Mood:  bright

Minority Affairs Minister A.R. Antulay’s statement that the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare’s death has been caused by Hindu radical groups is not surprising. The alliance at the Center which prided in scrapping POTA, so much so that its Common Minimum Programme (CMP) stated that as a matter of policy change to woo the minority community, should be expected to have cabinet ministers who would toe a Pakistan line of argument. Also, not surprisingly, there has been a deafening silence from the prime minister’s office on the issue. Mr Antulay when asked to clarify added for good measure: “I don’t need to explain anything to anyone”. After all, Mr Antulay has only taken a leaf out of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s book on how to pander to minority communities.

 Till the time of going to press the Congress Party spokesmen were on a part-denial mode. Abhishek Singhvi’s statements to the media were laced with “our party completely disassociates from the minister’s statement in the Parliament”. The party spokesman who otherwise would not stay his hand when suggesting what Narendra Modi or Yeddyurappa should do, maintained a sanitised version of “we cannot suggest if the PM or the government should sack Antulay”.

One wonders why this politeness does not extend to opposition party-led state governments. Nor was this strict adherence to protocol seen when the NDA government was in power and the POTA Bill was passed. Congress party survives on the belief that public memory is short. Look at the ardent plea made by the new Home Minister P. Chidambaram that the new anti-terror law has to be passed with everyone’s consent in the House. “We could make all the necessary amends as we go on”, he said on the floor of the House while introducing the new anti-terror Bill. It must have been deja vu for Opposition leader Shri L.K. Advani.

Also, in this whole episode post-26/11, the BJP should be credited for showing its true nationalist colour. Shri Advani’s unconditional support to the government in its war on terrorism was a true reflection of the national mood. Earlier BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad made it clear in media briefings that BJP would support the government in any of the tough decisions to be taken in the war against terror. Juxtapose this to the post-Parliament attack in 2002. By evening of that fateful day Congressmen were busy cornering NDA ministers asking: “you passed POTA Bill with all the fanfare. Did that prevent the attack on Parliament?” The argument put forth was that POTA did not prevent the attacks as it did not deter the terrorists one bit. It took one viewer’s opinion shown on the ticker on NDTV 24x7 to put things in perspective: “traffic regulations are flouted everywhere, every time. Does that mean that we do away with traffic rules?!”

Mr Antulay’s reaction in the Parliament is a classic case of how the war on terror is compromised in this country. Every earnest effort made by the security agencies has been questioned and investigated by the secular governments. Former police chief of Punjab KPS Gill who brought terrorism in Punjab to a glorious end often states this at public meetings about how his officers are still doing the rounds in the courts because some human rights NGOs have questioned their action. The government does not provide any succour though it will take all the credit for bringing the tragic saga to an end in Punjab.

Antulay’s conspiracy theories may come in handy to pander to the minority community. Antulay can be forgiven for his comment in view of what the prime minister said a year ago in the midst of passing the Indo-nuclear deal that minority communities have priority in access to national resources.

But in Mumbai it is not just the politicians who have become discredited. Former Home Minister of Maharashtra R.R. Patil who has become so arrogant to say such small terror attacks in big cities are quite normal recently told a reporter: “will bullet proof jackets and better fire power prevent terrorist attacks?!”

The government’s hypocrisy and lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation have been underscored by pseudo-secularism. The other grave concern of the citizens of Mumbai is related to the lack of proper training given to any the state departments in dealing with a crisis seen on 26/11. Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata group, went on record to say that most of the security agencies and state utilities were at a loss in dealing with the crisis. Fire tenders came in late, policemen were found removing their safety gear at ground zero, some policemen even quietly left for home when they were informed of the terrorist attacks, police were found more engaged in crowd control than saving lives, television media was hysteric so much so that news anchors were howling at everyone on air and the most defining moment was the large crowd outside Taj hotel brandishing cell phone cameras trying to take pictures of terrorists who were still engaged in a pitched battle with the commandoes. If the terrorists had dropped a grenade from the top floor of Taj hotel on the crowd below the area would have looked like a scene out of ‘Saving Private Ryan”. Intelligence has failed, but the way various agencies were bickering over who is to be blamed for the crisis was most unnerving.

It’s tragic that Ratan Tata says his hotels will have their own anti-terror systems and personnel in place. Does this mean that the state has become so inept in providing security to its people. It is sad to see Bollywood actors scampering for enhanced personal security systems. It only means that the state has completely failed in providing security to people. As one Mumbai local train debate on the issue concluded that the world has entered the 21st century of sophistication but India is still caught in R.K. Narayanan’s Malgudy Days of simplicity and immaturity.

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Posted by Anil Nair at 6:24 PM

Updated: Saturday, 17 January 2009 11:57 AM

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Mood:  chillin'

If there is a Google to check the most asked question in Mumbai today it is this: what makes the latest terror attacks in Mumbai different from the earlier ones? There are several hypotheses and innuendoes to explain why the government has sat up to take notice and introduced a slew of measures to combat further attacks. The remarkable thing is the international reaction which is so unusually pro-India this time round. Earlier terror attacks in Mumbai have been more gruesome, taking a much wider toll in terms of the number of dead and the injured. But Pakistan made a huge mistake this time if they thought that the reaction in India and abroad would be tepid.

First and foremost, the 24x7 news coverage put paid to Pakistan’s complicity in the attacks, so much so that even if the terrorists enjoyed full media exposure for days on the end, the outrage in the world community, especially in the West, made sure that action against Pakistan would be commensurate with the outrage. Second, if Pakistan had presumed that attacking Israelis in Mumbai would only attract the same kind of indignation as that of attacking Hindus, they were terribly mistaken. The cruel joke that has gained most currency in Mumbai local trains is that Ajmal Qasab could have joined Bollywood and become a national hero like Sanjay Dutt if it weren’t for the attack on Jews. In all the former terrorist attacks in Mumbai the death toll always had been more than double of that seen in the latest attack.

The US all this while had only paid lip service to India’s pain for being at the receiving end of Islamic terrorism, but attack on Jews in Mumbai ensured that the US and western Europe demonstrably came on India’s side. The happy change in attitude towards Pakistan’s complicity in breeding terrorism has resulted in the United Nations banning Jamaat-ul-Daawa which is a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba. It should not be lost on anyone that banning a terrorist organisation in Pakistan does not mean anything, as the arrested people are free to move about to propagate and conspire further attacks on India. Pakistan should have learnt the lesson when a journalist of the Wall Street Journal Daniel Pearl was abducted and killed by what is now popularly known as non-state actors. The accused in that case was promptly booked and sentenced to imprisonment because Daniel Pearl was an American national.

Unlike in India where there is no value for its citizen’s lives, most countries in the West don’t take things lying down. It is always an eye for an eye. Pranab Mukherjee might fret and fume in the Parliament over Pakistan’s complicity in repeated terrorist attacks but would not forget to add the rider at the end of his speech: “war cannot solve problems”. The world is almost convinced that unlike Israel, India simply does not have the courage and the fortitude to take Pakistan to task.

On December 3, over one lakh Mumbaikars assembled at the Gateway of India in a congregation called by a local organisation to protest against Pakistan. The majority of the protesters that day, and that is over 70 per cent of the crowd, was made of college-going youngsters. The groundswell support that was evident that day on the streets of Mumbai had to be seen to be believed. Though most news media reported that people were angry against the politicians, the real anger was directed at our western neighbour. There were placards calling Dawood Ibrahim by four-letter words, even as slogans by student group were laced with the choicest abuses. Surely, that day offline editors in news channels had a hard time editing the footage.

All this only reflects on the growing impatience of people who want to see some substantial action. The growing feeling among the common people is that Pakistan has to be given a resounding slap on its face. The least that people had expected was an apology from our Prime Minister for mishandling the combat efforts. “After every terror incident all that our politicians do is to call it an intelligence failure. One wonders if this country has any intelligence at all, and the pun is intended there”, Sourav Das (name changed), a student of KC College told this reporter at the Gateway of India protest rally. The whole emphasis of the Indian government has been to ask the US to take action against Pakistan. People in this country are perplexed over the sabre-rattling and threats, for which Pakistan only shows its unconcealed amusement. Why is the Indian government so petrified about taking direct action against Pakistan. “There was not even a customary by-your-leave when the US attacked Afghanistan or Iraq to retaliate the terror attack on the twin towers in New York. The world community was a mute bystander”, said another student.

The reaction of the Indian government to terrorist attacks planned and executed by Pakistan has become quite predictable. It goes without saying that the death toll this time which included the CEO-types residing at the Taj Hotel has ensured that the government does not just give a fleeting look, make all the right noises of fighting terrorism and finally start counting Muslim votes when it comes to bringing tough laws to combat terrorism. The pressure being put by corporate India on the government to prevent any such future attacks by making all the amends in policy as well as execution may be subtle and under-cover, but it will certainly teach Pakistan that this time the worm has turned.

Posted by Anil Nair at 12:15 AM

Updated: Saturday, 17 January 2009 11:59 AM

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Last month Forbes magazine came out with a survey which listed Mumbai as the 7th dirtiest city in the world, while Delhi appeared not any better at 24th position in the filth list. Two years ago, the Readers’ Digest placed Mumbai at the top of the most rude cities in the world. There are even more statistics to compare Indian cities with global standards, which we will tell you in course of this series of articles on urbanisation in India, but the moot point is that infrastructure provided to citizens has a bearing on their life in a mega-city like Mumbai.

Recently, a website had collated the opinion of the Indian software community the world over, which gave an insight into the mind of the Indian youth. The large number of middle-class Indians who travel abroad for work, and even more these days on vacation, list out infrastructure as the root cause of all ills that plague our cities. The new cities that are coming up in tier II and tier III category because of the rapid growth in industry and subsequent urbanisation are no better than older cities in terms of utility services and planning.

A European CEO of a mall in suburban Mumbai was recently quoted in the press as saying that, in India the economic growth has skewed the development process. “We see all around us beautiful, swanky malls, multiplexes, restaurants and private residential complexes. They are better than the ones found in Europe or South East Asia. But once you step out of their precincts you witness the kind of infrastructure not seen even in the bottom pit of third world countries”.

The Forbes article on dirtiest cities in the world also allude to this fact. In the pre-1980s, there was abysmal economic growth in India. “During those decades the developed world was ignorant and indifferent to conditions prevailing in India. But today with record-high foreign direct and capital market investments the world has started to notice the prevailing irony of India’s growth story”, enunciated Manish Parekh, a real estate developer based in Mumbai.

After the private airline fares slumped to compare with train fares, passengers travelling by air and by air-conditioned trains have become common. The comparison today is between the well-oiled and near-perfect domestic airways system in comparison to the moribund railways.

The private airlines are employing the latest aircraft and technology but the railways are still riding on 19th century engines and coaches. The airports, despite the occasional jackal on the runway, are comparable to the best in the world. Most of the 3,000-odd railway stations in India look and work on a hundred-year-old technology which has been decommissioned all over the world. If you ask a train engine driver of the Indian raIlways, he would tell you that most railway engines do not have a functional speedo-metre, and the speed limits are followed more as a matter of guess.

The latest local train coaches introduced in Mumbai also have the same pathetic design which it had since Independence. Westerners, like the Mayor of London, find it astounding that local trains in Mumbai run at 120-kmph with doors open and hundreds of passengers clinging on to their dear life. In Mumbai, crowding in trains has reached epic proportions that many get killed during peak hours while holding on to the door panel when the train can reach up to 100-kmph speed. They are either ejected out of the coach by the surging crowd or hit by a passing electric pole. There are many who are run over while crossing tracks. The ways to reduce crowding in local trains are simple. There is solution to all these problems, but no one seems to be in a tearing hurry to solve them.

The new local train coaches in Mumbai designed in collaboration with an Australian firm and IIT have the same outrageous feature.

On the other hand, the newly-designed railway stations on the harbour-line corridor in Mumbai which connects to the satellite town of Navi Mumbai do not have any provision for escalators to help passengers cross over from one platform to the other. It is common sight in Mumbai to see old and physically challenged people struggling to climb steep flights of stairs.

“Infrastructure is creaky, but there seems to be a dearth of innovative thinking and compliance with international standards”, points out Sushant Pai of Suburban Railway Users’ Club in Mumbai.

According to him, even today there is no measure taken to prevent the average daily death toll of 147 people in city suburban railway accidents. Railway accidents are the biggest cause of death in Mumbai, more than disease and road and industrial accidents, especially in the young, most productive age group. The high death toll on the Mumbai railway tracks has been historically recorded since 1970s. What is alarming is the indifference of subsequent governments, both at the Center as well as the state, to the need for quick and life-saving emergency para-medical teams to reduce the death toll. Anywhere in the developed world these statistics would have brought the government down, but not in Mumbai.

Balasaheb Thackeray, since he started his Shiv Sena movement in the 60s, has been talking about an average 300 migrant families settling down in Mumbai everyday. But what has the state done to improve the infrastructure in the last 50 years to accommodate this growing population? According to Mr Pai, the demand for transport in the city has surpassed all the estimates of the railways. “The two rail corridors, viz: central and western railways, should have doubled capacity by having a two-tier railway system. This would have meant additional four railway lines to the existing four lanes. Every suburban railway station should have been redesigned on lines of Vashi railway station wherein there could parking lots and office space which could earn revenue for railways for expansion plans”, elaborates Mr Pai.

Migration of Biharis or south Indians into Mumbai would never have been a problem if subsequent governments had planned to improve infrastructure post-1960s. The railways do not even have enough rakes or coaches to meet the demand in city suburban railway, though the system is far from reaching its full capacity. If there had been one local train leaving CST and Churchgate every minute round-the-clock the living standard of the city would have improved remarkably. “Every minute a flight takes off from Heathrow Airport, which is the busiest airport in the world. So why can’t CST and Churchgate stations be able to expand and handle that kind of traffic?” asks Mr Pai.

Instead of taking to violence to drive out outsiders from Mumbai there should have been a concerted effort to improve living standards by investing hugely in infrastructure. Not surpringly, the most pertinent question posed at railway users’ meet is: what stopped governments from building infrastructure all these years. The drainage system in Mumbai is over hundred years old, and the municipality is still worked up over building a new storm drain system. Former Mumbai Municipal Commissioner Johnny Joseph has questioned the need for a new storm drain system. According to him, a July 26 kind of torrential rains occur only for a day in the year and the municipality need not spend a ‘bomb on such a project’!

Recently, an intrepid photographer of a city newspaper took pictures of over 370 BEST buses idling in depots. These buses have not been put into service for months now. BEST buses are idling in depots ostensibly because the cost of operations has shot up though the number of passengers using BEST buses have actually gone down in the last few years. People prefer to avoid using buses even on feeder routes because of the slow speed (average 15-kmph) of the buses, just as facilities, comforts and convenience of travelling by buses have come drastically down. Mumbai has lesser and lesser air-conditioned buses and there is no incentive or even an alternative for car owners to give up their personal mode of transport in Mumbai. The car pooling system has proved to be inadequate to ease the traffic congestion at many places in Mumbai.

Over-crowding in buses during peak hours often lead to verbal exchanges and fisticuffs among passengers which at times even involve bus service staff. There is no reason why the municipality or the government can’t intervene and put idling buses back to service. BEST has gone in for intensive anti-stress programmes for its staff with bus drivers and conductors joining the laughter club. But the solution to relieve stress lies somewhere else, which the BEST management and the municipality choose to ignore.

A few months ago there were riots in Kalva, near Thane, on the Central Railway line and a boycott of suburban train services for a day at Vasai on the Western Railway corridor because passengers find lack of rakes and coaches leading to infrequent services. Even during rush hours frequency often drops to less than one train leaving CST in ten minutes.

In the midst of all this last month Paris tourism department made a presentation to the media on how they are seeking more and more tourist population in Paris. When asked about how their city takes in huge migrant population without all the attendant infrastructural issues, the French representatives told the Mumbai media that Paris city managers constantly improve infrastructural facilities and keep increasing the target number of tourists which are expected to flow in. Paris today has only 34 per cent local citizens, the rest are floating tourist population. London is no different. Any Indian tourist will be shocked to find that there are more number of browns and blacks than whites on the streets of London.

Another instance of how world-class cities manage to increase efficiency and bring down wasteful expenditure is New York city. New York produces seven times more garbage than Mumbai does everyday though Mumbai municipality employs three times more personnel than New York state government does to clear garbage and keep New York squeaky clean. One wonders, why world-class cities are desperately trying to attract more and more people to their cities to improve their economy and tourism, while in India we are trying to single out ‘outsiders’, even as services and facilities are failing all around us. The fact is that no political party wants to do the hard work of improving infrastructure in Mumbai (or in any other city, for that matter) when they come to power, but would take the easy way shown by the Thackerays: intimidate people from other states and force them to leave.

Last time when Raj Thackeray and his goons beat up young boys from Bihar who had come to take railway exams at Kalyan station then Congress chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, who is a dalit, had unequivocally said that he was not against Raj Thackeray’s philosophy of son of the soil; he was only against the violence used!

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Posted by Anil Nair at 9:39 PM

Updated: Saturday, 17 January 2009 12:00 PM

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Mood:  cheeky

Subhash Ghai should be complimented for making a movie like Black and White. He has the courage to spell it out clearly that religious indoctrination is the biggest threat to mankind today. The film has a on-the-face way of dealing with issues that concern us most today — poisoning young minds with religious bigotry and consequent terrorism.
Black and White’s story is all about a Pakistani young boy Nomair Qazi (brilliantly played by Anurag Sinha) trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan sneaking into Delhi on a suicide mission. His mission as spelt out by the Pakistani jehadi groups is to kill the VIPs attending the annual Independence Day parade at Red Fort.

He masquerades as a Gujarati Muslim under the guise of a riot victim. He comes from Pakistan loaded with documents to prove his Gujarati lineage. Black and White does not pull any punches on debates on Islam. Though several newspaper reviews have suggested that the movie gets preachy, the scene that opens the protagonist of the movie Anil Kapoor as Prof Rajan Mathur (a Urdu teacher at Zakir Hussain College) at a Chandni Chowk debate with friends is gripping. Being used to politically correct ways of dealing with minority issues a viewer is taken aback by the no-holds-barred opinion of one of the resident Muslims who argues that jehad is about killing the kafir for not following the Islamic tenets. Anil Kapoor is at pains to argue that such interpretation of Holy Koran is wrong.
The movie is so heavily nuanced that any ordinary viewer used to Govinda flicks would miss the central theme of Black and White. The gullibility of the professor and his wife (played by Shefali Shah) in trusting the Pakistani boy in spite of lurking suspicion and uneasiness is so realistic and unnerving. Ghai has been able to include several everyday issues in the movie that a believing Muslim confronts. Should women be involved in modern professions and work along with men, should Muslims make money in any business activities with non-Muslims, are political expediency and personal gains from teaming with Hindus legitimate in Islam, etc. The cut-and-dry dialogues stun viewers, and most viewers would liken them to real life situations in both Hindu and Muslim community.

Nomair Qazi during his stay in India comes across various facets of Islamic life which he always thought were black and white. India provides him with the grey shades and his mind starts to question the impracticality of practicing the jehadi version of Islam. At the end when Prof Mathur is held for sheltering a terrorist, even as Nomair Qazi’s friends kill his wife Shefali, he has a message for the terrorists that weigh in tones. If the Islamic terrorist groups abroad think that they can infiltrate into this country with jehadis who have skewed ways of thinking, then this country has the ability to convert them back into a modern, liberal-minded global citizens. Hope the message reaches the right quarters.

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Posted by Anil Nair at 9:32 PM

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