CAN BENGAL INDUSTRIALIZE?

[Bengal was India's most industrialized state still the 1950s. Then its industries got into trouble, their workers were unionized by communists. They won elections in 1977, and have been in power ever since. Industrialists have withdrawn from the state and set themselves up in more friendly states in the west and south. Recently, however, the communist government has tried to attract private industry. Its most conspicuous success in persuading the Tatas to make a small car in India has run into trouble over land acquisition, which has been strongly resisted by people who would lose their land and their jobs. I wrote this critique of West Bengal government's attempts to attract industry in the Calcutta Telegraph of 3 January 2007.]

CAN BENGAL INDUSTRIALIZE?

Being a west Indian, I never met a Bengali till I was through my teens. My image of Bengal was shaped by Rabindra Nath Tagore, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Satyajit Ray. I used to think that the Bengalis were the most talented Indians. When I went abroad, I met my first Bengalis, and the awe in which I held them depreciated; especially after I went to Germany and found even children speaking German, I came to think that Germans were more intelligent than Bengalis.
But then I made some good Bengali friends. So I was pained when West Bengal began after 1965 to make news for all the wrong reasons: strikes, bandhs, gheraos, processions, and economic paralysis. My Bengali friends were, of course, overjoyed that revolution was round the corner. Slowly, though, these disruptions passed out of the news although they continued: West Bengal ceased to matter to the rest of India.
Today, I find West Bengal again in the news – not for the bandhs and processions which continue, but for Singur. The lineup is, however, different. Whereas the communists were the villains of the 1970s and 1980s, angels are on their side today; so also are capitalist devils. Everyone takes it for granted that Ratan Tata’s plan to make people’s cars in Singur is a Good Thing, that it is heroic of Buddhadev Bhattacharya to vanquish all opposition to it, and that Mamata Banerjee is a crazy Luddite.
Ratan Tata is one of the most respected men of my generation. But I find some of his recent actions uncharacteristic. Throughout independent India’s history, the Tatas kept a distance from the government. In the licence-permit raj, the right to expand or diversify became a favour from the government for which businessmen had to fight and bribe. Most of them did both. But the Tatas stuck to their knitting, and did what they could without courting politicians, begging for favours and oiling political wheels. They dominated the truck and bus industry, made TISCO the least-cost steel producer, and built up TCS outside the control net. They did not bend their knee to anyone – not to Indira Gandhi, nor to Rajiv, nor to George Fernandes. When I joined government in the 1990s, controls were still in place. Many industrialists came to pay court or nudge files along; never anyone from the Tatas. For that I respected them – and so did many of my fellow-Indians.
Singur is the first project on which the Tatas have relied on a government – this time the government of West Bengal – and sought its favours. This is not necessarily improper – not unless they raise their contributions to CPI(M) immoderately – but it is unusual; this is precisely the sort of thing they eschewed when it was so much more common and so necessary for success.
What made them change? My guess is that after the passing of central controls, competition has intensified, corruption has seeped from the centre to the states, and in the dirty new world that has arrived, the Tatas have decided that the West Bengal government is the lesser evil. With the opening up of the economy, it has become easy to import automobile components. And for the smaller manufacturers, accessing the export market has become essential if they are to reach the necessary minimum scale. So the entire automobile industry is rushing to the coast. Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are the favoured locations. Tamil politicians are reputed to be economically rational; and the BJP, of which Narendra Modi is the satrap in Gujarat, is equally realistic about the relationship between power and political prosperity. Ratan Tata has publicly rued that the Tatas were kept out of the aviation industry while sundry upstarts approached politicians and obtained licences. It must hurt because both JRD and Ratan have been amateur flyers and because Air India, the Tatas’ pioneer airline, was snatched away by the government. Ratan Tata presumably found Tata Motors losing out because it would not bribe the politicians of the coastal states; he made a bargain with the government of West Bengal that he found acceptable. I would like to know, though, what the bargain is.
I wondered, earlier, about the Tatas’ bid for Corus. The Birlas were the first to go international; today, every Tom, Dick and Harry is buying companies abroad. But the Tatas stuck to their domestic base through the worst years of controls; why are they trying to acquire a foreign company three times the size of Tata Steel? I attributed the decision to the forthcoming consolidation of the world steel industry, of the emergence of big players like Mittal-Arcelor and their likely entry into the Indian market space. But then I realized that the Tatas were not far behind in acquisitions abroad; their companies too have been spreading out since it was allowed. So I now wonder if it has something to do with the competitive corruption emerging between Indian states – whether the Tatas are winning beachheads in markets abroad where industry is freer and governments cleaner.
Coming to West Bengal, it has always struck me how top-down development in this state is. If you look at India’s most developed states – Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat – most industry there is indigenous and small-scale. All the businessmen whom the West Bengal government favours are big and non-Bengali. In the 1980s and 1990s, they were foreign; Indian industrialists were not welcome. Even now they are generally foreign, like the Salims. The Tatas are the first Indian group to have found favour; and they are different. They treat their workers well, and are friendly to trade unions. They are more congenial to communists.
In particular, I have been struck by Buddhadev’s studied neglect of Mukesh. He is sitting on huge reserves of gas of the Krishna-Godavari coast, and is looking for somewhere to land it and sell it. He tried UP, but the split with Anil wrecked that plan. He has been courting Tamil Nadu, so far without success. All that gas would transform the industrial future of West Bengal. What makes Buddhadev hesitate? The spectre of CITU descending on Calcutta with hundreds of thousands of coal miners?
So I am tempted to formulate the following laws of development under communism. The communist state is a slave of its trade unions. It is forced to rely on big industrialists because small industry cannot survive organized, militant trade unions. Amongst big industrialists it prefers foreign ones who would have no constituency in this country. If it cannot get them, it will settle for Indian ones, but only if they accept CITU. And competition in product markets weakens the bargaining power of trade unions; so it would prefer firms that have a monopoly or a niche market.
These are stringent requirements; if the West Bengal government sticks to them, it may attract Tata Motors, but it will achieve little overall industrialization of the state. If I am right, Buddhadev will face increasingly obstinate opposition within the CPM family, will win ever greater admiration from the bourgeoisie, and will be largely ineffective. It is not his fault; it is the party he belongs to. He should bend it to his will, or split it.

A FIRST VISIT TO LUXEMBURG

[I went to Luxemburg in January 2007 on an official visit, and met ministers, bankers and businessmen amongst others. This report of the visit was published in Business World of 15 January 2007.]

LUXEMBURG EXPERIENCED

Lakshmi Mittal’s acquisition of Arcelor put Luxemburg on Indians’ mental map. I had never been to Luxemburg before; from photographs I had imagined the Arcelor headquarters to be a chateau – a country house to which you drove up along a long shaded avenue. So I was surprised to find it situated in the center of Luxemburg, close to the railway station.. I had expected ‘Mittal-Arcelor’ to be emblazoned in bold on it; instead, I found that the building still bears the name ‘Arbed’ in big stucco lettering at the top (Arbed was Luxemburg’s steel company which was merged with Usinor of France and Aceralia of Spain to form Arcelor in 2001). The new name of the company is found at the entrance in small letters. I had imagined Lakshmi Mittal looking out of its windows on his green, wooded domain; actually, he looks out on busy noontime traffic. That is, when he visits the four-story office mansion built almost a century ago. He does it often; Arcelor-Mittal no doubt engages much of his attention these days. But he has not converted the office into his residence; he stays in a hotel.
Why the Mittal-Arcelor affair made such big news in India is clear – Lakshmi Mittal is of Indian descent, and all true Indians wanted to take up cudgels for him – verbally. But why did it stir people so in Luxemburg? Luc Frieden, minister of justice, the budget and the treasury, said it was because the father or uncle of almost everyone had once worked in Arbed. Jeannot Krecké, minister of the economy, commerce and sports, attached importance to the survival of manufacturing industry. (They do have thick portfolios, these Luxemburg ministers; after all, there are only 15 of them.) Arbed is to Luxemburgers what the Tata Steel is to India. It is an icon; whatever happens to it will reverberate in the local polity – even though Arbed today employs just 6,000 people out of the country’s work force of 311,000, and produces just 4 million tons of steel.
There is also a local way of doing things into which the hostile bid for Arcelor did not fit. Luxemburg has a small share of Arcelor’s equity, and prefers to have a voice in the board. Its government likes to resolve issues by consultation. It also favours shared decision taking, for which it has tripartite bodies in which it brings together workers and employers. Mittal’s reputation as a capitalist buccaneer caused some trepidation at the outset. But both the government and the Mittals (Lakshmi and his son Aditya) have been talking and learning each other’s ways. Luxemburg has a small and approachable government; it acts quickly, and looks for solutions friendly to business. When Luc Frieden drafts a law, he talks to businesses and institutions to learn what they would like to see in it.
I am sure that if Mittal thinks about it, Luxemburg’s ways must contrast to its favour with those of Indian governments. Their slow, opaque, ponderous ways may not so much affect services which require little of land, logistics or investment. But in manufacturing industry, costs depend a great deal on the infrastructure provided by the government. And timing is important in a competitive industry; it makes all the difference how quickly one can go into production. In quality of government, Luxemburg with its small, agile government would score higher than India.
All of manufacturing employs only 11 per cent of Luxemburg’s labour force. Despite – or perhaps because – of the fading of industry, Luxemburg has the highest national income per head in Europe, more than twice that of France, Britain or Japan. Admittedly, the figure involves a bit of sleight of hand, for many people come every day and work in Luxemburg, which is only 82 km long and 57 km wide. Germans call their Turkish workers guest workers, although they have been guests for over 40 years; German guests in Luxemburg, however, commute to work in the morning and go back to their homes across the border every evening, as do workers from France and Belgium, the other countries encircling Luxemburg. A third of Luxemburg working population is non-resident. Foreign workers speed along six-lane highways. As they enter the city, street signs tell them how many parking spaces are available in which underground car park.
Underground activity goes quite far back in Luxemburg’s history. For it is settled on a sandstone cliff overlooking the confluence of the Alzette and Petrusse rivers. Luxemburgers built a castle; but the Austrians, who were visiting Luxemburg in the 18th century, had an even better idea. They tunneled through the cliffs and opened bastions overlooking the valley; this underground fortress was indestructible and made Luxemburg a formidable obstacle to the imperial armies of France as they fought for the mastery of Europe over centuries. Wars between roughly balanced empires are impossible to win decisively. When people despair of winning, their thoughts turn to God. So religion was Luxemburg's major industry in the Middle Ages; buildings of ancient monasteries in the centre are a conspicuous reminder of it. Luxemburg is close to the heart of Europe.
Whereas at one time this made it the tramping ground of armies, today it is bringing to Luxemburg the august institutions of the European Union. Brussels is the home of the European Commission and the fount of its unceasing Directives. But EU is a federation built from the bottom up; so its members have multiplied its institutions, and strewn them across member countries. Luxemburg, being central and beautiful, has got more than its fair share. It could not accommodate the new European armies of bureaucrats in its old palaces, so it has given over the next hill to them. There they have built imposing glasshouses; European Investment Bank, European Court of Justice, Eurostat are amongst the institutions on this hill.
But while European bureaucracy may provide the cream, it is finance that is Luxemburg’s dominant industry. It has an extraordinary concentration of financial service providers. It is host to 155 banks – only 15 of them local. It has 95 insurance companies, and 271 reinsurance companies. It has 946 investment companies, 1046 unit trusts and 15 other undertakings for collective investment (UCIs) as they are locally called. At the beginning of 2006, the combined assets of Luxemburg’s UCIs were over E1.5 trillion – twice India’s national income. The main business of its financial sector is to attract the savings of people in neighbouring countries, principally Germany and Belgium, and to offer them an enormous variety of avenues for financial investment through companies whose solvency is assured. Switzerland has been in this business for much longer; it specializes in investment services for the world’s super-rich. Luxemburg caters more to the middle classes. To this end, it is home to a large number of mutual funds which offer standardized combinations of investments to cater to savers who cannot afford to go to the private bankers of Zurich. It also has branches of all major Swiss banks, which found it to be a good point of entry into EU territory. Initially, investors were attracted by lower taxes; but the difference is now dwindling. Similar funds are available in the home countries of investors, but Luxemburg has kept its lead. Serge Kolb, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Luxembourg, attributes it to low costs, greater choice of funds and better knowledge. But as Fernand Grulms of ABBL, the Bankers’ Association of Luxembourg put it, Luxemburg’s command of languages is also important. A large proportion of the work force speaks German, French and English; and the financial institutions combine expertise on the regulations of neighbouring countries. The government is small, approachable, and friendly to business. So it is really the quality of administration and client service that gives Luxemburg an edge. This is why Indian companies have for long found Luxemburg a good place to raise capital. Immediately after they were allowed to do so, 31 Indian companies issued GDRs in Luxemburg in 1994; since then, Luxemburg has been a favourite destination of Indian companies floating GDRs or raising bonds.
But Luxemburg may become attractive to Indian business for another reason. The European Union is a market of 500 million people with high incomes, as Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg’s minister of foreign affairs and immigration, points out. Indian companies are buying and setting up subsidiaries in EU. If they wanted to establish their presence, Luxemburg would be a strong candidate. It is a small city, consisting largely of offices; only 75,000 people live in the city. But it offers all the conveniences of a city, including a concert hall, an opera house and museums of classical and modern art. It is easy to get into and out of; one can enjoy country life in one of the villages in the neighbourhood and drive into Luxemburg for work. One’s children would grow up speaking French, German and Luxemburgish. Paris, London and Amsterdam would be within driving distance. And for those who get homesick, there are at least five Indian restaurants – Star of Asia, Swagat, Himalaya, Everest and Khana Khazana. No wonder Lakshmi Mittal chose a Luxembourg company to buy into.

INDIAN AND EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY

[January 2007, when I went to Luxemburg, was a time when West Bengal government was facing strong resistance from people it had displaced from land it had handed over to the Tatas for a car factory. This column, published in the Calcutta Telegraph of 13 March 2007, reflects my thoughts about how the Indian democracy differed from - was less constructive than - the European.]


THE POINT OF DEMOCRACY

A couple of months ago I spent some time in Luxemburg. I could not meet the Prime Minister because he was away in Brussels conferring with his fellow European Prime Ministers. But I conferred with four ministers including the foreign minister and the minister of the economy.
I went to Luxemburg with considerable skepticism about the EU experiment. Continuing to maintain the paraphernalia of parliaments and ministries in every member country after they had all joined the EU seemed extravagant to me. The numerous EU institutions housed in vast buildings looked like bureaucracy run riot. Sprinkling the institutions all over Europe seemed designed to waste people’s time and transport facilities. And the innumerable committees holding meetings, tying up so many ministers and bureaucrats, and taking years to come to the most modest decisions, seemed an extraordinarily inefficient way of running a government to me.
One of the things I discussed with the Luxemburg ministers was their reaction to Lakshmi Mittal’s takeover of Arcelor. One of them had reacted adversely. The Indian press had gone to town over this, reading in his hostility parochialism, racism, xenophobia, Indophobia and every other sin. I asked the ministers the reasons for the hostility. They denied every emotion that we Indians had attributed to them; and upon reflection, I realized that the emotions had been attributed without any evidence at all, and certainly without talking to anyone in the Luxemburg government. The Indian press had embroidered an explosive, emotional story around a single statement that supported none of the pyrotechnics, and avoided all on-the-ground investigation.
The ministers’ responses could be summarized to say that Mittal had surprised them: that he had not talked to any of them. This response sounded strange to the liberal in me. After all, enterprises should be freely transferable, and Mittal had a perfect right to take over Arcelor if he could marshall the money and persuade enough of Arcelor’s shareholders to sell their shares. The US government would not have expected Mittal to talk to it if he wanted to take over a similar steel company in the US; nor probably the British government. So while I was in Luxemburg, I was a bit mystified by this insistence on talking.
Then, the reason slowly dawned on me as I watched the proceedings over Singur sitting in Calcutta. There were a number of parties involved: the West Bengal government, the residents of Singur who were going to be replaced, their political leaders, Mamata Banerjee, and the Tatas. It struck me that throughout the Singur affair, these parties talked to everyone except one another. They were aggrieved, agitated or in conflict; they could have sorted out their differences only by talking. But they never talked to one another. Instead, they held public meetings and talked to people who thought like themselves; they organized processions and shouted slogans at a random selection of people who happened to be within shouting distance; they talked to the press, which converted their differences into banner headlines. They did everything within their power to magnify their differences; they never sat down together and look to bridge their differences. After Mamata had gone on hunger strike, Buddhadev offered to talk with her. But she was not interested in talking; she only wanted the Singur takeover to be nullified. Ratan Tata too offered to talk at a very late stage in the proceedings; but he sounded choosy about whom he would talk to, so no one took up his offer. The entire Singur affair was settled by the muscle power of the government; although West Bengal is a democracy, its method of resolution of differences was no different from that of the British government that preceded it, or indeed of a pure dictatorship.
Why did it never occur to the elected government to settle differences by talking to the affected and to political opponents? Evidently because its concept of democracy does not involve peaceful resolution of political problems. The way the communists look at it, the role of democracy is simply to decide who is to rule West Bengal for five years. Once elections have answered that question, the electors are taken to have given the government power to decide such questions as compulsory transfer of land from some farmers to some industrialists.
This view of democracy is not peculiar to West Bengal or to the communists. It is impossible to watch the proceedings of the West Bengal assembly. But I often watch the proceedings of Parliament when I feel my level of cheerfulness is dangerously high; Parliament is a wonderful antidote for cheer. I watched Lalu Yadav present the railway budget. I only watched, because I could hardly hear him. He was made inaudible by half a dozen members of Samajwadi Party, who stood in the well of Parliament and went on shouting the same monotonous slogan again and again, protesting against the threat that the central government might throw out the Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh and impose President’s rule. SP may be considered a party of hooligans. But I have seen members of the Bharatiya Janata Party similarly sabotage proceedings with slogans about Bofors. This is a relatively mild form of sabotage; some weeks earlier, members of the Trinamool Congress Party went about wrecking furniture in the West Bengal assembly. Clearly, these venerable vandals must think that they are doing something useful – that they are exercising their democratic right of protest, or carrying out their duty of protesting against injustice. Just as the West Bengal government believes that an electoral victory gives them the right to compulsory acquisition of anyone’s land, the protesting MPs think that their own election to Parliament gives them a right to stop Parliament from working.
If that is what they think, then what of democratic dialogue? Parliaments are debating societies above anything else; their entire procedure is designed to facilitate orderly discussion. They have formulated elaborate rules about how debate is to be conducted; and they have a speaker who uses those rules to lead an orderly debate. Speakers have extraordinary authority in other Parliaments. Long ago, when I lived in Canada, I used to watch the Canadian Parliament on television. Whatever pandemonium was going on in that Parliament, the speaker had only to stand up, and everyone fell silent.
So I am no longer sure that those European politicians are wasting their time. Arcelor is a big employer in Luxemburg; its steelworkers were liable to be worried and upset by a hostile takeover. The Luxemburg ministers instinctively felt it to be their duty to manage the takeover – a major event in their polity – peacefully and smoothly. They took it as their job to find solutions to public problems that were the most acceptable to those involved and affected; and they found the solutions by talking, negotiating, cajoling. This is what European democracy is about. I think we, the world’s greatest democracy, have missed out on something somewhere. We may be the world’s greatest talking shop. But we talk past one another, and not to one another. Democracy is a ritual for us, not the problem-solving instrument that it is for the Europeans.

INDIAN CRICKET LEAGUE

I wrote this column after Subhash Chandra, owner of Zee Television who runs a number of channels in India, decided to run a cricket tournament called Indian Cricket League, implicitly in competition with the World Cup run by the International Cricket Council (of which the Board of Control for Cricket in India is the richest member). It was published in Calcutta Telegraph on 10 April 2007.

TIME TO SECEDE

Wars are older than mankind. Blame games had to await man’s arrival because they need speech, but are a million years old nevertheless. They are so predictable after a defeat that the aftermath of the Indian cricket team’s expulsion from the World Cup is simply boring. A selector blames the coach, the coach blames players, Sachin blames Greg Chappell, and so the circus goes on. Even if it goes through 500 shows, it will not leave Indian cricket any better.
The World Cup is cricket’s highest championship; it is competition amongst the best, and competition is good for any game. Someone must lose in one-day matches; it happened to be India this time. One way would be to wish the team better luck next time, and leave the whole sorry story behind.
Another is to ask whether we have too much competition or too little. And the answer would be that there are two markets: the market for cricket players and one for models in television advertisements. The latter pays much better, but entry to it is via the first market. Everyone wants to get into the team because that is the qualification for competing in the ad market. The advertisers pay Board of Cricket Control in India, which selects the national team. BCCI has a monopoly of selection.
Now comes along Subhas Chandra to break that monopoly. He proposes to start a tournament under his India Cricket League and broadcast it on his Zee channels. He has been compared to Kerry Packer, who started the World Series, his own tournament, in 1976 because the Australian Cricket Board, when it gave out broadcasting rights, favoured the government-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation over his Channel 9. He signed contracts with 50 of the world’s best cricketers, including Imran Khan, Viv Richards, Dennis Lillee and Tony Grieg, and started his own tournament. He started night games with white balls on colourful pitches, between players in fancy dress. After holding out for two years, Australian Cricket Board compromised. Nowadays, all cricket boards, including India’s, auction broadcasting rights, eliminating favouritism in granting them.
But India Cricket League is not the World Series and Subhas Chandra is not Kerry Packer. India Cricket League is in India, and faces a government that is far more arbitrary and ruthless than the Australian government. BCCI awarded the World Cup broadcasting rights to Nimbus by auction. The government simply ignored the auction, and usurped broadcasting rights for its own Door Darshan television; then it gave a share of DD’s advertisement earnings to Nimbus. Expropriation is a hallowed tradition of India’s socialist governments to which the present one fully lives up.
Besides, if Chandra were to start a competing championship, he would have to take on BCCI, which just now is in the pocket of the minister of agriculture, Sharad Pawar. He is perfectly capable of using the government’s muscle to do Zee in.
That is why Chandra will not take on BCCI, and has not. He will probably start a tournament which bypasses the corrupt and dysfunctional state cricket associations. The best strategy for him would be to hold local tournaments in a dozen cities which are the biggest markets for him. Teams that win these local tournaments would then compete nationally. Pawar himself is unhappy with the state associations, and wants to introduce competition that is not purely between regional teams. He talked of a young men’s and an old men’s team. He may work out a deal with Chandra. It would involve that Chandra should set up a competition with easier entry conditions for novices – conditions that are not related to locality – and that it should throw up young cricketers which then enter the Ranji trophy league for national competition.
If he does, the situation will improve in two respects. First, more players will enter on merit through ICL. Chandra’s players will play on television; they can be judged by millions of viewers. So their merit will be difficult to hide. And if they come to be rewarded on merit, it will become difficult for the state cricket associations to ignore them. A fairer league table of domestic players will emerge, and it will lead to better selection by, and less favouritism in, state cricket associations. So some improvement in the quality of national players is very likely.
But it will not be such as to transform the Indian team into a winning one. Cricket is not like football, with grown-up men in shorts run about kicking a ball and elbowing other players. The pitch varies enormously in cricket, and favours or works against players in many ways. In cricket there are two ways of getting batsmen out, namely leg before wicket and stumping, which require constant vigilance and on-the-spot judgment by umpires. And although cricketers spend at least half their time fielding, they are judged largely on their batting and bowling. That gives them a strong incentive to field poorly.
So if Chandra wants to use his television channel to create a world-class Indian team, he will have to do five more things. First, he must acquire or less about 100 cricket pitches across India, and reproduce on them all the varieties of pitches one comes across in the world. Second, he must eliminate human umpires, and leave it to a watcher in the stadium, armed with half a dozen television cameras and playback facility, to make all umpiring decisions. Third, he must get Surjit Bhalla to work out an index of fielding for each player, based on how many catches he takes and how many runs he saves, and use it in selecting players. Fourth, he must bring the world’s best players to play in Indian teams. Indian cricket should become like Britain’s county cricket. Nationality should cease to matter; the quality of play should be all. And finally, he should engage commentators who are not only familiar with cricket but who tell the viewer how well or badly everyone is playing, ball by ball, and back it up with shots and figures.
If Chandra manages to do all the five things above, then he will contribute to a major change India requires, namely education of the Indian viewer. Television has brought in millions of uneducated viewers to cricket. The only things they understand are boundaries and sixes; the only thing they care for is the colour of a cricketer’s uniform. They need to learn a great deal before they can begin to enjoy the game, as distinct from the battle. Cricket will again become worth watching when these hordes become discerning viewers – when they can appreciate Kallis’s stroke play and Shoaib Akhtar’s speed even when India is losing. While they paint their faces like African tribesmen and scream like mynahs whenever Sachin makes a run, they are simply not worth watching a game in the company of. What is wrong with Indian cricket is the Indian viewer; but he cannot be eliminated. He can only be educated. This is what Chandra should aim at – creating an expert, observant, reflective Indian viewer. If the viewers become more sophisticated, they will pull down the present fatally flawed selection system, and put a more rational one in its place.

BRAND GANDHI

I wrote this in defence of Rahul Gandhi, son of Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, after the press savagely attacked him for some boastful remarks. The column was published in the Calcutta Telegraph of 24 April 2007.

THE SAVIOUR SYNDROME



Ten Janpath in Delhi is a fortress. It is surrounded by a high barrier which hides all that goes on inside. The gates are always closed; nothing smaller than a tank could batter them down. Armed guards protect the bungalow round the clock. This is the house to which Sonia Gandhi moved from Race Course Road after Rajiv was assassinated in 1991. This is the house in which her two children grew up.
The high level of security is not abnormal; it is the same as for central ministers. Nor is it unjustified. Rabid Hindu nationalists have always hated Sonia for not being born in an Indian family. She has faced and continues to face scurrilous attacks; it is reasonable to fear that some amongst the Hindutwits would like to harm her or her children.
Sonia after her widowhood has been an extremely private person. Powerful men always attract a crowd of hangers-on; those who surrounded Rajiv left when he died. Some were dropped by Sonia. The relations between Narasimha Rao and Sonia were never close. He gave her recognition that was proper, but not much more. While he was in power, Congressmen followed his example and avoided Sonia. The press on the whole is as xenophobic as the Hindutwits. Seeing its hostility, Sonia learnt early on to avoid it – as well as anyone who may talk to the press. So she has not had many close friends.
Hence, the Gandhi children grew up with little beyond their own company. Their attitudes were shaped by their sequestration. What did the mother and the children talk about on winter evenings? No doubt, what the children’s ancestors had done for India was one of the topics. In the presence of all the hate and hostility outside the gate, what kept Sonia going – what kept her in India – was undoubtedly a sense of heir to the family that lived and died for India. It was the feeling that Rajiv had handed her a legacy of leadership to pass on to her children. Her opponents see a sinister conspiracy to keep the throne for her son; but there can also be an idealistic side to it.
Rahul has been sailing these days in the sea of inhumanity called Uttar Pradesh. He has been making waves there. First he said that if one of his family (meaning Rajiv or Sonia) had been Prime Minister in 1992, he would have prevented Hindu hooligans from destroying Babri Masjid. Then he said that it was one of his family (meaning Indira) that had divided Pakistan in 1971. Both were boasts. But the first was also implicit criticism of Narasimha Rao who, according to some, allowed Babri Masjid to be pulled down by Hindutwit hooligans even though he had received advance information of their plans. It led Manmohan Singh suddenly to shower compliments on Narasimha Rao.
In these remarks, Rahul only repeated what must have been common evening conversation in the drawing room of 10 Janpath when he was growing up. What he said about Indira Gandhi is general knowledge. What he said about Babri Masjid is conjecture, but it is understandable seeing whose son he is. His comments have upset many ranging from Ashok Singhal to Shahbaz Hussain, from Manmohan Singh to Muslim Mullas. That is only politics; upsetting opponents – and sometimes even allies – is a part of its tactics. They have also brought him considerable publicity, which he can do with at this stage in his career. So I do not think his forays into controversy were unjustified or undesirable. Indira Gandhi also was fond of bragging about her achievements in her election speeches; it did her no harm. She and her father had some achievements to brag about. If one is too young to have any, like Rahul, one can only brag about the achievements of one’s ancestors.
The real question is whether his telling it will bring the Congress votes. Rahul obviously thinks it will. Before the Congress returned to power in 2004, there was general consensus that it was in no condition to win. So everyone gave credit for the win to Sonia Gandhi. More recently, Congress has lost state elections in Punjab, Uttaranchal and Delhi. The situation is reminiscent of the late 1960s; then too Congress lost a number of elections. Congressmen had lost appetite for a fight; Mrs Gandhi marched around the country, gave fiery speeches, and won elections single-handed.
I would not be surprised if the same feeling pervades 10 Janpath. It would be easy to believe just now that the Congress organization everywhere is moribund, that Congressmen are born losers, and it is only the name of Sonia that brings it whatever votes it gets. This is the feeling that is driving Rahul: he is out to save the Congress for the sake of his ancestors.
Is he wrong to appeal to his ancestors? I do not think so. Family loyalties are fierce in India: people do all sorts of things out of family pride. To think that Rahul would be a good patriot because he comes out of a patriotic family is quite a reasonable assumption, at least until he disproves it. There are worse ways of electioneering that reminding people of one’s distinguished ancestors – for instance, abusing and threatening Muslims as BJP does.
Will it bring Rahul votes? Will it bring him to power? Maybe not. But politics is a gamble; one should not rule out the possibility that his tactic may work, especially in conjunction with his good looks and general air of decency.
But as a long-term strategy, this appeal to dynastic leadership is dubious. For it also sends the message: sans moi, le deluge – that the Congress will die without the Gandhis. The strategy brought Congress back to power under Sonia. But it made it a party of sycophants. One reason why Sonia does not meet her own partymen is the nauseating way in which they coddle up to her. This worshipful model has made Congress a party of minions, a party without ideology and without second-rank leaders – so much so that when Manmohan Singh became Prime Minister, his illwishers attributed his elevation to his loyalty to Sonia, not to his proven ability.
What the Congress needs to survive and succeed is a large number of younger leaders. A sycophantic model will not bring young men and women of energy, passion and imagination to it; if Rahul aims to be the Great Leader – such as Manmohan Singh has anointed him to be – he will have only sycophantic, middle-aged opportunists to follow him.
When he took over the Congress, Rajiv Gandhi was disgusted with such sycophants who surrounded him. He was very rude to them. He wanted younger, more intelligent leaders, and brought in a number of his own, Doon-School types. He had the right idea, but went about it stupidly. His ideal of building a young, democratic, vibrant Congress is as right as it was 25 years ago. Rahul will have a better chance of sustained success if he takes it up again. He should aim to be the first among equals, instead of forming his own one-man band.

SUDDEN WEALTH IN SOUTH AFRICA

I wrote this column in the Calcutta Telegraph of 5 May 2007.

LIFE OF A SOUTH AFRICAN MILLIONAIRE

Mandla Mthembu ran a printing company in Johannesburg called Sechaba Photoscan without conspicuous success. He drove around in a beaten old BMW; his friends remember him coming every so often to ask for petrol money.
Then in 1998, Mandla saw an advertisement in a newspaper. The government was in financial trouble, and was holding a fire sale of government enterprises. It had advertised sale of Transnet Production House, the printing division of Transnet, the public corporation that ran railways, ports and buses for the government. Mandla sent off a bid.
Two years later, he got a letter telling him that the bid was won by Skotaville Press, and that Sechaba had lost it. Skotaville Press is a well known South African publishing house. In the 1980s it published a number of books by black authors, including ones in the black nationalist cause. It has been a favoured publisher of African National Congress members and supporters, and continues to be an important publisher in South Africa.
Mandla thought about that day in 1998 when he had received a phone call from Zwelibanzi ‘Miles’ Nzama, the official in charge of the auction. They set up an appointment in a downtown hotel. Miles met Mandla and William Peterson, the joint managing directors of Sechaba, and told them that he would guarantee their success if they gave 15 per cent of the shares of their company to the African National Congress Fundraising Trust. They refused.
Incensed, Mandla went to court and sued the government for 60,689,000 Rands, which he said represented the profits Sechaba would have made out of the business in the three years since bids were called for the business. Transnet admitted that Miles had persuaded Skotaville to give ANCFT 20 per cent of its equity for a throwaway price. The trial judge awarded Sechaba the damages asked for after deducting only 5 per cent for contingencies – that is, 57,650,554 Rands. Transnet appealed to the South African Supreme Court, but lost. So it had to hand over the money to Mandla.
That money transformed Mandla’s fortunes. Now he had money not just for petrol, but for new cars. He bought one car after another: as a journalist put it, “A car to drive to go and buy bread; a car for going to parties; a car to go to church; a car to drive long distances; maybe even a car to go to the toilet!” Mandla started an agency called Umsobo Investment Holdings. It picked up a contract to import Saudi crude and sell it to the local oil company. That contract proved to be a gold mine. By 2005, Mandla was a billionaire – or so everyone said.
What is a man approaching 50 to do with so much money? Mandla divorced his wife, Dolly Matshabe, with whom he had two children. He gave her a 3-million-Rand fully furnished cluster home in Bedfordview, and a monthly allowance of 10,000 Rands. Having thus pensioned off the family, he bought his freedom to enjoy himself.
In the meanwhile, Muvhango, the interminable, hugely popular situation comedy on South African Broadcasting Corporation’s SABC2, had a crisis: Lindiwe Chibi, who acted as Doobsie, the heroine of the series, was shot in the head on 30 April 2005 by her boy friend outside her home in Soweto, the sprawling black township outside Johannesburg. Duma Ndlovu , the producer of the sitcom, had to replace her in a hurry. He got hold of a bubbly 19-years-old, Khanyisile Mbau, to replace Lindiwe.
It was Khanyi’s first break, and she made the most of it. She gave chatty interviews, and appeared on the covers of tabloids. Everyone wanted to meet her, to take her out, and to invite her to parties; and she took all the invitations that came her way. She had a whale of a time. Soon she was known around the city as the wild girl, painting the town red. Ndlovu did not like her hogging the publicity and bringing him and his show unwelcome publicity; six months later, when her contract came up for renewal, he sacked her.
But by then, Khanyi had run into Mandla. Mandla was doing more or less what she was doing – he was picking up girl friends, going to bars, driving around in his Porsche, and generally having a good time. Soon they teamed up. Every evening, after her performance, they would go to bars, drink, dance and sing. They would get to his place around 3 AM, do what remained to be done, and then sleep till 2 PM. Then Mandla would take Khanyi shopping. Soon she had 600 pairs of shoes. The time came when there was no more room for her clothes in their bedroom.
Khanyi’s father ran a taxi business. Mandla bought him a house worth 1.5 million Rands. As a reporter wrote, “She is known for little other than having a to-die-for collection of shoes and a 51-year-old accessory, hubby Mandla Mthembu, who swipes his credit card the minute he gets bored.” But Khanyi had no regrets: “This is everyone’s dream – now that it’s happened why should I feel sorry for myself? We’re so quick to hear about black people suffering or our country’s economy going down – why can’t we celebrate what God has given us and say: “It happened to me, it could happen to you.” “
All this togetherness led to love, and Mandla married Khanyi. The wedding was conducted by Masibulele ‘Hawk’ Makepula, three times world flyweight boxing champion. Hawk is 33, and can see the end of his boxing career approaching. So he is taking a degree in theology in Rhema Bible College in Johannesburg. He cannot yet do a full-scale church wedding. But he did the preaching at wedding of Khanyi and Mandla, and no one bothered to doubt that he had married them.
As often happens after such hectic love-making, Khanyi delivered a 2.67kg, 48cm baby at 6:30 PM on 24 December 2006. Then she and Mandla went and bought a pram for 80,000 Rands. The baby was just a distraction. Khanyi and Mandla soon resumed their high life.
On 19 April, they went to the South African Music Awards, which went on and on. At the party after the event, Mandla was feeling peckish. He picked up a pie from the tray of a waitress passing by. Khanyi told him off for lacking class. A row began that went on till they were in their 6-million-Rand penthouse in Melrose Arch. He accused her of having an affair with Thokozani. She nearly died laughing. She said Thokozani was a gay; how could she have an affair with him? Mandla slapped her. Khani stormed out and went back to her mother.
She has been incommunicado, but Mandla has been giving statements to the swarming media, and denying them. He said that Khanyi was a gold-digger, and denied it. He said he was feeling suicidal, and then denied it. The saga has not ended. Even till now it has proved much more fun than Aishwarya Rai trudging through temples in the company of her in-laws or Shilpa Shetty being repeatedly bent in a kissing ceremony by Richard Gere. South Africans are luckier in their celebrities.

WHAT I THINK OF INDIA'S NEW PRESIDENT

[I wrote this column in the Calcutta Telegraph of 19 June 2007. It reflected my low expectations from the new Presidential Candidate chosen by the Congress. She did not disappoint me.]

PRATIBHA WHO?

I did not read the headlines carefully enough. What registered in my mind was that some Patil was chosen as Presidential candidate by Congress and supported by Bahujan Samaj Party, and that their combined numbers would ensure her election. I could not place the name immediately. Then I remembered that Parvati Patil was a fellow student of Harry Potter. That made her famous enough; and now she must be close to adulthood, so it should be all right. But she had a sister, Padma, who would be equally eligible; which of the two had Congress chosen?
I looked again, and found it was Pratibha Patil. Good, I thought. We Indians boast of being a democracy. We tell everyone that even a tiffin carrier could become President of India; it is great if we have chosen a really unknown Indian.
But why this preference for obscurity, when we have so many illustrious Indians? There is Amitabh Bachchan, the consummate actor who has the right word for every occasion. There is his daughter-in-law, Aishwarya Rai – sorry, Bachchan – whose eyes would bewitch the whole world. If you are on the other side, there is Shahrukh Khan, who would display to the nation his patented technology of breaking hearts. And if you want a more international figure, there is Shilpa Shetty, whom the British think of as delectable Miss India.
There is Amartya Sen, the Nobel Laureate who can write three speeches in one flight and make each sound different. There is Ram Guha, who can make history as interesting as fiction; his President’s XI that would beat all the world’s cricket teams. If you are on the other side, there is Arundhati Roy, the bad-tempered beauty who has put her literary talent at the service of the goddess of environment. And if you prefer an achiever to a wordsmith, there is Ela Bhatt, who brought a livelihood to poor housebound women.
There is Ratan Tata, the industrialist that the largest number of Indians admire. If you admire size, you can choose Lakshmi Mittal, who controls the world’s largest steel production capacity. Then there is Azim Premji, who turned a vegetable oil factory into India’s biggest software factory. Or there is Sunil Mittal, who defeated every obstructive or greedy telecommunications minister and created a business in ten years as big as it took the Ambanis forty years to develop. And if you like showmanship, none could be better than Vijay Mallya. President’s parties would be adorned by fountains of Scotch; and Abdul Kalam’s herb garden would be replaced by a race course.
There is Vishwanath Anand, who two months ago became the world’s champion chess player. He would probably not accept Presidency while he is at the peak of his career; nor Sania, who is still going up the ladder. Sachin Tendulkar just might, if he accepts the emerging opinion that he is past his peak. I would prefer Mahendra Singh Dhoni, provided he grows his hair long again. But both may decline, since there is more glory in playing cricket before 30 million viewers than in giving the Independence Day speech to 300 schoolchildren and 500 policemen. So maybe we should go down to Kapil Dev, the best living Indian cricketer. Then there are artists: Husain the grand painter, Susmit Sen, leader of Indian Ocean band, and Salman Rushdie, the writer with the beautiful girl friend.
If the President were elected by direct vote of the Indian people, I bet that any of the 21 people I have named would get more votes than Pratibha Patil. How did Congress decision-makers reject all of them and settle on her?
The answer could be that much as the Prime Minister keeps exhorting Indians to achieve excellence, excellence was the last thing they were looking for. Let alone excellence, they did not even want outstanding achievement. Politicians do everything to defeat merit; reservations are standing testimony to their distaste for it.
But more likely, it is a matter of caste. The candidate had to be a politician. It was reported last year, when Sourav Ganguly was ejected from the cricket team, that Buddhadev Bhattacharya had offered him a seat in the upper house of Parliament. But that was to be a reward, not for being a good cricketer, but for being a victimized Bengali. And it was intended to make a politician out of Sourav. But even in the depths of his misfortune, he refused to convert to politics. In any case, Communist Party (Marxist) would never put up Sourav for Presidency; he has achieved too much to qualify.
But lack of achievement cannot be a qualification. Almost every politician would qualify if it were, and it would be impossible to choose a candidate. Even Congress insists on some qualifications in Presidential candidates. The foremost qualification is loyalty. So many people have left Congress over the years; Bharatiya Janata Party would be a shadow of itself if all ex-Congressmen left it. And if you are a Congressman, you do not have to leave the party to be disloyal. Since the present Congress is Congress (Indira), any flirtation with Congress (Organization) forty years ago would have disqualified Pratibha Patil. Congress (O) was at least a separate party; even if she had flirted with Narasimha Rao her future would have been blighted. The loyalty required is not loyalty to the party, but to the dynasty of the party.
But even the number of dynasty loyalists is too large; a further criterion of choice was needed. It goes beyond past loyalty; it amounts to future loyalty. After he is made President, the candidate must not develop a conscience and disobey the party’s orders. This is difficult to ensure, for the President can no longer be disciplined for disloyalty to the party. He could be impeached. But disloyalty would not be sufficient grounds for that; something more serious like moral turpitude would be necessary. How can one guarantee that a President would do one’s bidding?
Congress does so by choosing a candidate who has never taken a decision on his own, even when given a chance to do so. Pratibha Patil was not just a Congress loyalist; she was a Chavan loyalist. That meant that as long as he was alive, she took his advice and did his bidding, even when she was a minister. And when he died, she transferred her obedience to the next dynasty loyalist in Maharashtra. Unshakeable resolution never to act independently was the final qualification that made her the chosen candidate.
So I am afraid Pratibha Patil will be a rather colourless President; forty years’ habit is difficult to break. This is no cause for disappointment, for most previous Presidents were no different. Varahagiri Venkata Giri, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, Giani Zail Singh and Shankar Dayal Sharma had the same qualifications as Pratibha Patil. Their tenures were so forgettable that Pratibha Patil cannot do worse. She has a wonderful job; expectations are so low that she can only surprise us. She may have been waiting patiently for forty years to get this chance of surprising the whole nation. Let us wait for the surprise, but do not hold your breath.

TRAVELLING ON DEUTSCHE BAHN

[I wrote this after a railway journey in Germany in July. It was published in the Calcutta Telegraph on 31 July 2007.]

EXCELLENCE IN RAILWAYS


I traveled last week from Berlin to Regensburg via Nuremberg. The rail line passes through what used to be East Germany – flat plains which were Germany’s bread basket 150 years ago and today mainly grow fodder crops like oats, broken by wooded hills topped by castles. The cities have a long history; one finds Roman walls, mediaeval gates and ducal palaces in their middle. I thought Indian tourists were missing much. So were Indian businessmen, for I found so many small factories closed and crumbling on the way. But Germany would never get many Indian tourists with the visa policy it has got. It still thinks of Indians as brown little men waiting to take German jobs at measly wages; it is still to wake up to the prosperity that is enveloping India, the upsurge of enterprise that is taking Indian companies abroad, and the cash Indian tourists are getting rid of in the shops of Singapore and Dubai. Meera Shankar, the Indian ambassador in Berlin, is one of our best; but she has not succeeded in making German visa policy more Indian-friendly. Now that the German embassy has outsourced visa processing in India to a local firm, traveling to Germany has become even more difficult.
But having overcome every hurdle presented by the BPO firm and got to Germany, what fascinated me was the German railways, which claim to be Europe’s best. The whole of India, which is 9 times as big as Germany, has 63,000 route kilometers and 109,000 track kilometers. German railways have 41.000 route kilometers and 80,000 track kilometers. Indian railways employ 1.5 million workers, DB, 230,000. Indian railways earn about Rs 400 billion; German railways, four times as much. They have continuous rails, and give an extremely smooth ride. Passenger trains have bogies with electric motors, which can act as engines (called multiple units), and bogies without. A local train is made up of two multiple units with two bogies between them; if more capacity is needed, two such little trains are hitched together. The speed goes up to 300 kilmeters an hour. The seats were not much more comfortable than ours; they were even a bit narrower, since German railways run on standard gauge and ours on broad gauge.
However, passenger comfort is not at the top of German railways’ concerns. Deutsche Bahn or DB considers itself hard done by because it has to pay tax on the fuel it consumes as well as Germany’s ecology tax, and airlines and shipping lines do not (rivers and canals are important carriers of freight and tourists in Germany). Airlines in India have to pay heavy tax on jet fuel; the government, being the railways’ owner, ensures that they are not disadvantaged. In Europe, all countries except Finland and Germany exempt railways from fuel tax.
Since fuel is its major cost, DB sees business advantage in economizing on energy. That also appeals to Germans, who have made environment-friendliness their new religion. Thus DB has reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 11.4 per cent since 2002, and will reduce them by a further 20 per cent by 2020. DB is the most efficient long-haul freight carrier; it generates 24 grams of carbon dioxide per ton kilometer, against ships’ 35, lorries’ 89 and airplanes’ 665. In long-haul passenger carriage, however, it is beaten by modern buses, which emit only 31 grams of carbon dioxide per ton kilometer against railways’ 47; cars emit 143 grams, and plans 191.
How does DB go about reducing carbon dioxide emissions? It teaches its engine drivers to drive energy-efficiently – to accelerate smoothly and to minimize braking. Railion, DB’s freight subsidiary, ran an energy-saving Olympiad. It was won by engine driver Mario Spangenberg. The race was run on a simulator. Spangenberg won by a hair’s breadth; he used the brake once less than his closest competitor. And even when he brakes in real life, he generates electricity; power generation from brakes saves DB 8 per cent of its fuel consumption. Spangenberg attributed his win to the fact that he goes angling when he has time; angling taught him smooth and steady action.
Another way in which DB saved on greenhouse gases is by redesigning its trains. In the 1980s, DB got its equipment manufacturers, Siemens and Bombardier, to design the trains called Intercity Express (ICE). It works closely with the manufacturers to improve the design; till now, the ICE has gone through three generations, introduced in 1991, 1996 and 1999. The first, experimental prototype set a speed record of 407 kilometers an hour in 1988. Once a satisfactory model was developed, an order was placed for 60 trains. This model has been followed ever since: DB works on an improved model with its suppliers, and once it has a satisfactory model, orders a large number of trains to achieve low costs.
But recently it has started something even more economical: it took 59 old trains into its Nuremberg workshop, stripped them and upgraded them to last another 20 years. This has led to reuse of 80 per cent of the materials, including 16,000 tons of steel and 1,200 tons of copper, and saved 35,000 tons of carbon emissions and 500,000 tons of waste.
Thus, DB has become a technological leader. Its ICEs have been adopted by other European railways. Many of its suppliers were used by Taiwan when it introduced trains running at 300 kilometers an hour on its Taipeh-Kaosiung line. The 345-kilometer line is the most expensive railway line built till now; it cost 15 billion dollars. Taiwan is earthquake-prone; if the rails got slightly displaced by an earthquake, a train traveling at 300 kilometers would be completely wrecked, with close to 100 per cent. To stabilize the line, most of it has been buried 100 meters underground. The trains are pulled by more powerful, 14,000 horse-power engines than DB mostly uses. But the Taiwan railway company borrowed Johann Ubenn from DB to train its engine drivers.
After high speeds and smooth engine driving, what excites the managers of DB these days? They want to make trains less noisy. DB is participating in a project of the European Commission called Silence, aimed at bringing down noise. In the course of this project, maps of noise-intensity are being drawn, rather like relief maps in geography which show altitude. The maps will identify the noisiest spots in Europe and their noise levels. The project aims to reduce the noise peaks by 10 decibels in such places by March 2008. If it succeeds, listeners will feel a halving of noise. Apart from this project, DB is working on halving the noise made by trains in friction with rails by 2020.
I do not know how much more comfortable passengers of DB will be 13 years hence; but they will certainly hear less of the screech emitted by trains’ brakes being applied. The ‘whispering brake’ that DB is trying to develop will be kinder to the passengers’ ears. And that is just on the basis of present technological plans. Who knows? By 2020, DB will have trains floating on cushions of air, and its passengers will feel as if they are traveling on flying carpets.