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OPEN VOLUME 12 ISSUE 43 2 NOVEMBER 2020

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LOCOMOTIF OPEN DIARY THE INSIDER INDIAN ACCENTS TOUCHSTONE OPINION WHISPERER OPEN ESSAY The trial By Swapan Dasgupta By PR Ramesh Reimagining An American Left, right and By Jayanta Ghosal Mao against then and now the Gita folk tale nowhere Nehru By S Prasannarajan By Bibek Debroy By Keerthik Sasidharan By Minhaz Merchant By Iqbal Chand Malhotra

28 HOW ILL IS INDIA’S 28 HEALTH SECTOR? With government hospitals overburdened, bottomlines of private ones wiped out, and an insurance system that seems to be unable to wrap its head around the pandemic, Covid-19 has laid bare India’s health infrastructure By Lhendup G Bhutia

34 BE PATIENT Being non-Covid patients in the time of a pandemic By Nikita Doval 16 5 38 DOCTORS JUMPING BORDERS With the disruption in corporate hospitals, underpaid medical professionals and neighbourhood nursing homes are stepping into the breach By V Shoba

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44 PUNJABI RAP Political brinkmanship in Punjab has taken a dangerous turn after the farm reform laws By Siddharth Singh 56

48 LETTER FROM LAHORE Land without small mercies By Mehr Tarar 52

52 56 60 65 66 BEHOLDEN TO THE ‘THE TIDE IS SHIFTING AWAY FROM THE INVISIBLE OTHER HOLLYWOOD REPORTER NOT PEOPLE LIKE US FATHER FIGURE MALE SUPREMACY’ What makes us who we are? Ewan McGregor on his A new beginning Sofia Coppola on her departure Parvathy on the Kerala Increasingly in popular culture new docu-series Long Way Up By Rajeev Masand from reflective character studies film industry it is who we are opposed to By Noel de Souza By Rajeev Masand By Ullekh NP By Kaveree Bamzai

Cover by Saurabh Singh 2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 3 open mail [email protected]

Editor S Prasannarajan letter of the week managing Editor PR Ramesh C executive Editor Ullekh NP Despite opposition parties being in disarray and editor-at-large Siddharth Singh deputy editors Madhavankutty Pillai Rashtriya Janata Dal founder Lalu Prasad serving (Mumbai Bureau Chief), a prison term for a multi-crore fodder scam, the Rahul Pandita, Amita Shah, V Shoba (Bangalore), Nandini Nair electoral fight in Bihar that looked like a onesided creative director Rohit Chawla affair at the beginning for the BJP-Janata Dal (United) art director Jyoti K Singh Senior Editors Sudeep Paul, combine has become tough as we near the voting dates Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), (‘Bihar 2020’, October 26th, 2020). The main reason is Moinak Mitra, Nikita Doval Associate Editor Vijay K Soni (Web) the poor performance of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar assistant editor Vipul Vivek over the past five years. If you look at the questions chief of graphics Saurabh Singh in the latest opinion survey also, you will see that SENIOR DESIGNERs Anup Banerjee, Veer Pal Singh while people still prefer him to anyone else, they are Photo editor Raul Irani also complaining about him individually, not the deputy Photo editor Ashish Sharma coalition. That should give the BJP some hope. Nitish National Head-Events and Initiatives Kumar rose in Bihar politics as a whiff of fresh air with the right backing Arpita Sachin Ahuja AVP (ADVERTISING) and promised to transform the state but got waylaid of the BJP’s leaders, she Rashmi Lata Swarup in between. He made prohibition his main plank could be the much needed GENERAL MANAGERs (ADVERTISING) Uma Srinivasan (South) but that has not helped grow the economy of Bihar. alternative in Tamil Nadu Instead, the Bihar government is losing revenue to politics. If the BJP doesn’t get National Head-Distribution and Sales Ajay Gupta both neighbouring states and smugglers. The LJP, the it right this time, it will be regional heads-circulation D Charles (South), Melvin George Congress and the RJD are full of discredited leaders. a longwinding road ahead (West), Basab Ghosh (East) Nitish Kumar has become a shadow of himself and for them. With the current Head-production Maneesh Tyagi his agenda of growth and development seems to have EPS adminstration’s poor senior manager (pre-press) Sharad Tailang taken a backseat. It’s a sorry state of affairs where no performance and DMK’s MANAGER-MARKETING matter who wins—Lalu’s son Tejashwi or Nitish once MK Stalin, Kamal Haasan Priya Singh Chief Designer-marketing again—Bihar ends up losing. and Rajini still struggling to Champak Bhattacharjee Bholey Bhardwaj become relevant, Khushbu cfo & HEAD-IT Anil Bisht could be the real alternative Chief ExecuTive & Publisher Tamil voters are looking for. Neeraja Chawla It’s now or never. All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner waiting for death tamil twist Ashok Goswami is prohibited. Much as we may yearn ‘to The B JP has finally got a Editor: S Prasannarajan. Printed and published by Neeraja Chawla on behalf cease upon the midnight face to activate its cadre in Switching parties is a way of the owner, Open Media Network Pvt Ltd. Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd, with no pain’, we may not Tamil Nadu for the electoral of life in Tamil Nadu politics 18-35 Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad-121007, (Haryana). really end up being fortunate race (‘Getting It Right’ by By and actor Kushbu Sundar Published at 4, DDA Commercial enough when our turn Maalan Narayanan, October has perfected the art by now. Complex, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. comes (‘The Sense of an 26th, 2020). The party’s plans She has had a lacklustre Ph: (011) 48500500; Fax: (011) 48500599 Ending’ by Arun Shourie, to rope in Rajinikanth has career in both the DMK and To subscribe, WhatsApp ‘openmag’ to 9999800012 or log on to October 26th, 2020). Yama’s not yielded any results as the the Congress. Now, the BJP’s www.openthemagazine.com or call our Toll Free Number emissaries are not known actor chose to float his own arrival on the Tamil scene 1800 102 7510 to be kind nor do they come party. Khushbu Sundar who has given her new opening or email at: [email protected] sequentially. So probably, could not shake the Congress and a third chance to turn For alliances, email [email protected] we should remember the much may be better placed into reality the part she has For advertising, email maxim that ‘preparedness in the BJP because the former been dreaming of. Let us [email protected] For any other queries/observations, is all’. Truly, being organised party is in a shambles in the wait and watch how the email [email protected] in death, as in life, is crucial state. The BJP doesn’t have BJP fares in the next Tamil to a peaceful end. Writing a any history there and may Nadu elections and whether Disclaimer ‘Open Avenues’ are advertiser-driven marketing will can indeed be liberating strike a chord with the voters it is able to grow beyond initiatives and Open assumes no responsibility for content and the consequences of using because it gives us a glimpse who are fed up of AIADMK’s elections. Whoever wins, products or services advertised in the magazine of our own end. Once we and DMK’s shenanigans. party-hopper Kushbu is

Volume 12 Issue 43 have our after-plan ready, Though Khushbu is no having a field day trying her For the week 27 October- we can, like passengers in a Jayalalithaa, she is no political luck out again 2 November 2020 Total No. of pages 68 lounge, soak in the moment. Sasikala either. She has and again. Sangeeta Kampani a clean track record and CK Jayanthimaniam

4 2 november 2020 LOCOMOTIF

by S PRASANNARAJAN THE TRIAL THEN AND NOW

efore 2020, there was 1968. Then: The streets Sorkin, a courtroom drama becomes a verbal arena where the erupted in counter-cultural romance of what Le Monde kinetic force of dialogues is matched by the moralism of the called the “bored” generation. In Paris, they occupied self-conscious idealist. As a scriptwriter and filmmaker (the universities and factories and invited Sartre for repertoire includes The West Wing, The Newsroom and The Social philosophical input—and old icons of communism Network), he is the polemicist of here-and-now, carrying within Bwere worthy of being there on the wall and the placard. That was him an overabundance of headlines-driven rage. In The Trial, the a time when capitalism and imperialism were synonyms for dramatisation of moral crime and predetermined punishment evil, a time when the guardian of Gallic essentialism, Charles de parades the idealists, bigots and conspirators from the year that Gaulle, had to temporarily flee the Republic. In the religion of America believes it’s reliving today. protest, conscience conditioned by ideology was the only temple. Here they are. The hippies, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Elsewhere, in the United States, it was a war and an played with comic irreverence by Sacha Baron Cohen and assassination that brought dissent to the street. Vietnam was Jeremy Strong (of Succession) respectively, come to the court one the wrong war for a generation angered by the extra-territorial day dressed as judges, and Hoffman never misses an opportunity terror of the imperium, and the foot soldiers dying in the faraway to defy the system with some of Sorkin’s best lines. Tom Hayden swamps and jungles of Vietnam mostly came from the working (Eddie Redmayne), the ideologue, is a conflicted soul waiting for class and the Black community. The war was not unsolicited validation. He will have his moment, even if it’s at the expense of martyrdom; it was sacrifice to please the wrong god. Then historical fact. Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, and riots broke out after the assassination of Rev Martin Luther Lee Weiner complete the list of rebels accused of being the rioters King Jr. The Republican candidate Richard Nixon campaigned of ’68. For a while they are joined by the Black Panther Party co- on the platform of law and order—and would win. And at the founder Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), without legal Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the “rioters” representation. When he stands up for his rights, he is gagged included hippies, pacifists and ideologues. One year later, in the and chained to his seat, and the scene provides the film’s most beginning of the Nixon era, their ordeal would come to be known eloquent reminder that racial dehumanisation is a constant as the Trial of the Chicago 7—the drama of youthful dissent and in America’s trials. The defence attorney William Kunstler insensitive state staged in the backdrop of a culture war. (Mark Rylance) argues with stoic restraint, and he is constantly When you watch Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, undercut by the federal judge Julius Hoffman, a looming tower of streaming on Netflix, in 2020, five decades after 1968, the distance conservative partisanship and a ruthless wielder of contempt-of- in time is reduced by the mythology of protest, its morals and court order, brilliantly played by Frank Langella. methods. The culture war is back, with the progressives in In the end, it doesn’t matter whether the judgment was custom- righteous rage set against the state without justice. Then it was made for Nixon’s “spoiled rotten”. It doesn’t matter whether the the assassination of King that set the street on fire; in 2020 it was seven would be acquitted by a higher court. It also doesn’t matter the death of George Floyd under the knee of a white policeman. whether we all along knew that the riot was instigated not by the Then it was Nixon who extolled the virtues of the strong state seven but the cops who put their badges inside their pockets before (“We see cities enveloped in smoke and flame”); today there charging. What we are meant to know is that The Trial of the Chicago is a Donald Trump, seeking re-election on law and order, to 7, even if we shuffle the text and context, retains its message in pull the presidential trigger, “When the looting starts, the the age of angry streets and a president worse than Nixon. We are shooting starts.” The cultural divide was as sharp then as it is meant to remember that our conscience is still on trial in a world today, with the dictatorship of correctness enforcing its where the lies of the state continue to borrow from history. own taboos in public discourse. The Trial of the Chicago 7 The post-credits question is: What does it take for a filmmaker should be watched as a memorial or a writer to let polemics and service and a moral rejoinder, which is The Trial of the Chicago 7 pedagogy diminish his art for the also an explicit directorial demand. sake of social, cultural and And the director being Aaron ideological obligations? n

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 5 open diary Swapan Dasgupta

or a few days or maybe a debunked under the all-embracing Fweek at most, a large section of category ‘prejudice’, it is worth the social media behaved as if the reflecting on what creates prejudice. most important thing in India—after I am often reminded of why Edmund Covid—was an advertisement issued Burke, often described as the archi- by the makers of Tanishq jewel- tect of modern conservatism, never lery. There were spirited exchanges considered prejudice to be a pejora- between those who described the ad- tive term. To Burke, prejudice was vertisement as a sensitive portrayal invariably the outcome of accumu- of the togetherness of India and those lated experiences which have been who believed—equally sincerely— passed down the generations. To that, behind the touching portrayal relationship with Muslim girls is him, prejudice was always based on of multi-religious accommodation, again left unaddressed. Anyway, this uncodified knowledge. Being devoid this was nothing but a justification of section strongly felt that the portrayal of prejudice involves being socialised ‘love jihad’. The furore was signifi- of Muslim open-mindedness was an in a very different ecosystem—a rea- cant enough for the Tata company to eyewash and that as far as their son why cosmopolitan India saw the withdraw the advertisement and the experience suggested, the Muslim Tanishq advertisement in a different share price of the company took a hit community was never going to light from Middle India. as a boycott campaign was launched accept multiplicity of faith. They However, there are exceptions. by those who were outraged. will point to the horrible predica- My grandfather’s sister was a feisty What is striking is that the ment of Hindu and Sikh minorities lady. She secured a doctorate from opinions on the Tanishq advertise- in Pakistan and the familiar tales of Heidelberg in the 1930s, became a ment differed significantly according conversions to Islam. trade unionist on her return and to class. For much of upper-middle In a facile article that seems earned considerable fame—and class, cosmopolitan India, there was to be the hallmark of the foreign notoriety—as the leader of sweepers nothing strange about a Muslim boy media in India, it was suggested in employed by the Calcutta Corpora- marrying a Hindu girl and his family Financial Times that this intolerance tion. Within the family she was accommodating the girl’s customs as is a feature of post-2014 India and regarded with both awe and dread. much as possible. In our social life, we that Narendra Modi’s victories have My grandaunt did something that know of many inter-faith marriages narrowed the Hindu mind. This is was unusual, even by her eccentric where there is no question of conver- complete hogwash. I recall in my standards: she married a Muslim. If sion. The more complex question of youth being told by kindly relatives she was a battle axe, Mirza Sahib—as what faith the children should fol- that we could marry anyone suit- he was known in the family—was low—if they are not to be atheists—is, able, but never a Muslim. Despite quite the opposite. A refined, highly of course, left unaddressed. the Shuddhi Movement of the Arya educated scion of a Hyderabad Slightly lower down the social Samaj in the late-19th century, most family, he was soft-spoken and well ladder, ‘love jihad’ is a touchy issue. Hindus didn’t factor in the possi- liked by everyone. He had a distin- There is, in any case, an innate bilities of conversions to Hinduism. guished career as a diplomat and a conservatism of families that fear the Conversion was always regarded as politician. There was no question of free social interaction of the sexes. a one-way street—from the Hindu my grandaunt changing her religion. On top of that, the bush telegraph faith to Islam. This was seen to be as Indeed, after marriage, she gave up suggests that Muslim boys are true for Hindu boys who married activism and became a devout Kali somehow adept at enticing Hindu Muslim girls as it was for Hindu girls worshipper, doing puja each day in a girls into a relationship and then wedding Muslim men. flaming red sari. securing their conversion to Islam. It is for historians and sociologists Her life didn’t reshape the notion The fear is always centred on the to provide credible explanations of prejudice in our family. But we intentions of Muslim boys. The of what lay behind such attitudes. adored Mirza Sahib and regarded my question of Hindu boys striking up a However, before the faultlines are grandaunt as totally bonkers. n

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NOTEBOOK The Return of the Quad

n Monday, October 19th, in a not alto- added). The next decade brought such geopolitical instability gether unanticipated decision, the Indian defence that the four governments became convinced their disbanded establishment abandoned its self-restraint, or rather dialogue had been an idea ahead of its time.’ self-imposed restraint, to invite Australia to the 2020 In the autumn of 2020 going on winter, China has risen from OMalabar exercises with itself, the US and Japan. The absence the beating it initially took over the pandemic to revel in military of surprise didn’t entail a lack of optimism, or even euphoria aggression and aggressive posturing brazen by even the People’s in some quarters. In the mix of the tangible and the symbolic, Republic’s (PRC) standards since the time of the Chairman. After the latter usually has the first say and Australia’s ‘return’ to the summer of bloodshed in the Himalayas with the Indian the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) is as symbolic as it military, President Xi Jinping has given a call for war-readiness to reconfigures the Quad’s raison d’être. Malabar, of course, is not the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and reportedly the PRC is seri- held under the auspices of the Quad but the forum can finally ously planning an invasion of Taiwan, or at least that’s the mes- live up to its name. And it was now or never. sage it’s intent on conveying. In a retaliatory diplomatic measure The Quad had disintegrated in 2008 when Kevin Rudd’s following up on the dragged-out but still unfinished trade war, Labor administration had pulled Australia out and enthusiasm the US has appointed a special coordinator for Tibetan issues. had waned in both Japan—with Shinzo Abe, whose brainchild The irony of the situation is that, having evidently got several it had been, leaving office in September 2007—and India— things wrong at home and abroad, the Trump administration where the UPA Government, with its overcautious defence got two things obviously right—China and the Quad—among minister, bent over backwards to stay out of China’s way. In the certain other things it most likely got right in foreign policy and years that followed, two, not unrelated, geopolitical develop- geopolitics. (It’s more than just a joke that Covid-19, originating ments had progressed simultaneously. China’s continued in Wuhan and then damaging Donald Trump, the first US Presi- economic rise with the attendant, now overtly prioritised, dent to put real roadblocks on Beijing’s long and quick march to military modernisation and the growing defence and strategic global supremacy, has been a windfall for the Party.) closeness between New Delhi and Washington. It was the Trump administration that in 2017 had helped The fear of an angry China had afflicted not merely South begin the resurrection of the Quad. This had perfectly dove- Block. China had protested tailed with New Delhi, with a vehemently when the double new Government in office, by Malabar of 2007 had expanded to then having realised that staying include Australia and Singapore. Australia rejoins Malabar and out of Beijing’s way only embold- In the end, the Chinese had won ened the PRC and made it take both ways. Rory Medcalf, strategic Delhi, by rights, will practise its you for granted. Rather, greater expert and head of National Secu- minilateralism within and proximity to Washington would rity College at The Australian Na- squeeze Beijing at one end and tional University, recently wrote without the Quad. But make it more amenable to dia- in Australian Foreign Affairs: ‘The sometime in the near future, it logue at the other. It worked to main criticism of the Quad back an extent where China went into then was that it would needlessly may want to note that alliances a mode of alternating between provoke China down a perilous are not commitments till death dismissing the US-India partner- path of military modernisation ship and raising its protest pitch. and destabilising behaviour. Yet do nations part. They are All the time, the border face-offs Beijing chose such a road anyway. also functional tools to went on as did China’s continued The perils the Quad’s critics efforts to block India from export thought it would invoke ended realise mutual goals with control regimes like the Nuclear up arising in its absence (emphasis likeminded partners Suppliers Group. By the time an

8 2 november 2020 Illustration by Saurabh Singh angry India, in the fall of 2020, invited Australia to Malabar, the nesia and a less formalised maritime exercise and exploration die had been cast. The catalyst was the second ministerial meet trilateral among India, Australia and France. As Medcalf points of the Quad in Tokyo earlier this month—a face-to-face, physi- out, there’s also the ‘less famous quadrilateral’ of Australia, cal meeting despite the pandemic—where mutual interest and New Zealand, the US and France in the South Pacific. The Quad, intent converged with all eyes on the clock. in fact, may now scale things up and broaden its horizons, Medcalf tells Open: “It was worth the wait. Australia’s taking a leaf out of the South Pacific diplomatic quadrilateral’s inclusion in the 2020 Malabar naval exercise is a confirma- book. Medcalf says: “After this, the Quad won’t look back, and tion of the logic of practical Indo-Pacific security cooperation we are likely to see collaboration broaden across other domains centred on the Quad. For many years now it has been clear like supply-chain resilience, cyber security and coordination of that these four countries offer an exceptional convergence of diplomatic efforts in multilateral organisations.” strategic interests, competent capabilities, mutual respect for a The question, for the others though, would inevitably rules-based order and willingness to work together. China and return to India. Soon after the announcement on October 19th, its affronts to regional order provided the final glue, making ABC journalist Siobhan Heanue tweeted: ‘Australia joining manifest the pre-existing alignment of interest among the Ex Malabar is significant - but it is India that will make or four.” As neatly as that sums up the resurrection of the Quad, break the Quad.’ Delhi has been more driven and seemingly what has changed in Delhi can’t be reduced to the post-Galwan determined than ever in reviving the Quad but it apparently heat. The message, despite attempts to mute it, is quite clear: remains the weak link. Japan and Australia are both alliance India’s counter-aggression vis-à-vis China now officially spans partners of the US. India is not likely to be one in the foresee- land and sea, from Ladakh to the Indo-Pacific, notwithstanding able future, especially given the persistence of apathy towards Delhi’s communiqué that the Quad should not be conflated the idea of big-time alliances in South Block. Delhi, by rights, with the Indo-Pacific. The truth, or what one hopes is the truth, will practise its minilateralism within and without the Quad should be that the immediate end here is cutting off the Straits but sometime in the near future it may want to sit up and note of Malacca from the PLA Navy whenever the need arises. that alliances are not commitments till death do nations part. Each of the four members of the Quad is in Beijing’s They are also functional tools to realise mutual goals with crosshairs. But the fact is that the Quad is not the only strategic likeminded parties. China has forged and broken alliances forum of its kind in the Indo-Pacific. While the idea was to ex- with one and all, often based on single, extremely short-term pand it to include the UK and France—an idea that may yet see objectives. From where Delhi looks at the world, it will not find the light of day given Japan’s permanent membership in Mala- ‘big’ countries, with a stake in its maritime neighbourhood, bar since 2015 and now Australia’s return—there are already at more likeminded than its three partners in the Quad. n least two trilaterals that have surfaced in the region: a for- malised broad-issue forum involving India, Australia and Indo- By Sudeep Paul

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 9 openings

portrait Vijay Sethupathi League season underway in the UAE, to issue a statement asking the actor to quit for the sake of his own safety and image. bowled out “When I spoke to him, Sethupathi seemed unaware of the political purposes that a biopic on a The Tamil star is browbeaten into withdrawing problematic figure like Muralitharan could serve,” from a biopic on cricketer Muralitharan says V Gowthaman, a Chennai-based filmmaker, pro-Tamil activist and politician. “We have nothing or fans of Tamil cinema, the name Prem evokes not a Salman against a film on Muralitharan. But it is being made F Khan character, but the 2012 film Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanum, in Tamil, with one of the most loved stars of Tamil in which the lead played by actor Vijay Sethupathi loses his memory after cinema playing the character. It cannot be seen as just sustaining a small injury playing cricket with his friends. “I tripped and fell. art—if the film comes out and Sethupathi becomes I got hurt here... that is where the medulla oblongata is. The shock must have a tool in the hands of an anti-Tamil establishment to resulted in short-term memory loss. It’s ok, it will come back on its own,” promote a hero who toes their line, it will hurt Tamil Prem assures himself, in words that every fan of the actor has committed sentiment no end,” he says. Muralitharan has put to memory. Sethupathi, 42, would have played cricket again onscreen, por- out statements clarifying that the film is intended to traying one of the greatest cricketers of all time, Sri Lankan offspin legend inspire a generation of upcoming cricketers. He has Muttiah Muralitharan. Cast in a biopic named 800—after the number of also claimed affiliation with the Tamil plantation Test wickets Muralitharan has to his name—Sethupathi had announced workers in Sri Lanka and said that his father and the project in early October, only to be browbeaten into withdrawing from relatives lost their lives to the ethnic conflict. “The it within a couple of weeks. The opposition came from a section of Tamil Tamil identity issue still rages in Sri Lanka, and an society that feels betrayed by Muralitharan’s politics. A Tamil who grew actor of Sethupathi’s stature should not be seen to up in Sri Lanka during the civil war, Muralitharan is accused of disclaim- endorse a man who has never before empathised ing his ancestry and siding with the Mahinda Rajapaksa government that with his own people,” Gowthaman says. oversaw the genocide of Tamils in the country. “Muralitharan is an example The sobriquet of ‘Makkal Selvan’ (People’s for achievers in cricket and a historically important figure. But his political Man) has stuck to Sethupathi since director Seenu posturing and alleged identity swaps are controversial and cannot escape a Ramasamy popularised it ahead of the release portrayal in his biopic,” says Maravanpulavu K Sachithananthan, a Hindu of his film Dharma Durai (2016). A rare actor in Tamil activist in Sri Lanka. As detractors took to social media and urged the Tamil cinema who trespassed several boundaries, star to back out of the project, sensible voices condemned the slurs and a rape including the one between the commercial and the threat directed at his daughter. The backlash finally prompted Muralithar- indie worlds, Vijay Sethupathi had a late start— an, who is coaching bowlers of Sunrisers Hyderabad for the Indian Premier after a career as an accountant in Dubai—and one

Courtesy Karthik Srinivasan that coincided with a new wave in the industry. Character-centric films, like the crime comedy Soodhu Kavvum (2013), the nostalgia trip that was 96 (2018) and Super Deluxe (2019) where he plays a transgender, made him a darling of Tamil audiences. Sethupathi has, on occasion, spoken up against communal tension, fan wars and the abrogation of Article 370. In an interview last year to SBS Tamil Australia, a radio channel, after winning the best actor award at the Indian Film Festival in Melbourne, he invoked Dravidian leader Periyar EV Ramasamy and criticised the Narendra Modi Government’s “anti- democratic” stand on Kashmir. His statements on the issue are rumoured to have come in the way of his bagging the Tamil Nadu Government’s Kalaimamani award for excellence in art and literature. Bowing out of 800, which could have won him an Oscar nomination, is a personal setback for Sethupathi the artist, but it has only reaffirmed his stature as the conscience-keeper of Tamil cinema. n

By V shoba

2 november 2020 ANGLE ideas Breaking Up Google The US government’s attempt signals recognition of the dangers of tech monopolies

By madhavankutty pillai

omething so powerful tion, makes it perpetuate the monopoly. that it controls access to your While the case will take time for a

S s getty image consciousness itself, which knows verdict, should the government suc- more about you than you yourself, and ceed, the spillover to the other big tech Progress can predict decisions that you are going companies is inevitable. Social media, Pope Francis endorsing to make even before it has crossed your which defines modern existence, too same-sex marriages has to be mind, must be allowed into society might eventually get out of the strangle- a dramatic moment for the with extreme caution. But the tech- hold of a handful of companies that Catholic Church, but it is also nology and the companies that wield exert extraordinary control over a large an inevitable one because that them came in almost without notice, swathe of mankind. is the nature of civilisation’s making it seem as just a natural pro- There are no answers to what the progress. Outdated values gression of entrepreneurship. It clearly alternative world will look like but the that seem ossified in stone in wasn’t. We see the signs of it all around, present everyone recognises is a calamity institutions find it difficult from appliances that hear every word in progression. Former Google CEO Eric to withstand the self-evident you say to posts targeted so minutely Schmidt who came in an online event of ideas being accepted in the rest to individuals that it can veer you to Wall Street Journal recently, said that they of the world. The present Pope, vote for a certain candidate in elections. had not foreseen or intended ‘social net- who was always known to be Online technology has encroached works serving as amplifiers for idiots and a liberal, was preceded by a into areas no one predicted and yet the crazy people…Unless the industry gets its hardliner. Sustainable progress companies that own it don’t nearly get act together in a really clever way, there builds up gradually until it challenged enough about the power will be regulation.’ But what did they becomes conventional wisdom they wield. That might end by the US intend then? To make vast profits by cap- abruptly. Think of the sun going government’s actions this week. turing attention at a scale never known around the earth, a belief which They filed an antitrust lawsuit that before while ignoring secondary effects. the Church held for centuries. n could potentially lead to Google being It was through Google’s search engine broken up because of, it said, too much money that they bought YouTube, the influence that was used to prevent company’s social media cash cow. Word’s Worth competition. As Reuters reported, ‘The Now when the consequences are be- U.S. sued Google on Tuesday, accusing coming real, these companies are trying the $1 trillion company of illegally us- to plug holes in the Titanic with paper. ‘The test of our ing its market muscle to hobble rivals in Spelt out in Schmidt’s statement is also progress is not whether the biggest challenge to the power and the next danger that these companies we add more to the influence of Big Tech in decades. The pose. Once Google decides who are the Justice Department lawsuit could lead ‘idiots and crazy people’, then anyone abundance of those to the break-up of an iconic company who does not meet their standard is who have much; it is that has become all but synonymous essentially an outcaste in the neighbour- whether we provide with the internet and assumed a central hood. And such powers and their abuse role in the day-to-day lives of billions of are limitless in scope. Regulation might enough for those who people around the globe.’ Effectively, as be bad for entrepreneurship but mo- have too little’ a search engine, Google is a monopoly nopolies that have appropriated godlike Franklin D Roosevelt and the money it makes from that posi- powers onto themselves are worse. n former us president

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 11 the insider PR Ramesh

come out in the open with The Real Reformer his version of what went on backstage in the key his seems to be the season released a book—Backstage: The reform years. He maintains: Tof books on the history of Story behind India’s High Growth “The 1992 Budget speech included India’s economic reforms. Often, Years—recently on the period of key the Dual Exchange Rate proposal it’s about conflicting versions economic reforms. that I formulated of that history—and equally For many of the and gave to the DEA conflicting versions of ownership books on those years, Secretary Montek of key proposals in the 1992 Union Manmohan Singh, Ahluwalia in a Budget. A book by Isher Judge the crucial driver of 10-page note. The Ahluwalia, former Chairperson of the reforms, becomes note was then sent the Indian Council for Research on a footnote or is pushed to the RBI, which International Economic Relations to the margins worked out the (ICRIER) who died recently, has while the writer operational details. rekindled interest in the subject himself becomes the The final version was as well as turned the spotlight protagonist. Now, worked out in the on what went on backstage. Her some of that self- home of RBI Governor husband, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, trumpeting is not Venkitaramanan, then Finance Secretary and the going uncontested, with me and most important public policy even the more articulate Joint Secretary YV Reddy official on economic reforms in versions. Arvind Virmani, a representing the [Ministry of the Manmohan Singh regime, also close associate of Montek, has now Finance].” Voila!

But the BJP leadership believes that its Dalit vote base with the advent Chirag’s Way in offering 15 seats to the LJP and of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), in suggesting that the Janata Dal- has been on the decline since 2005. hirag Paswan, who took over as United, or JD(U), share 10 other seats In 2005, it won 10 Assembly seats. In CLok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief with the LJP—a suggestion Nitish 2010, that came down to three. And after the death of his father Ram Vilas outright rejected—it did Chirag in 2015, the number plunged to two. Paswan, might have chosen the more than a favour. Consequently, Even Ram Vilas Paswan, known as over-the-top option of letting his it disapproves of what it sees as an astute leader who understood audience see how dear he held tantrums from the LJP leader, who which way the wind was blowing Prime Minister Narendra Modi in is considered callow and politically to effect a seamless switch, openly his heart. Even as Chirag dropped untested by several people in the acknowledged that he could not out of the NDA in Bihar and chose JD(U). Against this backdrop, a become a political force in the state to contest alone, vowing to oust comfortable victory for the NDA in on the strength of just votes from Nitish Kumar and ring in a BJP chief Bihar could mean curtains for Chirag the Paswan community. It was this minister, the BJP’s leadership— Paswan. His party’s following could that had dictated his support for the which launched a multi-pronged well be up for grabs too. A big Mandal Commission report as well attack on him in both Delhi and loss could also be prime real as other political somersaults in his Patna recently—is actually livid estate in New Delhi where career. This year’s Bihar election with him for the decision to Ram Vilas Paswan had could prove to be the biggest risk walk out of the alliance. occupied a spacious residence the LJP leadership has taken in its For sure, some blame on Janpath for years as existence—especially if voters, Nitish and his refusal minister under various notwithstanding Chirag’s claims of to share power and dispensations. The LJP, loyalty to Narendra Modi, decide to responsibility for which suffered a big dip vote directly for Modi’s candidates Chirag’s decision. in popularity among and his closest allies instead.

12 2 november 2020 Star Campaigners

he Congress rebel in Rajasthan, seems destined to linger near the TSachin Pilot, and Ghulam Nabi margins. That the old timer, among Azad, Leader of the Opposition in others, had already been relegated to Rajya Sabha, have both been added the sidelines was evident when the to the list of star campaigners for the party tasks performed earlier by him Bihar Assembly elections along with were handed over to lightweights party chief Sonia Gandhi, Rahul such as KC Venugopal. That shift Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. was evident in the last Parliament Azad was among the 23 dissenters session when men known to punch who wrote to Sonia Gandhi earlier, much above their political weight demanding a complete overhaul of were assigned the task of handling the party’s organisational structure. the Congress’ parliamentary group Pilot revolted against Rajasthan in the Upper House. They were at Wrecking Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. The the forefront of leading loud protests move to include these two in the in the well of the House. And the Ball campaign A-list of 30 is, therefore, leaders who orchestrated these seen more as a symbolic act of unseemly theatrics now seem to be ndia’s Turning Point: An mollifying them. With the three eyeing the opposition leader’s post ‘IEconomic Agenda to Spur heavyweights of the Congress’ first that will become vacant when Azad Growth and Jobs’ was a report family featured high on the list, Azad retires early next year. from the McKinsey Global Institute released in August this year. The widely read document bats heavily for a reform agenda in the next 12-18 months to accommodate last year, the post had been vacant 9 crore more workers in Scaling after the appointment of GC Murmu non-farm sectors by 2030, as the first Lieutenant Governor of especially in the thick of policy the Heights the Union Territory of Jammu and decisions that lead to high Kashmir. On October 29th, Murmu growth in the manufacturing xpenditure Secretary relinquished the post of expenditure and construction sectors. In ETV Somanathan may not have secretary and Atanu Chakraborty, 2017, there was ‘India’s Labour been a well-known name earlier, a 1985 batch IAS officer, was given Market: A New Emphasis but since end-2019—after the 1987 the additional charge. Somanathan on Gainful Employment’. batch officer from the was awarded the gold McKinsey became the most IAS’ Tamil Nadu cadre medal for the best IAS favoured agency for many was appointed to his trainee in his batch and establishments. Its policy current post in the has a PhD in economics perspectives became the finance ministry— from the University core ideology for many his star has been of Calcutta. A trained businesses to ‘rationalise’ their ascending. In March chartered accountant workforce over the years. Thus 2015, Somanathan (CA), this bureaucrat’s buoyed, the agency drafted was appointed Joint inimitable talents— its newsletter to advise on Secretary in the PMO. including those pruning and redeploying staff Before that, he was of a CA, CMA and in major organisations in the Commercial Taxes chartered secretary— capital. The man McKinsey Commissioner and Principal apparently carry a lot of weight in tasked with the job is now Secretary in the Tamil Nadu policy formulations. The good news wreaking havoc on the job government. When he was raised to is that he has five years left in service market and being blamed for expenditure secretary in December and is tipped to scale greater heights. largescale retrenchments.

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 13 indian accents

By Bibek Debroy

Reimagining the Gita The limits of reading it as an independent text

hat is a ‘Gita’? I have been writing segment. Let’s call it Mahabharata (O); ‘O’ standing for about Gitas in the Mahabharata. But ‘original’. There was a final text. Let’s call it Mahabharata (F), whether it is Gitas in the Mahabharata or in ‘F’ standing for ‘final’. These things are difficult to date with W other texts, that question can’t be answered any precision. Therefore, Mahabharata (O) probably dates satisfactorily. ‘Gita’ simply means something that was sung. to 500 BCE, while Mahabharata (F) probably dates to 500 CE. It may certainly be the case that the Bhagavat Gita was the This is a range of 1,000 years. Most scholars will agree on this first such Gita. It is certainly the case that the Bhagavat range. At best, some will say 400 BCE for Mahabharata (O) Gita is the most important of these Gitas. Nevertheless, and 400 CE for Mahabharata (F). one should be aware that there are other such Gitas. There There have been attempts to identify later layers and is a website that has Sanskrit documents. It has a listing distinguish them from older layers, such as through of such other Gitas and their texts. That lists 55 Gita texts. examining the evolution of the Sanskrit language. But There are a couple more on the Gita supersite maintained all such attempts are inherently subjective. A quote from by IIT Kanpur. That means, the Gita corpus has around 60 10.35 of Bhagavat Gita is relevant. In this section, Krishna texts. One might argue that, to be called a Gita, a text has to is telling Arjuna how he is the most important among be explicitly described as a ‘Gita’. There is a problem with various categories. For example, among all shining bodies, this argument. Those descriptions will typically be in the he is the sun. Among all the gods, he is Indra. Among all the chapter heading, or in the colophon added at the end of a mountains, he is Meru. Among all animals, he is the lion. chapter or text. But the vintage of these chapter headings Among all rivers, he is Ganga, and so on. That bit of 10.35 and colophons is later. There is no means of knowing states: ‘Among months, I am Margashirsha.’ Margashirsha is whether they were part of the original text. also known as Agrahayana, roughly from around November Let me stick to the Mahabharata and let me stick to 21st to December 20th. Calendars differ across the country, the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata, published by the but most people will agree the calendar begins with the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in Pune. month of Chaitra, roughly from March 21st to April 20th. From 1916 to 1966, the BORI sifted through more than 1,200 Why would Krishna imply that Margashirsha was the versions of the Sanskrit Mahabharata and produced what most important among all the months? That can only is inferred to be the closest to the original text. This text is be because the calendar then started with the month of known as BORI’s Critical Edition. Nothing can be established Margashirsha. One should note that the word ‘Agrahayana’ with certainty and hence there is subjectivity in inferring. literally means the first month of the year. Therefore, when Some critiques have criticised BORI, both on grounds of this bit of the Bhagavat Gita was composed, Margashirsha omission and commission, though more the former. Today, (named after the nakshatra Mrigashira) was the first month the Mahabharata text is divided into 18 parvas. They are of the year and the year started with the full moon in the not even in size and their names are 1) ‘Adi Parva’ 2) ‘Sabha month of Margashirsha. Many important festivals are still Parva’ 3) ‘Aranyaka (Vana) Parva’ 4) ‘Virata Parva’ 5) ‘Udyoga concentrated in Margashirsha. There are reasons why it is Parva’ 6) ‘Bhishma Parva’ 7) ‘Drona Parva’ 8) ‘Karna Parva’ difficult to use astronomical data to date events, such as the 9) ‘Shalya Parva’ 10) ‘Souptika Parva’ 11) ‘Stri Parva’ 12) date of the Kurukshetra War. Astronomical calculations ‘Shanti Parva’ 13) ‘Anushasana Parva’ 14) ‘Ashvamedhika moved from nakshatras to rashis (signs of the zodiac), from Parva’ 15) ‘Ashramavasika Parva’ 16) ‘Mousala Parva’ 17) lunar months to solar months. Lunar months sometimes ‘Mahaprasthanika Parva’ and 18) ‘Svargarohana Parva’. Most started with purnima (the day of the full moon), sometimes people are familiar with these names. The Mahabharata with amavasya (the day of the new moon). Therefore, one has was composed over a period of time. There was an earlier to make assumptions, which in the last resort, are subjective.

14 2 november 2020 Subject to this, a respected astronomer named VB Ketkar the Bhagavat Gita don’t read the Bhagavat Gita sub-parva. (Indian and Foreign Chronology, 1921) gives us an answer to Most people are familiar with the 18-parva classification of the question of when Margashirsha was the first month of the Mahabharata, listed earlier. What may not be known the year. His answer gives us a range between 699 BCE and is that there is also a parallel 100-parva classification of 452 BCE. This part of the Bhagavat Gita is therefore as old as the Mahabharata, which probably pre-dated the 18-parva Mahabharata (O). classification. Remnants of that remain in the sub-parvas Sanskrit grammar evolved over a period and, after Panini, that are part of the 18 main parvas. For example, the came to assume a certain structure, especially in what Bhagavat Gita occurs in ‘Bhishma Parva’, when Bhishma is called classical Sanskrit. We haven’t been able to date was the commander of the Kaurva army. Within ‘Bhishma Panini satisfactorily. Sixth century BCE, fifth century BCE Parva’, there is a Bhagavat Gita sub-parva. This has 994 or fourth century BCE are reasonable guesses. Linguistic slokas and 27 chapters. Those who know about the Bhagavat evidence from parts of the Bhagavat Gita show that these Gita will be surprised. Isn’t the Bhagavat Gita supposed to sections were written before have 700 slokas and 18 chapters? classical Sanskrit became the Indeed, the Bhagavat Gita does norm. Therefore, fifth century have 700 slokas and 18 chapters, BCE, fourth century BCE, third but the sub-parva named after century BCE—something the Bhagavat Gita has a little like that. These parts of the bit more than what we know Bhagavat Gita, therefore, pre- as the Bhagavat Gita text. In date Mahabharata (F) and belong the 100-parva classification of to more or less the same period the BORI edition, this Bhagavat as Mahabharata (O). Couldn’t Gita sub-parva is numbered there have been a Bhagavat Gita 63. The first nine chapters (O) and a Bhagavat Gita (F), with are about preparations and these earlier sections belonging preliminaries. The 10th chapter to Bhagavat Gita (O)? Couldn’t then starts with the famous there have been multiple words: ‘Dhritarashtra asked, ‘O authors of the Bhagavat Gita? If Gita is defined as a text Sanjaya! Having gathered on This is an old issue, discussed where Krishna himself speaks the holy plains of Kurukshetra, threadbare, but never seems to Arjuna, other than the wanting to fight, what did my to go away. The dead horse sons and the sons of Pandu do?’ keeps kicking every once in a Bhagavat Gita, one will only The first nine chapters lead to while. In these columns, I have have Anu Gita. But if it is defined the 10th chapter, which is the mentioned Yardi’s work, who as any text that talks about first chapter of the Bhagavat tested for multiple authorship the four human objectives Gita. There is no break in of both the Bhagavat Gita and (purusharthas) of dharma, continuity between the ninth the Mahabharata. So as not to artha, kama and moksha, there and 10th chapters. The Bhagavat maintain the suspense, there was are sever al other texts Gita is part of Mahabharata (F). a single author for the Bhagavat Lest we forget, slokas from the Gita and five authors for the Bhagavat Gita are also found Mahabharata. Naturally, this is elsewhere in the Mahabharata, probabilistic, not deterministic. Nothing can be confidently sometimes with minor variations. Those who seriously asserted with certainty. But that’s the way science works. suggest that the Bhagavat Gita is an independent text, There was a Mahabharata (O) and a Mahabharata (F). But interpolated into the Mahabharata later, have probably not there is no Bhagavat Gita (O) or Bhagavat Gita (F). The read the Mahabharata. Bhagavat Gita is an integrated whole. MR Yardi did his If they do, they will discover these other Gitas in the analysis when artificial intelligence (AI) couldn’t be used Mahabharata. We come back of course to the definition for such work. AI has now been used to vivisect William of ‘Gita’. If Gita is defined as a text where Krishna himself Shakespeare’s works, such as Henry VIII. Who knows, in the speaks to Arjuna, other than the Bhagavat Gita, one future, AI may also be used to refine the Yardi kind of work. will only have Anu Gita. But if Gita is defined as any Therefore, a single author composed the Bhagavat Gita text that talks about the four human objectives around fifth century BCE. Couldn’t the Bhagavat Gita have (purusharthas) of dharma, artha, kama and moksha, there been authored as an independent text that was spliced into are several other texts. Of course, the entire Mahabharata Mahabharata (F) later? I suspect many people who read is also about these objectives. n

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 15 touchstone

By Keerthik Sasidharan

An American Folk Tale An alternative portrait of Donald Trump

he voice of Emperor Hirohito of Japan was of political leaders, knaves and villains—including in litera- famously heard for the first time when he declared ture—have often posed greater challenges to any efforts to on the radio his country’s surrender in World discern who exactly is doing the talking. Is it the head of state, T War II. Essayist Richard Lloyd Parry writes that so the potentate who dictates terms, the man behind the facade or unprecedented was the whole event for the Japanese that the human cloistered behind the accoutrement of power? For many listeners had difficulties understanding the emperor centuries, ever since that great Shakespearean villain Richard on account of his highly stylised speech. Throughout his III declared on stage ’Now is the winter of our discontent/ Made long reign, from 1926 to 1989, the emperor had given only glorious summer by this son of York/ And all the clouds that one interview in 1975 to an American journalist. His son, lour’d upon our House/ In the deep bosom of the ocean buried’, Emperor Akihito (who abdicated the throne in 2019 to make authors and scholars have wondered who exactly the ‘our’ is in way for Emperor Naruhito, thus bringing to a close the Heisei those lines. They ask this because a few lines later, Richard III re- Era of the Chrysanthemum Throne), did slightly better. He sorts to a more familiar first person pronoun: ‘But I, that am no gave occasional but highly scripted press conferences where shap’d for sportive tricks… I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want questions had to be submitted and vetted by the Imperial love’s majesty… I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion…’. Household Agency. On a rare occasion however, this persona This ‘pronoun shifting’ in speech has often been a way for the of royal discreteness slipped—the word ‘persona’ comes from exteriority of a person, especially in a performative context, to the Latin word ‘prosopon’, a ‘mask’ used during a performance recede and allow for a more reflective inner voice to emerge and in order to become another—and Akihito broke away from allow insecurities and anxieties to burble forth. the script and, uncharacteristically and movingly, spoke out In the case of Trump, however, this first person singular is against the pressures that had been put on his wife Empress often merely not just an opportunity to catalogue and enumer- Michiko by social expectations and the vicious gossip sheets. ate his self-declared greatness but also an opportunity to use the For a brief moment, Akihito the man set aside Akihito the bully pulpit of the president’s office to speak as if there were no Emperor and revealed his inner thoughts, only to recede back inner restraint. No prejudice was too shameful to utter in public into the elaborate persona that had been patiently created and no paranoia unworthy of treating as fact. It is therefore unsur- over decades through acts of personal sincerity and the halo prising that many have resorted to thinking of Trump’s manner bestowed by royalty. of speaking that is indistinguishable from a steady lurch towards On the other end of this menagerie of political inner voices chaos and cruelty as the id of American body politic. is Donald Trump who—like most politicians who steer their In the Freudian vocabulary, the id is born from unconscious ship within the maelstrom of democratic waters—misses no and the ego from the conscious. These mental constructs are opportunity to appear in front of cameras and speak ex tempore. drawn as being in directly in opposition—as if the mind’s role Despite his usual grabbag of conspiratorial gossip, innuendo, was often to participate in an election to choose between the paranoia, faux nostalgias and racist dogwhistles, unlike other two. The Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis tells us, ‘The great megalomaniacs in history there is no confusion about id is primitive, the ego civilized; the id is unorganized, the ego who is doing the talking. His speech is littered with first person organized; the id observes the pleasure principle, the ego the singular. His administration’s achievements and victories are reality principle; the id is emotional, the ego rational.’ All of this solely his (and their failures are solely because of others). It is naturally lends to useful, but arguably facile, juxtapositions often as if he were inviting us to see the squalid inner quarters of when talking about Trump and Biden. This contrast between his steadily declining mind which once had the self-confidence the two is played up by a third and singular presence in the of a veteran braggart to declare, “I have the best words.” American (and democratic) electoral politics: the mainstream But for much of history, the inner worlds and soliloquies media and its handmaiden, social media. To wit, they act like

16 2 november 2020 Illustration by Saurabh Singh

implicitly their, complaints about the world: ‘Hillary Clinton’, ‘China virus’, ‘immigrants’, ‘Mexicans’ and so on. The fact that despite his catastrophic handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, he continues to poll within the margin of statistical error in many states against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden should give all a pause. Trump may very well lose by a landslide on November 3rd but Trumpism has sown its seeds in American political grounds. Much like the Reagan-Thatcher era birthed a generation-long belief in neo- liberal institutions and market fundamentalisms, the Trump era has birthed a set of vocabularies that has mainstreamed old, primordial urges of the American body politic: isolationism, xenophobia, white nationalism—all in the name of the collec- tive good. Emotions and prejudices which had somehow been tempered by custom, rules and inner restraints of common people have now found ways to appear reasonable and ineluc- table thanks to Trump’s singular presence. In this sense, Trump has been that little understood phenom- ena in present-day political vocabularies, but one that is all-too- familiar in folk tales—a Great Seducer who, through his own autobiographical soliloquies, has tapped the listener’s subcon- scious complaint that the world is unjust. Seduction, of course, Modernity has spawned many seducers, is a dirty word especially in our times when men and women speak about ‘agency’ as if it were a sacramental truth of our inner especially when old order crumbles and psychologies. But seducers have appeared throughout history, fosters cognitive crises—be it when the gods in guises that are often hidden in plain sight. In folk tales, which and magic surrendered to scientific are often morality plays—such as ‘Little Red Cap’ (made famous in the 17th century version by Charles Perrault called ‘Le Petit explanation, when rituals that marked the Chaperon Rouge’ or ‘The Little Red Riding Hood’)—they are ex- relationship between the sacred and the plicitly visible. The wolf in that folk tale, as psychologist Bruno profane eroded or when an individual was Bettelheim has written, is a ‘dangerous seducer’, who ‘represents all the social, animalistic tendencies within ourselves’. set afloat in a sea of meaninglessness thanks Modernity has spawned many seducers, especially when to breakdown of social relations old order crumbles and fosters cognitive crises—be it when the gods and magic surrendered to scientific explanation (Max Weber called this ‘the disenchantment of the world’), when rituals that marked the relationship between the sacred and the the superego—that hectoring, bullying, self-critical part of the profane eroded (Marcel Mauss called it ‘desacralisation’) or when ego that borrows freely from the unconscious, and therefore an individual was set afloat in a sea of meaninglessness thanks the id. The superego, writes British psychoanalyst Adam Phil- to breakdown of social relations (Emile Durkheim called this lips, acts a permanent faultfinder. It echoes a line from Samuel ‘anomie’). Trump, and his soliloquies which are all bile and much Beckett’s novella called Worstward Ho: ‘Something there badly fury, appeared at a similar juncture: when economic order has not wrong.’ The superego is like a self-aggrandising TV anchor over the past two decades changed all-too-dramatically for many. or a hectoring father, whose usual rhetorical style is to accuse, This is, in parts, the real reason to be pessimistic irrespective of to insinuate weakness, to bore you with their righteousness the electoral results. The underlying faultlines of the American and ultimately pummel you daily with cruel assessments. If we polity are only likely to widen as economic insecurity marries resort to this tripartite division of the American or, more gener- with demographic changes to birth strange new anxieties with ally, the Western, political mind, the age of Trump has been one no names. In a decade from now, we may come to think of Trump where the id and the superego have come together to browbeat as a symptom of malaise and divisions that was intermittently the rational ideas of the American self, its ego, into trembling successful in overpowering the rational part of the American po- submission. It is perhaps therefore not surprising that Trump’s litical mind. Only by then however—faced with a powerful and rallies continue to attract hundreds of thousands of attendees, belligerent China—there will be more calls for an efficient and who pooh-pooh away any risk from the coronavirus and who radical version of all that Trumpism, in its malevolent genius, has travel from far and wide to hear him rail against all his, and set in motion. Winter, after a brief spell of spring, is coming. n

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 17 opinion

Left, Right and Nowhere Who’s more fascist than the other? By Minhaz Merchant

our freedom ends where my nose begins. As The principle of exclusion is an important weapon in the long as what you say or write does not incite violence armoury of the left. In media, it ostracises right voices. The Y or cause public disorder, freedom of speech is absolute. left cabal monopolises op-eds in dailies and TV panels. Left- The Supreme Court is wrestling with a slew of issues around aligned media like NDTV 24X7, The Wire, Scroll, The Caravan, the limits of free speech. If hate speech causes communal or The Telegraph and The Hindu keep up a barrage of negativity. caste enmity, it breaks the law. There are established provisions Good journalism is always adversarial to the government in the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to deal with such and, to use a tired cliché, must speak truth to power. But it breaches of law. There should be no ideological bias in judging often speaks lies to power. That subverts everything that these issues, just the sensible application of law. good journalism stands for. The controversy over a pro-right bias in social media is Criticism is the lifeblood of media. Some of the criticism facetious. If anything, Facebook and Twitter, for example, is ideological. So be it. Some is made up. Again, so be it. Good suffer from a pro-left bias. Hate posts from left extremists journalism delivers news and opinion based on facts. The are tolerated. Hate poets from right saurabh singh plurality of opinion in a democracy evens extremists are banned. Both obviously out the narrative. should be banned. But the bias is clear. If facts are twisted, the market will punish Part of the problem is that the left the newspaper, website or channel. A quick ecosystem is more united and strategic glance at television broadcast ratings (BARC) than the right ecosystem. It moves fast, and the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) show orchestrates a social media storm and how the market is punishing those who ruthlessly discredits key members of pursue an agenda-driven narrative. the right. The right ecosystem is more There are fascists on both the left and the divided and less tactical. right. But those on the left use bullying as The extreme left disguises its fascism standard operating procedure (SOP). The real and intolerance to other points of view target of every attack by the leftwing-Congress with finesse. The extreme right lets its fascism hang out to dry. ecosystem is of course Prime Minister Narendra Modi. History favours the left: young people are naturally Read between the lines—or the lines themselves— left-leaning and anti-establishment. The right’s and it boils down to an attack on Hindutva, creeping demography is older, wealthier and (in America) whiter. majoritarianism and the erosion of institutional In a battle of perception between hoodies and suits, there governance. Some of these criticisms are justified. The Modi can be only one winner. Government has failed to tame the bureaucracy, cut over- The extreme left covers its tracks well. Some of the worst regulation and take old corruption cases to their conclusion. human rights crimes have been perpetrated by left-communist Modi’s Government must be held to account over its despots from Mao Zedong and Stalin to Castro and Pol Pot. handling of Covid-19, the economy, China and a host of The right ecosystem is inarticulate and ponderous. other issues. The criticism should be fierce and fearless. In It is shrill and apologetic at the same time, burdened by India, and in the West as well, that is simply not the case. grievance and constantly seeking approval and validation Left-leaning media deals in fake news to tarnish the from the left which treats it with disdain. government rather than criticise it constructively and offer Left-leaning TV news channels delight in hectoring solutions. Right-leaning media on the other hand behaves members of the right ecosystem who are uncomfortable like the propaganda machinery of the government and loses with English and mumble their way through panel credibility. It is appalling to see powerful sections of the discussions. Left panelists in contrast lie with a straight face electronic and print media allowing themselves and often win the argument. to be used as arms of the government, abandoning all The left-leaning media in the West forms a cartel of critical faculties. opinion. The modus operandi is well-rehearsed: Reuters Balance—the cornerstone of journalism—is flashes a piece of inaccurate news, the BBC follows it up, the victim. n The Guardian adds context, The New York Times picks up the threads, CNN closes the circle. Minhaz Merchant is an author, editor and publisher

18 2 november 2020 While Inside Look Outside For FREE With access visit www.openthemagazine.com Whisperer Jayanta Ghosal

Old Favourite new generation of leaders has Abecome very relevant to the Bihar election. The Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Tejashwi Yadav has arrived as the main opposition leader. Lok Jan- shakti Party’s Chirag Paswan is the joker in the pack who might have a crucial role to play after the election. For the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), however, the main draw remains its perennial trump card—Narendra Modi. In an attempt to create a wave in favour of the Janata Dal (United)- BJP alliance, Modi is all set to address as many as 12 rallies, three in a day. Also, for the first time, he will seek votes for Nitish Kumar, a man who had opposed his elevation as the BJP’s prime ministerial face in 2013 and ended his alliance over it then.

ormer Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis Fmay have become the BJP’s in-charge of Bihar for the election, but it is said he remains busier in his home state. Home In earlier elections, when Arun Jaitley or any other senior Bound BJP leader was at the helm in a state, they used to stay there for a few months at a stretch, even taking a flat or house on rent. But that is difficult in the times of Covid. So, Fadnavis comes on and off to Patna.

The Unusual Complaint n what was highly unusual, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan Icomplained in a letter to Congress President Sonia Gandhi about her party’s senior leader Kamal Nath. The latter had in an election rally used derogatory language against a female BJP by-election candidate. Rahul Gandhi, too, had criticised the language but Kamal Nath did not apologise. Instead, he shocked his party by saying that it was Rahul’s personal opinion. A minor issue has now blown up into a major one in the Congress.

20 2 november 2020

Illustrations by Saurabh Singh

Advance Plotting Man For All rihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, in Mumbai, is Parties Bextraordinarily wealthy and powerful. Elections to it are, therefore, very important. For 25 years, the Shiv Sena has umar Vishwas, who been in power there, but last time it fought alone without Kused to be an impor- the BJP in alliance and retained power only by a slender tant leader in the Aam margin. The next elections are only due in 2022 but with the Aadmi Party, might have estrangement between the two parties, moves are already afoot on how it will be fought. The big question is what fallen out of favour with its will the Sena do. There are rumours that it might ally with leader Arvind Kejriwal, but the BJP and that is why its senior leader Sanjay Raut met both the Congress and the BJP Devendra Fadnavis recently. But it is also being said that the seem to have a soft spot for him. Sena could fight alone, and if necessary, have a tie-up with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the He was a candidate against Congress after the election. The NCP, however, is Rahul Gandhi in Amethi keen on a pre-poll alliance. Many secret discussions are in the 2014 Lok Sabha reportedly already underway. elections, but in Rajasthan, Chief Minister Ashok Backfired Attack Gehlot has made aharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari seems to Vishwas’ wife Mbe in some trouble after dashing off a letter attacking Manju a member of Rajasthan Public Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray over the reopening Service Commission. A Rajasthani, of temples, something that the state BJP is keen on. But she is a professor from the Mali com- Union Home Minister Amit Shah, in a media interview, did munity to which Gehlot too belongs. not support the Governor. Now the Shiv Sena wants the Governor changed. NCP chief Sharad Pawar too hit out at Meanwhile, Vishwas’ brother Sanjeev him asking how anyone with self-respect could continue in Sharma, a professor at Meerut’s office. There could be a reshuffle of governors after the Bihar university, was made the vice chancellor elections and Koshyari must be wondering about his fate. of Mahatma Gandhi Central University The Centre not supporting Koshyari led to much interest in West Bengal where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has also in Bihar. Some say it was at the written a letter to the Prime Minister complaining about the behest of the BJP. Governor there, Jagdeep Dhankhar. She asked why, if there is so much reaction to Koshyari’s utterances, no action has been taken against Dhankhar who has been speaking against her for a long time. Lingayat Alternative n Karnataka, senior Congress leader House on Track IMB Patil, who is a figurehead of the ecause of Covid and its economic impact, several powerful Lingayat community, could be BGovernment projects have stalled. But in this go-slow switching to the BJP. Although Patil situation, the Prime Minister’s dream project of a new tweeted that the rumours are baseless, Parliament building and a makeover of the area has he did not rule out the possibility. The BJP continued. Old Government buildings will be demolished central leadership may also be searching for and the old Parliament will be a museum of the Indian a Lingayat leader as a counter to their state freedom movement. From Rashtrapati Bhavan to India Gate, several buildings will come up. Opposition parties are leader and Karnataka Chief Minister protesting about the resources being spent but Team Modi BS Yediyurappa who, too, retains enormous maintains this needs to be done. pull in the community.

21 september 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 21 open essay

By Iqbal Chand Malhotra

Mao against nehru When the CIA came to India’s rescue in 1962

he ceasefire announced by the PRC in the Sino-Indian war came into effect on 20 November 1962. It meant different things to different people, particularly those involved as prominent personalities in the autumn war. In the opulent and sybaritic luxury of Room 118 in the Great Hall of the People in the Zhongnanhai district of Peking, Chairman Mao Tse Tung stared at the collection of late autumn leaves on the lawn outside his window. He needed to be distracted from the matters of state. The distraction was in the form of a coy teenage girl. In a riveting book, Mao’s physician, Dr Li Zhisui, has revealed that Mao had an insatiable appetite for sex and was quite happy to manifest his sexual desire with either gender. But in November 1962, during the Sino-Indian war, Mao was besotted by a young 14-year-old girl called Chen. She was his favourite partner from the diverse supply of young people available in his harem. Mao was obsessed with longevity and, according to Dr Li, he used to follow the ancient Daoist prescription for ageing men to supplement their declining yang or male energy with yin shui or the water of yin. Yin shui was the vaginal secretion of young women. Because yang is considered essential to health and power, it cannot be dissipat- ed.T Thus, when engaged in coitus, the male rarely ejaculates. Frequent coition is, therefore, necessary to increase the amount of yin shui. However, in pursuit of many women, Mao contracted trichomonas vaginalis, but because he was asymptomatic, he refused to be treated for it. Instead, he became a chronic source of transmission of the disease. Interestingly, trichomonas vaginalis also leads to psychiatric disorders. What is fascinating is that Mao, who professed to be an atheist and a communist, was actually a follower of the ancient Chinese religion of Daoism. This religious philosophy co-existed along with Confucianism in ancient China, particu- larly during the Eastern Zhou period which gave rise to the Chinese dream of world domination. Was Mao’s ruthless cruelty along with his delusions of grandeur a consequence of this disease? Dr Li Zhisui obliquely alludes to it. It is unfortunate that in those days, the Government of India had an inadequate system of intelligence from within China and that it was, therefore, unable to decipher the reasons for Mao’s almost visceral hatred of India.

or Nehru, the news of the dire threat to the plains of Assam, brought to him on 19 November by General Thapar, was F devastating. According to Shiv Kunal Verma, the author of The War that Wasn’t, on the morning of 20 November 1962, all of India was still in the dark about the ceasefire because the Indian chargé d’affaires in Peking had not relayed the news to New Delhi. Nehru had summoned Lt. Gen. Thorat, now retired, by special aircraft to New Delhi, ostensibly to offer him the job of COAS in the wake of General Thapar’s resignation. When Thorat met him in the morning, a sleep-deprived Nehru was cutting a cigarette into tiny pieces with a pair of scissors. Since the conversation between Nehru and Thorat veered round to Krishna Menon and degener- ated into acrimony, Nehru was distracted and Thorat left without receiving a job offer. Nehru wanted Kaul to succeed General Thapar; however, President Radhakrishnan dissuaded Nehru from taking that step. The next

22 2 november 2020 John F Kennedy and Jawaharlal Nehru at the White House, November 1961

At the White House on 19 November, Kennedy convened a high-powered meeting that discussed increased US military assistance to India and options for a show of force in the region. Also mentioned was the possibility of using the CIA’s Tibetan guerrillas. The new CIA Director John McCone, who replaced Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs, was on hand to brief Kennedy on such covert matters. With McCone was Des FitzGerald, the CIA’s Far East Chief

ap in line to be offered the job was Lt. Gen. Daulet Singh, who passed and merges into the Tarim River. Both the Shaksgam River and on the offer. After Menon’s resignation was accepted by Nehru on the Karakash River originate within the political boundary of 1 November 1962 in the midst of the war, Nehru personally took Maharaja Hari Singh’s state of Jammu and Kashmir that merged charge of the Ministry of Defence. Menon, with due credit to him, with India on 26 October 1947. Because of his unwillingness recommended Thorat for the top job, even though he had earlier to let the Indian Army recover the entire lost territory of this sabotaged Thorat’s natural succession. Now, with Thorat getting state from the clutches of the Pakistan Army whose proxies Nehru’s goat, the job by default went to Lt. Gen. J.C. Chaudhuri. invaded the state on 22 October 1947, Nehru was responsible for India losing territorial control over the Shaksgam River in 1947. Further, because of Nehru’s unwillingness to prevent the or Mao, who had successfully drained the Indian Sino-Soviet invasion of Aksai Chin in March 1950, India lost F establishment of their ‘collective mojo’, the task of keeping territorial control over the Karakash River to China. Lop Nor out of public gaze remained, notwithstanding the Both the Shaksgam River and the Karakash River flow ‘victory’ over India. into the western part of the Tarim River. The eastern part of In the early 1950s, Soviet aerial surveys of the Shaksgam Val- the Tarim River that flowed into Lake Lop Nor was scheduled ley revealed that the Shaksgam River originated in an area be- to become radioactive; so was Lake Lop Nor. The latter was tween the Shaksgam Glacier and the Shaksgam Pass. This river going to be the drainage point of all the radioactive debris from merges with the Raskam River at a point called Chog Jangal and, China’s proposed nuclear tests. It, therefore, became crucial for thereafter, the combined river is known as the Yarkand River. China to usurp and claim ownership over both the Shaksgam The Yarkand River merges with the Tarim River. The Shaksgam River and the Karakash River in order to provide for the future River lies on the northern side of the Karakorum watershed irrigation needs of the entire Tarim Basin post the nuclear tests as does the Karakash River that flows north from Aksai Chin that were planned. In effect, China had to steal both these rivers

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 23 open essay

if it wanted to go nuclear at the selected site of Lop Nor. eanwhile, one of the first things that General Second, Kim Philby had leaked the knowledge of the three M Chaudhuri did was to order an investigation into the British nuclear monitoring stations in the Gilgit Agency to military debacle in October and November 1962, during the the Soviets. By the by, China also came to know of them. After just-concluded hostilities. For this investigation, General Pakistan joined SEATO and CENTO pacts in 1954, it was specu- Chaudhuri appointed a team of two officers led by Lt. Gen. lated that there was a proposal by the British to set up a fourth Henderson Brooks, then the GOC XI Corps. Brigadier P.S. Bha- nuclear monitoring station in Raskam Village in the Shaksgam gat vc (later Lt. Gen.), then the Commandant at IMA, Dehra- Valley or Trans Karakoram tract, which was ceded to China as dun, was the junior member of this team. It is said that General part of the Sino-Pak Boundary Agreement signed on 2 March Chaudhuri was initially keen to initiate a full-fledged study of 1963. Today, this village is known by its Chinese name of Yilike. the ‘debacle of 1962’, but he was advised to avoid any inves- A metallic road connects it with Mazha, which is a junction on tigation on the higher direction of that conflict. This would the Chinese Sinkiang-Tibet Highway, now called C219. require the Brooks-Bhagat team to access files pertaining to If a nuclear monitoring station had been set up at Raskam governmental decisions. And this was unacceptable. India’s Village, it would have looked over the Taklamakan Desert new Defence Minister Y.B. Chavan stated that the government directly at Lop Nor. Therefore, it became critical for China to le- was unwilling to institute an enquiry into its very own policies gitimise ownership of the Shaksgam Valley and build the basis and decisions. of a deep and lasting friendship with Pakistan. Mao was thus As a result, the terms of reference of the Henderson Brooks- able to erect an impenetrable wall of secrecy around Lop Nor. Bhagat Report, as it came to be popularly known, was to look only at what went wrong militarily—issues like training, equipment, physical fitness of troops and the role of military commanders. In pursuit of many women, Mao contracted The purpose of this exercise seemed to fix the blame only on the ‘failure of military trichomonas vaginalis, but because he was commanders and to the tactical mishan- asymptomatic, he refused to be treated for it. Instead, he dling of troops on the ground’, Chavan said became a chronic source of transmission. Trichomonas in a low-key statement to the Parliament. vaginalis also leads to psychiatric disorders. Was Moreover, the focus of the enquiry was re- stricted to the operations of IV Corps, which Mao’s ruthless cruelty along with his delusions of was responsible for the debacle in NEFA. The grandeur a consequence of this disease? outcome in Ladakh or the western sector was not even considered. Nevertheless, what the two distinguished officers produced was an unforgiving analysis of the prob- lems along the entire Sino-Indian border, getty images discovering along the way a great deal that Lt. Gen. B.M. Kaul would like to have kept hidden. The report laid the blame on Army HQ for its direct interference by bypassing the established chains of command for the deployment of troops on the frontline against the Chinese. The example cited is of the general staff in Delhi giving direct orders to HQ 7 Brigade, bypassing the established chains of HQ Eastern Command, HQ IV Corps and HQ 4 Mountain Division in order to capture a PLA post 1,000 yards north-east of the legendary Dhola Post, and to contain PLA concentration south of Thag La Ridge at the NEFA frontline. This order could be seen to be as incredible as the order for ‘the charge of the light brigade’ during the Crimean War in the mid-19th century.

Mao Zedong, 1957

24 2 november 2020 Galbraith had a qualified World War. This officer was Maj. Gen. S.S. Uban. Mullick also convinced Nehru that change of heart because since the British had no money and fewer Krishna Menon was no resources, he could get these at no cost longer the Defence from the Americans. It was necessary to do things correctly. Minister. By the end of What Mullick in all probability did not the Harriman mission, disclose to Nehru was that the suggestion the CIA and IB had to create such a force had actually come arrived at a rough from CIA Chief Allen Dulles who was interested in fixing the lack of effective co- division of labour. The IB, ordination between the CIA and the large with CIA support, would unwieldy force of Tibetan Chushi Gandrug work towards developing guerrillas operating from the Nepalese Establishment 22 as a border region of Mustang. If India joined in, then things would get much easier. A crest- tactical guerrilla force fallen and floundering Nehru could find no fault with Mullick’s suggestion. Since the ap British had successfully created and oper- ated such a force of both British and expatri- The controversial Sinophile and Indophobe author Neville ate Europeans to hit targets behind German lines, there was no Maxwell opines that Henderson Brooks and Bhagat placed reason why such a force of Indian-trained Tibetans could not the immediate cause of the collapse of resistance in NEFA on do the same behind Chinese lines. the panicky, fumbling and contradictory orders issued from The executive order authorising such a force was issued by IV Corps HQ in Tezpur to a coterie of officers they judged to the Government of India on 14 November 1962, which was be grossly culpable, namely Lt. Gen. L.P. ‘Bogey’ Sen, Lt. Gen. also Nehru’s birthday. Mullick had proposed this as Nehru’s B.M. ‘Biji’ Kaul, Maj. Gen. Niranjan Prasad and Brigadier (later gift to the nation on his birthday. Extraordinary times require Maj. Gen.) D.K. ‘Monty’ Palit. But the investigation, even if it extraordinary decisions. Setting up Establishment 22 was in wanted to, could not have access to records of meetings in the many ways anathema to a man like Nehru who had an aver- Ministry of Defence, since Menon had categorically disallowed sion to all such martial activities, particularly of the cloak and any notes or minutes to be kept of his meetings, saying these dagger variety. By withholding the use of the air force in the were top secret in nature. Therefore, the Brooks-Bhagat team war and ensuring the rout of the army in NEFA, Mullick had was unable to access crucial information to see if the blame lay paradoxically expanded the remit of his empire. He had added on Krishna Menon and his core team. It thus absolved them of paramilitary-based black ops to his repertoire. A tripartite responsibility for their blunders in the ultimate analysis. agreement between the IB, the CIA and Chushi Gandrug was signed, with the Tibetan outfit represented by General Gompo Tashi Andrugtsang and Jogo Namgyal Dorjee. Chushi Gan- n October 1962, after Nehru fully understood the drug was to source 12,000 Tibetan Khampa fighters from the I import of the Chinese invasion, which left him floundering potential recruits available in Mustang in Nepal. These were around trying to figure out how to handle this enormous crisis, Mullick’s own equivalent of the Gorkhas. Thus, the Indian the ever crafty Mullick put across a very unusual proposal. State now had two streams of foreign mercenaries fighting for Mullick said that he had a chat with Sir Roger Hollis, the it, namely the Gorkhas from Nepal in the Indian Army and the then DG of MI5, which was the parent organisation of the Khampas from Tibet in Establishment 22. IB. Hollis had suggested that the IB create a force of Tibetan The Dalai Lama’s elder brother Gyalo Thondup, who was saboteurs to undertake cross-border clandestine sabotage of at that time deeply involved with the CIA, flew to Mustang PLA units, garrisons and facilities in Tibet. For the purposes of with a team of CIA and IB officers to interview and select the deniability, the force should only be staffed with Tibetans. The front echelon of Tibetan officers for the new force at its HQ in force should be modelled along the lines of the Second World Chakrata near Dehradun, then in the state of UP. The initial War British organisation called the Special Operations Execu- complement of Tibetan officers was led by a man called Jamba tive or SOE. Mullick added that there was an army officer who Kalden. The CIA sent an eight-member team of instructors led was a perfect fit to head such a force. This was a distinguished by former United States Marine Corps (USMC) Colonel Wayne and decorated officer who had served in the Long-Range Desert Sanford who helped set up the entire matrix of the force. Colo- Group of the British Army that conducted sabotage opera- nel Sanford was the then head of the CIA’s Special Operations tions behind German lines in North Africa during the Second Group. The CIA was investing a lot in this business.

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 25 open essay

Indian troops in NEFA, 1962 needs. General Paul Adams, Chief of the US Strike Command, was to head the military component. From the CIA, Des FitzGerald won a seat for the mission, as did the head of the Tibet Task Force, Ken Knaus. On 21 November, Harriman’s delegation left for New Delhi. Although the Chinese declared a unilateral cease- fire while the group was en route, the situation was still tense when it reached New Delhi the following day. Without a pause, Ambassador Galbraith ushered Harriman into the first of four meetings with Nehru. The results of these discus- sions were plans for a major three-phase military aid package encompassing material support, help with domestic defence production and possible as- sistance with air defences. The National Security Action Memorandum Number 209, approved getty images on 10 December 1962 by JFK, authorised The focus of the enquiry was restricted to the operations a new military aid package for India. Un- der the aid programme, it was decided of IV Corps, which was responsible for the debacle that the US would: in NEFA. The outcome in Ladakh or the western sector was 1. assist in creating and equipping not even considered. Nevertheless, what Henderson Brooks six new mountain divisions to work and PS Bhagat produced was an unforgiving analysis of with the Indian Army to guard the Himalayas, the problems along the entire Sino-Indian border 2. help India increase its own arms production facilities and 3. prepare for a US–UK air defence programme for India ehru appealed to Kennedy for assistance. Imme- As a sideshow to Harriman’s talks, the CIA representatives N diately, Washington stepped into the fray and responded on the delegation held their own sessions with Mullick and generously to Nehru’s appeal for assistance. By 2 November, his deputy M.M.L. Hooja. This was a first, as Galbraith had the USAF had already flown eight missions into India every previously taken great pains to downscale the agency’s activi- day for a week by using Europe-based Boeing 707 transports. ties inside India to all but benign reporting functions. As early Each plane was packed with basic infantry equipment to refit as 5 November, he had objected to projected CIA plans due to the soldiers streaming off the Himalayas, who, in most cases, the risk of exposure. But in a 13 November letter to Kennedy, were outfitted with more primitive gear than had been af- Galbraith had a qualified change of heart because Menon was forded to even the CIA’s Tibetan guerrillas. These supplies were no longer the Defence Minister. By the end of the Harriman later ferried by USAF C-130 transports to smaller airfields near mission, the CIA and IB had arrived at a rough division of the frontier battle lines. labour. The IB, with CIA support from the Near East Division, At the White House on 19 November, Kennedy convened would work towards developing Establishment 22 as a tactical a high-powered meeting that discussed increased US military guerrilla force. The CIA’s Far East Division, in the meantime, assistance to India and options for a show of force in the region. would unilaterally create a strategic long-range resistance Also mentioned was the possibility of using the CIA’s Tibetan movement inside Tibet. The Mustang contingent would also guerrillas. The new CIA Director John McCone, who replaced remain under the CIA’s unilateral control. n Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs, was on hand to brief Kennedy on such covert matters. With McCone was Des FitzGerald, the This is an edited excerpt from Red Fear: The China CIA’s Far East Chief. At the end of the meeting, it was decided Threat (Bloomsbury; 356 pages; Rs 799) by Iqbal that Ambassador-at-Large Averell Harriman would lead a Chand Malhotra to be released on November 2nd. high-powered delegation to New Delhi to fully assess India’s Malhotra is an author and award-winning TV producer

26 2 november 2020 Joy of spreading knowledge

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* Gift may be sent to you and magazines to the person you want to gift the subscription. Cover Story

How Ill is India’s HealthSector?

With government hospitals overburdened, bottomlines of private ones wiped out, and an insurance system that seems to be unable to wrap its head around the pandemic, Covid-19 has laid bare India’s health infrastructure

By Lhendup G Bhutia

ill about the end of June, Dr Tanaji Lakal would look out nervously from the window of his office in Osmanabad Civil Hospital and feel grateful. By that time, the Covid-19 pandemic had swept through Maharashtra’s large cities, such as Mumbai and Pune, and begun to make inroads into the state’s smaller cities and towns. But somehow it seemed Osmanabad was being spared. “The whole city was in a green zone for

T28 Photograph by raul irani How Ill is India’s HealthSector?

With government hospitals overburdened, bottomlines of private ones wiped out, and an insurance system that seems to be unable to wrap its head around the pandemic, Covid-19 has laid bare India’s health infrastructure How some of India’s best known hospital chains are performing

1 Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited 2,921 2,926 a very long time. And even when the vi- 2,844 rus was spreading into nearby districts, we 2,581 were getting only a few cases,” Lakal says. 2,639 And then came July. 2,581 2,507 The number of cases began to grow 2,352 2,296 rapidly across the district from then on. 2,179 Osmanabad, to the south-eastern end of the state, consists of many small vil- Net Profit 58 77 89 209 -203 lages. While there are a few minor pri- vate hospitals in the city of Osmanabad, Fortis Healthcare Limited for both the city and the entire district, 2 the Osmanabad Civil Hospital, with its 1,221 1,173 over 400 beds, remains its most vital 1,131 1,157 healthcare set-up. 1,057 1,046 1,081 1,067

780 hen the sudden surge began, the hospital didn’t just get cases of pa- 610 W tients who had either travelled from cities such as Mumbai and Pune or had Net Profit 75 120 -73 -43 -190 relatives visiting from those areas, Lakal says. There were also farmers who had 3 Narayana Hrudayalaya Limited remained aloof in their fields for months. Soon, the hospital was close to breaking 828 790 782 749 point. Even when a centre came up nearby where the mildly symptomatic patients 715 743 728 713 would be sent, there were not enough 530 beds in the hospital. There were shortages of drugs and oxygen cylinders, the nursing 398 staff was untrained in procedures such as Net Profit 31 46 32 12 -118 when and how to use nasal cannulas to deliver oxygen to patients, and perhaps 4 Aster DM Healthcare Limited the most crucial, there were just two doc- 2,325 2,327 tors for the entire hospital. Lakal and his colleague Dr Pravin Dumne divided their 2,091 duties between themselves in 24-hour- 2,031 long shifts. “That was the only way. One of 2,094 2,069 us would do a 24-hour-long shift and the 1,991 1,930 1,767 other would take the next shift,” Lakal says. 1,772 “We would spend almost our entire shift drenched in sweat in PPE suits. It was ex- Net Profit 10 6 151 146 -89 hausting because we had to be everywhere. And so many were dying too.” 5 Kovai Medical Center and Hospital Limited In July, Lakal’s colleague Dumne be- 194 came infected. The following month, 178 180 Lakal himself had to be admitted to the ICU with the infection. 168 Much of the focus during the pan- 159 demic has been on large cities where the 151 145 disease first appeared and continues to 139 131 take a heavy toll. But in less urban areas, 122 especially those which lie close to these big Net Profit 19 16 24 33 1 cities, the pain has been no different. Here, the shortage of doctors and trained health- JUN 2019 SEP 2019 DEC 2019 MAR 2020 JUN 2020 Source: moneycontrol.com Source: Total Income Total Expenditure All figures in Rs crore 2 november 2020 Cover Story

care workers becomes more glaring, the he healthcare set-up across cities tions of Fortis Healthcare, for instance, paucity and inadequacy of healthcare and rural areas, both government had fallen 46.8 per cent or Rs 532.4 crore centres starker. For instance, in the state T and private, is currently in disas- when the April-June quarter of 2019 of Maharashtra, which continues to lead trous shape. While the rush of patients (Rs 1,138.3 crore in income) was com- in total number of infections so far, it is has laid bare the inadequacy of govern- pared to the April-June quarter of this year estimated that there is a need of 19,752 ment hospitals, most private hospitals (Rs 606 crore in income). The company doctors, nurses and paramedics to fight are in a financial mess. While the costs reported a Rs 178.9 crore net loss in the Covid. According to an Indian Express of running a hospital during a pan- quarter compared to the Rs 67.8 crore net report, as of September 15th, 12,574 of demic have shot up, revenue streams, profit for the same period last year. Na- the posts were vacant. Of the 1,700 Class I especially from international patients rayana Hrudayalaya saw a Rs 383.9 crore doctor posts (including specialists) that and complex surgeries such as organ dip in total income from operations (from the Public Health Department needs to transplants, two categories that make Rs 777.4 crore to Rs 393.5 crore), with a fill, only 538 have been. up the bulk of private hospitals’ revenue reported net loss of Rs 119.7 crore for the In many of the more rural areas of streams, have nearly collapsed. To add same period compared to a Rs 30.3 crore India, such as the district of Osmanabad to the chaos, there is a tug-of-war going net profit in the same quarter of the pre- which lies close to cities like Mumbai on between insurance companies and vious year. ‘The trend persists for smaller and Pune, the healthcare system has private hospitals over what should be the and mid-sized listed hospitals such as come close to collapsing. There has been adequate pricing of treatment protocols Kovai Medical and Artemis Medical Ser- a respite in the last few weeks, but many for Covid patients. There have even been vices,’ IndiaSpend reported. ‘Kovai Medical worry that there could be another wave instances of doctors threatening to go on saw its total income from operations fall of large infections, brought on by the strike over unpaid salaries. from Rs 165.4 crore to Rs 129 crore, while Some 18 states have notified price caps, but the implementation“ “ hasn’t happened. So even if hospitals do not adhere to these, there is no regulation that can check them Bejon Kumar Misra, consumer policy expert

coming festivals. Dr Rohinton Dastur, the medical di- Artemis Medical Services posted a Rs 73 The surge lasted right up to the begin- rector of Bhatia Hospital, a well-reputed crore drop in revenue year-on-year from ning of October in Osmanabad. But over private hospital in South Mumbai, told Rs 135.7 crore to Rs 62.7 crore.’ the last few weeks, in a pattern mirroring Open a few months ago that many pri- According to Dilip Jose, Managing the rest of the country, infection numbers vate hospitals are close to shutting down. Director and CEO of Manipal Hospitals, have begun to come down in this district Costs from the need for frequent testing, while the biggest impact to their hos- too. Help has also arrived. Two private PPE suits, and higher financial incentives pitals’ revenue stream was in the early doctors and a few AYUSH doctors have for healthcare staffers to continue work- months of the pandemic when the lock- been contracted at the hospital. The care ing in the pandemic have shot up, while down was enforced, even when more of patients has now been divided among revenue remains low. “I know a lot of hos- people are visiting hospitals for non- the doctors in a better manageable four pitals which won’t be able to sustain this Covid treatment, normalcy hasn’t yet units, with a single doctor having to pull way beyond two months,” he said. returned. “The biggest impact on patient a 24-hour shift just once in four days. IndiaSpend, studying the balance footfalls was in April, when the fear of “It’s become much better now,” Lakal sheets of some of India’s leading private the virus was probably at its highest and says. “But I still worry what might happen hospitals, found many of them were travel restrictions were near-total. Overall, if things went bad again.” bleeding. The total income from opera- OPD (out-patient department) visits fell to

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 31 Cover Story

I know a lot of hospitals which “ will not be able to sustain this way beyond two months”” Dr Rohinton Dastur, medical director, Bhatia Hospital

about 20 per cent of pre-Covid levels and in-patient occupancy at near normalcy Regretfully, that would be very dispro- consequently there was a similar decline by September-end. “However, these in- portionate to the risk of contracting the of in-patients too. Both reflected in the rev- clude Covid patients, who form a sizeable infection from a hospital, if that is what is enue, which dropped to about a third of proportion of both. Elective procedures preventing patients from accessing treat- that in January or February,” he says. “Elec- remain below normal trends and these ment,” Jose says. tive procedures constitute a significant are visible in specialties like orthopae- Various state governments have re- proportion of the work in hospitals and dics, neuro sciences and cardiac scienc- sponded to the pandemic by clamping almost every patient opted to postpone es. Avoidable morbidities and perhaps down on prices and forcing private hospi- such interventions. Sadly, even lifesav- deaths too are occurring even today. tals to reserve beds for Covid-19 patients. ing procedures like organ transplants or treatments for serious conditions like A life-saving surgery underway at Indraprastha cancer were delayed in the early months Apollo Hospital in New Delhi, August 16 Photograph by raul irani of Covid. Even now, well over six months into the pandemic, such elective inter- ventions are yet to return to earlier levels. Keeping aside its impact on the income of the hospitals, the tragedy is that lives that could otherwise have been saved or had a better quality, are being lost,” he adds. Pointing to the higher costs most private hospitals now incur, Jose says, “The increase in operating costs are on account of cost of PPEs, additional clean- ing cycles and sanitisation, reduced work hours for healthcare professionals as well as special allowances for staff engaged in caring for Covid patients. Further, there are significant costs incurred on quar- antine, alternative accommodation and other facilities for employees. Capital expenses were also incurred to set up fever clinics, testing facilities and to make changes to the hospital infrastructure to treat Covid patients.” By the end of last month, more pa- Various state governments have responded to the tients had begun to visit hospitals. In the pandemic by clamping down on prices and forcing private Manipal Hospitals’ chain, most of their hospitals have seen OPD visits at about hospitals to reserve beds for Covid patients. These, 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels and hospitals claim, have also hurt their bottomline

32 2 november 2020 dialogue on the prices. Major hospital

groups have the ability and balance sheet to tide over resulting losses, but there are

many instances of standalone facilities or nursing homes closing down as they were “Revival of stressed hospitals needs to be a priority, so that “ investments already made are not lost. Larger hospital unable to deal with such a situation. The larger distress is losing hospital capacity groups may be able to play some role in that direction at a time when the country requires every Dilip Jose, possible bed to be available,” he says. managing director, Manipal Hospitals According to Jose, of the nearly 15 lakh hospital beds in India, over 60 per cent are in the private sector, and smaller facili- ties account for a bulk of that. “Revival of stressed hospitals needs to be a priority, so that investments already made are not These, hospital representatives claim, introduced price caps, these do not have lost. Larger hospital groups may be able have also hurt their bottomline. There any legal standing. “These would come to play some role in that direction, but is currently a PIL in the Supreme Court under the Clinical Establishments (Reg- a lot would depend on the steps that that seeks to curb the prices private hos- istration and Regulation) Act, 2010, but government(s), regulatory bodies and pitals can charge for treatment of Covid so far no state government has imple- financial institutions take,” he says. patients. The General Insurance Council mented it. Some 18 states have just no- In Poladpur, a remote taluka at the responded to this issue by releasing an tified it, but the implementation hasn’t southern end of Maharashtra’s Raigad dis- indicative rate chart for Covid treatment, happened. So even if hospitals do not trict, Rajesh Salagare mans a tiny hospi- but private hospital associations, such as adhere to the price caps, there is no regu- tal of about 30 beds. This is like the many the Association of Healthcare Providers lation really that can check them from small centres that dot India’s countryside, (India), have come out with their own doing so,” he says. Misra points out that unremarkable in appearance but serving charge structure which is far higher. much of the blame for the current im- as a vital link. Dr Alexander Thomas, the president of passe between insurance companies Salagare is an AYUSH doctor and at the association, did not respond to re- and private hospitals lies with IRDAI. night he is relieved by another. For years, quests for an interview, but he has told a “The body is too beholden to insurance there has been a vacancy for three special- media outlet that they have shared their companies. They will often meet insur- ised doctors but this has never been filled. rates with the council and are trying to ance companies, but as a policy holder Until Covid-19 hit this remote hospital, a reach a consensus. (or activist) it is impossible to meet them majority of Salagare’s patients were peo- even with genuine concerns,” he says. ple who had been bitten by snakes or scor- In such a situation, it is not a surprise, pions, or women at childbirth. Occasion- any patients have also found it he says, that insurance companies have ally, people who had injured themselves difficult to get their Covid-19 treat- refused to completely honour their poli- in accidents on the nearby Mumbai-Goa M ment expenses covered by their cies during the pandemic. One of the highway were brought in. But patients health insurances. While the Insurance results of the impasse, Misra points out, with severe cases used to be mostly sent Regulatory and Development Author- is that many private hospitals have away to distant, bigger hospitals. ity of India (IRDAI) has issued circulars stopped taking cashless options for pol- When Covid hit the area, this small instructing insurance companies to cover icy holders, and when patients seek to hospital was made to double up as a Covid-19 if an existing policy already cov- reimburse their costs, they are told they screening centre. “RT-PCR results take ers hospitalisation, and also pushing them have been overcharged. three days here. So we would have to to process Covid claims expeditiously, When asked about the price caps in- keep the suspected Covid patients here problems have persisted. One such has troduced by various state governments, with the others until the result came,” he arisen over price caps on private hospi- Jose says that private hospitals stepped says. “Plus there was the regular work. It tals—with the hospital insisting these up to take on the challenge and to work just became very difficult,” he adds. caps do not extend to those with insurance with governments during this pandemic. “I am an AYUSH doctor. I can treat while many insurance companies refuse “While in many instances, the price caps snake bites and things like that. All this to pay anything in excess of that. that were fixed were seen as not taking is beyond me,” Salagare says. For now, According to Bejon Kumar Misra, an into account the actual cost of care, hos- this AYUSH doctor and his unremarkable international consumer policy expert, pitals went ahead with providing treat- but vital hospital in the countryside are while many state governments have ment, separating their duty from the soldiering on. n

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 33 Cover Story

Be Patient Being non-Covid patients in the time of a pandemic

Emergency ward at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital in Bhagalpur, Bihar, July 27 Be Patient Being non-Covid patients in the time of a pandemic By Nikita Doval

hen Sadhna, 62, wife of Ved Prakash, a retired Army officer, got high fever in September, the family went into a tizzy. A former cancer patient, Sadhna ensured she and her family took every Wprecaution possible and then some against Covid-19. The fever subsided the next morn- ing only to be replaced by an altogether terrifying development: excessive blood in urine. “By that time we knew this was a prob- lem related to her other health concerns but we were still on the fence about going to the hospital,” says Prakash. As it turned out, the decision as to whether Sadhna should go to hospital or not wasn’t really the family’s to make but the hospital’s. It began with Arte- mis Hospital in Gurugram where Prakash was told that his wife’s condition was seri- ous enough to warrant immediate admis- sion—but they had no beds available. Of the two Army hospitals in Delhi, Base hospital was handling only Covid-19 patients while Research & Referral was prioritising serving personnel over retired. “We went to at least four hospitals and called up nearly every big one in Gurugram but every time we were told there were no beds.” In the case of Columbia Asia Hospital in Gurugram, the hospital first agreed to admit Sadhna and even started the paperwork but the minute it realised Prakash

From shortage of beds to lack of transparency in treatment and struggle to get access to non-Covid-19 treatments, the average Indian has been hit by a strained healthcare infrastructure that was

reuters already creaky to begin with

www.openthemagazine.com 35 Cover Story

was seeking admission under the Ex-Ser- doctors and nurses but it was enough to things which should have been includ- vicemen Contributory Health Scheme, cause panic. Public pressure was enough ed in the package but weren’t. His sister it said no beds were available, Prakash on the government to control the rates was conscious throughout and had kept alleges. The family did find a hospital in private hospitals and by June 20th, a track of medicines consumed and even in Gurugram finally but only after tap- the government had prescribed maxi- doctor visits and they found that the hos- ping some influential contacts. All this mum per-day charges. An isolation bed pital had inflated nearly every aspect of unfolded over 28 hours during which was capped at Rs 10,000; ICU without their bill. “More advanced critical care, Sadhna’s condition kept worsening. ventilator support was to be charged talent—all these are the strengths of big Ved Prakash’s struggle to get a bed Rs 13,000-15,000 and with ventilator was corporate hospitals in India. In the case for his wife during the pandemic is a capped at Rs 18,000. Private hospitals, as of Covid-19, complications can mean a small example of what patients—both expected, were up in arms, complaining prolonged stay for a patient and hospi- Covid-19 and non-Covid-19—and their these prices were not feasible. tals will not discharge you unless you are families across the country are going completely stable. For instance, hospitals through. From shortage of beds to lack claim a certain amount of personal pro- of transparency in treatment to exor- ajinder Saxena’s sister was tection equipment (PPE) use each day. It bitant bills and struggle to get access to admitted to a Delhi hospital in June is an easy item on which to inflate num- non-Covid-19 treatments, the average R for Covid treatment under the gov- bers. It is difficult to understand what Indian has been hit by a strained health- ernment notified cap but on discharge families are being charged for in the final care infrastructure that was already he found that he had been charged for bills,” says Malini Aisola, co-convener of creaky to begin with. In April, advocate Sachin Jain filed a PIL against the ex- orbitant rates being charged PPE is an easy item for inflating numbers. It is by private hospitals for Co- difficult to understand what families are being charged vid-19 treatment. Citing a newspaper report where a for in the final bills, according to Malini Aisola, patient had been billed Rs 12 co-convener of All India Drug Action Network lakh for Covid-19 treatment, the PIL stated that billing by private hospitals was ‘highly inflated and unreasonable’. getty images The PIL sought price regula- tions in private hospitals to make them ‘affordable and accessible’. Maharashtra, the worst hit right from the be- ginning of the pandemic, be- came one of the first states to cap Covid-19 treatment rates in private hospitals. Gujarat and Tamil Nadu followed. Delhi, equally badly hit, de- cided not to regulate pricing in hospitals then. In the first week of June, a ‘rate card’ attributed to Max Hospital Patparganj in Delhi started doing the rounds on social media where the daily rate of an ICU bed with ven- tilator was Rs 72,000. Max Hospital explained that the rate included fees for all routine tests, medicines, The reception at Yatharth Hospital in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, September 27

36 2 november 2020 Hospitals segregate insured patients by not admitting them under the government cap scheme even as some insurance companies refuse to cover expenditure above the government cap

All India Drug Action Network (AIDAN). Lack of transparency and violations of insurance policies unaffordable. As it The organisation is at the forefront of patients’ rights are just some of the issues is, insurance reach in India is extremely helping patients get redress. Aisola can families are struggling with even as hos- low with the National Sample Survey in go on citing cases of patients from all pitals continue to obfuscate processes. 2018 revealing that over 80 per cent of over the country who had no one but The Chatterjee family was still lucky Indians have no health cover. A study civil society organisations to help them that their bill (upwards of Rs 5 lakh) was released by the Public Health Founda- as hospitals overcharge on the pretext of settled by the insurance company with- tion of India the same year had revealed the pandemic. There have been instances out a fuss. Most patients, especially those that out-of-pocket health expenses had of hospitals refusing to hand over bodies who have been handed bills upwards of driven 5.5 crore Indians into poverty in to families due to unpaid bills in defiance Rs 10 lakh, find themselves running 2011-2012. of court rulings. from pillar to post trying to deal with As the bulk of the country’s health- When Ashish Chatterjee’s elderly both the hospital and the insurance care system has turned its focus to cousin felt feverish on September 10th, company. People complain of policies Covid-19 treatment, non-Covid patients the family was immediately on the that start with a reasonable enough cover are struggling. While a lot of private phone with their doctor. A diagnosis only to be exhausted midway through nursing homes and clinics were shut of probable typhoid was given but on the treatment. Hospitals also segregate owing to the pandemic, people are also September 15th, the patient developed insured patients by not admitting them worried about catching the virus by go- breathing difficulty. “My cousin was 62, under the government cap scheme even ing to hospital. And those who do make diabetic and overweight. He kept saying as some insurance companies refuse to their way to hospital find that they have he would not go to a hospital. He believed cover expenditure above the govern- to pay more for the same services. Those that if he went in, he won’t come out. We ment cap. Even those who are aware of who are seeking admission, quite like didn’t listen to him and took him to Fortis how hospitals and companies are failing Sadhna, have to move from one hospital in Noida.” From the general ward where them have nowhere to go in the absence to another, hoping some luck and a few he was admitted, Chatterjee’s cousin was of a redress mechanism. In the end, civil good contacts will get them a bed. moved the next day to the Covid-19 ward society organisations have to step into a The pandemic has laid bare the cracks after the hospital said his test result was role the state should have played. in the Indian healthcare system but AID- positive. “We got a video from the atten- AN’s Aisola also believes that Covid-19 dant that day in which my cousin can be could well turn out to be an inflection heard talking about the things he needs, he Insurance Regulatory and point for India. “The fact is that there including a pair of slippers so that he can Development Authority of India has been no rate regulation in the Indian walk up and down. That was the last we T had in March itself declared that all healthcare industry. Players like insur- saw him conscious. We were informed health policies will cover Covid-19 treat- ance companies did not play their part of requirements like plasma via phone ments but most health policies don’t of- well and now they are realising they are calls or messages. The hospital did not fer any coverage on consumables, usu- being fleeced. [The pandemic] could be a ask us about his medical history so that ally identified as medical equipment major turning point for bringing in regu- Covid-19 treatment could be adjusted which is discarded after use. Before Co- lation. Already more than 20 states have accordingly and our attempts to reach vid-19, consumables were a minuscule brought in a cap for Covid treatments,” out, engage were stonewalled. Even the part of hospital bills; now consumables, she says. Every time there is a Bill con- daily updates we got were a hardwon such as PPE kits and masks, comprise a cerning hospitals and healthcare, price privilege.” Chatterjee’s cousin’s situation big chunk. In September, the General regulation is the first thing to be dropped. deteriorated on September 19th when he Insurance Council, the industry body for “Bodies like [the Indian Medical Associa- had to be put on the ventilator. He died on non-life insurers and standalone health tion] which should have been allies [of September 21st of a heart attack. “It has insurers, appealed to the Supreme Court patients] work for private hospitals,” been a month now and we still don’t have against exorbitant pricing by hospitals she says, referring to the petition filed by any answers as to how it all accelerated. arguing that if lack of transparency in the association against the extension of Was he even really Covid positive? There billing continued, it would have a di- the government cap on Covid treatment are questions galore and no answers.” rect impact on premium rates, making prices in Maharashtra. n

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 37 Cover Story Doctors Jumping Borders

n the lanes of Manikonda, one his clinic, he says. “We have seen a trend the smaller hospitals, the independent of Hyderabad’s IT-powered suburbs, where patients with minor or routine doctors and the family physicians who commercial strips hollowed out by complaints prefer teleconsults or visit had already been eclipsed by glass-and- the lockdown are slowly returning to small outpatient setups rather than risk marble facades and five-star comfort, the life. The most ubiquitous of the new catching the virus at a large hospital. We Covid crisis has dealt a double blow. But class of businesses coming to occupy do not see Covid cases now, but patients there may yet be a silver lining. Iparts of these empty shopping complexes who know I see Covid patients at Conti- Amidst allegations of overcharging are clinics. LED boards announce new nental Hospitals, where I am a consultant, by major hospitals, doctors have spoken diagnostic centres and polyclinics, mul- are wary of coming to the clinic.” out about exploitative practices, ques- tispeciality practices and old-fashioned For well over a decade now, large, so- tionable ethics, and poor working condi- physicians. Several medical facilities are called corporate hospitals have dominat- tions. Some have joined smaller hospitals under various stages of construction. ed secondary and tertiary private health- or braved the odds to start up. “Some of Buildings with ‘To Let’ signs for their care and added high-end quaternary India’s largest hospital chains are trying driveways and ground floors indicate a specialities to their stable of services. To to force doctors to accept pay-per-service preference for banks and clinics. It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. The past six months have disrupted I could have waited it out but I didn’t want to. private healthcare in new and unfore- seen ways. On the one hand, Practo and I am at a stage in my career where I am climbing other digital healthcare companies have “ the ladder. I didn’t want to miss work” got physicians to go online and turned Dr Karan Shetty \plastic surgeon the business of diagnostics on its head by aggregating freelance phlebotomists based on their location. On the other, the resource shift from secondary and tertiary care to emergency medicine and Covid management has resulted in a large class of general physicians, specialists in areas relatively unaffected by the virus, and sur- geons whose livelihood largely depends on elective procedures, suddenly finding themselves out of work, underpaid or la- belled non-performers. Some have found new opportunities in the crisis. “At least a dozen new clinics have sprung up in Man- ikonda in the past four months. Rents are low, and physicians without postgradu- ate degrees, or doctors who have lost their jobs, have set up shop in the hope of of- fering affordable secondary care,” says Dr Venkatesh Billakanti, a general prac- titioner who runs Relief Clinic, a two-year- old multispeciality venture in the area. There has been a surge in the number of paediatric and gynaecology OPD cases at Photograph by pee vee

38 2 november 2020 With the disruption in corporate hospitals, underpaid medical professionals and neighbourhood nursing homes are stepping into the breach By V Shoba

permanent increase in pay apart from the incentive he received for Covid duty for three months, and an ENT specialist who lost her position as head of the depart- ment at an upcoming hospital in Calicut and took a 75 per cent pay cut to join a clin- ic. Reshmi (last name withheld), 36, says she blames no one for the situation. “The hospital was new and could not afford to pay our salaries. All departments except paediatrics and gynaecology were shut down,” she says. At the ENT clinic, there are few walk-ins despite the fact that it is a preferred referral clinic for many small centres from peripheral towns. “There have been three procedures in the entire month of October so far. But something is better than doing nothing,” she says. Doctors have to find innovative ways of keeping themselves relevant, says

Dr Karan Shetty, 35, speaking to Open at

the end of a long working day at his new clinic in Jayanagar, south Bengaluru. “I “When things return to normal, I will continue to “ had four surgeries and OPD,” says the plas- consult but I think an independent practice and identity tic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgeon whose spectrum of work ranges from are essential for specialists today cleft lip surgery and burns to leg and face Dr U Vasudeva Rao vascular surgeon reconstruction and cosmetic procedures. As work ground to a halt at the hospitals he was consulting at, Dr Shetty turned to his longstanding dream of setting up rates, essentially turning healthcare into no intention of settling into the fringes.” a surgical centre. “You don’t need an ICU a gig economy,” says a senior gastroenter- In the early stages of setting up a virtual setup for most minor surgeries and cos- ologist at a large Bengaluru multispecial- gastroenterology practice along with metic procedures like liposuction. An ity hospital who was summarily taken off three former colleagues, two of them outpatient surgical facility could fill the payroll and asked to consult for a fraction from Chennai, she sounds excited, and a gap in the market that has opened due to of the salary she was drawing. In late May, little scared. the high cost of procedures at corporate the 53-year-old decided to practise online hospitals and the fear of contracting the for the first time, and now sees 10-20 pa- virus there,” he says. With orthopaedic, tients a day on video. “I feel used. I helped he pandemic runs like a dark diabetic foot and wound and gynaecol- the hospital build the department. Now it thread through my conversations ogy consultants sharing the 2,000-sq-ft is time to build my own brand. I can afford T with a young cardiologist at a hospital space with Dr Shetty, Tara Healthcare, to take a pay cut, but somewhere, there is in Hyderabad who was demoted to para- named for his mother, has seen over a loss of dignity. And that is not acceptable medic duty, an overworked nephrologist 200 patients in the past month and per- to most senior doctors,” she says. “I have from Chennai who has been demanding a formed 20 surgeries. He has invested

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 39 Cover Story

“ In India, we keep talking about the need to expand capacity in healthcare without realising that we have an underutilisation problem” Dr Nagendra Swamy medical administrator

Rs 45 lakh in the venture and is hopeful the pital decided to go non-Covid-only from benefits to experienced doctors, he says. concept will take off. “Right now, we are October 5th, a conscious decision that “Our professional fee, which used to be riding the surge in interest in botox fillers, has impacted business in the short run. 25 per cent of the total bill, has dwindled liposuction, breast augmentation and “We have had only three patients so far, to about 15 per cent.” With the caseload other cosmetic procedures. Women but things will turn around by November. at Manipal dropping drastically, Dr Rao now have the opportunity to heal in the There simply isn’t a need for that many saw opportunity in visiting smaller hospi- privacy of their home,” he says. What Covid beds anymore—regular patients tals, but didn’t know who to reach out to. made him go independent at a time of should have access to a safer healthcare He rounded up five to six associates and uncertainty? “I could have waited it out environment. And this is where mid-sized colleagues, and together, they decided to but I didn’t want to. I am at a stage in my hospitals can step up and fill a gap in the launch a group practice, using Medisync, career where I am climbing the ladder. I market,” he says. a private healthcare management start- didn’t want to miss work.” “There has been a lot of movement in up that helps connect secondary care “There are two sides to how the past core Covid departments,” says Raghaven- hospitals in the market with doctors and half-year has affected doctors—and hos- dra Reddy, a 32-year-old pulmonologist patients, to find work. “We have worked pitals. OPD and non-Covid admissions fell who recently moved out of Century Hos- out a system where we cover seven hospi- by over 60 per cent, but handling Covid pitals, Hyderabad, to a smaller hospital tals in Bengaluru between us. We don’t all patients has helped prove that we can run by the Renova Group for better pay have to do rounds at every hospital every provide quality critical care that is also and the opportunity to practise interven- day—we cover for one another and work affordable,” says Dr V Suriraju, MD and tions. “Many pulmonologists have started as a team. The revenue sharing model, too, CEO of Regal Hospitals in Thanisandra, their own individual practice aside from works out well.” he says. The basic surgi- Bengaluru. “As a 100-bedded multispecial- being attached to major hospitals. For us, cal group has doctors with various levels ity hospital, we have been able to survive this is a time to learn and to build a brand of experience and it plans to onboard a with five full-time doctors because we around ourselves.” specialist group of associates who would always had 35-40 Covid patients at any “Many of my patients have been ask- be brought in for consultation if a case given time. As we emerge from Covid, ing if I have an independent outpatient demands it. “When things return to nor- we must make use of the goodwill we setup,” says Dr U Vasudeva Rao, a vascu- mal, I will continue to consult for Manipal have earned to cement our position in lar surgeon who has been associated with but parallelly, I think that an independent the industry.” Manipal Hospital, Bengaluru, since 1991. practice and identity are essential for spe- Retaining doctors has been a chal- “Physicians can set up a clinic but special- cialists to cultivate today,” Dr Rao says. lenge for corporate hospitals as well as ists like me who joined high-tech modern mid-sized doctor-run hospitals. “About 25 hospitals for access to the best diagnostic per cent of doctors working in corporate machinery cannot do independent medi- edisync set out to be the Oyo of hospitals may come out of this crisis de- cine any more. The costs are prohibitive, secondary hospitals in the private taching themselves. Although Covid has with the initial outlay for a small clinic M sector, says Dr Nagendra Swamy, given hospitals reason to slash pay and starting at Rs 1.5 crore,” Dr Rao, 67, says. the founder and chairman. He describes target non-performing doctors, holding He is clear that he doesn’t want to be the two-year-old Sequoia Capital-backed on to a cosy job albeit at lesser pay is tempt- chained to a single corporate hospital ei- company as a knowledge platform to ing,” says Dr Jagadish Hiremath, MD, ther. Since they are answerable to inves- help neighbourhood hospitals manage ACE Suhas Hospital, Bengaluru. His hos- tors, large hospitals tend not to pass on and market themselves better. “In India,

40 2 november 2020 of them specialists. It is also helping sur- geons by offering transparent pricing to

patients and bringing down costs. “We are

trying to restore the family doctor culture “Although there is a short-term pain element, across our hospitals. The Covid-19 phase this forced acceleration of healthcare reform is “ is an opportunity for the private health- good for patients and doctors in the long run. care market to reorganise.” Doctors are more accessible now Dr Sonal Asthana organ transplant surgeon here has never been a better time for doctors to make themselves valu- T able, says Dr Sonal Asthana, an organ transplant surgeon at Aster CMI Hospital, Hebbal, Bengaluru. He is excited about how the leap in the adoption of telemedi- we keep talking about the need to expand cine and teleradiology within a short pe- capacity in healthcare without realising riod of time has changed the way doctors that we have an underutilisation prob- practise. “Even in super-specialities, 70- lem. Out of the 16 lakh beds in the coun- 80 per cent of the work is follow-up, and try, eight lakh are in the private sector, and most of this has moved online. Although less than a lakh of them in corporate-run there is a short-term pain element, I think or large hospitals. Of the remaining seven this forced acceleration of healthcare re- lakh private beds, only 40 per cent are oc- form is good for patients and doctors in cupied at any given time. We see opportu- the long run. Doctors are more accessible nity in strengthening this segment rather now, dead time has been eliminated, and than creating new infrastructure,” says Dr costs will come down eventually. Many Swamy, who has three decades of experi- doctors now have time to think about ence in corporate healthcare. Large multi- the direction they would like to take speciality hospitals were built for tertiary when things normalise,” Dr Asthana says. care, and yet, they have cornered 60-70 per Aster focused on retaining doctors at cent of the secondary care market, he says. a time when most hospitals, large and “Neighbourhood hospitals are underuti- small, were delivering pay cuts ranging lised because they are not recognised as a from 25 to 70 per cent. “Hospitals will brand. Just like Oyo standardised the mid- always need qualified specialists and Upcoming clinics in dle-class hotel category by ensuring clean specialists will need high-quality infra- Hyderabad’s Manikonda area rooms and bathrooms, we help smaller structure, but post-Covid, this symbi- hospitals by verifying doctor credentials otic relationship could change in many with the Medical Council, ensuring trans- ways. Hospitals would try to consolidate parent billing, appointing customer care the gains from the past few months, and managers to counsel patients, insisting on groups of doctors would branch out to set uniform care for all patients, and encour- up aggregate practices. One thing is for aging patients to seek a second opinion if certain: patients will be better off.” they so wish. The patient can confidently “As hard as it is to run a hospital walk into a Medisync hospital and expect today, with administration getting standardised care.” increasingly complicated, smaller, doctor- The company has onboarded eight run hospitals that survive the crisis could new hospitals since Covid-19 struck— emerge as net gainers,” says Dr Anil Agadi, a 50 per cent growth—and introduced whose 44-year-old hospital, started by them to the digital market by setting up his father in the heart of Bengaluru, has a telemedicine platform. “We have helped refused to go corporate. “With fewer them find a new clientele in this time of people able to afford corporate healthcare crisis. We now set up 400-500 digital ap- post-Covid, and specialists like Dr Rao pointments in a day,” Dr Swamy says. making time for visits to small hospitals, Medisync has 300 doctors onboard, most there is hope.” n

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Available as an e-magazine for tablets, mobiles and desktops. * For terms and conditions, visit http://www.openthemagazine.com Politics Punjabi rap Political brinkmanship in Punjab has taken a dangerous turn after the farm reform laws T By Siddharth Singh

hese are days of brinkmanship in Punjab. Less than a month after Parlia- ment passed three farm reform laws, the Punjab Legislative Assembly on October 20th passed three bills designed to nullify the Central Acts. While the fate of the bills passed in Punjab remains uncertain— they are yet to acquire the governor’s as- sent—their passage represents a spiral of dangerous politics from which the state may find it hard to extricate itself. “We have made the law, we have to face it. Whether the governor will give the per- mission or not is not known. Then it will go to the President. It is not known whether he will give his assent. But we will fight this,” Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said in a speech in the state Assembly that was high on rhetoric even as it displayed flashes of realism about the economic damage inflicted on Punjab due to the ongoing agitation by farmers there. By Singh’s

Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s speech in the state Assembly was high on rhetoric even as it displayed flashes of realism about the economic damage inflicted on Punjab due to the ongoing agitation by farmers there. By Singh’s estimation, the hit suffered by the state amounts to Rs 40,000 crore ani

44 2 november 2020 Sukhbir Singh Badal ANd Harsimrat Kaur Badal on a protest march in Bathinda, September 25 getty images estimation, the hit suffered by the state The SAD is seeking to claw back the space it lost amounts to Rs 40,000 crore. In his speech, Singh pleaded with the in the 2017 Assembly elections to the AAP and farmers to back away from the path of agi- the Congress. Since then, the party has been tation as he cited the Rs 40,000 crore figure. trying to find some emotive issue that could “We have stood with you [farmers]; now you galvanise its supporters or, more accurately, should stand with us [government],” he said even as he promised that his government enable it to win them back would get the farmers what is due to them. Placating the farmers is one spin that can be given to legislative action. But there day, Singh asked, “Why has Harsimrat 24th, he said, “This is the best, the quickest is a far more visible story unfolding in not quit the Modi Cabinet? Why has and the most effective way for Punjab to the state: the fight for primacy between Sukhbir Singh Badal not pulled the SAD pre-empt the application of the Centre’s the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the out of the NDA even after the Naren- latest anti-farmer Act in the state because Congress. With the entry of the Aam dra Modi Government failed to address the Centre’s Acts do not and will not apply Aadmi Party (AAP) into the fray, it was their purported concerns on the farm to principal market yards declared by any nearly impossible for Singh’s government bills?” By the end of the day, Bathinda MP state government. Therefore, the Punjab to resist the pressure to take a firm stand Harsimrat Kaur Badal had quit the Union government must act without delay.” against the Central laws. Cabinet. That evening, she tweeted: ‘I have The action of October 20th in the What is being witnessed in Punjab is resigned from the Union Cabinet in pro- state Assembly was a direct fallout of this a spiral of high-pitched rhetoric and esca- test against anti-farmer ordinances and political pressure. latory political steps that force the main legislation. Proud to stand with farmers There is more at stake than merely political parties—the SAD and the Con- as their daughter & sister.’ Nine days later, protecting farmers’ interests. The one gress—to remain one step ahead of each the Akalis quit the National Democratic demand that is strangely out of place is other. The trouble is that there are only Alliance (NDA). Now it was their turn to that Minimum Support Prices (MSP) for those many twists in that spiral before ratchet up pressure on Amarinder Singh wheat and rice be declared a statutory Punjab gets into a zone of politics that is and the Congress. right. This was suggested by the Chief dangerous and can spin out of control. Even before the SAD had left the NDA, Minister on the floor of the Assembly On September 17th, Lok Sabha passed Sukhbir Singh Badal had trained his guns on October 20th and reiterated by the two farm reform Bills. On the same on the Punjab government. On September Assembly in the unanimous resolution.

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 45 Politics

The Food Corporation of India (FCI) has past when Punjab was a turbulent province. to political ends with unmatched effi- purchased wheat and rice from Punjab Punjab has a history of such political ciency. The Guru Gobind Singh Marg— and Haryana for decades without any fights getting out of hand and engulfing the highway that links shrines associated law prescribing MSP for its operations in the entire state in a zone of violence. Events with the tenth Sikh Guru—had been in- these two states. When the three reform that led to the lost decade of the 1980s augurated by him and he was reaping the Acts were passed, no less than Prime began on a note not very different from symbolic and political benefits associated Minister Narendra Modi promised that what is being heard in Punjab now. Back with the move. It was a bad time for the MSP would continue. This promise was in 1973, the Congress led by Chief Minister Akali Dal—as the SAD was then known— reiterated by other ministers, including Giani Zail Singh was on a strong wicket. and the party was desperately in search of Rajnath Singh and Dharmendra Pradhan. A year earlier, the Akalis had been beaten a theme that would allow them to get back But these promises cut no ice, suggesting decisively in the Assembly elections. Zail into the reckoning. that something else is at work behind this Singh had marshalled religious sentiment It was at this point that the Anand- demand. This is not hard to fathom. Punjab’s political problem is not the Amarinder Singh-led Congress but the discredited SAD seeking to claw back the In trying to dissuade farmers from the path of space it lost in the 2017 Assembly elections agitation, Amarinder Singh has clearly to the AAP and the Congress. This was the demonstrated his understanding of the first time that Punjab witnessed a three- dangerous possibilities inherent in such cornered contest where each contestant had his/her own strengths. In the Malwa gatherings. Can anyone rule out that a ‘farmers’ region of Punjab, the contest was bitter as issue’ will not metamorphose into a ‘Sikh issue’? this is a stronghold of the SAD. The result led to a drubbing for the SAD and one of its worst electoral performances since the state was formed. To rub salt into its wounds, the Akalis did particularly poorly in Malwa. The AAP and the SAD ended up fighting for the same set of votes. There is no way back to power for the SAD except by regaining what it has lost in this part of Punjab that accounts for 69 of 117 seats in the Assembly. Since then, the SAD has been trying to find some emotive issue that could galvanise its supporters, or more accurately, enable it to win them back. Under Amarinder Singh, an experi- enced politician, the Akalis did not get any such opportunity. The two issues that can ignite politics in Punjab are farmers’ liveli- hood and religion. Singh said that openly in the Assembly on October 20th. The Akalis, through their incremental turning of politi- cal screws in Punjab, would like to combine religion and farmers’ issues, making it a deadly cocktail that can potentially sideline the AAP and prove to be a headache for the Congress. In the days after the SAD walked out of the NDA, Sukhbir Singh Badal did make noises about “Sikh issues” and “fed- eralism”. These are echoes from the party’s

A Farmers’ protest in Patiala, October 15

46 getty images pur Sahib Resolution was crafted and There is more at stake than merely protecting launched. The uses of this document— which were to prove ruinous—have an farmers’ interests. The one demand that is interesting story. There was relative strangely out of place is that Minimum Support quiet in the months, and even years, Prices (MSP) for wheat and rice be declared a after its release in October 1973. This was statutory right. The Food Corporation of India has largely a function of Akali efforts to woo the Janata Party at the national level, and purchased wheat and rice from Punjab and this required tactful handling. That paid Haryana for decades without any law prescribing off. By 1977, the Akalis were back in the MSP for its operations in these two states saddle as the ruling party of Punjab. The trouble began in the early 1980s when the Congress was back in power. That was when the Anandpur Sahib Resolu- gained political traction to the point that them in the lurch. What the BJP needs to be tion took on a very different meaning and both parties became irrelevant in Punjab’s careful about is its former partner, the SAD. demands for ‘federalism’ and ‘autonomy’ politics for a decade. The preacher—Jarnail The moment Punjab politics seems to take surfaced with a vengeance. Singh Bhindranwale—was killed in 1984 a wrong turn, the Centre needs to step in. In those years, especially after 1983, the in the course of military action in Amrit- There is a bigger problem at hand. Un- ruinous effects of political competition sar. But his poisonous legacy consumed less it takes some tough steps, the three based on religion became obvious. While Punjab. The real culprits turned out to be farm reform Acts will become irrelevant. the two parties were busy hurling abuses the two main parties in the state, the Akali If it agrees to the resolution passed by at each other, an unknown Sikh preacher Dal and the Congress. Punjab and gives a statutory backing to MSP, this will lead to virtually all states with surplus output demanding the same t is erroneous to treatment. That can only lead to unimagi- say that the past repeats nable and unbearable financial pressure on itself with regularity as the Centre. Also, unless the bills passed by I no two human situa- Punjab are not vetoed, or kept in cold stor- tions are exact. But what age at the governor or the President’s level, is happening in Punjab Congress-ruled states will pass similar laws now has alarming similarities with its past. to neutralise the Central legislation purely Now that Amarinder Singh has done what on political grounds. (In its 2019 Lok Sabha was necessary for keeping his party solvent election manifesto, the Congress had prom- in state politics, the danger is that the SAD ised far more ambitious farm reforms.) and even the AAP may try to go one step The other, politically and economical- further to get political advantage. ly more demanding option for the Centre, To his credit, the Chief Minister re- is to let these Bills pass. In that case, once alises the danger. In trying to dissuade Punjab is notified as a single market, the farmers from the path of agitation, he has FCI can progressively reduce its wheat demonstrated his understanding of the and rice purchases from Punjab and be- dangerous possibilities inherent in such gin developing foodgrain markets in other gatherings. Can anyone rule out that a states. This will not have any detrimental ‘farmers’ issue’ will not metamorphose effect on food security in India as Madhya into a ‘Sikh issue’? The problem is that Pradesh and Telangana have enough sur- his political rivals, especially the Akalis pluses in wheat and rice, respectively, to and the AAP, may not understand that. handle requirements under the National The issue in Punjab is one thing, but Food Security Act. But this will be a risky the problem for the Union Government gambit: while it can serve as a warning to is of a very different magnitude. It needs other states that might want to ‘do a Pun- to handle Punjab with tact. It has started jab,’ it may end up creating a major law well by ensuring that rice procurement and order problem in Punjab with the continues without a hitch, a very power- potential of even reviving separatism. ful signal to farmers who can comprehend What the Centre cannot ignore is the these matters that the Centre won’t leave challenge thrown down by Punjab. n

www.openthemagazine.com 47 Letter from Lahore

Land without Small Mercies The social and emotional inequalities of Pakistan come out in small anecdotes

s the long days black shalwar kameez in his 20s, presumably, a woman in her of summer slink into 60s, a teenager in shorts and a tee, two domestic staff members, shadowy evenings of one old, one young. There were more, I forgot them even as A fall, there is an urgency they crowded very close to me. in the air for something that is in- As they shouted, I tried to make sense of what they were say- describable. Or is it the humdrum ing. They were from a house a few houses from ours, on the other of things staying the same? The day side of the road. Apparently, they had an issue with the silencer changing colours, stark brightness to of Zain’s heavy motorbike, and they had talked to him a few days By Mehr Tarar velvety darkness, is my clock. Exist- ago. The elderly woman, sister of the elderly man, was unwell, ing mostly within the rectangularity and the sound of Zain’s motorbike disturbed her. Zain had agreed of my room, I’m aware of the differ- to drive at slow speed outside their house, and the matter was ence between one day and another. Dully aware? Acutely aware? solved. Clearly, it hadn’t. The time of namaz changes with the season. My workout Enraged at the sound of his motorbike as he drove past the varies every day. I read, every few days, more pages of the book brother-sister duo walking on the road, they went to their house, I take forever to read. The Haunting of Bly Manor, despite being gathered more of their folks, and stormed to our house. To physi- deliciously tragic and palpably scary, is not a binge-watch as I take cally beat up a teenager? three days to finish it. The repeat viewing unfolds newness in As I tried to calm them down, saying to them that I had to corners I didn’t notice, shadows that were people long dead, in stop shaking before I talked to them, I reached out and grasped, explanation of pain that haunted every crack of the gothic manor. briefly, the hands of the older and younger men. In Pakistan, fe- I see something new in everything old. Until something males don’t hold hands of strange men. I did, to reassure them happens that jolts awake in me the realisation that not much that I was listening to them. Fuming, they paid little attention to changes in the world outside my large window. anything I said or did. They accused Zain of unleashing Pearl on One quiet October night, I was a guest via Skype on a talk them, my seven-year-old mixed breed who lives in my room and show being aired live on PTV World, giving my oft-repeated hates strangers. In a matter of minutes, I found out that one of points on the short and long-term agenda of the recently them had slapped, repeatedly, my domestic staff member Nasir. formed alliance of eleven major and minor political parties, That was when I got really, really angry. innocuously termed Pakistan Democratic Movement. The Nasir is like a family member. One of his two children, eight- door and window of my room tightly shut to keep the air-con- year-old Baku, the name I gave him, is in my room all day long. He ditioned silence necessary for the hour-long show, I was all set even sleeps on my couch. Nasir’s daughter and wife are in their for a conversation with one host and two guests staring at my village for a few days. He told me that the neighbours stormed own image on the screen. For once, even my two roommates, to our house, kicked our gate, stepped into the short driveway, my dogs Pearl and Autumn, decided to go on the terrace outside shouted at being attacked by a dog that merely barks and angrily my room without barking up any fuss. sniffs strangers, and slapped Nasir without even giving him a A few minutes into the show, I heard a commotion down- chance to speak. Zain told me that as he drove past them, the man stairs. My sister in panicky loudness, my teenage nephew Zain tried to push him off the motorbike. I was enraged. running upstairs and going back in seconds, the dogs barking in- When they said to me that the sound of Zain’s motorbike both- cessantly, and unfamiliar voices, raised, angry, beyond the front ered them, my immediate reaction was an apology and a reassur- door of my house. For the first time in my life, I told a talk show ance that it wouldn’t happen again. Without even going into the host I had to go because I could hear people shouting at my gate. details of the conversation they’ve had with Zain earlier, I gave Shaking, I ran downstairs. Despite being strangely fear- them my word that his motorbike wouldn’t be a source of distur- less all my life, the fear of something happening to a loved bance to their invalid family member. They kept shouting, they one makes me go into a trembling mode. Until I start to ex- kept looking at Zain and me as if we had done great harm to them. hale. When I reached the gate, there was a group of people I stopped caring about their anger as soon as I found out what they shouting so angrily, I thought Zain had got into a fight with had done to Nasir. I asked them to apologise to him. They refused. someone on the road. The group of shouting strangers had a The older man started to walk in the direction of his house, grey-haired older man in a white shalwar kameez, a man in a shouting, “Mera pastol lao.” (bring my pistol). He didn’t care who

48 2 november 2020 Illustration by Saurabh Singh

heard him. I asked loudly what he needed his gun for. “I’m going to shoot that dog,” he answered pointing to Pearl sitting quietly at I told the police that I felt unsafe, my family felt the terrace. Now I was so angry I knew I had unsafe, my dogs were unsafe, and that I was to do something. Zain had called the police emergency going to file a police case against the bunch of number 15. Shortly after my useless talk men who didn’t even have the decency to give with the fuming neighbours, four Dolphin a sincere apology to a poor man personnel arrived on their official police motorbikes. The Dolphin Squad of Lahore is part of the Punjab Police that is mandated “to respond to emergencies within a timely manner and to assist Capital City Police in ending street crimes.” I stayed outside my gate. On the street. I refused to go back in- They listened to the two sides, us in front of our gate, them in side. I was not going to let go of what they had done to Nasir even if front of their house. I could bring myself to overlook how they had behaved with Zain. Us was me, a woman; Zain, a teenager; Nasir, our domestic Another neighbour came to talk to me. The self-proclaimed staff member, “servant” in the terminology of almost every Paki- mediator of the feuds of the neighbourhood. Sharing with me stani; and my two dogs, watching us quietly from the terrace that he was part of the group that talked to Zain a few days ago, after having calmed down, grudgingly, by the din at the gate. and the courteousness of that conversation, his advice to me was The Dolphins were impeccably behaved, respectful, helpful. to calm down and forgive and forget the whole thing. Agreeing They listened, patiently, and stayed there for as long as I didn’t to his suggestion of the pointlessness of prolonging a solvable go inside my house. issue, I said that I would let it go if they apologised to Nasir.

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 49 Letter from Lahore

More time passed. People driving by stared. Some slowed absence of ‘the man of the house’ made us vulnerable. I made a down. Some stopped to ask me what had happened. The concern call to the police for an officer to be sent to my house. of two young men and a young woman in a White Toyota Land Then I started to make phone calls. I texted someone, a very, Cruiser was noteworthy. They talked to my nephew, gave him very important person in the province. My lucky night, he was their phone number, and said to us that we could call them at any online. A few minutes later, I received a call from his office. A few time if there was any issue. Insisting that Zain had not commit- minutes later, a high-level police officer called me. A few minutes ted any crime just riding his motorbike, they said that we should later, another police officer called me. And a few minutes later, have never said sorry to the angry neighbours. another police officer called me. In a matter of minutes, an entire After talking to the neighbours, the two Dolphin cops chain of command came into action. convinced them to render an apology. Two men arrived, the 20s It was after 11 pm. I sat on the grass outside the house in front one in black shalwar kameez, and probably his older brother of ours. Nasir and Zain didn’t leave my side. Nasir finally got me a or cousin. Flippant, sardonic, the younger one apologised to chair from my sister’s living room. I waited for the police. Nasir. I could see what he was doing. The sham apology to avoid And then the police officer, an ASP, in command of my a police report. It was the older man, probably in his 40s, who residential area, arrived. He was the last phone call. Masked, spooked me. accompanied by his team, he listened to the entire story. I asked him to verify the story with the guards and the drivers and the cooks standing outside our other neighbours’ homes. laring at Zain, he said, “Who unleashed the dog They knew Nasir and had seen and heard the entire thing. I told Gon my parents?” He recoiled when I went close to him, him about the attempt to push Zain off the motorbike, their trying to tap him on his shoulder to talk to him. As if I was a kicking of the gate of my house, entering my house, slapping a person of a low caste trying to touch someone of a high caste. man who had not said a word to them, the threat to shoot my My attempt to clarify that no one had attacked his parents dog, the menacing tone of the man in his 40s. went unheard. He walked away without listening to me. I My stance was unambiguous by that time: I told the police that asked him again. He refused to even stop. Why would he listen I felt unsafe, my family felt unsafe, my dogs were unsafe, and that I to the explanation of a woman? He had come there to “settle a was going to file a police case against the bunch of men who didn’t score” with a teenager, while his brother or cousin offered his even have the decency to give a sincere apology to a poor man. fake apology to a “servant.” The night silence deepened. Cars stopping to ask what was go- His demeanour was insulting. It was also scary. In our home, ing on became fewer. The entire stretch from our house to theirs it is my sister and Zain and me and Nasir’s family. My brother- was now full of the vehicles of the police and DHA (our residen- in-law works in Saudi Arabia. My son studies in New York. The tial area) security personnel. The police officer went to talk to

A Dolphin Force police squad in Lahore

The Punjab Police were extremely efficient. Even the ones who had arrived without the orders of a very, very important person. Immaculately behaved, they listened, showed empathy, advised, offered to help in any way my family and I needed help. They promised more patrolling of our street, of the stretch of the ‘incident’

50 2 november 2020 the angry, unrepentant neighbours. Their voices were different when they talked to him. No longer were they flippant or sar- In 2020, what remains unchanged is the vulnerability. donic or threatening. Suddenly, they were Despite the noise about equality of rights of all well-behaved men of a decent family who humans, fights for gender equality, protests for cruelty had got into a fight out of their concern for the wellbeing of the woman of their against animals, police becoming more vigilant, it is family. Zain and Nasir were there for a still an unsafe world for the underprivileged, little while during the police officer’s women, teenagers, animals questioning. They saw the neighbours changing their tone, their demeanour. The officer told me that he had lis- tened to both sides. Incredulous, I said that there were no sides. I said I wished to file a formal report. One officer took out a notepad and a pen. The grey-haired bearded man came to talk to me. I didn’t think it was a willingly taken action. But I listened to him with respect. One police officer said that the sound of Zain’s motorbike was not an issue to anyone other than people who were unwell. The ASP’s subordinate said that while Zain had not done any- thing wrong, our neighbours entering our house, slapping Nasir and threaten- ing to use a gun—all crimes. Reassuring the neighbour gentle- man that Zain’s motorbike would not cause any disturbance to his ailing sister, I wished him and his family well. We said goodnight with big smiles. I know mine was sincere. I decided not to think too much about his. reuters A protest ahead of International Women’s Day in Karachi, March 6 The Punjab Police were extremely efficient. Even the ones who had arrived without the orders of a very, very important person. Immaculately them, until time diminishes them. behaved, they listened, showed empathy, advised, offered to help The patriarchy, the boxes of gender, the dynamics of class in any way my family and I needed help. They promised more and privilege. What is to do and how to do it, there is barely any patrolling of our street, of the stretch of the “incident”. clarity despite the reality of some very clear-cut rules. The rules Two hours had passed. I walked into my room. My laptop that decide who is to be treated in which manner versus the reposed in a long-ended talk show on Skype. My dogs welcomed mindsets that judge who is to be treated in which manner. me as if I had returned after a full day. Baku barely looked up from In 2020, what remains unchanged is the vulnerability. his Nintendo switch. Despite the noise about equality of rights of all humans, In 2020, the world turned upside down by Covid-19, fights for gender equality, protests for cruelty against animals, Pakistan undergoing myriad issues of inflation, and the united police becoming more vigilant, it is still an unsafe world for the opposition’s efforts to topple the government, young and underprivileged, women, teenagers, animals. old people dying everywhere in the world, flakiness of life Those two hours on the road outside my house that becoming the glaring concreteness of existence, some things October night. I knew. I felt alone. I felt scared. My world, despite remain unchanged. The unchangeability is etched in words and being privileged, is still unsafe for Nasir and Zain and Pearl actions that seem to shift form with a fluidity that is paradoxical and me. n to their very existence. Things that are etched are permanent until someone rubs dirt over them, until a sharp thing erases Mehr Tarar is a well-known Pakistani columnist and author

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 51 cinema n o

sal Beholden to the Fat her Figure

Photo alamy 2 november 2020 It’s well after midnight for me here in India when Sofia Coppola connects, via Zoom, from her home in New York. Dressed in a crisp white shirt and sipping from a glass of what appears to be iced tea, she’s in no rush to talk shop. She apologises that the time difference means we have to do this so late my time. She enquires about my Star Wars fixation when she spots a Darth Vader figurine on the shelf behind me. And although I suspect she wouldn’t mind if I spent at least a few minutes of the time allocated for this interview talking about my favourite among the films she’s made (Somewhere, 2010), it seems only fair that we get on with the subject du jour–her seventh and latest film On The Rocks, which begins streaming globally on Apple TV+ from October 23rd. For On The Rocks Coppola reunited with her Lost in Translation star Bill Murray whom she first directed 17 years ago. That film, a moody melancholic piece about two strangers who meet in a foreign land and find sanctuary in their brief encounter, won the then 32-year-old writer- director an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. It’s also regarded as a modern masterpiece of sorts; a smart, poignant film that captured the zeitgeist when it first came out, and one whose legion of fans continues to grow as younger generations discover it. BEHOLDEN TO THE FAT HER FIGURE The new film is a departure from Coppola’s oeuvre of reflective character studies. It stars Sofia Coppola’s Rashida Jones as an author and mother of two young girls in New York who’s struggling to find new film is a father- her rhythm so she can bang out the new book daughter buddy movie. she’s contracted to write. Preoccupied with the niggling suspicion that her husband (Marlon The director talks to Wayans) may be having an affair with a colleague, she reluctantly allows her father (Murray), a R ajeev Masand charming playboy with devil-may-care charisma, about her departure to persuade her into spying on him. Before long father and daughter are reconnecting over from reflective drinks, discussing life and relationships, and character studies setting off on car chases as they stalk her husband in search of the truth. From as soon as the plot of the film was revealed there has been talk that the story is autobiographical, or at the least that Murray’s dashing, larger-than-life charmer Felix is based on her own father, the Oscar-winning legend Francis Ford Coppola. It’s a ‘charge’ that she

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 53 cinema

admits to, but only in part. “There are That was one of the big things. Usually It has, because I’d just met him during moments, but the character is inspired in my films there are feelings under the Lost in Translation and I was young as much by other people of my parents’ surface, things not said. But I wanted and starting my career at the time. generation—my father-in-law, family there to be more of a dialogue. I wanted But now we know each other, and friends, friends of my dad,” she says. the characters to be able to talk about Bill has trust and respect for me as a She also accepts that the film is a their emotions and their feelings work collaborator. So it was really fun change of pace from her style. “I was at but without sounding corny. It was a because we just know each other better, a point in my life when I was looking to challenge because it was new for me at and he and Rashida knew each other so do something that was fun, but it still the screenplay stage. we could all work together. had to say something. And it had to be in my style,” she explains. The resulting For the longest time you resisted The scene where Bill and Rashida are effort is a film that examines how two working with Bill again for fear of tailing a cab in a noisy convertible is different generations (and genders) look tarnishing the affection people had for the one played for broad laughs—not at love, relationships and marriage. It is Lost in Translation. It’s a good thing something you do often in your films. structured like something of a father- you got over it because it’s hard to think Does straightforward comedy require daughter buddy movie and unfolds like of another actor who could play this you to apply a different muscle from the an adventure of sorts in bars, restaurants character without him coming off as one you’re generally use? and the busy streets of Yes, definitely. I think Manhattan. But there are you always want to push moments of introspection, rashida jones and bill murray in On the rocks yourself and do something heartbreak and solitude you haven’t done or you’re that feel closer to Coppola’s not as familiar with. So I was signature. It’s a slick, stylish really glad to have Rashida film about privileged folks and Bill help me with that, and their problems, some and to try and do something might even say, but it seldom in a more comedic tone, but rings untrue. then that they could put their more heartfelt, serious Excerpts from the side in as well. conversation: I know it’s hard to shoot You’ve said that in your in cars but I couldn’t help it twenties you’d often sit because it lent itself to the down with your father and story. And it was fun to do have conversations about life over a I was really glad to the car chase. I kept talking about it as drink. It’s one of the things that inspired have Rashida and Bill do our action sequence—which it hardly the relationship between Bill’s and something in a more comedic is—but luckily I had a lot of help with Rashida’s characters in this film. Has tone, and they could put that. And Bill’s a great driver, so that your father seen the movie? their more heartfelt, helped. Yes, my dad saw it and appreciated it. He’s not a bon vivant in the way that serious side in as well You only completed the film a few the character is, but of course there Sofia Coppola director months ago. But it already makes one are elements of him, and I think he nostalgic for a world that we knew so appreciated the attention (laughs). unlikeable. How does he do it? well: for a time when people were in the He’s just a unique force of nature. But streets going about their lives normally You’ve said Rashida’s character Laura is he has so much heart and sincerity so it and bars were crowded and restaurants an extension of you. helped a lot with the role, which can be were busy. Does that hit hard? Does it Well, it’s not a self-portrait, but it’s a lot of complicated because anyone that’s very feel like another lifetime? little personal things I was thinking of. charming and charismatic usually has Oh definitely. We only shot it last a dark too, and he was able to bring just summer but it feels like a long time Most of your films—The Virgin Suicides so much joyfulness and heart. He’s so ago. And it makes me feel a little (1999), Lost in Translation (2003), lovable; he’s just a unique creature. melancholic. I hope it’s nice for people Somewhere (2010), Marie Antoinette to see it, and because we can’t travel and (2006)—tend to be more reflective, How has your relationship with him do these things now I hope it’s fun to be less ‘wordy’. changed since Lost in Translation? in New York with Bill and Rashida. n

54 2 november 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!

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The Tide is Shifting Away from Male Supremacy in Movies Parvathy is done with the whataboutery of the Kerala film industry. The straightshooting actor shares her hopes and frustrations with Ullekh NP

Courtesy Aum Thiruvoth

56 2 november 2020 arvathy Thiruvothu, popularly known with the EC, making the general body almost toothless. Out of by her screen name Parvathy, is an outspoken and 15 members of the EC, only three were women. p well-read feminist known for her roles in multiple Two of the male EC members are legislators in the Kerala south Indian languages and in Bollywood where Assembly. They speak from such power that only some five-six she had starred in Qarib Qarib Singlle (2017) alongside the late of us at the general meeting asked questions. We got up to speak Irrfan Khan. Her most popular films include Poo (Tamil, 2008), and found a slot to make our voices heard, even as AMMA was Take Off (Malayalam, 2017), Uyare (Malayalam, 2019) and Virus almost close to passing the new amendments to the bylaws (Malayalam, 2019). Recently, the award-winning actor quit the without any voting. Thanks to our intervention, they had to nodal actors’ body of the Malayalam film industry, Association freeze that move. of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA), over a derogatory remark Since that day we had told them we are ready to work with by the general secretary of the organisation about a fellow fe- them, with our lawyers on our side, and form a committee male Malayalee actor. Kerala, feted for its high social indices, has for bylaw amendments. But as expected there was radio often incurred the wrath of feminists over its toxic masculinity silence after that. on and off screen. Undeterred by rape threats and cyberstalking, the likes of Did the AMMA general secretary make the statement, which Parvathy, who is part of Women in Cinema Collective (WCC), triggered your exit from AMMA, about the actress herself or was are leading a crusade against the scourge which often brings it about the character she was going to play in a movie (that “she them face-to-face with big names in the is dead now”)? Is there any confusion? industry. “For me they are not superstars There is no confusion. I watched the unless they also have a moral compass,” video so many times before I made my says 32-year-old Parvathy. She spoke to decision. I wanted to be sure. What he Open from the sets of a short film she is It is dishonourable to use said is completely out of line. shooting, along with an untitled movie the word ‘Amma’ for the directed by Sanu Varghese. Excerpts You always enunciate each letter in the from the interview. organisation. They are the most acronym AMMA instead of pronouncing regressive and anti-women it ‘Amma’. Why? When did you start feeling that AMMA organisation that I have found It is dishonourable to use the word does not stand up for the rights of its on every count. I would call it ‘amma’ [mother] for the organisation. female members? They are the most regressive and anti- Ever since the incident happened in A-M-M-A because people need to women organisation that I have found February 2017 [when a leading female ac- see it is an organisation and stop on every count. I call it A-M-M-A because tor in Kerala was abducted and allegedly putting it on a pedestal that it people need to see it is an organisation raped]. I found their ‘support’ to be rather doesn’t deserve ” and stop putting it on a pedestal that it performative than holding any value Parvathy actor doesn’t deserve. to help the survivor. That really con- founded me. Three members resigned as How far have things changed in the members of AMMA in protest against this injustice, including industry since the early days of your acting career? the survivor, but I, Padmapriya and Revathi stayed back as a I have far more hope that things are going to change now than strategy to fight on. when I joined the industry. Back then, I had zero hope. It was We went through the bylaws of AMMA. We went for its incredibly male-dominated and it wasn’t even discussed openly. executive committee [EC] meeting which was, in hindsight, a There was a strange pattern that women were never allowed to big drama to ensure that we as well as the media kept quiet for huddle together. There were production controllers and the way a while. We wanted them to request the survivor to return to they would speak about an actress to another used to be very its fold. We also had questions about the bylaws and about the derogatory. We came to know much about all this after we came internal complaints committee [to probe sexual harassment at together as WCC. We never knew there was an underlying the workplace]. We kept writing emails to them and they never plan to stop us from interacting closely, to ensure that we don’t responded. The next thing we knew was the president and a few share our secrets and experiences. I feel we were all floating little EC members organised a press conference where they said the islands until WCC came together. survivor needed to apply for a membership in AMMA in order Nevertheless, I was vocal about me reading the script before to come back. And so, we decided to go into the general body signing on. They used to ridicule me for that. They used to ask meeting with the same set of questions. We realised that 90 per questions like, ‘Oh you will only read the script and say yes?’ It cent of the members had no clue that the EC was going to redraft was as if it was not the right of an individual to ask to read the the bylaws which were atavistic and they were going to make script to know what task lay ahead of them. They treat women them more regressive. Essentially, more powers would be vested as if they have no agency of their own. Newcomers are made

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 57 cinema interview

to feel they were being offered a favour by producers and direc- over the past three years in our understanding of it. We are look- tors by hiring them for a movie. ing to speak the truth and move forward together.

Many male actors blame female AMMA members for being What is your idea of feminism and how has it evolved? selective in their outrage — that is, people complain only when it My idea of feminism used to be the very basic idea of it which suits them. What is your response? is about holding equal spaces for everybody so that there can There is a good word for it: whataboutery. Basically, they need be freedom to make a choice without any conformist ideas to be called out for their whataboutery. The onus is on them to pushing them to make that choice. That notion itself has not answer this, not us. I have seen a lot of women do it too. I don’t changed, but by being part of WCC and with the help of my even want to dignify such statements. There are so many ways closest friends I have come to realise one cannot overlook in which they would try and digress from the issues at hand. the core part of feminism: intersectionality. Feminism is not something that can be applied in the same way for each person You have called out some big names for their misogyny. because of their economic, social and political backgrounds. Yes, I have called out a few idols that have been created out of hu- The more conversations I have with fellow women, the more man beings who are as flawed as any other person. It is strange I am able to understand their perspectives. It has led me to that you can pick and choose where and when you glorify them. understand my own privilege and how that has enabled me You can talk highly of their superhit movies. But what about to do and be so many things. That is not the case for those who their basic moral responsibility? If there is gross injustice at their go through casteist oppression or are harassed based on their own workplace and they are quiet about sexual orientations and gender. it, they are enablers. Period. Can you elaborate on your privilege? What is the state government I was born and raised in an upper-class doing about it? Women in Cinema Collective is Hindu family. That cushions a lot of the I would like to voice out my disappoint- full of people who are from blows . I did not recognise the cushion- ment over the delay by the Kerala govern- ing I had until I started working with ment in placing the report of the Justice a varied range who work in WCC and started listening to others. I Hema Commission [appointed two years various departments in the film have strongly felt that to a really great ago to study gender discrimination in industry. We are disruptors, we extent, the justice I have received often the Kerala film industry]. WCC is the one are whistleblowers, but we are is because of my skin colour, my caste that sought this commission. The recom- also a support system. Our core and so on. There are women who stand mendations have been made, but it is not to lose because of lack of that privilege. yet in the public domain. We understand belief is that we are here for this is Covid time, but we have to make equal spaces, equal opportunities You are up against formidable powers. sure there is a preventive and prohibitive and we want to be treated with How do you plan to go ahead? mechanism. Why are those recom- basic human dignity” What is it that makes them formi- mendations still in cold storage after a Parvathy dable? It comes with a certain structure lot of time and money has gone into the from which they have benefited by creation and running of the commission? oppressing others. That is the power We need a tribunal in place. Or else, more women are going to structure that I would like to break. That is an ongoing process. drop complaints for want of redress mechanisms. This wouldal- We have the same agency as any other person. There is a façade low criminals to terrorise them with absolute impunity. of niceness and we do not want to be part of it. I plan to con- tinue to work, produce and direct movies, and aid and facilitate Is your Collective (WCC) a cohesive entity? moviemakers who are trying to make a change. The strongest Of course, there are differences of opinion. WCC is full of people way to make change is actually by making a very good connec- who are from a varied range who work in various departments tion with the people by giving them quality in the film industry. We strive for healthy debates and discus- content. That is what I am very focused on at the moment. sions. We call it sisterhood, yes, but we don’t want to put it on a I don’t think the market changes all this just on its own. I pedestal where some of us cannot be touched or questioned. We think we have the power to change the market. We are figur- are disruptors, we are whistleblowers, but we are also a support ing a way out. People who are likeminded are coming together. system. We are supportive of every member in the film industry That an all-encompassing power structure is irreplaceable is who is willing to make the change along with us. Our core belief a myth. The tide is shifting already. The age-old oppressor is that we are here for equal spaces, equal opportunities and we structure will be replaced. OTT [over-the-top or streaming want to be treated with basic human dignity. We at WCC have media service] opens up a lot of opportunities for us. In time come from different notions of feminism and we have evolved we will have a far more concrete plan in place. n

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Karan Johar may well have given Prime Minister Narendra Modi a written undertaking that he, and other filmmakers of note, would be making ‘inspiring content’ to celebrate 75 years of Independence in 2022. But for that directors will first have to decide what this content is to be and which national identity will it acknowledge. Will it be, as it has been in the past few decades, only in opposition to the other, which keeps changing over time, or will it be an affirmation of the many identities we all carry, caste, class, religion and gender? The Call it the fear of small numbers or the psychic tyranny of the minority, the national identity is posited in opposition to a specifically defined community. If it was the homosexual man in a repressed society, it Invisible became the Western/Westernised woman in a newly inde- pendent India trying to find its own imprimatur. Of late, as society becomes increasingly divided, the Indian Muslim, or his sympathiser, has to bear the brunt of solidifying the notion of nationalism, whether it is movies such as Tanhaji (2020) Other or ads such as the recent Tanishq promotion where a Hindu woman married into a Muslim family was dubbed love jihad What makes us who we are? and trolled on social media. Increasingly in popular culture it At different points in our history, Hindi cinema has served different ends. The Nehruvian consensus of the 1950s made way is who we are opposed to for a certain exploration and adventure in the 1960s and 1970s with the rise of independent women. The unease with them By Kaveree Bamzai usually manifested in their representation as either vaguely Anglo-Indian such as Helen’s dancer character in Teesri Manzil (1966), who is blonde and fair unlike the heroine Asha Parekh,

The Indian Muslim, or his sympa thiser, has to bear the brunt of solidifying the notion of nationalism, whether it is movies such as Tanhaji (2019) or ads such as the recent Tanishq promotion

saif ali khan in tanhaji

60 2 november 2020 or like Anita, in Deewar (1975), whose first appearance is clad in Dinesh Bhugra, Professor of mental health at King’s College, a slinky dress, smoking and making the first move on the hero. London, believes national identity has changed over the years Both get shot because of their proximity to the hero, which ac- in reference to the other. “I am male because you are female. cording to film scholar Geetanjali Gangoli, is one way of resolv- I am sane because you are insane. The creation of the other is ing the fascination of the colonised Indian man for the coloniser. both social and personal and a result of prejudices and long-held Equating the Western/Westernised woman with vamp/prosti- beliefs,” he says. Over the years, the other has been manifested tute was both an act of defiance and cultural superiority. in various ways. In the sixties, films such as Dosti (1964) and In the case of actual white women, beginning with the gener- Sangam (1964) showed sublimated homosexuality. While Dosti ous Elizabeth of Lagaan (2001), who is said to have remained showed the love between Ramu and Mohan, who had the added unwed all her life like Radha as a tribute to the love of her life, disadvantage of physical disability, Sangam, many have argued, Bhuvan, the attitude was quite different. This was echoed in was an extended friendship between the characters played Rang De Basanti (2006) as well, when Alice Patten’s passionate by Raj Kapoor and Rajendra Kumar, with Vyjayanthimala’s film student is forever in love with the memory of DJ (Aamir character coming between them. Even in Kal Ho Na Ho (2003), Khan). It spoke of a newfound sense of confidence of the it could well be that Preity Zinta’s character was extraneous to country’s place in the world, even though the Indian man was the relationship between the characters of Aman (Shah Rukh never quite united with the white woman, she remained deeply Khan) and Rohit (Saif Ali Khan). And of course, Aman had to connected to him in her lifetime. die. Nikkhil Advani, the director, says there was no mystery to Women’s sexuality remained problematic and there was it. “It was the idea of everlasting love, living on even after death.” enormous discomfort with the emergence of the unwed It was not until Dostana, in 2008, that a gay couple made it to mother. If in Dhool Ka Phool (1959), Yash Chopra’s directorial mainstream Hindi cinema, albeit in a comical way. debut, a scared Mala Sinha abandons her illegitimate child in a In the seventies, with the rise of women in the public do- forest, by 1978, Waheeda Rahman raises her child by herself, ask- main, the westernised woman took the place of the vamp. Often ing for nothing from the tycoon lover who abandoned her. That the westernised woman would be eliminated from the screen, it leaves a permanent scar on their son, Vijay, who spends the as was Anita in Deewar. At other times, she was rapidly Indian- rest of the film trying to avenge his mother’s dishonour suggests ised through the change in her clothing within the same film. there was still latent ambiguity about something that movies The trend continued in the ’80s and early ’90s, with Sridevi and such as Kundan Shah’s Kya Kehna (2000) and R Balki’s Paa (2009) Madhuri Dixit often carrying within their screen characters this made most acceptable. conflict between modernity and tradition. It could be Sridevi

The Indian Muslim, or his sympa thiser, has to bear the brunt of solidifying the notion of nationalism, whether it is movies such as Tanhaji (2019) or ads such as the recent Tanishq promotion

the Tanishq ad where a Hindu woman marries into a Muslim family

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 61 cinema essay

The unease with independent women usually manifested in their representation as vaguely Anglo-Indian such as Helen’s dancer char acter in Teesri Manzil (1966), who is blonde and fair unlike the heroine Asha Parekh helen in teesri manzil playing Anju and Manju in Chaalbaaz (1989), the meek and a traditional baby shower for their Hindu daughter in law. A smart twins who look out for each other and are the ultimate savage response by right wing trolls got the jewellery brand to male fantasy. It could be Ganga in Khalnayak (1993) who is as pull the ad. In Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare (2020), both much seductress as a police officer devoted to her Ram. the Muslim characters, Osman and Shazia, end up shot dead. The rise of terror in India, with the Babri Masjid demolition Says writer-director Alankrita Shrivastava of Osman’s death: and the consequent serial bomb blasts in Mumbai in 1992-1993 “From the moment he was born in my thoughts, he emerged as also saw the rise of a powerful other—the ‘bad’ Muslim. Until a character who would die at the end. And his death would be recently the ‘bad’ or misguided Muslim would always be bal- a catalyst for Dolly to finally free herself. I think there is a deep anced by the ‘good’ Muslim whether it was Sarfarosh (1999) or cynicism that has set in inside of me. We are no longer a country Fanaa (2006). So for every Gulfam Hassan, Muhajir ghazal singer where religious divisions don’t matter. We are a majoritarian maddened by the Partition, a line drawn by an Englishman in society now. The dark polarisation of society stares us in the face, the sand, there is a Zooni in Fanaa who thinks nothing of shoot- and we can’t escape it.” Indeed, a Surf Excel ad in 2019 that had a ing down the father of her child because he is a traitor. young girl protecting her Muslim friend from getting splattered But of late Hindi cinema has decided demonisation is the bet- with colours met with the same kind of hostility online as the ter part of displaying diversity. Cut to Alauddin Khilji’s represen- Tanishq ad, shrinking the space for multiculturalism onscreen. tation in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat (2018), where the Not every community that has long been ‘othered’ by Bol- Muslim ruler is seen beheading his father-in-law, tearing into lywood has done so badly. The community broadly known as his chicken and generally behaving like Khal Drogo’s offspring. hijras or transgenders has slowly emerged from the shadows in Unlike the domesticated Akbar of Jodhaa Akbar (2008), Khiljji is Hindi cinema, as indeed they have in real life, with the Supreme shown as a brutal invader who can never unite with his queen, Court recognising them as transgenders in 2014. A study of who chooses mass jauhar over dishonour. 29 films by Gurvinder Kalra and Dinesh Bhugra divided the representation into five categories: hijras as figures of fun, pass- ing references, sociocultural puppets, as villains and as sensitive ven that is not enough in these divided times. mothers. The study suggested that there was a paradigm shift EThose who work for the Mughals find themselves in their move from the margins to the mainstream, as in the painted in the same brush, literally in the case of Uday Bhan forthcoming Laxmmi Bomb, starring Akshay Kumar. Rathod in Tanhaji (2019), who wears all black, throws hot water Dalits, in a string of movies from the scathing Court (2014) by on prisoners, relishes crocodile meat and thinks nothing of dis- Chaitanya Tamhane to the witty Serious Men, directed by Sudhir membering elephants. All this while a clearly foreign-looking Mishra, find themselves represented as the oppressed. But a Aurangzeb clicks his knitting needles and dreams of capturing community that refuses to be defined by defeatism. The poet the whole of Hindustan. in Court does not accept the ludicrous argument that his song Movies such as Mulk (2018) have shown a greater complexity lured the manual scavenger to kill himself, while in Serious Men, of the Muslim experience, from the law-abiding police officer to Ayyan Mani sees his own caste status interwoven with his class the staunch secularist patriarch to the angry young militant. But and wants to find the quickest way from 2G to 4G, a generation it is a narrative that does not fit in with the Hindutva idea of the which has sweated so much that its offspring can live in comfort other. Little surprise then that the invisibilisation of the Muslim through their lifetime. Because nothing establishes an Indian’s may well be the next step, as is evident from the outcry over the identity than wealth. It is one marker that overcomes all diversi- recent Tanishq ad which showed a Muslim family conducting ties and disparities. n

62 2 november 2020 books

The First Heroine The Lost Heroine Vinu Abraham A fictional account of Kerala’s forgotten Translated from Malayalam by female Dalit actor of the 1930s CS Venkiteswaran and Arathy Ashok Speaking Tiger By Suneetha Balakrishnan 176 Pages | Rs 299

n a world far removed from Nayika (2020), by CS Venkiteswaran and now, the first Malayalam film was Arathy Ashok, brings the story of PK of the culture in focus. Metaphors and Iproduced and released in erstwhile Rosy to the non-Malayali audience. sentence structures also vary from Travancore on October 23rd, 1930. But The well-preserved sense of ‘local’, language to language. what was the beginning of a great and the light and non-intrusive ap- Lakshmi Holmstrom has famously history, the first screening of proach to translation works well. The preserved the ‘Tamilness’ of Salma’s Vigathakumaran (Lost Child) at the style of multiple translators is worked The Hour Past Midnight in her English Capitol Cinema Hall in Trivandrum, seamlessly into the text. translation by retaining metaphors and ended in disaster for some. The innate culture of a language has not altering linguistic structures of the The first heroine of Malayalam its subtexts which can be lost in transla- source language. Her retaining the meta- cinema, PK Rosy, was forced to flee her tion. Alternatively, this is seen adapted phor of the ‘tamarind branch’ for ‘a catch’ hometown, Trivandrum, in the ruckus suitably into the tapestry of the target is an example. This maintains the case raised by the casteist forces. Because, she language. It’s the translator’s challenge for the untranslated and unannotated was an untouchable, a Dalit, playing the to keep a fine balance. A ‘literal’ trans- word and also for two levels of transla- role of an upper-caste woman in the mov- lation, where one ‘hears’ the original tion: the popular translation as we have ie. She was already a pioneer in taking on tongue, does bear the risk of the text known it and an academic translation as female roles in the folk form Kakkaarissi sounding awkward in English. As AK is increasingly endeavoured. and had had her setbacks there too. Ramanujan says, ‘A translator hopes not The Lost Heroine has likewise con- She was never heard of again. only to translate a text, but... to translate served the flavour of the original text in When Vinu Abraham, a writer of a non-native reader into a native one.’ Malayalam, with lexis like ‘sayip’, ‘Koche’, short fiction in Malayalam, stumbled on In the particular case of texts ‘Penne’, ‘Edi’, ‘vaidya’ ‘tharavad’, etcetera, this piece of ignored history of transported from Indian languages to with random capitalisation as quoted. Malayalam cinema, he was intrigued English, there often is displayed a sheer And therefore, the references to the ‘por- enough to chase the tale of the ‘Lost necessity to anglicise the bouquet of the ridge for supper’, ‘gruel’, ‘boiled asparagus Heroine’. Some material compiled argot. Arguably, this dilutes the flavour and chilly chutney’, ‘tapioca and fish by dedicated researchers was curry’ comes across as dissonant. available but it had more gaps Illustration by Saurabh Singh The cultural context of cuisine and than information. And not even its role in placing the protagonist a mugshot of the lady was to be in the intended social band are too found. But the story of Rosy, by precious to let go in translation, then, demanded to be document- especially in a period story. ed in fiction. And Vinu Abraham Also, the mother is referred admits he understood the need variously as ‘Amma’, ‘Ammachi’ for liberal doses of imagination to and addressed once by Rosy as complete his mission. ‘Mother’. Again, when the upper- The novel Nashta Nayika (Lost caste moral brigade foul-mouths Heroine) came out in 2008, and Rosy, it’s ‘aruvanichi’ at various since then, Rosy’s story has fused places and ‘whore’ and ‘slut’ at into the Keralan culture-o-scope, others. An editorial consistency both aurally and visually. The would have saved the translation biggest take-off of the novel was, from such glitches. perhaps, the movie Celluloid Rosy’s story is one that should (2013), which collected awards be announced to the wide, wide galore. A delectable and fully justi- world. Lost Heroine rises finely to fied English translation of Nashta this occasion. n

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 63 books

Shooter to Runner How to become a

reformed gangster Zishaan A Latif By Zac O’Yeah Courtesy Rahul Bhiku Jadhav

lcoholic gangster turns buy romantic services from the bar girls up in gutters with skull fractures and marathon runner; crime reporter by which time he has, unfortunately repenting, life spirals downward until Aturns author; all’s well that ends for himself, drunk so much that he’s he figures he must either kill himself or well. But that would be a simplistic way impotent. totally reboot. of summing up this immensely engag- According to this book, Jadav was Although Jadav appears pigheadedly ing real-life chronicle even though it involved in an estimated 5 per cent of unsavoury in this semifictionalised tale, reads, occasionally, like an inspirational the shootouts in Mumbai during the one is gripped by the saga of a delusional self-help manual. first decade of our current millennium. dude who never stood a chance in the Mumbai youngster Rahul Jadav Meanwhile his family is devastated, first place. Miraculously, in the end he has a fairly typical suburban, lower- substance abuse unhinges him, he gets manages to beat all odds: despite poor middleclass family background: life careless and is arrested outside his usual health, he takes to running as a substi- ain’t easy, school doesn’t work for him, bar, and his complicit friends’ lives are tute for drinking, undertaking his own career options aren’t promising. But he’s smashed into smithereens. He’s charged mammoth anti-addiction awareness smart and growing up in the1990s, an under the stringent Maharashtra marathon from Gateway of India (Mum- era of gangster wars, he figures better Control of Organised Crime Act, spends bai) to India Gate (Delhi) in 2019. than joining his dad at the razorblade years in jail as an undertrial, abandoned Fantastic, so far! But I’ve never manufacturing unit would be to run by his don, ineligible for bail, tortured by quite understood why publishers errands for mobsters. Whilst earning interrogators. don’t employ editors to read through more money than his parents ever did Eventually, he sorts himself out manuscripts before these are sent to and partying hard, his disapproving (starts learning law, smart boy that he is, print—gaffes include 0.45mm calibre girlfriend dumps him, resulting in booz- in order to argue his own case in court) revolvers and 0.38mm bullets, which ing, the usual drill, until his family is but only with a view to getting back to made me visualise darts as thin as 1/3- thoroughly fed up and forces him to join gangsterism. Letting his family down mm piercing perhaps balloons but not a computer course. again and again, his body ultimately hearts. Still, I’m not going to complain Big mistake. As we’re in the early days collapses and the last option is rehab. excessively on this lack of fact-checking of digital India, Jadav’s the only gang In and out for years, relapsing, waking since the book is otherwise illuminat- member tech-literate enough to crack ing regarding the ad hoc functioning of the internet’s potential for cybercrime, so-called organised crime, their hawala which is how he finally strikes gold. and hafta systems and the arsenals of Simply put, he ferrets out private details professional hitmen (who’d probably of Mumbai’s shiniest—businessmen, prefer 0.45-inch-calibre guns to afore- real-estate magnates, Bollywoodies… . mentioned pinpricks). His don appreciates this breakthrough. I’ve read plenty of putdownable pulp Extorting crores, the offshore-based don through my life as a lit-crit, but this scur- hands down enough cash for booze and rilously scandalous ‘how-to-become-a- bawds, so Jadav spends his youth be- reformed-gangster’ case study brought tween a cybercafé and a dance bar. Start- me much illicit pleasure. And happily, ing each day with a fortifying 270ml of Gangster on the Run via the deaddiction centre, Jadav found The True Story of a whiskey at the bar, Jadav then goes to Reformed Criminal mental rest—figuratively speaking—on the cybercafe to threaten people in the Puja Changoiwala Freud’s sofa. Bottom line being, it is name of the don and after work returns never too late to… uh, well… whatever to the bar to treat friends to drinks and HarperCollins your excuse is, it’s never too late. n 296 Pages | Rs 399

64 2 november 2020 Hollywood reporter Noel de Souza

‘I Love Not Knowing What’s Going to Happen Next and Not Caring’

wan McGregor truly do the trip when we did. We has a penchant for bikes. probably slightly naively decided E Back in 2004, in the to leave in September, because it TV series Long Way Round he was still brutally winter and cold documented his 31,000km down there. We got down there journey with friend Charley to Aswan, we were flying in over Boorman from London to New these snowy mountains and York City. His latest docu-series Charlie and I were just looking at is Long Way Up where he and each other going, ‘Why’s there so Boorman travel on electric much snow?’ (Laughs) And then Harley-Davidsons 20,000 km we were literally snowed in for through Central and South about four or five days, we had to America. wait. Anyway, that being said, it was just an amazing adventure You’ve done so many of these from start to finish really. motorcycle trips. Have you discovered anything new about Tell us about your bikes. yourself? I’ve got lots of bikes. I mean I’ve gotten in touch with the most of my bikes are Moto Guzzi, wonder in me. I really like it. I which is my favorite brand from love not knowing what’s round Italy, and I have been a Moto the next corner. With this trip Guzzi rider since I was 20 years it had to be a little bit more Ewan McGregor old. And so that’s almost 30 organised because we were years, oh my god! So that’s my going on electric motorcycles favourite bike. and therefore at night we had to be then he had a second accident in South I have a Harley now because, of somewhere where those bikes were Africa 2019 where he did some further course, I got a Harley-Davidson after plugged into an electricity source. damage, broke his pelvis, he was really we did this trip, because I really liked So in a way that took a little bit of the in a very bad shape there. So probably working with Harley-Davidson too. freedom away. In Long Way Round sleeping on the ground isn’t probably And the difference about the electric and Long Way Down (Scotland to very nice for Charlie anymore. That bikes, it very much lends itself to a Cape Town) most of the time we’d be with the electric nature meant we’d a trip like this because they are silent riding along and if it was four in the slightly different adventure this time. and they are very smooth, they are afternoon and we got tired we would But I know from doing these trips that very fast and agile. You ride them very just say let’s stop here and we would I just learned that I just love not really confidently because I think you can ride off the road, find a place, put our knowing what’s going to happen really feel the road through the tyres tents up, make some tea and then we next and not caring. That’s really nice, in a way that with the petrol engine would have the rest of the night just it’s a great relief. That meditation on is interrupted. I really liked it, I find kicking around our little camp. And the bike is very soothing . I like long that we were less tired at the end of the I love that; I love the freedom of that. stretches of just sitting on the bike and day. And the constant mathematics So there was two things. My friend things bubble up. of how far you have got to go, what Charlie had a terrible accident in 2016 speed should we be at, are we going to and he very, very much damaged his Since none of us can travel, we can make it, that to begin with was quite legs so he’s a bit hobble-y now Charlie, travel vicariously and enjoy the stressful, but in the end it became quite he’s totally mobile and everything but adventure on our screens. pleasant, I liked all of the figuring it he’s less mobile than he used to be. And Yeah. I know, we were so lucky to all out. n

2 november 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 65 NOT PEOPLE LIKE US

RAJEEV MASAND

A New Beginning for at least another year by when it might be safer to roll cameras In August, Sanjay Dutt announced that he was taking time without the fear of the coronavirus looming over their heads. off from work for medical treatment. Neither the actor nor War director Siddharth Anand’s rumoured film withShah his family revealed details of his condition, but in the days Rukh Khan was also meant to be a globetrotting actioner, but following the announcement, Bollywood sources began sources say the film’s shoot has been pushed till it is safe to travel to confirm that the 61-year-old actor had been diagnosed and roll cameras on overseas shores again. Meanwhile, Vidya with advanced stage lung cancer. Subsequently, his wife Balan resumed shooting her film Sherni with Newton director Maanayata appealed to fans and the media not to speculate Amit Masurkar in Madhya Pradesh earlier this week, and about his health. Mirzapur director Gurmeet Singh is in pre-production on Phone Not long after, it was reported that while Dutt had begun Bhoot which he is expected to start shooting soon, in India, with treatment in Mumbai, he would also complete shooting Katrina, Siddhant Chaturvedi and Ishaan Khatter. his pending scenes for both the Ranbir Kapoor dacoit saga Shamshera and the Akshay Kumar-starring Prithviraj Hot Right Now Chauhan film. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the understated charm On October 24th, the actor took to social media to and talent of Rasika Dugal, who this weekend pops up in announce that he had beaten the ailment. ‘The last few weeks two anticipated streaming shows. In the second season of were very difficult time for my family and me. But like Mirzapur, she will return as Bina Tripathi, the sexually they say, God gives the hardest battles to his strongest dissatisfied wife ofPankaj Tripathi’s mob boss soldiers. And today, on the occasion of my kids’ character Akhanda Tripathi, who was put through birthday, I am happy to come out victorious from the wringer in the finale of the first season. In this battle and be able to give them the best gift I a shocking twist that no one saw coming, Bina can—the health and well-being of our family.’ was sexually abused by her wheelchair-bound He further went on to thank his family, father-in-law (played by Kulbhushan his fans and the medical team at Kokilaben Kharbanda) and then ordered to ‘Bobbit’ Ambani Hospital. Never once mentioning her lover Raja, the domestic help who the original diagnosis, Dutt was only she’d been sleeping with under the sending out the message that the worst family’s nose. was possibly over. Meanwhile, in Mira Nair’s adaptation of Vikram Seth’s classic Overseas Action novel A Suitable Boy, Rasika plays Amidst speculation that ambitious Savita Kapoor, the amiable elder plans to shoot overseas may have sister of the protagonist Lata grounded a few productions, Sultan Mehra (played by newbie Tanya director Ali Abbas Zafar has revealed Maniktala), whose marriage opens that he still intends to film his superhero the six-part Netflix mini series. Unlike project with Katrina Kaif across foreign and her rebellious, romantically confused Indian locations. The filmmaker revealed that sibling, Savita dutifully weds the man her he’s already locked locations in Abu Dhabi and mother has chosen for her, gives him a Dubai, and that he is heading on a recce to Poland healthy baby within a year of her marriage, and Georgia to identify a few more potential and blends nicely into his family. The two shooting sites. He will also film portions in characters, and shows, couldn’t be more Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi. dissimilar, but Rasika adapts to both However, the film doesn’t go into production worlds comfortably. n

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