Proud to be from Dehradun

For the first time ever, a shoe has been thrown at the man, or a big boy rather, who is supposed to be future Prime Minister of this country. Yes, a shoe thrown at our very own Rahul Gandhi, and that too in Vikas nagar in our own Uttarakhand!

Shoe thrown at Rahul Gandhi in Uttarakhand rally

Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi was at the receiving end of a flying shoe at a rally in Vikasnagar in Uttarakhand on Monday afternoon while addressing a poll rally. The shoe flew past him and the offender was seen taken away by security officers. Gandhi was heard requesting the security not to beat up the man.

 

Shoes seem to be flying thick and fast in Uttarakhand this poll season with one thrown last Saturday at Team Anna in Dehra Dun. Arvind Kejriwal was addressing the gathering at Lord Venkateshwara Hall when a shoe was aimed at him. But it missed him, as well as social activists Kiran Bedi and Manish Sisodia who were also on the dais.

Apparently there was an ink attack on Baba Ramdev as well recently when he was addressing a press conference on black money. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a retaliatory attack, not organized but most likely by a follower of truth and justice taking on the dirty CONgress, but nevertheless, I sincerely believe that CONgress is adept at playing dirty games, and if anybody else has to take them on, they have to play their dirty game.

Ramdev is of course a persona non grata for the Gandhi party, since he is one of the few eminent people in the country willing to take on the fight against them. Hence begins the well run smear campaign that labels him a non-Indian, a corrupt person himself, a rabid right wing Hindu nationalist, and a few other nice direct accusations.

According to the link above,

Ramdev had earlier announced that he would campaign against corruption and black money while targeting the Congress in the five states where Assembly elections are being held.

Congress spokesperson condemned the attack and said the Government was trying to tackle the black money menace.

"Whatever happened is unfortunate. If anybody has done wrong, we condemn it. Ramdev has a right to oppose Congress. It doesn't make any difference at all. As far as black money is concerned, we have done our best. It's a serious issue," said Alvi.

Congress leader Digvijaya Singh denied his party's hand in the incident. "I see a conspiracy behind this to incite communal tension. Identity of this person should be investigated," said Singh.

So there you have it. Pick a Muslim guy to throw ink at Baba Ramdev for talking about black money. If one has to look at conspiracy theories, one can portray that the Muslims of India are thoroughly behind the CON party and this act will further spur the Muslims of India to stand up for the grand party that has helped them out so many times over the past decades.

Also notice how Doggy Singh's comments are ALWAYS asked for when something happens. This is definitely a ploy by the Gandhi's and their henchmen to divert public attention from the real question, I feel. When one is unable to face the message, one diverts from the topic, or one attacks the messenger. So something happens that will show the Gandhi's in poor light, and in comes their faithful, and immediately the public is talking about the asinine comments he made.

Congress is of course demanding a thorough inquiry as to how a shoe could reach so close to their beloved prince.

"I condemn it. It is unfortunate. For some time, BJP has been saying that people will come on streets and a civil war could take place. Such kind of irresponsible statements encourage such acts. I do not know exactly who is behind it but political parties and political leaders should be very careful before giving such statements," party spokesperson Rashid Alvi told PTI.

Party general secretary Digvijay Singh said those hurling shoes or showing black flags have the same intention and motive.

In an oblique reference to Baba Ramdev, he said, "They all have same intentions that somehow we would scare them and the cases, which are registered against them, will be stopped.

Singh said Rahul Gandhi belongs to a brave family "but who is Ramdev. He is a criminal."

So after 60 years since being crowned the world's largest democracy, it has come to this. :-)

Intolerance among people, utter lack of conviction and scruples among the rulers, and a thorough disarray and chaos that permeates throughout the length of breadth of whatever is left of governance in this country.

Elections seems to bring out the worst in our democracy, each time and every time.

India is not China

While China today stands for nothing that defines a modern society - freedom of the individual, freedom of speech and freedom of expression, the Government of India and the upper judiciary of India have realized that with their browbeating and bullying, at least they get the job done.

In such a politically important time as this when the millions of poor and the needy in this country continue to live in poverty and malnutrition but are enraged at the kind of muck that is being hosted on facebook or google, the people in power are at least doing something about one of the above two problems.

So while I am critical of all the western media groups and websites and businesses that preach freedom of speech everywhere but bend over backwards on those principles in order to do business in India, I agree with what the counsel for Google India told the Honourable Delhi High Court - India is not China.

Google India, which along with 20 websites is facing criminal case for allegedly hosting objectionable material, on Monday told the Delhi High Court that blocking them was not an option as a democratic India does not have a “totalitarian” regime like China.

“The issue relates to a constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression and suppressing it was not possible as the right to freedom of speech in democratic India separates us from a totalitarian regime like China,” advocate N.K. Kaul, appearing for Google India, told Justice Suresh Kait.

The biggest strengths of Google or Facebook today are its ability to connect people from all across the globe into one community. Freedom of the internet is a forgone conclusion for most of us, but then like so many other occasions, we must realize that there are absolute idiots roaming our streets or sitting in the highest offices of power who may never have opened a site and looked at the 'objectionable content', nor the 'objectionable content' will make any difference to their sorry little lives, but will take it upon themselves to free the society of the scourge of hate speech.

When I use the term hate speech, I am doing them a favour, because as far as I know, the Government of India is pissed only because now finally people have the guts to call out Sonia Gandhi for the dirty, greedy, secretive politician she is.

According to the New York Times, in October 2011, HRD minister Kapil Sibal called internet service providers to protest a Facebook page maligning Sonia Gandhi. Following another meeting in November, on December 5, 2011, Sibal called Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and others to proclaim that "the Indian government doesn't believe in censorship. It believes in self-regulation". But his request from the service providers was Herculean. They were to create a mechanism to identify and, perforce, excise "inflammatory" and "defamatory" material. The service providers were to be simultaneously regulators and spies.

All "objectionable" and "controversial" matter was to be reported to the government. In full form at a press conference on December 6, 2011, Sibal expressed a responsibility "to take care of the sensibilities of the people... (because) cultural ethos is very important to us". The IT ministry was now the cultural ministry. This expanded universe of threatened censorship was clear. Sibal's broad concerns were about defamation, obscenity and offending religious sensitivities, or were they? The websites took the view that they would not prescreen material. Sibal was positively threatening: "If you do not co-operate, we will have to take action".

In January 2012, the Delhi High Court was asked to stay criminal proceedings against Facebook India and Google India. The case itself was astonishing. A complaint was filed by Vinay Rai under the obscenity and other provisions of the Indian Penal Code. What the trial court did next was to summon representatives from 21 sites including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube. This was an extraordinary summons on an ambiguous complaint, about allegedly derogatory articles, asking these providers to submit to censorship in respect of free speech exercised by others through a pipeline they provided, but over the contents of which the providers had no control. The summons took place after the Metropolitan Magistrate had examined four witnesses and the Delhi Police affirmed the authenticity of the information. This was clearly enough to conquer the cyber world.

India represents a great conundrum in this regard. Indians have fanned out in the entire world as honest, hard working and well qualified Information technology professionals while the governance systems of this country are still far far away from even understanding how the same IT can change the entire way we work and live for the better. This is another great example of the grandiose image that politicians of power have of themselves.

The pendulum swings both ways, and with millions and millions of individuals of all genders, races, languages and genes access the same sites, there will be billions of thoughts, ideas, images and words that will be exchanged and viewed. While there will be many pages on Facebook, for example, praising India,  there will be many that will be spewing bile against it. Those that access the internet probably access only a few percentage points of it, and have learnt to ignore the rest, but as history tells us, particularly so the recent history of India, that there are many idiots out there roaming our streets or sitting in the offices of power who believe that it us up to them to save us from the scourge of opinions that they don't believe in.

In our overly sensitive and touchy modern India, we see such examples all the time. There was a time when Shiv Sena idiots beat up Cyber Cafe owners because somebody had written things online about Shivaji that weren't showing him in a glowing light. Since the internet is not a physical thing, nor can they attack the servers sitting in various parts of the world, they attack the nearest thing connected to the internet to vent their frustration.

If such hate sites, even if against Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, or whatever, had the ability to sway public opinion, I could imagine an ever-devious politician would be pricking his or her ears and listening to what its saying, but as far as I can see, a hate site against India really hasn't rankled me or anybody around me anytime. But the fact remains that with billions of opinions out there on the internet, there will be millions that one find objectionable, and when it comes to the internet, once again, we ignore them, or go to a chat site or a forum and create our own good rebuttal!

But I am talking sense in a situation which makes absolutely no sense at all. The Delhi High Court is warning these sites that they will not hesitate to do a China based on the case filed by a Mr. Vinay Rai, a journalist by profession and now a crusader of internet cleansing.

Acting on a complaint by Vinay Rai, the trial court had earlier summoned the representatives of 21 social networking sites, including those of Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Youtube. It had directed the centre to take "immediate appropriate steps" and file a report on January 13.

The complaint has been filed under Section 292 (sale of obscene books etc), 293 (sale of obscene objects to young person etc) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.

A civil judge had last month ordered the social networking sites to remove all "anti-religious" or "anti-social" contents by February 6, 2012.

So a civil judge ordered these 21 sites with billions of combined users, probably trillions of pages and many trillions of accumulated comments and views, to clear all that they find objectionable within a few weeks. Vinay Rai's interview with the Wall Street Journal sheds some light on what is driving this man to be the great online crusader, and he says that he does not have a facebook account but it's his readers who keep him informed of objectionable material. Considering its an Urdu newspaper he edits, I am assuming a lot of objections then will have to do with sites and pages that are critical of Islam, and considering that this is such a politically important time, it is in the government's immediate interest to show the Muslim community that is stands by them. They may not be able to build schools for them or try harder to integrate them into the national, secular society, but like I said, at least it is taking care of one of their biggest problems - that of objectionable internet content.

As a Supreme Court lawyer writes in the India Today article I quoted in the beginning,

 The Congress has a long history of muzzling the press as in the cases of Sakal (1962) and Bennett and Coleman (1973), the Emergency (1975-77), the Indian Express case (1986), and the Defamation Bill 1988 among others. It seems to get paranoid when its leaders are portrayed in bad light or lampooned. The Congress should play big brother for the poor and not be so obsessed about attacks on its leaders in the name of cultural ethos. Ominously on Friday, the 13th of this month, the government sanctioned a pervasive criminal proceeding because the content of websites was against national interest. Have they been taking lessons from China?

Its disappointing, to say the least, to see the courts of this country stand up for the shenanigans of the nation's shameless government. The internet entered India's mainstream over a decade ago, and millions of Indians are online in various forms and capacities, and the timing of the Government's zealous fox-hunt tells me that it is nothing but a case of voter appeasement. Over the past years, the Government of India has behaved not like the government of a nation that aims to be a power, but as a unit that is shameless and brazen in its rape of the national treasury, but at the same time highly insecure about its image, bristling at even a hint of criticism and thoroughly incapable and unwilling to lead this nation.

Patralekha Chatterjee in The Asian Age makes a very valid point that this is a hogwash because the government, and the society in general, has always shied away from going after the real causes of our social division and collective rage. Who regulates the matrimonial sites who promote caste based marriages? why aren't Khaps told to change their ways and move out of the centuries old feudal mindset? Why are we not enraged as a society at crimes against women and children?

Unfortunately, like I have said many times before, tough problems need tough responses, and I simply do not believe if our society has the strength, but more importantly the inclination, to come together and work towards a better social structure. Its money and affluence that drives today's India, and since our government is an outcome of the same society, it can't be expected to, and won't, do what the society doesn't want it to do. 

Happy New Year!

Africa's aid industry

A long time ago I had started writing an article on how foreign aid in Africa had done absolutely nothing to bring the people out of their poverty and instead given birth to this huge self-serving industry in the developed nations which involved expensive fund raisers for the rich and vacations in the third world for their 'volunteers'.

I have in fact written about this earlier, but a very nice and detailed article again introduced me to this issue. Written by Yash Tandon on the news site http://www.allafrica.com/, the article follows the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held at Busan, South Korea from 29 November to 1 December.

Titled "It is Official - Busan Heralds the Dismantling of the Aid Industry", the article says that all the donors at the Forum finally came around to accept that what is required is not "aid effectiveness", which has been the focus all along, but "development cooperation", which should have been the focus on the entire aid industry in the first place. Everybody got this but the Western aid industry itself, and perhaps for very obvious and self-serving reasons.

According to The Guardian, the biggest outcome of the Forum at Busan was the emergence of the BRIC nations as one of the key players in providing aid and assistance in future. Apart from that, the article says, there was no serious commitment or targets set at the Forum, but only a promise to do so in the future.

If you care about evidence-based policy making, this conference has been mixed. While there was not enough explicit referencing, sifting and collation of the plethora of evidence available on what has worked and what hasn't over the five years since the Paris declaration, it has, nevertheless, filtered into the outcome document, with less important Paris commitments being dropped and the vital ones being reaffirmed.

The issue of ownership, as I understand, is that the third world nation that is the recipient of the aid must have a great control on the aid and a greater say in where to spend the aid. This has been lacking because, I feel, the donor does not believe the recipient has the ability to spend it wisely, or perhaps the fear of corruption, or simply because they think they can do a better job. In India's case, corruption was and remains a huge issue as large amounts pilfered through the numerous aid schemes, both funded within and without the country.

After last minute negotiations (in which Brazil played a key role) and the insertion of a paragraph distancing non-DAC (the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) donors from concrete commitments, China, India and Brazil all endorsed the idea of working together more closely in what is being described, even by usually critical civil society representatives, as a "new global partnership". This matters to African countries that want to apply principles to all international partners, without diminishing the distinctiveness of Chinese support for their development.

The inclusion of civil society in negotiations was also an important procedural innovation, in contrast to the reduced political space it is experiencing in many countries.

If Paris was a triumph of technocratic organisation, Busan has been an expression of shifting geopolitical realities, with the role of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) proving more critical than ever before.

African nations too, are beginning to demand greater ownership of aid, and its a good step forward in asserting to the donors that the former probably knows best whats best for itself.

The Business Daily Africa article linked above says it best that while aid is a noble thing, all effort must be made by African nations to replace it with homegrown aids to development.

In the aid industry, since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 there have been significant structural changes to make aid more effective. In recent years, this re-engineering process has come to be known as ‘the new aid architecture’.” Before 1989 aid transfers to poor countries were largely driven by geopolitical and commercial reasons. Consequently, some of the most inhuman regimes in Zaire, Philippines, Haiti, Bangladesh and Nigeria received aid regardless of atrocities committed on citizens.

With the Cold War long gone today aid delivery is being informed by a number of factors. These include: failures of previous economic management approaches such as the Washington Consensus; emergence of new global economic players (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Venezuela and South Korea) from among recent developing countries; reinvigorated roles of the international philanthropic foundations; emerging development challenges such as climate change and global terrorism; and recurrence of financial crises around the world since the 1970s.

Much as aid has been useful in preventing destitution and in catalysing economic growth, on its own it is not a panacea to development in poor countries. There is need therefore to radically implement local non- aid means to development.

But to finish out on this post where I can see that the global consensus is firmly headed towards the realization that the aid industry, the way it has functioned, has achieved very little, and rather, has emasculated the societies it proposes to help by making them dependent on that aid and doing nothing to enable them to be independent. China has built a lot of infrastructure in the continent of Africa in recent years, but as more and more media publications find out, it is mainly on a quid pro quo basis as the Chinese ask for the country's natural resources in return. A Professor in the American University in the United States follows Chinese aid in Africa and seems to be a decent source (biased in the way I like it) of information.

Coming to the paper written by Mr.Tandon, there are some choice lines I could pick up.

Professional politicians and diplomats have a particular way of making public speeches. They send important and often critical messages encrypted in coded language. One has to be able to interpret the code, to read between the lines, in order to get to their hidden messages. At Busan, when the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said 'Beware of those who want to take your resources with quick fixes', you can be reasonably sure that the warning was levelled at African countries and the pointer was at China. (I was once a politician and a diplomat; I have learnt to read between the lines).

One, the ODA (Overseas Development Aid) is no longer the main source of development financing. 'It used to be 70% of total financial flows in the 1960s; now it is only 13% -- even as aid quantity has increased'. So, then, what is the purpose of aid? It should be, she said, 'to facilitate private sector investment'.

Two, 'donor aid is driven by donor agenda...We should follow partner lead'. By 'partner' she meant the recipients of aid. There should be, she added, 'genuine mutual accountability'. She gave the example of recipients' insistence that donor aid should be 'untied' to donor procurement sources.

Three, and this is a telling statistic that put to question the whole issue of aid effectiveness. Clinton said that an independent study undertaken just before the Busan meeting revealed that out of 13 objectives set out by the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, only one was met.

The principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness do not address the underlying dynamics of 'aid'. The PDAE takes 'aid' for granted as a 'virtue', and gets on to the 'technical' task of making it 'effective'. Deeper thinking (not a forte of 'normal' professional politicians and diplomats) would show that the PDAE principles obscure, obfuscate, reality of life; they encourage muddled thinking on aid.

The President of Rwanda made a cool, dispassionate, speech covering the following issues.

One, 'massive aid transfers have been ineffective'.

Two, there is a contradiction in the growth statistics of Africa. On the one hand, African economies have grown 7 to 8 per cent over the last several years; on the other hand, the per capita income has fallen.

Three, many African countries are unlikely to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. This is the hard reality.

Four, there is a 'huge aid industry' that has now become 'a permanent feature' of north-south relations. This 'industry' is undermining the essential linkages between aid, trade and investment.

Five, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness states 'mutual accountability' as one of its principles. 'In reality there is no mutual accountability'. Kagame pointedly added: 'When a country is not managing its resources how can it be held accountable?'

Six, Donors only talk about channelling aid through country systems; 'in practice they refuse to use national systems'. There is a 'need for greater mutual trust'.

QUEEN RANIA AL ABDULLAH OF JORDAN - THE MOST ENLIGHTENED AND FUTURIST SPEECH OF THE WHOLE BUSAN CONFERENCE

Busan, she said, is different from Paris or Accra. 'We live in a different world; it is a world of Tahrir Square, and Wall Street occupation'. The world, despite all talk about globalisation, is 'growing apart, not coming close'. In some countries such as Argentina and Malaysia they have narrowed income gap. But global inequality is increasing. We need 'a new development paradigm'. Development has to be based on equity; growth itself does not bring equity. We must give everyone an opportunity to develop his or her potential. 'Sixty percent of our people are youth and a quarter of them are unemployed. They want jobs not aid'.

ANGEL GURRIA, MYUNG-BAK LEE AND BAN KI MOON TREAD OLD, OBSOLETE, PATHS

Angel Gurria, the Secretary General of the OECD, President Lee Myung-bak of Korea, and Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary-General were treading old, worn out, paths in their presentations. Interestingly, they had the same message, as if they had sat together and planned what to say. Their arguments can be briefly summarised as follows:

One, Korea is a shining example of a country that has 'moved from being a recipient of aid to a donor'. (This message was played up, insensitively, almost nauseatingly, in speeches and in large poster displays at the Bexco Convention Centre).

Two, aid will end poverty, improve gender equality, bring education to girl children, and so on and so forth.

Three, the world has fallen behind achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 'Therefore' (sic!), rich countries need to 'give more aid'.

Four, the 2008 financial crisis has shown that when countries work together they can prevent contagion. Etc, etc.

Korea was presented as a 'success story'; that may be the case. But the period when Korea was able to carry out land reform under American occupation; pursue state-aided and bank-rolled programs for encouraging Daihatsus; industrialise without having to pay massive intellectual property rents for technology; and export to the US almost duty-free at a time when the latter needed a dependable ally in Asia to contain communism - this period and its circumstances are not the same as today. Korea cannot be repeated by, for example, African countries. Korea is no 'model'. Furthermore, the two Koreans (Lee Myung-bak and Ban Ki-Moon) conveniently ignored the fact that their country's development owes itself largely to their hard-working working classes rather than 'aid'.

Here is a brief analysis of the outcome document.

To start with its title, 'Busan Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation'. 'Effective aid' is now replaced with 'effective development'. This is a more telling indictment of 'aid' than is realised at first glance.

HLF4 was largely an affair between the 'poor' countries of the so-called 'third world' and the so-called 'traditional donors' of the OECD countries. Conspicuously absent were the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

This was reflected in the telling opening of paragraph two of the 'Outcome Document' with the words 'The nature, modalities and responsibilities that apply to South-South cooperation differ from those that apply to North-South cooperation.'

There is no question that the bigger countries of the south (India, Brazil and China) as well as Russia have distanced themselves from the 'aid effectiveness' agenda of HLF4. Their agreement to refer to the principles of North-South relations on a 'voluntary basis' can only be interpreted as a political rejection of those principles.

Aid to the Third World is a self-important feel good activity of the developed world, and Mr. Tandon makes a very valid point that it will not go away easily. The likes of Oxfam and Bono will forever call for aid to help the third world, but I believe it will be better if they channel their energies in getting the third world to be more self reliant and thus more confident in its abilities to take care of itself.

One big point made is the greater south-south cooperation, which is something I have always stood for and believed in in my blog. The third world, including the fast industrializing and fast developing nations, must come together and get out of the WASP shadow on their own future. I had written in a post some time ago about how countries like India and Brazil help the rest of the third world by introducing them to better agriculture practices, or China can come in (without its greed for resources) and genuinely usher in infrastructure development and redevelopment of cities and urban spaces.

An important point is that if global trade is still the way forward, notwithstanding the protectionist attitude of the first world now that globalization is finally becoming the two way street they advertised, the third world is an important market in itself. There are big markets in developing nations across the globe where fledgling industries in other third world countries can sell their goods and services.

I think a big factor in achieving this greater south-south cooperation is getting rid of the developed west centrality. A brown man must learn to trust a black man or a yellow man, to give a very crude example! Considering the last two centuries were ruled the WASPs, unfortunately our thinking is centered around their thinking. Global media and flow of arts and culture is controlled by North America and Western Europe, and a greater exchange of people and ideas among the third world is absolutely essential for this shift to take place. I can see it happening and I hope it only goes stronger.