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Home , Ajoy Mukherjee, Annayum Rasoolum, Antilia (building), Arun Jaitley, Dhirubhai Ambani, George Fernandes

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OPEN VOLUME 12 ISSUE 36 14 SEPTEMBER 2020

contents 14 september 2020

5 6 7 12 14 16 20 LOCOMOTIF INDRAPRASTHA MUMBAI NOTEBOOK TOUCHSTONE SOFT POWER WHISPERER OPEN ESSAY The expert and By Virendra Kapoor By Anil Dharker The revenge of ideology Bad education By Jayanta Ghosal Dhaka Central the populist By Keerthik Sasidharan By Makarand R Paranjape By Syed Badrul Ahsan By S Prasannarajan

24 In Memoriam 24 PRANAB MUKHERJEE (1935-2020) By MJ Akbar & Sunanda K Datta-Ray

34 MUKESH AMBANI THE POWER OF INTUITION The world’s sixth-richest man takes RIL, India’s most valued company that straddles the traditional and the digital with equal competitiveness, to the global centrestage By Ullekh NP and Moinak Mitra 34

42 THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE Using scale and a digital ecosystem, Mukesh Ambani joins a club of corporate icons who are defining the future by Madhavankutty Pillai

46 46 THE IDENTITY ANGLE IN ASSAM Why an alliance between the Congress and the AIUDF may end up helping the BJP By Siddharth Singh

49 THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS’ NEST Rhea Chakraborty is being portrayed as an unlikely villain in the 49 messy aftermath of her ex-lover Sushant Singh Rajput’s death By Kaveree Bamzai

52 55 58 60 64 66 EYES WIDE OPEN THE STAGE LOGS IN LOVE REMAINS THE NUTS AND BOLTS GARDENING NOT PEOPLE LIKE US Fahadh Faasil personifies Creating plays for the screen A husband’s photo diary of his OF HISTORY Hands in the mud Ghost of a chance the New Wave of By Prachi Sibal wife’s final moments makes the The microfoundations of By Shylashri Shankar By Rajeev Masand Malayalam cinema personal universal big political events By Rajeev Masand By Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi By Siddharth Singh

Cover photograph by Rohit Chawla 14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 3 open mail [email protected]

Editor S Prasannarajan letter of the week managing Editor PR Ramesh C executive Editor Ullekh NP The Congress episode is like rewatching an old serial: editor-at-large Siddharth Singh deputy editors Madhavankutty Pillai Faced with the a half-hearted revolt from senior leaders, (Mumbai Bureau Chief), Sonia Gandhi was learnt to have asked the party to find Rahul Pandita, Amita Shah, V Shoba (Bangalore), Nandini Nair a new chief and expressed her desire to step down— creative director Rohit Chawla only to be back since no one in the party knows how art director Jyoti K Singh Senior Editors Sudeep Paul, to fill that vacuum (‘Gandhis Win, Congress Loses’ Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), by Harish Khare, September 7th, 2020). When Rahul Moinak Mitra, Nikita Doval Associate Editor Vijay K Soni (Web) Gandhi was elected Presidenta few years ago, the same assistant editor Vipul Vivek questions were asked about the credentials of the lead- chief of graphics Saurabh Singh ership and there was a call for a formal election process SENIOR DESIGNERs Anup Banerjee, Veer Pal Singh to avoid favouritism. It is a moot question whether this Photo editor Raul Irani current drama will break the vicious cycle and change deputy Photo editor Ashish Sharma the character of the party for the better and re-establish National Head-Events and Initiatives the credentials of India’s grand old party before the young politician. Arpita Sachin Ahuja Yeshu Mishra AVP (ADVERTISING) General Election in 2024. This is not the noughties Rashmi Lata Swarup when Sonia Gandhi surprised herself as much as GENERAL MANAGERs (ADVERTISING) Uma Srinivasan (South) others by reviving the party in an age which looked classical doyen resigned to non-national party dominance. The leader- Pandit Jasraj will be National Head-Distribution and Sales Ajay Gupta ship needs to seriously think about the future not only remembered for taking regional heads-circulation D Charles (South), Melvin George of the Congress but also of India’s multi-party political Hindustani classical music (West), Basab Ghosh (East) system inherited from the Westminster tradition but beyond the rarefied confines Head-production Maneesh Tyagi which we reinvented into a messy but workable sys- by imbuing khayal with an senior manager (pre-press) Sharad Tailang tem. Otherwise, it should make it clear, like Wajid Ali unmistakable element of MANAGER-MARKETING Shah’s lackeys, that it has lost interest in real political bhakti (‘Everyone’s Musician’, Priya Singh Chief Designer-marketing games. Voters could at least look elsewhere. August 31st, 2020). The Champak Bhattacharjee MR Jayanthi foremost exponent of the cfo & HEAD-IT Anil Bisht Mewati gharana moved away Chief ExecuTive & Publisher from dhrupad and employed Neeraja Chawla harkats and murkis associated All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner collective failure Jaitley’s Legacy with semi-classical music. is prohibited. The letter from 23 senior Arun Jaitley played a great The purists took time Editor: S Prasannarajan. Printed and published by Neeraja Chawla on behalf Congress leaders that asked role in changing the politics to compliment him; the of the owner, Open Media Network Pvt Ltd. Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd, for an honest introspection of this country (‘Politics connoisseurs couldn’t resist 18-35 Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad-121007, (Haryana). shouldn’t have been such without Arun Jaitley’ the charm of his stotras, Published at 4, DDA Commercial a surprise for the High by Swapan Dasgupta, his mastery over shuddha Complex, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. Command given the party’s September 7th, 2020). madhyam notes and his Ph: (011) 48500500; Fax: (011) 48500599 comprehensive defeat Few politicians has had ability to play with light To subscribe, WhatsApp ‘openmag’ to 9999800012 or log on to against the BJP in every the talent for spotting and and heavy and popular and www.openthemagazine.com or call our Toll Free Number respect since 2014 (‘Gandhis humility for appreciating rare ragas such as Durga, Jog 1800 102 7510 Win, Congress Loses’ by upcoming leaders. I recall and Abeer Todi with equal or email at: [email protected] Harish Khare, September how one evening last year my felicity. Not to forget his sage- For alliances, email [email protected] 7th, 2020). Dissent followed colleague and the Bengaluru like presence on the stage For advertising, email by healthy discussion is a politician, Tejasvi Surya, which got a little dramatic in [email protected] For any other queries/observations, sine qua non for any course called me up excitedly about the latter half of his career. email [email protected] correction. Rather than a call he had got from Jaitley It was his association with collective brainstorming, after his maiden speech in his spiritual guru Maharana Disclaimer ‘Open Avenues’ are advertiser-driven marketing the leadership is getting Parliament in which Jaitley Jaywant Singh of the initiatives and Open assumes no responsibility for content and the consequences of using more aloof, more remote and complimented him saying he erstwhile princely state of products or services advertised in the magazine more suspicious of its own saw a reflection of himself in Sanand in Gujarat that made Volume 12 Issue 36 cadre, with a reluctant Rahul Surya. Even through sickness him believe in the miracles For the week 8-14 September 2020 Gandhi failing to bring in Jaitley continued to think of bhakti. He was also a Total No. of pages 68 any breath of fresh air. of his party and country, master of haveli sangeet. Sangeeta Kampani making time to encourage a Jayanthi Subramaniam

4 14 september 2020 LOCOMOTIF

by S PRASANNARAJAN The Expert and the Populist

efore the expert, there was Elias Canetti. He What we have lost—and keep losing—economically have made began his influential Crowds and Power, published the world unliveable for a large number of people even in the 60 years ago, by observing that it was fear that forced so-called affluent societies. Inevitably, questions are being asked. men to keep distances around themselves. “There Was a complete suspension of economic activity necessary? is nothing that man fears more than the truth of the Did the extremism of expertise hurt the common good? Bunknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and Is there a proven correlation between complete lockdown and to be able to recognise or at least clarify it. Man always tends to the containment of the virus? Still, we need to remember: We avoid physical contact with anything strange. In the dark, the would have been paying a higher price had we left it entirely fear of an unexpected touch can mount to panic. Even clothes to those nationalist-populists who moved from denial to give insufficient security. It is easy to tear them and pierce demagogy to dubious panacea with alarming flexibility. And through to the naked, smooth, defenceless flesh of the victim,” the commandments of experts instilled fear and awareness into he wrote. The viral indoctrination of social distancing tapped us in the beginning when the profusion of information was into our natural instinct: the fear of what is lurking out there, not necessarily authentic. Questions are being asked because nameless. And what was lurking out there was multiplying, and a consensus of the virtuous seems to have put the entire blame a pandemic was upon us. Our only shield was our fear, and our for our hardship, which shows no signs of going away, on the only solace the words that gave us hope, no matter how fragile political class. it was in the end. It was a time when even science was in panic. Ideology made this blame channelling easier. All along, the Even common sense, as delivered by people with authority and progressives, the most virtuous of them all, in their visceral credibility, was taken as expertise. repudiation of the Right, saw in the expert an ally, another In the beginning of the pandemic, the expert was pitted victim of anti-science populism. The Right’s demand for an against the politician, who had more faith in his instinct than early restart of economic activity, in the progressive telling, in the intellect of others. A false choice—lives or livelihood?— was nothing short of a disregard for life, and a political stunt. made them, the politician and the expert, incompatible virus (They relented a bit only when social distancing had to give busters in countries where populism advocated civil, social and way to the march for social justice.) There was exaggeration on individual liberties. The expert would prevail: the economic both sides: the Right that chose to undermine the virus and the shutdown, social distancing, stay-at-home, compulsory progressives who overstated the uses of lockdown. (In India, masking (which set off a culture war of its own)… A world there was a role-reversal, by the way.) The world would have frozen in fear could only wait as new guidelines made our been better off had there been a balance between the sobriety of confined lives more remote. The populist had to give in to the politics and the modesty of expertise. As the pandemic raged, expert, reluctantly. The expert staged a remarkable comeback. a badly infected world had to choose between the politburo of Remember the Brexit campaign, when the Leavers shamed knowledge and the callousness of politics. That was not much him publicly? The then Chancellor Michael Gove passed the of a choice. It was a punishment. ultimate judgment: “I think the people of this country have We may have overcome the fear, and got used to living had enough of experts with organisations with the virus. We may have learned with acronyms saying that they know what the hardest way that it is not technology is best and getting it consistently wrong.” alone that changes the behavioural True, they got it wrong periodically; they shifts of history, that scientific knowledge differed among themselves; and some of can’t always keep pace with the them believed in the absolutism of disputed mysteries of biology. What we need knowledge. The pandemic rearmed them, for to accept, as we struggle to cope in a shattered the better mostly. world, is that the orthodoxies of Today, the cost of the pandemic can’t be knowledge are as bad as the boastfulness measured in death and survival rates alone. of salvation politics. n

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 5 INDRAPRASTHA virendra kapoor

lections to the that two outsiders be nominated Emanaging committee of the to the MC, it was not the club but Delhi Gymkhana Club seem to be a the Ministry of Corporate Affairs priority. They are scheduled for later that went in appeal against the this month. The club remains closed order, further fuelling the talk of due to the Covid-19 pandemic, club takeover. A major complaint though a takeaway service from concerned the way existing the partially functional kitchen has members enrolled their dependent begun. Why elections couldn’t wait and non-dependent children out of till the pandemic was behind us, or turn, devising special provisions for at least the club was fully functional, the backdoor entry. Kangana Ranaut is not clear. Members of the will be surprised to learn that country’s premier gentlemen’s club, nepotism in Bollywood is nothing which opened its doors back in 1913, real estate asset as the Delhi Gym: its compared to what goes on in the seem to display an ungentlemanly 26.3 acres abut the Prime Minister’s country’s elite gentlemen’s club. zeal in fighting for a place on the House and is next door to the Membership is virtually a closed managing committee, or MC as it is bungalows of senior ministers and affair, with the waiting called by candidates canvassing for other VVIPs. For a princely sum of period lasting nearly 40 years. votes. No expense is spared. Some a little over Rs 5,000, the land was For an application to remain on candidates enlist the help of patrons allotted by the imperial masters for the ‘active’ list, a deposit of in the business community to throw use as their own exclusive watering Rs 7.5 lakh is necessary, and if, lavish parties to woo voters. A couple hole. Now, supposedly, it has become decades later, you are granted of years ago, a serving secretary of a the cynosure of the rulers. Quite a membership you are required to key ministry had no qualms inviting few members suspect the ongoing shell out Rs 20 lakh. The club earns members, nay, voters to a dinner investigations into its affairs tonnes of money hiring out well- hosted by the country’s top real ordered by the Corporate Affairs appointed ‘banquet halls’ and other estate tycoon. He emerged victorious Ministry mask the real objective venues for huge fees for wedding for the top post in the club. Another of ‘grabbing’ the prime land for receptions and social functions. candidate had a prominent hotelier use in the redevelopment plan of Considering a vast majority of the host a sumptuous lunch on her the Central Vista and other areas members come from an upper socio- behalf. Given that a position on the around it. These fears could well be economic segment, with senior civil MC offers no pay or perks, the sheer unfounded, especially considering servants and officers of the armed ferocity with which candidates the investigation process was forces constituting a big chunk fight for a place on it is puzzling. initiated following complaints by a of the membership, the failure to As a longstanding member of the couple of members of the MC who manage the club in a transparent club put it, the MC elections are a suspected hanky-panky in the club’s manner is truly shocking. If they dirty affair with candidates trading finances. They pointedly refused fail to manage the club without all kinds of charges, stooping to to append their signatures to the causing scandal, can they complain low intrigues and manipulation, annual balance sheet unless first about the investigation? Being part sending scurrilous emails against vetted by the domain experts. Yet, of an elite members-only watering rivals, etcetera. “It is much worse this has not stopped gossip that the hole in the heart of Lutyens’ Delhi than election to the local municipal new MC will have a major role in does not entitle them to a special corporation.” It may be because thwarting the threat of a potential dispensation. That would reflect in reality MC members wield a takeover by the Government. They what a notable dignitary had called lot of weight in the affairs of the talk of an administrator being the Khan Market Club syndrome, a club, including how to manage its appointed to manage its affairs. It is misplaced sense of entitlement enormous finances. No other club significant that when the National and privilege unavailable to in the country has a comparable Company Law Tribunal ordered ordinary mortals. n

6 14 september 2020 Mumbai Notebook Anil Dharker

am writing this on (Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister was I September 1st, which would have responsible for the Urbanisation been Charles Correa’s 90th birthday. It Commission) and what usually fol- was just over five years ago that I got a lows is something like this: a Grand call at midnight. Woken up from deep Plan and a major talent to design it sleep, I was about to say, ‘Do you know is announced; the appointed expert what time it is?’ when I realised that puts in his best ideas over hours of the caller was Correa’s son-in-law, Ra- work to produce a detailed world- hul Mehrotra, with the terrible news of class concept; but this involves major the passing of India’s greatest architect. There is no space here to write upheavals, giving up on entrenched He was, in fact, one of the world’s about his many outstanding designs. ideas and taking drastic action. The best, and major international awards To get an idea of Correa’s genius, it government passes the project from were conferred on him through the is enough to look at just two of his one department to another, and there years: the Royal Gold Medal of the projects: the first and the last. The it remains, in perpetual limbo. Institute of British Architects, the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, There was only Doordarshan then Praemium Imperiale given by the built in the early ’60s, stands out for its on our TV screens, and I did a pro- Imperial family of Japan, the Aga sheer simplicity of design where less gramme on Correa’s architecture. He Khan Award for Architecture, the is really more. It is as close a reflec- explained the New Bombay project in Austrian Decoration for Science and tion of Mahatma Gandhi’s persona detail: it would have been not just a sat- Art and our own Padma Vibhushan. as it is possible to be. One of Correa’s ellite town; it would have transformed His family and admirers founded the last projects was the Champalimaud the city of Mumbai. But so much Charles Correa Foundation which Centre for the Unknown in Lisbon, change—even if it’s for the better, is too started a biennial series of seminars in inaugurated by the Portuguese Presi- much for the government to bear? Goa. This year, starting September 1st, dent Aníbal Cavaco Silva on October ‘You and Your Neighbourhood’ went 5th, 2010. I can’t do better than quote he only thing Mumbai digital and featured speakers from Correa himself: “What makes me Tand Melbourne share is the first Buenos Aires, Cairo, New York, Paris, most proud about this project is that letter of their names. But here’s a little Toronto, Zurich, Beijing, Santiago, it is not a Museum of Modern Art. On story from there about the coronavi- Boston and cities in India. the contrary, it uses the highest levels rus, which we do share. An Indian- His buildings—there are nearly a of contemporary science and medi- origin man found his yearning for hundred of them—stand out for their cine to help people grappling with butter chicken greater than his good distinctive style, a rejection of the glass- real problems: cancer, brain damage sense, so not getting any in the city, he and-steel approach of post-modernist and going blind. And to house these drove 32 km out to reach Desi Dhaba, architecture; he introduced instead cutting-edge activities, we tried to famous for its chicken makhani. Cops a modern version of design deeply create a piece of architecture. Archi- caught him for breaking lockdown reflecting local cultures and the use of tecture as Sculpture. Architecture as rules and he was fined the equivalent local materials. Earth colours provided Beauty. Beauty as Therapy.” of Rs 86,000, making it the most a dramatic contrast to the materials’ Every great career has a great expensive butter chicken in history, if austerity, while there was an emphasis failure and with Correa, these came he had got it, that is. on outdoor spaces and terraces, one in his role as an urban planner. He did There’s a happy ending though. of our traditional practices discarded pioneering work on urban issues and Desi Dhaba, no doubt pleased with all by today’s architects. I remember low-cost shelters, and this was reflect- the free publicity, promised the man a standing with him on a balcony in the ed in the important positions he was year’s free supply of his favourite dish. high-rise Kanchanjunga building on appointed to: Chief Architect for New If he has it once a week, that would Peddar Road: he explained how he had Bombay, Chairman of the National come to Rs 1,653 per plate, which isn’t used natural airflow to make air-con- Commission on Urbanisation and cheap. If he has it every single day, it ditioning superfluous. He really didn’t Chairman of the Delhi Urban Arts will be only Rs 235, trifling by any stan- need to tell me, the breeze wafting past Commission. As you will recognise, dards. But it will probably drive him to us told its own story. these are government appointments dal makhani for the rest of his life.n

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 7 openings

NOTEBOOK The End of PUBG

ore than a month ago, when India first Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi once asked a woman at banned a number of Chinese apps, it appeared an event, when she informed him that her son was hooked to that the popular mobile game PlayerUnkown’s online games, “PUBG wala hai kya?” Underground Battlegrounds (PUBG) would India has never really had an e-sports market. Those who scrapeM through. Those connected to distributing and organis- played on consoles and gaming personal computers were ing official events around the game in India argued that the negligible. But the arrival of cheap mobile phones and data game wasn’t exactly owned by a Chinese company. They connections, coupled with the emergence of PUBG’s mobile hoped the game’s somewhat complicated ownership—involv- versions, jumpstarted India’s e-sports scene. Many foreign ing a South Korean company that first developed the game cre- e-sports companies began operations in India. Teams of profes- ated by an Irish game developer, but which later collaborated sional players emerged who became celebrities in their own with Chinese tech company Tencent to develop and distribute right within this world. later mobile versions of the game—would see it through. In contrast to the scepticism with which the game was seen But that wasn’t to be. In the latest wave of Chinese app bans— in its initial period in India, the game soon burst forth into the ostensibly for security-related purposes, although this follows mainstream. Large brands flocked to this entirely new medium the latest border skirmishes—the biggest casualty is PUBG. Both of such a young and captive demography of players and their mobile versions of the game played in India now stand banned. audiences. There would be brand tie-ins where cricketers PUBG’s growth in India has been a remarkable story. Much would interact with the game’s celebrities. Bollywood film like how TikTok transformed social media in India, bringing promotions happened here. Unsurprisingly, an ecosystem of within its fold audiences that had until then remained largely professional players, coaches, people who earned money live- untapped, PUBG transformed streaming their matches, sleek the country’s gaming scene. Even content creators and even com- that is an understatement. Huge mentators of the game emerged. audiences weren’t just playing Some of the games even began to PUBG. They were also watching PUBG took off in India not just be telecast on TV (MTV). it. And with that transformation because of the game’s addictive The reason the game escaped of PUBG (not just as a game to a ban two months ago is prob- play but also as a spectator sport) quality. For the first time, such a ably because of its complicated came large national and interna- rich gameplay experience could ownership pattern. The game— tional tournaments, the creation be had on a device worth just a premised like the film Battle of celebrity players and teams, Royale (2000), where individuals endorsements and the ilk. few thousand rupees. The game’s must survive on an island by The game had always been developers did appear to be killing their opponents—was popular ever since its mobile anticipating trouble. At the end first created by an Irish game version reached India about two developer (Brendan Greene) and years ago. But until 2019, it was of July, it issued a revised privacy developed by PUBG Corporation, viewed with scepticism. Parents policy stating that all collected a subsidiary of South Korean often complained about it, data from Indian players would be videogame company Bluehole, newspapers talked of its addic- for PC and console versions back tive nature, and there were even stored on local servers. The ban in 2017. The so-called Chinese calls for its ban (not because it will no doubt hurt PUBG’s element in the game’s ownership was Chinese-owned but because creators. India is its largest market came with the mobile version. parents felt it had an unhealthy Chinese conglomerate Tencent, impact on their young wards). collaborating with PUBG Cor-

8 14 september 2020 Illustration by Saurabh Singh poration, released mobile versions of the game. PUBG Mobile ing to analytics firm Sensor Tower, the game was downloaded couldn’t be published in China because of the game’s violent more than 54 million times in India just in the first half of this nature. Instead, a tamer version, titled Game for Peace, had to be year. “We’re seeing 400 to 500 per cent kind of growth in watch- launched there. time, play times, interactions, registrations. Everything. It’s But PUBG Mobile did start to become something of a phe- like exploding right now,” Akshat Rathee, the cofounder and nomenon elsewhere, particularly in India. The developers even managing director of Nodwin Gaming and one of the earliest came out with a version, PUBG Mobile Lite, that could easily be Indian e-sports entrepreneurs, told Open recently. supported on inexpensive phones with poor processing ability. Tencent appears to have been particularly hard done in this re- One of the reasons the game took off here is not just because of cent wave of bans. Not only has PUBG been banned in this round the game’s premise or its addictive quality—rather that, for the (and WeChat a month ago), several of its other apps have also been first time, such a rich gameplay experience could be had on a dealt the same treatment. From its cloud storage app Weiyun; device worth just a few thousand rupees. stock-tracking app Watchlist; online games like Ludo World, Are- The game’s developers did appear to be anticipating trouble. na of Valour and Chess Round; to multiple versions of its WeChat At the end of July, it issued a revised privacy policy stating all col- apps that escaped scrutiny the last time round, have now been lected data from Indian players would be stored on local servers banned. But its apps are only one (and most public) aspect of its within the country. But that hasn’t passed muster with regula- business in the country. Over the last year, Tencent has emerged tors. The ban will no doubt hurt its creators. India is its largest as one of the largest investors in India’s startup industry. It has market. According to reports, of the estimated 500 million-plus made several investments, from Swiggy, Dream 11 to Flipkart who have downloaded this game on their phones, between and Practo. And on the day the ban on its apps was announced, 140 million and 150 million did so in India alone. “If you ask me news also emerged (reported on the website Entracker) that it had about DAU [daily active users] and MAU [monthly active users], invested $40 million (via its European subsidiary Tencent Cloud) there are no official figures. But last I heard, between 30 million into the Times Group-owned music streaming platform Gaana, a and 40 million play the game daily. About 60-80 million on a significant investment considering the economic climate. monthly basis,” Sidharth Kedia, CEO of Nodwin Gaming, the But Tencent won’t be the only one hurting from this ban. Indian e-sports company that organises PUBG Mobile’s profes- Just as the ban on TikTok left a big group that depended on this sional tournaments in India, told Open recently. medium as a source of employment in the lurch, this ban too is The ban comes at a time when the game was becoming likely to affect many more—and not merely gamers.n even more popular. The Covid-19 outbreak and the resulting lockdown meant more people were playing the game. Accord- By Lhendup G Bhutia

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 9 openings

portrait SHINZO ABE Kishi was a founding member of the behemoth called the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that would monopolise most of Japanese politics after The Man Who Did Too Much 1955. When Abe became prime minister in 2006 Japan’s longest-serving prime minister leaves for the first time, and lasted a year and a day in office, the musical chair of premiership in Tokyo office on a low, but he got higher than most was unstoppable. When he returned with an LDP landslide in 2012, it seemed like destiny. N SATYAJIT RAY’S SLIM volume of insightful essays titled Our Films, A decade ago, in the offices of a national I Their Films (1976), the entry on Japanese art and cinema is called ‘Calm newspaper where this writer was present, rugby Without, Fire Within’. Calm without, fire within could stand as short- enthusiast and former Prime Minister Yoshiro hand for much of post-war Japan although that characterisation stretches Mori, one of Abe’s mentors, had said: “The back through time in its attempt to capture something essential and not interesting thing about rugby is that the ball is not altogether elusive about a land whose history, within and without, has round. So, when it falls on the ground, you don’t been one of the bloodiest in the annals of human civilisation. know which direction it will take…it is important Shinzo Abe, Japan’s renaissance man, has understood many things but to make sure everybody is together, especially not always how to get them done. In a replay of Renaissance overreach, when scrums occur...” Mori had lasted 21 more he found himself caught between the angelic and demonic points-of-no- days than Abe’s first term in office but he was return without ever making a Faustian bargain. Abe, make no mistake, instrumental in Japan’s rethinking of the world is one of Japan’s most significant statesmen ever, not merely its longest- and its place in it—and about doing something serving post-war prime minister. Being a conservative in Japan comes practical with the longstanding friendship with with a baggage the world outside may find repulsive but is defined by the India. Abe’s Japan displayed the outward calm peculiar Japanese sense of hurt—and hurt pride—that cannot even begin that endeared the nation and its prime minister to to make sense to an outsider if not seen from the inside. many—and the dispute with China and edginess Yet, when Abe leaves after almost eight uninterrupted years in vis-à-vis North Korea only helped. With India, he office, we will find it difficult to label him. A ‘pragmatic realist’? A prioritised the strategic and economic partnership ‘revisionist nationalist’? These labels have circulated for some time. Or, on a war-footing. He pushed the civilian nuclear the ‘Womenomics’ conservative, after the incremental stabilisation and deal and got along extremely well with Prime ultimate blunting of the three arrows of Abenomics? Minister Narendra Modi and his predecessor. The In the beginning, there was that hurt. The national that was also the Quad, if it sails the seas again, owes its resurrection personal, or the other way round. Abe never got over the fact that his in large measure to him. Abe, a tireless pragmatist maternal grandfather Nobusuke Kishi was called a ‘Class-A war criminal’, in foreign policy and consistently emotional about perhaps not without justification, by the Chinese and Koreans. He was India, will be missed in New Delhi. to be tried as a war crimes suspect, but the expediency of politics and the Back home, after the last elections, Abe was a imperatives of geopolitics made him, instead, the prime minister in 1957. weakened figure. The series of campaign finance getty images scandals involving his ministers, the alleged scams he got personally tied up in, the pandemic, the dissipation of the economic energy of his early years, had all brought the ratings of one of Japan’s most popular public figures and his administration down to the low thirties. His insistence on revising textbooks on Japan’s wartime role only stoked the fires within. The non-ideological Japanese electorate, at the end of the day, just wants stability at home. When the ulcerative colitis made him decide to resign, Abe could look back with the satisfaction and disappointment of a man who tried too many things to make them all come good. Perhaps his worst regret will be the failure to revise the constitution to end Japan’s enforced pacifism. But what cannot be taken away from him is his effort to hold most people together in the scrum. n

By Sudeep Paul

14 september 2020 ANGLE ideas

The Right to Not be Killed Charlie Hebdo republishes the cartoons and makes a point about free speech By madhavankutty pillai

n recent times, at least, the will not want to test this principle in I satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo many places. Even in India, every state deciding to republish the cartoons has venerated figures cutting across reli- of Prophet Muhammad must be the gions against whom anything derogato- most courageous stand for freedom of ry has often led to riots and assaults and expression one can think of. In 2015, it would be a brave Indian liberal who Opportunism after the first publication of these would try to check the limits of his free Facebook first did not ban BJP cartoons, two armed men claiming to expression. He would just get beaten MLA T Raja Singh for flouting be members of Al-Qaeda, had entered up and the police would register a case its hate speech policy on the their office and shot dead 12 employ- against him instead. Therefore, when platform despite an in-house ees. Just before the trial of the other a magazine at any part of the world in- recommendation. A Wall accused—the shooters were already vites more terrorist attacks after almost Street Journal investigative killed—in that shooting was to begin, its entire staff was murdered, one must report revealed that this was they republished all the cartoons again at least applaud wherever one is. because it didn’t want to in its latest issue. A BBC News report There is then the question of the antagonise the government on it said: ‘The French headline reads direction that one would want societies and get hurt commercially. “Tout ça pour ça” (All of that for this). In to take even if present values are often But after the public exposé, it its editorial, the magazine says that it decided and enforced over obscure has now done a U-Turn and has often been asked to carry on print- beliefs. Would you want it for the future banned him. Both its actions ing caricatures of the prophet since the too? Countries ossified by words of reek of opportunism. It seems 2015 killings. “We have always refused religious texts, enforced with lashings to be suggesting that the to do so, not because it is prohibited— and beheadings? This was a struggle right thing to do is entirely the law allows us to do so—but because already waged and won by Western dependent on circumstances. there was a need for a good reason to civilisation over centuries to break out of That it will follow its own do it, a reason which has meaning and the dark ages. Liberal democracy and the rules only when weighed which brings something to the debate,” incredible bounties of modern science against the personal cost it says. “To reproduce these cartoons are all offshoots of this victory of reason. involved. n in the week the trial over the January But unless relentlessly reinforced, it is 2015 terrorist attacks opens seemed easy to turn back the clock. Just look essential to us.”’ at the freedoms that men and women It is important for a couple of enjoyed in Iran or Afghanistan until Word’s Worth reasons. It reinforces the argument that some decades back and compare it to the free secular societies—or, in an ideal present. In Saudi Arabia, women have ‘The plan itself is world, any society—shouldn’t be hos- just been allowed to drive cars and that is opportunism. tage to religion. It might be decent and considered a giant leap. The sacred is be- kind to not want to deliberately offend a yond question or comment but it is also There is no plan community but should anyone do that, unchanging, and held in place not just by before that’ then murder in retaliation shouldn’t be reverence but also by fear. Republishing Warren Buffett a justifiable position. Pragmatic people the cartoons is a revolt against that fear. n business tycoon

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 11 touchstone

By Keerthik Sasidharan

The Revenge of Ideology Don’t write off the Rasputin of resentment politics

efore the pandemic began, I had described by those who had been initiated into this theological discovered an old copy of Robert Pirsig’s classic brotherhood where mathematical signs, economic signfiers Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at a used and cultural significands were the lingua franca. The world was Bbookstore on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, either a machine and we were all to be its rational tinkerers or it New York. Inside was a photo of the young author and his was predetermined and we were merely puppets awaiting the son, driving their motorcycles somewhere in the middle inevitable discovery of laws that governed our lives. of America. Along the borders of that photo somebody had By 2020 however—stunned by the brutalities of 9/11, fol- scribbled ‘Phaedrus’. Who did it refer to? I had forgotten lowed by the extraordinary turmoil of the 2008 credit crises and the book and its uniquely American protagonists, both of now paralysed by the Covid-19 pandemic—this part-religion, which had made such an impression upon me as a teenager. part-machine worldview has sputtered to a stop. The reigning Then, suddenly, like some old godhead who chooses to ideologies of the 1990s and 2000s—from ‘shock therapy’ to reveal itself, I remembered who Phaedrus was. It was the ‘structural adjustment programmes’ to ‘democratisation’ to author’s shadowy self, the doppelganger of his mind, a ‘free trade’—all have had to come face to face with the fact that Platonic daemon who lived in the world of ideas in contrast there is a burbling disquiet that has now spilled out into the to the author’s Aristotelian obsession with the empiricism open. It now threatens to expose and undermine the disem- of machinery and motorcycles. Phaedrus and Pirsig were boweled nature of these intellectual prejudices that masquer- entwined, like a double-helical persona, condemned to aded as disinterested science. Projects and the priesthood coil around each other without being able to reach out and which gave a pass or fail grade to entire nations as long as these become one. The carefully managed exterior carapace of genuflected to the great God of Capital now appear laughably Pirsig’s everyday life sequestered the bramble-filled forest of corrupt or brimming over with a stunning lack of self-aware- the interior persona called Phaedrus. ness. The larger public, inured from these changing winds of In ways that Pirsig perhaps didn’t anticipate, right around intellectual fashion, except when on the receiving end as work- the time his book came out in 1974, a sweeping set of changes ers or as consumers, now openly disavow those homilies from were underway in economics, public policy and commentariat the 1990s and 2000s which were treated as self-evident truths in the West, which had begun in earnest after World War II. Per of public policy. A great irritation has set in and the machine this view, society and human affairs could be modelled as either that produced neoliberal intellectual infrastructure—from sentient automatons who optimise uncertain decisions over academic curricula, think-tanks, policy briefings to staffing an infinite horizon or as witless saps reducible to structuralist at multilateral agencies—now find themselves struggling to forces beyond their own making. The former approach became pivot away and refit themselves. The voters may not know the the gunpowder in the hands of neoclassical economists, who old gods of the neoliberal ideology— Friedrich Hayek, Frank waged a great war with an older and less-mathematical genera- Knight, Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, George Stigler and Mil- tion of economists by relying on techniques like dynamic lin- ton Friedman—who had convened at the high estates of Mont ear programming, Bellman equations and other esoterica bor- Pèlerin in the Swiss plateau to jumpstart the neoliberal project, rowed from mathematical statistics and operations research. but that playbook has little takers, at least electorally. According to the latter approach which thrived in Marxism- Nowhere is this changing wind seen more vividly than inflected domains of the academia, particularly history and in America where the rise of Donald Trump on the right and anthropology, individual agency was progressively whittled Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the left speaks to a great resent- as a causal force in our lives. In both approaches, the world ment of what these doctrines have wrought upon America: the was reducible to a model governed by primary causes, causal disembowelment of America’s once-enviable industrial base and linkages and fore-ordained consequences that could only be middle class. It is the intuition to sense this animus that propelled

12 14 september 2020 Donald Trump—the Rasputin of resentment politics—to lead In 2020, rebellion is in the American air, if for nothing but the pack among his Republican contemporaries in 2016, all of the very pleasure of burning things down. This is the sort of who misread the mood of the hour and mouthed neoliberal mania—one that terrifies the middle class and convinces the banalities that they had been told in the 1990s was important. It is elite that authoritarianism is more preferable than chaos, if only still this vast reservoir of resentment that might still give Trump to protect its capital—that arises only once a century or less. The a more than fighting chance in the November 2020 elections result is the rise of militant Trumpism which has metastasised in despite the catastrophic handling of the pandemic. Meanwhile some quarters to white nationalism only to be countered by an ar- the machine of neoliberalism still thrives, but it has experienced chipelago of anti-fascist or Antifa radicals and Black Lives Matter a great many setbacks. Pirsig writes elsewhere, ‘The test of [any] demonstrators. Together, these opposing factions echo what feels machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn’t any other test. like the early hours of something that could quickly spiral into If the machine produces tranquillity it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s protracted scenes of violence, executions and assassinations of wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.’ the kind that leads up to mass casualties or worse, à la the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. Only this time, instead of Joseph Stalin’s

Illustration by Saurabh Singh USSR or Adolf Hitler’s Germany to feed the fires, it is the sprawl- ing and cavernous hollows of the internet through which sundry discontents acquire the imprimatur of righteous anger. For much of the 20th century, political ideologies, like some temperamental machine, filled humanity with irritation, disturbed our inner equipoise and on occasion even provided respite. They were the Phaedrus of our historical selves—the faint slivers of our psychological needs to cohere and group together in the hope of fighting an aggressor and defining ourselves. In this sense, these political ideologies played the role of what traditional religions had historically performed. Over the last 300 years, however, as the gods receded and in their stead, secularised ideologies filled the void, that original form and content of yearning nevertheless remained. Thus, we have had liberalism and Marxism mimic the homogenising imperiums of monotheisms while modern conservatism has hoped to retain valences of social hierarchies that have typically marked polytheistic religions. What neoliberalism managed to do in the last 50-odd years is to sidestep such historically contingent roles that political ideologies played, and instead reduced political ideologies to anthropological curiosities, worthy of genuflection only insofar as they helped us to manage irrational affiliations among our fellow citizens. The singular affilia- tion that mattered in practice was a form of loyalty to the idea of efficiency of capital. All other loyalties were suspect. Meanwhile, the technocratic elites who shaped our public policy and its commons agreed that those who take political ideologies seriously were either under the influence of some linguistic fallacy at best, or suffering from a debilitative psychological Nowhere is the changing wind seen condition at worst. And now, after having systematically effaced aspects of the human need to belong and work with self-dignity, more vividly than in America where the ideologies that don’t privilege capital have begun to make a rise of Donald Trump on the right and comeback including those that rely on the most egregious and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the left genocidal forms of collective hallucination. The struggle to speaks to a great resentment of what cohere fragments of his self into one which Pirsig wrote about is in many sense the very same that afflicts all societies—the need neoliberal doctrines have wrought to commingle its psychic needs born out of its own historical self- upon America: the disembowelment understanding and the all too pragmatic needs to thrive materi- of America’s once-enviable industrial ally. Failing to realise the importance of the former is tantamount to setting the stage for a violent confrontation between multiple base and middle class selves that live within the body politic. n

www.openthemagazine.com 13 soft power

By Makarand R Paranjape

Bad Education Institutional restoration is the only answer

hen it comes to the National knowledge-society, both in temporal and spiritual matters. Education Policy (NEP) 2020, not a day From architecture and town planning to metallurgy and passes without some minister, bureaucrat mathematics, from agriculture and astronomy to medicine W or academic singing hosannas in its and music, from arts and literature to technology and war- praise. Or making tall claims, using it as a pretext, of India fare—and much else—there was no area that we did not try to becoming a global education hub. Even predicting, with excel in or export our genius. more fervent confidence than realistic assessment, This is not just idle talk or jingoistic bragging. The evidence that we will once again regain our status as visvaguru in favour of classical India is so overwhelming that an emi- (world teacher). nent British historian was moved to name his account of it I don’t want to sound a false alarm or strike a wrong note The Wonder That Was India. The past tense is to be noted. What in this overly sanguine scenario. True, the NEP is pathbreak- we are today is quite far beneath, comparatively speaking, to ing and, in places, visionary. There is, moreover, no call not what we were once. Our ancient civilisation and society were to be positive about the overall future of India’s educational comprehensively destroyed and scattered during wave after system. We are, after all, still a young country demographi- wave of invasion. The last phase of this downfall was clearly cally, besides being a growing economy. Things can, or should, the British colonial interlude of over 200 years, when our get better for us. fabled wealth was expropriated and we were reduced to being But when we take a look from such hopeful expectation to one of the poorest nations of the world. the actual institutional dysfunctionality that afflicts us, then All this is well-known. But even more trumpeted is our the overenthusiasm and buoyancy seem not just forced and current vaunted aim to regain our pre-eminence in the world florid, but unnaturally flushed if not balefully rubescent. The order. What is not, however, properly, let alone honestly truth is that policy is one thing and the ground reality entirely acknowledged, is that we are very far from rising to the different. In fact, the gap between them is nothing short of dizzying heights that our leaders proclaim. The reasons are alarming, especially when it comes to the official apparatus to there for all to see. The instruments and institutions of our deliver the policy and convert it to actuality. desired transformation are severely crippled or defective, I say this with all the force of experience and sincerity at especially when it comes to the educational sector. Barring the my command as a lifelong teacher and student. It would not IITs, IIMs and a few other notable pockets of excellence, Indian be an exaggeration to say that I’ve done nothing all my life ex- education, particularly when it is government-managed or cept study, teach, read, research, write and think. The drive to mishandled, is in dire straits. learn and impart knowledge is, thus, akin to breathing. What What have we done about this in the last few years? If I is more, I have, all my adult years, yearned, in the wake of the were to put it plainly, the answer would be precious little or great savants and change-agents of the Indian renaissance, nearly not enough. We continue to invest in mediocrity and for the reawakening of Bhavani Bharati or Bharat Shakti, the deprivation. Our universities remain hotbeds of politics, power of India to do good to itself and to the world. where disgruntled students with few skills and uncertain That education is a key driver of change and transforma- futures are easily lured to become ‘anti-nationals’. tion is something that our ancestors recognised way back in As to our primary education, it is a colossal mess, especially our ancient past. India was, indeed, a knowledge-giver to the in the unwieldy and inefficient public sector. Unbelievable world. It was the leader in nearly all known areas of human sums of money, running into lakhs of crores are spent across endeavour, not only in the arts, but also in the sciences, not the country, but our children leave schools without proper only in religion, but also in material accomplishments. It training or skills. On the other hand, private schools, whether would not be inaccurate to say that we were the original secular or religious, breed elitism from the very early years that

14 14 september 2020 Illustration by Saurabh Singh hensive institutional development plan (IDP)’, the systemic failure in our major institutions has persisted regardless of changes in regimes and their ideological leanings. Article 13.7 of the NEP declares ‘the presence of outstanding and enthu- siastic leaders that cultivate excellence and innovation as the need of the hour’. But whenever there is someone trying to improve things, the vested interests deeply entrenched in the system attack them with daggers drawn. The sad verity is that most of our institutions are designed to fail. Why, one might ask? What is the cause of the institutional crisis in education? If it were to be summed up in a line it would be the lack of political will combined with bureau- cratic indifference. Such apathy, coupled with unscrupulous and selfish elements, hold our institutions to ransom. This systemic fault in our major institutions has persisted regardless of changes in regimes and ideological leanings. It would seem sometimes that all good efforts at reform are designed to fail, political patronage often being merely the cloak of a dangerous power-lust. Some of these failing institutions are our oldest and best universities, not to speak of other, smaller centres of excellence. Most of them are given over to destructive politicking and jockeying for control. Unprincipled malcontents thrive in an atmosphere of indiscipline and insubordination. Those who try to usurp our institutions for personal power or profit are rarely held accountable, let alone punished. Education in India cries not for a piecemeal tinker- ing, but root-and-branch reform. That is because our system has enshrined corruption and incompetence while sidelining talent, sincerity and hard work. It is in this context that the ‘Mission Karmayogi’ approved on September 2nd by the Union Cabinet is to be welcomed. Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar The sad verity is that most of called it ‘the biggest Human Resources [HR] Development our institutions are designed to reform in the Government’. An apex HR council will monitor fail. Why, one might ask? What is and encourage civil servants to ‘meet the challenges of the world’ according to C Chandramouli, Secretary, Department the cause of the institutional of Personnel and Training (DoPT). “A civil servant of today… crisis in education? If it were to will have to be imaginative and innovative, proactive and be summed up in a line it would polite, professional and progressive, energetic and enabling, be the lack of political will transparent and tech-enabled, and constructive and creative,” he added. combined with bureaucr atic Entirely laudable as a scheme for both individual and indifference institutional capacity building, but too tall an order? Perhaps. But sorely needed is something similar for the educational sector. What Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson in Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012) is never quite eclipsed or offset no matter how many coercive demonstrated in development economics also applies to counter-compensations are offered later on. Wherever these educational capacity building. That is because a national edu- schools succeed, government interferes and forces upon them cation policy or system can only be as good as the institutions tasks and responsibilities which it has failed to perform itself. that comprise and constitute it. Our institutions are in need of Despite the NEP’s stress on ‘institutional restructuring and urgent repair and restoration. Else, these enormous national consolidation’ and the reaffirmation of ‘the integrity of faculty assets will go down the drain and result in an incalculable loss and institutional leadership positions through a compre- to future generations. n

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 15 Whisperer Jayanta Ghosal

Dressing Up ukherjee was not particular about his Mdress sense. Once, Indira Gandhi told him he was wearing one shirt too frequently and advised him to have a bigger wardrobe. When he told his wife he had to buy more shirts and the reason for it, she laughed and said that he never listened to her when she said the same thing. She bought him new shirts that very day.

Work Is Respect fter the death of Pranab Mukherjee, Athe Centre announced a seven-day state mourning. Usually, it is accompanied with a holiday but there was none this time. Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted to change this old tradition. Even Mukherjee was said to be against the ‘holiday culture’. Modi thought that Mukherjee being a workaholic, a more fitting tribute would be to work even more. So gun salutes and ceremonies would mark the mourning period but no one would get any The Secret Diaries leave. Meanwhile, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee decided that Former President Pranab Mukherjee, who tradition should not be broken and so, passed away on August 31st, was known to be a in Mukherjee’s home state, there was a prolific writer. He used to maintain a personal government holiday. diary that he wrote late night after finishing all his work. Interestingly, what he wrote was about occurrences that happened 48 hours A Man for All back. His argument was if you pen it Parties immediately, it is difficult to know the ven though he became President, emotional impact of the event. No one ever EMukherjee was not the first choice of read the diaries. They were never published and Sonia Gandhi. When the Congress was dithering on putting forward his name, could be revelatory and maybe even BJP leader LK Advani sent a message to controversial if done now. Before his death, him that if he was ready to accept, then Mukherjee handed over the diaries to his the BJP would announce his name as daughter Sharmistha. He told her to publish presidential candidate. The Congress could also support it. The Shiv Sena had them after his death, if she wanted to. But when already told Advani they would support he had been President, he once told her it would him. Mukherjee replied that he was a be better to burn those pages along with his Congressman and wanted the party to body after his death. We don’t know yet if announce his name. Sonia eventually did it. Sharmistha will publish them.

16 14 september 2020

Illustrations by Saurabh Singh

Indira Stories ranab Mukherjee remained an Indira Gandhi loyalist Pto the end and it was a relationship of mutual respect as evident from an episode in his life. In 1980, Mukherjee contested the Lok Sabha elections despite Indira advising against it. She turned out to be right. He lost even though the Congress returned to power with a thumping majority. Mukherjee thought his career was over. But she asked him to come to Delhi and, at the airport, her son Sanjay was waiting to receive him. He told him that his mother had said Mukherjee may be upset from the loss but ought to know he would be in her Cabinet. Another Indira anecdote relates to his English. He spoke with a thick Bengali accent. Once Indira told him he should improve his English pronunciation. She suggested that he have a tutor and that she was sending him one. Mukherjee said that he couldn’t do it. He was from a remote village and she would have to bear with the way he spoke because he couldn’t Sweet Returns change his native accent. Mukherjee had a sweet tooth. Whenever They both laughed and the Mamata Banerjee came to meet him, she used matter ended there. bring Gems, a chocolate variety. When she was Railways Minister, he was Finance Minister. Before the Rail Budget, she came and demanded a large tax waiver. That day, she also gave him a big box of Gems. Mukherjee told her that Magnanimity with so many Gems, he would have to do Stymied something about her request. t was apparently Indira Gandhi who Itold Pranab Mukherjee that during elections, political parties and leaders Easy Bonding were at war but when they came Narendra Modi and Mukherjee shared a unique to power, it was time to be magnanimous and not relationship as Prime Minister and President vindictive. It was a lesson he adhered to. After becoming although they belonged to opposing parties. Defence Minister in the United Progressive Alliance, Before Cabinet meetings, Modi would send he stopped the Tehelka sting investigation and gave senior minister Arun Jaitley to brief Mukherjee a clean chit in Parliament to the defence minister in about the agenda and take inputs from him. the earlier National Democratic Alliance Government, There was never any conflict between them. George Fernandes. Sonia Gandhi was said to be upset Mukherjee was to visit Israel before a prime about this and Congress leaders, like then Law Minister ministerial visit. He suggested that he go to HR Bhardwaj and Arjun Singh, complained to her. The Palestine too since the Congress philosophy had been to always have friendly ties with both party high command told Mukherjee to restart the case. parties. Modi agreed and Mukherjee visited A senior Congress leader came to tell him about the both Ramallah and Jerusalem. decision. Mukherjee was upset but a fresh FIR was filed by his defence ministry. 7 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 17 FREE With 2 year subscription Multifunctional CHOOSE Desk lamp

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By Syed Badrul Ahsan

Dhaka Central South Asian stability depends on a stable relationship between India and Bangladesh

he whirlwind visit to Dhaka by Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla recently has been the subject of much comment and ceaseless interpretations in both Bangladesh and India. Given that, of late, certain developments have been taking place in Bangladesh’s diplomacy, with reference particularly to the country’s links with China, there is understandable concern in New Delhi about the new strands that appear to be underlining Dhaka’s approach to its neighbours. It would be naïve to pretend that relations between Dhaka and Delhi have not suffered a jolt in the last few months. The overture by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, through his telephonic call to Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has certainly raised eyebrows in Delhi. That said, there is as yet little reason to suppose that the telephonic conversation between the two leaders has signalled any change in Bangladesh’s position vis-à-vis relations with Pakistan. And one can reasonably suppose that Islamabad’s expectation that Dhaka will look favourably on its Kashmir policy will fall flat, especially in light of historical factors. Back in the pre-1971 days, whenT Bangladesh was Pakistan’s eastern province, Kashmir played little or no part in the Bengali movement for regional autonomy under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Bangabandhu), subsequently to be Bangladesh’s founding father. As far as China is concerned, Bangladesh’s ties with it are a mixed bag. Bangladeshis recall the pro-Pakistan posture adopted by Beijing during their War of Liberation and with that the veto that it exercised at the UN to prevent Dhaka from taking its place in the world body. Not until September 1974 was Bangladesh able to become a member of the UN. Not forgotten either is the fact that the Chinese refrained from according diplomatic recognition to Bangladesh until after the assassination of Mujibur Rahman in August 1975. Beijing recognised Dhaka’s sovereign status 16 days after the assassination. The existing state of Dhaka-Beijing ties is essentially based on the dictum voiced by Bangabandhu—of Bangladesh’s foreign policy being based on the principle of ‘friendship for all and malice towards none’—being pursued by the government led by Sheikh Hasina. Defence deals have been reached between the two countries along with measures towards economic cooperation. Against such a backdrop, Delhi’s concerns over Dhaka’s approach to Beijing’s Belt-and-Road (BRI) project are only natural. It will not be out of place to note here that the BRI has had Bangladeshi observers of regional diplomacy worried as well. Which brings one back to Indian Foreign Secretary Shringla’s visit to Dhaka. The perception in Delhi is that the trip was an outcome of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s endeavour to keep India-Bangladesh relations on track despite the hiccups of recent weeks and months. The Indian leader has apparently made it his preoccupation to set things right with Bangladesh. That of course begs the question: Where fundamentally have things been going wrong in diplomacy between the two nations? For an answer, one needs to trace one’s steps back to the historical legacy which has served as a bond between Dhaka and Delhi.

20 14 september 2020 Sheikh Hasina and Narendra Modi in New Delhi, October 5, 2019

REUTERS

The Indian Foreign Secretary’s visit was perhaps an outcome of Narendra Modi’s endeavour to Keep India-Bangladesh relations on track. Modi apparently wants to set things right with Bangladesh. That begs the question: Where have things been going wrong between the two nations? For an answer, we need to trace our steps back to the historical legacy

Caught up in the frenzy of Partition in 1947, the eastern part for Bengali freedom from Pakistan. With 10 million Bengali of Bengal found itself reborn as Pakistan’s eastern province. De- refugees streaming into India in the face of genocidal operations spite the fraught ties between India and Pakistan—and we speak by the Pakistan army in East Pakistan, the Indian authorities of the period between 1947 and 1971—Bengalis on both sides of went out on a limb to assist the Bengali political circles in setting the frontier maintained a level of cultural ties which could not be up a government-in-exile, with its base in Calcutta, in April 1971. sundered despite the best efforts of successive Pakistani regimes India’s assistance in helping to set up freedom-fighter training to drive a wedge between the two Bengals. On a brief visit to Cal- camps within its territory and making provisions of arms and cutta soon after leading the opposition United Front to a massive ammunition to the Mukti Bahini, the Bengali guerrilla army, triumph at the East Bengal provincial elections in 1954, Chief are recalled with gratitude in Bangladesh. Not forgotten, too, is Minister AK Fazlul Huq (once Prime Minister of United Bengal) the global diplomacy undertaken by the Indian Government waxed eloquent on the cultural indivisibility of Bengalis on both under Indira Gandhi’s leadership in 1971 to draw international sides of the political divide. Derided by the entrenched political attention to the sufferings of Bengalis and the need for a political classes based in Karachi for his comments, Huq’s ministry was settlement to the crisis through the release from incarceration soon dismissed by the central government. That did little to in West Pakistan of the elected Bengali leader Mujibur Rahman. dampen East Bengali links with West Bengal in cultural terms. Small wonder, then, that on his way back home from London fol- Besides, Rabindranath Tagore’s birth centenary was observed lowing his release by the Pakistani authorities in January 1972, with enthusiasm in East Pakistan in 1961. Mujib chose to stop over in Delhi to personally thank the Indian India’s links with Bangladesh’s people were solidified in leadership for coming to the aid of his embattled Bengalis. 1971 through the moral and material support provided by the However, in the last nearly 50 years since the emergence of Government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the struggle Bangladesh as a sovereign nation, certain stumbling blocks

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 21 open essay

have often come in the way of the relationship between Delhi over a nosedive in Delhi-Dhaka relations when it opted to take and Dhaka. The inability of the Indian authorities—add to that the Farakka Barrage issue, a holdover from the Pakistan period, what is perceived as intransigence by the West Bengal govern- to the UN in 1977. Given that post-1975 Bangladesh saw a clear ment of Mamata Banerjee—to reach a deal with Bangladesh turning away from its original secular ideals, the Zia regime’s on an equitable sharing of the waters of the Teesta river has had perception of Farakka placed a sudden strain on ties between the Bangladeshis deeply disturbed. A deal had been expected to be two neighbours. Matters were not helped either in the nine-year signed in Dhaka in 2011 during the visit of then Prime Minister dictatorship of General Hussein Muhammad Ershad and in Manmohan Singh. Its last-minute scuttling, through the oppo- the subsequent government led by Zia’s widow Khaleda Zia. sition of the West Bengal Chief Minister, was a clear damper for Relations with Pakistan were particularly close under these three Bangladesh. It was in a mood of good cheer, therefore, that Ban- rulers and allegations of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) influence gladeshis welcomed new Indian leader Narendra Modi’s pledge in Dhaka were rife. to resolve the Teesta issue with the Sheikh Hasina government. In the larger political sense, the role of the octogenarian That promise too has come to naught. politician, Moulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, in a nega- tive reshaping of perceptions in Dhaka on ties with Delhi must not be overlooked. Within months of Bangladesh’s liberation, istorically, relations between Delhi and Bhashani raised the slogan of a ‘Muslim Bengal’, which was a HDhaka have been underscored by long-term policy per- clear threat to the secular republic established by Mujib and spectives in the two capitals. One could cite here the conclu- his party in 1971. Besides, sentiments in Bangladesh have per- sion of a 25-year treaty of friendship and cooperation by Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in Villagers cross the Teesta river in Rangpur district, Bangladesh March 1972. Additionally, reference is to be made to the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) on an exchange of enclaves reached by the two leaders in 1974. While Bangla- desh swiftly ratified the deal in the same year, it was not until 2015, following the assumption of power by Modi, that India finally ratified the agreement. For Bangla- deshis, this very long period between 1974 and 2015 before Delhi finally formalised the LBA has rather been a mystery. But with such realities have come certain positive new factors in relations between the two countries. Dhaka’s agreeing to give Delhi transit access through its territory to India’s north-eastern region is justifiably looked upon as a sign of the increasingly closer links between the two nations. Additionally, an agreement on curbing cross-border terrorism has thrown up encouraging results. Besides, the handover of Bangladeshi criminals to Dhaka by India has buttressed the links. REUTERS But none of this should obscure the downturn in India-Bangladesh ties in the The inability of the Indian authorities to reach a period between the fall of Mujibur deal with Bangladesh on an equitable sharing of the Rahman’s government in 1975 and the waters of the Teesta river has had Bangladeshis return of his Awami League to power under deeply disturbed. It was in a mood of good cheer, his daughter Hasina in June 1996. The his- therefore, that they welcomed new Indian leader tory of independent Bangladesh has been marred by a series of assassinations and mili- Narendra Modi’s pledge to resolve the Teesta issue tary rule. The country’s first military regime, with the Sheikh Hasina government. That headed by General Ziaur Rahman, presided promise too has come to naught

22 getty images

Dhaka-Beijing ties are based on Mujibur Rahman's dictum: ‘friendship for all and malice towards none’. Defence deals have been reached between the two, along with measures for economic cooperation. Delhi’s concerns over Dhaka’s approach to the Belt-and-Road project are natural. The BRI has Bangladeshi observers of regional diplomacy worried as well

Sheikh Hasina and Xi Jinping in Beijing, July 5, 2019 sisted all these years regarding the protests made by Major MA institutions. In a similar fashion, Indian students are enrolled Jalil, a leading freedom fighter, on weapons and other ammu- at Bangladeshi academic institutions. A good number of Indi- nition being transferred to India by troops of the Indian army ans serve in Bangladeshi organisations, among which are the soon after Bangladesh’s liberation. Jalil was later dismissed country’s service-oriented industries. from the army and would go on to found the Jatiya Samajtant- This spirit of cooperation does not, however, obscure an rik Dal (JSD) as an opposition platform to the Awami League in important reality. It relates to the frequent killings of Bangla- October 1972. The JSD would earn particular notoriety when, deshis by India’s Border Security Force (BSF) along the frontier in November 1975, its activists attempted to abduct Samar Sen, between the two countries. For its part, though, the BSF has the Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh. The incident generally drawn attention to illegal border crossings by Bangla- led to largescale arrests of JSD politicians by the Zia regime. deshi nationals as also smuggling and even theft of cattle. But The advent of the Sheikh Hasina government in June such explanations have not gone down well with Bangladeshis, 1996 marked a reversal of the trends set in place by the Zia who remain unable to come to terms with the propensity on and Ershad regimes. In December 1996, Sheikh Hasina and the part of the BSF to shoot their fellow citizens dead rather than her Indian counterpart HD Deve Gowda concluded a 30-year adopt other measures to deal with the problem. deal on a sharing of the waters of the Ganges between the two At the end of the day, the truth cannot be obscured: the countries. Additionally, the Hasina government’s resolution hiccups which sometimes disturb India-Bangladesh ties ought of a long-running insurgency in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, not to be mistaken for tremors. Delhi surely has its foreign pitting Bangladesh’s security forces against armed Chakma policy perspectives in the region and Dhaka is a priority in tribals, was instrumental in bringing an armed conflict to such perceptions. The Shringla visit is testimony to this real- an end. Dhaka’s firm and determined handling of United ity. For Dhaka, the preoccupation today is twofold: keep and Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) activities in Bangladesh terri- strengthen its historical links with India even as it branches tory, through clamping a full ban on such activities aimed at out in search of larger diplomatic dimensions for itself. destabilising India’s Northeast, were a contributory factor to a And let another fundamental truth not be ignored. It is that, remarkable improvement in bilateral relations. in these times, Bangladesh and India happen to be two normal Overall, diplomacy between Bangladesh and India rests on countries, assuming one can use the phrase in the context of firm ground despite the worries that sometimes have come the subcontinent. The normality defines various layers of their in the way in both capitals. Dhaka has consistently regarded internal politics and external diplomacy. Delhi and Dhaka Kashmir as an internal Indian issue, though it is to be acknowl- know only too well that they need each other, that on a stable edged that its silence on the Galwan Valley clash has obvi- relationship between them depends the process of ensuring a ously left the Indian side perturbed. Beyond all that, India and larger stability in the South Asian region. n Bangladesh have experienced regular exchanges of cultural ties, especially in terms of shared heritage between Dhaka Syed Badrul Ahsan is a Bangladeshi political analyst. and Kolkata. Besides, thousands of Bangladeshi students have His works include biographies of Bangladesh’s founder Sheikh been taking various academic courses at Indian educational Mujibur Rahman and its first prime minister Tajuddin Ahmad

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 23 PIB Photo Presidential portrait24 of 14 SEPTEMBER 2020 Pranab Mukherjee in memoriam

[ Pranab Mukherjee] 1935-2020

He understood that democratic politics is algebra, where various parts of the electoral equation are held together by governance, not deposits in vote banks

By MJ Akbar

A pandemic’s sense of pervasive death has diminished the funeral. Is that necessarily a loss? Funerals are so often crowded with people come to lay a calling card on a bier. Death becomes another excuse for an hour’s hypocrisy, particularly in a town embalmed in power, where the next political transaction weighs so much heavier than the past, which is quickly reduced to light whiffs of conversation. The funeral prayer of Delhi is the cliché turned flaccid by overuse. Those who stood in the shadows wielding arsenic scalpels when there was life, suddenly discover virtues in statements released to the press as quickly as they are drafted. Those who had no time for the living race to the front of the queue at the funeral with solemn faces tilted towards cameras. Genuine grief is a companion of solitude, for those moments of lonely

14 SEPTEMBER 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 25 in memoriam

reminiscence when the ledger of the world is empty on both about what precisely happened. However, of this we can be sides: you gain nothing and you lose nothing in the public certain: if the charismatic Bose had returned to India, he eye for you are not on display. might have led the nation after the 1962 elections, and cer- The human being is not a natural hermit. He is gregari- tainly would have become Prime Minister after 1967. Bose ous. Life brings us together. We call it friendship on the was born in 1897, so would have been only 70 in 1967. intimate level, association in an expanded context, and The second Bengali was sabotaged by the communists. society on the macro scale. But we die alone. Maybe we This is almost unbelievably ironic since Jyoti Basu was a should mourn alone, too. founder of his party, the CPM, or the Communist Party of Even writing a eulogy seems invasive of something India (Marxist). He was Chief Minister of Bengal from 1977, precious: of long conversations that gradually increased in and nationally renowned by the time of the hung Parliament veracity with time, since confidence is the culmination of a of 1996, in which a non-Congress coalition was ready to difficult process which evolves through so many stages of form the Union Government. This coalition solved its most time. I came to know Pranab Mukherjee, or Pranabda, when difficult problem without fuss, choosing Jyoti Basu as poten- I was editor of a young but ebullient daily newspaper in tial Prime Minister. One newspaper headline proclaimed Calcutta, and he was a senior star in Indira Gandhi’s firma- that a red star had risen over Delhi, while coalition partners ment. We kept aside political differences—or, more accu- awaited the formality of party approval. Instead, the CPM rately, he did—and continued to bond through the inimi- politburo, in a ghastly mistake, decided not to join govern- table intimacy of the Bengali language. ment and thereby prevented Basu from becoming the first The test came when, after 1985, Pranabda lost the con- communist and Bengali Prime Minister. fidence of the new Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and with Jyoti Basu might also have become the wittiest Prime it his Cabinet position and the big bungalow in the capital Minister. Once, travelling first class from Calcutta to that is the one unrivalled perk of India’s national politics. London on British Airways for his annual holiday, he was He moved to a small flat, which included a tiny room for asked by a bumptious fellow passenger what a communist puja. Very few people knew how religious, and indeed was doing in the first-class cabin. Replied Basu: “I am a first- Brahminical in the best sense of the term, Pranabda was. class communist.” Jyoti Basu was also the only communist Every day would begin with a puja, and each year he would who could have renamed the road on which the American go to his birthplace-village in Bengal to preside over puja consulate in Calcutta stood Ho Chi Minh Sarani and then ceremonies. I would call on him with even more frequency gone to America to seek investment. during those fallow years; years which must have strength- Later, in an interview to this writer, Jyoti Basu called the ened his study of astrology, which attempts an explanation decision “a historic blunder”. He was right. Indian commu- for the devastating descent or the rapid ascent of fortune. nism never recovered. In 2000, Basu retired. His successors Destiny is not coherent. not only lost the communist fortress of Bengal, but whittled Very few people came to visit him then. He never forgot down the red movement to insignificance. them. Our mentor-student relationship had many facets, from books to speeches to animated discussion of vital political n 2004, Pranab Mukherjee could have become decisions, but everything was safely stored in that custody the first Congress Prime Minister from Bengal. By of trust which can be irreparably damaged by even a single any measure of ministerial experience, parlia- instance of leakage. What was confidential in his presence, mentary sagacity or political savvy, he was the must remain closeted in his absence. His public life, how- pre-eminentI figure in the Congress, way ahead of ever, to state the obvious, was public. For me what is interest- Manmohan Singh. But Sonia Gandhi would not trust him. ing is not where he reached on the slippery slopes of politics, Indeed, he did not even get the finance ministry, which was but what he should have achieved. his second choice. The same barely disguised antagonism Pranab Mukherjee was the third Bengali icon who was was evident in 2012, when Pranab Mukherjee wanted to denied a legitimate place as Prime Minister of India in the become President of India. That was when he brought a modern annals of our country. lifetime’s craft and personal relationships into play, and The first was Subhas Chandra Bose, who was finessed outmanoeuvred the Congress. out of leadership by Mahatma Gandhi in the late 1930s for Pranab Mukherjee was finance minister when he came reasons that do not stand up to historical scrutiny. Bose left to Bengal to do the sort of thing that politicians are required the Congress and found his own way towards the common to do: change the name of a street with a speech before objective of India’s freedom from British imperialism, mohalla elders. Except that this was the lane in which I had raising the Indian National Army in alliance with Japan. grown up, in the small working-class settlement outside Bose survived World War II, but was lost to the nation in Victoria Jute Mill on the banks of the Hooghly called the uncertain aftermath. There has been much controversy Telinipara, a two-hour drive from Calcutta through difficult

26 14 SEPTEMBER 2020 With Indira Gandhi, 1982 i ves ex p ress arch

In 2004, Pranab Mukherjee could have become the first Congress Prime Minister from Bengal. By any measure of ministerial experience, parliamentary sagacity or political savvy, he was the pre-eminent figure in the Congress, way ahead of Manmohan Singh. But Sonia Gandhi would not trust him a p

With Sonia Gandhi, 2009 in memoriam

We met for the last time in January this year, when he released my book on the lawns of his home in Delhi. He was frail. But his speech had all the familiar verve, punctuated periodically by the trademark quiet smile as he made an off-the- script comment or recalled something from the silken folds of memory. It was an unforgettable privilege and an honour for me and for everyone who came to hear him

traffic and pockmarked roads. Previously known as the one else, but his real passion was national politics, which rather grandiloquent Sir Alexander Murray Lane, it was he learnt at the invaluable school dominated by Indira being renamed in memory of my father. There were no politi- Gandhi. He was devoted to her, and she understood his worth far cal rewards in this gesture; it was personal and typical of the better than her successors did. His loyalty did not flinch inherent generosity of the man. The boys on the lane were during Indira Gandhi’s most difficult days, after she lost the half-bemused and half-awed when he arrived, but suddenly elections in 1977 and had to face the Shah Commission, set up while we were at lunch they gathered in front of our home to inquire into the multiple excesses of the infamous Emer- and raised lusty cries of “Pranab Mukherjee Zindabad!” They gency. Indira Gandhi and he were the only two leaders to boy- cheered him on his way back cott the commission, although to Calcutta and Delhi. getty images he did so with legal finesse Our last one-to-one con- rather than political confron- versation was in December tation. She was clear-minded last year; the shadow of un- enough to foresee defeat once certainty occasionally flick- the 1977 campaign began, and ered across his face when he told him so, although her col- spoke of his health. But his leagues were optimistic, and political analysis was as frank her opponents were unable and astute as ever. He had no to believe they could ever win. vested interest left in any par- Pranab Mukherjee was always ty, sharpening his objectivity. confident of Indira Gandhi’s We met for the last time revival, because he knew that in January this year, when he her connect with the base was Gandhi’s released my book With the author, 2011 her primary strength. She Hinduism: The Struggle Against drew her political chart from Jinnah’s Islam on the lawns of the people’s eyes. his home in Delhi. He was frail, for his body had been further The Congress has first steadily and then sharply weakened. But his speech had all the familiar verve, punctu- declined after Indira Gandhi because it narrowed its ated periodically by the trademark quiet smile as he made concentration from the people to just its presumed voters. an off-the-script comment or recalled something from the Pranab Mukherjee understood that democratic politics is silken folds of memory. It was an unforgettable privilege algebra, where various parts of the electoral equation are held and an honour for me and for everyone who came to hear together by governance, not deposits in vote banks. him. Then February darkened with the pall of Covid-19 and He would have always kept this much in mind if he had a pandemic put us into isolation by March. become Prime Minister of India. n One perennial topic between us was Bengal. Pranabda was the quintessential Bengali: warm, erudite, involved, MJ Akbar is an MP and the author of, most recently, and a perfect gentleman. He knew Bengal better than any- Gandhi’s Hinduism: The Struggle Against Jinnah’s Islam

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Available as an e-magazine for tablets, mobiles and desktops via Magzter in memoriam [ Pranab Mukherjee]

Juggling with figures remained the first love of the one-time economics teacher in an obscure Bengali college who became India’s youngest finance minister By Sunanda K Datta-Ray

espite holding the highest office in the land Indira Gandhi would never have written that letter about for five years (2012 to 2017), the 84-year- Cabinet meetings if she had remotely feared a challenge. old Pranab Mukherjee may not have died But lacking a mass base and despite reports of lavish cam- with a sense of complete fulfilment. A joke paign spending, Mukherjee was not elected to the Lok Sabha attributed to him was that while prime until 2004. ministers came and went, his initials made She recognised his intellectual calibre, executive com- Dhim ‘PM’ for life. The witticism may have concealed a certain petence and parliamentary finesse. He was not just utterly wistful yearning. loyal to her politically. His devotion bordering on servility (to However convoluted his politics may have been—with Sanjay too until his death) was strongly laced with personal some party colleagues being treated more like adversaries— adulation and affection. As Mukherjee himself recounted, he could be a loyal friend. I was always welcome to borrow while Rajiv Gandhi remained “exceptionally calm and from the extensive library in his house in Delhi’s Greater displayed total control and fortitude” when he heard of his Kailash II where books on subjects that ranged from biog- mother’s assassination, “tears started rolling down” his face, raphy to economics and philosophy to history indicated and he “wept inconsolably.” He could “compose” himself intellectual interests that set Mukherjee apart from most “only after some time and with great effort.” others in Delhi’s corridors of power. Thanks to his painter Interestingly, he also acknowledged that Rajiv’s stoicism wife, Suvra, who predeceased him by several years, I have was “possibly a trait he had inherited from his mother.” It also enjoyed many informal en famille dinners in that house. was the English stiff upper lip, a quality that is little known He readily wrote a very warm and committed foreword in Indian life. The two very different responses to the tragedy for my book, Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew’s Mission highlight the cultural differences between the two Indias. India. The theme chimed in with his own declaration when It might thereby also help to explain why the multitude feels an Asia-Europe mechanism threatened to exclude India closer today to a Bharatiya Janata Party that subscribes so that “Asia minus India is like Hamlet without the Prince of ostentatiously to folk beliefs and customs than to a Congress Denmark.” Singapore’s Lee called him “a very able fellow”, committed to a distant Fabianism that hardly any Indian adding, “I’m impressed by his intellect.” has heard of and headed by an Italian-born woman and her Mukherjee told me once that he had a letter from Indira visibly cosmopolitan son and daughter. Gandhi authorising him to preside over Cabinet meetings Mukherjee’s cordial response to Mohan Bhagwat’s invita- in her absence. He set such store by those written instruc- tion to address the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in tions that I did not have the heart to remind him of a cartoon Nagpur may have been an acute political operator’s recogni- by (I think) my former colleague Sudhir Dar that showed tion of that grassroots reality. her measuring Devaraj Urs’ height, while the man respon- Rajiv’s world has been derided as ‘the babalog’, the ‘safari- sible for her political comeback from Chikmagalur in the suited brigade’ and the ‘Beatles generation’. They were an historic October 1978 by-election pleaded, “I haven’t upper-class English-speaking Westernised milieu that was grown. Honestly, I haven’t!” or words to that effect. Clearly, instinctively more restrained in its behaviour than the Indira Gandhi thought otherwise. Ruthless strategist that emotionalism of traditional India. It was a different universe she was, she soon jettisoned the Karnataka Chief Minister altogether from that of the lower middle-class Bengali family to whom she owed so much. in rustic Birbhum to which Mukherjee belonged. He start-

30 14 SEPTEMBER 2020 express archives

Before presenting the Union Budget, 1983

ed life as an upper-division clerk in the office of the deputy both Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri. Whatever accountant-general (Post and Telegraph) in Kolkata. it was, it accounted for the political exile that continued till That difference was again evident when I asked him 1989 when a reconciliation of sorts was patched up. But it about Indira Gandhi’s relations with Lee Kuan Yew. “Not was not until 1995 that PV Narasimha Rao, another shrewd at all good!” he replied at once, completely out of his depth judge of men, brought Mukherjee into the fold and made with the banter and badinage that marked the ‘people like him external affairs minister. us’ syndrome of the world’s small and exclusive English- Asked many years later about the foreign affairs legacy educated elite. Despite their political differences, the two he wanted to leave behind, Mukherjee replied, “As the prime ministers understood each other perfectly at the foreign minister who prepared Indian diplomacy to human level. Mukherjee was excluded from that rapport. address the challenges of a more globalised, interdepen- We will never know for certain what exactly passed be- dent and uncertain world.” He skilfully pushed through tween him and Rajiv during those moments when India the historic 123 Agreement and treaty with the Nuclear was poised on the razor’s edge of dangerous uncertainty. The Suppliers Group. Historians may well judge that his laconic ‘He let others influence him and listened to their cal- eloquently convincing parliamentary defence of both saved umnies against me’ in one volume of Mukherjee’s memoirs Manmohan Singh’s UPA II. conceals more than it reveals. So does the probably colossal However, it would be a mistake to conclude from that understatement, ‘I let my frustration overtake my patience.’ defence that he was especially fond of Sonia Gandhi’s He may have mentioned Indira Gandhi’s letter and tried choice of Prime Minister. He was loyal to the party which to assert the ‘right’ he mistakenly felt it conferred on him. he had abandoned in despair and disappointment to set up Being well-versed in the intricacies of protocol and prece- the short-lived Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress but to which dent, he may also have staked a claim to head an interim gov- he had returned in 1989, recognising that there could be ernment, as Gulzarilal Lal Nanda had done after the deaths of no other vehicle in India for secular, caring, middle-of-

14 SEPTEMBER 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 31 in memoriam

With Narendra Modi, 2016 getty i mages

His stint as India’s 13th President provided surprisingly few controversies. There was none of the stormy distractions triggered by personal animus during Zail Singh’s tenure. Nor does it seem to have been marked by any of the philosophical dissonances of Nehru’s relationship with Rajendra Prasad

the-road governance to deliver both personal ambition crowning glory was being able to return its third tranche and desirable public goals. unused because India’s economy had moved forward. Although the son of a dyed-in-the-wool Congressman, it Lee Kuan Yew was not the only global statesman to be was concern for Bengal, which the Congress seemed to ne- impressed by his fiscal management; so was the US Treasury glect in those days, that influenced his political initiation in Secretary, Donald Regan, who is regarded as the real author the venerable Ajoy Mukherjee’s Bangla Congress. That same of ‘Reaganomics’ and tax cuts as a means of creating jobs and concern prompted him to write a long letter to The Statesman stimulating production. comparing and contrasting New Delhi’s lavish generosity to His stint as India’s 13th President provided surprisingly West Pakistani refugees with its niggardly treatment of those few controversies. There was none of the stormy distractions in the East. The paper published it in full. triggered by personal animus during Zail Singh’s tenure. Juggling with figures remained the first love of this one-time Nor—surprisingly—does it seem to have been marked by economics teacher in an obscure Bengali college who became any of the philosophical dissonances of Jawaharlal Nehru’s India’s youngest finance minister. Adjudged among the world’s relationship with Rajendra Prasad. In theory, the elaborate best finance ministers by the journal, Euromoney, he freed In- Ram Mandir bhoomipuja could have burgeoned into another dia from the shackles of the so-called Hindu rate of growth to Somnath temple controversy if it had been in his time. But achieve 5.6 per cent growth. Not for nothing did a leftist maga- only in theory. Pranab Mukherjee is unlikely to have allowed zine comment then that socialism did not grow out of the pipe ideology to disturb pragmatism. Whether for reasons of Mukherjee smoked. Operation Forward, which he and then constitutional propriety or personal conve- Industries Minister Charanjit Chanana launched in the early nience, he remained the Man for All Seasons 1980s, started the liberalisation process that eventually led to to the end. n the revolution under Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh. He negotiated the biggest-ever loan that the International Sunanda K Datta-Ray is a journalist and author Monetary Fund (IMF) had ever granted any country. His of several books. He is an Open contributor

32 14 SEPTEMBER 2020 While Inside Look Outside For FREE With access visit www.openthemagazine.com Cover Story

The Power of Intuition

The world’s sixth-richest man takes RIL, India’s most valued company that straddles the traditional and the digital with equal competitiveness, to the global centrestage. Inside one of the most expansive corporate transformation stories

Photograph by Rohit Chawla

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ne of the many messages shared online after Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) snapped up debt-saddled Future Group’s retail assets invoked Gujarati pride and its mercantile ethos. In the joke, the narrator and Mukesh Bhai (Mukesh Ambani, RIL’s chairman) go to buy groceries from Big Bazaar, owned by Future, and while the narrator buys onions on sale, Asia’s richest man buys out the whole company and much more. In fact, Ambani bought retail, warehousing, wholesale and logistic operations from Future Group for Rs 24,713 crore, which means he now owns 1,800 stores of popular brands such as EasyDay, Central, Foodhall and FBB, besides Big Bazaar. Described by many as a burnished showpiece of Indian enterprise, RIL is acting on an ambitious vision to bolster its retail spread and emphatically dominate e-commerce giants, such as Amazon and Walmart, in the domestic market. The Future entities that RIL will

now own, apart from retail, are Future Lifestyle Fashions Ltd where he wanted to be on the wealthy list in the future, he had (which operates Brand Factory) and Future Consumer Ltd. More outlined a step-by-step approach starting from 500 to being at the Ofunny messages and those that celebrate the Gujarati sense of top. Ambani, who works late and starts work before noon, is a entrepreneurship and business zeal are in circulation long after bibliophile who also gorges on technology articles besides finding this major corporate announcement came out at August-end. time to watch movies. His favourite movie, informs a former RIL To understand the grand strategy of Mukesh Ambani, who executive, is The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and beat Tesla’s Elon Musk and the likes of the Google founders to based on a book by Mario Puzo. He also ranks Walter Isaacson, the become the world’s sixth-richest man in net worth, it is impor- author of several biographies including that of Apple co-founder tant to remember that Ambani had said early on that his com- Steve Jobs, as his favourite writer. “As far as his goals are concerned, pany would always embrace businesses of the future, which in I think he is steadily moving up towards his goals. He is already the current context include the retail and digital sectors that are the sixth-wealthiest man in the world and is gung-ho about his relatively resistant to economic shocks. Ambani has called it the investments in 5G and retail, which in India is growing rapidly Reliance DNA and has said this is the core of the philosophy of his and is expected to touch $1.3 trillion by 2025. He is already ahead father, Dhirubhai Ambani, who built the Reliance empire from of even international behemoths. As with 5G, with the world scratch. The entry of Ambani Sr to the realm of Indian business looking forward to doing business with non-China-based com- is often said to be epochal, in that it effectively replaced an era of panies, RIL is expected to hit paydirt. As Mukesh himself said, he socialist policies often described as ‘self-reliance’. What followed, seems to be ahead of others in terms of intuition. But then what he they say, was the era of Reliance. calls intuition is simply business acumen, in common corporate The transformation of RIL is rather unprecedented in the re- parlance,” says a former RIL executive. gion’s business history: it shifted from textiles and polyester to “No other businessman of his age group (now 63) either in oil and then to consumer goods and digital. Under Mukesh, this India or abroad would even contemplate diversifying to tap new transformation has been swift, which is why, on Dalal Street, there opportunities. At least so far, we have not heard of anyone else is a saying that if data is the new oil, the only man who has un- who had the courage and the risk-taking ability to do that,” says derstood it clearly enough to reorient his business strategy is the a Mumbai-based senior executive of a consultancy. captain of a heavy industrial group. This change is nothing short RIL’s chairman, who was born in Aden, Yemen, in 1957, while of phenomenal. Ambani has given enough and more reasons why his father was based there, relocated to Mumbai in 1958 when his he is doing what he is doing: that he is ceding to the young genera- father started the textile business, first named Vimal and then tion within the family and in the Reliance empire. He always says ‘Only Vimal’. Although his father kept him abreast of the trajec- that is the way his father wanted him to do business ever since tory of their business from an early age, Ambani Jr went on to Ambani Sr initiated his son into the business at the age of 14 by study at St Xavier’s College, then pursued a BE degree in Chemical treating him not as a son, but as a partner. “Investing in businesses Engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology before of the future is the key,” he often reiterates. he headed for the US to do an MBA at Stanford University. Steve Stories about Mukesh Ambani’s business acumen and in- Ballmer and he were buddies there; both dropped out in 1980, tuitions abound. Long ago when he was asked by an associate Ballmer to help build his former Harvard friend Bill Gates’ tech

36 14 september 2020 start-up Microsoft and Ambani to assist his father grow Reliance which is going to continue, Reliance Retail’s model to connect from a fast-growing business to a conglomerate. All through, kirana stores sounds reassuring because they would be having whenever Ambani diversified, there were critics who predicted the largest part of the retailing business through kirana stores huge setbacks, and they were all proved wrong. connected to their JioMart platform.” Last year, Reliance Retail Ambani, whose son Akash and daughter Isha are active in contributed Rs 35,000 crore of revenue from groceries and Future the business along with his wife Nita, has often talked about Group contributed somewhere around Rs 16,000 crore. “So that how he conceived the idea of becoming an internet titan with is roughly Rs 50,000 crore coming in from grocery retail alone the launch of Jio through which he wants the whole coun- last year. And, at a 15 per cent rate of growth, they will clock try to stay linked to the World Wide Web at affordable prices Rs 65,000 crore worth of revenue in the current financial year while enjoying enhanced internet connection speed. On the only from the groceries,” Choksey avers. morning of her return from Yale University, of which Isha is He emphasises, however, that the mainstay of Reliance’s retail an alumnus, she reportedly said: “Papa, internet speed in India is in the digital domain with its digital stores. The Reliance Digital sucks.” Ambani recalls that he tried to initially convince his stores contribute about Rs 45,000 crore worth of revenue, which is daughter that the internet speed and response time was good one-fourth of the total revenue of the company, he reasons. Of the enough at their home, but finally realised that his daughter 10,000-odd stores that Reliance has on the ground today, almost had a point because she kept insisting that she had managed three-fourths of them are Reliance Digital stores. “The fashion all her classes, assignments, videoconferences and submission and lifestyle business contributes only Rs 13,000-14,000 crore in of video assignments on the internet at Yale with no problem. revenue. Now a chunk of revenue will also be attributed to the There are analysts who con- tend that the challenges in the 5G space are huge for RIL, especially because for global reach, the company has to battle competition To understand the grand strategy of Mukesh from players who have been there Ambani, who beat Tesla’s Elon Musk and the likes and done that: Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and so on. of the Google founders to become the world’s But what most analysts agree sixth-richest man in net worth, it is important to about RIL is that its retail business will move from strength to remember that he had said early on that his company strength. Let’s not forget that the would always embrace businesses of the future, contribution of the retail sector to India’s GDP stands at 10 per cent which in the current context include the retail while its contribution to employ- and digital sectors that are relatively resistant to ment is at 8 per cent. More impor- tantly, others are already feeling economic shocks. Ambani has called it the Reliance the heat of RIL’s e-commerce foray. DNA and the core of the philosophy of his father Deven Choksey, MD, KRChok- sey Investment Managers, says: “Last year, RIL had Rs 1.65 lakh crore of revenue from its retail businesses. If we take up the numbers Future Group produced from retail, it adds about Rs 26,000 crore. Added to the Rs 1.65 lakh crore this year, RIL’s overall revenue from retail would be anywhere around Rs 2 lakh crore.” He goes on: “This puts them ahead of anyone else in the retail space.” Choksey says that at the moment 59 per cent of retail is contributed by the grocery segment and 41 per cent by the non-grocery segment: “If you look at this trend, getty images

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 37 Cover Story

fotocorp petroleum retailing business which is the JV between them and BP where RIL has 51 per cent stake. Whatever retailing of petroleum products they do, it will also be forming a part of the overall retail segment of the company,” Choksey states. Smart moves, indeed. Isha Ambani, Director, Reliance Retail Ventures Limited, spoke to Open about the Future Group deal: “With this transaction, we are pleased to provide a home to the renowned formats and brands of Future Group as well as preserve its business ecosystem, which have played an important role in the evolution of modern retail in India. We hope to continue the growth mo- mentum of the retail industry with our unique model of active collaboration with small merchants and kiranas as well as large consumer brands. We are committed to continue providing value to our consumers across the country.” RIL launched JioMart, an online selling platform for Reliance Retail’s grocery outlets, late last year. Customers can place orders through WhatsApp, which, at the moment, is used by 400 million people in India. According to other reports, the Rs 6.6 lakh crore conglomerate picked up 15 per cent of online lingerie company Zivame and a sizeable chunk of online pharmacy Netmeds apart from holding negotiations with online retailers, some of whom are household names. India was ranked number two on the Global Retail Development Index in 2019. On the Netmeds buy, Isha Ambani says: “This investment is aligned with our commitment to provide digital access for everyone in India. The addition of Netmeds enhances Reliance Retail’s ability to provide good quality and affordable healthcare products and services, and also broadens its digital commerce proposition to include most daily essential needs of consumers. We are impressed by Netmeds’ journey to build a nationwide digital franchise in such a short time and are confident of accel- erating it with our investment and partnership.” Ankur Bisen, head, Consumer & Retail, Technopak, argues that the Reliance Retail-Future Group pact augurs well for the retail sector because it is capable of making food retail also modern. “For 15 years, the story is around traditional retail going modern, online, etcetera. But food has not gone modern. For any agri-reform to take place, you can’t have a unidimensional approach around subsidies and support. You need demand pres- Akash with father Mukesh Ambani in Mumbai sures from the market to reform the supply chain. So, we have to view the deal in the light of the under-invested category of food retail.” He is also pleased with the leadership at Reliance Retail. with us in our journey to digitally empower India and Indians. Says Bisen: “Pankaj Pawar has been heading the entire Reliance Jio is committed to make a digitally inclusive India that will pro- Retail since 2006 and reports into Manoj Modi [trusted lieutenant vide immense opportunities to every Indian citizen, especially to of Ambani]. A lot of digital transformation is what Isha and Akash our highly talented youth. General Atlantic’s endorsement and Ambani are looking at. This is Reliance Retail leadership from a partnership energises Jio’s young team to set and achieve even non-fuel and non-telecom perspective. Now even Gaurav Jain is more ambitious goals in our onward march.” working along with Pankaj Pawar. The outfit is run as a profes- At least two people who have watched Ambani closely say sional entity with CEOs of different formats reporting into the that his business intuition arises not only out of his familiarity leadership structure that has been laid out.” with technological advancements, but also from his understand- On investment by General Atlantic in Jio Platforms Limited, ing of grassroots India. As someone who grew up in a home with Akash Ambani, Director, Jio, told Open: “We are delighted that middle-class values, he has himself suggested that he knows both a renowned global investor like General Atlantic is partnering the street and Wall Street. When he and Nita were dating in 1984,

38 14 september 2020 he would take her out most often to eat vada-paav at street-side ing, teaching, finding communities, people they care about, and eateries although he also took her to Mumbai’s posh restaurants, of course starting all kinds of new businesses.” Sundar Pichai, driving around in a green Fiat car. Even though he dines at luxury CEO, Google, is glad that the joint collaboration will focus on hotels, he still visits Matunga’s Mysore Café occasionally to tuck increasing access for hundreds of millions of Indians who don’t into his favourite dish, idli-sambar. He began frequenting this café currently own a smartphone. on Bhaudaji Road when he was an engineering student from Meanwhile, some analysts are excited for Jio, but a few others 1974 to 1979. Ambani had cracked the IIT entrance exam and forewarn that any company that gets into the global 5G space joined IIT Bombay, but when the results of the University De- will face numerous challenges. Mahesh Uppal, a telecom con- partment of Chemical Technology (UDCT) came out, he left IIT sultant, points out that while Reliance may have invested in to join UDCT where he met Manoj Modi, who now plays a piv- hiring very bright engineers, acquiring start-ups and so on, such otal role at RIL. It is confirmation of Ambani’s conviction about steps alone cannot ensure a business edge. He adds: “It (RIL) is keeping his friends closer. also likely to be a major potential user of its technology output. Having said that, this is an extremely competitive area. It is an area where Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei have great advantage is family moved up the social ladder at breakneck over others. So, it is no walkover for anyone who moves in.” speed thanks to his father, but the young Mukesh had Uppal states that the approach that Reliance is following is not great exposure to various socio-economic groups and

neighbourhoods in Mumbai. Moving over the decades getty images from Bhuleshwar in a crowded commercial area to Usha Kiran, a high-rise on Altamount Road to Sea Wind Hin Cuffe Parade and then to Antilia, again on Altamount Road, Ambani has had direct interactions with various layers of urban Indian society. He said years ago in an interview to Rediff that as kids, he and his siblings, Dipti, Nina and Anil, “played hockey, football and different kinds of games, watched matches at Coo- perage, travelled in buses and trains and explored different parts of Mumbai. We went camping and stayed in a village for 10-15 days every year”. “As the middle class in India is expanding, he knows what they want. He has an ear to the ground and he considers the opinions of people in his family and the company and takes their suggestions seriously. Which explains why he is betting big on app-based businesses and is open to partnerships. That way, he is down-to-earth,” says the executive who has worked with RIL earlier. Talking of partnerships, Ambani has sold $20 billion of Reliance Jio, his telecom venture, to a group of investors, including Facebook and Google. “This will offer him great advantage that cannot be fully explained or comprehended at this stage,” says the Mumbai-based consultant. Ambani had said years ago Ambani had said he wants his in a speech that the world would eventually shift from fossil fuel to renewable energy, underlining his strategy. He had also said new businesses to create a large he wants his new businesses to create a huge number of jobs for number of jobs for the country’s the country’s young citizens so that he can put a lot of money in their hands to rev up the economy and try a hand at innovation. young citizens so that he can put Google, Microsoft and Facebook are thrilled about the deals a lot of money in their hands to rev they have inked with Reliance Jio. Says Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook: “India is a special place for us, it’s home to up the economy and try a hand the largest communities around the world on Facebook and at innovation. Google, Microsoft WhatsApp, and there are a lot of talented entrepreneurs. It is also in the middle of a major digital transformation that’s being led and Facebook are thrilled about by organisations like Jio that over the last four years have put the deals they have inked hundreds of millions of Indians on to the internet. And that’s a big deal, because when people get access to the internet, digital with Reliance Jio tools, they are powered to do a whole lot of new things—learn-

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 39 Cover Story

tailor-made for short-term success. “Embracing Open-RAN Choksey of KRChoksey Investment Managers, for his part, (radio access network) would basically mean that you can have says that Jio’s valuation can be based on two distinct models it is a network in which people could source components from pursuing—subscription-based revenue depending on the num- different companies. While it is true that it is the direction the ber of customers and the subscription the company would get technology is heading, we should not forget that the very same from them; the second model is that of transaction. “Jio right companies competing in the market are also aware of this and now is focusing on about eight verticals—agriculture, educa- are also putting in huge resources to make sure that they address tion, healthcare, gaming, media and entertainment, e-commerce new challenges,” he points out. and retail, e-payments and broadband (mobility, fiber-to-home Uppal goes on: “One key thing as regards this technology is that and fiber-to-enterprise). Across these eight verticals, there is no country has a large enough market. So, the key to success is to room for both transaction-based and subscription-based reve- be able to access a global market. Unless you have a global reach, nue. And Jio would cater to both B2B and B2C segments,” he says. this is not the kind of business where you will have big success. Choksey adds that, in the case of Jio, around 40 crore customers Dominating in one or two countries is not enough.” Open-RAN come to its mobility platform. Therefore, he says, it is expected technique, according to reports, will allow RIL to avoid paying that their fibre-to-home and fibre-to-enterprise platforms would expensive premiums to existing equipment providers (such as generate more revenue than their mobility platform. “That’s be- Samsung) and may help it export its technology to new markets. cause the ARPU (average revenue per user) in the case of mobility today sits at Rs 140. But fibre-to-home would contribute Rs 500-600 ARPU getty images on a monthly basis and it would be in thousands for the fibre-to-enterprise vertical. Sometime in 2021-2022, the profit generated out of the Jio platform could exceed the profit generated by the core businesses which are currently in operations like refining business and the pet- rochemical polymer businesses. Jio could possibly overtake the profit these two platforms are making currently and Jio and retail put together could probably be a much larger proposition going forward. If today the EBITDA margin for the Jio platform is around 40 per cent, one shouldn’t be surprised if it could rise to 50-55 per cent going forward via volume scale that they will achieve,” he explains, adding that the oil and petrochemicals business will continue to be a cash cow because the larger part of the revenue they generate come from exports of refining products. “In many ways, RIL is mov- According to Deven Choksey of KRChoksey ing from the commodity side of the Investment Managers, Jio right now is focusing business to the specialty chemicals in O2C business. But throughout this on about eight verticals—agriculture, education, march, the focus has been on profit- healthcare, gaming, media and entertainment, ability,” says Choksey. Which, according to Choksey, is ecommerce and retail, epayments and broadband. clear from the fact that Jio is going to Across these eight verticals, there is room for both be a platform on which retail would be riding. “Without Jio’s online plat- transaction-based and subscription-based revenue form, to drive retail at a faster pace is impossible. They are integrating the

40 14 september 2020 Ambani, the billionaire who wears patriotism on his sleeve, lays great emphasis on skilling and education and is upbeat about the digitalisation initiatives of the Centre and undeterred by challenges and the cynicism of others. He wants to do things on his own terms and those of the younger generation that he takes seriously

fotocorp entire backend of retail with the frontend of Jio, and to the consumer it is a seamless experience whether it is a kirana store merchant or a direct consumer. Onboard- ing of customers becomes much easier with social media. So, alliances with Facebook work with WhatsApp and Instagram thrown in when they have to acquire customers in the B2C space. In the enterprise space or the B2B space, customers can be acquired under offerings by the likes of Google or Microsoft ventures. Reli- ance is extremely well-positioned to leverage technology across its businesses. Agreed, Amazon Cloud is the largest cloud in the world. But they cannot breach the Google and Jio combination here in India.” On the launch of the broadband services, JioFiber, Akash Ambani, says: “JioFiber is already the largest fiber provider in the country with over a million connected homes, but our vision for India and Indians is much larger. We want to take fiber to each and every home and empower every member of the family. After making India the largest and the fastest growing country in mobile connectivity with Jio, JioFiber will propel India into global broadband leadership, thereby providing broadband to over 1,600 cities and towns. I urge everyone to join the JioFiber movement to make India the broadband leader of the world.” Nita and Mukesh Ambani in Mumbai

ith large telecom firms like Bharti Airtel and many other countries disfavouring Huawei, along with Vodafone India, which have huge gross revenue Ericsson and others, Jio is also expected to gain further, espe- dues to pay to the Government, struggling and cially in the subcontinent. The biggest worry for the US is that facing perhaps even chances of bankruptcy, the Chinese Communist Party government could possibly use Reliance Jio is expected to gain in market share. Huawei for commercial espionage and cyber warfare, a percep- Shankkar Aiyar, political economy analyst who has tion that is rather contagious. Wclosely watched and written about RIL for years, says: “RIL is Mukesh Ambani, the billionaire who wears patriotism on known for scale and it has built scale in both retail and telecom his sleeve, lays great emphasis on skilling and education and is and the plan clearly is to leverage technology to dominate the upbeat about the digitalisation initiatives of the Centre and un- domestic market potential of a growing Indian middle class. deterred by challenges and the cynicism of others. He wants to Expect to see many of the competing companies on the casu- do things on his own terms and those of the younger generation alty list.” He adds that Ambani is uniquely endowed with an that he takes seriously. An inveterate vegetarian and a teetotaller, ability to see opportunities in granular form, and telescope it his swagger is synonymous with his self-assurance and his smile to scale. “He knows money talks. The billions he has raised will hearty and sublime. Looks like this time round, too, he will have fuel domination,” adds Aiyar. Certainly, with India, the US and the last laugh. n

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 41 Cover Story The Masters of the Universe

Larry Page Mark Zuckerberg Sergey Brin

Jeff Bezos

Tim Cook

Elon Musk aurabh S ingh S aurabh

Mukesh Ambani 42 14 september 2020 by Illustration Using scale and a digital ecosystem, Mukesh Ambani joins a club of corporate icons who are defining the future

ust last week humankind probably took its the way establishing a chain of companies at the cutting edge of first baby step towards immortality. Elon Musk, technology and also servicingthe needs of people. The technology the founder of firms such as Tesla, SpaceX and of SpaceX supplements Tesla and vice versa, for example. Musk’s Boring Company, gave a presentation to the companies, if they can manage his overarching ambition and world about what another one of his ventures, insatiable demands of capital, are as future-proof as any can get. Neuralink, had been up to. It was known that In the world today, there are just a few such people planning to Neuralink aspired to implant chips into the own and define the future. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is another. There brain that would progressively fuse it with Ar- is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. And even though Larry Page and tificial Intelligence, which would ultimately Sergey Brin are not as identified with the micromanagement as bring benefits that are not short of miraculous. the others, Google is another behemoth. There is also Apple, now Memories, at some point, as the technology pro- without Steve Jobs but still riding on his genius to become just Jgressed, could be downloaded and stored. Happiness could be recently the first company to attain a market capitalisation of $ modulated, depression a thing of the past. Areas that the brain 2 trillion. China has its own avatars. You could find a scattering had lost contact with could be connected again. You could per- across the rest of the world. All have one thing in common: they haps turn your television on by thought. Who knows, in a dis- might have started out with one big idea but, using it, went on to tant future, consciousness itself could be separated from the body ringfence a percentage of the population, thus creating a captive and that would make man get out of the confines of the body and live forever. Neura- link does not spell it all quite like that. For the moment, Mukesh Ambani is different from his global rivals in his they are content with it being roots and background being from a non-digital era and a medical device helping peo- business. But two things going for him are cashflow ple with brain-related disabil- ity navigate life better. In the from the parent company that allowed him to take the presentation, Musk showed gamble and his understanding of and control over the pigs implanted with chips in their brains and how neu- Indian business environment. While domestic competitors ral activity could be tracked didn’t have his resources, for foreign companies, India depending on what the pigs were doing. Human trials is just one important market among many were going to begin soon. One of Musk’s companies makes electric and battery- operated cars, another makes spaceships, a third is about boring bank for a variety of services and products. It is into this select group tunnels through which ultra-high speed transport will be possible. that Mukesh Ambani is slowly entering. Even though they all seem unrelated, including Neuralink, there You only have to imagine what Jio was considered in the public is a larger end at play here. That is the ecosystem being created to imagination before it launched—as just another telecom compa- achieve Musk’s ultimate ambition: to establish a colony on Mars. ny. Everyone thought they would have one more service provider That will need expanding the limitations of time and space because for their phone. And after its launch even though it disrupted the Mars is far away and that might not even be the last stop for Musk. telecom market by absurdly cheap offerings, no one still thought But these things require a lot of money and he is therefore along it extending any substantial distance into other territories. We

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 43 Cover Story

know differently now. Telecom was the highway through which play, as with the Big Tech companies, then their competitors can Jio could get access to 40 crore Indians and counting. And from only be the ‘others’ in that club. then on, anything was possible because this was a locked-in mar- As an illustration, take what everyone recognises as the future ket. In one form or another, they provide news, movies, music, of transport: the driverless car. Google, which was first an email shopping, health services, gaming, video conferencing, grocery service; Facebook, which connected friend and family through a delivery and more.The tip of the iceberg is only now starting to website; Apple, which made computers; Amazon, which was an rise up. Consider the recent takeover of Future Group’s retail online bookstore once—they are all vying for the driverless-car by Reliance for Rs 25,000 crore. It will be a business running in business. They are stepping into the territory of Elon Musk’s Tesla sync with the larger umbrella of the platform. In an era before which is far ahead in the race when it comes to technology. And the smartphone, at the most they could make the phone useful all of them are going to be directly in competition with brick-and- was by sending SMSes. Now, Jio is more than a SIM card; it is an mortar automobile companies that have been around for over ecosystem that has the potential to be limitless in what it offers. a 100 years. It is almost impossible for Mercedes to start making And it needs to be limitless to survive. phones that outsell Apple, but Apple would not find it as difficult Imagine the companies (as of now) you can be certain will be to get into the car business when a new technology can change around in future and the same names will come up. Most people the entire dynamics of the sector. These are the leaps that can be in the US cannot imagine a world in which Apple is not feeding made because of scale and ecosystems. It is why Ambani realised them the phones and apps that sustain their lives. The Android that if Reliance had to step into the future then there was no other operating system, a Google product, is ubiquitous in the lives of way. Petrochemicals could keep funneling money but with every phone users in other parts of the world. Google has a phone too passing year the world was changing irrevocably. Without an but that is expendable; it is the Android operating system through ecosystem of his own, Ambani would have no future. which it gets its captive audience. And Gmail, the email service that Ambani is in some ways different from other members of this displaced Hotmail within a blink and entrenched itself. Or in In- club in his roots and background being from a non-digital era and business. But two things going for him are cashflow from the parent company that allowed him to take the gamble and his under- Facebook is now an investor in Jio Platforms, which standing of and control over the suggests that it has realised partnering is more Indian business environment. Domestic competitors didn’t have rewarding than competing with Ambani. Likewise, access to the resources needed to Google too came to a similar conclusion. India is such compete.For foreign companies with more resources than him, a huge market that it is enough to slake the thirst of India is an important market but Ambani’s ambitions for some time. The more products it is only one among many. And, and services he adds within his ecosystem, the greater being outsiders they would find navigating Indian hurdles dif- the distance between him and the rest ficult, as Facebook experienced when they came out with their Free Basics internet access that would give them access to a huge dia, take Facebook, which has created an umbrella of social media swathe of the population but were stymied by an online campiagn. services that few can wriggle out of. If you are somewhat older, all Facebook is now an investor in Jio Platforms, which suggests that your friends and family are on Facebook. If you are young, Insta- it has realised partnering is more rewarding than competing with gram, owned by Facebook, is a must. And all of them are also on Ambani. Likewise, Google too came to a similar conclusion. WhatsApp, completing the fence. Social media is how Facebook India is such a huge market that it is enough to slake the thirst has got its billions of users hugging to itself. Or Amazon, which is of Ambani’s ambitions for some time.The more products and uniting all the shoppers of the world and knows their preferences services he adds within his ecosystem, the greater the distance inside out. They can even tap user data to anticipate what someone between him and the rest. He has just taken over Future Group’s might need even before that person knows it and target products retail, thus running against Amazon, which is 10 times Reliance’s accordingly. Once you are certain of access to hostage consumers size with a reputation for winning against competitors. But in and keep satisfying them cheaply using economies of scale, then it India, it is a battle Ambani should feel confident to get into. When is a moat that makes it nearly impossible for a competitor to enter his plans extend beyond India, it might be a different story of the space. The capital required for such a breach will deter most competition but, for the moment, he remains India’s only answer of them. It is tough to create the ecosystem but once it comes into to the rapid advance of Big Tech companies. n

44 14 september 2020 The beauty of the written word; a story well told. The luxury of immersing myself in myriad lives; journeying to faraway lands. I am obsessed. And the Reviews in Open help me discover the best. A quiet corner. An interesting book. Life’s good!

Sanjay Malik, Dubai

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The identity angle in Assam Why an alliance between the Congress and the AIUDF may end up helping the BJP (L-R) AIUDF’s Badruddin Ajmal and Congress’ Tarun Gogoi at independent candidate By Siddharth Singh Ajit Kumar Bhuyan’s nomination for the Rajya Sabha in Guwahati, March 13

n late August, former Uttarakhand Chief Minister political scene in the state has already begun heating up. On the and the Congress’ pointperson for Assam, Harish Rawat, one hand are parties like the Congress and the AIUDF which denied that the party was in talks for an alliance with the are quietly trying to work out an electoral arrangement. On the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), the regional other are regional outfits such as the All Assam Students Union party led by perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal. (AASU) and the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the In an interview to The Indian Express, Rawat said: “We Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) that are fighting to remain relevant. are in talks with some social organisations that are fight- The party that remains silent is the one that controls the levers ing for Assam and Asamiat and are against the anti-Assam of power in Dispur: the BJP. policies of the Centre and the Sarbananda Sonowal government. The sailing for the Congress in stitching an alliance with the IBut there is no discussion on any form of alliance so far because AIUDF, however, is not smooth. There is a faction within the state forging alliance is neither in my jurisdiction nor that of the state Congress that feels such an alliance has the potential to back- Congress… There is nothing like [an alliance plan] as of now.” fire on it as the AIUDF is perceived to be a party that backs the Rawat was being economical with the truth. Earlier this year, interests of Bengali Muslim immigrants. In a polarised politi- the two parties jointly backed Ajit Kumar Bhuyan, a journalist cal environment, this can swell support for the BJP that, in any who stood as an independent candidate for the Rajya Sabha from case, has not been damaged after nearly five years of rule.E ven Assam. Bhuyan won in no small measure due to the cooperation if an electoral calculation is made, observers feel the alliance is between the Congress and the AIUDF. Then, just around that unlikely to secure power for the Congress in the 126-member time (in March), the two parties decided to jointly contest elec- legislative Assembly. For the AIUDF, however, an alliance with tions for the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC). It is another the Congress will bestow greater legitimacy on the party and it matter that the elections were stalled. Even earlier, during Lok is not averse to such a tie-up. Sabha elections last year, the AIUDF did not put up a candidate In contrast to the feverish activity in other parties, the BJP is from Kaliabor, the constituency from where Gaurav Gogoi, son playing cool. After the bout of violence in Assam last year in the of former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, won. At that time, the ex- wake of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests, pression used to describe the relation between the two parties was many in New Delhi and even Assam had ‘written off’ the party’s ‘tacit understanding’. Now it seems to have progressed further prospects. But the anti-CAA agitation in the state waned off as even if there is a certain allergy to the word ‘alliance’. quickly as it had arisen. Even before the agitation had begun, in July Elections in Assam are not due until April next year but the last year, the Union Government had notified a 13-member com-

46 14 september 2020 getty images

(L-R) AIUDF’s Badruddin Ajmal and Congress’ Tarun Gogoi at independent candidate Ajit Kumar Bhuyan’s nomination for the Rajya Sabha in Guwahati, March 13 BJP’s Himanta Biswa Sarma campaigns for the Bodoland People’s Front in Bhawanipur, April 2019

mittee to recommend steps to effectively implement Clause 6 of So far, the BJP has not reacted to the leak of the Clause 6 com- the Assam Accord of 1985. According to Clause 6, ‘Constitutional, mittee report. But if the recommendations are implemented, the legislative and administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, party stands to reap electoral gains in the state. On paper, previ- shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, ous governments have taken steps to implement this clause. social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people.’ But anyone who cares to leaf through the pages on the website On August 11th, members of the committee who belong of the Assam Accord implementation department—hosted by to the AASU leaked the report. The report, among other steps, the Assam government—can see that the steps have been ho- recommended amending Article 371B of the Constitution that meopathic in nature. The most important steps—the ones that deals with special provisions with respect to Assam; broaden- the Assamese consider essential for preserving their identity and ing the definition of A‘ ssamese people’ to include the Assamese way of life—have not just been kept in abeyance but have been community over and above the Tribal communities in the state; subverted in many ways. reserving 80-100 per cent of seats in Parliament, the Assembly and These demands—safeguarding Assamese identity and mate- local bodies for ‘Assamese people’ and changing the cutoff date rial interests—are not simple ones that political parties can assess for this purpose to January 1st, 1951. Interestingly, the National and then implement fully or partially. The trade-offs pose difficult Register of Citizens (NRC) had March 24th, 1971 as the cutoff date challenges. For the Congress, a proper implementation of these for inclusion in the NRC. Perhaps the most notable recommen- demands would have antagonised its Muslim constituents. For dation made by the committee is about the prevention of land the BJP, which is perhaps in the best position to give what the Assa- alienation from ‘Assamese people’ to non-Assamese. There is a mese want, there are challenges. Ideologically, the party is against comprehensive set of recommendations which, if implemented, ‘dividing’ the Hindu community along caste or ethnic lines and can sort out the contentious politics of the state. hence its reluctance to act against Bengali Hindus who migrated This year, in February, the Union Government also cleared the from Bangladesh. In Assam, the indigenous people have a differ- deck for a delimitation exercise to readjust parliamentary and leg- ent dividing line: Assamese versus Bangladeshi migrants. In a islative Assembly constituencies in Assam. When the last such first-best world, all illegal migrants—Hindu or Muslim—would exercise was carried out in 2008, Assam, along with Nagaland, be thrown out. The frictions the BJP encounters in the state are due Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, had been excluded from that to these different perceptions of what needs to be done. round of delimitation. Some preparatory work for this purpose, So far, the party seems to have managed these contradictions at the local level in Assam, has begun. well. The date on which the report was leaked, August 11th, said

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 47 Politics

something interesting about the AASU and its insecurity than among a significant fraction of the state’s residents not to see the the damage the leak could inflict on the BJP’s prospects. At the AASU’s demise. In practical terms, this does not pose an electoral moment, there is intense speculation about what the BJP will do. challenge for the BJP but the party needs to watch Upper Assam, It has been speculated that sometime before the election, the party especially the southern bank area of the Brahmaputra. In these may cut a deal with the ‘accord faction’ of the insurgent group rural areas, there is always a residual challenge. ULFA. While the ULFA is now a spent force with its different fac- The degree of the BJP’s confidence can be gauged from anoth- tions trying to survive the rough and tumble of Assam politics, it er decision the party took earlier in the year. The BJP is in alliance retains a degree of influence in Upper Assam. The support base with the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF) in Parliament, the state of the ULFA and the AASU overlap to an extent and any deal to Assembly and at the local level in the BTC, the local council that partially governs four districts of Assam where the Bodo people are in a majority. There is a faction within the state In the council elections that were due in Congress that feels an alliance has the early April, the BJP had decided to go it alone and contest all 40 seats. The Con- potential to backfire on it as the AIUDF gress and the AIUDF had earlier decided is perceived to be a party that backs the to jointly contest 20 of the 40 seats in the BTC, with the Congress contesting 13 and interests of Bengali Muslim immigrants. the AIUDF seven. Then, as the coronavirus In a polarised political environment, pandemic gathered pace, these elections this can swell support for the BJP that, were postponed indefinitely and the administration of the council was taken over in any case, has not been damaged after by the governor of Assam. nearly five years of rule The BJP’s calculation in this area—where it does not have a mass base—is simple: it wants to test the waters and its local cadre is

reuters confident of winning seats. Then there is the multi-cornered contest, whenever elections are held, that will only help it. The politics of the Bodo region is complicated. The BPF has different factions as does the insurgent group the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) with its different factions promising support to different wings of the BPF. If one looks at the BPF’s record, it tends to support any party that has power at the Centre and in the state. As long as the BJP retains power, the ghar wapsi of these bicker- ing groups is a foregone conclusion. When the BJP wrested Assam from the Congress in 2016, the party was in serious A protest against the Citizenship Amendment Bill in Guwahati, December 2019 decline not only in national politics but also in Guwahati. The tightrope act, per- fected by successive Chief Ministers from ‘rehabilitate’ the former weakens the latter as a political force. Hiteswar Saikia onward, had run its course. The ‘demographic In any other state, such organisations are peripheral to main- damage’ inflicted on the state was beyond repair and there was no stream party politics where the contest is usually between two or, sign that repair was even contemplated. For the BJP, the state was at most, three parties. But in Assam—a state that has seen insur- alien territory, a land where religious identity was overshadowed gency, insecurities over the identity of its original inhabitants and by linguistic and ethnic concerns. That it could gain power in Gu- a history of letdowns at the hand of mainstream parties—this is wahati was in no small measure due to its organisational prow- not the case. Organisations like the AASU are like ‘wheels within ess. But what also mattered was the realisation on the part of the wheels’ of state politics, however small their cogs may be. The people of the state that, in the world, only second-best solutions idea is that even if outfits like the AASU and the ULFA get three are available, not the best ones. Ideologically, retaining power in or four seats in the Assembly, they can act as a pressure group on Assam is vital for the BJP and its project to ‘mainstream’ Northeast ‘national’ parties to deliver on their promises. Thus the desire India. It is sure to put in political energy where it matters. n

48 14 september 2020 Profile

The Girl Who kicked the hornets’ nest Rhea Chakraborty is being portrayed as an unlikely villain in the messy aftermath of her ex-lover Sushant Singh Rajput’s death By kaveree bamzai

fotocorp

t’s 2009. Rhea Chakraborty is one of several single memory of her as being anything other than sweet, warm, gawky teenagers to whom Cyrus Sahukar shoots ques- with a love for life and knowledge.” tions in the TVS Scooty Teen Diva contest. She gets all So what happened? What made a hardworking young wom- right, except one: who created the little black dress? Yes, an with dreams and ambitions the most vilified woman in the yes, Coco Chanel, but the Army brat from Ambala Canton- country today? As the girlfriend of the late Sushant Singh Rajput mentI doesn’t know. She doesn’t win the title; it goes to Apeksha for over a year, she is in the centre of a storm that has brought out Porwal. But being first runner-up, she follows it with a great audi- the worst aspects of our society as it is—its deep-seated misogyny, tion, which lands her a job as an MTV veejay in Mumbai at all of 17. its complete lack of faith in the judicial system and its collective At the end of the noughties, being a veejay did not have the sense of victimisation. It is as if Sushant’s death has inflicted a glamour associated with pioneers such as Ruby Bhatia and psychic wound on everyone, forcing them to lash out at the easi- Kamal Sidhu, who brought a certain hyphenated ease to post- est target. As a young woman of moderate means and average liberalisation youth as they negotiated the world and the nation success, Rhea symbolises the nastiest impulses and the basest at a transformative time. But Rhea Chakraborty did achieve a instincts in us all. Gold-digger, vishkanya, black magic woman, modicum of fame as MTV’s youngest veejay. She was expected a woman of no “aukat”. Death threats, rape calls, social media to be bubbly, eternally cheerful and always engaged in what hounding, veritable public flogging by star anchors, there is little she was doing, which could range from promoting sling bags that the 28-year-old has not been subjected to since June 14th, the in a Hyderabad store one day with fellow veejay Bani J to doing day Sushant died. skits on MTV with colleagues, a young Ayushmann Khurrana, There was a time though when Rhea was on the fast track. Anushka Dandekar and José Covaco. Covaco remembers her as Shortly after her stint as veejay, she got a film with Y-Films, the being “great to work with” while Sahukar calls her “inquisitive, youth division of Yash Raj Films, which did well. She played cheerful, high energy, kind and helpful”. He adds: “I don’t have a ‘Shakira from Delhi’ in Mere Dad Ki Maruti in 2013, which was a

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 49 Profile

moderate success. Post that, she says in a TEDx talk she delivered jaw was too long,” she says. By now, she thought she would be a in 2019 at BITS Hyderabad on ‘How to Tap the Superhero Inside shark in a shark tank but she was just Nemo, a tiny little confused Us?’, she was sure she’d have a yacht and a penthouse by the end fish. “Hundred books and many TED talks later I realised I had to of the year. Or not. disintegrate to integrate, unlearn to learn again,” she adds. Sonali Cable, her second film, produced by Rohan Sippy, star- She still did some work for Y-Films, which was set up in 2011, ring Ali Fazal (soon to be seen in Death on the Nile in what has be- on the cusp of the digital revolution, just ahead of the streaming come a flourishing OTT and international career), featured her as a curve. Its feature films, short films and series were interesting, spunky cable operator up against an evil businessman (played by offbeat and aimed at young people. It was headed by her old boss Anupam Kher) looking for market domination. It flopped. It was at MTV, Ashish Patil, who was eventually fired in 2018 in a blaze 2014. Rhea realised, in her own words at TEDx, that she who had of bad publicity after serious #MeToo allegations by an aspir- thought she had superpowers was not so super. At 25, she started ing writer/actress. Rhea was one of several rising stars in that second-guessing herself. “Suddenly, my lips were too thin, my youth laboratory, alongside Ali Zafar, Saqib Saleem, Saba Azad and Shraddha Kapoor (who was the only one who walked out of Y-Films unhappy with the choices she was given after her movie Luv Ka the End underwhelmed at the box office). Visitors Sushant singh rajput was to the Y-Films floor at the Yash Raj Films studio at that time re- much above Rhea in the member it as a buzzing place full of young energy, with writers, actors, directors hanging out together, exchanging ideas in the Bollywood food chain, yet atrium studded with MF Husain’s wall art, eating free food at the they could relate to each canteen, and often getting to play a game with ‘big screen stars’ other as outsiders in an at strategically placed table tennis tables. There was an aura of entitled world possibility around the division, even though it was clear that the content was not yet commercially viable. There were other met- rics of success—likes, thumbs up, number of followers—which became more meaningful as the power of social media grew.

his is where Rhea first met Sushant in 2013. He had been signed by the talent management wing of Yash Raj T Films after the success of his first film with Abhishek Kapoor, Kai Po Che. By her own account, they became friends but started dating only when they met again at a party thrown by one of the film industry’s super publicists in 2019. By then, they had much in common. Both had been discarded by the powerful studio Yash Raj Films, both had seen failure and both had not achieved the stature for themselves they had imagined. Sushant was much above Rhea in the Bollywood food chain that is determined by box-office revenue and backing of big directors, yet they could relate to each other as outsiders in an entitled world. From the conspiracy theories now being put out by news anchors, it seems they had another bond, that of drugs, with Rhea acting as a conduit for Sushant to feed his habit, something that has so incensed certain individuals that they have ensured that Rhea in the mind of the public is portrayed as a woman whose sole aim in life was to force-feed drugs to the actor. By her account, she was only trying to help him seek psychiatric help for what was a bipolar disorder. By their account, she was, and is, nothing short of a greedy, needy struggler, with a younger brother who has no recognisable source of income. Rhea may not have scaled the heights of success she had wanted for herself but she worked steadily enough through the years, mostly for Y-Films. She was Saba Azad’s irritat- ingly talkative sister in one of six short films directed by Ankur Tewari, Love Shots; she was an Arnab Goswami-loving fotocorp

50 14 september 2020 Rhea Chakraborty leaves the Enforcement Directorate office in Mumbai, August 7

By her account, rhea was only trying to help sushant seek psychiatric help. By the media’s account, she was, and is, nothing short of a greedy, needy struggler

getty images journalist in Bank Chor where the chors were led by Riteish a while to summon the power of belief, of somersaulting over Deshmukh; and a midriff-baring psychiatrist in Dobaara: See her circumstances, of thinking that a ridiculously bad day could Your Evil, with her old co-star Saqib Saleem. She also landed the become a ridiculously good day. part of Arjun Kapoor’s New York girlfriend with a dodgy Ameri- It is the same confidence she exudes even today with her can accent in Mohit Suri’s Half Girlfriend. back to the wall with so many agencies investigating her, from No one had any complaints about either her work ethic or her Mumbai Police, to Bihar Police, to Enforcement Directorate, to infallibly sunny nature invariably on display at Y-Films parties CBI to the Narcotic Control Bureau. It is the same assertiveness and get-togethers. Tewari remembers her as always being avail- that she exudes when she announced that she will fight the slan- able for readings and fittings during their short shoot. “She was der and the infamy. Journalist Jaideep Prabhu has interviewed always on time and never threw a tantrum on set even though her thrice and says he always found her quite receptive to the we were on a tight budget and couldn’t even afford vanity vans questions and elaborate in her answers. “She was always open for the actors,” he says. He feels it is unfortunate that we are at a about her acting career and was at ease discussing some movie point where people have lost trust in the system to deliver jus- choices that didn’t go right,” he says. He says she perhaps made tice and have decided to descend into a digital mob to demand a mistake by taking a break between 2015 and 2017, which she a solution. did to prevent being typecast. “By the time she returned, even Rhea thought perhaps that her role in Jalebi in 2018, as a young though she had three quick releases, they didn’t make an impact woman who walks out of an impetuous marriage to make a ca- and the audience had moved on to other stars. The recognition reer for herself, was her ticket to stardom. But as she says in the she had earned was lost,” he adds. TEDx talk, clearly referencing Jalebi, “My dream of a Filmfare There is a 2013 visual of her dancing around Ayushmann award for best female lead was shattered.” This was the period Khurrana as he sings ‘O Heeriye’ in a prettily shot music video in which she collaborated closely with the film’s producer Ma- which ends with the legend: ‘However messy it is, always be in hesh Bhatt, an association that has been presented in the media love.’ The reality is that she was perhaps just an innocent girl who as creepy rather than avuncular. The film she worked so hard for loved an innocent boy. And yes, their love may have been messy. tanked, yet again, and Rhea says in her TEDx talk that it took her But is that enough to put her on a show trial? n

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salon wid op Ey Fahadh Faasil cinema e e n e s Fahadh Faasil’s new movie is a 90-minute thriller, shot during the lockdown and wrapped up in 18 days. The actor personifies the New Wave of Malayalam cinema By Rajeev Masand

just have six reactions and I festival of Onam, Faasil was introduced as play around with these six reac- an actor through his first film Kaiyethum tions,” says Malayalam superstar Doorath, produced and directed by his fa- Fahadh Faasil, leaning into the ther Fazil, the respected senior filmmaker camera, his long fingers up in the who also introduced Malayalam superstar air, framing his face, for empha- Mohanlal on screen. Eighteen years later, I sis. The actor is doing the inter- this week during Onam, another of Faasil’s view over Zoom from his home in Kochi, films,C U Soon, dropped on Amazon less than three weeks since he turned 38 Prime. But there’s an ocean of a difference on August 8th. There’s a self-effacing smile between that painfully raw 19-year-old we when he speaks about his process and he saw in his first film (a resounding flop as sometimes breaks into a gasping, staccato it turns out) and the self-assured, brilliant laughter, embarrassed at being called a actor who plays a skilled hacker trying to great actor. solve the mystery around the disappear- But his ‘six reactions’ theory is a stretch. ance of his cousin’s girlfriend in the new There are few actors in India who can slip film. Today, Faasil is a key figure of the New into a character as seamlessly, as invisibly Wave in Malayalam cinema along with as Fahadh Faasil. other actors like Nivin Pauly, Dulquer He is the Everyman in Malayalam Salmaan, Vineeth Sreenivasan, Parvathy cinema—playing a naïve villager who be- Thiruvothu, Jayasurya, Rima Kallingal comes obsessed with avenging his humili- and Remya Nambeesan. ation in Maheshinte Prathikaaram (2016), a C U Soon is the fourth film Faasil has wily thief in Thondi Muthalum Driksakshi- produced under his banner Fahadh Faasil yum (2017), a cocky, silver-tongued youth And Friends. (Ask him why that name and leader in Oru Indian Pranayakatha (2013), he says, “I function with all my friends. It’s the software developer with OCD in North nice; I’m not alone.”) The film is a 90-minute 24 Kaatham (2013) and the hyperbolic, thriller, directed by Mahesh Narayanan that sham evangelist pastor in Trance (2020). started as an experiment, was shot under Interestingly, except for two Tamil the coronavirus lockdown protocols and films, his success and his massive fan wrapped up in 18 days. base has come from sticking firmly to But Faasil is no stranger to risk. He Malayalam cinema—a prolific but small produced Kumbalangi Nights last year, a industry. “I talk to my friends about it all beautiful story of four brothers harbour- the time… the fact that people watch the ing emotional hurt, who live in a fishing films in Malayalam and take the effort to island in a house with no front door and understand them. That itself is a big thing no women. Faasil chose the role of the for us,” he says, adding, “I’m a big fan of egotistic antagonist Shammi, instead of [Hindi films like]Piku and Pink, so films are playing one of the protagonists. He says travelling all across India. It isn’t just hap- he only discussed the role with his wife pening in a studio or a particular location. Nazriya Nazim before he signed on, warn- Cinema travels everywhere.” ing her that the audience may not accept Back in 2002, during the Kerala harvest him as this toxic, creepy character. It didn’t people watch the films in Malayalam and take the effort to understand them. That itself is a big thing for us” Fahadh Faasil, actor

www.openthemagazine.com 53 cinema

Excerpts from a conversation

You have an uncanny instinct A scene from for picking interesting material. C U Soon What is your approach? I always believe that if I pick the right filmmaker 50 per cent of my job is done. What one hopes for, of course, being very interesting and became a deter him, though. Kumbalangi Nights was is to be able to do the right film with real discovery. In fact, we enjoyed the a runaway commercial and critical hit, the right maker. A person like process so much we’re thinking of awakening even more audiences to Faasil’s Mahesh [Narayanan] is capable of doing a sequel. brilliance and uncanny instinct, as an actor doing many kinds of films, but I and a producer. wanted to do a film like C U Soon The fact that it is not 2019 turned out to be a winning year. Faasil with him. I guess that’s the trade disorienting to watch a played a man humiliated by his cheating wife secret—if you want to call it that— 90-minute film that takes place in Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s gamechanging getting the filmmaker to do a film entirely on screens tells us a lot Tamil hit Super Deluxe. He’d been itching that he’s also excited about; not one about how much of our lives we to work with the director after his last film that only excites me. spend in front of screens. Aaranya Kaandam (2010) blew his mind. Exactly. You know, I remember an When it became clear that he wasn’t having But a missing-person thriller that interview [Amitabh] Bachchan did any luck convincing Kumar to make a Malay- unfolds entirely on computer and with Steven Spielberg some years alam film with him, he took the role in Super mobile phone screens has been ago, in which Spielberg said that Deluxe despite being uncomfortable acting in done by Hollywood already, in what’s lacking in the world today is Tamil. Asked how he adapted to the film- the 2018 film Searching. eye contact. No one has eye contact. maker’s infamous tendency to shoot literally I watched Searching two years ago Everyone is looking at their phone, hundreds of takes for each scene, Faasil laughs. with my wife and I loved it. When I or doing something. Even when “With Kumar he will tell you why he’s going love a film, or when any actor or you’re travelling, you’re not looking for retakes. I like to explore and look at the filmmaker loves a film he gets out of the window, you’re looking possibilities, even if you’ve got the right take. I inspired. But the idea is not to make into your phone. The only place don’t think that it’s right for actors to get tired another Searching. The idea is to feel where we establish eye contact is on of doing multiple takes. It’s their job,” he says. inspired by Searching and go off and FaceTime or over virtual chats. It helps that Faasil knows no other way but make another thing. Look, [C U Soon] to be completely immersed in his craft, eager could be one step ahead of Searching When a film of yours releases to experiment and exacting as an artist. He has or it could be 10 steps behind it. But you like to hear from those who no vanity; metamorphosing into scruffy parts, the idea is to attempt something in enjoyed it, but you also seek out unconcerned about acquiring a six-pack, that space. those that didn’t. What fuel do nor bothered by his receding hairline. But he these critics give you? does have a unique physical gift—his hazel, What was it like to be For the first three days, anger (laughs). light eyes. In Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum performing with no co-stars But to be honest my films are like (2017), we are introduced to his character, a for the entire duration of the that—not everyone loves small-time thief, through just his eyes, zeroing film? You’re only performing everything in them. But most people in like lasers on the gold chain worn by a pas- to a screen. are very excited about the new things senger on the bus. Honestly, no one knew this would be they saw. Every time I decide on a Annayum Rasoolum (2013) is arguably the such a difficult task. We started film my biggest concern is, ‘Have I film that has best exploited Faasil’s expres- shooting, and then early on into done this before?’ You repeat because sive eyes. When his Rasool falls head over the shoot we had to stop because you loved what you’re doing. And heels in love with Anna, he stalks her as she we weren’t getting the connection. things that you get excited about, takes the ferry every day, his eyes following So then we sat around a table and you will definitely repeat. Even her every move. She catches him staring and we started playing the scene like without you knowing it, you will turns her back on him. Rasool blinks, his that—we would get the other actors repeat it. So for me, when I get eyes flicker, turning from love-struck to hurt. to read their lines and we tried to get excited, the biggest fight is, A‘ m I He flicks his gaze away, looking out at the their rhythms. The exercise ended up repeating myself?’ sea, smarting from the rejection. It’s a master class for young actors. n

54 14 september 2020 theatre The Stage Logs In Creating plays for the screen By Prachi Sibal

number of faces Brilliant Thing’, directed by Quasar populate the Zoom screen Thakore-Padamsee of Mumbai-based in front of you. You see QTP Productions and performed by their names and you see Once we Bengaluru-based actor Vivek Madan. Athe trepidation. The host is genial and After having performed over 45 shows knew this was welcomes us to this new world, which around the country, the lockdown caught reminds us of, if not replicates, a familiar going to be the them, like many others, mid-run. They setting. The host, an actor, starts with situation for a had eight shows lined up, so they decided an introduction. Behind him are a cozy long time, we had to reinvent the piece as a ticketed show on apartment, a bookshelf and a table. He to find ways to Zoom. Thakore-Padamsee is like many is telling us a story of a young boy and work with a other theatre practitioners in the country his mother. Slowly, he begins talking who find joy and livelihood on the stage. about a list that he is populating, of every new medium” The pandemic has restricted gather- brilliant thing in the world, so as to bring rajit kapur ings and has hit theatre hard and forced joy into his mother’s life. This is a scene actor, One on One—Unlocked practitioners to look beyond the literal from the recent Mahindra Excellence in stage and explore the virtual medium for Theatre Awards-nominated play, ‘Every full-fledged performances.

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 55 theatre

When theatres shut down early in the everybody else but here I can only hear lockdown, troupes in the country such as myself for 85 per cent of the story. It made Delhi’s Asmita Theatre Group, Mumbai’s me interpret my own pauses differently. Akvarious Productions and Pune’s Aasak- They weren’t as long as they were on ta Kalamanch began making recorded stage. Longer silences made me nervous. plays available online. It was a means to A lot of unlearning needed to happen,” he fill the gap before life returns to ‘normal’. explains. Then there were the mishaps “Once we knew this was going to be the that come with a live performance in a situation for a long time, we had to find new medium: such as a neighbourhood ways to work with a new medium,” says dog barking in the background during a Rajit Kapur, Rage Theatre, Mumbai. scene about a dog, an audience member Siddhartha Menon and Kubbra Sait in lockdown love Thakore-Padamsee had the advantage logging in while driving. of working with a familiar text and a The cast and crew were certain, they production that had seen its days on the weren’t trying to replicate the offline are one-to-one and actively work towards stage. “We were trying to find solutions experience. “Once you switch online, it minimising distraction,” he says. rather than reinventing the wheel. stops being a play. The moment we ac- The performance was followed by It was more productive that way,” he knowledge that we aren’t trying to stage a conversation with a mental health says confirming that 90 per cent of the anything, it became easier. It is a much professional and audience members script remained the same, save for a few nicer way to make the medium work. were encouraged to hang out after the changes that were made to fill in for audi- The moment you play to the camera, it show. “All that builds community rather ence interactions. For instance, Madan seems forced,” says Thakore-Padamsee. than switching off right after,” Thakore- (the actor) would have to make do with Madan and Thakore-Padamsee ap- Padamsee explains. his own sweater as opposed to asking an proached the medium with caution and audience member for one. Centred on late in the day. For Madan, the ‘live’ ele- mental health, the solo show in its origi- ment is what remains crucial to theatre n April, another ticketed live nal form was interactive, with audience and Thakore-Padamsee’s concern was Iperformance, Kommune’s Lockdown members often doubling up as characters driven towards creating a sense of com- Love, made it to our computer screens. Di- and aiding the storyline. Online, this was munity that has come to be the hallmark rected by Sheena Khalid, featuring actors achieved by providing viewers a detailed of drama. “It is very different to watch such as Shriya Pilgaonkar and Priyanshu set of instructions before the perfor- something alone than with a roomful Painyuli, it was a take on modern-day mance. Yet, unreliable internet often of people. We became very aware of arranged romances in the backdrop of forced the actor to jump in when there that when we switched to the online the lockdown. “It was inspired by the was silence at the other end. medium. It is also what sets the medium sudden popularity of dating apps during Silence is what troubled Madan in the apart from say cinema or OTT, theatre is a isolations,” explains Khalid. Rehearsed Zoom world. “In the stage show I can hear one-to-many experience while all others over Zoom, the performance that was streamed live, was timely, contextual and interactive. “The audience got to play Shweta Tripathi in Timeloss cupid and there was a lot of improvisa- tion,” Khalid says. Khalid insists that treating the online space as a new medium is important while also acknowledging its limitations. “It’s not a hybrid of the theatre stage and film. It is a medium unto itself and must be treated that way. And the reality of being on the internet cannot be ignored. We have terrible internet speeds and lags and there’s no point trying to hide it,” she says adding, “If anything, an interactive performance is closest to the experience of gaming.” Director, writer and critic, Vikram Phukan, who worked on two pieces,

56 14 september 2020 here I can only hear myself Siddhartha Menon and Kubbra Sait in lockdown love for 85 per cent of the story. It made me interpret my released online in June, agrees adding consists of nugget-size stories that delve that trying to find traces of the stage into the complexities of isolation and its own pauses experience online is futile and that the impact on the protagonists. differently. A lot medium must be viewed as a new one. Kapur, who isn’t a fan of creating of unlearning Both performances, ‘No Spring Chicken’ work online, wanted to keep it sim- needed to happen” (for British Council India) and ‘FirstAct’ ple. “We wanted to be true to theatre: vivek madan (for FirstPost) were released as recordings one camera, one shot, one actor was actor, Every Brilliant Thing and not live material. “We didn’t want to the brief. And we chose to record the take the risk of a live performance with performance for technical reasons,” electricity going off. The adrenaline you he says. While he admits the process have as a performer and as an audience and writing were seamless, rehearsals such as Shweta Tripathi and Dilshad member during a live performance is weren’t quite the same. “How does a Edibam Khurana. “It’s a hybrid between absent. It is in essence, a different kind of director rehearse with his/her actors? theatre and a short film. It tells the story spectatorship,” he says. The rehearsal had to be done without of a couple that comes together, 10 years These plays were also set in the lock- being in the same space, over video calls after acting in a film for the dubbing for an down context and the Zoom environ- and phone cameras,” he recounts. unexpected release. It’s like a relationship ment was an integral part of the stories. study,” he tells us. Phukan says that there’d be little differ- Akvarious Productions marks 20 years ence in the script if it had been written karsh Khurana of Akvari- in theatre this December and Khurana be- for stage. However, it was the rehearsals Aous Productions chose to record lieves the virtual medium will be crucial that Phukan found more challenging. his productions for similar reasons. to marking this celebration. “While it was “When you are working together, you Having created a whole new platform a stopgap arrangement initially, it might form different dynamics with each other for live interactions, Akvarious Live on become a larger part of our lives and may and the director. In Zoom it is a single Instagram, Khurana has hosted several actually stay. It might be possible to watch room. For instance, I can’t take an actor talks, storytelling sessions and solo acts a play without having to wade through aside for a conversation. Everyone is through the lockdown. “We had decided traffic,” he says, admitting that it comes working together all the time,” he says. that every month, we will try and create with its share of restrictions in terms of ‘One on One—Unlocked’ by Rage one formal performance,” he says. First cast size and production design. Productions, a series of 10 monologues, came ‘Bubbles’, a play designed for the Phukan too, believes that the virtual written during lockdown, premiered on online medium where every dialogue medium might actually offer an alterna- August 14th on Insider as part of Front was a social media post. “We realised tive space for plays in the absence of and Back, their recent live theatre proper- that we enjoyed the process and brought available venues. “The online space is ty. Featuring several big names from the back an older play, ‘Love Bombs and democratic. Anyone can put up a per- theatre fraternity including Rajit Kapur, Apples’, to the online format,” he says. formance. The theatre was restricted by Aahana Kumra, Abhishek Majumdar, A lot of the rehearsal process, he numbers and their own programming. Anu Menon, Seema Biswas and Neil explains, involved finding the right loca- It might be something that continues Bhoopalam, it attempted to recreate the tion and backdrops at home and working once theatres open up too. While I don’t stage experience online, through single with limited resources. Khurana recently see premieres happening online, it could cameras and a single take. The recorded released Timeloss, based on an Iranian play be something that groups will consider show (available until September 13th) byAmir Reza Koohestani, featuring actors offering additionally,” he says.n

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 57 books

Love Remains A husband’s photo diary of his wife’s private and final moments makes the personal universal By Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

Photos courtesy Nitesh Noor Mohanty

he sea god Proteus, in Greek mythology, could It was tense to see her heal, disintegrate, come together, forge, fall change his shape—he could be lion, monster or down, break apart; and, eventually, dissolve into her pain. fish. But if his adversary held on to him through the The photographs, taken across seven years, tell a story of a transformations, he had no choice but to surrender marriage and the great, difficult, rewarding task of loving some- and expose his identity as a divine being. Nitish Noor Mohanty’s one. Dead bees, an empty bed, a half-eaten pomegranate—photo- self-published book, Nowhere (designed by Studio Anugraha; graphed on a Nikon and latterly over a phone—manifest exqui- limited edition: 300 copies; 136 pages; Rs 2,500), is ostensibly sitely on Munken Pure Rough, a paper that conveys the granular, about that time of his life spent caring for his wife, Diya, who nostalgic quality of images. Books (photographs of books by ultimately succumbs to her cancer—astrocytoma, a tumour of Julian Barnes and Michael Ondaatje) are offered as clues into the the brain—a passage recorded with visual candour, elegance, couple’s personal time. Were the books here to companion long compassion and precision. In holding the memory of his wife, hospital silences? If they were gifts—lover’s gifts—what solace Mohanty’s photographs become like an embrace across time did the couple find in the pages? The photographs are placed as and space. Slowly, instead of losing her life to cancer, Mohanty’s masterfully as in Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency— gaze turns Diya, whom he had met as a fellow while they don’t share Goldin’s electric rock-n-roll student at JJ School of Art, into someone ahead of decadence, there is a lyric parallel, a shared mood death, otherworldly, celestial, a personal angel. of whimsical time, unreliable time, diminishing The embrace reveals her—she is young again, time: any moment, things will change. the wind is in her hair, one hand on her hip, time The photographs follow rules of formal- stretches before her, without end. ism—triangles grow evident in the flocks of birds Over a few years, I watched Mohanty post pho- in flight. A cityscape, under monsoon clouds, tographs online of Diya, as she worked with her laid out over two pages, seems almost to follow cancer; and indirectly of himself, in his care of her. guidelines of set design. Formalism defines ar-

58 14 september 2020 Now, as the mere act of breathing is hazardous, a gener ation of Indians—the youngest in its history—is forced to look at its mortality in the eye. And death—Nitish Noor Mohanty’s key theme of examination— r aises one silent, secondary question: how must the bereaved go on? rangement, which sometimes keels into the obvious (an image cised ideal of the female form. Morris controls the photographer, of a wilting flower placed beside a shot of a woman leaning laying out traces of intimacy, herself establishing the Morse into a balcony wall, looking down). The book arrives at a vital code of a marriage and of her body. Photographing is no longer cultural and social moment—we are all locked in our homes a ‘taking act’ but a giving one, where the subject is sovereign, (at least for those privileged by shelter). Now, as the mere act of undecorated, an aesthetic that appears to guide Mohanty. ‘If you breathing is hazardous, a generation of Indians—the youngest set out to make pictures about love, it can’t be done,’ Gowin has in its history—is forced to look at its mortality in the eye. And said. ‘But you can make pictures, and you can be in love. In that death—Mohanty’s key theme of examination—raises one way, people sense the authenticity of what you do.’ silent, secondary question: how must the bereaved go on? In a conscious elimination of a larger spatial context of Nowhere might serve as a visual companion to Joan Didion’s time, this book could be reduced to a diary of private mo- The Year of Magical Thinking, which in constructing the author’s ments. Nowhere is deeply personal of course, but its excellence first year of widowhood gradually evolves into a meditation on renders it universal, the loss of one person is gateway to the losing someone. In the years after a death, memories lunge at larger idea of sacrifice. What waits in the space made by the you like javelin strikes; then there is the guilt one feels for not person who has left? ‘The lover’s fatal identity is precisely loving enough or too much; and the shame one conceals for this: I am the one who waits,’ wrote Roland Barthes. Nowhere the privilege of remembering in a world defined by forgetting. is glorious, subtle and moving evidence of what occurs when Mohanty’s book resists these sentimental urges; inspired, as if by someone has made waiting their life work, which is to say: it Proust, each photograph is a prompt, ushering us into the pho- does not call on time to fulfil further promises. tographer’s private album where after the aesthetic consump- Love has been enough. n tion of sorrow is done, one experiences a tremor of something authentic, a quality difficult to achieve in photography. Emmet Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi’s book Loss Gowin’s pictures of Edith Morris, his wife, sidestep the romanti- (HarperCollins India) releases in October

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 59 books

The Nuts and Bolts of History A timely examination of the microfoundations of big political events By Siddharth Singh

he cabinet noir or the government resorted to asking the a vast expanse of political and social be- black room was an infamous clergy for its local, parish-level records to haviour, from the interaction of emotions practice of opening letters of understand who owned how much land in everyday life with political choices T high officials, members of and other assets. to revolutions and from chaotic events the nobility and virtually anyone who The result is a very different picture of to constitution-making in different mattered in the ancien régime. Put in place pre-revolutionary France that contrasts countries and ages. It is one thing to use during the reign of Louis XIII (1610-1643), vividly with stories of bread riots, queens mechanisms—on paper—to describe it became a regular practice under his asking people to eat cakes and the venal and understand events in the abstract but successors. One could dismiss it as fulfill- nature of the monarchy. Billed as the first something altogether different to explore ing prurient desires on part of French volume of a three-part study that com- an actual revolution that is far removed monarchs or even spying on notables in pares a similar unravelling in colonial in time. his kingdom. In reality, it was a device America of the British regime and a final So how does one make sense of a book to scour for authentic information in a volume looking at constitution-making like this? For anyone who is familiar with country that was notoriously opaque. Im- in the two countries, Elster’s project is standard methods of historical research perfect centralisation and secrecy on part ambitious. His ambition lies not just in and writing, this book will at first glance of the three classes—the clergy, the nobil- the scope of what he seeks to explore but evoke incredulity. Modern understand- ity and the commoners—made such also in bringing novel ing of past events is based indirect methods of getting information a methodological tools to on observing facts and regular practice in 18th century France. explore politics from the then subjecting them to In reality, these methods were ground to the top. This is interpretation. Momen- thwarted as Jon Elster shows in his neat in contrast to the macro tous events like those of exploration France Before 1789: The and microhistories that 1789 are usually ascribed Unravelling of an Absolutist Regime. have spawned an entire to some cause and causes. He writes, ‘Orchestration of letters in the industry of writing on Very often interpreta- expectation that they would be opened the events before, during tions have an ideological also occurred. A might fake or instigate and after 1789. edge. In the French case a letter by B to C knowing it will be read Of all the scholars to there are conservative France Before 1789 by D (the king), the last being the real have written on these The Unravelling of interpretations such addressee.’ The result was the spread of topics, Elster is perhaps an Absolutist Regime as those of Pierre Nora, unusual complexity in whatever the gov- the best-equipped to look Jon Elster François Furet and, if ernment did. To give another example, at the microfoundations his work is considered Princeton University Press taxation led to second and third-order of ‘big’ political events. 263 Pages | $39.95 interpretative history, effects. In the first round, the monarch It won’t be an exaggera- Joseph de Maistre. There imposed new taxes to fund France’s tion to say that micro- are leftist versions as interminable wars and other needs. In foundations, for long an well. But in none of these the second round, the people of France obsession with economists who sought efforts is there a description of ‘micromo- became suspicious of any enumeration/ to explain observed economic aggregates tives’ of officials and subjects. Revolu- survey/census as they assumed it was a such as output, inflation, exchange rates tions, it seems, happen because the price prelude to another round of taxes. The etcetera, came of age in social science at of bread crosses a certain threshold. On third-order effect of this state of affairs— large with Elster. From Ulysses and the that explanation hunger, it seems, leads the government being unable to directly Sirens (1979) to France before 1789 (2020) to anger and everything else follows in gather the information it required for is a period of more than four decades. Dur- its wake. Because this—obviously—is administration—was ever more empha- ing this period, Elster—now 80 years of not how events pan out, ‘ground up’ sis on indirect sources of information. In age—has expanded rational choice and histories are often tinged with political the cases of taxes, for example, the central methodological individualism to explore explanations about ‘people’s’ behaviour,

60 14 september 2020 model of action. In the standard model, A caricature of the Cabinet Noir, 1815 individuals’ desires lead to gathering of an optimal amount of information and then belief-formation. This, in turn, leads to action as a rational pathway. (There is, of course, a direct route from desires to action: the irrational-choice path.) There is no room for emotions in this model. In contrast, Elster allows emotions to loop back from beliefs to desires, complicating the path to action. Perhaps readers in the age of Twitter where desires are a straight product of emotions can comprehend Elster much better than dry historical fare. The result is a stunning interplay of emotions between the three classes in pre-revolutionary France. The first estate (clergy) hated the third one (commoners); the second (nobility) felt envy towards the third, and the third had contempt for the second. These insights were known to Alexis de Tocqueville when he wrote his history of the ancien régime. Elster puts them on a strong analytical and factual basis. Hatred far more than hunger can compel a person to pick arms; bread prices are a mere sideshow. He concludes, ‘I suggest that the French Revolution became inevitable when the reaction of members of the third estate to the contempt of the nobles changed from shame to anger. I leave this remark as an unverifiable speculation.’ Perhaps, he will elaborate on this in the planned volumes. For a history writer who started with a model and then sifted cabinet noir or the black room was an infamous through a gigantic—but incomplete— practice in france of opening letters. it was a mass of facts, documents, interpretations and more, France before 1789 is an achieve- device to scour for authentic information in a ment of a high order. country that was notoriously opaque Is such a historical exercise replicable in other settings, say Mughal India or British India as the latter was a period with an abundance of data, testimonies, leading to circularities: the assumption a degree? Somewhere along these causal memoirs and documentary evidence? (of people being endowed with revolu- chains, a degree of brittleness enters the The prospect is tantalising even as it is tionary politics) and what is sought to be equation, making it hard to believe. dim. An exercise of the kind Elster has explained (the revolution itself) often get Elster follows a different track, often done requires not only mastery over mixed up. Another ‘explanation’ rests on using a combination of emotions (fear, historical material but also a method- people being exploited and the process hatred, envy, etcetera) and microeco- ological orientation that understands the getting out of hand. But why were the nomic assumptions and then building an importance of individual motivations people exploited to such an extent that it explanation. His novelty for explaining in history. Material interpretations, the provoked a revolution? Was the exploiter the actions of different actors has an inter- darling of Indian historians, hover up in (or the exploiting class) irrational to such esting twist on the standard belief-desire the air where humans seem like ants. n

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 61 books

Beyond the Glass Ceiling Isher Judge Ahluwalia’s memoir chronicles a life less ordinary Isher Judge Ahluwalia By Zakia Soman

Illustrations by Saurabh Singh

reaking Through is the against their fellow economists who the time. She travels the globe, carries on story of an unusual journey. Most were demanding relaxation of state research and publishes extensively. She Bimportantly, it is unusual because control to give more flexibility to private is credited with building institutions how many Indian women in the 1960s players. Ahluwalia narrates how there such as the Indian Council for Research would have pursued economics and was need for infrastructure planning, on International Economic Relations. studied at the Massachusetts Institute reforms in industrial and trade policies, Hers is a remarkable story even by con- of Technology and worked at the Inter- measures for restoring fiscal balance in temporary standards of gender defined national Monetary Fund? It is unusual those days. Her husband has been one of roles and rules at home, in society and in because breaking through the world the key architects of these reform policies. public life. of economics would have been un- She has made her own share of contribu- Everyone may have their own views imaginable for a girl from a middle-class tions to the economic reforms that India on India’s economic policies or the Punjabi family at a time when outright embarked upon beginning 1991. direction taken as well as the efficacy patriarchy was the norm and the place of Isher Judge is determined, persever- of measures pursued after 1991. But the a woman was within the home. It is also ing and gritty right from the start. It is reader can’t miss the remarkable jour- unusual to write a book based on one’s heartening that her trajectory continues ney of a courageous woman economist own life story when one is diagnosed after she adds ‘Ahluwalia’ to her name. from a so-called Third World country with an illness that is certain to end one’s She demonstrates remarkable clarity negotiating with the male-dominated journey in the near future. about her goals even as a schoolgirl, world and male-centric institutions at Isher Judge Ahluwalia’s personal from a Hindi medium background. every step. And she emerges a winner journey coincides with the journey She finds a seat in Presidency College, with help from others at various stages. of a rapidly changing India. In some Kolkata and later on in Delhi School of Once back home in Delhi, she manages instances, it is an eyewitness account Economics based on sheer merit and the responsibilities of a mother and a from close quarters and an overall bird’s dogged perseverance. She marries wife of a public figure with equal verve eye view of economic liberalisation in Montek Singh Ahluwalia, a fellow and ease. Her funny side comes up when the country. She had the opportunity to economist, and successfully raises a the phone rings asking for “Dr Ahluwa- meet Manmohan Singh in 1970, then a family beating the gender stereotypes of lia” and there is silence from the caller professor at Delhi School of Economics, on being told “this is she”. There is a brief for dinner. ‘My first impression from mention of the tragedy of the anti-Sikh that dinner was that he was a man of few riots in 1984 and how it affected all words. He liked to listen… He was very peaceloving Indians. unassuming… but when he spoke, it was Fundamentally, this memoir, written very substantive and he came across as in a lucid style, is the story of an Indian very knowledgeable.’ woman trying to make the most out The book narrates how the public of her life as a mother, a professional debate on the Indian economy before and in this case, as a public intellectual. the 1991 reforms was a contest between She emerges as a shining and inspiring leftist economists and those calling for persona. In the foreword, Sudha Murty Breaking Through reform. The leftist economists viewed A Memoir reminisces about shared memories any liberalisation of economic policy as Isher Judge Ahluwalia with the author and hopes that the book undesirable and a ‘surrender to private would help countless young girls over- sector interests’. They were positioned Rupa Publications come challenges in their own lives. n 184 Pages | Rs 395

62 14 september 2020 Natural Instinct Vesper Flights Wonder-filled dispatches from the wild Helen Macdonald Jonathan Cape By Nandini Nair 288 Pages | Rs 683 (Kindle)

choose to think that my its world is to return to an or it is a man-versus-wild scenario. subject is love, and most specifi- impoverished one. Macdonald’s writing stays clear of ‘I cally love for the glittering world of A reader remains invested in these pitfalls because it is so deeply non-human life around us,’ writes Helen first-person essays when the author inked with empathy and wonder. As Macdonald in the introduction to her is interesting. And Macdonald has an a loner child who found company in recent collection of essays Vesper Flights. arsenal of anecdotes and experiences the wild, nature is not something to be In her memoir H Is for Hawk (2015) to hook anyone. Her tales are odd yet conquered nor does it exist for man to Macdonald told the story of training a compelling. She is allergic to dogs, discover himself. Nature to her is, above hawk to tame her grief after her father’s horses and foxes. She can be felled by all, a place where she seeks ‘intimacy sudden death. While the book poured migraines. Back in 1997, she worked at and companionship’. out from a wound, it also established a falcon conservation-breeding farm To her work she brings both a Macdonald as a nature writer of stand- in rural Wales seven days a week, for scientific temper and a spiritual bent. ing. Vesper Flights is once again firmly four years. Once when she found a The natural world is to be appreciated rooted in the wild and pulses with an wounded ostrich that could not be through the lens of science as that uncommon understanding and respect saved, she bashed its head with a rock reveals that we ‘are living in an exqui- for the natural world around us. to knock it out, and then cut its throat sitely complicated world that is not all It is the kind of book where, on with the only instrument she had, a about us’. Macdonald also confesses the one hand, you want to treat each keychain penknife. She writes of how how while writing her memoir she of- chapter like a sacrament, something as a child she’d clean and polish fox ten found the secular lexicon inade- which must not be rushed and must skulls and keep the wings of road-killed quate. In this book, she realises that the be bestowed with reverence, but, on birds. As an adult she finds a swift by language she needs is most often used the other, one also wants to plough the River Thames and unsure of what for writing about religious experiences. through it from beginning to end in to do with it, swaddles it in a towel and In nature’s ‘small’ occurrences she sees uninterrupted sittings because to leave tucks it into her freezer. She learns she the divine, whether it is the sight of is allergic to foxes, while skinning a a hill through clouds or hailstones at road-killed fox to turn into a rug. Who one’s feet. In these moments she feels a would not want to hear the stories numinous consciousness. she has to tell? Who would not In the introduction, Macdonald want to walk with her in writes, ‘I hope that this books works a the woods? little like a Wunderkammer. It is full of Much of nature writ- strange things and it is concerned with ing can be read in the the quality of wonder.’ baritone of David This collection is precisely that. It Attenborough. It is a overflows with insights and details language of either which the reader will wish to pass onto pristine nature in others. For example, did you know that which humans only female glow-worms cannot fly have no place, but emit a light to attract the smaller, winged male? Once mated, the light is extinguished, they lay 50-100 small eggs and then die. Or that disoriented by city lights more than a hundred thousand birds die each year in New York itself? This is ultimately a book about grief and birds, love and death. What could Helen Macdonald be more essential for all time? n

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 63 gardening

Hands in the Mud When planting a thought is space-time medicine

ave you ever Gardening helps—one has to think of seeds to sow now for the thought of your flowers to bloom two months later. When we sow a seed, says Hmind as a garden? Stuart-Smith, we plant a narrative of future possibility. It is an ac- Of connecting what you do tion of hope. For instance, I have decided that this winter, cosmos, with your plants with what impatiens and petunias will be the flowers in the garden. I will plants do for your well- grow cosmos from the seed, which means I have to sow them this being? Sue Stuart-Smith is month so that they will begin blooming in late October. a psychotherapist who has Drawing on geographer Jay Appleton’s psychology of written The Well-Gardened landscape, she points out that we prefer being in spaces that Mind: The Restorative Power combine elements of ‘prospect’ with elements of ‘refuge’. That’s of Nature (Scribner; 352 how we assess our physical surroundings in terms of possible By Shylashri Shankar pages; $28) in which she hazards and scope for protection. A garden satisfies this need for tackles the question of how a safe enclosure without entrapment. War veterans and others our mind and emotions respond to gardens. How plants and recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder benefit from gardens nurture our minds and souls, and what we have lost such gardens, and recover their sense of trust. Psychologically, in urban spaces through ‘plant blindness’ (our city brains filter tending to a garden repairs our broken hearts and minds. Caring out plants from our awareness) are some of the questions she for a garden can help recover a sense of self-compassion; depres- tackles in the book. She effortlessly weaves in findings from sion is usually accompanied by feeling of failure and harsh psychoanalysis, neuroscience and behavioural studies on the self- criticism, she says. In our pandemic state, we are prone to importance of plants in shaping our emotional responses, neurasthenia—a state of insomnia, depression, anxiety and irri- making each chapter a joy to read. tability—that was often diagnosed for the wealthy and the intel- How is gardening connected to our sense of well-being? ligentsia in the late 19th century. Walt Whitman and Theodore Gardening, she says, can be understood as a form of space-time Roosevelt were among the sufferers who were given the nature medicine. Working outdoors helps expand our mental space cure, which is not available for those of us under a lockdown. and the growth cycles of plants can alter the relationship we Taking care of plants helps us through difficult times. In my have with time. There we experience slow time by connecting case, I began with a single hibiscus planted in memory of my with the natural rhythm of life. Wake up with the sunlight, dear Labrador. I mixed the ashes with the earth. I then spent eat when one is hungry, listen to the wind rustling through many hot afternoons in nurseries, particularly Sunder nursery, the leaves, look at the changing intensity of the monsoon looking at plants, and wandering along the pathways. Attach- clouds and listen to the bird calls. One doesn’t need to name ment and loss go together, says Stuart-Smith, drawing on re- the bird or the plant or the tree. It is merely about observing as search in this area. As humans, we are primed to seek reunion, we inhabit the present. While looking out of the window, not to dis-attach, so there is nothing in our biology that helps us I spotted a bird that looked like a mynah in the bough of a deal with loss. Mourning is something we have to learn from Gulmohar tree. It was giving itself a bath from the rain experience. To cope with loss we need to find a safe haven, and droplets on the leaves. Just noticing its fierce concentration nature provides us with one. Gardening, which is about setting in its plumage lifted my spirits. life in motion, helps us recreate our world anew, she says. There is a scientific basis to being observant. She points out More than just observing, gardening makes us work with that observing movement such as a kestrel or some other bird our hands. She cites a study by a neuroscientist that a belief in flying high above makes our brain simulate those actions and our ability to shape our lives originates through shaping our movements through the activity of mirror neurons. These neu- physical surroundings. When actions produce a result we can rons fire up as if we were making the movements ourselves, as see, feel and touch, we feel more connected to the world around if we too were flying in the vast expanse. Then, time doesn’t slip us and have an increased sense of control. This is called learned by as a series of moments lost where all we can do is regret their persistence where one has to make an effort to shape the world passing. Gardening gives us a larger story into which we can around us. In contrast is ‘learned helplessness’ which involves slot these moments and not feel regret, she says. feeling at the mercy of external events, which our present But we also need to cultivate a future orientation too, she says. state under the pandemic embodies. Those of us who do only

64 14 september 2020 hobby is gardening, one doesn’t have to have a plot of land, or even a balcony or terrace. Just looking at the trees on the roadside, or in the neighbourhood park will do. One of the joys of living in Delhi is how green and complex and biodiverse it is. The brain needs to see complexity and variety, which are important in terms of nature’s restorative effects, she says. In his book, Alick Percy- Lancaster, the superintendent of Sunder Nursery in the early 1950s remarks, ‘New Delhi is a city which contains more trees per square mile than any other city in the East if not in the whole world.’ Stuart-Smith revives an interesting connection of warfare with gardening. She says that the idea that one might counterbalance the other has ancient roots. ‘Writing in 329 BC, Xenophon described how for Persian kings, the art of war and the art of husbandry were considered two of the ‘noblest and most necessary pursuits.’’ Churchill too was serious about war and gardening. So was the first Mughal emperor Babur who designed many gardens in Kabul and later in Saurabh Singh Saurabh by Illustration India. German and British soldiers, doctors, chaplains posted on the front created small gardens in flowerpots made of spent shell When we sow a seed, says casings during the stalemates and periods of Sue Stuart-Smith, we plant a inaction. For instance, in one of the German narrative of future possibility. dugouts was a garden complete with au- riculas, shrubs and roses in tubs, right in the It is an action of hope middle of the fighting! Why? Because death may come at any moment, yet meantime life must be lived—a phrase that can be ap- plied to our pandemic-stricken 2020. Plant mental work or tech-related work have lost something vital to nurseries in India and elsewhere are reporting a rise in sales of our mental wellbeing, she says. houseplants and medicinal plants during the pandemic. You could be someone (like me) who had never grown a Once one begins to garden, one spends a lot of time think- single plant. Yet, when you begin earnestly, listen to the advice ing and dreaming of the garden. I have spent hours making of the gardeners in the plant nurseries, and learn from the mis- plans for my rooftop garden—how to make it more sym- takes you make, the plants then bloom and grow bountifully. metrical without losing the exuberant wildness. Thanks to Anybody, I have realised, can grow green fingers. Stuart-Smith the pandemic, I walk on my rooftop for an hour. While pacing concurs and advises us to aim for a ‘good enough’ garden. up and down, I conjure up new arrangements for the bamboo One can start gardening at any age. Studies have found that and fountain grasses, the small ficus trees, the blue flowers in middle age, we can experience a surge of creative energy, of the plumbago, the vivid scarlet of the bougainvillaea, the a phenomenon called ‘generativity’ (we take a perspective bright yellow lantana and the deep red roses. Doing is a way of beyond our own life). In contrast, if the passing of time makes experiential learning, she says, not only about nature but about us feel ‘what is the point?, we are likely to enter a state of ourselves and what we are capable of. That kind of learning stagnation in which life loses meaning. underpins our cognitive development by knitting things in Psychiatrists, she says, have shown that the second most some sort of personal relevance. But one should also recognise important thing after cultivating close relationships is how we that this constant planning is also part of always ‘doing’. So, sit spend our time—not so much in productivity but in generativ- back and just be in or with the garden is her advice. I plan to do ity and creative play. Hobbies are to be cultivated, and if that it tomorrow. Today I need to finish a bit more ‘doing’. n

14 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 65 NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

RAJEEV MASAND

Ghost of a Chance rave reviews last year and the film was a box-office money- Supernatural comedies could be all the rage in the new year. spinner, but the Hyderabad star says he had no interest in It was clear after the success of Stree three years ago that doing the Hindi remake. Bollywood was on to something, and the makers of that film “I would’ve done it if I was sure the whole of India would quickly announced a sequel (more on that later). But there watch it. I wanted the story to reach a bigger audience. And are at least two more films, both recently announced, that I know that if Shahid does it, that will happen; not me,” he will exploit a similar formula. says. “So I was very happy when I heard about the Hindi Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani’s Excel remake, and I know Shahid is a great actor and I’m sure he Productions have announced Phone Bhoot, which will star will do justice to the role.” The part he is speaking of is one Katrina Kaif, Ishaan Khatter and Siddhant Chaturvedi. of a promising local cricketer who gives up the sport, then Meanwhile, it was announced this week that Saif Ali returns to it well after he’s crossed his prime in order to win Khan and Arjun Kapoor will star in Bhoot Police, which the respect of his wife and son. will be directed by Pawan Kriplani who helmed the sadly Like Kabir Singh (2019), the Hindi remake of the Vijay underappreciated Radhika Apte chiller Phobia. Both projects Deverakonda-starrer Arjun Reddy (2017), the Bollywood are expected to begin filming before the end of the year (when remake of Jersey will also be helmed by the director of the shooting restrictions are relaxed) and are reportedly eyeing a original Telugu film. mid-2021 release. Which brings us to Stree 2 and the drama over that Hot Right Now project. If the film hasn’t gone into production yet, Theatre and film actorKumud Mishra, who has despite an announcement from producer had small but memorable parts in popular films Dinesh Vijan as far back as August 2018, it could like Rockstar (2011), Badlapur (2015), Article 15 have something to do with the fact that there’s a (2019) andThappad (2020), delivers a career-best legal battle brewing between Vijan and the original performance in Filmistan director Nitin Kakkar’s film’s cowriters and coproducersRaj Nidimoru and long-delayed drama Ram Singh Charlie, which went Krishna DK over unpaid dues. Raj & DK have alleged straight to streaming last weekend. Mishra plays a that they are still to receive their share of the Charlie Chaplin impersonator in a Kolkata profits from Stree, as committed by Vijan in circus who struggles to make ends meet their contract. That little issue may have when the circus shuts down. It’s a beautiful also put a spanner in the works when it performance, entirely free of artifice and comes to the sequel of Go Goa Gone. The caricature. Mishra nicely channels the original film was directed by Raj and DK spirit of the tramp in a bittersweet story for Eros Entertainment and Illuminati about smiling through one’s tears as one Films, the latter being the banner floated tries to find one’s place in a world that is by Saif Ali Khan and Vijan, which has most dismissive of one’s craft. since been dissolved. After doing the rounds of both Indian and international film festivals in Remake Artist 2016, the film has remained unreleased Shahid Kapoor, who was shooting the because distributors told Kakkar it Hindi remake of the Telugu hit Jersey (2019) didn’t have much ‘theatrical potential’. in Chandigarh when the pandemic required The film’s streaming release has drawn for production to be halted, may have found a some attention, and encouraging champion in Nani, the star of the original film. reviews will likely ensure it doesn’t sink Nani’s performance in that film earned him without a trace. n

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