The future is here
Vol. 1 Issue 1, 18 June-2 July 2005

When I started Planman Consulting in 1996, my biggest division then was the research and analysis division. It had 5 of the most brilliant toppers from IIPM. We had a dream to start a world-class business magazine. It was the first division to close down too! Dreams, however,have this habit of re-surfacing. They did, when I met this 19 year old exceptionally talented BBA topper at IIPM named Siddharth Nambiar. I have always believed in the abilities of intelligent, young business graduates and Siddharth fitted the bill perfectly. Siddharth’s drive and his willingness to take up this project got us rolling. We were soon sitting on the mission impossible - to bring out a first-of-its-kind business and economy magazine. I immediately asked him to first book the name, Business & Economy. When we approached RNI, we were disappointed to realise that the name had already been booked. But it was pleasant to get to know later that day that the name had been booked years back by us only!

Then started the tougher part. The hunt for world class people – and the rejection associated with being rejected by the people we wanted. And finally falling back on our internal support system. In walked A. Sandeep with a promise to do it all alone. Prasoon also decided to join in. We three were batch mates at IIPM too, so the tempo started building up. The excitement reached top gear when Sutanu took up our offer. Finally, we had someone to bring in industry expertise. Mouli Marur brought in the world class design. Prashanto, Abhimanyu and Satyajit added the remaining elements of excitement.

When you have a world class team, the rest of the job becomes easy – especially if the people are passionate about the dream ahead. Time flew... passionate, smiling and capable new people joined in and worked with utmost sincerity... and we reached the last week before the launch and suddenly 24 hours a day was not enough. The lovely, lively and smart team worked through the nights to bring out this first issue of a revolution. Because what you hold in your hand right now is a never seen before, Indian, world-class business and economy magazine. Each story, each column, each analysis done with just one aim in mind – to give you an intellectually stimulating experience. In these days of dust-bin-ization of the consumer with unlimited bombardment of relevant and irrelevant news from multiple sources, we realise the only reason you would want to read a magazine is when it gives you incisive and insightful analysis done by supremely competent people. And that’s what B&E stands for (ninety percent of our editorial people are MBAs. They understand business best and their analysis is impeccable). It’s time you start reading a business magazine that adds meaningful value to your precious time. Its time you realise - the future is here.

The future is launched
Vol. 1 Issue 2, 2 July-15 July 2005

A professor-like, relentlessly sharp, incisive and analytical lecture on sincere journalism and a clearly laid down list of dos and donts for B&E by the highly respected and fearless journalist, author and politician Arun Shourie (he called B&E a mission with passion); a lot of praise as well as advise to increase pages given to politics by our former finance minister Yashwant Sinha, in a lucid speech; a futuristic talk on India by the young face of politics Milind Deora; a dose of huge motivation from the veteran leader and ever young-at-heart Vasant Sathe; a warm and welcoming gesture by the doyen of business magazines, Ashok Advani; and passionate speeches by A. Sandeep, Prasoon and Abhimanyu, all hosted with grace by the charming Simon Singh in the midst of corporate leaders and social achievers is how The Future was launched. The first issue itself sold a staggering 35,000 copies from the stands alone. Praise for the wonderful contents and especially the world class design poured in. We won’t get complacent. It’s a promise!

Africa : do they really care?
Vol. 1 Issue 3, 16 July-29 July 2005

True, Africa has received the maximum aid over years from the developed world. But does it mean it’s enough? Or does it mean that the developed world really cares? Not really. Africa makes a nice philanthropic posture in times of mounting global criticism

on things like the Iraq war and how the world was misled into believing in its necessity. The fact is that while the developed world has been talking about giving 0.7% of its gross national product for the cause of eradicating inhuman poverty that still kills millions in Africa, it has not even given a fraction. For the war on Iraq, of course, Bush has spent 0.7% of the American GNP. The double standards are painful, especially when you confront the facts of Africa where one in five kids born doesn’t see the age of five; the average life expectancy in the poorer countries just barely touches 40; diseases like malaria still kill millions; not o forget AIDS, which alone is pulling down life expectancy in many parts by about 25%. Those who give clichéd arguments of aid not reaching poor and needy due to corruption, need to sensitise themselves to these facts first. Then they will realise that the need of the hour is aid and more aid. Aid in the form of investments, healthcare, helping Africa grow more food and fight diseases. The Ethiopians today respect the Chinese much more than any G8 nation simply because China is bringing investments, building roads, infrastructure and generating employment. It is the responsibility of the donors to see to it that the terms of the aid are very strictly binding and that aid is not disguised in the form of debt relief or siphoned off by corruptgovernments, or wasted by the aid supervising western representatives on housing and car benefits.

The UN was created after a monstrous war that took 10 million lives. More than twice that number die today of hunger and curable diseases while UN talks about bringing world peace. It’s a shame that despite the UN and the unbelievable prosperity the world has seen in the last fifty years, the earth entered the new millennium with poverty still existing. The UN now wants to make poverty history by 2025. The G8 nations form the controlling power in the UN, why then do they require a special closed door summit to decide on giving aid to Africa? If they cared, they would have already made poverty history. But in this fiscal bottom-line oriented global arena, survival of the weakest ( Africa) takes a backseat to survival of the fittest. It’s time to rechristen what Marx said long back, “Weakest of the world unite... you have nothing to lose, but the unending misery flowing out of poverty, hunger and diseases. Press for your rights... the educated and civilised world will be there to back your rights”.

While talking about the civilised world, one can’t help but refer to the huge contrast in the way the Texan cowboy dealt with terror with his smoke ‘em out attitude and the way Tony Blair spoke in the most cultured manner on the need to respect and retain Britain’s multi-cultural ethos even after TURMOIL hit London through the ugliest possible form - with dead bodies scattered all around the capital city of the country that Dr. Manmohan Singh a day later saluted as the guiding force of Indian democracy.

The Chinese success is no miracle

Vol. 1 Issue 4, 30 July-12 August 2005

Every time an Asian country starts making its pres­ence felt in the global markets, there is a tendency to call it a miracle. First it was the Japanese miracle, then the Korean miracle and now it’s the Chinese miracle. Terming it a miracle is an escapist route to remaining ignorant. How can it be a miracle that first IBM’s PC business and now MG Rover have both been taken over by Chinese companies? And in the case of Unocal and Maytag, the US government had to interfere personally to stop the deals from taking place! They might have been successful for the time being, but how long can they delay the inevitable? It’s the rule of the jungle, as well as the free market, that the mightier always swallows the weaker. It’s the rule that the Americans themselves set for the rest of the world.

And the Chinese have understood this rule best. They first went about flooding the globe with their low cost products and went on to make the most enviable $160 billion trade surplus with the US, and now is the time for them to invest these dollars in buying up whatever remains made-in-America. This was always coming. For more than seven years now, one could not find any low quality Chinese product in the streets of Europe and America. From Georgio Armani to GAP, from Tommy Hilfiger to Versace, all products had the made-in-China stamp. In Disneyland, it seemed that more than 90% of the thousands of products sold from the 200 hundred odd shops were made-in-China. Everyone’s life was being touched by China. During Christmas, all gifts being exchanged were made-in-China (it was a similar case in India during Diwali). When 9/11 happened, Americans became hyper-patriotic and we could see American flags all over; most of these flags were made-in-China.

Not just that they went global, the global MNC giants preferred to invest in the dictatorial Chinese markets over the democratic Indian markets. The logic was simple: The Chinese government, before their quest for being the global survival of the fittest, had taken care of their local national needs for survival of the weakest. By being committed to their own people first and giving them purchasing power and removing millions out of poverty (the figure, put at 200 million, made the World Bank itself admit that in recorded history, no other country had brought more people out of poverty in a span of only 20 years), the China had made its markets attractive for investors.

Nothing works like commitment to the poor when it comes to every­thing from GDP growth to FDI to going global. Miracle is in commit­ment to the bottom 80% of the population. If the paralysed parliament and its worse off parliamentarians would only understand this and start working, it would be India in the global acquisitionspree next. The old seem over the hill, but are the young ones listening? Or do they want to be a part of the same status quo and let the country grow despite the parliament?

Dislike Bush. Love Marx. Globalise Gandhi.
Volume 1 Issue 1, 12 August - 25 August 2005

Every, simply every Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi residing in America I happen to meet, seems to dislike Bush. My friend from IIPM, who at one time loved staying in the intellectual capital of the world – Boston – today feels “definitely alienated” as a brown in America. “We are always being looked at with suspicion,” she says. Her gym instructor talks about “outsourcing” in a sarcastic tone when they meet. And other Americans still feel bad to see browns earning more than the whites – her husband being a doctor. The wife of a Pakistani friend of mine – a doctor himself – is deliberately asked more than once by other women coming to pick up their children from a New Jersey school, if she is the kid’s maid servant. And my Bangladeshi friend who stays in one of the most upscale localities of New York, is asked by her neighbours, deliberately again, whether she is the new janitor. All my friends feel that this discrimination, though always prevalent, was much lesser earlier; and that it’s not worth staying in the US anymore (not to talk about rising prices and a growing difference between the ‘haves’ and ‘less haves’, which even they feel now – despite not being students of economics, let alone having any love for Karl Marx). The bottom- line is very clear. Bush is pathetic for all of them; and for about half of the US who didn’t vote for him. Those who voted for him are not half as passionate about him, as those who are against him. Never perhaps in recent history has a President of the world’s most admired country been so disliked across the world, and been looked down upon as a role model to the young ones. Even in United Kingdom, America’s biggest ally, the majority is convinced that the recent London Tube bombings were a result of Bush’s war on Iraq.

Interestingly, on the other hand, in a poll conducted by BBC (post 7/7), Karl Marx got voted as the world’s greatest ever philosopher, getting more than 29 percent votes out of the 30,000 odd votes, leaving the next in the race way behind at 12 percent. This, despite a huge campaign by the pro-Bush media against voting for Marx. The growing love for Marx was earlier given credence, when none other than George Soros, after spending years in the stock market, said that Marx and Engels were perfectly right in their analysis of capitalism. Marx’s thoughts on globalisation are today being looked upon as startlingly relevant by leading economists around the globe. Venezuelan President Chavez recently handed over hundreds of idle companies to worker cooperatives, and stated, “Revolutionary democracy is the transition, the bridge, the path towards ‘socialism of the 21st century’, one that is Bolivian, Venezuelan, and Latin American.” He also floated ‘Telesur’, the Latin American television channel, to counter the “cultural imperialism” that was occurring thanks to the CNN/BBC kind of lopsided reporting, which ignored developing country perspectives.

A friend’s nine year old son, who was born in the US, wants to become the first American President with Indian roots. His reasoning is simple: The Americans need to learn the most invaluable Gandhian principle of ‘non-violence’, and only an Indian can teach them that. As the hatred for

Bush grows, whether the world will see the revival of Marxism might still be debatable, but the globalisation of Gandhian ideology is surely the need of the hour. Else, we might have to live with Bush’s warring methods – a time proven symbol of typical capitalist greed ‘For A Few Dollars More’.

Al-Amin way: The real alternative to reservations
Vol. I Issue II, 26 August-8 September 2005

The Supreme Court is angry. Its decisions are being politically challenged. After all, this time around it gave a correct decision on an issue that has for long been used by scheming politicians for garnering votes (remember V.P. Singh and the Mandal Commission?). While education institutes had to change their course contents and start teaching the positives of privatisation, in these days of “privatise everything,” the education sector itself (in the absence of any heavyweights like Ambanis, yet, in this sector to get the government laws changed to favour them) has been left under strangely prohibitive and government regulations where privatisation is not the call of the day. Of course, there is a reason to it. Unlike other sectors (oil, power, hotels and others), the government’s education infrastructure is perhaps worst developed and there are no takers for it, leave alone people who would be ready to pay a hefty kickback too (one of the key motivations behind privatisation)... unless of course some honourable minister does a Bunty aur Babli Taj type deal and offers the IITs and IIMs for sale!

In the middle of this rubbish comes the Supreme Court’s logical decision to make private colleges free of reservations, especially if they are unaided and haven’t taken acres of government land (at times hundreds of acres a la IIMs,to build an infrastructure for just 200 students) at non-market prices. How can private sector, market-driven, entrepreneurial initiatives be forced into non market diktats? Those are private educational institutes today, which are arguably providing the best of education and infrastructure to students – albeit at a price the market is ready to pay (thanks to the employment opportunities after these courses). If India is so excited about its information technology manpower pool, it has a lot to thank initiatives like those of the T.A. Pai Group, which carried on a silent revolution in Manipal and changed the engineering and medical education landscape in India. So the question is not really “DO THEY NEED REGULATION?” but the question is, if the government is really worried about quality education, then why is it not concentrating on making its own colleges world class and attractive enough, so that students join them and benefit from their low costs and social orientation, reservation et al?

However, the fact is also that in a country like India, we cannot leave the less privileged to the merciless hands of the market forces. The solution to this problem perhaps lies somewhere far away from the issue of reservations in higher education that is terribly resented by more meritorious students. In a village called Khaladbari in West Bengal, a school called Al-Amin takes in poor students and provides them with hostels away from negative social influences, gives them high quality education, keeps a private teacher for each room of ten students; and year after year, their students pass with flying colours; and they don’t at all expect reservations in colleges to get admission. They compete and get admission. At IIPM, every year, we take about fifty students free of cost from Al-Amin and Ram Krishna Mission (which also follows a similar model) and our experience shows that these students really can compete equally, given the right opportunity. The government needs to make primary education effective by supplementing it with similar systems for the underprivileged. That’s the way the underprivileged students will really come up without resentment from the rest of the society.

India is shining! But is it time yet to rejoice?
Volume 1 Issue 3, 9 September - 22 September 2005

The future is here, is how we looked at India (and at our magazine – which of course is selling like hot cakes from the stands!) in our first issue. And for most in the middle income group and beyond, India is really shining. At least that’s what they sincerely believe. Take, for example, the marriage market. Imagine being educated and intelligent, yet being of less marriageable value, just because you have a good job in India, and not in the US! One of the good and visible fallouts of India Shining is the growing demand, amongst the parents of prospective brides, for ‘educated Indians working in India’. The catch is ‘working in India’. Not too long ago – and not that it has stopped – there were these NRI guys coming over to India during the weekend and looking at a dozen girls – like one looks through tomatoes and potatoes in the vegetable market – and while the girls waited for their fate for two days, they

would go off getting engaged in an overnight ceremony with one girl, without even having the courtesy of informing the others they had seen earlier. It made one feel pathetic. These were educated girls from the more affluent sections of the society... and the way they allowed themselves to be treated without any self respect and dignity was appalling. Of course, shame on the parents who scripted such events with a hope of a strange definition of better life for their daughters far away from their eyes – in the USA preferably. Things, it seems, are changing. With a happening economy and a better than ever job market, it’s the Indian boy with a good Indian job who is the more exciting meat in the marriage market now, than his friend in America. With growing retrenchments in the US, it seems the first question that parents nowadays have, when it comes to these NRI kids from America, is, “Does he have a job?” The second question is, “How safe is the job?” To many, India sure looks like a better option today; and men settled in India have a reason to cheer.

As Indians, we don’t any longer feel too embarrassed to tell the world “Hey, I am from India.” People around the globe are looking at us with newly discovered respect, thanks to the Indian IT manpower pool, which has the world stunned. I was in a small town in Sweden recently where I happened to locate an Indian restaurant. At 12.30 in the afternoon, when I went inside, what I saw left me completely amazed.

There were about fifty seats inside, all jam-packed with foreigners; with some fifty more standing in a queue in front of the buffet table. Those foreigners who were sitting were having tandoori chicken with naan and Indian vegetables – many in Indian style, with their hands! Standing there in the queue as the only Indian, I really felt proud. At least we have started capturing international taste buds!

As I flew back to Mumbai, and was greeted by the unending line of slums as the plane landed, my excitement somehow seemed to disappear. We, the middle class and beyond, living in an oasis of growing plenty, surrounded by so much poverty all around, “Can we really afford to rejoice?” is THE CORE DILEMMA.

Cash rich business. Cash starved Indians.
Volume 1 Issue IV, 23 September - 6 October 2005

One would perhaps have no hesitation in answering with paeans on how amazingly cash endowed India Inc. has become in the past few years; of course, with supporting evidence being displayed in almost all primary and secondary market movements.

To quote from our research, as per the last available reports, Wipro is sitting on free cash reserves of Rs.6 billion; Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories on Rs.8 billion; and Infosys, at Rs.15 billion. Satyam Computers easily beat Infosys with a mammoth Rs.23 billion. If one thought that was high, the free cash of Rs.71 billion of TCS, Tata Steel and Tata Motors (as a group) is enormous. But then, adjectives would perchance fall short if one were to look at the Rs.129 billion free cash reserves of ICICI Bank; and to be fairer, the list just goes on and on.

A cash rich India? With the resounding answer in the positive, many would presume the case closed for this question. But I should confirm, that move would be insensible by all parameters. On the contrary, India is thoroughly cash-starved. Our governments, who have ensured this in the past, will keep ensuring this in the future. The Sensex smashing the 8400 level (scam or no scam) is perhaps a hollow victory as 150 million Indians live a dastardly life without a roof on their head, 250 million Indians beg, cry and almost everyday go to sleep hungry, and 350 million don’t know how to read a newspaper. Does the cash-richness of the Sensex matter two hoots to these people? Do you think they celebrate when a cash-rich Indian corporation is added on to the NYSE’s top performers list? I am sure the answer would be getting clearer now.

But then, all is not lost. With the government’s ineptness and ineptitude, it should be the private cash-rich corporations that return the favours to the Indian community, which allowed them to reach these cash-rich levels. Private corporations should now urgently encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship through various grassroots programmes instead of making their money lying idle in banks. Banks should also look for additional productive uses of the money instead of giving it all away as cheap loans to the middle class to buy more cars and homes.

Social entrepreneurship (for profit and not for profit) is an extremely productive way to immediately ensure that development reaches to the lowest levels of society; and fast, as the experiences show in many developed countries including the US. It is time to see thought leaders like N.R Narayana Murthy leading the way in this direction. And this need not even be just a corporate social responsibility initiative; as such entrepreneurship initiatives do have high chances of becoming extremely profitable; given appropriate direction and learning. Let not India suffer the fate and ignominy of having simply two classes of society; the cash-rich businessmen, and the cash-starved rest. This is the time for private corporations to give back to Indians, what they have given them; otherwise the boom for the stock market will remain a scam for majority of Indians.

Iran is the excuse. The new war is between the Dollar and the Euro
Volume 1 Issue V, 7 October - 20 October 2005

For years, Americans have had it very easy. As a result of the dollar being the universally accepted form of international currency, the US made merry at the cost of the rest of the world. While countries like India craved for dollars and had to give products against the dollar, America could simply print paper and buy products. Since countries with dollar reserves have typically no option but to finally place the reserves back with the American treasury itself, at an abysmally low 1.5% rate of interest, for the Americans, the cost of supplying dollars to the world in effect has been as low as 1.5% interest per annum on the money being supplied! In fact, with all the dollars they print that eventually come back to their treasury itself, US has been so flush with dollars that American citizens over the years have got the cheapest of housing & car loans possible – thus keeping their economy up and running too, in more ways than one.

With the advent of the euro, this seems to be changing. In spite of all the apparent friendly joint front that the Americans put up with the Europeans, there is now an undercurrent of tension because of the advent of euro as a strong currency, and a possible alternative to the dollar. As more and more people, and more and more countries, start finding the euro a stable mode of foreign exchange, and start opting for the same, the demand for the American dollar has started falling fast. To Americans, this is scary, given the good times they had got used to. Past history is testimony to the fact that Americans have stopped at nothing when it has come to their economy. Even if one were to overlook their inhuman use of the nuclear bomb in an era bygone, the relentless bombing of Afghanistan and misleading the world about Iraq’s possession of WMDs and the eventual war on Iraq ( all for oil ), show that Americans have stopped at nothing. It is a myth that they discriminate only against blacks ( Katrina being just a small case in point ) or Muslims. When it comes to their economy ( read profits ), they spare none.

The latest, of course, is their political onslaught on Iran. The apparent reasons they give could be anything. But the real reason is Iran’s decision to accept the euro against sale of oil instead of the dollar from 2007. It has peeved the Americans no end, and they are prepared to take Iran head on, despite their huge flop show in Iraq. This time though, they may not have the European support in the same way as they had last time. After all, the problem is not with Iran; the problem is with euro’s growing acceptance. It is now to be seen if the controversy will remain centered around Iran or will boil down to a larger debate and war ( of words, at the least ) with the west itself getting divided into east ( Europe ) and west ( America ).

Back home, India as of now looks more inclined to support the US vis-à-vis Iran . The big question for us though is, IS INDIA PREPARED to partner the US in the long run, given that US has historically been an unreliable partner to third world countries?

Of twisted truths and lewd lies
Volume 1 Issue VI, 21 October - 3 November 2005

Saddam Hussain, the now infamous dictator of Iraq, along with his three former lieutenants and four regional officials would be tried begin­ning this Wednesday, October 19th 2005, when this magazine would be under print. There is a huge hue and cry across the globe from various human rights associations, questioning the fairness of his trial. I think these associations are completely jus­tified in their own way. The way the US government under President George Bush has conducted itself, particularly in matters to do with its foreign policy, does raise a lot of questions on the veracity of his trial. But if one actually gets down to analysing this particular issue, the point of contention is not the trial, but how US has turned the entire world against Saddam by dictating its terms to media, in both its physical and virtual forms.

The whole racket over Saddam and Iraq reached its frenzied peak when President George Bush conspired with the US media and the CIA to manufacture a global consensus on how dangerous Saddam and his possession of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ were for the entire world; and how important it was to capture this criminal for restoring global peace, particularly for the citizens of Iraq. The rest is history.

History is laden with instances of how most US governments over the years have blatantly connived with the media to ‘propagate manu­factured agendas’ towards US interests; reason enough to explain why the US is always so stubborn when it comes to any form of dilution of this inexorable media control. Two recent developments further prove this American stance. On one hand, the recent appointment of Michael Powell, the son of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, as the Chief of Federal Communications Commission –and his decision to ease regula­tory norms – goes on to further help the established media houses in a big way, eventually consolidating the all pervasive American control over these media behemoths. On the other hand, the recent demand by the European Union for handing over the management of the Internet to the United Nations, met with a staunch rejection by Ambassador David Gross (US Coordinator for International and Information Policy). Though, on the face of it, the Internet is managed by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), it is no secret that in reality it has been controlled by the US Commerce Department. Finally, it is not surprising that the Bush administration ends up paying $240,000 to journalists like Armstrong Williams and a PR firm to buy favourable news for Department of Education.

So, in effect, whether or not Saddam gets a fair trial would be a mat­ter of his destiny (which is in American hands again); but it is a fact that we all are part of a world where everything we see, hear and ob­serve is brutally conspired. There cannot be expected any transparent and fair opinion, value judgment, and conclusion, as any logic leading to these is based on information; and sadly, information is copyright America today.

India needs a hardliner?
Volume 1 Issue VII, 4 November - 17 November 2005

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in October gave the call for Israel to be “wiped off the ( world’s ) map,” the world, rightly so, erupted in protest (and I do hope that the protests will be similar if America were to give a similar call for wiping

out Iran tomorrow). EU condemned the statement vociferously, so did Russia. Almost all EU nations ‘summoned’ Iranian diplomats for explanations. The White House commented that Ahmedinejad’s statement proved right their concern about Iran’s nuclear programme. UK’s Tony Blair also blared out UK’s total non-acceptance of the issue, but confirmed that no plans were being currently made to invade Iran. UN promptly released a joint statement further castigating Iran. And Israel, the honest victim, demanded that Iran be kicked out of the UN immediately. Israel’s Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres excitedly gave a global press release that Ahmedinejad’s statements were “tantamount to a crime against humanity.” Interestingly on November 3, the same Ahmedinejad approved a radical plan to offer shares of state owned companies, including oil monopolies, totally free to Iran’s poor families, estimated at 14 million. This move will dramatically uplift millions of Iranians above the poverty line, and might one day soon, “wipe off poverty from the face of Iran.” But would any western country care to praise Iran at the UN about this pro-humanity move of Ahmedinejad? Of course not, why should they support an autocratic ruler? For records, despite whatever Bush & Blair might pretend, Iran was,

is, and would remain a democracy, in spite of a so called “hardliner” at the helm. Western nations have to realise that democracy neither had its origin in their backyards, nor was born to serve them. A number of democracies are today opting for hardliners as their leaders because, simply put, none of these ostensible pro-poor first world countries can give shares of their rich government oil corporations to poor people of third world nations to remove their hunger. In New Delhi, on the weekend before Diwali and Eid, a series of bomb blasts killed more than 70 people, injuring and decapitating many more, destroying their families and livelihoods. All evidence from the blasts provided incriminating reaffirmation of Musharraf and Pakistan’s continued support to anti-India terrorist groups. It was surprising that despite India having such definite evidence, not one EU country summoned diplomats of Pakistan demanding an explanation or condemned President Musharraf ’s complicity. Not one White House official commented that these blasts prove India is right about the negative intent of Pakistan’s nuclear programme. No UN official condemned Pakistan. Not once did UK’s Tony Blair speak about invading ( or not invading ) Pakistan. Nobody threatened to throw Pakistan out of the UN, or could squeak out a press statement saying Pakistan had committed a “crime against humanity.” Of course why would anyone? The western world was anyway never concerned about India or Pakistan. Neither India, nor Pakistan ever had any oil to give them, did we? As did Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran. While talking to many concerned thought leaders after the Diwali bombings I realised that many in India actually want someone like Ahmedinejad to say, “India, Here I Come,” because if having a hardliner for a leader means pro-poor policies and equitable economic growth as well as tackling external

threats firmly, then they say, such hardliners are the ones India, ought to welcome. Though it is a scary way of looking at things, it does go on to show the growing frustrations amongst, not just the common man on the streets, but also a section of the intelligentia. Don’t be surprised if democratic India too opts for a hardliner next time around.

Paris in flames. Is it the new face of the non-violent revolution?
Volume 1 Issue VIII, 18 November - 1 December 2005

With huge interest, I switched on the television every night over the last fortnight as Paris burnt. No, however much I might sound like the Roman emperor Nero, neither am I a sadist, nor was I enjoying the loss of property and, more importantly, the loss of global peace. But as a peace lover, I have always been convinced that global peace will remain a big illusion – as long as large portions of the society (often the majority) in the world are marginalised by the rich and powerful minority, perpetuallyin search for more, in order to satiate their unending self-centered myopic greed; as long as rich nations keep growing richer without sparing a thought for the hungry and dying millions in the poorer nations; as long as apartheid remains in the souls of the developed White and shows its ugly face in the form of visa regulations to income distribution; and as long as the ‘White West’ remains at the top of Human Development Rankings while the ‘Black West’ is not even there in the top 50!

The French themselves found the situation unfortunate, but not unpredictable. It was not just about the deaths of the two black boys. It was much more. It was always coming. A walk through the more common streets of Paris, Brussels or Amsterdam is good enough to feel the tension in the air. Little wonder that Jacques Chirac was nowhere to be seen during the first half of the last fortnight, as never seen before flames swept through Paris and looked almost impossible to be stopped, till the declaration of a state of emergency. However, as a keen student of ways to make a difference in the society, I got drawn to the ‘ Paris in flames’ syndrome. I doubt if anyone really had this as a masterpiece of an idea, or as the new philosophy on social revolution and had planned it all out, systematically. But, the results were dramatic, and without doubt, hold interesting possibilities till more humane forces bring about a stop to the endless marginalisation of a vast majority across the world.

With only one casualty, the most interesting part of the whole affair was that there was no serious loss of life; if one were to compare its effect in terms of visual and psychological impact. As democracies around the world get manipulatedby money and muscle, armed revolutions become a thing of the past around the world (barring in lawless places like Bihar and others), mass movements become passé in wake of the majority not having to fight for basic existence,mass demonstrations become ineffective – being looked upon as regular affairs by governments across the world – and strikes go out of fashion in the world of outsourcing, I had been wondering about what then is the weapon in the hands of the masses to bring about changes, which are of less concern to the people in power. And, as I saw Paris in flames (with approximately 5000 cars burnt on the day before they declared emergency), I wondered what would be the consequence if the Blacks in ten more European cities were to join in, in a similar way, and were further joined in by the Blacks in twenty more cities in America... Apart from providing a ray of hope for the struggling automobile industry in Detroit, with 150,000 cars burning a day, it could have been a giganticform of the modern day version of a non-violent revolution; and just 7 days of such a form of protest and a million cars burnt could have shook the world, making governments across the world take serious note of the real problem. The absence of one strong and identifiable leader was perhaps the only reason that stopped this strong protest against daily oppression and humiliation of the Men In Black (who in various ways, also represent the voices of the marginalised) from being globalised. In these days of easy communication via sms, mobile phones and internet, it takes moments for a revolution like this to globalise, and next time around, it may not be just a Paris in flames, but Europe and America. The world needs to fear the possibility of globalisation of a similar “ Paris in flames” revolution, as much as the ‘GLOBALISATION OF CORRUPTION’. The only way to avoid similar incidents in future is to treat men around the world as equals in the true sense of the word.