Cartoons, class and political insecurity

For the outsider, Indian politics is a mind-bogglingly confusing mess. A multitude of institutions, individuals and social groups seem to be locked in a permanent battle with an infinite number of fronts; the states and the centre  perpetually tussle for power, with the current swing being decidedly towards the states; competing interests lead to paralysis until, quite inexplicably, everything happens all at once and you're left reeling in confusion. Democracy in India makes the tortuous, ludicrously long US Presidential election look like a primary school egg-and-spoon race.

This makes it difficult for a foreign blogger, in the country for less than a year, to write anything vaguely intelligent on political issues, which is frustrating for me as someone who's followed politics in one way or another for may years. Every now and then, though, India's politicians throw me a bone by embarking on a squabble that manages both to dominate the headlines and yet be so silly that I feel like even I can get a decent grasp on it.

The current furore on the Indian political scene concerns cartoons. As Denmark knows well, cartoons have an extraordinary ability to upset people. Normally, though, the cartoons that cause offence are ones that are produced by bold, some might say reckless, modern artists who are willing to take risks to push the boundaries of what is acceptable. In this case, the cartoonists are not young. They are dead. And the the cartoons are not modern. They were drawn 60 years ago.

It all started with the inclusion in school textbooks of the following cartoon:

For those outside India scratching their heads, the man on the left is Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India. On the right is BR Ambedkar, a quite extraordinary man who was born into a Dalit caste but became a renowned scholar and jurist, and was largely responsible for the drafting of the Indian constitution. He is, with a great deal of justification, regarded as an icon of modern Indian history and in particular as a hero by Dalits. As the cartoon shows, however, he was not immune to criticism.

When it came to light, however, that this cartoon had been included in school text books, all hell broke loose. An insult to Dalits; a slight on a national hero; derogatory; offensive; inappropriate for "impressionable young minds". Most of these howls of protest seemed to emit from the two houses of the Indian parliament. There were calls for the resignation of the Minister of Human Resource Development, who has responsibility for education in the country.

Not only that, but it transpired that there were other cartoons included in the text books featuring political figures who were portrayed in a demeaning or insulting way. The protests reached new levels of shrillness; now, the cartoons represented a "conspiracy to malign the political class"; young children were being "poisoned" by such images. Faced with such a cacophony, the Minister eventually announced that all "offensive" cartoons would be removed from the textbooks.

At this point I think I should add some context by sharing the text that accompanied the original cartoon in the textbook. It ran as follows:

"Cartoonist's impression of the 'snail's pace' with which the constitution was made. Making of the constitution took almost three years. Is the cartoonist commenting on this fact? Why, do you think, did the Constituent Assembly take so long to make the Constitution?"

In other words, the point of including the cartoon is to encourage students to think about a key period in India's history and the writing of the nation's founding constitution, and to do so through the eyes of a contemporary political observer. The text book's use of the cartoon seems solely aimed at bringing an otherwise dry issue to life; giving students an accessible entry point into discussion and understanding of a remote but crucial point in India's past. 

I studied politics at school and remember our textbooks, and our teacher, making frequent use of such cartoons precisely because they bring issues to live in a vivid and engaging way. This, for me, is the strength of cartoons wherever they appear. Yes, they are often also used to mock and ridicule persons in positions of power. But this is secondary to their power to engage the reader in political issues. I don't recall my "impressionable young mind" being "poisoned" by all this. I do recall being made to think.

It would be easy at this point to sneer at India's politicians and their thin-skinned reaction. Good grief, says the cynical Brit in me, try being a politician in the UK, which has a tradition of mockery of its politicians that is probably unrivalled in its savagery anywhere in the world. If India's politicians find the image above so revolting, God help them if they ever remake Spitting Image over here. 

The general public seem a bit bemused by it all. I don't know if there are armies of Dalits out there outraged at the treatment of the man who did so much to raise them from subjection, and I could hardly be totally unsympathetic to them if there are. But judging by my friends' views, and those on the comments pages on the internet, this whole affair is simply political trickery; a distraction from the real issues that India faces and an example of a privileged class at the top of the hierarchy demanding not just power and prestige but also obsequious respect.

There's something in both of these accusations, I think. The sight of politicians, who live a life of unimaginable luxury compared to the average Indian, complaining about "conspiracies" against them does stick somewhat in the gullet. And of course the old watch-the-rabbit trick is a favourite of politicians everywhere (though manufactured crises are not usually based on such nakedly flim-flam material).

I have a slightly different perspective on this, though. Power in India is like a sand dune: it's constantly shifting, and while it might look as solid as a mountain it could be a completely different shape in a short length of time. Lower castes and other excluded groups are asserting themselves more; new alliances are springing up; the once all-powerful Gandhi dynasty is looking vulnerable. For all their privilege, members of the political class know that their position depends on being able to navigate this rapidly shifting terrain and stay on top. There is, in other words, a reason why they sound so insecure: they are.

Compare this to the UK, where an extraordinary number of our political leaders come from a very, very narrow background of Eton and Oxbridge (though the assumption that the UK is becoming more elitist is not correct, the degree to which this kind of privilege has remained in place since the war is remarkable, as this article points out). Our political class still has a sense, not of being in danger of losing their position, but of having a right to it: of it being their natural place in the order of things. As a white, male Oxbridge graduate myself I have come across this attitude a good deal - deny it though they of course would.

So maybe this explains why British politicians don't get hot under the collar when they are portrayed as a slug, a poodle, or a fascist dictator on national television. They don't need to. They can afford to be complacent. And although I pity the schoolchildren whose textbooks have been left drier and less effective by this ludicrous affair, I can't help but feel that it reflects something that makes India so exciting: in political terms, it's a big and increasingly level playing field, and no-one really knows who's going to win the game.

How to intimidate the enemy

Borders are strange places. Coming from an island, I still find arbitrary delineations between different countries vaguely surreal. The fact that land tends to look pretty much the same on one side of the border as it does on the other reinforces how artificial even our most important constructs are. But if borders in general feel slightly unreal, the border between India and Pakistan, just west of Amritsar, is completely bizarre.

This wasn't my first time visiting a border between two countries with less-than-friendly relations. The border between North and South Korea is the most heavily fortified in the world, and a visit to Panmunjom, about 25 miles north of Seoul, is a must-do for most tourists to the South. At Panmunjom you can "walk into North Korea" by circling the negotiating table that sits exactly in the middle of one of the huts that straddle the border. Outside, the North and South Korean soldiers face off, wearing identical stern expressions but contrasting uniforms (the Northerners like something from the pages of a history book, the Southerners like something from Robocop). On the Northern side there are enormous letters attached to the landscape saying things like "Our General is Number One", and the picture is completed by two ludicrously large flagpoles (I believe the Northern one was until recently the tallest in the world, and the flag is so heavy that it never actually flies).

It's a fascinating but also rather sobering place to visit. The border closing ceremony at Wagah near Amritsar is equally fascinating but of another nature altogether. Here, two of the world's most jittery nuclear powers face off against each other - with a military display that's frankly as camp as a row of tents, accompanied by one of the most jubilant party atmospheres I have come across in India.

On either side of the road at the border, the authorities have erected enormous stands for the audience, who flock here in their thousands every evening to watch the show. On the Pakistani side the genders are strictly segregated; on the Indian side they mix freely and dance to the upbeat Bollywood tunes pumping out from the speakers (until the business gets underway, when they are told to sit down by the soldiers, who enforce this very strictly).

On both sides, a man with a microphone did the business of getting the crowd well and truly worked up, while dignified sari-clad ladies queued up to take their turn with one of a set of enormous Indian flags; once they got it, they ran up and down the road like schoolgirls with both flag and sari flapping crazily behind them.

You may have noticed the quite extraordinary headgear modelled by the Indian soldiers. I'm not sure the historical origin of these, and I have to admit that, extremely capable though I am sure the Indian army's finest are, I struggle to find them particularly intimidating in this get-up:

They are mirrored on the other side of the border by Pakistani soldiers in similar attire, although I can't help thinking that the more sober colours and big facial hair on display on the Pakistani side maybe achieve the desired effect rather more:

But the real show starts when these guys get moving. They wait in line for the real business of the evening to begin:

Then, on a given signal, two female soldiers from either side march with really quite astonishing speed - seriously, it looks like they are jet-propelled or have wind-up motors attached - to the border gates, which are ceremonially opened.

Then, two by two, the male soldiers reel off from each side and approach the gate themselves, at the same improbably fast clip, punctuated by high kicks that any chorus girl would be proud of. At the border they meet their Pakistani counterparts with a tightly choreographed display that's somewhere between a Haka and a tango. This goes on for about half an hour before the gates are finally slammed shut again. It all runs like clockwork and every move is executed with a degree of precision that the West End's choreographers would envy. And the whole while, the crowd on either side goes crazy, whooped into a chanting fury by the men with the microphones. 

There's no sense of hostility really, which is odd considering the history of relations between the two countries.  It's like one big party. And it's very evident from the way in which the two sides mirror precisely each others' actions that these guys must spend quite a bit of time rehearsing the whole thing together. I suspect that at quiet moments they probably have a gossip over a cup of chai.

Show over, we followed the throngs back away from the border and toward our waiting vehicle, reflecting on the odd ways of humanity and the strange ways in which nationalism manifests itself. The po-faced hostility at Panmunjom and the pomp and posturing at Wagah stem from similar situations of mutual distrust and unresolved conflict, but they could hardly be more different.

Borders really are strange places.

India's garbage: there is hope

Anyone who has spent much time in Indian towns and cities will know that garbage management is not a forte here. While the plush bits of Delhi and the major tourist attractions are generally kept sparkling clean, elsewhere it's a different story. In places, it's not uncommon for the piles of rubbish lying on the streets to get so big that passing vehicles have to swerve to avoid them, and pedestrians are well-accustomed to having to step over all manner of nastiness to go about their business.

Why is this a problem for India? Partly because the country is undergoing rapid urbanisation, and the kind of infrastructure necessary to keep the impact of spiralling city populations to a minimum is just not in place - not to mention a shortage of funds that can only be exacerbated by the country's corruption problems. But this doesn't explain everything. Even in smaller towns, the same issues arise, and on my road trip in Kerala earlier this year I witnessed stretches of semi-rural roads with garbage lined up along either side for kilometres at a time. So is there something more fundamentally problematic in Indian attitudes towards their public spaces?

That seems to be what the people behind the Ugly Indian initiative in Bangalore think. I read about this on the BBC a couple of days ago: a group of anonymous volunteers who meet up via social networking and email, to clean up Bangalore one street at a time. By the looks of it they are having considerable success.

What I find interesting about this story is that it both confirms and challenges some stereotypes about India. The country is, in Western minds, inextricably linked with dirt and poor hygiene - a very common reaction when I told people I was moving here was "don't get sick", and recently the movie Eat, Pray, Love caused outrage here when a character was advised not to touch anything after coming to India. It would be foolish to pretend there isn't some truth in this, though I've been here nearly six months now without having any major problems (a slight upset following my trip to Varanasi aside).

The organisers of the Ugly Indian initiative seem to acknowledge that this is a real problem with attitudes, not just a symptom of a developing country: the mission is rooted in an attempt to "understand the Indian mind and attitude towards cleanliness" and "outwit him/her with clever solutions". This positions it not just as a matter of picking up litter, but actively combating everyday Indians who neglect the cleanliness of their environment.

So the "dirty" stereotype has some justification. But at the same time, the development of this initiative shows that society here is a lot more innovative and dynamic than it is sometimes credited with being, and that there is a healthy sense of community spirit. Before coming here I read Pavan K Varma's brilliant Being Indian, in which he argues that Hindu spirituality, which emphasises individual approaches to God, and a linked social structure based on tight family units and rigid social divisions, has led to a country disinclined to evangelism and aggressive expansionism, but also inward-looking and lacking in community sentiment. There's maybe something in this - but I find it hard to reconcile with an initiative so selfless as the Ugly Indian.

The most astonishing thing is the anonymity. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think even the most altruistic initiatives in the West wouldn't take this approach (I'm not talking about anonymous charity donation, which is a bit different I think, but active community initiatives). But here it has been seen as a big factor behind the success - maybe (and I'm just speculating) because it frees the participants from the traditional sense of shame about engaging in the menial and dirty activities reserved for the low castes.

Whatever the reasons for its success, I hope London and other UK cities are looking at this as an inspiration (I'm sure, as a colleague of mine pointed out, that Mr Cameron would just love to have this kind of "Big Society" initiative take off in the UK). I also hope that Indian activists like Anna Hazare (the anti-corruption campaigner and hunger striker whose approach I'm not the biggest fan of) take a look and maybe reflect on the fact that if an issue isn't made into a personal promotion, it allows everyone to focus on what's really important.

But most of all, I hope the initiative spreads to Delhi and that I can join in the clean up. Anonymously, of course.

Private acts, public accusations

Greetings from Kolkata airport, which has made a late new entry rather high in my list of depressing, drab and desolate aiports around the world (closely rivalling Moscow, Coimbatore and Luton), with special mentions in the "confusing layout" and "excessive number of passport checks" categories. I would love to blog about Kolkata, but I've been here on a two day business trip that has allowed no time for sight seeing. I will just give a quick commendation for the absolutely superbly named Hotel Rockstar, which I passed on  my way in from the airport and which, frankly, deserves to become an international chain on the basis of the name alone.

I may not have seen much of Kolkata, but I did get to stay in the rather splendid Taj Bengal, which has rooms built around an enormous atrium like the world's most luxurious prison, and which pays attention to the details. Like the little "things to do" reminder note on my bed when I arrived, which included tips like "confirm your flights" and "take your prescribed medicine", but which kicked off with "have you called your family today?" This inspired a minor twinge of guilt as I reflected that it had been some days since I called anyone in my family (although I have introduced my mum to the joys of Skype). Sorry, mum.

The Taj Bengal: the most luxurious guilt trip in India

It's very Indian to find that a hotel takes it upon itsef to remind you to stay in contact with your nearest and dearest. It's impossible to overstate the importance of the family here and how assumptions about family relationships inform every social interaction. "Proper" family relationships are subject to public sanction that show themselves in ways that range from small and harmless (as per the Taj's chirpy note) to quite horrifying (such as the ritual of Sati - supposedly still practiced in places - whereby a widow is expected to throw herself onto her husband's funeral pyre).

Of course India is far from unique in imposing strict social (and sometimes legal) controls on matters that in the West would be considered private matters. But I wonder if anywhere else in the world has to deal quite so intensely with the conflicts that inevitably spring up between this and the values of a democratic, secular and liberal state. News just broke, for instance, that the Indian actress Nikhita Thukral has been suspended from making Kannada language films for three years after rumours circulated that she had caused the break up of a fellow actor's marriage by having an affair with him. The move has not gone uncriticised - anonymous members of the film industry are reported as describing it, rather mildly I think, as "unprofessional" - but the fact that this could happen at all highlights the yawning gulf that exists between what is considered acceptable censure of others' private lives in India and the UK.

Quite apart from the disproportionate blame attached to the woman in a case of alleged adultery (which is, I'm afraid, entirely unsurprising) and the apparently very shoddy ground on which Thukral has been tried and convicted by a faceless committee at the Kannada Film Producers' Association, the idea that such a private matter could lead to a formal, public ban is, for an outsider like me, incredible. It's not that Western film industries are incapable of shutting out individuals thought to have behaved improperly - from poor old Fatty Arbuckle to Lindsey Lohan, many people have found there are lines that cannot be crossed without retribution, even if they are only suspected of crossing them.

But a formal, public blacklisting is, by the standards I am used to, an extraordinarily rare thing. Even elected officials, for whom marital or sexual improprieties once spelled career death, have ceased to face such stringent condemnation for private matters in the UK (the US is a very different case in this regard, while until recently France, by contrast, seemed to take a kind of pride in the voracious appetites of Dominique Strauss-Kahn).

This very public judgement reflects the fact that in India, a strictly organised, hierarchical and family-focused society has combined with a working democracy to produce a rather fuzzy dividing line between the personal and the political, the private and the public. It seems to me to have more in common in this regards with the West in the 1950s - a time when social censure for personal indiscretions could still easily ruin lives. The question is whether the counter-culture that emerged immediately after that decade in the West will have its counterpart here. There are already signs - tentative gay pride marches, underground music scenes, an increasing number of young people who have money and access to the internet - that things are changing. But the forces of Indian conservatism remain strong.

I make no judgement about whether such social change is a good or bad thing. I don't condone the treatment of Thukral, but I recognise that traditional Indian values have long provided a source of strength and stability that has arguably been increasingly lacking in the West. I wonder, though, if India is ready for its own version of the "culture wars" - and what form they will take in the coming decades.

Indira's shadow

Has there ever been a world leader whose appearance demanded attention as much as Indira Gandhi's? With that shock of black-and-white, Cruella de Vil hair, unmistakable nose, and fiercely intelligent eyes, hers was a face made to be on the front page of the newspaper if ever there was one. She died nearly 27 years ago, but her impact lives on in India - and not just through the fact that her family name remains the most powerful one in the country's politics.

She was assassinated at her home in Delhi, which has now been turned into a memorial to her and to her son, Rajiv, who succeeded her as Prime Minister in 1984 and was assassinated in his turn. My visit there today was a claustrophobic affair. The site of the martyrdom - for that's what it is seen as - of the nation's favourite daughter is a place of pilgrimage for Indians, who jostle and cram their way into the somewhat cramped exhibition halls - covered with newspapers spanning the decades of her career and Gandhi family photos - and have a habit of thrusting their mobile phones in front of the display you are looking at, in order to get a snap. It didn't allow for a great deal of peaceful contemplation of Indira's impact, but it shows just how large a figure she still looms in Indians' minds.

She was certainly an extraordinary figure. As a child she had to get used to the repeated incarceration of her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a leader of the Indian independence movement and became the country's first Prime Minister after the end of British rule. Her political awareness thus not only started young, it was personal right from the start - which maybe helps explain her later dictatorial tendencies. The photos and sketches of her from the time show a serious girl, with large, intense eyes that seem to hint at the remarkable life she was to lead:

She herself was imprisoned by the British - and, years later, by her political opponents in India. She served as Prime Minister for a total of fifteen years, including during Bangladesh's successful war of independence against Pakistan, in which India played a decisive role.

She was famous for her sharp political instincts, that helped her stay in power for so long, and must have cut an intimidating figure. She was fiercely committed to improving conditions for India's poor, and drove through the Green Revolution that allowed the country to feed itself. But she was also responsible for some of the darker moments of India's post-independence period, including a 21-month state of emergency (proclaimed on rather tenuous grounds) which allowed her to rule effectively by decree, and the event that would lead to her assassination, the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar in an effort to root out separatist Sikhs calling for the creation of an independent "Khalistan" in the Punjab.

Among Sikhs, unsurprisingly, she hardly cuts a popular figure, and she inspired unusual ire among her political opponents, as well as Richard Nixon (so she can't have been all bad). But for most Indians, she is remembered as a great national leader of a status comparable to her father. Unsurprising, then, that the memorial museum tends towards the hagiographical: the State of Emergency and the violence in Amritsar are brushed over, and no mention is made of the immediate aftermath of Indira's murder, when thousands of innocent Sikhs were killed - many burned alive - in revenge attacks across Delhi and elsewhere in India.

The museum displays her living quarters, preserved in her tasteful but rather spartan style, as well as the sari, bag and shoes she was wearing on the day she was shot by her Sikh bodyguards in revenge for the attack in Amritsar. The blood stains are clearly visible:

It might be trite to say that death is the great equalizer, but looking at this small collection, and her very ordinary bag and shoes, it's hard to associate them with one of the twentieth century's most important leaders or with an event that went on to shape - and destroy - thousands of lives. Rajiv's clothes at the time of his own murder seven years later are also on display, and have an altogether more shocking impact:

The violence of Rajiv's death - he was blown to pieces by a suicide bomber - is clear. For some reason though, it was the socks that moved me - oddly intact, just grubby, as though Rajiv had been out for a run and dumped them on the floor afterwards, and incongruous with the solemn museum setting.

Anyway, after musing on Indira's life and death, I made the ten minute walk to the spot where another Gandhi - even more famous than Indira - was also assassinated. The place where Mahatma Gandhi was killed is also preserved as a memorial, but was far less crowded than Indira's. This got me thinking about the meaning these two people - who were close personally but very different in their historical roles - have for the country today.

Others are much better qualified than me to judge, but to me the bigger crowds at Indira's memorial reflect the fact that for modern India, her shadow is longer than the Mahatma's. Mahatma Gandhi is, and always will be, an iconic figure internationally, and India continues to hold him up as a role model and one of the founding fathers of independent India. But for all that people profess to admire his ideals, few Indian public figures since then seem to follow them much.

Certainly his frugal lifestyle is not often followed by those Indians who have a choice in the matter. His condemnation of the oppression of women and of caste distinctions have not prevented them remaining widespread in India more than 60 years after his death. Even in my own area of vocational education his words sound at odds with prevailing attitudes here: Gandhi said that "instead of regarding craft and industry as different from education, I regard the former as the medium for the latter". That's not a popular view in a country where work-related education is still associated with low caste and low prestige in many circles.

I say this more in observation than condemnation, for if India had followed Gandhiism, I suspect it would be rather worse off now than it is. The pursuit of wealth may have created some very ugly inequalities, but it has also allowed for economic growth that has lifted millions out of poverty. Ultimately, Gandhi's asceticism was something he chose - because he was in a position to make that choice. Most Indians - like most people elsewhere - don't make that choice. It makes him an extraordinary person, and an admirable one, just as his approach to challenging British rule proved astonishingly effective. But it doesn't mean that his way is in any sense practical as long term public policy.

Indira, though, in her awareness of her own power, her willingness to use it and her belief - no less than Gandhi's - in the cause of India, seems to me to have more in common with the increasingly assertive and confident country India is today. That has some good consequences, and some potentially scary ones - the India-Pakistan relationship being top of the list of the latter.

Modern India, nuclear-armed, accustomed to sabre-rattling and struggling with rampant graft, seems to have a politics that owes little to peaceful, self-denying Mahatma Gandhi. In this, I guess it is little different to the rest of the world - where he is held up an admired as an inspiration, but where politics dance largely to a different tune. One that Indira knew better.

Blog in haste...

My post yesterday looks a bit ludicrous after the events of today. The India corruption story has just taken a turn for the dramatic: Anna Hazare and 1300 other people have been arrested in connection with his planned hunger strike over the corruption bill, and the Indian government is busy denying that it is suppressing democratic protest. Things are starting to get rather hot under the collar.

It seems like the debate over corruption is morphing into a cartoon battle between Goodies and Baddies, with no-one quite sure which is which and the issues over which they are fighting starting to slip into the background. Much as this latest move by the government looks like an over-reaction, I think a part has been played here by the blunt tactics used by Hazare, which seem to have opened the way for the level of debate to decline to who is prepared to push hardest.

It's not like India has no track record in more productive and innovative ways of tackling the issue. In 2007, an Indian NGO called the 5th Pillar started producing Zero Rupee Notes: a "banknote", made to look similar to the 50 rupee note, with a stated value of zero rupees. The idea was that citizens could present this to officials who solicit bribes as a way to shame them and to "say no to corruption without the fear of facing an encounter with persons in authority."

Clearly this isn't going to root out a problem the scale of India's, but as a means to raise the issue of corruption and to empower ordinary citizens to speak out about it, it's a great initiative and in my view better than trying to browbeat the government by going on hunger strike. This country suffers a lot from corruption. I think its people deserve a better approach to addressing the problem than they are getting.

India turns 64

Today marks India's independence day - did you notice the rather nice graphic of the Red Fort on Google? It being a national holiday, I had great plans to go up to the Fort and meander down to the Rajpath to enjoy the spectacle. Unfortunately, plans were derailed by a stonking migraine (which generally seem to hit me on days when I am not due to be in work anyway, curses). By the time I felt human enough to leave the house, the crowds had long since dispersed, leaving only some out-of-towners gaping at India Gate, the occasional toddler forlornly waving the Indian flag, and a few autorickshaw drivers who'd missed the rush to get home. It was all a bit of an anticlimax.

Ah well, there's always next year. In any case I understand the REALLY big parades happen for Republic Day, which is in January, so I will save my ace reporter hat until then.

Independence Day is also the day on which the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, delivers his annual address to the nation. I haven't seen the full transcript, but if the press reports are anything to go by, this was no optimistic, rally-rousing State of the Union type affair. The focus has been almost entirely on his comments about corruption, as the powers that be do battle over the "Lokpal Bill" - the legislation to set up an ombudsman to deal with the problem - and in particular, over how extensive the ombudsman's powers should be. For the last few months the defining story of Indian politics has been the hunger strike carried out by Anna Hazare, who is demanding stronger powers for the body than the government currently seems prepared to grant.

The impression given by the media is of a rather defensive speech, in which Mr Singh protested that the government has no "magic wand" to deal with the issue of corruption. He also argued that hunger strikes will not help solve the problem. I agree with him, but since hunger striking as a political tool was employed extensively by Mahatma Gandhi himself, you can understand why it remains a potent weapon in India.

If the speech was defensive in tone, this was matched by the PM's physical environment: he was behind a bullet-proof enclosure as he went over issues from land rights to terrorism and the economy. India is taking no chances. I don't blame them - they face real threats from domestic and international terrorism - but I can't help thinking that this kind of measure risks reinforcing perceptions of a distant and removed governing elite, which may feed further into popular resentment over corruption.

Overall, though, I don't really understand why the popular mood seems so overwhelmingly negative at the moment. India's economy may have slowed recently, but the concern is that it may not quite manage 8% growth this year. I'm pretty sure that if David Cameron was looking at 8% growth there would be parties in the streets of London rather than riots. Indian democracy may be flawed, but its politics are a hell of a lot healthier than those of other countries in the region. And speaking of the region, relations in general are looking better now than they have in years - particularly with Bangladesh, where Sonia Gandhi was a couple of weeks ago and where Mr Singh is going next month. As I speculated in my last post, India may be gearing up to play a positive leadership role in South Asia through its new development agency. Whatever doubts I have about that, it's not the action of a country in trouble.

On the other hand, after the thrashing India just got at the hands of England in the cricket, maybe it's not surprising the mood is a bit sour this independence day. Still, the flags keep flying, and however bitter the current internal conflicts are, India still has plenty about which it can be proud and optimistic on its 64th birthday.

Aid from India?

You may have seen in the news recently that India looks likely to set up a national Aid Agency to distribute overseas aid, with a budget of some $11 billion. Unsurprisingly, this is raising a few eyebrows, including my own. I'm all for a diversification of international development away from the domination of a few (Western) organisations and improved co-operation between developing countries. The field has been moving in this direction for some time anyway, and China already eclipses most rich countries in terms of the amount of aid it gives. But when DfID in the UK stands accused of giving away money that is needed at home (which, since the recession, it often is, though it's generally withstood this pressure admirably) the idea of India doing the same is extraordinary.

To put things into context: if India's poorer states were independent countries, they would rank alongside some of the least well-off and least developed countries in the world. And these are not small states: Bihar, the poorest Indian state, has over 100 million people, while an independent Uttar Pradesh would be the fifth biggest country in the world. The projected budget of India's aid agency amounts to around half of Bihar's entire GDP.

India may no longer be a poor country, but a lot of poor people live here. According to the World Bank, 28% of the rural population and 26% of the urban population subsist below the poverty line. That's around 350 million people for whom the emergence of India as an economic power has yet to bring anything close to a decent standard of living. I wonder what they make of the government's plans.

Of course, this is a hard line to tread. Those who object to the UK maintaining its levels of aid spending at a time of severe economic hardship do have a point: poverty and desperation are not unique to developing countries. But I've always found the arguments in favour of maintaining an active development programme - in terms of the moral imperative and enlightened self interest - convincing, and I think DfID's work brings tremendous benefit to the UK as well as to the recipients of it.

So why should I not think the same of India? It remains to be seen, after all, how India will use the new agency. It may, by focusing on its immediate neighbourhood, be able to use it to build a more stable and prosperous region for which we would all have reason to be grateful - not least the citizens of India who stand to benefit greatly. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh need development, but both would share in the results of a more normalised relationship between India and Pakistan, for instance.

But apart from the question of whether India should see to its own poor first, I have two niggling doubts. Firstly, I wonder what the motivation is behind setting up the agency. As India establishes itself as a superpower-in-waiting, it (like many other countries) has sought opportunities to launch the national brand to the global audience. The Commonwealth Games in Delhi last year is the obvious example, and one that remains controversial here (the billions, says my landlord Mr Mehandru, should have been spent on fixing Delhi's drainage system, not to mention building a decent waiting room at the city registration office). An international aid agency, by its nature, is something only the most successful countries can afford. I'm sure there is more to this initiative than a desire for a prestige project - but I suspect that desire is part of the picture. (Again, I run the risk of double standards here - it would be naive to suppose that this hasn't played a role in the setting up of aid agencies elsewhere.)

My other concern lies more in the theory of aid itself. With corruption and non-accountability prevalent in so much of the developing world, the effectiveness of aid has long been suspect. Many development agencies have switched their focus on to improving governance, to allow for better use of existing resources rather than ploughing more cash into wasteful or crooked systems. Apparently India itself has quite a bit of experience in this, as the country's bureaucrats have been involved in training their African counterparts for decades. But with the country's track record on corruption, which dominates the papers here and arouses enormous public ire, I do find it hard to see this being the new agency's focus. There really is a plank of wood to be seen to here before tackling Africa's motes of dust.

Going back to old models of aid would be counter-productive - and having been on the receiving end of a lot of it over the years, I'm sure the Indian government knows that very well. Alternatively the agency may focus on infrastructure development - but this tends to open up even more opportunities for corruption, as well as raising tricky questions about the fuzzy dividing line between aid and investment. So I wonder what approach the new agency will take. Perhaps we are due to see new models emerging as "South-South" cooperation becomes more common.

Anyway, I will be watching the developments around the mooted new agency with interest, particularly the strategies it decides to pursue. It will be enlightening to see how the Indian population reacts should it officially get off the ground - with pride at their country's rising influence, or with anger at possibly misplaced priorities?

In the long run, though, an outward-looking India can only be a good thing. The country's growing global stature remains fraught with contradictions and difficulties, but however it gets there you can't avoid feeling that it is moving towards its rightful place in the world.

The Slut Walk comes to Delhi

You may have seen on the news that the Slut Walk reached Delhi today (if you don't know what the Slut Walk is, click here). I was intrigued at how this very Western phenomenon would take shape in India, so I dragged myself out of bed ridiculously early on a Sunday morning and took myself up to the centre of town.

The event has been given a second name here: the "Besharmi Morcha", which translates as "shame walk" rather than the more confrontational English name. This in itself is rather interesting. There are plenty of words in Hindi that would be a fairly accurate translation of the word "slut", but the organisers clearly felt that for one reason or another they would not be appropriate. I'm not going to go into the rights and wrongs of this here, but there is a really interesting blog post by an Indian writer here, which connects this to the (undeniably true) assertion that the walk in India (as elsewhere) has made by far its biggest impact among the professional, educated elite rather than the poor and marginalised who are the biggest victims of sex-related crime.

Controversies about the event itself aside, there was no doubting the sincerity of the participants (around 300-400 showed up). Interestingly, there were at least as many men as women and I would estimate that the volunteers organising the walk were about three-fifths male. Unlike elsewhere, there was very little flesh on display: the participants wore mainly jeans and t-shirt or salwar kameez, or if they were really daring, shorts, while the organisers wore sober white t-shirts:

This was no surprise: Delhi remains far more conservative than the other cities where walks have taken place, and in any case any outrageously dressed walkers would have distracted from the more important messages about violence against women, a notoriously severe problem here. This point was emphasised when a rather statuesque German lady showed up wearing a sleeveless top with the word "slut" scrawled on her arm. She would have attracted no attention in London, but the Delhi photographers swarmed after her like wasps at a picnic.

Participants had clearly been encouraged to create their own slogans and make their own placards. There were some interesting results, from the pithy:

To the sincere, but maybe slightly wordy:

To the slightly surreal:

To some rather tortuous pop culture references:

While some of the chaps on the walk came over as a little confused...

There were also some very telling placards that highlighted the difference in issues faced by women in India to those in the countries where previous Slut Walks have taken place: I doubt London or Toronto saw any signs reading "Don't Side With Foeticide".

The media seemed unsure of what to make of it. Most of the interviews I saw taking place were with the various (mainly female) foreigners who had shown up, including the aforementioned Teutonic Goddess. One rather camp man with a floppy fringe got a lot of attention by becoming highly animated whenever he had a camera pointing at him. "I have a message for such men," I overheard him say at least three times, "Get some libido-suppressing pills!" I would have thought that local women would get more attention, but on the evidence of what I saw, they were not the priority.

The walk itself was over in about fifteen minutes, after which there was an energetic piece of street theatre (all in Hindi, but the message was pretty clear):

And that was it. Gradually the crowd dispersed, placards having been waved and slogans chanted.

I'm not sure what the event achieved in the end. There will be a fair amount of media coverage, but there was no direct engagement with any policy makers or other leaders. But I think the criticisms in the blog I linked to at the start of this post are more pertinent: the Delhi event may have had some important things to say, but in taking its inspiration from a movement that started in Canada and spread to the UK, the Netherlands and Australia it's questionable how relevant it is for the vast majority of Indian women, who face a different set of issues.

The position of women in India is complex. Certainly the notion that women can hold powerful positions is not unknown here. Indira Gandhi was one of the twentieth century's most powerful and longest-serving leaders of either gender; and the city of Delhi as well as the states of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu (together accounting for about a third of the country's population) are led by women. The president, the speaker of the lower house, and the leader of the opposition are all female. And then of course there's Sonia Gandhi, leader of the Congress party and, according to Forbes magazine, the ninth most powerful person in the world.

But the world of politics is a rarefied one, and it often bears little resemblance to the daily lives of a country's citizens - particularly, it seems, in India. Whatever qualities they may have as individuals, it can't be denied that many female leaders here - including both the Mrs Gandhis - would be unlikely to have reached the positions they did were they not member of powerful ruling clans. This is not to downplay their achievements once in office, but it would be a mistake to think that the existence of these powerful women reflects a society in which opportunity is open to all regardless of gender.

Indian girls have it tough even before they are born. The most recent census indicates that the gender balance has swung alarmingly in favour of males in recent years: for every 1000 boys born here, there are now only 914 girls. In Haryana, it's just 861. Apart from the social problems India is setting up for itself by creating millions of future young men who are unable to find wives (already foreshadowed in the existence of people smuggling operations bringing in brides from Bangladesh and West Bengal), what's even more disturbing is the evidence that rising prosperity may actually be making things worse. As wealth and education rise one might think that an enlightened approach to gender relations might take root, but in practice it gives access to more sophisticated technologies to determine the sex of a foetus and to take action as a result (such practices are strictly illegal but still widespread).

If a girl manages to be born, she still faces a society where domestic violence, rape and abuse are all too common. Attitudes towards women are so ingrained that the perpetrators of such acts are significantly often themselves women, particularly when it comes to "dowry deaths" - when newlywed women are murdered by their husband's family for bringing insufficient cash and goodies with them when they enter into the marriage. (The practice of dowry really is repugnant, and reflects the degree to which women are devalued - it is essentially considered necessary to bribe a man's family to get him to take a woman as his wife.) Of course, as always with India, you have to beware of generalisations: things vary a great deal from state to state. But there's no denying that its treatment of its women is a stain on India.

Things are starting to change, albeit slowly. Two generations of Indian women have grown up under democracy, and those who have also had the benefit of an education are demanding a different world. I recently finished reading Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai, one of the angriest books I have ever read, which portrays the situation of women in Punjab through the tale of a young girl accused of a multiple murder and a social worker's efforts to uncover the truth. There's a heartbreaking scene that has the girl and her sister discover the skeletal hand of a baby buried in their backyard - their sister, murdered by a family that only wanted boys.

Books like these and events like the slut walk are part of a growing movement calling for change. The government, too, is doing its part: it has reserved 33 percent of seats in local democratic bodies for women, and is trying to do the same at the national level (I'm not a fan of quotas like these as I don't think they get to the root of the problem, but it is at least action), and it has invested in a public awareness campaign including posters like this one I spotted at a bus stop a couple of weeks ago:

This litany of challenging issues helps explain why the women on the Delhi walk dressed conservatively, and why the word "slut" was not translated: questions of what women can wear and what language is used may be important, but they are hardly the top of the agenda here. Ultimately, calling the event the "Slut Walk" seems really just to have been a way to get it more attention - it was really a protest against sexual violence in general, a related but different message to its forebears elsewhere in the world. Sadly, though, without the "slut walk" tag it would never have attracted as much publicity as it did - partly because of the controversial term and the (unfulfilled) prospect of scantily clad participants, and partly because the participants themselves were attracted to being part of a global, progressive movement as well as to making a statement about gender relations in India.

But you have to wonder if poor, marginalised and illiterate women in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar are going to have their lives changed by misnamed "slut walks" by privileged city dwellers, government posters and angry books. And how exactly does one go about changing the mindsets of over 600 million men who have been raised to believe they should be in charge of a wife - a wife they will find it increasingly hard to find?

Reproduction again

I posted a while back on the initiative in Rajasthan to offer people cars and household goods in return for undergoing sterilisation. I didn't think much of the policy then and I don't now, but here's an interesting different take on the issue.

So is the policy sexist? Probably. The status of women in India is a complex issue, and at some point I will post something a bit longer dedicated to it.

But anyway, at least I'm not the only one to believe that the answer to India's problems of over-population does not lie in this policy or, as one of the comments on the article suggests, in aping China's one-child policy - or, indeed, in any coercive tactics at all.

Negotiating India

I just had a fascinating lunch with a bunch of Indian colleagues from all over the country - Bangalore, Kerala, Rajasthan and West Bengal. Most of it consisted of a series of good-humoured but increasingly vociferous disagreements on subjects ranging from the proportion of people to gods in the country (we agreed in the end on approximately 400:1, discounting the various monotheistic Indians from the equation) to the day on which it is appropriate to pay homage to the goddess Lakshmi. The most strident note of conflict was about whether it is possible to buy beef in India (and, on a side note, whether Dominos put ham on their pizzas here), which gave rise to some quite stirring speeches about India being a "dietary democracy".

It was both entertaining and fascinating for me, a newcomer to this country’s ongoing dialogue with itself to understand what “Indian” means. It’s a truism that India’s ability to hold together as a democracy in the face of both overwhelming diversity and large-scale poverty makes it an outlier in the world of political science. I don’t know how they’ve done it either. But democracy at the very least allows people the space to have these discussions, to negotiate their way through their vast differences and find their real commonalities. This is happening at a million lunch tables, in a million parks, on a million streets every day, and has been for the last sixty years at least.

It's kind of incredible, really.

Pomp and circumambulation

I did quite a lot today. Having decided on another "tourist Saturday", I hopped on the Metro and headed up to the heart of New Delhi, the Rajpath, at the centre of the bombastic capital designed by Lutyens for British India and still the heart of power in India. Over the course of the day I ambled up and down the Rajpath and Raisina Hill (which leads up to the home of the Indian president), carried on to the National Museum, and then walked through the leafy avenues of New Delhi to lovely Lodi Gardens, through the park and on to the India Habitat Centre for dinner at the (impressively accurate) "All American Diner", before hopping back on the Metro at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium (the one built for the Commonwealth Games).

That's not a bad walk for this climate, and I have to admit by the time I got to the park I was flagging. The inhabitants of Delhi think I am bonkers for wanting to walk anywhere at all. My landlord, who is lovely, tried and failed this morning to hide his view that my tendency to walk the 10 minute journey from my flat to the Metro station to get around town was a plain indication of my lunacy. In Delhi, the only people who walk are those who have to (this is still, it should be added, an awful lot of people). Everyone else is either in their car, on their bike, sitting in a tuk tuk, taxi or rickshaw, or driving them. And if you're white and anywhere NEAR a road, however much you think you are just pottering along minding your own business, what you are actually doing (as far as all the tuk tuk and rickshaw drivers are concerned) is carrying a large sign that says:

I AM A DESPERATE, LOST FOREIGNER WHO WILL PAY THREE TIMES THE GOING RATE. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE FOLLOW ME DOWN THE STREET RINGING YOUR BELL INCESSANTLY UNTIL I COME TO MY SENSES AND GET IN YOUR RICKSHAW. IF I SAY NO, I DON'T REALLY MEAN IT. KEEP TRYING.

The thing is, Delhi is actually for the most part quite a walkable city - especially the parts I visited today. Admittedly crossing some of the roads can be a hair-raising experience, but with a decent map navigation is unproblematic and it compares favourably with walking in a lot of other Asian mega-cities (I still shudder a bit at my memories of trying to walk round Bangkok).

But try telling that to the people who live here. I'm not the first person to experience this bafflement in the face of someone who actually enjoys being able to walk around the city at my own pace - Sam Miller's book Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity is based on his experiences of doing just that for a year (nice life these journos have) and I'm pretty sure he had to fight off legions of rickshaw wallahs every day.

Anyway, enough about walking. Having packed in a lot of stuff I have a lot to blog about, so I am going to be sneaky and use a lot of it as ammo for future days when I can't think of anything decent to write (see Tuesday and Wednesday this week). So for now I'll just talk about the Rajpath and New Delhi.

I think of all the bits of Delhi I've seen so far, the Rajpath is far and away my least favourite. Don't get me wrong, it's very impressive. The buildings are magnificent and suitably awe-inspiring; the scale of the broad mile-long avenue running from the Rashtrapati Bhavan (the President's home, formerly home to the Viceroy of India) to India Gate is as immense as anything I've seen anywhere else in the world and makes the Champs Elysee look like a back alley. But the whole place just feels wrong.

Part of it is that there's just too much space:

The Rajpath and its surrounding lawns are so wide (I'd say at least 120 metres, though I'm not much good at estimating such things) that walking there, even when the sun is not too bad, makes you feel kind of like this traffic light (which is situated at Vijay Chowk at the bottom of Raisina Hill):

That is, isolated, exposed, and liable to get utterly drenched should the monsoon rains make an appearance (they did, but I was rescued by a friendly tuk tuk driver who - bless him - offered to take me somewhere for free as "it is a human right to stay dry". I got him to take me round the corner to the National Museum and paid 20 rupees for a 45 second trip).

The second thing is the lack of people. I know this was a Saturday and I'm sure it's busier during the week, but I can't quite believe that enough people ever come here (except for the big parade on Republic Day) to fill that yawning vacuum of space. Today there were a few lacklustre guards, some underwhelmed-looking tourists, a few families lounging in the grass, and a lonely ice cream man (I bought an ice lolly and then came back for another). Combined with the self-important architecture and the vast expanses of tarmac and patchy grass, the lack of people gives the place an austere, desolate air quite unlike the rest of the city.

In fact, although the Indians have taken the colonial infrastructure here and made it their own, that's the problem: it doesn't fit. It looks and feels like a massive colonial folly (I don't include all of New Delhi in this, by the way, a lot of which is really quite lovely) and is at odds with the packed, hardworking Indian city around it that is by turns elegant and squalid in equal measure. I don't blame India for doing this: in fact they are to be praised for embracing history and taking charge of it, rather than seeking to erase it (as in Seoul, where Japanese colonial buildings were torn down without regard for historical or aesthetic value). I just find the whole ensemble rather alienating (come to think of it, maybe that was the idea).

(On a side note, all my guide books tell me that Lutyens wanted the Rashtrapati Bhavan to be visible all the way up the Rajpath, and was really annoyed when he realised it only comes into view when you get towards the top of Raisina hill. Having been there, I have this to say: Lutyens was a bloody idiot. If you stick a big building on top of a hill but set it several hundred metres back from the summit edge, it's going to have an impact on its visibility from below. It's not rocket science. Greatest British architect, my aunt Fanny.)

Anyway, here are a few more photos of the Rajpath area if I haven't totally put you off (by the way, the National Museum and Lodi Gardens were both amazing, so subsequent posts will get a lot less critical...)

The Viceroy moved out, the President moved in. If you ask me, it's hard to see why either of them would need so much space.

*Insert metaphorical caption about Indian democracy*

No presidential residence is complete without pachydermal topiary.

Get out of the road, crazy white man!

I was going to upload a couple more but the connection speed has just dropped through the floor, and this post is probably long enough already anyway. Don't worry, lots more to come!

What would you do to get a free car?

Given that one sixth of the human race, in all its magnificence and depravity, reside in India, it's not surprising that the country has its fair share of disturbing news reports. This one, however, caught even my jaded attention:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13982031

So basically the official health service in Rajasthan is giving people gifts in return for them volunteering for sterilisation. Give up your chance to have kids, and get a Tata Nano. You know, the world's cheapest car that, award-winning though it is, is barely bigger than a go-kart.

Quite aside from what it says about the development of materialism in India (which, despite the "spiritual haven" tag pinned on it by Western hippies, I don't believe has ever been that shy of making a buck - and I don't think this is a bad thing), this just seemed to me to be population control of the worst kind. I mean, who's going to undergo sterilisation in order to get a car that sells at about 1,500 quid brand new?

Oh that's right - poor people.

For poor people in India, the value of the car represents several years' worth of earnings. If you're living on a couple of quid a day, for which you have to work bloody hard, already have a brood of brats and someone says "hey! not only will you not have to take care of more kids, but you can have this car, sell it and get two years' salary straight off!", it might not sound like such a bad deal.

Of course, the people on this kind of income in India are the low-caste and "scheduled tribes" who continue to face discrimination and disadvantage despite years of official efforts to overcome it, and who are still considered undesirable - not to say "untouchable" - by those born more luckily. Not, I'm sure, that this was a major consideration behind the development of the policy.

It makes me think of the contrast that is often drawn between India and China, and the advantage that India is often said to hold due to its democratic nature. On the whole I think the point is correct, and as The Economist recently pointed out, China faces some potentially difficult times as the growth of the welfare state - and the need for the middle classes to fund it - leads to demand for a political voice in return. India should avoid this, at least.

But this story shows that India is not above using blunt tools to deny people what should be a pretty fundamental right - the right to reproduce. For these particular Indian policy makers, it seems the technique is to bribe people into giving it up voluntarily, as opposed to China, which - unencumbered by democracy - just made it illegal to have more than one child. I realise population growth must be checked. But this is not the way to do it.

I know this is just one case in one state in this vast country - though apparently not without precedent - but I was shocked that it's been allowed to happen at all. It's probably naive of me to think it, but shouldn't a country that has made such huge successes - not least in education - be trying to educate its people about the benefits of fewer children, and to pay attention to the reasons why people may choose to have them, rather than trying to fob them off with trinkets?