www.openthemagazine.com 50 27 JULY / 2020

OPEN VOLUME 12 ISSUE 29 27 JULY 2020

contents 27 july 2020

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LOCOMOTIF OPEN DIARY INDIAN ACCENTS TOUCHSTONE WHISPERER OPEN ESSAY The missing rebel By Swapan Dasgupta The ideal king The rot in rhetoric By Jayanta Ghosal The uses of adversity By S Prasannarajan By Bibek Debroy By Keerthik Sasidharan By Mohan Malik

22 SELF-RELIANCE IN A BRAVE NEW WORLD By Siddharth Singh

28 HOMEMADE From Reliance Jio’s Made-in-India 5G 22 plan to the recent boom in desi apps and PPE manufacturing, Indian industry gets ready for a swadeshi turn By Lhendup G Bhutia

34 THE INWARD GAZE 38 The evolution of self-reliance from Gandhi’s village ideal to Modi’s national vision By Madhavankutty Pillai

38 THE JAIPUR JOLT Sachin Pilot becomes the face of rebellion in a party on the brink By PR Ramesh

50 44 FOR GOD’S SAKE By restoring the management of Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple to the Travancore royal family, the Supreme Court raises the larger question of the state’s control over temples 44 By J Sai Deepak

56 50 THE OTHER STORY FROM KASHMIR A new spirit of entrepreneurship sprouts across the Valley By Kaveree Bamzai

56 60 64 66 MURDER ON THEIR MINDS NOBODY’S NOVELIST THE HOPEFUL HISTORIAN NOT PEOPLE LIKE US Portrayals of psychiatrists on Ottessa Moshfegh’s new book establishes Rutger C Bregman’s new book Alarm bells recent web shows use psychology her prowess at excavating the minds of questions our shared assumptions By Rajeev Masand to titillate or trivialise characters on the margins of society about humanity By Shreevatsa Nevatia By Nandini Nair By Bhavya Dore

Cover by Saurabh Singh 27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 3 open mail [email protected]

Editor S Prasannarajan letter of the week OPEN managing Editor PR Ramesh C www.openthemagazine.com executive Editor Ullekh NP Prime Minister Narendra Modi has firmly reset the editor-at-large Siddharth Singh deputy editors Madhavankutty Pillai terms of engagement and redefined our equations 20 JULY 2020 / 50 (Mumbai Bureau Chief), with China (‘Riding Out the Storm’, July 20th, 2020). Rahul Pandita, Amita Shah, V Shoba (Bangalore), Nandini Nair He rightly said, “The weak can never bring peace. The creative director Rohit Chawla weak cannot initiate peace. Bravery is the precondition VOLUME 12 ISSUE 28 art director Jyoti K Singh Senior Editors Sudeep Paul, for peace.” That, in short, sums up the strong Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), martial spirit and culture of India’s security forces. Moinak Mitra, Nikita Doval Associate EditorS Vijay K Soni (Web), That also sums up Modi’s political message to China Shahina KK from Nimu. His speech was a redoubtable geopolitical assistant editor Vipul Vivek chief of graphics Saurabh Singh player’s response to the aggression shown by Chinese 20 JULY 2020 SENIOR DESIGNERs Anup Banerjee, premier Xi Jinping’s regime in the region. Modi’s mes- Veer Pal Singh sage spelt decisiveness in the face of any territorial ag- Photo editor Raul Irani deputy Photo editor Ashish Sharma gression. The pursuit of good relations between India and China is conditional upon agreements on all fronts and financial support in National Head-Events and Initiatives Arpita Sachin Ahuja and no tiptoeing around the highly sensitive territorial time. It is time to make AVP (ADVERTISING) Rashmi Lata Swarup issue. After the tension created by the fateful encounter education affordable and GENERAL MANAGERs (ADVERTISING) in the Galwan Valley region, there is no mistaking that inexpensive for all sections Uma Srinivasan (South) disengagement on the ground and de-escalation are a of society via the internet. National Head-Distribution and Sales reality now. For all the trouble, India remains Online education saves Ajay Gupta regional heads-circulation alert and wary of Chinese adventures in the area. India costs of infrastructure, D Charles (South), Melvin George (West), Basab Ghosh (East) has never crossed the LAC, by way of either aggres- maintenance, operation Head-production Maneesh Tyagi sive patrolling or grabbing territory as the Chinese and transport. Doubts senior manager (pre-press) have tried since May. When it comes to safeguarding clarification may be done Sharad Tailang MANAGER-MARKETING borders, every country has to do the job alone, however easily via IT tools. Priya Singh superior the enemy’s strength or economic power. P Vasudeva Rao Chief Designer-marketing D Sampathkumar Champak Bhattacharjee The solution to the cfo & HEAD-IT Anil Bisht disruption the coronavirus Chief ExecuTive & Publisher Neeraja Chawla has caused in education All rights reserved throughout the indian resolve Army also caused Chinese is going 100 per cent world. Reproduction in any manner is prohibited. Wars bring in their wake casualties though China online. Covid-19 cases are Editor: S Prasannarajan. Printed and heroic stories (‘Riding Out may not like the world to exponentially increasing. published by Neeraja Chawla on behalf of the owner, Open Media Network Pvt the Storm’, July 20th, 2020). hear about that. Education and employment Ltd. Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd, 18-35 Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, China’s transgressions, Ashok Goswami via the internet can Faridabad-121007, (Haryana). Published at 4, DDA Commercial which have given rise to the help maintain physical Complex, Panchsheel Park, possibility of a war, seem digital new world distancing without bringing New Delhi-110017. Ph: (011) 48500500; Fax: (011) 48500599 to have pushed India to the Many CBSE Class 12 our daily life to a complete To subscribe, WhatsApp ‘openmag’ to point where there is little students have passed their halt. Reserve Bank of India 9999800012 or log on to www.openthemagazine.com potential for diplomacy board exams with flying Governor Shaktikanta Das or call our Toll Free Number 1800 102 7510 and it must take the dragon colours this year despite recently made a statement or email at: head on. It’s rare to see a the pandemic-induced that the Indian economy is [email protected] For alliances, email prime minister visiting lockdown hurting classroom showing signs of normalcy. [email protected] For advertising, email Ground Zero during an education (‘The Future of Going online across sectors [email protected] ongoing border dispute. Learning’, July 20th, 2020). can help strengthen those For any other queries/observations, email [email protected] Prime Minister Narendra Many scored excellently, signs quickly. The world after Modi went there to boost the including a girl, Divyanshi the coronavirus is going to be Disclaimer morale of the Army and send Jain, and a Dalit, Tushar drastically different. There is ‘Open Avenues’ are advertiser-driven marketing initiatives and Open assumes no responsibility a strong message to China. Singh, topping with 100 no point waiting any longer for content and the consequences of using products or services advertised in the magazine China may not find it easy per cent. This shows all for things to go back this time. The Indian Army students and humans have to ‘normal’. Call it Volume 12 Issue 29 is more determined and inner talent. Focus should For the week 21-27 July 2020 resignation or adaptation— Total No. of pages 68 resolute to defend itself be on building strength that’s the fact. on the border. The Indian and providing technical PN Sreelekha

4 27 july 2020 LOCOMOTIF

by S PRASANNARAJAN The Missing Rebel

olitical atrophies are caused by different of them to be the dissident the party badly needed. Like the reasons. The obvious one is the old truism: the ‘unleader,’ he too was launched by ancestry, but, today, he is growing distance between the party and the people. not defined by it. As administrator and organiser, there was The party is still steeped in its calcified inheritance, clarity in his words, and a purpose in his actions, a rare virtue unaware of the pace with which its once devoted in his party. Still, he is not the rebel that he is made out to be. Pvoters have walked past. This happens when the party becomes A tradition is redeemed only when the rebel can’t afford to be a weather-beaten monument to a lost tradition, and a reminder cautious—and the cautious are not called rebels anyway. The of an idea’s incompatibility with the times. This reason brings rebel is not a conspirator, like a member of the old Syndicate; out the prevalence of another: the leader who could not make he is more likely to be a Young Turk, like Chandra Shekhar sense of his (or her) irrelevance, or even redundancy. A leader when he played out the romance of radicalism. The story we without a vocabulary to have a rewarding conversation with the miss today is as familiar as the rebel we miss from Jaipur: the people, and someone who has opted out of history, and stepped ‘unleader’ is matched by the ‘unrebel.’ into a make-believe. The reason that matters most, perhaps, is Maybe it’s all explained by a genetic malady within the the alternative—what was once a counter-argument becoming Congress: the party’s existential indebtedness to the Family the only argument winning the day. When countries shed their has conditioned the responses of the restless young and the sacred pretences, it makes no sense in holding on to them instead contented old. The inherited sense of bondage has made them of being receptive to the change. The leader is now the last all wilful sufferers and achievers in the sheltering shadow guardian of the relic that he or she is left with. Political atrophies of the Family. There was always someone with the most are inevitable only when the leader is ejected from reality. privileged surname to fight for them, to keep them as members The Congress story, currently relished as a narrative of of India’s longest ruling establishment, to win and even die suppressed mutiny and reasserting satrapy, makes political for them. Power enhanced the mythology of the Family, from atrophy sufficiently dramatic. The Rajasthan drama, with which came the Nation Builder as well as Mother India. The its vanquished young warrior waiting for his day and the old new leader has been denied power to write his own mythology; warhorse revelling in his ruthlessness, is less about a clash he is burdened by the mythology of his inheritance. He is the between two value systems. It’s a power struggle between rightful inheritor who has spent the longest time outside two unequal men, divided by generation and genealogy: the power. And his struggle, all the while, has not been for power. restless young leader and the wily old guard. The young is not The struggle has been with himself, his chosen roles shifting baring his conscience and challenging the Leader, the resident from the vacillating insider-outsider to the raging freelance of the make-believe; undermined and underappreciated, he provocateur, ceding the space that the party held to the new has not spelt out what he stands for—what the “truth” is. For interpreters of India from the Right. In the Family lore, those the trusted warhorse, there is nothing to be said, nothing to be who were most passionate about power alone won India. If the revealed, for he is so transparent as an image of the last residue Family has moved from the mythology of power to the banality of a tradition, rusty but still useful. of privilege, give credit where it’s due. The story we miss is: what the young That won’t happen because those who leader could have been. He could have claim to be rebels are actually asking for chosen to be a generation’s rejoinder to nothing but a fair deal from the Family. a stagnant but India’s oldest political They want to be accepted, recognised— tradition. He could have been the voice the psychological need of those who have that challenged India’s most engaging been shaped by political stoicism. The ‘unleader.’ He could have been the one who fallen usurper in Jaipur only brings out the said it finally: I don’t want to be just another fact that the political atrophy of our time is quietly suffering gravedigger for a tradition hastened not by the so-called rebellion but that made me. He may be the most qualified by a heritage without a keeper. n

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 5 open diary Swapan Dasgupta

ometime in the 1970s, report, better known as the Cox Report, Spossibly in my first year as an which analysed in great detail the ac- undergraduate, I read a slim novel by tivities of China’s intelligence services. Manohar Malgonkar entitled Those who are interested may access Spy in Amber. It wasn’t one of the full report on the internet, but some Malgonkar’s more memorable works, facets are worth repeating. and certainly not a patch on A Bend in According to the Cox Report, ‘Pro- the Ganges and The Princes—loosely fessional intelligence agents … account based on the fascinating life of Prabir for a relatively small share of the PRC’s Chandra Bhanj Deo, the Raja of Bastar. foreign science and technology collec- I remember the novel solely because it tion. The bulk of such information is dealt with a Chinese spy ring in India. took the incursions in Ladakh and, ear- gathered by various non-professionals, Reading spy thrillers is one of my lier, in the India-Bhutan-China border including PRC students, scientists, passions and has been ever since I to force this country into a realisation researchers, and other visitors to the discovered John Le Carré, particularly that our eastern neighbour was much West… Chinese intelligence officials the duplicitous mind games involving more than a ruthless economic power, typically do not direct or control the George Smiley and Karla. The Cold it is now clear that India has a monu- effort, because it is Chinese intelligence War certainly provided a ready mental China problem on its hands. consumers who determine the nature backdrop to an entire genre of In his Chinese Spies: From Chair- and extent of Chinese collection opera- espionage novels. With the fall of the man Mao to Xi Jinping published last tions, just as it is US consumers whose Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the year, the French spy-watcher Roger purchase shape the US economy.’ Soviet Union, Western writers have Faligot wrote: ‘The word Guoanbu ‘Since they are not intelligence discovered new enemies—Islamist will probably become as familiar professionals, Chinese collectors do not terrorists, financial swindlers and drug in the 21st century as the acronyms understand or make use of clandestine barons. Of late, Vladimir Putin’s Russia MI6, CIA and KGB were in the 20th.’ techniques such as ‘dead drops’ under has joined the list. However, it is in- Guoanbu is the abbreviated name for pedestrian bridges in parks; instead triguing that—apart from a few thrill- Guojia Anquanbu, the Ministry of Public they tend to rely on simply sitting ers set in Hong Kong—China hasn’t Security, the nerve centre of the world’s down with a knowledgeable friend or quite made it to the list of adversaries. most extensive intelligence network. contact and asking confidentially for The reasons for this omission are If Faligot is to be believed, the Guoanbu information or assistance. The normal worth thinking about. Is it because has its personnel in almost every arm consumer collects information for Maoist China was mad but quite of China’s overseas outreach, from the his own use or for his immediate co- unfamiliar? Is it because the West journalists in the Xinhua news agency, workers, so his collection goals are very hasn’t been able to come to terms with diplomats in embassies, Chinese modest. Even when a collector pilfers Confucian deviousness? Or, is it be- students in universities overseas, the sensitive or classified information, it is cause too little is known about China’s vast Chinese diaspora and, of course, normally in small pieces.’ intelligence network, its organisation Chinese businesses. This is not to The large numbers of people that and its methods? include China’s vast data-mining and are used to bring together the pieces The reasons for these questions its cyber activities, using the services of of a jigsaw puzzle makes China’s are painfully apparent. Over the past China-controlled businesses. intelligence gathering unique and decade, as China has deftly moved from The activities of the Guoanbu may difficult to identify. What it basi- its understated projection of its own ca- not have been registered in the popular cally means is that nearly all Chinese pacities to the Belt and Road assertive- imagination or even in the minds of people who travel to a foreign country ness, the concerns over Beijing’s creep- many China-watchers who seem a bit are knowingly or unknowingly a part ing hegemonism have multiplied. too inclined to take China at face value, of its intelligence operations. China’s growing influence all over but that doesn’t imply they haven’t China has turned spying into a Asia (including Australia), Africa and been recorded and assessed. In 1999, the mass activity—an innovation that Europe has been alarming. Although it US Congress published an elaborate is mindboggling. n

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NOTEBOOK A Monumental Shame

olitical moves and judicial intervention a church and a mosque and then a museum, and I recall them go hand in hand in Turkey. This isn’t unique to emphasising that it should remain a museum since it attracted President Recep Tayyip Erdog˘an’s country alone. millions of tourists annually to Istanbul, where Erdog˘an, the But the agility of authorities that overturned country’s authoritarian leader, has met with electoral setbacks. Pwithin a matter of days that rich secular legacy of the founder Most people in Istanbul were friendly and the guides friend- of modern Turkey, Kemal Atatürk, was remarkable—and lier, all schooled in the not-so-distant secular past of the country. sad. These deft moves attracted global attention also because a Yet, there were also those in long robes and turbans who felt sixth century iconic monument has been a bone of contention betrayed about being humiliated by the adoption of what they ar- between secularists and Islamists and was a seat of rivalry gued were Western morals “foreign” to Turkey. They wanted the between Ottoman and orthodox worlds. The current structure Hagia Sophia to be turned into a mosque in line with the customs was built as a church under the orders of the eastern Roman that existed in 1453—it is said that around then, it was customary emperor Justinian I (although the original Hagia Sophia was to convert at least the main cathedral of a place of worship of the built a century earlier), converted to a mosque after the fall of conquered people into the place of worship of the victors. Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 by Mehmed For centuries thereafter, the images of mosaic on the ceiling the Conqueror, and then designated a museum by Atatürk in of the cathedral, comprising images of Jesus Christ, Virgin 1934. In its 1,700 years of existence, the stunning structure has Mary, John the Baptist and other Christian symbols, were plas- been a place of Christian worship for 1,100 years, then 500 years tered and hidden from public view until Atatürk announced under Ottoman rule, and more than 90 years as a museum. that it would be a museum in the new republic. Very recently, a court in this land known for its sham trials, Now, the plan is to reveal the famed mosaics to all visitors ruled that the turning of the Byzantine monument into a mu- when the Muslim prayers are not on. Unlike in the past, the seum in 1934 was unlawful. Shortly thereafter, Erdog˘an, on July admission would be free of charge. The likes of Erdog˘an see this 10th, issued a decree ordering that the majestic Hagia Sophia, the as a milestone in snatching back the lost soul of Islamic Turkey 65,000-square-foot stone structure that has been a tourist hotspot that various Islamists and hardline poets had appealed for since for decades, be opened for Muslim prayers. As a result, the first the 1950s to no avail. Regardless, their pronouncements found prayer at the Hagia Sophia mosque will take place on July 24th. echo in the voices of those committed to Islamic revival and What is farcical is that Christian mosaics in this huge monu- proud of the Ottoman heritage. The Byzantine empire fell to the ment will be covered with curtains Ottomans following a long siege of or lasers during the Muslim prayers, the capital city of Constantinople according to an announcement by in the 15th century. the ruling Justice and Development In fact, the population of Party (AK Party) of Erdog˘an. As Erdoğan’s critics say that he Turkey’s minorities that includes someone who has visited the place was in a hurry to convert the Armenians and others has shrunk twice, it was its cosmopolitanism Hagia Sophia into a mosque thanks to genocides at various that had left me impressed. The last points of time, especially in the visit of 2016, days before the suicide because his party lost two decade before the establishment bomb attack on Atatürk Airport, successive polls in Istanbul. of the new republic in the begin- was momentous also because many It was indeed a humbling ning of the 20th century. But now residents of Istanbul, most of them it is slipping fast into an intoler- Muslims, told me they were proud experience for a man who ant Islamic nation where dissent that the grand Byzantine structure had said not long ago that is viewed as a sin that cannot be was a museum, and not a mosque. if his party loses Istanbul, condoned. Guides felt a sense of gratification Most of this is a big departure that this is a structure that had been it would also lose Turkey from Atatürk’s time. Erdog˘an has

8 27 july 2020 alamy The interior of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul been making no-holds-barred assaults on secular institutions in unleashed over centuries, from Hitler’s Germany to countries his country and the intelligentsia with an eye on pandering to where power-hungry rulers are leaving no stones unturned the radical Islamists in order to cling on to power. Although he in tapping jingoism to secure votes. Most often, leaders bent has not attacked the founder personally, he has merrily quoted upon fanning hatred and riding a wave of ultra-nationalism are Mehmed the Conqueror’s will that says whoever tweaks the bound to take their countries backwards by decades or centu- status of Hagia Sophia was committing the gravest of all sins. ries, depending on the intensity of their bigotry and prejudice. The whole world has reacted to Erdog˘an’s move to promote Columnist Peter Welby, an expert on religion, history and radical Islamism and to turn a secular nation—at least, in religious extremism, makes a stunning observation about how principle—to an Islamic republic. While fanatical forces of re- the priorities of great men can change the course of history. He ligion have backed him, the likes of Edward Luttwak, the noted cites the story of how Caliph Umar refused to enter Jerusalem’s military historian and author of books on the grand strategies Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 638 CE, and instead, prayed of Byzantine and Roman empires and essays on Turks, tweeted at a place where a stone he threw fell. A mosque came up at with a sense of resignation, ‘Hagia Sophia is not just a ‘religious the place where he prayed while the church where Christians structure’. It is sublime. The world is littered with inferior believe Jesus died continues to stay. The logic of the Caliph was copies, including the Ottoman mosques. Istanbul’s Muslims that if he had accepted the invitation of the Orthodox bishop are well educated. They despise Erdog˘an & his attack on the at the time and prayed inside the church, his followers would city’s character to please the unlettered fanatics.’ He added, have converted the church into a mosque. So the story goes ‘No civilized government changes the identity of any religious about the seventh century siege of Jerusalem. Welby regrets building. Erdog˘an has just handed over the Hagia Sophia, hith- that instead of Caliph Umar, Erdog˘an chose to follow in Sultan erto a museum open to all, to the notorious Diyanet [Turkey’s Mehmed’s footsteps. His critics say that he was in a hurry to infamous Directorate of Religious affairs], staffed by ignorant convert the Hagia Sophia into a mosque because his party lost fanatics & bleak time-servers.’ two successive polls in Istanbul. It was indeed a humbling Any move to dig up history in the name of ‘avenging’ his- experience for a man who had said not long ago that if his party torical insult invariably opens up a can of worms in any mod- loses Istanbul, it would also lose Turkey. ern country. Such designs to stir religious pride and drum up With this blunder, Erdog˘an has undermined the very conservatism are counterproductive, especially because such republic where he was born in to a poor family and then gradu- notions of grandeur and conceit border on the pretentious and ally climbed the social ladder to become its president. n are not accurate portrayals of history. Throughout the world, we have seen the horror such inward-looking policies have By ullekh np

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 9 openings

portrait TikTok the Chinese government, such as the Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, the religious group Falun Gong and internment camps in Xinjiang. video voodoo Even when protests in Hong Kong began to trend on almost all social media platforms, if you looked The company’s ties to the Chinese regime it up on TikTok, at least during the height of the are likely to backfire across the world protests, it almost always drew a blank. TikTok also tends to have strong cultural strictures. There are rules, it is reported, for hen TikTok first arrived globally—sometime in 2018, after instance in the US, over how much cleavage W its parent company ByteDance merged it with another platform is to be permitted on the platform, over hip Musical.ly—it became something of an instant cultural phenomenon. It thrusting, shaking of the upper torso, the showing was a new type of social media, built entirely in the pursuit of fun. It had of cigarettes, tattoos and drugs. According to a no news, no political discussions, no ads, no lengthy status updates. Just Washington Post article, earlier this year, some of short fun and goofy videos that were meant to go viral. Globally, it has TikTok’s content moderators in the US carried on a gone on to garner more than 800 million users. silent rebellion and did not delete videos of women Now just two years later, this social media behemoth is finding itself under working out in sports bras and leggings despite scrutiny, and close to being expunged, for its closeness with the Chinese some of the heavier women violating TikTok’s rule government in several parts of the world. After the recent ban in India, one of against showing more than two inches of cleavage. its most important markets, the US, is considering a similar move (a White TikTok has tried to respond to the increased House spokesperson has said the decision will be taken in a ‘few weeks’.) scrutiny by distancing its roots in China stressing The US State and Defense departments already prohibit employees from that it is not available in China—ByteDance offers downloading the app on government devices and there is now a bill to bar all a similar app called Douyin there. And that while federal employees from doing so; there are now also demands to look into its it might have been born in China, it is now led by acquisition of Musical.ly. Several companies are also following suit. Amazon an American CEO (the former Disney head Kevin briefly asked its employees in the US to do so too. Similar scrutiny is now Mayer) with key employees from local countries. building in other countries in Europe, UK and Australia. It points out that it stores data locally—in the case Although TikTok denies it shares data with the Chinese government, of the US, in Virginia with a backup in Singapore; much of how it works, from how it stores its data to how its algorithm in Ireland and UK, for European users. There are works, is shrouded in mystery. All social media companies collect users’ even reports that TikTok is considering shifting its data, but one of the primary concerns, its critics say, is that ByteDance headquarters out of China; according to The New cannot refuse information requests from the Chinese government. York Times, it has even hired a small army of lobbyists, In the past, there have been several reports showing that TikTok including one with close ties to President Donald instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention topics sensitive to Trump, to plead its case. As a show of its intentions, it became one of the first social media companies to Illustration by Saurabh Singh pull its operations out of Hong Kong after the city imposed new national security laws that would force internet companies to hand over user data. A big problem for TikTok is that as a social media company, it is travelling in unchartered territory. TikTok is the first true social media platform that has managed to break out of China and become a global cultural phenomenon. Even the other social media powerhouse, the Tencent Holdings–owned WeChat, is mostly limited to China or the diaspora abroad. How does the platform navigate this new world it finds itself in, straddling the distinct cultural and political values of the country of its origin and those it wishes to become part of? All this while the world becomes much more cautious of China and its control over its businesses. For TikTok, it is skating on thin ice. n

By Lhendup G Bhutia

10 27 july 2020 ANGLE ideas

Don’t Bet On It On Mumbai’s declaration of control over Covid-19 es g e tty imag By madhavankutty pillai Protocol A lot of cricket tournament ust this week, Anthony Fauci, odds on the situation, then chances are organisers—especially the BCCI, J the man who is leading the battle you would make more money betting which wants to host the IPL against Covid-19 in the US and one of against this sanguine projection. The sometime later this year—is keenly the world’s best-known experts on first reason is that the local suburban watching the current England-West infectious diseases, said that it had the trains are yet to be fully operational Indies Test series to observe how a potential to be as bad as the Spanish and without it the city is always de facto tournament can be organised during Flu, the worst pandemic in history. He in a state of lockdown and economical this pandemic. After the disastrous was speaking in a webinar to students deep freeze. Offices just can’t function Adria Tour whose lax regulations and CNN reported him saying: ‘If without employees able to get there. meant several individuals you look at the magnitude of the 1918 And should the local trains get going contracted Covid-19, everyone is pandemic where anywhere from 50 to in full strength again with the usual especially nervous. The English 75 to 100 million people globally died, crowds, then the virus will be waiting Cricket Board has created what it that was the mother of all pandemics to rip through with numbers far greater calls a ‘biosecure environment’. and truly historic. I hope we don’t even than anything ever seen so far. Players and support staff are to stay approach that with this, but it does Another reason for not celebrating in isolation for weeks before and have the makings of, the possibility of is contained in Chahal’s statement itself during matches and never step out … approaching that in seriousness.’ when he says that most of the cases during the tournament. But how Almost simultaneously, the being seen at present are coming from foolproof can these protocols really Brihanmumbai Municipal Commis- abutting cities. All those cities are, in be? Test matches are five-day long sioner (BMC) Iqbal Chahal was averring fact, not separate because the majority of affairs. How do you get so many that the spread had been overcome in people work in Mumbai and commute people to follow such military-like Mumbai. The Economic Times reported daily to it. Separating them as geographi- measures over such long periods him saying that the city does not need cally distinct might be administratively without an occasional slip up or a lockdown and quoted him: ‘We are in accurate but it means nothing in the breach? England’s bowler Jofra total control of the situation. Yes, we are context of the disease being contained. Archer was dropped from the team getting around 1,200 cases daily. Howev- Even Kerala, which brought the first for the second Test, after his name er, more than 80% of these people have wave of infections to zero, is now seeing it had been announced, when it was had a travel history. They have come go out of control with over 600 cases daily found he had breached protocol and from cities around Mumbai…We have because lakhs of expats have returned. stopped at his flat while travelling to boosted testing resources. Now, we are And, as against a one-time entry there, the venue. n conducting more than 6,500 tests daily. those living outside come and go daily to We have relaxed restrictions since June Mumbai. The city will have to be kept in 1. There are 1 crore people on the streets perpetual isolation for control to remain. Word’s Worth daily. Yet, we have only 1,200 cases per But Chahal’s argument that lock- day, which shows that our policy of down is no longer necessary will still ‘If you rely completely chase the virus has succeeded’. hold because it is inevitable, no matter As the person in charge of contain- what the state of the spread. Effects of on protocol, you can ing the disease, it is good to display months of lockdown in Mumbai have become a robot’ optimism and keep the morale high been economically crippling. Reopen- Margaret Trudeau but, if there were bookies accepting ing is no longer choice, but survival. n author and social advocate

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 11 indian accents

By Bibek Debroy

The Ideal King How the Pandavas passed the Dharmic test

n the last column, we left Yudhishthira near the wa- The yaksha asked, ‘What is the divine trait of Brahmanas? ter. He could see his brothers lying there, dead. He entered What dharma of theirs is like that of the virtuous? What are the water. As he entered, he heard words from the sky. their human traits? Which of their traits are like that of those I The yaksha said, ‘I am a crane that lives on without virtue?’ aquatic plants and fish. I have taken your younger brothers Yudhishthira replied, ‘The study of the Vedas is their to the land of the dead. If you do not answer my questions, divine trait. Austerities are like that of the virtuous. Mortality you will be the fifth. Do not be foolish enough to do this. I is their human trait. Slander is like the conduct of those have obtained possession of this earlier. Answer my without virtue.’ questions. Then drink and take the water.’ The yaksha asked, ‘What is the divine trait of kshatriyas? Yudhishthira asked, ‘Are you the foremost among the What dharma of theirs is like that of the virtuous? What are Rudras, the Vasus or the Maruts? Which god are you? This is their human traits? Which of their traits are like that of those not the task of a bird. Who is the greatly energetic one who without virtue?’ has felled my brothers? The gods, the gandharvas, the asuras Yudhishthira replied, ‘Arrows and weapons are their and the rakshasas are incapable of withstanding them in a divine traits. Sacrifices are like that of the virtuous. Fear is great battle. You have accomplished something that is their human trait. Desertion is like the conduct of those extraordinary. I do not know what you are doing. Nor do I without virtue.’ know your intentions. I am greatly curious, but I am also The yaksha asked, ‘Which is the single sacrificial chant? overwhelmed by fright. Who are you?’ What is the sacrificial formula? What do sacrifices need? The yaksha replied, ‘I am a yaksha. I am not an aquatic bird. And what can sacrifices not transgress?’ It is I who killed all your brothers.’ Yudhishthira replied, ‘The breath of life is the single Yudhishthira approached and stood there. He saw the sacrificial chant. The mind is the sacrificial formula. yaksha, with malformed eyes and gigantic in form, as tall as a Sacrifices need speech.S acrifices cannot transgress speech.’ tala tree. The yaksha said, ‘O king! Your brothers were The yaksha asked, ‘What is the best among those that repeatedly restrained by me. But they tried to drink the water descend? What is supreme among those that are sown? by force and I killed them. Answer my questions. Then drink What is the best among those that stand? What is supreme and take.’ Yudhishthira replied, ‘O yaksha! Ask me. I will among those that speak?’ answer according to my wisdom.’ Yudhishthira replied, ‘Rain is best among those that The yaksha asked, ‘What makes the sun rise and who descend. Seeds are supreme among those that are sown. are those near him? What makes him set and on what is Cows are best among those that stand. Sons are supreme he established?’ among those that speak.’ Yudhishthira replied, ‘Brahma makes the sun rise and the The yaksha asked, ‘Who experiences the objects of the gods remain near him. Dharma makes him set and he is senses, is intelligent, is worshipped by all the beings in the established in truth.’ world and breathes, but is not alive?’ The yaksha asked, ‘How does one become learned? How Yudhishthira replied, ‘A person who does not render does one attain greatness? How does one obtain a second? offerings to the five—gods, guests, servants, ancestors and How does one become intelligent?’ himself—breathes, but is not alive.’ Yudhishthira replied, ‘One becomes learned through the sa- The yaksha asked, ‘What is heavier than the earth? What cred texts. One attains greatness through austerities. One ob- is higher than the sky? What is swifter than the wind? What tains a second through perseverance. [It is not obvious what is more numerous than men?’ ‘second’ means.] One becomes intelligent by serving the elders.’ Yudhishthira replied, ‘The mother is heavier than the

12 27 july 2020 earth. The father is higher than the sky. The mind is swifter the righteous never breaks.’ than the wind. Worries are more numerous than men.’ The yaksha asked, ‘If abandoned, what makes one The yaksha asked, ‘What does not close its eyes while pleasant? If abandoned, what does not lead to sorrow? If asleep? What does not move when it is born? What has no abandoned, what ensures prosperity? If abandoned, what heart? What grows through speeding?’ makes one happy?’ Yudhishthira replied, ‘A fish does not close its eyes while Yudhishthira replied, ‘The abandoning of pride makes asleep. An egg does not move when it is born. A stone has no one pleasant. The abandoning of anger does not lead to heart. A river grows through speeding.’ sorrow. The abandoning of desire ensures prosperity. The The yaksha asked, ‘Who is a friend to one who is abandoning of desire makes one happy.’ travelling? Who is a friend at home? Who is a friend to one The yaksha asked, ‘When is a man dead? When is a who is sick? Who is a friend to one who is about to die?’ kingdom dead? When is a funeral ceremony dead? Yudhishthira replied, ‘A caravan is a friend to a travel- When is a sacrifice dead?’ ler. A wife is a friend at home. A Yudhishthira replied, ‘A poor physician is a friend to one who man is dead. A kingdom without is sick. Charity is a friend to one a king is dead. A funeral ceremo- who is about to die.’ ny performed without a learned The yaksha asked, ‘What trav- Brahmana is dead. A sacrifice els alone? What is born again af- without dakshina is dead.’ ter birth? What is a cure for cold? The yaksha asked, ‘What is the What is the greatest field?’ right direction? What is spoken Yudhishthira replied, ‘The sun of as water? O what is food and travels alone. The moon is born what is poison? What is the right again after birth. Fire is the cure time for a funeral ceremony?’ for cold. The earth is the great- Yudhishthira replied, ‘The vir- est field.’ tuous are the right direction. The The yaksha asked, ‘In a single sky is water. The cow is food. A re- word, what is dharma? In a sin- quest is poison. A Brahmana is the gle word, what is fame? In a single Yudhishthir a said, ‘The best time for a funeral sacrifice.’ word, what is heaven? In a single reputation of good deeds The yaksha asked, ‘Who is a word, what is happiness?’ touches heaven and earth. As man? Which man possesses all Yudhishthira replied, ‘In a sin- long as that reputation riches?’ gle word, dexterity is dharma. In a Yudhishthira replied, ‘The single word, generosity is fame. In remains, one is said to be a man’ reputation of good deeds touches a single word, truth is heaven. In a heaven and earth. As long as that single word, conduct is happiness.’ reputation remains, one is said The yaksha asked, ‘What is a man’s self? What is the friend to be a man. One to whom the pleasant and the unpleasant, given by destiny? What is the support of his life? What is the happiness and unhappiness and the past and the future are best refuge?’ equal, is a man who possesses all riches.’ Yudhishthira replied, ‘A son is a man’s self. The wife is The yaksha said, ‘You have explained who is a man and the friend given by destiny. Rains are the support of his life. which man possesses all riches. Therefore one of your broth- Generosity is the best refuge.’ ers, whichever one you wish, will live.’ The yaksha asked, ‘What is supreme among objects that Yudhishthira replied, ‘Nakula is dark, with red eyes, mighty are lauded? What is supreme among riches? What is the arms and a broad chest. He is as tall as a shala tree. He will live.’ supreme gain? What is supreme happiness?’ The yaksha said, ‘You love Bhimasena and you depend Yudhishthira replied, ‘Dexterity is supreme among on Arjuna. Why do you then wish Nakula, who is your step- objects that are lauded. Knowledge of the sacred texts is brother, to be alive?’ supreme among riches. Health is the supreme gain. Yudhishthira replied, ‘Men know of me as a king who al- Satisfaction is supreme happiness.’ ways follows dharma. I will not deviate from my own dharma. The yaksha asked, ‘What is supreme dharma in this O yaksha! Let Nakula live. Madri is like Kunti and I see no differ- world? What dharma always leads to fruits? What does not ence between the two. I wish the same for both my mothers.’ grieve when it is controlled? What alliance never breaks?’ The yaksha replied, ‘All of your brothers will be restored to Yudhishthira replied, ‘Non-violence is supreme dharma. life.’ At these words, the Pandavas stood up. All their hunger The dharma of the three [Vedas] always leads to fruits. The and thirst disappeared in an instant. The yaksha was actually mind does not grieve when it is controlled. An alliance with Dharma, testing them. n

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 13 touchstone

By Keerthik Sasidharan

The Rot in Rhetoric The China-India border dispute, too, did not escape a schizoid response

n the aftermath of the terrible events in the young lad from a rich family with his head full of stories of gran- Galwan Valley in Ladakh, where 20 Indian and an deur—to ‘define’ virtue. Slowly, Socrates playfully points to the unknown number of Chinese soldiers died in brutal Aegean-size holes in Meno’s arguments. Soon, Meno exasperat- Iways at the hands of each other, it was hard not to edly offers up two retorts about what can be known itself. One, notice how India and China went about demonstrating Meno asks, if we already know what virtue is, there is no need to their claims regarding that patch of land. The Indian side search for it and the whole discussion about the nature of virtue relied on historical records and the logic of postcolonial is irrelevant. Or two, if we don’t know what virtue is, then how territorial sovereignty that was grandfathered in since the would we know what it is when we come across this thing that days of the Anglo-Sikh wars of 1845-1846; while the Chinese we call virtue—is virtue a quality, a phenomenon that refracts claims spoke of historical memory of the Qing dynasty- through us, a corpus of actions we undertake in life, a divine led conquest of Tibet in 19th century and eventually the whisper to right action—that we call virtue. In short, Meno Maoist takeover of Tibet and Aksai Chin after the 1950s. asks, either we know what something is or if we don’t know Claims and counterclaims—in the name of the nation- what it is, we will not be able to recognise it, far less define it as state, cultural homogeneity, fuzzy delimitations on a Socrates expected him to do. Then, like a clever student who be- map, geopolitical gamesmanship—lay bare not just the lieves he has outfoxed his teacher, Meno pointedly asks, ‘Does complications of a protracted struggle, but also the very that argument not seem sound to you, Socrates?’ To which, the nature of how we apprehend the world. If we were to old master replies, with some snark, ‘Not to me.’ follow the debates on cable TV and the accompanying Eventually, after much toying around with Meno, Socrates political vitriol, the world would appear Manichean with ‘resolves’ this paradox by asking a geometry question to Meno’s well demarcated claims of good and evil. But if we were to slave boy. He methodically shows that the slave boy had the follow the language of negotiators, diplomats and senior knowledge to answer the questions within him, even if he army commanders, they spoke of a different reality: a was unaware of it at first. During the course of this exposition, world that was more nuanced, grey, marked by tactical Socrates claims that we are all imperfectly knowledgeable (or, retreats and unwritten compromises. The former sought to equivalently, ‘partially ignorant’) about ideals that abound in approximate the world into an ideal mental representation the world—beauty, truth, justice, virtue and so on—and we while the latter was an effort to parse carefully the hurly have ‘forgotten’ it; and as long as we have the techniques to burly of historical reality. Comparing the two, one could make inferences, we can go from partial knowledge to some very well be forgiven for thinking these spoke of two form of fuller knowledge. Implicit in this argument is one separate realities rather than the singular travails of a of Plato’s most powerful and seductive idea that there exist complicated present. ‘forms’—the most real unchanging things of the world—out This schizoid response regarding our comprehension of there. During the course of history, this conceit of a perfect the present is not new. In one of Plato’s more famous dialogues model of transcendent reality on the basis of which we ought called Meno—named after yet another of Socrates’ seemingly to structure our quest for knowledge, our ethical behaviour inexhaustible supply of preening but witless interlocutors—is has found many champions including in religious doctrines. an eponymous dilemma that is often called Meno’s Paradox. Nietzsche famously remarked in his aphorisms, to the effect, The bland opening gambit of that dialogue—‘Can you tell that Muhammad was a Plato who succeeded. me Socrates, can virtue be taught?’—is met with the standard Nearly 2,400 years after Plato, the great German philosopher Socratic defence wherein the old master declares happily: ‘I Martin Heidegger—early on in his career, before he joined blame myself for my complete ignorance about virtue.’ Then, and later left the Nazi party—made a case for a ‘different kind having defanged any expectation, he solicits Meno—a callow of knowledge’. To him, our understanding of the world was

14 27 july 2020 one far removed from the highminded ideals and forms that Socrates spoke of—that occupy much of time and much of our life. In fact, for Heidegger, it was the very study of this ‘average everydayness’ that allows us to intuit who we are as beings. But this ‘everydayness’ doesn’t— unlike the forms—stand outside time. In fact, our experience of the present is situated within ‘time’, within history itself. There are no forms, no mental models, into which we can reach to discover—as Socrates told Meno—the nature of what we think valuable, who we are, what our roles in society are or who we are as a collective at a particular point in time. Our presence and roles are mediated by history. Time flows through our being and we become the site of revelation. The natural question that arises is how is one to go about studying this everydayness of life that goes beyond the models that we impose on our mental at- titudes? The answer to that comes from a technique to approach reality called ‘phenomenology’ which was developed by Heidegger’s teacher, Edmund Hus- serl. At its heart, the phenomenological approach thinks of the world, not as an approximation, but as one that we can study carefully. Phenomenology doesn’t devalue our experience in the name of some theoretical construct—be it virtue or a nation. Yet, as Naipaul writes, the challenge is often that we don’t have the vocabulary to describe what we see. To ‘see’ the world for what it truly is requires a form of careful delineation of things we take for granted Saurabh Singh Saurabh by Illustration including our own worldviews. This is a form of deconstruction, a patient study of how things are put It is activities far removed from the highminded together to allow truth to froth forth. But this ‘seeing’ ideals and forms that Socrates spoke of that doesn’t come easily. Our very experience of histories occupy much of time and much of our life. often distort, if not refract, realities and our experi- ence of it. To this end, we need to interpret carefully In fact, for Martin Heidegger, it was the very our recorded experience—what the German tradi- study of this ‘average everydayness’ that tion since Friederich Schleiermacher in 18th century has called the ‘hermeneutic’—a study of interpreta- allows us to intuit who we are as beings tions (from the Greek god of speech, Hermes). Over time, hermeneutic techniques became ways to think about human experience, history and even individu- al psychologies to uncover truth. derived from what we do, our actions, rather than what we What we are thus increasingly faced with in our public life know, our thoughts. In the second part of his famously dif- are two distinct modes of engagement with reality. One, ac- ficult text, Being and Time, he reminds us that it is precisely the centuated by television and mass media, which act like Plato’s things that are in full view, in which we live, that are hard to academies for aggrieved masses, where we rely on transcen- see. VS Naipaul writes in The Enigma of Arrival, with stirring dent models and suprahistorical claims to apprehend the pres- self-awareness, ‘I saw what I saw very clearly. But I didn’t know ent. The other is a worldview marked by an active awareness what I was looking at. I had nothing to fit it into.’ For Heidegger, of our historically contingent presence in the here and now. when faced with the efflorescence and diversity of experiences, The former relies on the dynamics of an idealised order to win Western philosophy had privileged mental exertions, reason, arguments, while the latter calls for the careful deconstruction calculation, computation over the amorphous realities of of received wisdom that leaves us aware of truth, but not the everyday life. Ironically, it was precisely these very activities— satisfaction of feeling triumphant in our clever rhetoric. n

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 15 Whisperer Jayanta Ghosal

ajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot Saving Rajasthan Rused his considerable experience as an old guard of the Congress to save his government and outwit Sachin Pilot, for the moment, at least. In this, he was helped by a Special Operations Group helmed by an additional director general of police, Ashok Rathore, an expert in intelligence gathering who is said to have been monitoring Pilot and other dissenters for several months. Rathore’s wife is also an IAS officer who was secretary to former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and that connection might also have helped. Raje was not in favour of Pilot joining the BJP because she allegedly sees him as a threat to her chief ministerial aspirations in the next term. Raje predict- ably denies this and joined party meetings to show her faith in the leadership. But she did not welcome or tweet in favour of Pilot. Delhi, meanwhile, instructed the BJP state president to issue a statement and several BJP leaders, too, said in public they would be happy if Pilot joined their party. Pilot used to frequent Delhi often and was in touch with the BJP. He recently met several Members of Parliament (MPs) in a hotel between Jaipur and Delhi. The Gehlot camp is claiming they have a pendrive where Pilot can be seen talking to them about switching over to the BJP. Gehlot has been briefing Congress president Sonia Gandhi about all this but Pilot has denied the allegations.

Power Play fter the cabinet expansion, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj ASingh Chouhan is on a different mission to fortify his position in the party against Jyotiraditya Scindia, who got most of his former Congressmen ministerships. Recently, a senior Congress leader and Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA), Pradyuman Singh Lodhi, joined the BJP. Interestingly, he is not close to Scindia and it was Chouhan who brought him in. He is also trying to bring in another set of Congress MLAs who were not in the Scindia camp.

16

Illustrations by Saurabh Singh

Gen-Next Crisis Keeping n the Congress, Rahul Gandhi is facing a Bangladesh Ibig problem with leaders of his generation, Close as exemplified by the Sachin Pilot revolt. The party high command is realising that several of fter the standoff with China in these leaders are upset and the BJP is in touch A Ladakh, the Prime with them. RPN Singh, Jitin Prasada, Milind Minister wants to give Deora, Jitendra Singh, Tushar Chaudhary, all more importance to form part of this group. Jyotiraditya Scindia, neighbours. In Doklam, who himself was one of them before going to it was Bhutan that the the BJP, is reportedly actively trying to make Chinese were targeting. The recent Nepal experience was not them defect too. Another rumour says these good either. Intelligence reports leaders are thinking of floating a new party reportedly say China is active at the national level. Even P Chidambaram’s in Bangladesh. Last year, Prime son Karti recently tweeted: ‘Why is @Google Minister Sheikh Hasina had a successful company? Because it lets visited China. Chinese talent to become entrepreneurial within the engineers are also construct- ing a bridge over the river organisation. Lessons to be learnt here.’ It is Padma and giving huge being seen as a message to his party about financial assistance too. China giving importance to youth leaders now. is also modernising a Bangladeshi port. The Prime Minister’s Office felt there should be a proactive high commissioner. So External Affairs Minister Attention Bengal S Jaishankar is sending Vikram Doraiswami, a seasoned Indian n West Bengal, there are whispers about Foreign Service officer, to Dhaka. He Ihow the BJP is trying to break the Trinamool had been an additional secretary in charge Congress. Suvendu Adhikari, the young of Bangladesh and Myanmar. A lot of transport minister in the Mamata Banerjee expectation rides on him to keep Dhaka away from Beijing, and on Delhi’s side. cabinet, may be the prime target. Adhikari is said to be in constant touch with the BJP. He is from Midnapore district where Haldia port is located. The buzz is he is close to an Covid Embarrassment industrialist with interests in ports and also n Karnataka, a corruption scandal related a BJP favourite. Another theory doing the Ito pandemic management has become an rounds is that Adhikari got a notice from the embarrassment for the BJP government. A Enforcement Directorate in connection with gang has been found to be selling an old chit fund scam. Trinamool leaders feel government beds for Covid patients. Stories he may join the BJP to get the case diluted. in local papers also talk of corruption in the supply of medical kits. Chief Minister BS Adhikari has deep pockets and influence over Yediyurappa is upset with these develop- Bengal’s digital media. He is also very popular. ments and has asked the health minister for a The BJP might make him their face to counter report. Even the Centre is concerned and the Banerjee. Adhikari has, however, told Banerjee PMO reportedly communicated a message of zero tolerance for such corruption. not to believe the rumours and that he would always be with her party. 27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 17 open essay

By Mohan Malik

The uses of adversity How China brings India and America closer

he deadly clashes between Chinese and Indian forces have led to a military face-off along their disputed Himalayan border. Several rounds of talks have produced an agreement on disengagement of forces deployed in eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation. Still, there is no agreement on de-escalation that will result in the withdrawal of forces, heavy armour, tanks and artillery deployed close to the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Neither side rules out the possibility of a limited war. The worst-case scenario is a two-front war involving three nuclear-armed adversaries—China and Pakistan on one side and India on the other. Exposing and exploiting vulnerabilities of enemies is part of traditional Chinese statecraft. Beijing has deep mistrust of India’s strategic ambitions, seeing its southern rival as a potential peer competitor that must be kept in check. An unsettled border provides China the strategic leverage to keep India uncertain about its intentions and nervous about its capabilities, while demanding New Delhi’s ‘good behaviour’ on issues of concern to Beijing. Despite tectonic shifts in world politics, the basic elements of China’s ‘contain India’ policy—encircle, entangle andT envelop—to pre-empt India’s rise as a peer competitor, have not changed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political consolidation in Kashmir and Ladakh threatens China’s western expansion (for example, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) through Pakistani-held Kashmir. Besides, Chinese leaders and diplomats have discerned a certain degree of assertiveness and overconfidence in their Indian counterparts missing under previous governments. Beijing sees India as a ‘spoiler state’—backed by the US, Japan and others—seeking to sabotage Chairman Xi Jinping’s ‘Chinese Dream’ and overturn the regional balance of power. As in the 1950s, India is once again seen as a growing, ambitious power courted by the West with whom China will have to have a day of reckoning. The well-planned intrusions by Chinese soldiers at multiple points across the LAC are from the old playbook. Forces are de- ployed cunningly at a time and place of Beijing’s choosing when the enemy is down or distracted, assuring surprise and overwhelm- ing force. My book China and India: Great Power Rivals, published a decade ago, had discussed the possibility of bite-sized territorial grabs by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA): ‘The irony is that China and India could stumble into another war in the future for the same reasons that led them to a border war half a century ago in 1962.’ Plus ça change. Even as the whole world is reeling from the death and devastation caused by the virus, Beijing has unleashed its military from the Himalayan borders to Indonesia’s Natuna island waters, from the East China Sea to the South China Sea to assert and reinforce Beijing’s spurious sovereignty claims. Beijing’s strategic opportunism and attempts to shift the territorial status quo amidst a global pandemic have reinforced historic fears about the Middle Kingdom’s ‘insatiable lust for territory’ and its image as a perennial ‘creeping aggressor’. Despite a 6.3 per cent contraction in China’s economy in the first quarter, Beijing has increased military spending by 6.6 per cent.

18 27 july 2020 Illustration by Saurabh Singh

The US and allies would now find New Delhi much more receptive to militarising the Quad and expanding it to include likeminded ‘China-wary’ countries—South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and New Zealand. Already, following the India-Australia virtual summit and the conclusion of a logistics pact, Delhi is stepping up naval cooperation with Canberra

Apparently, Beijing sees the narrow ‘strategic window of the “Chinese virus” has sharpened the divide. The world’s two opportunity’ closing due to the global backlash against China largest economies are locked in a new cold war. post-Covid-19. Xi seems in a rush to realise his ‘Chinese Dream’ In the new cold war between China and America, India and lock in China’s geostrategic gains. In a speech in April has emerged as a frontline state. Chinese state media has been 2020, he said: “Great steps in history have always emerged voicing its strong opposition to Delhi’s growing tilt towards from the crucible of major disasters.” Washington in recent years. In April, Beijing watched warily the Every crisis has unintended consequences. The US could convening of an informal US-led grouping (comprising India, Ja- benefit from the Sino-Indian conflict in theH imalayas. As in pan, Australia, Vietnam, South Korea and New Zealand), dubbed India, more than two-thirds of the American public holds a the ‘Quad Plus’, to coordinate their responses to the pandemic. negative view of China across the political spectrum. China The Chinese military’s ‘maximum pressure at multiple is perceived as a hostile power. There is a widespread sense of points’ strategy vis-à-vis its southern rival is clearly aimed at betrayal and backstabbing. Cooperation and engagement have the Finlandisation of India in Cold War 2.0. Beijing seeks to given way to talk of containment and competition. Sino-Amer- deny India a peaceful environment essential to realising its ican relations were in a downward spiral even before the global economic developmental goals that would narrow the power health and economic crises erupted. A degree of ‘decoupling’ gap with China. When Japan and the US offered financial was already underway, caused by a trade and technology war, assistance to help their companies relocate manufacturing out ideological hostility and geopolitical competition. President of China post-Covid-19, the Chinese media poured scorn on Donald Trump’s characterisation of the novel coronavirus as the Indian Government’s plans to benefit from C‘ hiexit’ (the

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 19 open essay

exit of Western and Japanese multinational corporations). The nuclear powers (China and Pakistan on one side and India on coronavirus and massive military mobilisation to counter the the other) by dispatching an aircraft carrier battle group to Chinese military buildup in Ladakh have now dealt a body the eastern Indian Ocean near the Malacca Straits—if events blow to Modi’s goal of a $5-trillion economy by 2024. were to spiral out of control. Should Washington dispatch An inevitable consequence of Chinese strategic opportun- an aircraft carrier to the Bay of Bengal to deter escalation and ism and irredentism will be the forging of a tighter US-India in a show of support for India—America’s new partner in military bond. Just as the Ussuri river clashes in 1969 brought Asia—Richard Nixon would surely turn in his grave, but the US and China closer into a pact against the common Soviet Henry Kissinger would redeem himself. (During the 1971 threat, the Galwan Valley clashes in Kashmir are likely to India-Pakistan war, the Nixon-Kissinger duo had dispatched bring the US and India together to counter the common threat. an aircraft carrier to deter India and to express solidarity with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced that “the America’s newfound partner China.) In return, the US could Chinese threat to India and Southeast Asia is one of the reasons gain significant insights into the Chinese military’s tactical the US is reducing its troop presence in Europe”. Trump has and operational planning, force mobilisation and logistics. offered SU mediation in the Sino-Indian military standoff. Washington would also find a larger market in India for However, mediation is not an option, deterrence is. advanced military technology and weapons sales as Delhi The US has deployed three carrier battle groups in the seeks to reduce hardware dependence on Moscow. The rapid Pacific to deter China in the South China Sea and to resist Xi’s mobilisation of the Chinese military across several zones in Taiwan temptations. Mark Meadows, the White House Chief a very short period of time points to the need for augmenting of Staff, told Fox News: “Our military might stands strong and space-based and high-altitude ground-based ISR (intelligence, will continue to stand strong, whether it’s in relationship to a surveillance and reconnaissance) systems and sensors. conflict between India and China or anywhere else.” The US China’s military moves in the Himalayas present an oppor- could deter the outbreak of a two-front war involving three tunity for Washington to show solidarity with its new strategic partner and operationalise the military dimension of the Quad in defence of its Indo-Pacific strategy. Plans to fortify the US naval, air and ground-based opera- Should Washington dispatch an aircraft carrier to the tions throughout the region will gain Bay of Bengal to deter escalation and in a show of momentum. The US navy has stepped up the frequency of freedom of naviga- support for India, Richard Nixon would surely turn in his tion operations (FONOPs) in the East grave, but Henry Kissinger would redeem himself and South China Seas to disabuse Bei- jing of the notion that these are China’s internal or territorial waters. The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act is likely to sanction the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI) to reassure US allies and partners and help build their deter- rent capabilities. The US Indo-Pacific Command plans to spend $20 billion to more fully disperse troops, roll out new advanced weaponry, deploy long-range cruise and ballistic missile systems to close a missile gap with China and create a network of joint training ranges across the Indo-Pacific. Furthermore, the US and allies would now find Delhi much more receptive to militarising the Quad and expanding it to include likeminded ‘China-wary’ countries (South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and New Zealand). Mao Zedong and Henry Kissinger Already, following the India-Australia in Beijing, October 21, 1975 virtual summit and the conclusion of a logistics pact, Delhi is stepping up Photos getty images

20 27 july 2020 The US could gain significant insights into the Chinese military’s tactical and operational planning, force mobilisation and logistics. Washington would also find a larger market in India for advanced military technology and weapons sales

Mark Meadows, White House Chief of Staff Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State naval cooperation with Canberra in the eastern Indian Ocean ing. Even before the pandemic, the OBOR projects seemed (centred round India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands and to have lost sheen. The Quad countries are coordinating on Australia’s Cocos islands). An invitation to Australia to join the tactics and strategy to offer an alternative vision of develop- US-India Malabar naval exercise is the next logical step. In a ment finance to ensure that the end of China’s century of clear signal to Beijing, the Japanese and Indian navies conduct- humiliation does not usher in a century of humiliation for ed a joint naval exercise in late June while the US has offered poor and small developing counties led by corrupt, unsavoury to train fighter jet pilots from India, Japan and Australia at the regimes. As Pompeo remarked: “We are banding together with Anderson Air Force Base in Guam. There is also talk of broad- the likeminded nations like Australia, India, Japan and South ening intelligence cooperation amongst Five Eyes (America, Korea to make sure that each Indo-Pacific nation can protect its Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand) to include Japan sovereignty from coercion. It’s part of a greater commitment to and India. The US has already been sharing intelligence with a free and open order.” India on the PLA’s capabilities and strengths and weaknesses of The collateral damage from the Sino-Indian conflict would new military hardware as well as doctrine in order to provide manifest itself in several forms. A major rupture in Sino-Indian a holistic picture of the battlefield operating environment. and Chinese-American relations would crystallise fluid, That is, security concerns about Chinese aggressive behaviour soft-balancing relationships into hard alignments. The days regarding territorial disputes will lead the Quad to cooperate in of ‘Chindia’, ‘Chimerica’, ‘South-South Cooperation’ or ‘Asian unprecedented ways to ensure that the Western Pacific and the Century’ and, more importantly, unregulated globalisation are northern Indian Ocean do not fall under Chinese hegemony. definitely over. Should there be a war in the Himalayas, China At the ideational level, in the broader contest of values and could emerge as a much weakened and isolated power in a visions, China’s vision of a power-and-hierarchy-based order multipolar world with a more regulated or guided globalisa- is pitted against the law-and-rule-based vision for a Free and tion. Prolonged economic slowdown caused by the pandemic Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). The concerns and anxieties about and/or war, potentially made worse by the ‘Chiexit’ (the Beijing’s mercantilist policies, unresolved territorial and mari- exodus of MNCs from China), could even threaten the stability time disputes and strategic mistrust of China have spurred of China’s one-party regime. India, Japan and the US to draft their own infrastructure initia- Just as the post-World War II era was very different from tives in a bid to prevent more countries in the Indo-Pacific from the pre-World War II order and the post-Cold War order was falling under Beijing’s sway. Washington would gain Delhi’s different from the Cold War order, the post-Wuhan world support in reforming old institutions such as the World Health order will be markedly different from the pre-Wuhan one. Organization and the World Trade Organization, and form- Meanwhile, the risk of miscalculation lies with the Chinese ing new ones. The proposal to transform the G-7 into D-10 (a military overestimating its strength—and the rest of the world concert of 10 democratic nations) is a case in point. China’s underestimating Beijing’s ambitions, power and purpose. attempts to establish a Sino-centric unipolar order are likely With ‘Chindia’ on a war footing and decoupling economically, to be frustrated by the Quadrilateral grouping of democra- the much-touted ‘Pacific Century’ is likely to be neither pacific cies and others whose interests lie in keeping the Indo-Pacific nor Asian, but just another bloody century. n multipolar where Chinese power is balanced by continued US power and presence and those of other Asian states. Mohan Malik is a Sinologist and the author of China and India: Last but not least, Xi’s signature initiative, One Belt One Great Power Rivals and editor of Maritime Security in the Road (OBOR), will face new hurdles from the Quad-Plus group- Indo-Pacific: Perspectives from China, India and the US

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 21 Cover story Self-Reliance in a Brave New World By Siddharth Singh

n 2004, after more than 50 years spent on arguing free trade and free enterprise, the econom- ics Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson did a table- turning of sorts. In a paper that year, he showed in textbook fashion how free trade could, under cer- tain circumstances, have negative consequences for a rich country that had benefited from a much poorer exporter. His hypothetical example in- volved the US importing a good produced cheaply in China. 2004 was a presidential election year and Samuelson’s arguments got traction. It was not until af- Iter the political heat dissipated that the three champions of free trade—Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya and TN Srinivasan—gently rebutted his claim. Another decade elapsed before these debates were to

Illustration by Saurabh Singh 22 Self-Reliance in a Brave New World Cover story

finally see some political action. By 2015, when Donald Trump aged and that makes countries turn inward. The last time that was on the rise, the reality could no longer be ignored: the happened, after the crash of 1929, it took a war and nearly five widespread feeling that the US had been ‘cheated’ by countries decades to end protectionism. The domestic mismanagement like China became unshakeable. In the years ahead, there were of an open world in the advanced economies where laissez trade wars and world trade entered a very uncertain phase. It is faire attitudes percolated in domestic politics as well—leave another matter that economists knew all along that free trade the losers to their own fate—unhinged the system in just a had distributional consequences; that there were winners and quarter century. losers and some form of compensation for the latter was es- Is India staring at such a world? It is unlikely that India sential if a political backlash was to be stopped. In the US that will turn into a protectionist haven. The key concern for poli- did not happen. The top 1 per cent garnered all the gains; the cymakers after China’s wayward behaviour is to keep vital bottom 50 per cent exacted its revenge. supply chains within India. There is some strategic logic to If in the US it was distributional issues that put free trade in it. The fear that the huge disparity in trade will feed China’s a fix, in India the culprit is a big and aggressive neighbour that war machine cannot be dismissed in a country that lost terri- has enjoyed overwhelming trade advantage with India. China tory with a catastrophic war with its overbearing neighbour. hardly buys anything while it sells everything to India. In nor- What is interesting about Atmanirbhar Bharat is that it revives mal times, this did not matter. But then a pandemic and a border skir- mish intervened. No Prime Min- Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers his ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ speech, May 12 ister, least of all Narendra Modi, could ignore the consequences of this skewed trade pattern. When coronavirus cases hit India, the country was left scrambling for vital medical supplies, from some- thing as basic as personal protec- tive equipment (PPE) to specialised items like ventilators. It was also worth noting that a huge part of India’s pharmaceutical supplies, especially the active pharmaceu- tical ingredients for drug formu- lations, were manufactured in China. Suddenly, it seemed that the adage ‘trade is good but imports are bad’ had some truth to it. In a widely discussed speech delivered on May 12th, Modi said: “The state of the world today teaches us that an Atmanirbhar Bharat (‘Self-reliant India’) is the only path. It is said in our scrip- tures—EshahPanthah—that is self- sufficient India.” One could dis- cern concerns about China—that became manifest a month later in mid-June when 20 Indian soldiers died in a clash in the Galwan Val- ley—but also the protectionist tendencies that had emerged in the global economy. A protection- ist world has economic and politi- cal pathologies built into it. For ex- ample, in such a world, importers tend to lose as exports are discour- pib

24 27 july 2020 some old debates, such as the one about the ‘home market’, private sector is unlikely to be given a free run. In any case, the at a time when most people had forgotten them. The issue of Thatcher-Reagan ideological positions never found favour in escaping a middle income trap—where demand saturates India except in the hearts of some ideologues. For good or for and, in turn, growth stagnates—is now an important one bad, India always had a mixed economy. after India has seen multiple years of tepid growth. Should There is evidence that, willy-nilly, some of the economic the objective of high growth be attained by promoting trade irrationalities that go back to the socialist era are being undone vigorously or should India’s potentially huge domestic mar- during the pandemic, nearly 73 years on. In her announce- ket be tapped? It is also a question of relative buying power ments on the Atmanirbhar Bharat programme, Finance Min- among different segments of Indian consumers, one that is ister Nirmala Sitharaman spelled out a number of changes exceptionally skewed towards the uppermost decile of con- that redefined the scope of Medium Small and Micro Enter- sumers. It is fascinating to note that in this emerging debate, prises (MSMEs). The original proving ground of Gandhian leftists of a certain persuasion are in favour of an open India economics, the MSME sector had not only become stunted while it is a conservative Government that seeks to develop due to perverse incentives. The moment an enterprise grew the ‘home market’. beyond a certain scale, the help it received from government In the two months since the Prime Minister’s speech, vanished. This was by design: India needed its ‘village-scale in- plenty of concerns—some bordering on dustrial enterprises’ and economic le- panic—have been raised on the idea of vers in the government’s hands were Atmanirbhar Bharat. These should not be going to ensure that. It does not take dismissed out of hand even as one should China hardly buys too much thinking to understand be clear that a return to the command why India never got its mittelstand, and control economic system that pre- anything while it sells the backbone of Germany’s industrial vailed between 1952 and 1991 is unlikely. wonder. Indian MSMEs had to adhere At Independence, India had under- everything to India. No to an ideological nostrum; output and gone 190 years of unbroken rule by the Prime Minister, least productivity were not there in the British. The experience of this time cast equation at all. In the times ahead, a huge shadow on the economic system of all Narendra Modi, this is likely to change. that India chose after 1947. Some of the could ignore the Where India needs to be cautious salient features were: One: a resolve on Atmanirbhar Bharat is in not going against free trade, a system that nation- consequences of this overboard. It ought to be a pragmatic alists since Dadabhai Naoroji had held ideal to cope with the world’s chang- to be exploitative and responsible for skewed trade pattern ing economic landscape. Ideological the alleged de-industrialisation of India. formulations, ones that have been Two: the belief that foreign investment so damaging to India’s economic for- was a bad idea, based on the—wrong— tunes, need to be avoided. It should not experience of British capital invest- be forgotten that India achieved high ments in railways and other sectors. growth rates at that time when it en- Three: a general suspicion of the private gaged openly and confidently with the sector, especially after 1952, as profit was world. Three issues in particular need considered a ‘dirty word’. Four: ‘Planning was in the air.’ It was to be kept in mind. First, self-reliance should not be confounded believed without planning and ‘marshalling of national re- with self-sufficiency. The latter is a product of an imagination sources,’ India could not be developed and its mass poverty that will take India into an economic rabbit hole. At no point could not be eradicated. should India close its doors to foreign capital, ideas and tech- Fast forward to the time of Atmanirbhar Bharat and virtu- nology. Second, government should never get into the game of ally all these factors are observed in reverse. The last item— picking losers and winners among business enterprises. That suspicion of the private sector—illustrates this best. India, path leads to inefficiency and cronyism. Third, there is little it seems, has taken Deng Xiaoping’s adage “It doesn’t matter doubt that global trade is weakening. Trade wars, protection- if a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice” to heart. ism and all the pathologies that were once thought to have been This is a politically incorrect example for these times, but banished have returned with a bang. Yet, in spite of all these it is unlikely that the private sector will be discriminated problems, India and Indian firms need to keep exploring and against if India makes a full-hearted attempt at self-reliance finding new export markets. That is the only way to ensure that in the years ahead. There is simply too much of accumulated foreign investment continues to flow into India without caus- economic and administrative experience to show that what ing macroeconomic problems down the road. India has always the private sector can achieve, the public sector cannot. In displayed export pessimism for a long time and the idea keeps certain sectors, it is the public sector that can deliver and the on appearing in different forms. This ought to be banished. n

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Homemade From Reliance Jio’s Made-in-India 5G plan to the recent boom in desi apps and PPE manufacturing, Indian industry gets ready for a swadeshi turn By Lhendup G Bhutia

our years ago, Mukesh Ambani trans- billion, and will also work together to develop an entry-level formed the communications industry in the smartphone capable of running 5G phones. His speech with country by providing a mobile service at prices its ‘Made-in-India’, ‘Made-for-India’ and ‘Made-for-the-World’ thought unbelievable until it happened. Now products had the touch of the Government’s ‘Atmanirbhar he has spelt out where he would steer Reliance Bharat’ push. “I believe that the time has come,” he said, “for Jio and possibly the country’s digital fortunes. a truly global digital product and services company to emerge Appearing online on Reliance Industries’ an- from India, and to be counted among the best in the world.” nual general meeting on July 15th—share- Reliance Jio Platforms may be one of the most prominent holders could participate virtually through examples of this swadeshi turn but other sectors are also rid- Fthe company’s recently launched video conferencing service ing the train. Far away from the large cities, the thousands of JioMeet—Ambani revealed that Jio has developed a ‘complete small garment manufacturing units in Tiruppur had fallen 5G solution’, using entirely Indian technologies and solutions. silent once Covid-19 broke out across the globe. The economy Not only will Jio launch a 5G service in India, he said, it will of what is known as the knitwear capital of India—whose also look to export these solutions to other telecom operators 10,000 small and large garment manufacturing units in Tamil globally. He also unveiled a slew of services, from a mega video- Nadu are said to account for over 90 per cent of India’s cotton streaming platform that will bring all OTT services under one knitwear exports, many for some of the world’s most famous umbrella; broadband services for small and large enterprises; clothing brands—had collapsed. No new orders were coming a mixed reality glass, Jio Glass, which can bring teachers and in; even the old ones were being cancelled. In the early part of students together in 3D virtual rooms to conduct holographic the lockdown, some of the garment manufacturers began to classes; and there were also more details on its ambitious idea get calls from the Government. “The district administration of using WhatsApp and JioMart to connect customers directly was asking us if we could make some PPE [personal protec- to kirana stores. But most importantly, the rumoured invest- tive equipment] suits for hospitals in our area,” says Raja M ment by Google turned out to be true. Google was going to Shanmugham, the president of the Tiruppur Exporters’ As- pick up a 7.7 per cent stake in Reliance Jio Platforms for $4.5 sociation. “None of us here knew what a PPE was... But we said,

28 27 july 2020 Illustration by Saurabh Singh 27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 29 Cover story

“There is a study which shows one out of three Android users in India constantly looks at which app or photo to delete to make space for more photos and apps” – rajneel Kumar, business head— expansion projects & head products, ZEE5

“Right now, there are about 40 lakh users creating about 12 million videos on Roposo daily. I keep telling people, there has never been a bigger moment for India’s digital startups” Workers stitch PPE suits in Kolkata during the first phase of the lockdown – Avinash saxena, co-founder of Roposo and vice president of Glance ‘Of course, if it has to do with garments, we can do it.” A PPE market was virtually nonexistent in the country then. A small number of firms manufactured medical wear such as gowns worn in hospitals, but no Indian company re- ally made body suits such as PPEs, ones which are seam-sealed “Earlier, we went and designed to make their wearers safe from any potential by European infection. There was panic all around. A surge of cases was expected. China, which makes the most number of PPEs in the specifications for world, was also beginning to impose restrictions on the export PPE suits. So you of this garment. This was also the time when images began to appear of doctors in small Indian towns and cities—without had coveralls which the availability of PPEs—treating Covid-19 positive patients were just too large and wearing raincoats. The garment manufacturers in Tiruppur such long pants. We had to do started in a small way. After learning the process of manufac- turing these garments and getting their samples approved, everything from scratch” at first only a few units started making these PPEs. “But the orders kept coming in. From other districts, then other states. – roshan baid, managing director, So we had to keep expanding,” Shanmugham says. “It started Paragon Apparels as a completely humanitarian gesture. But we soon realised

30 27 july 2020 and with it many manufacturers believe an entire new indus- try, one they hadn’t ever considered before, has now emerged. India now has, according to a report by Invest India, the coun- try’s investment promotion agency, a Rs 7,000-crore (nearly $1 billion) PPE market. The report also points that the global PPE industry, valued at $52.7 billion, is expected to touch $92.5 bil- lion by 2025. Not all PPE manufacturers are, however, pleased. Shanmugham claims that constant new rules around PPE manufacturing is leading to PPE kits, earlier cleared for their safety, now being rejected. “Exports of PPE kits won’t pick up because only [export of] PPE coveralls are being allowed right now. Not masks, for instance. Clients abroad want to buy it in totality. Not piecemeal,” he says.

ith new consumer needs emerging following the lockdown, many companies saw an opportunity. W Food delivery platforms turned into grocery suppliers to provide contactless purchases of essentials. Some firms, like the Indian edtech firm Think and Learn which runs the app Byju’s, are seeing enormous numbers turn to their app. The most crucial need, of course, has been around that of health- care. In the absence of any new drug or vaccine to combat Co- vid-19, Indian scientists and healthcare professionals have been trying to rediscover and repurpose old drugs. But they have veered from the potential benefits of one old drug to an- other, often driven by very little scientific evidence. Expectedly, there have been shortages. The most recent be- ing around the drug Remdesivir, originally developed by the American biotechnology firm Gilead Sciences for use against Ebola fever. Till about a week back, a vial of Remdesivir, priced at about Rs 5,400 per vial, was being sold, according to reports, getty images for as high as Rs 40,000 in the black market. The Indian pharma companies, Cipla and Hetero, having separately entered into licensing agreements with Gilead Sciences, are now ramping this could be a business opportunity too.” up the production of their versions of the drug. There have been In all, Shanmugham estimates, around 150 to 200 garment worries over other drugs too. Many Indian drug companies, manufacturers churned out somewhere close to three million for instance, began working upon Favipiravir, an old Japanese PPE suits (which included, apart from the full body coveralls, drug that is now off-patent. Glenmark Pharmaceutical acquired masks, gloves, head and shoes covers). “There was a lot of panic permissions to produce its version of the drug last month. An- in those days,” Shanmugham says, “I used to tell the govern- other firm, Lasa Supergenerics, which produces APIs (active ment authorities, ‘Don’t worry. If it becomes a problem, we at pharmaceutical ingredients) for veterinary medicine is also Tiruppur can make enough PPEs for the entire country.’” But awaiting permissions to be able to use the API of the drug for it wasn’t just the garment manufacturers of Tiruppur. Across the Indian market. “We started working on the drug in March, the country, both large and small manufacturers, from spe- right when we came to know it was a drug of interest. We didn’t cialists in niche clothing products like sportswear to those want to take a chance where it might later prove crucial but it making pieces for the world’s largest clothing brands, from isn’t widely available,” says Omkar Herlekar, the Chairman of companies like the Aditya Birla Group and Arvind Mills to Lasa Supergenerics. Without permissions yet to make the drug small-time manufacturers working out of industrial clus- available in India, Herlekar is currently exporting the API of ters, began to make PPEs. For a market that didn’t exist three the drug to other countries like Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and Iran. months ago, India is now believed to have become the world’s The most sudden opportunity however arrived, not be- second largest producer of PPE suits. A few weeks ago, satisfied cause of Covid-19, but the border skirmish with China, when that there was likely to be no shortage in the near future, the the Indian Government banned a number of Chinese-owned Government even lifted the embargo on export of PPE suits apps, most notably, that of TikTok’s. Overnight, an estimated

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 31 Cover story

200 million users of TikTok in India were up for grabs. A apps],” says Rajneel Kumar, Business Head (Expansion Projects number of new and old Indian apps have since tried to cap- & Head Products), ZEE5. “Just one destination [app] with mul- ture this market. Among them, the most established is that tiple uses would be ideal.” ZEE5’s version of the hypershort- of Roposo. The platform had already been growing rapidly form video platform called HiPi, Kumar says, will be launched reaching about 50 million users, according to Avinash Saxena, in about a month’s time. Interestingly, it will exist within the the cofounder of Roposo and Vice President of Glance (the ZEE5 app. While this will allow it to leverage ZEE5’s existing company that acquired Roposo last year). But in the weeks active user base of about 80 million, the platform will also after the ban on TikTok, it has shot up to 75 million users. By seek to attract other users. Kumar says they have already got the month-end, they expect to reach 100 million. “Right now, around 300 established social media influencers to help them there are about 40 lakh users creating about 12 million videos woo these users. More, he says, will come soon. on Roposo daily,” he says. Roposo, however, is quite different The potential of Indian businesses in making swadeshi from TikTok. It does not have a singular feed of short videos, more than just a slogan can be seen in the example of Roshan but multiple ones. “What happens with a single feed is that Baid. As managing director of Paragon Apparels. Baid runs one the content becomes very monolithic. of the largest sportswear manufactur- You will see just one or two kinds of ing companies in the country, his four content pieces. The same lip-sync units employing around 4,500 indi- format again and again,” Saxena says. Across the country, viduals producing goods for several Roposo has hyper short videos international brands and also his own from around 30 channels, based on both large and small label, Alcis Sports. He became one of diverse interests such as films, news, manufacturers, began the earliest manufacturers of PPEs in humour and devotion, in about 12 the country. His units already owned languages to chose from. The plat- to make PPEs. For a around three hot air seam-sealing form was acquired by InMobi group’s market that didn’t exist machines, an item that is considered Glance last year. Glance, which push- crucial in making PPE suits safe for es content through locked phone three months ago, India its wearers. Now he had 17 more ma- screens, is backed by, among others, chines imported. There were consid- PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Through is now believed to have erable challenges. Although he was Glance, Saxena says, Roposo finds an- become the world’s able to secure permissions to operate other outlet to deliver its content. He one of his units during lockdown, is expectedly thrilled with the recent second largest producer he had to convince his employees to turn of events in the tech sector. “I keep return to work. He then had to send telling people, there has never been a of PPE suits his samples all the way to South India greater moment for India’s digital Textile Research Association in Co- startups,” he says. imbatore, an industry body, to have Others are joining this technologi- them approved. Many of the early cal race in the creation of desi apps. The samples were rejected. But Baid kept most prominent is Ambani’s JioMeet, working on it, he says, till they had got a video conferencing app that looks it right. “You have to understand all uncannily like Zoom. With the recent this was just so new. We didn’t even investments and its suite of many apps, either developed or in have Indian specifications to go by,” Baid says. “Earlier, we the works, many have begun to wonder if Ambani might not went by European specifications. So you had coveralls which eventually create a super-app like China’s ‘one-stop shop’ app were just too large and such long pants. We had to do every- WeChat where a user can do multiple things, from hailing a cab thing from scratch.” At one point, Baid’s manufacturing unit or making payments for purchases to chatting with friends and was making between 8,000 to 10,000 PPE suits daily. a host of other things without once exiting the app. Within the Indian market, there has also been a profusion The streaming platform Zee5 is also working towards be- of poor-quality PPE suits. “These are made of laminated mate- coming an Indian super-app. The platform already streams rial. So not only is it risky, it becomes unbearable for its wear- original movies, TV shows and live news. Recently, they added ers,” Baid says. According to him, this is still a new industry, a gaming platform within their app. Now they want to come and gradually more checks and balances will come in place. up with an Indian answer to TikTok. “There has been an ex- Baid is currently in the process of getting some of his products plosion in the Indian smartphone market. But not all smart- exported. Even when some semblance of normalcy returns phones are born alike... There [is a study] which shows one and his apparel business resumes large-scale operations, he out of three Android users in India constantly look at what will continue to produce PPE kits. “It is really quite amazing. app or photo to delete [to make space for more photos and Most of us didn’t know a thing about PPEs,” says Baid. n

32 27 july 2020 While Inside Look Outside For FREE With access visit www.openthemagazine.com Cover story

Essay

The Inward Gaze The evolution of self-reliance from Gandhi’s village ideal to Modi’s national vision

By Madhavankutty Pillai

34 27 july 2020 Illustration by Saurabh Singh

house is said to be self-sufficient if it has a Government was announcing victory with Modi saying that toilet attached to it. This might not have been 11 crore toilets had been built and 60 crore Indians had ben- true a few decades ago but is accepted as self-evi- efited. And yet, while this was true, there was an unspoken dent today, which also indicates how the idea of footnote, which demonstrated how difficult it is in India for sufficiency can metamorphose. What had been policy to meet objective. The structure of a toilet is a neces- perfectly normal for thousands of years—going sary, but not a sufficient, condition for it to be used. It needs into the backyard or field with a vessel contain- water supply, electricity, sewage disposal— and providing Aing water—becomes a symbol of backwardness. This was those everywhere are much more gargantuan challenges. As why Prime Minister Narendra Modi, immediately after first a result, there have been scores of reports of how these newly coming to power, instituted a policy of toilets for all. It was constructed toilets are not used, with villagers often turning a prime element in the Swachh Bharat campaign. Crores of them into storage spaces. Self-sufficiency is a composite; all houses were going to get toilets and, where it was not possible, pegs of the tripod must stand together for it to work. at least everyone would get access to them. Even a year ago, the Toilets—which he made a principle of cleaning himself—

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 35 Cover story

Essay

getty images were not a big feature of Mahatma Gandhi’s prescriptions, but sanitation and personal hygiene were. Where available, he thought toilets must be as clean as drawing rooms and open defecation, according to him, even though a cause of many diseases, was also fixed by adopting good practices like covering the faeces in a pit or converting it to manure through compost. It was, for that time, more practical than construct- ing a toilet in every home but even that didn’t quite succeed because people just couldn’t take the effort. Such cheap and easy solutions were part of Gandhi’s larger view on how India could and should become self-sufficient by making its villages self-sufficient. In the Sevagram Ashram’s website, there is a page on Gandhi’s economic ideas gleaned from his various writings. It has a subhead on self-sufficiency at the top fol- lowed by his quote: ‘Man is not born to live in isolation but is essentially a social animal independent and inter-dependent. No one can or should ride on another’s back. If we try to work out necessary conditions for such a life, we are forced to the conclusion that the unit of society should be a village or call it a manageable small group of people who would, in the ideal, be self-sufficient [in the matter of their vital requirements] as a unit and bound together in bonds of mutual co-operation and interdependence…In other words, there should be equal- ity between the town-dwellers and villages in the standard of food and drink, clothing and other living conditions. In order to realize this equality today people should be able to produce their own necessaries of life, i.e., clothing, foodstuffs, dwellings counterproductive to the ends it is designed to attain. Much of and lighting and water.’ human history stands testament to it. For most of its existence, the pre-colonial world did practice a form of self-sufficiency and the result was near-zero growth e thus makes self-sufficiency’s objective not inde- economies. Sure, you could have a Genghis Khan who went pendence from the outside world, but equality with it. conquering all over and through plunder, made the Mongols H There is also another quote contained there which puts incredibly wealthy overnight. But these were mere blips in in a rider on the concept. ‘My idea of self-sufficiency is that vil- the overall chart. The world, except perhaps for luxury goods lages must be self-sufficient in regard to food, cloth and other for a chosen elite, retreated to its hamlets, villages or towns, basic necessities. But even this can be overdone. Therefore you where the goods consumed by the vast majority didn’t change must grasp my idea properly... Self-sufficiency does not mean and, even if it did, it was in painfully slow increments. Take the narrowness. To be self-sufficient is not to be altogether self mobile phone, which when first introduced commercially, contained. In no circumstances would we be able to produce was so prohibitively expensive that only the richest in the all the things we need. So though our aim is complete self-suf- richest countries could afford it. But now most Indians, even ficiency, we shall have to get from outside the village what we those walking the poverty line, have one a few decades later. As cannot produce in the village; we shall have to produce more against this, think of inventions of the distant past, say, toilet of what we can in order thereby to obtain in exchange what we paper. The Chinese used it as far back as the 6th century CE, but are unable to produce.’ There is in that a parallel to what Modi it would become a daily feature of Western civilisation only said about his Atmanirbhar Bharat vision on July 9th at the two centuries ago, that is, more than 1,200 years later. It took India Global Week 2020: “130 crore Indians have given the call more than a millennium for toilet paper to become common. for an Atmanirbhar Bharat. A self-reliant India. Atmanirbhar According to studies by Bradford deLong, economics pro- Bharat merges domestic production and consumption with fessor from Berkeley University, the world Gross Domestic global supply chains. Atmanirbhar Bharat is not about being Product per capita remained more or less stagnant up to the self-contained, or being closed to the world. It is about being end of the 19th century and then rose steeply. It was the result self-sustaining and self-generating.” Both—Gandhi’s village of European expansionism and colonisation—an enforced glo- vision and Modi’s national one—recognise the impossibility balisation by force of arms. It changed the nature of the global of absolute self-sufficiency. Or even the desirability of such a economy, connecting it through a vast network of trade linking position. It not only does not work taken to its extreme but is goods and services from one end of the world to another. Con-

36 27 july 2020 A group of women be met by these craftsmen or tradesmen. The small trader sup- spinning khadi photographed plied the other goods which the village did not produce.’ by George Rinhart One of India’s greatest sociologists, MN Srinivas, in a paper he wrote in 1960 in the Economic & Political Weekly, however, argued that the villages were in fact part of a ‘wider economic, political and religious system’ even if they were poorly con- Cheap and easy nected by roads and monetary transactions were minimal. solutions were part ‘The appearance of isolation, autonomy and self-sufficiency was only an illusion,’ he wrote. One of the examples he gives of Gandhi’s larger view is that villages always required the services of townspeople for specialised services. He wrote: ‘Whenever they wanted to on how India could build a brick-and-mortar structure, whether it was a dwelling and should become house, a well, a hospice [dharmasala], a village meeting house [chavadi], or a pigeon-tower [chabuturi], they had to call in brick- self-sufficient by layers and lime-workers from nearby towns. They also get their gold and silver ornaments made by a town smith. Though mud making its villages pots and pans were popular in the house, the few metal vessels self-sufficient which were in use, and the immense metal utensils for cooking community dinners, were bought and repaired in the town. The florist, the tailor, the washerman, the vahivancha [gene- alogist] and the grain parcher were all to be found only in the towns and very large villages.’ If absolute self-sufficiency is impossible and never exist- ed, then what is it that is being asked for? If self-sufficiency is to be self-reliant, then what is self-reliance? If it is to be self- contained, then what is self-containment? There is no clear sider all the vegetables in your home at present. The tomato. definition once it is agreed that self-sufficiency does not mean It wasn’t even known outside the American continent till the wilful total isolation. The broad idea seems to be to somehow Europeans went and brought it first to themselves, and then be as little dependent on anyone else for one’s own growth. elsewhere, like India. The green chilli. The potato. These were But that only makes it a synonym for local manufacturing all alien to India. For thousands of years, Indians were bereft and development. And how then is that any different from of almost all the tastes that are so familiar today. Even up to a aspirations of the past? It is hard to find a satisfactory answer hundred years ago, you could divide India into rice and wheat- but we might make some headway by asking why has it be- eating silos because people ate what they grew in their region. come necessary to stress on it now. For decades, globalisation The price of self-reliance was the absence of choices. has been unquestioned because of the riches it brought in. Free Indian villages have been considered to be quasi self- movement of goods and services kept the growth of the world sufficient units up to modern times, which is probably the going. To push for self-sufficiency in such an environment ideal Gandhi wanted to go back to. In a paper in the American was to go backwards in a race where everyone was winning International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social by merely participating. Sciences, historian Hareet Kumar Meena wrote about villages But two factors have changed. One is the pandemic, which in the pre-British period: ‘The villages enjoyed a self-contained brought the interconnectedness of the world to a screeching and self-sufficing existence. One of the remarkable historians, halt as countries locked down to protect their own populations, Elphinstone had described Indian villages as “Little republics, and in isolation, what other option is possible other than self- having nearly everything they can want within themselves.” reliance? The second factor is the Chinese dropping all preten- The activities of the villages were regulated, as far as possible, sions about their global political ambitions. For the last few de- a self-propelled and self-dependent economic unit [Moreland, cades, the world’s prosperity has correlated on the shoulders 1968]. Broadly speaking, the needs of the village community of China’s cheap labour and manufacturing. Now that it is a were satisfied either within the village or by the neighbour- superpower, it wants to assert political dominance, and one of ing villages. The prime economic necessities were food and its targets is India. What started off as the US starting a trade war clothing. The majority of members of the typical village com- with China, has now also swept India in its tide. We have been munity were, therefore obvious, cultivators and weavers. The forced to turn inwards in recognition of our economic vulner- additional needs, such as, farming implements and utensils, abilities. But given that other factors remain unchanged, the were provided by the smith. The potter made pots, and the success or failure of self-sufficiency will be entirely dependent goldsmith, ornaments. The simple needs of the villager could on all that has made India a success or failure in the past. n

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 37 Politics

Sachin Pilot and Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot in Jaipur, October 2, 2019 The Jaipur Jolt Sachin Pilot becomes the face of rebellion in a party on the brink

By PR Ramesh

ven as late as 2013, Sachin Pilot—who has now raised a banner of revolt in the Congress citing irreconcilable differences with Rajasthan Chief Minister and seasoned politician Ashok Gehlot—was not among those colleagues Gandhi family scion Rahul Gandhi considered friends or close associates. This is not- withstanding his age and lineage: he was 36 then, an alumnus of Wharton and St Stephen’s and the son of the late Congress Estalwart, Rajesh Pilot. Pilot, of course, had everything going in his favour for close to a decade then: in 2004, he became the youngest Member of Parliament (MP) at 26, winning from Dausa, his father’s constituency from 1991 until his death in 2000. He became a minister in the Manmohan Singh Government in 2012. But he was yet to make it to Rahul Gandhi’s close circle of young Congress leaders. Gandhi was then friends with many others, though, including, interestingly, Pilot’s brother-in-law Omar Abdullah, who was a family friend of the Gandhis. Abdullah had all the right credentials: he was an opposition leader and didn’t pose any threat to Gandhi’s leadership. He was also well-educated, almost of the same age group, and had all the required social and cultural credentials. Among his own party colleagues, Gandhi hung out with the guitar-playing Milind De- ora and his brother when in Mumbai, a family with deep connections with cor- porate houses and industrialists. Gandhi, though, had few obvious close friends.

Photos getty images And, as it transpired soon enough, even fewer experienced and shrewd political

www.openthemagazine.com 39 Politics

advisors to guide him through what to him must have been a maze of mirrors. The equations that Gandhi had with Pilot were destined to change very soon. In fact, in a matter of months. After the re- sounding drubbing the Congress suffered in the 2014L ok Sab- ha elections, Gandhi started taking lengthy breaks on foreign shores. One of his favourite destinations was Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve, an area of wilderness frequented by the likes of Amitabh Bachchan and his family, Uddhav Thackeray, and so on. Pilot began accompanying Gandhi on these leisure trips to Masai Mara, and this newfound camaraderie did not go unno- ticed by other party leaders. By then, Pilot clearly had access to the Congress high command steered by the family matriarch Sonia Gandhi and her children much more than most others did. Over time, although Pilot’s trips to Masai Mara with Gandhi stopped, there was little doubt that he still enjoyed the latter’s trust. Pilot would presently go on to become Rajasthan’s state Congress presi- dent. After all, the family, which always rewarded its loyalists, was the unquestioned wielder of power within the Grand Old Party thanks to access to money and election funds. John Echeverri-Gent, a professor at Virginia University, who has done a study on election funding in India, has for long argued that the Nehru-Gandhi family maintained its supremacy within the Congress thanks to its control over election funds. His paper had said that the inflow of campaign finance allowed the family to centralise control. “They [the family] tend to have more access and control over this funding. Centralised campaign funding is a key feature of any dynastic political party, be it the Congress or the DMK,” he had said in an interview to Indian media. All that helped the high command eliminate the role of affiliated mass organisations in electioneering. “Because the family has access to these funds it reduced the party’s incentive to build organisa- though he yielded to pressure in late 2018. The friction between tions—affiliates—that connect with segments of civil society,” he the Chief Minister and his deputy reached a hysterical high after had said. But then, with the inflow of money slowing down since the Rajasthan police sought his answers recently about alleged the reversal of its political fortunes in 2014, things were meant to plans by the BJP to purchase Congress MLAs to bring down the take a different turn. party’s government in the state. Gehlot is also the state Home Gehlot, meanwhile, was someone trusted by all members Minister and that is why Pilot saw the notice sent to him by the of the first family of the Congress. Born in 1951 in a poor family police as an attempt to humiliate and harass him. He could no in Rajasthan, he had worked with his magician father before he longer work with Gehlot, he declared—and rebelled. Congress became a professional magician himself—and before Indira Gan- sources also say that Pilot’s rebellion was delayed by the Covid-19 dhi spotted his organisational skills during the refugee crisis that outbreak and that he had planned to come out in public about followed the 1971 war with Pakistan. A bright student, Gehlot, his opposition to Gehlot in March. who came under Indira Gandhi’s spell, joined youth politics and The tale of woes over power-sharing that began in late 2018 managed to acquire degrees in law and Economics. He would reached its sordid denouement on July 14th, when the Congress over time become one of the Congress’ excellent general secre- officially sacked him from the twin posts of Deputy Chief Minis- taries besides holding plum positions at the Centre and as Chief ter of Rajasthan and state Congress president, once again shooting Minister of Rajasthan. His rapport with the family was so good itself in the foot. The developments came in quick succession that in 2018 it was a foregone conclusion that if the Congress won after a last-ditch attempt by senior Congress leaders to appease in Rajasthan, Gehlot, not Pilot, would be the chief ministerial Pilot came to nought on the evening of Monday, July 13th. The candidate of the family. Pilot had to settle for the post of Deputy Rajasthan leader had camped in New Delhi for nine days after Chief Minister although he had spent a lot of time refurbishing throwing his gauntlet down before the party’s leadership in New the organisational apparatus of the party in the state and in en- Delhi. Refusing to be trapped in the usual round of ‘ring a ring o’ hancing its electoral prowess. roses’, he then refused to meet Rahul Gandhi and refused to attend Obviously, Pilot was not happy with the arrangement even a meeting of Congress MLAs from his home state called by Gehlot.

40 27 july 2020 Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and Jyotiraditya Scindia (extreme left) in Lucknow, 2019

Rahul Gandhi has been doing poorly both for himself and his party. From Himanta Biswa Sarma to Jyotiraditya Scindia and now Sachin Pilot, few young men have stuck around with him

Pilot had already laid down his terms and made up his mind to On July 14th, however, the stage unit of the party accused cross the bridge in his efforts to do things on his own terms. him of colluding with the BJP to topple the state government, following the decision to sack him along with two ministers in the rebel camp. Yet, national leaders continued to express their n July 13th, just a day before the Nehru-Gandhi anguish at his exit. Shashi Tharoor tweeted: ‘I am sad to see @ parivar chose finally to stop dithering, only to rudely SachinPilot leave @INCIndia. I consider him one of our best & O strip Sachin Pilot of his posts as Deputy Chief Minis- brightest, and wish it had not come to this. Instead of parting, ter of Rajasthan and state Congress chief, senior party leader and he should have joined the effort to make the Party a better & vocal colleague Kapil Sibal tweeted in acute distress: ‘Worried more effective instrument for his, and our, dreams.’ The next for our party. Will we wake up only after the horses have bolted day, however, party leader Sanjay Jha, who has lately been per- from our stable?’ The tweet came at the height of the power tussle sona non grata for the family, was suspended from the Congress between Pilot and Gehlot and de facto Congress supremo Rahul after he tweeted in favour of Pilot. He had tweeted mocking the Gandhi’s steadfast refusal for weeks to come up with a strategy high command: ‘For five years Sachin Pilot gave his blood, tears, that would ensure a patch-up and not endanger the Congress gov- toil and sweat for the Congress party between 2013-18. The Con- ernment in Jaipur or the future of the party in the state. Sibal’s was gress came back from a wretched 21 seats to 100. We just gave not a lone voice. From senior to mid-ranking, Congressmen and him a performance bonus. We are so meritocratic. We are so women were publicly voicing their angst at the developments. transparent.’ Late on the evening of July 14th, former MP Priya Dutt tweeted: The central leadership’s efforts to defuse trouble in Rajast- ‘Another friend leaves the party. Both Sachin and Jyotiraditya han were far from satisfactory. After having dug their heads in [Scindia] were colleagues & good friends. Unfortunately, our party the sand for weeks—after it became clear that Pilot could do a has lost 2 young stalwart leaders with great potential. I don’t be- Scindia (who switched sides to the BJP in Madhya Pradesh) in lieve being ambitious is wrong. They have worked hard through Rajasthan—the Congress’ first family assigned lightweights the most difficult times.’ like Randeep Singh Surjewala and KC Venugopal to sort out the

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 41 Politics

mess in Jaipur. The impasse only compounded, despite Abhishek sonal attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi despite the Manu Singhvi pleading on July 13th with Pilot to relent and not latter’s soaring popularity ratings, his inaction has prompted to take a hard stance. Early on July 14th, Surjewala brusquely an- many young leaders to leave the Congress and join the BJP. For nounced the leadership’s decision to oust Pilot from his posts, the younger brigade of enthusiastic leaders, which should have besides removing two of his supporters as ministers. been enlisted proactively to give the Congress a new direction, Petulance and pique, imperiousness and ignorance have once the Nehru-Gandhi family had little. On the other hand, it is being again defined the de facto supremo of the Congress, Rahul Gan- increasingly seen as an unlikely platform for both young leaders dhi. A man given to monologues and pithy conversations of lim- with aspiration and voters. Worse, the party continues to lose ited awareness, Gandhi, was already a leader with a singular lack power in large swathes of India thanks to its inability to become of political depth and little to set him apart except entitlement. a counterweight to the BJP. That was clear when, in Gujarat, he backed new entrant Hardik Patel as the state Congress’ working president. This was directly at the cost of key leaders like Bharat Solanki, who lost the Rajya ilot’s own increasing ire and his frustration with Sabha election. Hardik Patel was identified with a sectional cause the party and its top leadership, especially Rahul Gandhi, of Patels, whose votes by and large continue to remain firmly with P over its refusal to intervene and settle the power struggle the BJP. It was the KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim between Gehlot and him was the worst-kept secret in political combination, propounded by Madhavsinh Solanki) experiment circles. Pilot’s distress was not entirely unusual. His own ambi- that created a large vote base in the state for the Congress. With tious father Rajesh Pilot and Jitendra Prasada, another top leader that platform, too, now crumbling, the Congress is likely to face (and father of Jitin Prasada, another of Rahul Gandhi’s ‘friends’), more trouble in the state. had joined hands years ago to revolt against the then Prime Min- Nor has Rahul Gandhi’s sister Priyanka Gandhi made things ister PV Narasimha Rao in the early 1990s. Rajesh Pilot had gone to the extent of declaring that had he been in charge of the home ministry, he would never have allowed the demolition of the dis- puted structure at Ayodhya. (By the designated day they were to The Gandhi family should meet at the residence of party leader PA Sangma’s house, however, both Prasada and Pilot had lost their courage.) have been more sensitive The first family of the Congress should have been more to the plight of Pilot sensitive to the plight of Sachin Pilot, all the more so after Scin- dia’s defection, with 20-odd MLAs in tow, to the BJP. A strategy after Scindia’s exit. A to secure the hard-won Rajasthan mandate was imperative and strategy to secure the long-pending. After losing Madhya Pradesh, and with Karnataka, hard-won Rajasthan among the bigger states, earlier slipping to the BJP, the Congress leadership can ill afford to let the BJP secure Rajasthan as well. mandate was imperative Even in Chhattisgarh, where the Congress has a brute majority, the party has been forced to make 15 of its MLAs parliamentary secretaries, exposing its nervousness and concern that they could decamp if not given some posts on a war footing. look better for him. After the disaster that the migrant bussing Worst of all, the current episode of implosion in the party incident turned out to be, the Congress’ great hope in Uttar stemming from Pilot’s exit could further debilitate an already Pradesh bungled further by backing Chandrashekhar Azad wobbly opposition nationally. Leaders in the ruling BJP, too, ac- (‘Ravan’) and, later, demanding a probe into Vikas Dubey’s death. knowledge that a strong opposition is imperative to a vibrant While she chose to view this through the prism of the Brahmin democracy. Yet, Rahul Gandhi twiddled his thumbs until the vote in India’s most populous state, there was little evidence on point of no-return on resolving the problem in Rajasthan. Per- the ground that the community perceived Dubey as anything plexingly, the family and its scion have refused to draw lessons but a gangster. Some analysts contend that Priyanka Gandhi’s from the past when it lost other leaders, such as Mamata Banerjee posturing has proved to be a political gain for Uttar Pradesh Chief in West Bengal, a veteran like Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra, and Minister Yogi Adityanath. Jaganmohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh. All of them broke with His sister’s shenanigans apart, Rahul Gandhi has been doing the exclusive Nehru-Gandhi family entity that the Congress had poorly enough both for himself and his party over the last few become only to launch regional parties that thereafter became years. From Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam to Jyotiraditya Scin- successful in their home states. dia in Madhya Pradesh and now Pilot, few young men have stuck The crisis in Rajasthan proves, yet again, that the Congress around with Rahul Gandhi displaying anything remotely close high command does not have its ear to the ground at a time when to confidence in his leadership abilities. the BJP has transformed itself into a political behemoth under the The sharpest irony is that while Gandhi keeps up his per- unchallenged leadership of Narendra Modi. n

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Also on openthemagazine openthemag RELIGION For God’s Sake By restoring the management of Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple to the Travancore royal family, the Supreme Court raises the larger question of the state’s control over temples By J Sai Deepak

Lakshadeepam ceremony at Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram

alamy

44 27 july 2020 Sree Moolam Thirunal Rama Varma (with sword), current head of the Travancore royal family, leading a temple procession in 2018

n July 13th, a Bench of the Supreme Court been supported by any reasonable constitutionalist who be- of India comprising Justice UU Lalit and lieves that the state must not involve itself in the running of Justice Indu Malhotra delivered a historic religious institutions either directly or indirectly. That apart, verdict in the Sree Padmanabhaswamy the high court’s directions were clearly at loggerheads with Temple case. The verdict was delivered in the fundamental rights of those who believe in the Deity of the two special leave petitions and a writ peti- Temple, the religious traditions of the Temple and the need to Otion preferred against the judgment of January 31st, 2011 of the respect the sanctity of the Deity’s property. Kerala High Court. The high court had held in a batch of writ What made matters worse for the Temple was that its secu- petitions and civil suits that the ‘Head’ or ‘Ruler’ of the Travan- rity risk spiked exponentially thanks to all the treasure talk, core Royal Family and his successors had no right to control which, in turn, made the Temple more dependent on the state or manage the affairs of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple for its security. Everything that is unconstitutional and un- owing to the abolition of all royal titles by the Constitution sustainable with state control of temples was facilitated by a (Twenty Sixth Amendment) Act, 1971. judgment of a constitutional court of the most literate state of The high court had issued detailed directions which empow- the country. But then what started the proceedings before the ered the state government of Kerala to constitute a trust to take high court in the first place? Before answering this question, it over the control of the Temple, its assets and management. Criti- is important to digress into history a bit. cally, such a trust was authorised by the high court’s judgment In May 1949, the then rulers of the princely states of Travan- to open all the vaults (‘Kallaras’) of the Temple, inventorise all core and Cochin entered into a Covenant with the Indian Union their contents and create a museum to exhibit all the ‘treasures’ which captured the terms of agreement between the parties. of the Temple for the public, devotees and tourists on a payment Article VIII of said Covenant guaranteed to the Ruler of the Tra- basis within the premises of the Temple. vancore state, Shri Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma, and his Effectively, the judgment of the Kerala High Court had the successors the right to control and manage the Sree Padmanab- following specific consequences: First, the rights of the Travan- haswamy Temple. In 1950, the Travancore Cochin Hindu Reli- core Royal Family and the devotees of Lord Padmanabhaswamy gious Institutions Act 1950 (the TCHRI Act 1950), which is the to manage and preserve the sanctity of the Temple respectively, legislation that applies to administration of temples in Kerala by were assigned to the state government of Kerala. Second, the Devaswom Boards, that is, religious endowment boards, came so-called treasures of the Temple, which form part of the Deity’s into force. Chapter III (Sections 18-23) of the TCHRI Act 1950 property under Indian law, were directed to be monetised by the specifically dealt with the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple and state government by putting them on display for the general expressly codified the rights guaranteed under Article VIII of public, and not just to practising Hindus who believe in the De- the Covenant and used the term ‘Ruler’ to refer to the head of ity, within the premises of the Temple for a fee. the Travancore Royal Family. Under Sections 18-23, the Ruler The history and tradition of the Temple were rewritten by is empowered to administer the Temple through an Executive the high court’s judgment. With all humility, it is this author’s Officer appointed by him, with the advice of a three-member opinion that none of the directions of the high court could have Advisory Committee nominated again by him.

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 45 RELIGION

The original signatory of the Covenant, Shri Chithira Varma, filed a writ petition before the high court seeking trans- Thirunal Balarama Varma, passed away in 1991 and was suc- fer of these suits to the high court. The transfer was sought on ceeded by his younger brother, Sree Uthradom Thirunal Mar- the ground that since the central question of authority related thanda Varma, who passed away in 2013. He was in turn suc- to the interpretation of Article VIII of the Covenant entered into ceeded by his nephew Sree Moolam Thirunal Rama Varma, who between his predecessor and the Indian Union in May 1949, the is the current head of the royal family. What is important to note high court was the appropriate forum to adjudicate the question. is that each male member of the royal family is given the prefix Consequently, given the common issue raised in the writ ‘Padmanabhadasa’, that is, an eternal slave and faithful servant petition filed in 2009 by the tenant and the writ petition filed by of Lord Padmanabhaswamy, which is a tradition traceable at the Ruler in 2010, both petitions were taken up together by the the very least to the dedication of the Kingdom of Travancore Kerala High Court. The issue, therefore, for adjudication by the in 1750 by the legendary king Anizham Thirunal Marthanda high court was as follows: In view of the 26th Amendment to the Varma to Lord Padmanabhaswamy, who ruled the kingdom Constitution, which abolished royal titles among other things, as the vice regent of the Deity. This effectively made the Deity could Sree Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma and his suc- the Ruler of the Kingdom and all agreements or treaties were cessors, after the death of the original signatory to the Covenant, entered into by the Padmanabhadasa as the representative of claim to be the ‘Ruler of Travancore’ as used in the TCHRI Act the Deity. This applied to the Covenant as well. 1950 in order to claim ownership, control and management of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple? This resulted in the judgment of 2011 wherein the Kerala High Court answered the ow is this history relevant to the Supreme question in the negative. It is this judgment that was subject to Court’s judgment? Around 2009, a practising ad- challenge before the Supreme Court in special leave petitions H vocate, who was a tenant on premises belonging preferred by Sree Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma and to the Temple, was asked to vacate the premises by the then the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple Trust. Subsequently, the executive officer of the Temple administration. This resulted Chief Thantri of the Temple and other devotee organisations, in the tenant filing a writ petition in 2009 before the high such as People for Dharma and Temple Protection Movement, court questioning the authority of the executive officer to seek joined the proceedings before the Supreme Court as Intervenors his eviction since, according to the tenant, the executive of- to present their grievances with respect to the high court’s judg- ficer’s appointment itself was illegal. This was based on the ment. The Intervenors were represented in the Supreme Court assumption that no member of the Travancore Royal Family had by this author. the authority over the Temple’s management after the death of What makes the Supreme Court’s verdict historic? Its salient the original signatory to the Covenant in 1991, coupled with findings and outcomes are the following: the 26th Amendment which abolished titles such as ‘Ruler’. In l The Supreme Court has recognised that Article VIII of the Cov- other words, according to the tenant, the term ‘Ruler’, as used in enant represents the acknowledgement by the Indian Union of the TCHRI Act 1950, was limited in its the special relationship of Shebaitship application to the signatory of the Cov- (the earthly custodian and representa- enant alone who passed away in 1991, ✻ tive of the Deity) that exists between and therefore none of his successors had the Travancore Royal Family and Lord the legal right under the Act to manage The judgment sets a Padmanabhaswamy. The court fur- the Temple. The tenant also sought a ther recognised that said relationship direction from the high court to trans- powerful precedent for was independent of and unrelated to fer the control and management of the those temples similarly any titles bestowed upon Indian rul- Temple to the state government. placed as the Sree ers by the British. Therefore, according In addition to said writ petition by to the court, the 26th Amendment of the tenant, three civil suits were filed Padmanabhaswamy 1971 to the Indian Constitution had between 2007 and 2009 by employ- Temple. TheDevaswom no bearing on the pre-existing special ees of the Temple and others before Boards in Kerala can be relationship between the Travancore courts in Thiruvananthapuram, one Royal Family and the Temple since seeking an injunction against open- restructured on the basis the amendment was meant to abolish ing of the Temple’s six vaults by the of the judgment to only those titles and privileges which Temple management, and the rest came in the way of the republican questioning the authority of the of- ensure that devotees character of independent India; fice bearers of the Temple to occupy have a greater say in l The Court has further recognised their positions. In 2010, the then administration that Article VIII of the Covenant forms Ruler of the Travancore Royal Family, the basis of Chapter III (Sections 18-23) Sree Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda ✻ of the TCHRI Act 1950 which specifi-

46 27 july 2020 cally deals with the administration of Shri Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma istration previously wielded by the ex- the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple. (extreme left) with his sister and brother in ecutive officer appointed by the Ruler. The object of providing a specific London, June 1933 Importantly, under Section 18(2), such chapter in the Act for the Temple was powers of administration will be again to ensure that the rights guaranteed subject to the control and supervision by Article VIII of the Covenant are of the Ruler. The five members of the protected and guaranteed to the succes- committee shall be the district judge sors of the Ruler, and not merely to the of Thiruvananthapuram, one member signatory of the Covenant during his nominated by the Ruler, one member lifetime, even after India’s transition to nominated by the state government a republic. The court specifically noted of Kerala, one member nominated by that this was precisely the reason why the Union Ministry of Culture, and the even the state government of Kerala Chief Thantri of the Temple; has never diluted the position or the n Importantly, the Administrative rights of the Ruler of the Travancore Committee shall not take any decision Royal Family through amendments on the following matters of policy ex- to Chapter III of the TCHRI Act 1950, cept after obtaining the approval of the despite having undertaken multiple Ruler: amendments to the TCHRI Act 1950 be- ◗ Any expense item exceeding Rs 15 fore and after 1971, and even after the getty images lakh per month; death of the original signatory of the ✻ ◗ Any one-time expense of Rs 1 crore; Covenant in 1991. Therefore, as of date, ◗ Any major renovation/ expansion of in so far as Chapter III is concerned, it In May 1949, the rulers the Temple; remains as it stood in 1950 with respect of the princely states ◗ Any changes in the standard operat- to the Ruler and his successors, proving ing procedures of the Temple Admin- that it is meant to secure their rights of Travancore and istration as laid down by the Ruler; and guaranteed under Article VIII of the Cochin entered into ◗ Any fundamental changes in the Covenant. a Covenant with the character of the Temple that would l Accordingly, the Supreme Court set affect the religious sentiments of its aside the judgment and directions of Indian Union. It devotees. the Kerala High Court and laid down an guaranteed Shri n All members of both committees administrative structure for the Temple shall be Hindus within the meaning of largely based on the suggestions placed Chithira Thirunal the TCHRI Act 1950. before the court by the current head of Balarama Varma It is evident from the above that the Travancore Royal Family. Under the and his successors in stark contrast to the judgment of structure as accepted by the Supreme the Kerala High Court, the Supreme Court: control of the Sree Court has restored the position of n Decisions relating to all policy re- Padmanabhaswamy the Head of the Travancore Royal lated matters of the Temple shall Temple Family as the Shebait of the Temple, be taken by the ‘Ruler’/Head of the under whose control and supervi- Travancore Royal Family who shall ✻ sion both committees shall function. be advised by a three-member Advi- In addition to the above, in Para- sory Committee in the discharge of his functions in accordance graph 116 of the judgment, the court has spelt out 12 with Section 20 of the TCHRI Act 1950. The Advisory Com- detailed directions, among other things, to preserve the religious mittee shall consist of a retired high court judge who shall be practices of the Temple, to recover the property of the Temple nominated by the Chief Justice of the Kerala High court. The from encroachers and to ensure that the funds of the Temple are retired high court judge shall be treated as the chairperson spent on religious and charitable purposes deemed appropriate of the Advisory Committee. The second member shall be an by the Advisory Committee, and hence the Ruler. eminent person nominated by the Ruler, and the third member Critically, the decision of opening the vaults of the Temple shall be a reputed chartered accountant to be nominated by the has been left to the discretion of the committees, which effec- chairperson of the committee in consultation with the Ruler. The tively leaves the decision to the Advisory Committee since it is a advice of the Advisory Committee is not binding on the Ruler; matter of policy and religious tradition. The Advisory Commit- n A second committee, namely the Administrative Committee tee under Section 20 of the TCHRI Act, in turn, is meant to advise consisting of five members, shall exercise the powers of admin- the Ruler, which makes the Ruler the last word on such matters.

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 47 The Ruler is, of course, bound by the traditions of the Temple. Therefore, either of the two governments or both must defray Therefore, notwithstanding the presence of a nominee of the the security expense of the Temple since both governments Union Government, a nominee of the state government and a have benefitted and will continue to benefit from the tourism district judge in the five-member Administrative Committee, and generated by the Temple from within and outside the country. a retired high court judge in the three-member Advisory Commit- Given that the Kerala High Court’s judgment had completely tee, the overall control on all issues, major and minor, remains assigned the control of the Temple to the state government, the with the Ruler in accordance with the clear object of Article VIII structure laid down by the Supreme Court based on the sugges- of the Covenant and the express intent of Sections 18-23 of the tions of the Travancore Royal Family comes as a huge relief to the TCHRI Act 1950. The recognition by the Supreme Court of the devotees of Lord Padmanabhaswamy. However, the structure can- continued validity of Article VIII of the Covenant makes the judg- not be treated as an ideal template for other temples given that it ment a powerful precedent for those temples which are similarly does not fully pass muster on the anvils of Articles 25 and 26 since placed as the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple and are protected the court did not test the structure with reference to the provi- by similar Covenants entered into with other erstwhile princely sions of the Constitution that are central to individual as well as states. At the very least, the Devaswom Boards in Kerala, which institutional religious freedoms. Devotees may draw solace from are the product of the Covenant, can be restructured on the basis the fact that the structure prescribed by the Supreme Court for of the judgment to ensure that devotees have a greater say in the the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple is certainly much better administration of the temples, which than the wholesale takeover of temples is currently not the case. Given that ✻ witnessed in the recent past in Uttara- most such temples have suffered heavy khand, and the bureaucratic and politi- bureaucratisation over the decades, it cal entrenchment seen in the Tirumala may be worthwhile to explore the use The Supreme Court Tirupati Devasthanam or the Shri Jag- of this judgment to pare down the pres- has left it to the Sree annath Temple in Puri, or the thousands ence and interference of the state and its Padmanabhaswamy of temples across the country. mandarins in temples. A lesser known fact is that the Does this mean all is hunky dory Temple to bear its Union Government was represented with the judgment? Ideally, the Su- security expenses, which in the proceedings before the Supreme preme Court ought to have given effect is a matter of concern Court in the Sree Padmanabhaswamy to the letter and spirit of Articles 25(2) Temple case at least from March 20th, (a) and 26 by not giving state nominees given its exposure to 2017, until the conclusion of argu- assured positions in the Temple’s ad- security risks caused ments on April 10th, 2019, which is ministration, notwithstanding the su- by talk of its ‘treasures’ reflected in over 20 orders passed by premacy of the Ruler in the administra- the court during that period. Yet, as tive structure and notwithstanding the by the state and Union reflected by the judgment of the Court, fact that the structure is largely based Governments between the Union Government for reasons on the suggestions of the current Ruler. best known to it, chose not to actively This is because the state is the worst of 2009 and 2011 participate in the proceedings to clarify tenants who never vacates and has a ✻ its position on Articles 25, 26 and the track record of encroaching upon the larger question of the freedom of tem- autonomy of Hindu religious institu- ples from state control. tions. Unfortunately, although the Supreme Court accepted the Given that the issue of Temple control falls under Entry 28 of contentions of the Intervenors with respect to the binding nature the Concurrent List, the Union Government is constitutionally of Article VIII of the Covenant, it refused to consider arguments competent to not just take a position in such matters, but is also raised only by the Intervenors under Articles 25 and 26 of the best placed to pass a Central legislation which eliminates state Constitution on the ground that such arguments were not raised control of temples or, at the very least, cuts the role of the state to in the proceedings before the high court. Given the extraordinary size in temples in a manner consistent with Articles 25(2)(a), 26 nature of the matter, the Supreme Court ought not to have allowed and 31A(b). Since the dispensation at the Centre appears keen on technicality to come in the way of recognising and enforcing undoing the legacy mistakes made by previous dispensations, fundamental religious freedoms since the dispute was not in the particularly in relation to civilisational matters, it may want to nature of a commercial dispute between private parties. set the balance right even on this front as it affects Also, the Supreme Court has left it to the Sree Padmanabhas- at least 75 per cent of the population. n wamy Temple to bear its security expenses, which is a matter of concern given the fact that the Temple’s exposure to security J Sai Deepak is an advocate practising as an arguing risks was caused by the constant talk of its ‘treasures’ by both counsel before the Supreme Court of India and the the state and Union Governments between 2009 and 2011. High Court of Delhi

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Available as an e-magazine for tablets, mobiles and desktops via Magzter Dispatch The other story from Kashmir A new spirit of entrepreneurship sprouts across the Valley

Photograph by ashish sharma

An open market stand in Srinagar

50 27 july 2020 The other story from Kashmir A new spirit of entrepreneurship sprouts across the Valley By Kaveree Bamzai

Amit Wanchoo, doctor, musician, Man- aging Director of the lowcost healthcare manufacturer Eaton Laboratories and Fel- low, Maurice Greenberg World Program, Yale University, “conflict was the biggest private limited company in Kashmir”. Not any more. Wanchoo, one of the few Kashmiri Hindus who stayed back in the Valley, which saw the exodus of the 3.50-lakh- R strong community, believes change is afoot. Whether it is Ishan Verma, born in a small village, Mangnar, in Poonch dis- oohi Nazki started Chai Jaai, trict on the India-Pakistan border, who a picturesque tea and bakery cafe on Sri- cofounded the JK Startups Association nagar’s Residency Road in 2016. It has just and runs a tech business from Jammu, celebrated its fourth birthday. In this short or Ruveda Salam, who joined the Indian duration, though, it was closed for almost Police Force in 2013 and is now tutoring half the time due to shutdowns of vari- young girls who wish to do the same, ous kinds in the Kashmir Valley. Farooq there is some optimism. Amin’s Safa Resorts and Hotels runs five It is born of resilience in the face of boutique hotels in the Valley, two of which an onslaught of challenges, particularly are in the midst of having their interiors severe since 2014 when floods destroyed redone. His 1,000 employees have been much of the Valley, followed by the agita- idle since August 2019 when Articles 370 tion around Burhan Wani’s killing. Any and 35A were abrogated and internet ser- work in Kashmir, be it a business venture vices shut down. Iqra Ahmad’s Tulpalav, or otherwise, says Nazki, requires a huge an online clothing store crafting the fin- commitment. A commitment to make est pherans from the Valley, was started in peace with the uncertainty that has un- 2015 but has been struggling since the on- fortunately become synonymous with line restrictions. A physical store, ready to the place. To stay sane or even just afloat be inaugurated since 2018, remains locked in Kashmir one requires the skill of a war- even as Ahmad struggles to pay rent. rior and the heart of a saint, she adds. Yet not one of them has lost hope. And Kashmiris are showing those Nazki has started experimenting with qualities in spades. Amin’s family firm, home delivery of bakery items; Amin, Kanwal Spices, the biggest spice manufac- who heads the Jammu and Kashmir turers in J&K, has kept his business going (J&K) council of Confederation of Indian with units in Jammu, Delhi and Bengalu- Industry, is lobbying for a financial pack- ru. Sahil Verma, a cofounder of JK Startups age from the government to help tide Association, has chosen to move back to over an overstretch heightened by the Jammu to start an e-commerce business, outbreak of Covid-19; and Ahmad fields PureMart, which believes in eating right calls every day asking to be mentored in and sourcing right and sells 221 food prod- the fashion business. For a long time, says ucts from within J&K. He started with

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 51 Dispatch

Rs 10,000, with which he bought 10 g are a team of 20 now and dealing in organ- got between 80 per cent and 100 per cent. of saffron. His father gifted him a 1-kg ic saffron, honey,shilajit , walnuts, garlic, “These children are the future,” he says. box walnuts as a goodwill gesture. “He nuts, seeds, dried fruits, handmade cos- And they have every right to facilities that said here’s your fortune box, make how metics and organic pickles. In the last one youngsters have in the rest of the country, much you can and serve the people with year their company has grown threefold. whether it is education, employment or honesty,” says Verma. He started from his People in J&K, by and large, don’t want entertainment. He has got permission little flat in Kopar Khairane, Navi Mum- to wallow in the past. Vijay Dhar who has from the state to finally reopen the legend- bai. “My wife use to work with Glenmark been running the Srinagar franchise of ary Broadway Cinema in a new avatar as a Pharmaceuticals and I was with Cogni- Delhi Public School since 2003 speaks multiplex and he hopes to do so by January. zant Life Sciences. It was my birthday and proudly of how all his Class 12 students In this environment, both Muslims as a gift I asked my wife to let me quit my who took the CBSE exam passed despite and Hindus are willing to forgive the past job and work on the startup,” he says. This a 10-month shutdown. They started on- and move on. It is not easy. Ashwath Bhatt, is how his journey started and they moved line classes immediately and he says of a Kashmiri Hindu actor best known for back to Jammu within six months. They the 268 children who took the exam, 172 playing an Islamic-fundamentalist Paki-

“Ever since I’ve started, I’ve been called a startup without taking off” Iqra Ahmad founder, Tulpalav

Photograph by ashish sharma

52 27 july 2020 “Any work in Kashmir, be it a business venture or otherwise, requires a huge commitment. A commitment to make peace with the uncertainty that has unfortunately become synonymous with the place. To stay sane or even just afloat in Kashmir one requires the skill of a warrior and the heart of a saint” Roohi Nazki founder, Chai Jaai

stani soldier (in Raazi, 2018) and a fear- There is hurt and anger on both sides ture and online commerce. Puri expects some Afghan warlord (in Kesari, 2019) had but also an understanding of the collateral to start a food park in Jammu soon. KB to leave the Valley in January 1990, only damage of the prolonged war within. In Kachru, Chairman emeritus of the Radis- to return in 2006. He has chosen to spend 1991, Salam’s father was abducted and son Group, which has invested in seven his downtime as an actor working with disabled by militants, a horrific incident hotels in the area, is hopeful of Kashmir children of strife. He had a choice between she says opened her eyes to the reality of reimagining itself as a new India’s leading being bitter and better; he chose the latter terror and “her perceptions about what domestic destination. “There are 26 mil- and now dreams of a time when Kashmir has been going on in the Valley for the last lion Indians who travel overseas every can reclaim its status as the summer capi- three decades”. year. This year, because of the fears around tal of Bollywood, featuring in major mov- Covid-19, they are not going anywhere. If ies during the ’60s and ’70s. Sanjay Raina, Kashmir is able to attract even 5 per cent Chief Operating Officer of Abu Dhabi usinessmen such as of that traffic, it can re-energise the people. Media, forced to flee the Valley in 1990 Sanjay Puri and Vikrant And remember, almost 80 per cent of the with his mother when he was 23, wants B Kuthiala who have spent traffic to J&K is to Mata Vaishno Devi. We to return too, to establish the equivalent of many years keeping their still haven’t developed any destination the Abu Dhabi Film Commission in Kash- heads above water in J&K are hopeful of around it to create a tourism triangle.” mir and restore the Valley to its potential change within their lifetimes with better After the change in J&K’s sta- as a picturesque alternative, as it was once infrastructure. Puri’s family runs PMark tus in August 2019, there is resent- upon a time, to Switzerland. This is some- oil since 1933, while Kuthiala has been ment against the marketing of this thing Wanchoo is promoting actively as in the timber and steel business. What moment in the area’s history as Naya well, with his company Space Commu- emerges today is a possible new vision Kashmir, an idea first mooted by Sheikh nications, which works as a facilitator in of J&K as a soft power, with tourism, the Abdullah in a memorandum that he gave this area. return of the movie business, horticul- to then Maharaja Hari Singh in 1944.

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 53 Dispatch

“My father was abducted and disabled by militants. That horrific incident opened my eyes to the reality of terror and perceptions about what has been going on in the Valley for the last three decades” Ruveda Salam IPS

People in J&K want a change in condi- Ditto for the demand for financial aid to n the other hand, tions. It still does not have a clearcut policy cover costs incurred during the Covid-19 Ishan Verma has a differ- of industrial incentives though the busi- lockdown. Add to that that 4G mobile ser- O ent story to tell, which ness community was told in February vices are still suspended, hurting online suggests that there should by Union Minister of State for Industries businesses such as Ahmad’s. From a high be better connect between fledgling busi- Som Prakash that it would be notified of selling 100 pherans and assorted outfits nesses in the region. Ishan (no relation of within 15 days. This is a prerequisite to a month, she has been able to sell the same Sahil Verma) moved to Jammu 17 years inviting any fresh industrial proposal. number over the whole of last year. “Ever ago to pursue further education and after No one is going to invest in a region un- since I’ve started I’ve been called a startup graduating in civil engineering decided to less they know exactly where they stand. without taking off,” says Ahmad. become an entrepreneur. After an initial struggle, they were among the first start- ups to be incubated at the technology Entrepreneurs dream of a time when business incubation centre at Shri Mata Kashmir can reclaim its status as the Vaishno Devi University, Katra. Collabo- summer capital of Bollywood, featuring ration is key, as is innovation. Wanchoo, for instance, is developing a programme in major movies during the ’60s and ’70s to map districts of J&K linked with their sector-specific states on the basis of prod- uct use. He says cricket bat manufacturers of Anantnag can be connected to Board of Control for Cricket in India headquar- ters in Maharashtra, or saffron growers of Pulwama can be linked to the temple of Tirupati. “Imagine,” he says excitedly, “the optics of Muslim farmers growing saffron for one of the country’s holiest Hindu temples.” He is a great proponent of the return of Kashmiri Hindus (known as Pandits) to the Valley and believes their greatest allies are common Muslims. “Ask me,” he says, “I never left and in fact I was the only Hindu student of MBBS in Govern- ment Medical College, Srinagar, and yet was elected as president of the students’ Shammi Kapoor and Sharmila Tagore on the set of Kashmir Ki Kali (1964) in Kashmir union in 1998-99.” His grandfather HN

54 27 july 2020 Photograph by ashish sharma “We have to inspire the 10-year-old in Kashmir today to become part of the change. Only then will the next generation be able to tell a different story” Amit Wanchoo managing director, Eaton Laboratories

Wanchoo was assassinated in 1992 by articulating the challenges facing young and beliefs. Ashiq Hussain Faktoo but instead of let- businesses in the region—according to an It won’t be politicians and bureaucrats ting that cloud his judgement he started estimate there are 25,000 MSMEs in the who will do this, but ordinary people, an emergency ambulance service in his J&K. And even in the smallest unit, work dreaming big and keeping hope afloat. honour. “We have to inspire the 10-year- is inclusive and multicultural, as befit- Says Dhar, 40 per cent of Kashmir is un- old in Kashmir today to become part ting the heritage of the region. Tulpalav, der 35. “They are seeing a new universe of the change. Only then will the next for instance, employs four tailors and two and want to be part of it.” Why can’t J&K generation be able to tell a different embroiderers, but among them are a Ben- become a hub for education, he asks, story,” he says. And adds Raina, even the gali and a Bihari. given Sheikh Abdullah had made it com- Hindus who go back will have to prove Kashmir, once the font of seven waves pulsory way back in 1951. Theosophist themselves to those who stayed back, of migrations of Hindus, beginning with Annie Besant set up the Vasanta Girls who had to suffer the double whammy one under Shah Mir, who established School and the iconic Sri Pratap Singh of militancy and security force stringency. Muslim rule in Kashmir in the 14th cen- College. Till 1977, every state had a two- Even many educated Muslims had to tury, may well learn to reclaim its history seat quota for Jammu and Kashmir stu- be persuaded to stay back in the Valley. as a region where there was no exclusion dents in their technical institutes. Hav- Amin recalls with a laugh how Jairam and no insularity and which sheltered ev- ing watched Kashmir closely for over 70 Ramesh forced him to stay back by taking eryone—from zealots to scholars, mys- years, he says: “In the last 30 years no one away his passport. “I had returned after tics to conquerors, missionaries to athe- has talked to the youngsters of the state. studying in the UK in 2002, and he said the ists, agnostics to warriors and allowed Do it now. Talk to them, ask them what Valley needed youngsters like me,” he re- them, as writer Siddhartha Gigoo has they want.” It’s no different from the rest calls. Today Amin is paying it forward by said, to profess and practise their ideas of the world. n

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 55 entertainment murder on Their Minds Portrayals of psychiatrists on recent web shows use psychology to titillate or trivialise By Shreevatsa Nevatia n o sal

Abhishek Bachchan in Breathe: Into the Shadows

27 july 2020 riting for The recent acclaimed web shows in Sadly, it only ever used these to further Hollywood Quarterly in India—Sacred Games, Paatal Lok—seem stigmatise mental afflictions. In one of 1946, Franklin Fearing to follow a thumb rule. To keep audienc- the show’s first scenes, Sabharwal takes made the kind of claims es hooked, there must be blood. For crime the stand to offer his psychiatric analysis thatW would still be considered progressive to simmer and for a criminal to pass of a young woman accused of murdering today. Examining films such as Alfred through the hoops of conditioning, trans- three members of her family. Sabharw- Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945) and Wil- formation and possibly even redemp- al’s task is cut out: he must confirm or dis- liam Dieterle’s Love Letters (1945) in his tion, the makers of these shows need to prove her symptoms of schizophrenia. essay ‘The Screen Discovers Psychiatry’, give their characters time. The stream- When interviewing the girl, the doctor’s Fearing writes, ‘It has become trite to say ing crime show is no longer a simple suspicions are raised when he sees she that the difference between the abnormal whodunnit. If we’re investing the better has solved a sudoku puzzle. Uninterested and the normal individual is shadowy. part of a day or a week in trying to unpack in her years of abuse, it’s the alertness of But it cannot be too often emphasised the riddle of violence, the show ought to her faculties that helps Sabharwal arrive that it is a difference in degree rather exceed the ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘when’ of its at a final conviction: ‘Chandni Rawat is than in kind.’ The purpose of a ‘good, sound, entertaining film’, says Fearing, is to make ‘abnormality’ intelligible and less horrible. The psychology professor’s Freud’s episodes insights were, of course, percipient, but take their names from their continuing relevance is unfor- popular Freudian tunate. Nearly 75 years later, neither concepts but rather cinema nor society has moved ahead. than apply theories of Writing when World War II had just human consciousness culminated, Fearing predicted ‘personal- ity disturbances are likely to increase to murder and rather than decrease’. He thus insisted madness, the show filmmakers and audiences treat these instead seems to only ‘disturbances’ with the same objectivity want to employ they reserve for biological disease. In a hypnosis as an easy year when our collective fears have again plot device needed an urgent and easy distraction, OTT platforms have come to enjoy an influence Fearing had once attributed Robert Finster in a still from Freud to films of the early 1940s. It only seems fitting that two recent web shows have crime(s). It must explain ‘why’. no more schizophrenic than anyone in made psychiatrists and psychologists the The trailer of Breathe: Into the Shadows this courtroom.’ protagonists they already are for some. (Amazon Prime) seemed like a veritable Breathe equates mental illness and dys- According to OTT logic, those who solve climax. Not just was Avinash Sabharwal functionality all too easily. Too preoccu- problems can, obviously, solve crimes. (Abhishek Bachchan) the victim of a pied trying to find his missing daughter, Sigmund Freud had once said the crime—his daughter had been kid- we never really see Sabharwal interact task of the therapist and that of the napped—but as a psychiatrist, he would with his patients, but at one point, we are examining magistrate is one and the come to play a key role in the hunt for made privy to the files he keeps on his same: ‘We have to uncover the hidden its perpetrator. One expected to feel the computer. While his diagnoses often read psychical material; and in order to do this same fascination and horror that shows like Wikipedia entries, the show, on oc- we have invented a number of detective like Mindhunter (Netflix) had inspired casion, does also let its bias slip. A bipolar devices.’ Freud’s model—one that takes in recent years. Psychiatry, we hoped, patient, for instance, is prone to ‘bouts incomplete and baffling stories and would be more than a gimmick. Rather of depression’, ‘irrational thoughts’ and makes them consistent—has often been than just dip its toes into the pool of also ‘aggression’. In the fictions of Breathe, compared to the classic Sherlock Holmes mental health and illness, here was the mental illness is the sum of its violent narrative. In March, when Netflix turned possibility of immersion. manifestations. Afflictions don’t just pro- the father of psychoanalysis into a sleuth Like its many crime counterparts, pel crimes; they are crimes themselves. for its show Freud, the transformation Breathe (spoilers to follow) too maps the Fearing wrote in 1946, ‘Without a seemed inevitable, but the early snatches intent of violence, but with a mental thorough grounding in psychology and of Breathe: Into the Shadows were admit- health practitioner at its centre, it had the allied social sciences as well as a mastery tedly far more surprising. luxury of diagnostic tools others did not. of the medium in which he works, the

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 57 entertainment

writer or director will almost certainly that Freud. He is decidedly a twenty- participant, Freud is reduced to being a present [psychological] material as something Sigmund (Robert Finster) bystander. His methods seem nothing merely spectacular or as a device which whose ideas of the unconscious still more than party tricks. enables him to escape from an impasse appear half-baked. To prove his radi- OTT platforms were once kinder to in the plot.’ The creators of Breathe can be cal theory that the human mind and mental health practitioners who double indicted on all these grounds. Avinash brain are separate, Freud even resorts to up as detectives. In The Alienist (Netflix, Sabharwal, we find, is surprisingly pliant playacting, but his housekeeper can’t 2018), a period piece set in 1890s New when his child’s abductor asks him to keep up the pretence. Asked to perform York, psychiatrist Dr Lazlo Kreizler start killing people he has categorised ac- the role of a grieving mother who speaks (Daniel Brühl) is called upon to under- cording to somewhat biblical vices. Not under hypnosis for the first time in 30 stand the psychology behind a string of only does Sabharwal join the investiga- years, she buckles under pressure. grisly child murders. At one point, he tion into murders he has committed, the In Netflix’s Freud, the psychoanalyst says, ‘Only if I become him, if I cut the show has a bigger twist soon after. is forced to examine mutilated bodies of child’s throat myself, if I run my knife Though Breathe seems to be waking prostitutes on his desk, not so much the through the helpless body and pluck the up with a dire hangover of having binged patients we are used to imagining on his innocent eyes from a horrified face, only on films like David Fincher’s Se7en (1995) couch. Freud’s cocaine habit verges on then will I come to truly understand and M Night Shyamalan’s Split (2016), it fullblown addiction. Bafflingly, he even what I am.’ There was something classi- demands a grand suspension of disbelief attends a séance. By the second episode cal about The Alienist’s vision of empa- that many of its genre inspirations do thy—it involved the psychiatrist placing not. Its implausibility is laughable, yes, himself in the shoes of a murderer so as but it’s also dangerous. Too often have In Breathe, mental to become a good detective. fictionalised representations of mental illness is the sum In Alias Grace (Netflix, 2017), a mini- health disorders like multiple personal- of its violent series that adapted Margaret Atwood’s ity disorder done more harm than good. manifestations. novel of the same name, Dr Simon Doing little to illumine the character Afflictions don’t Jordan (Edward Holcroft) busies himself and motivations of those afflicted, these just propel crimes; with a psychiatric evaluation of Grace portrayals use psychology only to either Marks (Sarah Gadon). Jordan’s findings titillate or trivialise.Breathe’s makers can they are crimes can exonerate Grace of the murder charg- argue their brief was to entertain rather themselves. it es levelled against her. His interviews than educate, but that does not absolve equates mental with Grace masterfully build suspense, them. They had a chance to make illness and but they also raise a vital question: what ‘abnormality’ intelligible and less dysfunctionality does it mean to be mad? As Grace says, horrific. They squandered it. too easily ‘When you go mad you don’t go any The crime genre has always relied other place, you stay where you are. And on epiphanies to piece together the somebody else comes in.’ Also set in the deliberately fractured narratives of its 19th Century, Alias Grace, unlike Freud, shows and films. Just around the time itself, it becomes clear that Countess So- carefully separates superstition and when detectives begin to lose their grip phia, hostess of the séance Freud attends, mental illness without ever giving up on the case at hand, they chance upon is killing more people dead than she is the thrills of its narrative whodunnit. a little insight that brings together all summoning. Freud will need a few ‘aha!’ Bound by the limits of convention, the pieces of the puzzle. To some mental moments to work this one out. shows like Breathe and Freud do little to health practitioners, these ‘aha!’ mo- Each of Freud’s eight episodes take take the crime genre forward. More im- ments might seem only too familiar. For their name from a popular Freudian portantly, perhaps, they do even less to psychiatrists like Breathe’s Sabharwal, concept—‘Totem and Taboo’, ‘Repres- explore our human appetite for destruc- a diagnosis might suddenly explain sion’, etcetera—but rather than apply tion. Watching the two shows together, errant human behaviour, but for Freud, these theories of human consciousness we see the mental health practitioner the purveyor of our unconscious, the to murder and madness, the show play several roles—perpetrator, victim, answer often involves the dredging of instead seems to only want to employ detective, addict—but not once do we much psychological muck. hypnosis as an easy plot device. Over see him throw a torchlight on the dank Set in 1880s Vienna, Freud’s protago- time, Freud’s theories have come to be basements of our minds. n nist barely resembles the self-assured, thought of as old-fashioned, his psychoa- even arrogant psychoanalyst the world nalysis is considered laborious, but the Shreevatsa Nevatia is the author of both reveres and derides today. The makers of Freud have assigned to him a How to Travel Light: My Memories of show’s bumbling hero is certainly not fate far worse. Rather than be an active Madness and Melancholia

58 27 july 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

Tell us why you read Open www.openthemagazine.com openthemagazine books nobody’s Novelist Ottessa Moshfegh’s new book establishes her prowess at excavating the minds of characters on the margins of society By Nandini Nair

ttessa Moshfegh is a soon after Eileen in 2017. The chapter (The Guardian). The Los Angeles Times master of the misfit. The titles themselves reveal the intention declared her ‘unlike any other author 39-year-old American author of the stories at hand: for instance, ‘The (male, female, Iranian, American, etc)’. Ocreates characters who tarry Weirdos’, ‘No Place for Good People’, In just over five years, she has proved on the slippery slopes of what is ‘accept- ‘The Locked Room’ and ‘Nothing Ever that her debut was no brilliant fluke, able’ and what is not. Moshfegh’s skill is Happens Here’. It is easy enough to spot rather it was the first milestone in the that she does not render characters—who a theme of dismay (and occassionally career of an exquisitely talented author might otherwise be seen as depraved, survival) in Moshfegh’s work. A wom- who excavates the depths of small lives, loony or pervs —into the fearsome ‘other’, an narrator, dating a wannabe actor, in those who are ‘nothing special’. instead, we identify traits of not only those ‘The Weirdos’, sounds like Eileen when In the opening chapter, Eileen we know, but also of ourselves in them. she says, ‘Nothing made me happy. Her debut novel Eileen was shortlisted I went out to the pool, skimmed the for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and tells surface of the blue water with my hand, the story of a 24-year-old protagonist praying for one of us, my boyfriend who works in a juvenile prison, lives or me, to die.’ Moshfegh’s second with a gin-soaked father, has lost her novel My Year of Rest and mother to illness, is obsessed and Relaxation (2018), set in New revolted by bodily functions, has bizarre York City, told the story of eating habits and dwells so deep in dark- a 26-year-old woman who ness that sunlight is an aberration. sleeps through an entire Eileen is a triumph as a character year, using medication. because she upends all expectations of a Moshfegh has conventional ‘heroine’ and protagonist, been celebrated as an she is unattractive and unsavoury. The ‘author-provocateur’ word ‘vomit’ appears 21 times in the 272- (The New York Times), page book. Her own body evokes disgust known for her ‘blackly from her, it is a landscape which she can comical, richly detailed, neither appreciate nor understand. She nihilistic creations’ says, ‘I took off my pants, but didn’t look at myself below the waist. My feet were fine, my ankles, my calves. That was all passable. But there was something so foreboding and gross about the hips, the buttocks, the thighs. And there was Ottessa Moshfegh always a sense that those parts would suck me into another world if I studied them too closely. I simply couldn’t navigate that territory. And at the time, I didn’t believe my body was really mine to navigate. I figured that was what men were for.’ Moshfegh’s short-story collection Homesick for Another World followed

Illustration by Saurabh Singh 60 27 july 2020 captures the essence of Moshfegh’s her mind. Vesta’s imagination becomes either ignore or belittle his wife. Even in characters; ‘I looked like a girl you’d both a sanctuary and a snake pit for her. her imaginings she is not free of Walter. expect to see on a city bus, reading some While Vesta’s ‘investigation’ into the She wishes to ‘dethrone’ him from her clothbound book from the library... note propels the plot, this is ultimately mindspace, and delete his voice in her I looked like nothing special… But I a novel of loneliness. Moshfegh had head, which tells her that she is a deplored silence. I deplored stillness. I written it after completing Homesick ‘sparrow’ who should not attempt to be hated almost everything. I was very un- for Another World as a way out of grief. a ‘hawk’ and should merely ‘twit about’, happy and angry all the time. I tried to She wrote in bursts of 1,000 words a day ‘dance a little’ and ‘sweep the floor’. control myself, and that only made me and hid it in a drawer. Four years later, While Vesta is a completely unreliable more awkward, unhappier, and angrier. the manuscript turned into a novel. In narrator, in her study of Walter we trust I was like Joan of Arc, or Hamlet, but an interview with The New York Times, her narrative. We see the husband who born into the wrong life—the life of a Moshfegh said of the book, “I wrote it has thwarted the spirit of his wife by nobody, a waif, invisible.’ for myself. It’s a loneliness story.” While being quiet and cold. In life and in death, Death in Her Hands, Moshfegh’s most the loneliness of Eileen felt like a whip he will always be the ‘nosy adversary’ in recent novel, is similarly the story of a to the shins, Vesta’s isolation is like the her home and in her head. The reality nobody, an invisible. Here the protago- slow turning of screws. You don’t sense of her marriage tells of a truth seldom nist is an elderly, recently widowed it in lashes, but it creeps upon you till it acknowledged; the loneliness of an woman, Vesta Gul, who lives alone in is excruciating. unhappy marriage can destroy a house by the lake in Levant, a town At first, Vesta appears to be a widow, and debilitate. without a post office, with her big dog who moves across the country, to Vesta’s obsession with Magda, her Charlie. Vesta is not unsavoury like distance herself from the death of her recreation of her often seems like a meta text and echoes an author describing her own relation- ship with her characters. ottessa moshfegh has proved that Vesta says of Magda, ‘I felt I her debut was no brilliant fluke, had gotten to know Magda, and I liked her… I wished that rather it was the first milestone she could have seen me so in the career of an exquisitely she’d appreciate everything I was doing for her, bringing talented author who excavates her back to life in this way, investigating her murder, the depths of small lives. In giving her a voice… I didn’t Death in Her Hands Ottessa Moshfegh death in her hands she once again love her as I loved Charlie, or as I loved Walter. I loved Penguin Press takes us into the mind of those her the way I loved the little 259 Pages | Rs 2,160 who are ‘nothing special’ seedlings soon to sprout in my new garden.’ Moshfegh, Vesta, a garden- er are all the same, tending Eileen, but she is similarly a woman husband, Walter, who succumbed to to creations that they will nurture and who seems all alone in the world. The cancer. But as the novel moves ahead, bring to fruition. Vesta’s investigation novel is set up as a thriller with Vesta the reader learns this was no happy is not a bid to unlock a mystery. It is her finding a note on her dawn walk in the marriage. Rather it was a marriage of attempt to establish her own agency birch woods. The note reads, ‘Her name lengthy silences at best, and adultery at and tell her own story. ‘Her name was is Magda. Nobody will ever know who worst. Early in the book, Vesta describes Vesta. That was what I meant to write all killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her the four-decade-long relationship as along—my story, my last lines. My name dead body.’ one where they’d barely talk to each was Vesta. I lived and died. Nobody will But there is no body. The discovery other on some days, ‘not out of spite, ever know me, just the way I’ve always of this note sends Vesta down the path but just that there seemed to be no need. liked it.’ of an investigation, where she recreates We were of a mind’. Of one mind they With Death in Her Hands, Moshfegh the character of Magda, conjures up certainly were not. He was a German once again proves that by writing of possible suspects and combines the re- scientist who didn’t visit a grocery store nobodies she tells the most human and ality of a small town with the fictions of for 30 years and took no opportunity to humane stories. n

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 61 books

A Broken System The Gated Republic India’s Public Policy Failures Can private players plug the public failure gaps? and Private Solutions By Siddharth Singh Shankkar Aiyar HarperCollins India 304 Pages | Rs 699 hen the Coronavirus dished out by governments. pandemic struck India, there Shankkar Aiyar’s The Gated Republic W was all-round panic given is a detailed excursion through these stepped into the breach but with a cost. the poor state of healthcare failures. The anatomy of failure runs, That is understandable: the private infrastructure. It was hard to find in a schematised fashion, somewhat sector provides services even as its ventilators in government hospitals in like this. First, government draws goal remains making profit from their case a patient required critical care. In up ambitious plans to provide these provision. Might the original sin of private hospitals, where the availability services. Quality requires extensive government be that it thought service of ventilators was much better, few sums of money that are hard to find in a delivery was a charitable enterprise? except those with deep pockets could developing country. Instead of first Can the clock be turned, and access them if needed. Soon enough, trying pilots in specified areas, from governments made efficient? In some there were stories about price gouging: where lessons about the working of areas, for example, education, some if you didn’t have money, beds in service delivery can be imbibed, politics state governments have tried hard to private hospitals suddenly became demands that these services be make things work. Here help has been scarce to the point of non-availability. provided as widely as possible. forthcoming from non-governmental There was a villain at hand: the greed The result is too little butter and too organisations and expertise available for profit in a time of pandemic. much bread. The history of with academics. But the defining This script is only slightly different unhappiness with government in feature: government-recruited teachers from what happens during normal 1970s and 1980s can be rewritten from accountable to virtually no one ensures times. Government hospitals offer free this perspective. When the private that whatever improvements that take or cheap facilities but people—even sector was unshackled in the 1990s place are marginal and, very often, those who are poor—prefer to visit a and more fully in the 21st century, it reversible. In other sectors, power, for high-cost private alternative. The why example, private provisioning became of it is not hard to figure: government necessary because the system was so hospitals are free but the quality of broken that it could not reliably serve service is so poor that anyone who has the most important customers like a better option available goes there. The industrial consumers. Captive power story can be diversified to different as- was not an option but necessity. Here, pects of public service provision: from as in education, quality was sacrificed water to transport and from power to at the altar of price: governments have education, governments provide these to provide all consumers—rich, poor, services that few are happy with. The middle-class—at the same price and system is broken to such an extent that the poor at even lower prices. Cost-plus short of a return to the drawing board, pricing was, for a long time, taboo; it can’t be fixed. There are patchwork when finally cost inflation became solutions that have been adopted but unavoidable, it was to take care of the costs of running and managing a bloated workforce and the truly the broken system is exorbitantly unmanageable costs of running these high. The private sector, with a much enterprises. Private enterprise, once smaller scale of operations in each of held to be a solution, came with its own these sectors—power, education, problems during the era of cronyism. healthcare and transport— Might better regulation be a solution? does a much better job It can be but, as with most things even if its services are Indian, only on paper. For the way more expensive time being, India runs on than the ones Shankkar Aiyar decrepit engines. n

62 Illustration by Saurabh Singh 27 july 2020 Losing Faith A Malayalam novel delves into the dangers of organised religion By Shikha Kumar Benyamin

Illustration by Saurabh Singh

hen Midhun ends a departure from writing about the also weaves in the real-life story of up in the ICU after his bike Middle East, setting the story in Delhi Alvares, the high priest who had W meets an accident on a Delhi and taking readers to Goa, Chennai, walked out of the Church rejecting the highway, his friends hope the worst is Bhopal and other cities as the three Portuguese’s dictatorial behaviour, and over. He’s lost some skin on his arms friends try to piece together the events chose to serve the poor and the sick. and legs, and has a small injury on his leading up to Midhun’s death. While translating stories about him head—but the doctors reassure them The fellowship is run by Pastor Sam from Portuguese for her father’s book, that there’s nothing to worry about. Philip, a larger-than-life personality Rithu is faced with a dichotomy around The next day, however, his condition who cites his own story of being res- the idea of faith and selflessness. worsens. There’s an internal haemor- cued from the clutches of poverty and Body and Blood sent me down a rabbit rhage that didn’t catch their attention death to inspire people to join the fold. hole of reading around prosperity earlier. Midhun is soon pronounced Benyamin makes Rithu’s character theology—jogging faint childhood braindead, and his organs make their the most intriguing—she’s judicious memories of watching televangelists way in different ambulances to give a and inquisitive, and is the one who working miracles on people with fresh lease of life to six people across gets Ragesh and Sandhya to dig deeper supposedly serious ailments. the country. when an anonymous tip on her phone Benyamin, a practising Christian As his friends try to come to terms indicates that Midhun’s death may not himself, has stated that he’s against with his sudden death, Ragesh says have been an accident. prosperity theology—it was a news to Rithu on the phone, ‘Why did God There’s also a farcical passage on item about the arrest of a doctor in an do this to the meekest man in our televangelists and their ‘healing organ donation scam that inspired group? What then is the meaning of sessions’. Rithu discovers much to the book. It’s an interesting time to the faith that we found in the prayers her shock that the girl in the video who read about faith, particularly the that we pray?’ He wonders how his heals from two illnesses at different capitalist evils that organised religion atheist parents continue to live more points in time is her friend. Benyamin can spawn—and one can’t help but happily than them. It’s a crucial think how the novel would have been moment in Body and Blood, Benyamin’s received if the religion in question was latest novel. The friends—Ragesh, not Christianity. Rithu, Sandhya and Midhun—are part Benyamin writes with admirable of the same fellowship in Delhi, where simplicity—the narrative is tight and they gather every Saturday to sing quick-paced—and I finished the book songs, pray, read the Bible and listen in two sittings. It’s telling for an author to the Gospel. This shared sense of who never aspired to be a writer, or faith and community fosters a kinship spent time fraternising with littera- among the four, all outsiders who have teurs or editors. In an interview around made Delhi their home. Yellow Lights of Death (2015), he was not Body and Blood Like in the much-acclaimed Goat Benyamin dismissive of comparisons with Dan Days (2008) and Jasmine Days, which Translated from Malayalam Brown, explaining that “if you can’t won Benyamin the JCB Prize in 2018, by Swarup BR hook the readers in the first five pages, migration and belonging form the crux you’ve lost them”. Body and Blood keeps of Body and Blood too. The author takes HarperCollins you hooked till the very end. n 229 Pages | Rs 499

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 63 books The Hopeful Historian Rutger C Bregman’s new book questions our shared assumptions about humanity. The bestselling historian tells Bhavya Dore why he remains optimistic

n early May, as the pandemic trapped people in thing to remember.” their homes and drained their spirits, an upbeat story on Bregman is a 32-year-old rising star, who shot to fame the Guardian went viral. The little-known tale featured a in 2019 when he blasted super-rich grandees at Davos for not group of Tongan teenagers who in 1965 washed up on a talking about higher taxes. “It feels like I’m at a firefighters’ Itiny Pacific island. With no civilisation in sight and little hope conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water, right?” for immediate rescue, the boys were forced into survival mode. he said. The premise sounded eerily like the horror of William Gold- Bregman is now being likened to Malcolm Gladwell and ing’s Lord of the Flies, where plane-crash survivors on an island— Yuval Noah Harari, historians and writers whose sweeping, all children—foment chaos and destruction. discipline-defying approach he shares. “It’s obviously a ridicu- But for millions of readers of Golding’s 1954 novel the real- lously ambitious book,” he chuckles. “You can call it hubristic.” life ending in the Tongan story came as a surprise and Humankind ranges over millennia, nimbly zapping across a welcome corrective. Unlike their fictional counterparts, the geographies and societies to buttress its central thesis. “I Tongans cooperated, improvised and survived in realised scientists from so many disciplines had splendid harmony until their rescue 15 months been moving towards a more hopeful view of later. “Maybe especially at the beginning of the human nature, but they often didn’t know it corona crisis people were yearning for a different from each other,” he says. “And then I thought kind of story,” says Rutger Bregman, a journalist hey, maybe someone needs to connect the dots, and writer whose book Humankind: A Hopeful bring all this together and show that something History (Bloomsbury; 496 pages; Rs 699) the bigger is going on.” Guardian story was excerpted from. “Isn’t it In doing so he takes a battering ram to some strange that for decades we’ve been forcing kids of our readiest assumptions. Our ancestors to read this really dark tale of who they are? Well, were not wicked savages trapped in an endless okay let’s also tell them about the one time that struggle for resources. We didn’t evolve because we know that really happened, because that’s a our forefathers were faster, smarter, stronger, very different story.” but because they were friendlier. Bystander Humankind pivots on this idea: our assumptions about effect—that people avoid helping strangers in need—is not human nature are all wrong, that drenched in the brine of cyni- quite what it’s cut out to be. Soldiers, conscripted to fight, actu- cism we have lost sight of the facts. And the facts are that for the ally hate firing weapons. most part human beings are decent. These insights are culled from an entertaining romp “We often assume that when things become tough people through anthropology, archaeology, psychology, biology, often start to behave in a selfish or nasty way,” says Bregman, from unpacking foundational academic principles in the process. his home in the Netherlands. “I call this veneer theory. That It’s not hippy-dippy Chicken Soup for the pessimistic soul but a civilisation is actually a thin veneer [for our worst selves]. bracing account of humanity. “What I’m trying to do is redefine Actually, what science has discovered is that people pull what it means to be a realist,” says Bregman. “Very often when together when things get tough. When there’s a tsunami or we say you need to be more realistic we mean be a bit more earthquake what you get is an explosion of cooperation and pessimistic or cynical. And I think that’s actually wrong. I think altruism.” the cynics are naive and it’s much more realistic to have a more What about a pandemic? “I know we have seen quite a bit hopeful view of nature, to emphasise we have a role to cooper- in the news about people behaving in a selfish way or hoard- ate and be friendly. And this is actually our superpower as a ing toilet paper but if you zoom out we can recognise that species. It explains why we conquered the globe.” the vast majority of how people behave has been pro-social Homo puppy as Bregman benignly renames our ancestors in nature,” he says. “Billions of people around the globe quite survived through fraternity not fractiousness. Wars became com- radically adjusted their lifestyles to stop the virus from spread- mon only once nomadic groups established settled societies with ing further. That is to me the headline and the most important their attendant ideas of possession and property.

64 27 july 2020 “In a tough environment such as the Ice Age you could only Studies on toddlers and children have shown they prefer those survive if you had a lot of friends,” he says. “Imagine someone like themselves. But biology is not destiny. “The most powerful like Trump in prehistory, he wouldn’t have survived for long. medicine against hate and racism we have is to bring people People wouldn’t have liked him... This changed quite radically in contact. It’s easy to hate someone who is abstract, someone not very long ago when we settled down. And now we seem to you’ve never met,” he says. “From a young age kids should be in live in a world of the survival of the shameless. That’s not where contact with as much diversity as possible, rich, poor, we come from.” left-wing, right-wing, different colours and ethnicities. Then Yet, the bleaker notion of ourselves is the prevailing one. we go back to our original hunter-gatherer model of living Bregman attributes this to a together. They had flexible so- few factors: one, the news we Illustration by Saurabh Singh cieties, huge networks and of- consume, a kind of psycholog- ten switched groups. I think ical junk food that focuses on we need similar fluidity.” everything that goes wrong, He’s careful though to crises, violence. distinguish optimism from Second, some of these hope: “Optimism is a form of ideas are deeply embedded complacency… hope impels and those who govern us you to act”—and concedes find it useful to perpetuate that climate change, corrup- them. “The notion that we tion, authoritarianism are are selfish is in the interest real problems. But on balance of those in power. Cynicism we are better off than before. is the main ideology of our There are really good reasons rulers,” he says. “Hope is to be anxious and fearful but a very dangerous thing. It there are good reasons to have means that people can go on hope for the future, he says. the streets and question the “Because we have seen ideas status quo.” that used to be dismissed as Bregman’s compel- marginal and crazy have been ling and counterintuitive moving into the mainstream. argument that people are Higher taxes on the rich, basically decent is all fine. ambitious policies against But how can you then ex- climate change, universal plain the Holocaust? Ethnic basic income [UBI]... That’s cleansing? Terrorism? He quite exciting and an example spends several pages tackling Billions of people around the globe of the shift in the zeitgeist.” the baser instincts of man, quite radically adjusted their lifestyles Bregman previously and commonly held beliefs to stop the virus from spreading further. dwelt on UBI in his first about the ‘banality of evil’ or book Utopia for Realists. the hidden villains in each That is to me the headline and the most Humankind returns to similar one of us. The top brass of the important thing to remember” themes, showcasing how the Nazi party may have been Rutger C Bregman historian laxer, more generous view murderous, ideologically of humanity has worked: driven nutters, but what open prisons, unstructured of the ordinary folk, the schools, employee-driven footsoldiers? “Indeed they were not motivated by ideology or companies. Ideas that sound radical turn out to be highly prac- anti-Semitism but more by comradeship and loyalty to fellow tical. “Cynicism is a legitimisation of the status quo. Hope is a soldiers,” he says. “This is the dark truth about our species. moral duty. That doesn’t mean we say that people are naturally Often, we do the most horrible things in the name of comrade- angels, because we clearly are not. But we have this strong ship, loyalty, friendship,” he continues. “The real paradox capacity in us to cooperate and do the right thing.” of my book is that on the one hand I argue that people have Bregman continues to write for De Correspondent, an online evolved to be friendly and on the other hand I’m saying that platform, and is currently researching climate change. friendliness is exactly the problem.” And what about Lord of the Flies? He still enjoys it as fiction, Bregman notes that ethnic solidarities often supersede indi- not prophecy. “It’s well-written but highly unrealistic,” he says, vidual goodness, that kindness tends to extend to those like us. with a laugh. n

27 july 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 65 NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

RAJEEV MASAND

Alarm Bells Christopher Nolan tentpole, will land in cinemas on Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan’s hospitalisation on July August 12th (the film has twice shifted its release due to the 11th upon testing positive for the coronavirus has reportedly global pandemic), there is excitement but also considerable compelled Bollywood to think harder about returning to anxiety among diehard Nolan fans in countries like India work too soon. While it may be hard to ascertain exactly how where it is unlikely that cinemas will reopen in time. the Bachchans caught the virus, it is no secret that Abhishek Nolan, who has forever been a champion of the ‘big screen’ had been visiting a dubbing studio for nearly two weeks to experience, has reportedly been pushing the studio for a complete work on his web show. And Bachchan Sr made it release, in the hope that it could revitalise the currently dead clear in a social media post that he had been meeting people, global theatrical business. But understandably it makes bad presumably to chalk out plans about completing his film and business sense to release at a time when the film could only television commitments. open in limited markets. Given the dozens of (if not more) livelihoods that depend Nevertheless, it is learnt that the studio is ensuring that on every project, it is understandable that the film industry the film is completely ready in time for the announced date. is trying to get back on its feet. However, this incident could Dimple Kapadia, who has a role in the film, has reportedly deter others from rushing back to work. More than likely, begun dubbing her lines at Mumbai’s Sunny Super Sound the Bachchans themselves may rethink their plans of Studio, just a stone’s throw away from her home in Juhu. She resuming work. is said to be dubbing for both the original English version and Word on the street is that the team behind Kaun Banega a Hindi version. Other professional dubbing artistes have Crorepati had planned to begin filming the 12th season been hired to dub lines for other actors for the Hindi, Tamil of the show from early September. According to well- and Telugu versions of the film. placed sources, they had decided to create a sanitisation tunnel that Bachchan Sr and Hot Right Now everyone involved with the show would be Thirty-year-old Zakir Khan, reportedly India’s required to pass through to enter the set. The highest selling comic, has landed a multi- size of the audience was to be restricted to show deal with Amazon Prime Video. The 50 people and they would be separated from Indore-born storyteller and funnyman has the host and the player by a glass been snapped up to do three new comedy partition. The hope was to begin specials in Hindi for the streamer and filming at the start of September will also release the second season and for the episodes to begin of his hit comedy series Chacha airing by the end of the Vidhayak Hain Humare, which was same month. already filming before lockdown Considering the actor’s was announced. Zakir made the age (he is nearly 78) and his announcement in an emotional complicated health history, video where he spoke about his industry sources are saying humble background and his Bachchan could be advised by journey to this milestone. The doctors and family to postpone deal with Amazon is significant the start date now. given the largely elitist attitude around comedy in India, where The August Tenet the bulk of stand-up comedies With Warner Bros having recently commissioned by major streamers announced that Tenet, their big is in English. n

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