investments are expected to double by 2015 to almost US$300 trillion. By 2025, the opportunity is sized at $700 trillion! However, 60 percent of this future growth will come from non-traditional places. This means the emerging markets in general, and China and India in particular. While this has been highlighted, in various ways, a number of times already, the IBM study points out that most of the financial services world in the West is not geared to take advantage of these emerging market opportunities as yet.

What a change it will mean for India if the Study is right. We are then indubitably contemplating a developed economy and a prosperous people if this comes to pass. But, even as we exult, let us remember that this is the same IBM that walked out of India lock-stock-and-barrel in Indira Gandhi’s time rather that conform to the nationalist demand to dilute their shareholding to a minority status in those heady, if misguided, socialism inspired times. And the Economist Intelligence Unit, pundit No.2 for this Study, has been calling the recent Indian economic progress “unsustainable” for most of 2007 because of severe infrastructure bottlenecks and has dubbed the Indian stock market “overvalued” with metronomic regularity over the last couple of years.

Still, to be fair, IBM has been back on our shores for quite a while now, along with Coca Cola, another US icon that had seen fit to walk out in a huff at the time. So who knows what twists in the tale could upset the applecart going forward. But, if the past is any guide to sober assessment, it makes quirky policy aberrations such as the one perpetrated by Madame Gandhi the First seem like so much obsolete junk in the backyard of history. Change, it appears, is about tomorrow and has scant respect for inconvenient precedent. They are handing out the Happy Masks and it may be seen as party pooping behaviour to refuse to don them. Besides, they will be handing out silly hats too and whistles that blow raspberries on the down draft.

And wreathed in them smiling masks, let us do some perceiving of our own, a kind of metaphor for the winds of change. But all is not airy fairy. There are real possibilities. Such as this: we could be waiting for the fun and island games to begin shortly at Havana. That is, after 81 year old Fidel moves on. Though it is true enough that he does have a brother nominally in the saddle and also a couple of sons dying to inherit the mantle. But the trick question is - will it be a socialist mantle that descends on whomsoever succeeds? Are they still making them in Shanghai because if not then they’ve gone out of production. There’s Hugo Chavez and his discounted oil of course. But will this alone be incentive enough to stay in poverty any longer than the fifty years endured already? One’s mirthful self thinks, or is it that it suspects, that we may have a very active emerging market buzzing shortly within a short boat ride of Miami. I can almost see the neon lighting up and the ghosts of all those pre-revolution croupiers preening in their bespoke dinner jackets, their customers wreathed in the world’s finest cigar smoke and Papa Hemingway smiling into his beard from the cumulus forming above.

But as things stand, the IBM study implies, none to subtly, that the global financial services think-tanks should urgently review “the situation” unless it’s other Fagins, including the localised ones, they are willing to be losing their business to. This is because, most of the worthies interviewed opined that they did not operate in a “globally integrated” manner. So if the powers that be in Wall Street and Broad Street and The City and so on, listen; a study, like this one, may cause US, European, Japanese and Australian financial services firms to reorganise. But, even then, it also implies, for reasons of practicality if none other, that home grown financial services firms, those who know their own yards, inclusive of its niche segments and contours, could end up being the major facilitators of this growth opportunity. And then, if BMW ends up selling more Beamers in New Delhi than it does in Frankfurt it should not be the German, or even the American case, to wonder.

(1,736 words)

Title: No Wonder!
By Gautam Mukherjee
Monday 17th September 2007

This and all other essays on GHATOTKACHSERIES are copyright 2005-2007 by Gautam Mukherjee. All rights reserved.

Spoilers don't prosper

2007-08-14T04:22:00.000-07:00

Spoilers don’t prosper

The present clamouring against the signed and cabinet-cleared Indo-American Civilian Nuclear Agreement by the Left Combine and the Opposition BJP is both obscurantist and retrograde. As a filibustering tactic in parliament, complete with slogan shouting scenes, general cacophony and walk-outs, it is destined to end in a whimper. This is misguided opposition to a foreign policy triumph that ends over three decades of nuclear apartheid against India. Perhaps this is the very problem, that the agreement, after tortuous and careful negotiations, has come to fruit. Much of the present uproar may be fuelled by common jealousy and deserves to be ignored with the firmness and resolve that the prime minister has shown thus far. In the unlikely event that the Left withdraws support and brings down the UPA government over this historic breakthrough, it is unlikely that any successor government will choose to attempt renegotiation of this nuclear agreement for fear of failure to wrest any further concessions from the only remaining superpower.

But for the moment, even as the Left’s opposition to the agreement is predictable given its antagonism towards closer ties with the US, the opposition of the BJP is somewhat puzzling. After all, it was the NDA government, led by the BJP, which initiated and fostered the tilt towards closer ties with the US in the first place!

And what is the fear after all? If India does need to test another nuclear device at any point in the future, we will surely go ahead and do so, guided solely by our own national compulsions. Cutting off our nuclear fuel supplies or even halting civilian nuclear cooperation, if it comes to that, will not stop us attending to our security needs. But by that time, we would be that much more knowledgeable in civilian nuclear technology and manufacturing and considerably more capable of making our own way. It is therefore inexplicable that we should be concerned about our security interests being compromised by this agreement. Let us remember that we attained rudimentary nuclear power and weapons status despite economic sanctions and suspended nuclear cooperation from the days after our first test in the mid-seventies.

As this agreement is implemented in the years to come, we can at last go forward towards energy security, essential in a country that imports over 60 per cent of its oil. This agreement will also boost nuclear power technology absorption, not only from America, but France and Canada and other nuclear powers and help to diversify our sources of machinery, technology and fuel from various members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) around the world. In addition, the understanding with the US is that even though she may be compelled to cease nuclear cooperation with India, bound as she is by the rigours of her Hyde Act, in the event we test again, she will not stand in the way of other nations in the NSG continuing to cooperate with us so that our supply lines and so forth are not disrupted.

In terms of the perceived, and opposed, foreign policy tilt towards the United States, let the opponents ask themselves whether our long-term leaning towards the oil producing nations of the Middle East including Iraq and Iran gave us any appreciable advantages even in the pricing of the oil, let alone in other areas? And let us contrast this meagre yield from decades of unswerving loyalty to the Arabs and Persians with the defence and agricultural cooperation benefits we have already realised from Zionist Israel, a staunch US ally, within just a few years after we normalised our diplomatic relations with them.

As for the Left’s ideological overlords, the People’s Republic of China – the situation, right from the sixties when they conquered large tracts of the North-East of India with consummate ease, and from which they withdrew only in the face of intense American pressure, has always been uncomfortable for India. We are still, to date, as China continues to demand Arunachal Pradesh and other territorial concessions from us, forced to deal with this menacing neighbour from a position of weakness. Surely it is time for India to update its foreign policy in line with our current aspirations and place in the comity of nations!

The world has come to accept that India is now on an accelerated economic growth path that is likely to sustain for many years to come. This will naturally make us richer, and assuming this to be so, is it not important to use our improved resources to build the military capabilities to offset any external or internal threat without compromise? But while the opponents to the nuclear cooperation agreement with the US may not disagree with this premise in principle, they insist on ignoring the potential for this agreement to act as a great enabler towards this objective. While the agreement is indeed a civilian accord that will facilitate the building of nuclear power plants in India, it clearly represents an unmistakeable strategic alliance with the US and the developed West that will help us achieve both energy and military security over time.

As for the other criticism about India turning into an American satellite with proscribed foreign policy freedoms, perhaps we need to welcome it for its possibilities and nod to realism. After all, for all our much publicised “non-alignment” we were regarded as a de facto Soviet satellite, and were persuaded, if not compelled, to follow the USSR’s foreign policy initiatives in return for their civil and military cooperation. This long-lasting alliance forged by free India, though date-expired now, endured for decades and served to force an American tilt towards Pakistan and China, even as we were ruled out of contention to our long-term disadvantage. That is, till very recently: this is a second chance and we cannot afford to let it pass us by.

We must also realise that our present warm relations with the US owes more to the realities of unfolding geo-politics than it does to any visionary diplomacy on our part, or even a sudden rediscovery of each other’s virtues, but should we not at least show the good sense to grasp the opportunity that the tide of history has presented us?

(1,045 words)

Title: Spoilers don't prosper

By Gautam Mukherjee
Tuesday, 14th August 2007

This and all other original essays on GHATOTKACHSERIES are copyright 2005-2007 by Gautam Mukherjee. All rights reserved.

It was twenty years ago today...

2007-07-19T03:44:00.000-07:00

It was twenty years ago today...

Actually, it’s been forty years, and a month, and a few days, if you go by the release dates of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on June 1, 1967 (Great Britain) and June 2, 1967 (United States) - thereby accounting for most of the English speaking cash registers in the swinging sixties. There was also a world-wide release in June 1967 that issued the vinyl wherever EMI had a presence, India included.

It all came back to me, not when I saw smatterings of the press on the 40th anniversary, not when I read the news (Oh Boy), of the BBC’s sponsoring of today’s relatively obscure pop/rock idols performing the thirteen tracks on Sgt. Pepper. That is, after all, pretty standard tributeism. It was when I saw the parody/tribute to that striking record sleeve closer to home.It was staid old India Today’s recent cover for the issue on 60 years of independent India.

For India Today it was a curiously selective photo essay in the tradition of the now extinct Life Magazine with potted blurb covering the decades. But then, here is a magazine already grown old and boring in thirty years, stuck in the arthritic groove of its journalistic formula and its ageing proponents, leached of spontaneity, proud of its ability to squash surprise and eliminate spark in favour of gloss and vacuous luxe. Of course, one can say what one will, but it’s paid off in yards of consumer product advertisements and demonstrated good business sense.

Nevertheless, perhaps in a burst of sentiment wafting forth from a peace-and-love-generation staffer, there they were, on the cover of India Today, those same Sgt. Pepper colours, that same collage of faces and bodies adapted, a little ridiculously, to suit the India story, complete with that same graveside flower arrangement in front, evocative, as we all know (or should), of an epitaph, rather than what the corporate sector refers to as a “forward statement”.

But let’s suppose for a minute that in using the Sgt. Pepper style cover, we India Today types are sticking with the original Beatles metaphor of influences, namely: (the faces and life-size cut-out collage), death,(name spelt out in flowers at the feet of all those faces), and rebirth (radically different content in the music). Let us pretend that we India Today types also know what we are burying and what we’re looking forward to as a nation. A photo essay compendium may not do the trick but one wonders what will? Why does all talk of progress and change in India seem so unconvincing? Is there a basic attitude problem here?

As far as I can see, we Indians suffer from a form of anal retentiveness. We are not willing to let go of anything, good, bad or ugly. Our way is to layer in the change on top of all that has gone before and if the burden is onerous enough to smother, snuff and extinguish any or all of the past- then so be it. In the event, we don’t have to hold ourselves responsible because we didn’t do it, it just happened and so, whatever it is, or becomes, it is not our fault. You may say it is a luxurious approach to social and economic change, ambivalence institutionalised even, but we in India won’t have it any other way.

This is why we cleave and cling to our socialism and love of poverty and the fertile fields of corruption and goondagiri, wearing both white and blue collars simultaneously. We preserve every bureaucratic hurdle intact to the best of our ability in the face of an information technology onslaught and try, try our best, to render null and void every move towards progress and extraction from the third world mire we have grown so very fond of.This, even as some of us realise that this is, at last, a losing battle. We tell ourselves that even if this is so, let us gird up and fight our last stand fight, our rearguard, reactionary, last gasp action, our bhelpuri version of Thermopylae if you will. The idea is to give nothing away right up to the moment we are swept away in the rising tide of global manna for our corporate prowess. After all, it won’t take us a split second to turn around from the other end of the sheet as if to the manner born.

We are not just reactionary but also horribly primitive, consisting of a veritable horde of “me-first” Socialists in transition. Paradoxical Socialists really, people who are uncaring about the suffering of the poor, perfectly content to be exploitative, venal and callous. We are Socialists capable of the greatest hypocrisy and brazenly determined to show little sign of a change of heart even when it comes right down to it. Still, God knows, this is a surprising nation, adept at confounding doomsayers and steeped in an undeniable religiosity that must be performing its own set of independent miracles. We may not, after all, need the pointy-head analysis if the majority of our people would rather take it as read. Awareness may suffice. See how we’ve managed to populate ourselves a billion plus strong, copious by any reckoning, at the rate of several million every year, with a combination of fecund awareness and prudery. And fast forwarding a bit, the prosperity that is coming to this benighted, misguided populace, will, in time, and not very much time at that, become a great metaphor for wisdom and sagacity. We might, all us India Today types, overtake ourselves in the darkness, by default, or by virtue of apathy if nothing else, and be content to take on from where we find ourselves. We won’t, most likely, remember to thank the few on the market capitalism bus who’ve been motoring on through the night while we slept - but then, “we are like this only”.

The prosperity coming our way is indeed a happy thought brought on by a happy juxtaposition. Because, surely, the proper and right use of metaphor, in celebration of our 60th, calls for it to be seen through to its implied end, hand-on-elbow and right up the stairs to the paradigm shift. That is, clearly, what The Beatles did with Sgt. Pepper – they buried the Brian Epstein induced Beatlemania that had lasted four phenomenally successful years, even with Epstein voicing his misgivings, and got on with being themselves. And in doing so, the world discovered that their larger selves were, if not grander, certainly more profound than when they were simply the biggest pop group that ever walked the face of the earth.There was great symbolism to the moment that gave birth to Sgt. Pepper and the album sleeve designer Peter Blake managed to capture it. It was symbolism so powerful that people around the world are still using the metaphor to depict change and renewal these forty years on.

Many others have parodied/paid tribute to the Pepper album cover, irresistible for its social commentary. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention was among the first, and later, much later, The Simpsons, more than once and Mad Magazine (2002) and Rolling Stone Magazine – for its 1,000th issue last year (2006). What sort of closures this might imply for these various entities is however not the subject of this piece. Besides, there’s always the fun and games of putting in all the faces, life-size cutouts and wax dummies one likes without worrying about the “grave” symbolism. It’s like throwing a party with everyone one has ever admired in attendance and then taking a group shot while everyone can still stand up.

But Sgt. Pepper, in 1967, represented the straight forward burial of certain endings. The Beatles had stopped touring in 1966 and were no longer constrained to write music they could readily perform live. In fact, unlike The Rolling Stones, they never performed live in concert as a group ever again. Sgt.Pepper, album number 8 in their repertoire, was the first of their influential and path-breaking studio albums. It used the then new-fangled eight track in multiple track series for the first time. Thanks to George Harrison’s fascination with India and Hinduism, they used Indian session musicians and instruments such as the sitar, tanpura and tabla and also a 41 piece western orchestra inspired by Lennon-McCartney. George Martin, their legendary Producer, sometimes referred to as the “Fifth Beatle”, mixed in authentic fair ground music and multiple sound effects using loop techniques that were brand new in 1966 and 1967. There was further technological wizardry in the mixing and other serendipitous discoveries of technique and effect during the 12 to 20 hour recording sessions spread over 129 days at EMI’s the state-of-the-art Abbey Road Studios.

And for the first time, The Beatles, inspired by Paul McCartney, made an interesting attempt to create alternate persona, a set of alter-egos that could liberate one : “You could do anything when you got to the mike or on your guitar, because it wasn't you,” said Paul, except that, in hindsight, it was very much you, just a different, more liberated, and as far as Sgt. Pepper went, a somewhat music-hall- psychedelic- hippie-generation-eastern-mysticism celebrating you.Nevertheless the McCartney inspired Sgt. Pepper, his Lonely Hearts Club Band and Billy Shears were very well received as a “theatrical conceit: an imaginary concert by a fictional band, played by the Beatles” as a Rolling Stones Magazine retrospective review put it as late as November 1, 2003. Over 11 million copies of the album were sold celebrating its incandescent creativity.

At the same time, Sgt. Pepper conclusively marked the end of the exuberant “I Wanna Hold your Hand” era. From now on, all those fifties rock and roll and delta blues influences showed up in the Beatles repertoire, or indeed in their solo careers thereafter, only as a retro echo, a stylistic highlight or a wry comment.

As postscript, perhaps because no metaphorical death is complete without a flesh and blood victim, the most influential figure in the making of the early Beatles died suddenly just after Sgt. Pepper was released. The soft-spoken but visionary Jewish record-shop owner who had taken the Beatles from their leather-jacketed beginnings to worldwide success via scores of the happiest pop songs the world had ever heard was dead. Epstein died just when his protégés grew wings and began to fly their own trajectories. It was time for him to let go. And so he did. In the India story, the parallel would obviously be the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.

Many years later, twenty one actually, by which time John Lennon too had been dead seven years; George Harrison, now in the latter part of his solo career, put together another supergroup over a series of dinner parties at his Friar Park home in the United Kingdom and at Bob Dylan’s house and studio in Santa Monica, California. This too, like Sgt. Pepper, was an alter-ego experiment, that went not just good but absolutely brilliant. The Travelling Wilburys existed for just ten days, a twinkling of an eye really, but it was long enough to produce a burst of creativity amongst its starry line-up consisting of Harrison himself, fellow Brit Jeff Lynne and transatlantic cousins Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison. They were backed by a session musician drummer called Jim Keltner, saxophone player Jim Horn, percussionist Ray Cooper and one Ian Wallace on tom toms.

Together, the stellar assembly wrote, rehearsed and recorded a celestial theme album fit for the Gods. The Wilburys persisted rather more seriously in the masking of their real identities and creating a myth but of course it came to nought. You can’t hide the distinctiveness of each of these great musicians as soon as you hear them play or hear their voices. But you can benefit from their collaboration, that alchemy that was part fuelled by their musical vision and pasts and infused also with their mesmerising tribute to their rock and roll and bluesy roots. When The Traveling Wilburys Volume 1 was released, it went platinum pretty soon and eventually sold over five million copies.And once again, there was a blood sacrifice. Roy Orbison, a luminous presence in The Traveling Wilburys Volume 1 died suddenly, barely three months after the release, but not before he'd got to know about and savour its resounding success.

There was a Travelling Wilburys Volume 3 too, produced in 1990, probably in deference to Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever reckoned perhaps as Vol. 2 by George Harrison because it too had Jeff Lynne, George Harrison, and Roy Orbison performing on it, with only Bob Dylan, from the Wilburys line-up, absent. But in any case, Wilburys Volume 3 was orphaned without Orbison’s trembling tenor, that unique pain-filled-Pretty-Woman-sunniness that he had, capable of lighting up not just a recording studio but the creativity of his supremely gifted collaborators.

The astral Orbison would, nigh on twenty years on from those ten days in mid 1988 at Santa Monica, California, it is possible, be satisfied with The Wilburys as a fit epitaph for himself. And come to think of it, maybe George Harrison would see it that way too, albeit with a doff-my-cap to "My Sweet Lord" and "While my Guitar Gently Weeps" and maybe "Here Comes the Sun".

But all of these were songs, of which Orbison also had a bushelful, many hits, but The Wilburys was, in effect, the last hit album George produced, wrote, performed and sang for. And it really was Orbison's last work.

Why else would Olivia Harrison, George's widow, re-release the complete CD set of The Wilburys along with a DVD on the making of this remarkable album, this June 2007, nearly twenty years on?

That it’s gone straight to No.1 in the UK and Australia and No. 9 in America is fitting tribute to its quality and relevance. And till June 30th 2007 The Wilburys had already sold over 500,000 copies worldwide. Its true. Witness yet another generation coming to terms with those ten days of masked magic!

As alter-ego rock and roll albums go, The Wilburys was only reckoned to be No. 70 on The Rolling Stones Magazine's All-Time-Great Albums Chart wherein Sgt. Pepper's occupies the No. 1 slot. It hardly matters, this order of champion stragglers sloping their way along the Yellow Brick Road. What matters is that these beloved pieces of music and their creators are on it, mask or moustache included.

Zorro, Batman, Superman, Spiderman and every secret-identity-Walter-Mitty out there would know just how it feels. Anyway, goodbye Nelson and goodbye Lefty also. Johnnie's still in the basement mixing up his medicine and Jeff and Tom are hanging out the washing. But you guys on the other side, you take care… and thanks for the music… and here’s hoping you’re having a blast as fully-paid-up card-carrying members of The Immortals.

And don't forget to remember us to John Lennon and Elvis. After all, we who flip over the CDs also stand and serve. So don't forget us neither.

Title: It was twenty years ago today…

By GHATOTKACH

Thursday, 19th July 2007

(2,523 words)

This and all other essays on GHATOTKACHSERIES are copyright 2005-2007 by Gautam Mukherjee. All rights reserved.

The art of defending sleaze

2007-07-03T07:47:00.000-07:00

The art of defending sleaze

Our “non-political” prime minister has been delivering a command performance of late, flitting from lecturing Indian business on the responsibilities of corporate governance to expressing great concern for the underprivileged. But none of this causes him to show visible discomfort when called upon to defend the indefensible. In fact, he has become so good at the political about-turn and any presumed necessary double-speak, that those who have been coveting his job are now reduced to the brink of despair. There seems little doubt that Dr. Manmohan Singh will complete his full term in office because he has shown a steely determination to hang on to his job and do whatever this takes. But the price of this security of tenure may well be the aiding and abetting of a developing situation that has the potential of subverting the spirit, if not the letter of our constitution. Of course, Dr. Singh knows that if he says no, there is a line of Congressmen only too eager to say yes in his place. Still, we may, by virtue of this most unusual of presidential elections coming up, be heading for a situation in the not too distant future that echoes the authoritarian interlude in our political past. We may also be heading for a future coronation rubber-stamped by every institution of constitutional significance.

The prime minister, in being his pliable self, is inexorably paving the way for a consolidation of political power without responsibility, that began, ironically, with his own appointment three years ago. But in the current situation, not only has Dr. Singh demonstrated the obtuseness necessary to defend the murkiest presidential candidate in independent India’s history, but he has done it with the practiced and blatant assertion of an accomplished politician undisturbed by paradox or hypocrisy. In the face of a barrage of allegations presented by print and electronic media alike on top of a clamour from the political opposition, Dr. Singh has had no difficulty in dismissing all the uncovered sleaze on Mrs. Patil as just so much “mudslinging”.

But then, we should remember that Dr. Singh has had three years of experience at defending a sprinkling of alleged murderers and financial skimmers and scamsters that populate his party, those of his coalition partners, the UPA’s parliamentary supporters - and a few such have found berths even within the union cabinet. Some of these duly elected worthies Dr. Singh has seen fit to appoint, and defend, up to the moment when they have been convicted and hauled off to jail. Others, with similar contours, are still waiting for the allegations to stick in the form of a conviction or two, and the prime minister is perfectly happy to wait alongside. The alibi, as always, is the lofty principle of presumed innocence till proven guilty which in India is turning into the rule of criminals instead of being proved by the exception.

This being broadly so, why should it be different in the case of Mrs. Pratibha Patil, a lady candidate chosen and agreed upon, incredibly, only after scrutinising a long list of eminent but presumably less pliable candidates? Allegations of fraud, embezzlement and murder and a clutch of legal cases arising out of these issues hovering around her and her immediate family have not been considered deterrents! The calculation may well be that due legal process in India is so tardy that there is little possibility of Mrs. Patil’s court cases becoming an embarrassment in the near future or perhaps even throughout her expected tenure of five years.

Meanwhile, Dr. Singh, the ruling coalition and its parliamentary supporters outside the government, have the brute numbers to elect Mrs. Pratibha Patil to be the 12th president of India. And that is precisely what they will do unless the parliamentarians pull an upset by voting their conscience during the secret ballot. But this is a remote possibility, and the ruling coalition will probably place, in the form and person of Mrs.Pratibha Patil, a rubber stamp by any other name, in Rashtrapati Bhavan. This appears to be a strategic consideration of great importance and apparently needs to be put in place before the general elections roll around in 2009.

The prime minister was himself elevated to his high office by virtue of his skills as an economist and his reputation as an architect of the reforms, but also because he has no grass roots support of his own, and significantly, because of his temperament. This temperament allows Dr. Singh to aid an abet the installing of a pliable and “committed” president in a throwback to the tactics last practiced by Indira Gandhi when she appointed Giani Zail Singh. But while this latest attempt at institutional subversion goes to weaken the very roots of the national fabric, the true worry lies in the kind of documents an over committed and compromised president can affix her signature and seal to. The outgoing president Dr. Kalam had the temerity to return several bills for reconsideration. Will a Mrs. Patil as president and commander in chief of our armed forces, beholden as she must feel, dare to even voice a contradictory opinion?

Our prime minister has not been able to do so because of the peculiarity of circumstance that put him in office, and very soon, it seems inevitable, neither will the President of India be able to do so. With this presidential election a foregone conclusion, the only future remedy is to change this travesty of democratic process, more suited to Zimbabwe than New Delhi, at the ballot box. Let us hope that in the interim there are no laws passed to prevent multi-party democracy, no fresh “emergencies” and no useful bans on certain sections of the polity. If all the truth leaches out of the ballot box, our very next election could turn up trumped up results. With the prime minister’s office and the president’s turned into pocket boroughs how long before we get a nice reasonable deaf mute into the Chief Election Commissioner’s chair? And what about a mentally retarded Chief Justice thereafter? 2009 may be our last chance to set this effrontery right. Because if we aren’t very careful, the world’s largest democracy could well end up as the world’s biggest series of rubber stamps.

(1,047 words)

Title: The art of defending sleaze
By GHATOTKACH
Tuesday, 03 July 2007

Also published by The Pioneer www.dailypioneer.com on 6th July 2007 on the Edit-page in the main Opinion slot as "Zen and the art of deceit"

This and all other essays on GHATOTKACHSERIES are copyright 2005-2007 by Gautam Mukherjee. All rights reserved.

Pinch me quick I'm having a revisionist nightmare

2007-05-31T06:35:00.000-07:00

Pinch me quick I’m having a revisionist nightmare

If only Dr. Jekyll knew, and could actually remember the Mr. Hyde of it - that socialist nightmare of bread lines and gas lines and rationed notebooks and eighteen-year waiting lists for an Ambassador - before he drank the draught that transmogrified him! If Dr. Jekyll Manmohan Singh knew and remembered, he would not be backsliding to his former Delhi School of Economics Marxist professor ways. Which Dr. Jekyll in his senses would jeopardise his Harley Street practice, his lady-love and his very life on purpose? Later on, of course, it was too late. The repeats came on thick and fast because the bestial Mr. Hyde had possessed poor Jekyll. It’s a morality tale worth the remembering – about how easily the much vaunted Marxist dialectic can turn into a singular monomania. And just how tyrannical Marxism can be in practice, with its foolish anti-prosperity stance, its ever willingness to destroy rather than create, and most tellingly, how little it ends up doing for the poor. After all, administered loans to Congress goons and calibrated licence-permit shenanigans are not designed to benefit the aam aadmi.

I don’t know how Dr. Singh handles his economic schizophrenia. But it seems to be hitting him with increasing frequency now that he is past his third year at the top-job-but-one. But this much is sure, the thought of the implied self destruction involved has a Kamikaze quality about it. His bouts of Marxism alternated with nuclear-power-pursuing Capitalism are quite liable to judder into the body economic square on. And wouldn’t that be a pity, all of us going up in flames for the price of his Marxist nostalgia? There can be no valid argument against putting a stop to his Kamikaze economics. We must get the 9.4 per cent GDP achieving doctor back into his economically liberal straight-jacket without delay.

Trouble is, this nightmare, like others in the repertoire, is always about underlying causes. Could it be that Dr. Singh, standing in on our behalf, cannot withstand his own success? Is the death-wishing longing for the squalor of an antediluvian Marxism so strong that he feels compelled to watch its approach helplessly, with the paralysed fascination of an ant with Godzilla lumbering his way? Why does the good doctor’s mid-term course correction sound like he wants to be hit, along with all of us in tow, by one of Shri Lalu Prasad Yadav’s profit making freight trains? What happened to his Liberal World Banking phase that not only made him personally solvent but also created him into the economic architect of liberalisation in 1991? Why is the same gentleman going around apologising every second day for doing well by the country? Why is he wringing his hands in anxiety for taking India away from its creeping death two per cent per annum GDP former self?

Perhaps the cancer is in the Congress Party itself, nostalgic for its Socialist glory days of being feted and flounced in the USSR, an entity since deceased, and by the domestic gaggle of Left Parties that persist in “supporting” it, even if it’s all the way into the ground. Could it be that this new fangled success and recognition that India is enjoying is too much to bear for many Congress Party dinosaurs wedded to the Socialist era? These Congressmen have their reasons to clamour for the old ways, but what is causing a change of heart in the prime minister? Why is he feeling guilty when spurious and motivated comments are made about his being a prime minister of the rich alone? Instead of showing the grit needed to take his reforms to the next stage and the next thereafter, Dr. Singh is busy exhorting the successful to avoid flaunting their success. With the record number of new billionaires that market reforms have created, it is definitely too late to hide such bright lights under socialist bushels. But isn’t this by way of the wrong emphasis anyway? After all, the Reforms, never on an overtly accelerated path in Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government, are now practically extinguished, thus putting paid to the possibility of automatically including the many that have not yet benefited from them. By reacting to criticism the way he has, Dr. Singh is in danger of besmirching his own best legacy unless he manages to show a political acumen for doublespeak that has not been evident so far.

Maybe his current bizarre reversals and about turns are knee-jerk reactions, scared up by one election loss after another, while dreaming of former near or absolute majority days with a comfortable supporting cast of Marxists behind the Congress Party. So the mantra handed down to him may well be - the economy be damned! After all, the economy does not vote. It does appear beyond the think tank capabilities of Congress policy formation to get away from the old snake oil and bamboozle-the-public prescriptions. Instead of taking the benefits of a strong economy to improve infrastructure for the masses they would rather suppress what gains have been made and reverse the flow to achieve the uniform poverty and inefficiency they have been comfortable with for decades. But infuriatingly, it has also been the Congress way to adopt a two-faced Janus push me-pull-you tactic of milking business and industry for funds while indulging in pro-poor propaganda and populist give-the-man-a-fish sops as elections near.

Perhaps a malleable Dr. Singh as prime minister, called the “weakest” ever by Mr. Advani, elected without any grass-roots support, via a safe Assamese seat to the Rajya Sabha, was hand-picked for his lack of angularity. But Dr. Singh may actually lack conviction too because this is not the first time his economics has changed to suit the role. He has gone from Marxism to free-market policies to the present misguided “inclusive” mish-mash of subsidies and sops. This abject pandering to short term non-productive expenditure is a drain on the nation’s resources and will lead to inflation. It is the productive parts of the economy that will consequently face higher interest rates and other curbs on their growth potential. Dr. Singh knows better and should have been reluctant to follow these failed policies. But the question is, two years from the hustings, just how much Dr. Jekyll is still left in Mr. Hyde?

(1,055 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Thursday 31st May 2007

Philosophers of simulation

2007-05-18T03:47:00.000-07:00

Essay-trends

Philosophers of simulation

The latest in the field of millennium thinking is all from France. And one of the most interesting and influential theories going around is about simulation. That’s simulation, not stimulation- as in pretend activity, not the breath-quickening kind, though it is arguable that some simulation is a lot more stimulating than the “real thing”.

French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who died on March 6th, 2007, at the age of 77, once famously said everything in a “post-modern” context is simulated. Post-modernism is a term coined by fellow Frenchman Jean Francois Lyotard in the late 1940’s. It is defined as, among other things, as a time after the era of “metanarratives” or grand theories that pushed “universal truths”. Lyotard obviously thought post-modernism was born already when he enunciated the definition.

And when Baudrillard said everything is simulated, somewhat later, in the eighties, he meant everything, even war, or maybe, particularly war, which he likened to a video game. So a soldier knows he’s at war not in any metanarrative sense but because of the amount of ammunition he expends or the tonnage of bombs he’s dropping. And Saddam Hussein knew he was at war by the number of Iraqi soldiers he was turning into cannon fodder just so that he could maintain himself in power. There is, according to this vision, no metanarrative involved. Neither is there any “real” war going on without the metanarrative, despite the suffering and bloodshed it engenders.

Baudrillard spoke of the seductiveness of something standing in for something else, the simulation itself. It works well enough, as long as we accept that we live in a post-modern era of fractured universal truth. The eclecticism we see all around us would strongly suggest that this is so, and so, by implication and empirical observation alike, everything around us is simulated. All things great and small are updated by means of simulation. Baudrillard explained that “object” has grown more important than “subject” and more attractive too.

So, by inference, the blatant steel and chrome excess of a 1950’s Cadillac Eldorado, which for all its sensual curves and protuberances, its classic sexiness, was merely “modern”. Alors Voila! Witness the post-modern simulated Cadillac: it is half the size to reduce fuel consumption, has just a hint or two of its former chromatic exuberance, retains a lot of sound-proofed pizzazz under the bonnet, and enough leather-coddling luxury on the inside so that you can, and do, recognise it. It’s Marilyn Monroe updated to Scarlett Johansson. It’s different, this simulated being, but you have to be very churlish to complain.

But what happens to the purist? There may be no go but to cater to him. But just remember he too is a simulacrum of a purist himself. But since you still have retro-people like this, and classicists, and the unbending orthodox, you might just point him towards a Porsche 911, almost unchanged, or the Oyster Perpetual from Rolex. Even they have moved the rest of their lines behind the mirror to avoid extinction. Where, pray, are Ovaltine and Binaca? But those who thrive and grow still - McDonald’s and its “healthy” Big Mac, the butch new Germanic Rolls Royce Phantom – are unabashed simulations of their former selves, Mata Hari, RTD2, Swastika- even some NASA chic.

When Baudrillard wrote of the entire post-modern landscape being simulated, it’s because a turret or belvedere perched on a suburban house and a Doric half pillar clinging to the side of a penthouse, is indeed simulation. Neither becomes Blenheim Palace or the Parthenon by virtue of such embellishment. But both are touched and benefited, however improbably, by a resonance of those places and others like them.

Followers of Baudrillard’s social theories termed his vision, or at least a part of it, Hyperreality, meaning a simulated reality that is more real than the real. Simulation itself creates this Hyperreality, constantly enriched by an ever varied menu. It is an evolving species, just like economic theory, moved on from the static visions of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Consider that in the 20th century you were a Liberal or a Conservative or even a Communist. In the 19th, you were sometimes a Feudalist and a Slaver and an Imperialist in addition to being a Whig or a Tory. But now you can be an issue-based both/all three/manifold, without betraying your beliefs for the jettisoning of the metanarrative. The simulation in all this, according to Baudrillard, is in the fact that the media today puts in most of the simulation. It is media that amplifies and repeats, distributes the labels, highlights the importance, defines the definition, turns it hyperreal.

In other words, simulation is not a fringe activity appealing to well, a fringe, but mainline evolution that is changing the way we think and perceive. The masses have good simulation antennae. It is a poor man’s aptitude, to grasp fractured nuances, to inductively leap over the metanarratives it replaces - because the poor long, much more than the others, for change and progress. The related implication is that the rich tend to be reactionary, metaphorically hanging on to their treasure chests and their status, looking at everything through the prism of vested interest. The middle classes are haplessly entrapped, choosing to emulate the rich except for their maverick outriders. But when the changes wrought by simulation become ubiquitous, even simple things wafted up from the street like wearing your shirt outside your trousers with a coat, or replying “good” to “How are you,” then, the middle classes vanguard the change, sometimes making the rich follow them into adoption. Adoption may well be the idiot cousin of simulation but we never ever call it names.

It was Jean Baudrillard and his thoughts that also inspired the makers of The Matrix. It is remarkable just how much The Matrix and its sequels appealed to the young. They were not confused by its esoterics, nor disturbed at the notion of being imprisoned by a rampant technology.

I suppose you have to like mirrors. And remixes too. But which part of the mix is the most real? But that’s like wanting to look into the core of an onion. Jean Baudrillard himself put it differently. He said: "What I am, I don't know. I am the simulacrum of myself."

( 1,050 words)

By Gautam Mukherjee
Friday, 18th May 2007

This and all other original essays on GHATOTKACHSERIES are copyright 2005-2007 by Gautam Mukherjee. All rights reserved.