One more year, one last lap towards the next general elections when the people will once again get a choice to choose their own government. The road is not very clear ahead what with some flashes of opposition unity shaking the ruling party’s confidence in its very own bastions. So until such time, let’s focus on the one thing that’s surely moving from strength to strength with each passing day, women empowerment. They surely have come a long way and our cover story this month focuses on some of them that have etched their own paths to the top of their chosen field, however diverse and however male-dominated it has been.
Even as the world just celebrated International Women’s Day, we doff our hat to these interesting women who rule their profession. From cricketer Mithali Raj, golfer Sharmila Nicollet, singer Ananya Birla, poet-writer Meena Kandaswamy to police officer Divakar Roopa Moudgil, bureaucrat Smita Sabharwal and enterprising entrepreneur Monica Malhotra Kandhari and others. Many more feather in your caps, women!
From this positive feeling, we take in a rather sinking scene that has hit our banking system with frauds exploding in our faces with regularity. India’s Non-performing Assets (NPAs) stands at a whopping 9.6 per cent. It has the second highest ratio of NPAs among the major economies of the world. So why is India plagued with such a huge liability? Is it the system or the politics of it?
On the other side of doing business is the brave story of Project Laksal that is helping women artisans in Ladakh make profits by weaving Pashmina. This is the story of how an IAS initiative is weaving Pashmina’s profits back to Ladakhi women.
Come April and its IPL time – the biggest cricketing circus in the world attracting big bucks. In its 11th edition, the Indian Premier League is ever changing getting ever bigger.
On the international front, we take a look at two quite opposing personalities – that of the doyen of magic realism in literature and a charming head of state. Colombian writer “Gabo’ Marquez would have turned 91 if he was alive. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a politician with the maple charm offensive. He even made it to the cover the iconic Rock magazine, the Rolling Stones.
In this issue of DW, we take a look at all these with our usual mix of easy reads and thought provoking ideas. Brace yourself for the coming summer. Read well.
CRICKET// The disgraced Australian duo of Steve Smith and David Warner was banned from cricket for 12 months over a balltampering scandal that rocked the sport and dragged their side’s reputation through the mud. While Warner, who was the vicecaptain of the Australian team, will not be considered ever for the leadership role of the national team, Smith and Cameron Bancroft would not be picked for captaincy until a minimum of 12 months after the end of their suspensions, Cricket Australia said in a statement. All three players will also be required to undertake 100 hours of voluntary service in community cricket.
Smith and Warner have also been ejected from this year’s Indian Premier League, losing contracts worth up to $2 million each. Cricket Australia suspended Smith and Warner from “all international and domestic cricket” while opening batsman Bancroft was slapped with a nine-month ban.
However, the CA statement said all three players involved in the ball-tampering incident during the third Test in South Africa will be ‘permitted’ and ‘encouraged’ to play club cricket. Smith was charged with knowledge of a potential plan ‘to attempt to artificially alter the condition of the ball’ but Warner was charged with developing the plan. Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland said the board had imposed ‘significant’ sanctions over the incident, in which Bancroft used a strip of yellow sticky tape to pick up dirt and illegally roughen one side of the ball to generate more swing for Australia's bowlers. ‘I am satisfied that the sanctions in this case properly reflect a balance between the need to protect the integrity and reputation of the game and the need to maintain the possibility of redemption for the individuals involved, all of whom have learned difficult lessons through these events,’ Sutherland said. Smith, Warner and Bancroft have been sent home from South Africa but coach Darren Lehmann remains in charge because Cricket Australia says he was unaware of the plot to alter the ball's condition.
LAW// The deadline for linking bank accounts and mobile phone numbers with 12-digit biometric identifier Aadhaar has already been extended indefinitely, till the five-judge constitution bench delivers its judgment on petitions challenging the validity of the biometric scheme and the enabling law.
The 31 March deadline for citizens to link their Aadhaar number to nearly 150 welfare schemes and services including pensions, rations and mid-day meals has been extended by three months, the government ordered last month. The extension comes just days after the central government, already under fire from privacy campaigners, gave people time till 30 June to link their 12-digit Aadhaar number with their Permanent Account Number. The fresh order comes just days after the Supreme Court declined to extend the deadline for welfare schemes, a decision that was widely criticised by rights campaigners because the court had given a reprieve to people for linking a range of services including bank accounts. The court has to decide but till it decides on whether the government's demand for Aadhaar to be linked to private and public services is a violation of the right to privacy, the 12-digit unique number given to each citizen does not have to be linked to other services.
The Unique Identification Authority of India, or UIDAI, that runs the Aadhaar programme, had directed departments to give people time to get themselves an Aadhaar number and link it to various welfare schemes. Government sources said these directives were primarily aimed at field level offices and departments that have been known to go on an overdrive and deny benefits to people.
ELECTIONS// The Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party has, along with its partners, won elections in the three northeastern states of Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura that held state elections recently. With these wins, the BJP and its partners run governments in 21 out of 29 Indian states in addition to running the central government from Delhi.
This is something that has not happened for the last 40 years. The BJP was, until a few years ago, not in power in any of the eight North Eastern states. Since 2016, though, when it won elections in the state of Assam, the BJP has focused on increasing its presence in the North East.
Tripura: A new team after 25 years Tiny Tripura has had the Communist party in power for 25 years – for 20 of those years, between 1998 and 2018, the government was led by Manik Sarkar. The BJP toppled him in this election. The reason for Sarkar’s fall was that the people of Tripura wanted a government that could create jobs for people. Many young people were dissatisfied with the Communist government as they felt there were no opportunities in the state.
Meghalaya: A new local team A local political party in the state called the National People’s Party fought the elections alone, and against the ruling Congress. It came second, but because the Congress didn’t get a majority on its own (at least half the seats), the NPP was able to partner with other local parties and the BJP to form a government.
Nagaland: A new party with an old face In Nagaland, the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party formed the government along with the BJP. The party is a new one and was formed only last year, but it is an offshoot of the Naga People’s Front which ruled the state between 2013 and 2018. The win will bring back Neiphiu Rio as the Chief Minister of Nagaland for the fourth time.
Wrestler Navjot Kaur became the first Indian woman wrestler to win gold at the Asian Championship when she beat Japan’s Miya Imai in the 65 kilogram wrestling final. Kaur was in command of the bout (that is what a game of wrestling is called) all along and won 9-1 against Imai. It was an incredible comeback for Kaur who had a serious back injury a few years ago.
ASTRONOMY// An asteroid hit on Earth is one of the dangers faced by our planet as it orbits around the Sun. If large enough, an asteroid could damage or even end life on Earth. To protect Earth from such danger, United States space agency NASA has drawn up plans for the ‘HAMMER’ spacecraft that could re-direct or blow up a dangerous asteroid.
A large number of asteroids are seen in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Though plenty of asteroids have struck Earth, most have been too small to do damage. But a large one potentially can-it was one such that may have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The asteroid that has scientists worried is called ‘Bennu’ and it is circling the Sun at over 100,000 kilometres per hour. It is now at a safe distance of 54 million miles away from Earth. Although there is little risk it could hit Earth, it is still considered a Near Earth Object or NEO that could hit Earth with three times more energy than all nuclear weapons detonated throughout history, say scientists.
To ensure Earth’s safety from Bennu and other asteroids in the future, NASA has drawn up plans to build the HAMMER (stands for Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response) spacecraft. This will be an eight tonne spaceship that will be capable of re-directing a giant space rock. It will also have the capability to blow up the asteroid if needed. Since it will take over seven years to get HAMMER ready to face-off against the asteroid, we will need to be prepared ahead of time to take one on.
CRICKET// India snatched victory from the jaws of defeat to beat Bangladesh in the finals of the Nidahas Trophy played last Sunday in Sri Lanka. It was a tri-nation T20 tournament featuring India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Facing off against Bangladesh in the final, India were set a target of 166 runs to score in their 20 overs. In the second last over with India placed at 133 for 5, and needing 34 runs from 12 balls, it looked like Bangladesh would pull off a much sought after victory over India. But that was before wicket-keeper batsman Dinesh Karthik changed the game. In the first three balls he faced, Karthik scored two sixes and a four. In the final over, India needed five runs from the last ball and Karthik closed the game with a six that won the tournament for India.
Not surprisingly, he was named ‘Man of the Match’ while young Indian spin bowler Washington Sundar was named ‘Man of the Series’.
Like playing at home
When India took the field against Bangladesh, it must have felt like a home game rather than an ‘away’ one with the kind of crowd support that it got from the Sri Lankan crowd. The reason behind this was a fight that broke out between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh teams during an earlier match. As they say ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ and the Sri Lankans turned up in strength to cheer for the men in blue.
CHINA// China’s parliament is all set to pass laws that will make Xi Jinping China’s President for a long time to come. Else, he would have had to retire in 2023.
Under Chinese law, a President and Vice-President can serve two five year terms. Now, the Communist Party of China has proposed to make a change in the law that limits people to two five year terms. Xi Jinping, who has been President of China since 2013, has just started his second term.
China follows a single party system-the country has one major political party called the Communist Party and they have been in power since 1949. The country is run as a dictatorship with the President calling all the shots.
Xi Jinping, who is the son of one of the founders of the Communist Party, has become one of the most powerful figures in Chinese history. Not since Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, has the country seen such a powerful leader.
Jinping has been fighting against corruption in China and has also been trying to make it easier for Chinese companies to grow quickly. However, since he took over, freedom of speech has become an even rarer commodity in China, and he is also accused of severely punishing those who speak against him or the government.
DEATH// Sudan, the last remaining male Northern White Rhino died a few days ago in Kenya. He died of poor health. Sudan, who was 45, lived at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. He was put to sleep on Monday after age-related complications made his health take a turn for the worse. His death leaves only two females- his daughter and granddaughter-of the subspecies alive in the world. The Northern White Rhino is a sub-species of the White Rhino which itself is one of the five types of rhinos left in the wild. The White Rhinoceros consists of two sub-species: the Southern White Rhino and the much rarer and critically endangered Northern White Rhino.
The population of the Northern White Rhinos in the African countries of Uganda, Central African Republic, Sudan and Chad was largely wiped out by poachers during the 1970s and 1980s. Poaching was driven by demand for rhino horn for use in traditional Chinese medicine, and for dagger handles in Yemen.
DEATH// World renowned physicist Stephen Hawking died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of March 14, 2018. He was 76 years old at the time of his death.
The British scientist was famed for his work with black holes and relativity, and wrote several popular science books including A Brief History of Time.
Born in England, Stephen Hawking was just 21 years old when he found out that he had a rare form of motor neurone disease that made his muscles extremely weak. Told that he had just two years left to live, Hawking beat the odds and continued to live and work in the field of science for more than 50 years. The disease left Hawking paralyzed and using a wheelchair for mobility. He was able to move only a few fingers on one hand and was completely dependent on others or on technology for virtually everything —bathing, dressing, eating, even speech. Hawking used a speech synthesizer that allowed him to speak in a computerized voice with an American accent.
“I try to lead as normal a life as possible, and not think about my condition, or regret the things it prevents me from doing, which are not that many,” he wrote on his website. “I have been lucky that my condition has progressed more slowly than is often the case. But it shows that one need not lose hope.”
Stephen Hawking showed how long, long ago, everything that now makes up our universe was packed into a singularity than finally exploded. That explosion was the Big Bang, the event that led to the creation of our universe, galaxies, stars, planets and eventually living creatures. Hawking went on to show that it was this expansion or inflation that created the universe as we know it-this was a massive change from previously held ideas of an eternal, unchanging universe.
One of Hawking’s most recent ideas was about the future of planet Earth. Hawking firmly believed that, in order for the human race to survive, we needed to colonize Mars or some other planet. The reason? Hawking thought that climate change would make life impossible on our planet. He said last year, “We have given our planet the disastrous gift of climate change... When we have reached similar crises there has usually been somewhere else to colonize... But there is no new world, no utopia around the corner,” he said. “We are running out of space, and the only places to go to are other worlds.”
Some of Hawking’s most important work revolves around the idea of ‘singularity’. To understand this, let’s first take a look at black holes. A black hole is what remains after a star, has burnt itself out. Once the star runs out of energy, it starts to collapse inwards due to the force of gravity. Gravity is the force that pulls us towards an object. For example, it is the gravity of the Earth that keeps us on the planet’s surface.
The gravitational pull of the dying star is so strong that it sucks everything into itmuch like a whirlpool. Stephen Hawking was one of the first to explain that, at the centre of a black hole, gravity is so strong that the normal ideas of space and time (the arrangement of the universe and the way time flows from second to second), stop operating. Such an occurrence is called a singularity. The gravitational pull of the black hole is so strong that no even light can escape from it, and is also sucked in. Therefore in a singularity, so much matter is crushed into such a small space and gravity becomes so unimaginably great, that the laws of physics stop working there.
Hawking was married twice. He and his first wife, Jane Wilde, wed when he was still a graduate student and remained together for 30 years before divorcing in 1995. Hawking was later married for 11 years to Elaine Mason, one of his former nurses.
He had at least 12 honorary degrees and was awarded the CBE in 1982. A CBE, or Commander in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, is considered a major honor for a British citizen and is one rank below knighthood. Despite being a British citizen he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the US's highest civilian honor, in 2009 by President Barack Obama.
In September 2016, Hawking joined 375 ‘concerned’ scientists in penning an open letter criticizing then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, citing the threat of climate change and blasting his push for the US to leave the Paris accord.
Fellow scientists hailed Hawking for his work and influence in the field.
“We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today,” Hawking's children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, said in a statement. “He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humor inspired people across the world.”
“He once said, ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.’ We will miss him forever.”
While the world celebrates International Women’s Day, we take a look at some interesting women who rule their profession of choice in their own way.
Mithali Raj could well have become a fleet-footed dancer but she instead chose to dance down the cricket pitch to haul a few over the ropes. Captain of the Indian women’s cricket team, Mithali wears the Indian blue with pride and distinction. She led the Indian team into the World Cup final last year and went down fighting to the Australian girls. With that Indian women’s cricket suddenly seemed to come of age and the nation woke up to some aggressive cricket played by these girls. Overnight Mithali became the darling of social media and even advertisers.
This 35-year-old cricketer has made history by scoring 6,000 runs, the highest in women’s cricket history. She has won the hearts of millions and has become an inspiration for millions of young women across the world.
But long before Mithali chose to dance on the green, she was aspiring to be a Bharatanatyam dancer and stories about how she made the switch is doing the social rounds after she broke a daunting record of scoring the most number of runs by an Indian woman cricketer.
The 34-year-old from Hyderabad achieved the landmark during the ICC World Cup match against Australia. Mithali’s father, an officer with the Indian Air Force who later joined the Andhra Bank, started taking his daughter to the St John's coaching camp in Secunderabad when she was barely 10.
At 19, she emerged as one of India’s best batswomen with a staggering 214 against England in the second and final Test at Taunton. In 1999, she became the youngest ever ODI centurion when she scored 114 in her debut match against Ireland at Milton Keynes.
Playing for Railways in the domestic competition, Raj started by playing with the likes of Purnima Rau, Anjum Chopra and Anju Jain for Air India, and the journey that saw her surpass those big names continues.
Under the watchful eyes of Sampath Kumar at Keyes School, Raj honed her game and it did not take long for the strict coach to predict that she would not only go on to play for India but also break many records.
Cricket may have happened by chance after a brush with dance, but it is not for nothing that Raj has been ruling the 22 yards.
Sharmila Nicollet is not just a golfer but she has become a brand. At only 25 this Indo-French professional golfer was the youngest golfer to qualify for the Ladies European Tour. She won the 2009-10 Order of Merit from the Women’s Golf Association of India.
Sharmila is India’s biggest mascot in golf among women and is, in fact, one of the important faces in the golfing world. But Sharmila is not just a golfer she also loves to play the piano, loves Sudoku and uses Yoga as meditation but loves to indulge in shopping. She is also an ace swimmer with more than 72 medals in state and national meets and quite a linguist speaking French, English, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Kannada and Urdu.
Nicollet did her schooling in Bishop Cotton Girls’ School and Bangalore International school finishing her 10th grade and 12th grade privately. Her game took precedence and she started travelling with it. An Indo-French person, she explored the sport in full spirit, practised regularly and then started playing on Asian and European Tours. Nicollet was also the youngest lady golfer to win the All-India Ladies Amateur Championship in 2007–2008.
A gritty girl from Haryana’s Hisar, Poonam Rani Malik leads the charge in women’s hockey in the Indian team. Dribbling her way into the India team at a young age of 15 in 2008, Poonam has been in the squad that took part in two Hockey World Cups, in 2010 and 2014.
A little girl from Hisar’s Umra village, Poonam showed glimpses of class from an early age backed with consistency and determination. She was only 15 years when she made her debut for the India senior team in the four-nation tournament in the Netherlands in 2008. But it was five years later at the Junior World Cup in Germany that Poonam Malik was able to capture the imagination of the sporting world by helping India finish third and earning a bronze medal. The victory was not only a milestone for the young Poonam but was historic for India too.
Leading the main thrust as a forward in the team, Poonam is a perfect symphony of skill, class and consistency under trying circumstance and has managed to script many a great victory for the Indian over and over again. The girl from Umra has played more than 160 matches over the years and is now considered to be one of the most experienced and dependable players in the Indian side.
Poonam’s initial inspiration to wield the hockey stick came from watching the village boys and girls dribble around in front of our house in the government school grounds as part of the village team. Her desire to wield the stick took a firm resolve when the women’s team won the gold at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England. The girl from Hisar has gone on to score more than 30 international goals to her credit. Today she’s an icon for every aspiring girl in Indian’s cities, towns and villages.
Ananya Birla is a unique mix of a successful singer turned successful entrepreneur. Who would imagine that a pop star would end up founding a microfinance company to help women in rural India access finance? Yes, you heard it right.
On the one hand, Ananya has nearly seven million YouTube views of her single Meant To Be while on the other hand, she is building a women-led emerging empire to become an agent of social change and advocate women’s rights in India and the world. Not only does Ananya enjoy being at the top of her singing career, selling millions of records and gracing international magazine covers but she also thrives on creating companies that give power and support to women in India and the world.
She founded Svatantra Microfinance to help women in rural India access finance and is also the Founder of CuroCarte, an inventory-based global luxury e-commerce platform and Co-founder of Mpower, a mental health organisation. These inspiring endeavours have earned her the ET Panache Trendsetters of 2016 award for Young Business Person and the Gold Award for Best StartUp (Skoch Financial Inclusion and Deepening Awards, 2014).
Ananya has always had a penchant for doing things differently, and as she taught herself to play the guitar using internet video tutorials, she created a love affair with music that only grew as time passed.
Before realizing her true talent and passion for music, Ananya had already cut out a spot for herself among the elite in the business world. While most teenagers at the age of 17 are getting ready to graduate high school and find their path in life, Ananya was creating her first start-up, Svatantra Microfinance. With a strong vision for helping the poor become economically selfsustainable, Ananya created the microfinance organization to support women entrepreneurs in the Indian rural areas to further grow their business.
The company soon grew into a large organization with more than 600 employees across 70 branches in four Indian states and went on to win the Gold Award for Best Start-Up. A woman with no limits, Ananya’s second business, CuroCarte, curates rare, high quality, handicrafts designed for the 21st-century luxe society from across the globe and makes them accessible through an e-commerce platform.
A true inspiration for young people everywhere, Ananya hasn’t wasted any time realizing what she wants in life. Cultivating what she has learned from her years of schooling at Oxford University and her acute awareness of the
inequalities that plague us every day, Ananya hopes to create a positive global change in the world one project at a time.
She found herself in the middle of a controversy as the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Prisons of Karnataka when she went public over the perks being accorded to fallen AIADMK leader and J. Jayalalitha’s longtime friend Sasikala after she was sent to prison over a disproportionate assets case. Roopa Moudgil an IPS officer of the 2001 batch from Karnataka fell foul of the system and her bosses when she flagged Sasikala’s privileges in jail. Soon shunted from her post, Roopa took it in her stride as she found herself transferred often for standing her ground on principles not getting bullied by the system and the powers be.
She has been awarded the prestigious President’s Police Medal for Meritorious Service and the Digital Women Award 2017 for bringing in a digital transformation in the road safety and traffic department as head of road safety and traffic.
In her 17-year career, she has been frequently transferred every year. Her association with the Khaki dress has been since her long association as an NCC cadet. She secured 43rd rank in civil services examination and opted for the IPS.
She set an example for the young officers that there is no need to fear about the corrupted system and it's loopholes if one thinks what they are doing is right.
Roopa may have been at the wrong end of her superiors for walking the straight and narrow in the difficult world of khaki where political interference makes most police officers bend to the whims and fancies of the powerful. But she has no regrets and has found overwhelming support from the people for her courage and conviction.
At a very young age, Smita Sabharwal managed to crack the most competitive exam in the country – the UPSC – and ranked an impressive fourth in the all-India competition. She was only 23 and became the youngest officer to assume office as the additional secretary at the chief minister’s office in the newly formed state of Telangana. She became popular as the people’s officer after her very popular campaign called the “Fund Your City’ in Warangal. It touched a chord with the people as she appealed to the residents to help the government build much-needed infrastructure in the Naxalite-affected regions. The “Fund Your City” scheme was designed to build much-needed public utilities like the foot over bridges, traffic junctions, parks, bus-stops, under an enterprising Public-Private Partnership model. She also worked with vigour and innovative ideas in the health and education departments in the fledgeling state.
Telangana is far from where Smita grew up in the scenic hills of Darjeeling. She, however, did her schooling in different parts of the country, finishing her schooling from the St Ann’s school in Maredpally in Hyderabad where she topped the all-India ICSE Class XII examination. She went on to graduate in Commerce from the St Francis Degree College for women in Hyderabad after which she ranked in the Civil Services exam.
After 14 years in the service, Smita still works with the same idealism and wages a daily battle against corruption, negligence in government duty and illegal activities. Her work for the public good speaks for itself and has earned the sobriquet of a people’s officer.
As a young girl, Monica was passionate about singing, dancing, and basketball. But the thing that really drove her at a young age was the craving for learning. This led her to start working at the age of 15. She wanted to know what her father did at work and how he handled different business situations and would go and work in different departments in publishing after school every day. “Where my classmates bunked classes at times for a movie or so, I did for work and office.”
Monica’s own style of working has emerged from her father’s style, “My dad was a Karma Yogi and I idolise him. He taught me to learn from my mistakes, to be humble, to never stop learning. While he taught me to aim for the sky he also told me that creating job opportunities is the greatest social work. Do not learn tricks of the trade instead learn the trade. He also taught me ‘either be the best or the biggest at work’.”
Today she is Managing Director at MBD Group. She has always been drawn to the education sector and enjoys working towards bringing new techniques in the field of education.
Given that there are multiple verticals that need attention and the group as a whole needs dedicated attention, Monica’s business mantra is to keep the business backwards and forward integrated as much to have better control on costs, time, and quality. Her focus is to create a fine blend of rigidity and flexibility in policies that help keep the team motivated. She wants the group to be recognised as futuristic and visionary.
Currently MBD Group is spread over 37 cities in India with their branch offices and also has its international operations in South Africa, Sri Lanka and the Middle East. Moreover the MBD Group has also diversified into hospitality and real estate sectors and is a name to reckon with.
MBD Group has added new age digital content and publishing including AR, VR and Robotics to its bouquet of education services that is used by over 7 million users, truly transforming from a publishing house to the largest education company in the country. It is striding towards becoming an edutainment company. Ranging from content for students to enabling teachers in the classroom, MBD Group takes the needs of every stakeholder in the education sector seriously. MBD Disha, the flagship teacher capacity building programme for developing teaching skill and techniques is focused on enhancing skills and knowledge of approximately 50,000 teachers annually. That’s quite an achievement, but for those at the helm of the MBD Group, have proved it time and again that targets are what they meet, and excellence is what they achieve.
INDIA IS REELING under an NPA burden which is growing by leaps and bounds and is at present at a staggering Rs 8 lakh crores. It is currently ranked fifth on the list of countries which have the highest Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) and is also topping the BRICS nations. The government has tried to stem the crisis by infusing about Rs 2.11 lakh crore in the public sector banks with an additional Rs 1.35 lakh crore by way of recapitalization bonds.
India is however topped by the countries known as PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain), excluding Spain that is ranked at the 7th spot below India and Russia.
The government needs to take certain reforms to make banks more responsive by boosting bank boards, address the NPA issue and other HR related issues. Experts feel that mere capital infusion in banks will not be enough unless backed by a whole lot of reforms that leads to responsive banking in the future.
It is easy to blame the preceding governments for the problem and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier blamed the UPA government for the humungous bad loans burdening the banking system by claiming that politicians put pressure on banks to forward loans amounting to thousands of crore of rupees to chosen industrialists resulting in a scam that surpassed the 2G, coal and Commonwealth Games scams. The Modi government has tried to push for reforms by reworking economic structures by introducing drastic steps such as demonetization, Goods and Service Tax (GST) and amendments to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. In fact, these steps found praise from the top rating agencies who hailed the Modi government for introducing the insolvency and bankruptcy code along with the NPA resolution framework to tackle the burgeoning bad loans that the PSU banks are stuck with.
But despite all these radical moves there seem to be some disconnect between policy and action. There has seldom been any review of how government policies have changed in the interim between the time a loan is under consideration and the time after disbursal which could lead to the chances of repayment turning detriment or the debtor’s ability to repay.
It is, therefore, ironic to see governments castigate corporates and banks for NPAs or stressed loans. Every reason, from “liberal or lax” appraisal of credit-worthiness of projects/promoters to ever-greening of loans by banks, is cited to thump borrowers and lenders, but hardly any attention is given to government policies.
This is not to imply that there are no black-sheep businessmen and bankers — but they number a few, and certainly do not make up the entire gamut of borrowers and assessment personnel in banks as is often made out to be.
Policy makers are always trying to find ways to protect themselves from blame and culpability and hence work out new policies with high moral and ethical consideration but little chance of how it works on the ground. Promoters of failed projects cannot bid for their sick units in case these are brought under the insolvency resolution mechanism under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.
Thus, policy-makers become savioursaints, and all others are painted as villains. The sad part is the new decree could breed a flock of both domestic and foreign (through offshore associates) who will bid discreetly for the projects, and many of these could eventually end up being controlled by the original promoter(s). Once the lid is blown off this, it will lead to a fresh round of investigations. Instead of insolvency and bankruptcy resolution, we would have a fresh load of muck.
Authorities need to also investigate how their own policy decisions — modified and changed from time to time — have led to NPAs, affecting the industry, banks and other financial institutions.
Has there been any quantification of the shock all enterprises — small, medium and corporate — suffered because of demonetisation? Are not the GST-bones still stuck in the throat of many businesses? Will that not create more stress for industry and banking?
Then there are instances where the government suddenly decides to induct or push new technology — these are, no doubt, progressive decisions — like in the case of electric vehicles. But where will all the investment in the oil sector go? Should new electric vehicle investments be made at a measured pace or in top gear?
In some cases, the government opposed the induction of new technology. Take the case of GM seeds — we have refrained from quick adoption. Had GM soy seeds been introduced, it may have led to soy and soy-oil prices coming down. This may not have been palatable to farmers and the mills, but the consumer could have benefited. Also, the import burden on the account of soy and soy-oil could have come down. In 2008, the UPA government banned the export of nonbasmati rice as a knee-jerk reaction that had no justification or rationale. There was no scarcity of rice within the country.
More than Rs 1,000 crore had been lent by banks. Following the ban, the promoters and banks that had lent to them were in tears. That is until the ban was lifted in September 2011. No one will point fingers at the government for its rank ad-hoc-ism. For the last seven years, rice has been the only viable export as far as agricommodities are concerned.
One can go on with many instances of such shocks delivered by the government. Government agencies procured 2 million tonnes of pulses last year, the bulk of which remains unsold. The National Food Security Act (NFSA) was created and, again, vast reserves of grains were built up. But now there is a go-slow on NFSA, in action if not in principle or policy. No one is made accountable for decisions that were more political than based on economic rationale. With the money of taxpayers sunk into implementing such decisions, these decisions are just as toxic as NPAs.
In most government offices, babus are busy preparing Cabinet notes or answers to Parliament questions on the new policies. These are mere exercises to find ways to dodge any issue of uncertainty arising from the policies or any question on the trashing of old policies that may surface.
Governments cannot shrug blame and point fingers at others by citing rapid technological change responsible for businesses rising or falling leading to considerable hurt to the financial sector. The government can hardly shut eye and leave the twin balance-sheet problem to the collusion between unscrupulous borrowers and corrupt officials among the lending banks.
Pashminas are well-known and well-worn around the world, a style statement in the rarefied social circles, bought at exorbitant prices. Yet Ladakh the high mountainous region in the northernmost part of India and part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir has hardly ever benefitted from this almost rare resource that is part of their landscape. But an enterprising project initiated by an Indian Administrative Officer (IAS) and his wife is trying to change all that so that the benefit of the Pashmina wool actually travels back to the Ladhakis.
The shepherds of Ladakh who traverse the high mountains with their goats over seasons to find green pastures live a tough life. Yet at their hands lies the precious resource of the fine wool that makes Pashima the fashion statement that it is. But the pashmina wool which is sheared from the goats raised by the nomads from the high plateau region of Ladakh has been for centuries shipped out to Kashmir. Here expert artisans fashion the famed Cashmere sweaters and shawls which are then handed over to merchants who are the ones that make the big killing. Hence, most of the profits that arise from this scarce resource are in fact in the hands of the shippers, merchants and weavers – everyone seems to manage a bit of the Pashmina pie except for the Ladakhi who is the very source of it.
But things seem to be looking up for the Ladakhis with a path-breaking cooperative by the Ladakhis who train women in the villages to weave the fine wool into exquisite products that have an international market.
It all began as an IAS officer’s brainchild. G. Prasanna Ramaswamy, the former Deputy Commissioner of Leh, and his wife Abhilasha Bahuguna developed the idea for the cooperative after a chance encounter he had in the remote village of Chumur, located in the Changthang Region of Southeast Ladakh bordering Tibet. While visiting the village the officer was presented with a luxurious pair of knitted socks by a Changpa woman who was a member of the local Ama Tsogspa, one of the mother’s collectives that have been formed by Ladakhi women. The socks, in fact, jogged the officer’s mind on why these local women cannot be in charge of this resource and use their innate skills to better their livelihoods by making use of this fine wool.
Soon along with his wife Abhilasha, he went about to build a weaver’s cooperative which would give employment to the Ladakhis in their own homes and would also stop the flow of migrants from remote villages looking for employment in the bigger city of Leh.
Prasanna soon found the ideal man to take charge of the budding project in Dr Tundup Namgyal which they called Project Laksal and the cooperative was evocatively named the Looms of Ladakh. The idea behind the cooperative was based on sound business sense. After all one Pashmina goat yields about 250 grams of wool, one-quarter to one-third of which is enough to weave a shawl that could fetch about Rs15,000 (US$236) on the market. If the women could process the wool and produce the finished shawls themselves, the herding families could retain a lot more of the profits from their goats.
Within a month, the founders began testing a pilot project in Stok and Kharnakling, two villages near Leh, the capital of the Leh District of Ladakh. Then, the founders began a training programme in those villages and in Chuchot and Phyang, also near Leh. During the following winter of 2016/17, training programmes were extended to women in Chushul, Merak, Parma, and Sato, and other more remote villages in the Changthang area.
The cooperative also roped in the services of a design expert Stanzin Pazo who trained 40 women in the Leh area. She went about her training in a very methodical way by first inculcating the value of the wool that these women were going to handle and the importance of the skills the women already possessed. Next, she made them understand the importance of design, size and finish. The village women also came to appreciate the importance of effective branding under the tutelage of Paslmo, who also designed the logo for the Looms of Ladakh. Their first store with that name opened in the main market district of Leh on May 12, 2017.
In fact, many members of the cooperative have about 70 to 80 goats while some even have more than 100. They take the goats to be sheared after which they distribute the wool to the other members. While there was a time when these innocent people did not know the value of the Pashmina wool now they all know its worth and how it is going to benefit them.
It did not take long for the Looms of Ladakh to grow, though it could have done much better with a little more detailed and better planning. However, in the first six months itself, the cooperative recorded sales worth Rs 23 lakh or US$362,000. The effort had paid off and the cooperative was showing positive results.
The products are bar-coded and packaged and every individual is able to make as much as nearly 38 per cent of the sales made. Out of the total sales, 41 per cent is kept aside by the cooperative to purchase raw materials for the upcoming season. The remaining funds are used for administrative costs of the organisation, utility bills, marketing, skill development, and other expenses. The organisation also keeps a percentage to develop a welfare fund for participants to use for health expenses and schooling of their children.
Earlier, all of the nearly 450 quintals of untreated Pashmina that was being produced in the Leh area was sold to traders in Kashmir and others in the international market. No wonder the most value of the Pashmina was controlled by those higher up in the supply chain. By breaking this chain the cooperative was able to earn benefits for the locals who were traditionally deprived.
The cost of Pashm or the raw wool after de-hairing (the process of getting rid of impurities like excess fibre) was Rs 7600 per kg in 2016 but in 2017 it took a little dip to Rs 7000 per kg. In the international market, the price of Pashmina is generally dependent on the production in Mongolia, China and Ladakh, alongside its global demand. There is little or no price stability at all. But Pashmina once finished carries the class of fine taste and exclusivity. It sits on the shoulders of the high and mighty and yet little thought is ever given to the hardships and the struggles of those people who rear and breed these goats to produce such fine wool.
The New York Times Op-Ed page headline said it all: “I Helped Sell the False Choice of War Once. It’s Happening Again.” The column written by Col. Lawrence Wilkerson appeared on February 5, 2018. The date was significant because exactly 15 years ago, on February 5, 2003, Colin Powell, former Secretary of State, spoke at the UN, making out a case for a preemptive war with Iraq. Remember those satellite pictures, sinister vehicular movement, “confirming” the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in that blighted country.
Powell’s Chief of Staff who actually helped draft the speech was Lawrence Wilkerson, now a much-chastened man. He learnt the hard way that both he and his boss Powell had been set on a Fool’s Errand by the Intelligence community. There were no WMD’s in Iraq.
The “war of choice” with Iraq “resulted in catastrophic losses for the region and the US-led coalition, that destabilized the entire Middle East”, he says.
Wilkerson, the perennial insider, then draws comparisons with the current mood in Washington.
“Just over a month ago, the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, said that the administration had ‘undeniable’ evidence that Iran was not complying with the Security Council Resolutions regarding its ballistic missile programme and Yemen. Just like Mr Powell, Ms Haley showed satellite images and other physical evidence available only to the US Intelligence community to prove her case.”
“It’s astonishing how similar that moment was to Powell’s 2003 presentation.”
For obvious reasons, in his New York Times article, Wilkerson is circumspect. He does not name Israel as driving President Trump’s policies. But speaking at National Press Club, he is much more unfettered and direct in answering the basic question: who is pushing America into a conflict with Iran?
“Avigdor Lieberman (Israeli Defence Minister) and Benjamin Netanyahu and their acolytes in this country (US), among whom I put Nikki Haley – they have determined that it would be best if American troops also participated in the overthrow of the Tehran regime.”
Wilkerson is full of admiration for the Israeli Defence Forces which could handle “anything Iran threw at it militarily”. Also, “Israel’s 200 nuclear weapons could decimate Iran”. Wilkerson then asks: “so, why this attempt to suck America into this conflict?” He puts it down to “crass opportunism” – “better to squander your ally’s blood and treasure than your own.”
It is possible to argue that if Wilkerson went along with the exaggerations in 2003, what is the guarantee that he is not once again exaggerating present dangers?
There is nothing about the present White House that leaves one sanguine on any count. It would be rank bad form to compare the President of the United States with Caligula but folks are making that comparison to good effect. Caligula elevated his horse to a cabinet rank. Donald Trump has committed no such misdemeanour thus far. But no one can bet on the future.
While his buddies across the Atlantic are in convulsions over Putin dispensing nerve agents on the streets of Britain, Trump has made a quiet telephonic contact with the same Russian gent. No one can make out whether he is cooing or barking on the telephone line.
Washington’s current policy towards Iran, which carries Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s imprimatur, is quite transparent: leave it outside the regional order the US seeks to impose in West Asia (Middle East). And then defang Iran in every possible way, including military action.
This is the exact opposite of the order Barack Obama-John Kerry had sketched for the region.
The 2015 nuclear deal with Iran was signed within a certain conceptual framework. Pivot to Asia had acquired greater saliency in Obama’s scheme.
China’s extraordinary rise required the US to pay greater attention to the Pacific region. This entailed that day to day supervision of West Asian affairs by the US would no longer be possible.
The US was not running away from its West Asian responsibilities. The legitimacy conferred on Iran after the nuclear deal made it a key player in the new West Asian balance of power which Washington was proposing. Other players in this arrangement would be Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar. But Saudi Arabia and Israel, sleeping in the same bed in Syria, were totally averse to having Iran as a player in the new West Asian balance. It was galling for the Israeli-Saudi duet when Russia with the help of Irancontrolled militias and Turkey’s switch in favour of Assad, turned the tide in Syria.
This is when Trump appeared in the White House, not quite Caligula incarnate but more or less there. As a candidate, he had told Jake Tapper of the CNN that billions of dollars had been given to groups in Syria who may well have been the Islamic State. “I think they were the Islamic state”, he said with certainty. The interview is available on youtube.
Instead of wasting money on questionable groups, Trump has fallen back on a strategy closest to his heart: making money. Towards this end he has American boots on the ground in Syria for which a prohibitive bill will be submitted to an embattled, Saudi King-to-be, running helterskelter between Yemen, Syria, Qatif and the occupants of Riyadh’s Ritz Carlton hotel.
Mohammad bin Salman is not a comforting sight to a Benjamin Netanyahu, on sixes and sevens with the noose of corruption allegations tightening around his neck. Meanwhile, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran axis continue to menace.
Might Trump, in search of some success, be pushed into a preemptive war on Iran? Can heat a time that Putin is glaring at him, eyeball to eyeball? True, key appointments around him can only add to Trump’s recklessness and hawk of hawks Nikki Haley is not budging from her position.
If he goes down that route he should glance at the elementary data Wilkerson has furnished: Polls show at least 4 billion people think we’re (the US) the number one threat to their security in the world; think about that for a minute – “We’ve already done Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria. We’d just be seen as continuing trend if we embark on Iran”. Is this to be America’s lasting heritage?
Shere-e-Punjab Trudeau. That’s what the millions of Sikhs in Canada called him after his long picnic in India, where he defied all protocols meant for conventional heads of states, and became one among the many celebrity tourists, with his wonderful wife, and wonderful two little sons, dressed in a kaleidoscope of designer Indian traditional dresses, sharp colours as a reminder of the vivacity of Indian handloom and craft, scoring multiple photo-ops, print and visual space in the Indian media.
He defied protocol. He was both enduring and endearing to the Indian people, especially the glitterati. He went to various religious places, to put his multicultural, multi-faith, multi-religious and secular public positions on record. He avoided the political class, well, almost, until he met Narendra Modi almost on the eve of his departure. That meeting too became a roller-coaster ride, because his youngest son, still a lovely toddler, decided to roll on the carpet with stunning glee, even as the immaculately dress Indian soldiers giving the family a guard of honour, watched with great amusement and delight. He surely made them his fans too, as did his wife and sons. He did not hug Modi. That was a crucial departure from the run-of-the-mill hugs floating all over the world since Modi has drafted his unique ‘hugging’ foreign policy, with many heads of state, reluctantly pushing their bodies away.
Shahrukh Khan and other celebrities met him with grace and great warmth. Shahrukh Khan did not meet hardliner Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unlike Amitabh Bachchan. That was a clear message.
Others too met the Sher-e-Punjab. Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Phadnis. The charge that he was tacitly backing erstwhile Khalistanis, who have taken refuge in Canada, just did not stick. The rock star threw his kid up in the air at the Taj Mahal in Agra, hundreds of cameras clicking, and no dignitary to accompany him as protocol, and he had already become a heartthrob of both India and expatriates in Canada. Trudeau knows his charm. And with ‘family values’ thrown in, he is more charming than many politicians in the world, especially the ageing, doddering, caught in multiple sex episode accusations, including scores of assaults and acts of misogyny and brazen machoism: Donald Trump.
As perhaps the youngest secular and liberal prime minister of a huge, liberal country, Trudeau is far ahead in his rock star ratings across the global landscape: leaving Vladimir Putin, Xi Jin Ping, Angela Merkel, even Emmanuel Macron far behind. Surely, Narendra Modi does not stand a chance.
Said a Vancouver-based Indian academic, talking to this reporter: “Indeed, the Khalistan tag was absurd. In Canada, it was used by the conservative media to racialize and stigmatise Canadian Sikhs, and by the media in India to build a binary of anti-nationalist minority and nationalist Hindus. 'Liberal Hindu' media and news establishment always turn Hindu nationalist when it comes to the identity of the religious minorities in India.”
Wrote The Atlantic: “No doubt Trudeau is firmly cast in the neo-liberal framework, but the Canadian Labour party and Trudeau have also kept the discourse on multiculturalism, social justice and antiracism alive. I think Trudeau was deliberately humiliated by the Modi establishment. The Hindu Right has no say in Canadian politics, unlike the Hindus for Trump in the US. Canadian Sikhs remain relentless in seeking justice for the 1984 Sikh victims of the genocide, and they are badly pissed off by the Hindutva Indian establishment’s attempt to tarnish their image and the image of Canadian Sikh cabinet ministers.
Sikhs have a glorious history of fighting discrimination and structural racism in Canada. And, to pigeonhole them into racial stereotypes, will not be taken kindly by them. Let us also remember that more than 1,000 Sikhs in Surrey signed a petition for the release of Saibaba, the alleged, 90 per cent physically handicapped Delhi University academic, and the Gurdwaras provided space to facilitate this signature campaign. No Indian journalist talks about it. Finally, it is obvious, there are no Gujju Adani, Ambani investments in Canada.”
Trudeau has smiled his way through India, however, meeting with business executives, signing billions of dollars worth of business deals, posing for photographs actors, and donning Indian attire befitting his own Indian wedding reception. The Indians, for their part, have denied the Canadian prime minister is being snubbed (one unnamed official went so far as to call it “protocol”). But a snub it is — and the diplomatic brush-off has its roots in an Indian separatist movement from the 1980s and present-day Canadian domestic politics.”
Trudeau has been accused of playing the Barack Obama nice-guy-who-doesnothing-card in Canada when it comes to tricky issues. His positions on climate change, global warming, and fossil fuels are cited. His record on the indigenous people ghettoized in the reservations is not great. His neo-liberal stance on various issues irks the socialists in his own party.
And, yet, when Trump declared no refugees or immigrants will be taken in America, or allowed to enter, even with a valid visa, Trudeau said: Come one and come all. You are most welcome.
He went to the airport to receive Muslim refugees from the middle-east. He took the child from a woman wearing a hijab, a big smile on his face, once a picture which stimulated a thousand claps. That he is admired for his good looks, or that he ‘drops in’ in a procession against racism, or in support of gay rights, or fighting against racism, wearing socks with a message: oh, the masses love him more for that. The rock star cares a damn for the selfie. The camera and the mobiles are eternally ringing to record his charm and message.
A student of literature and education at McGill University and the University of British Columbia, and a young, promising teacher, who took up social causes as a youth leader in the Liberal Party, often following up in the footsteps of his father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau took a tough stand in the midst of the clampdown by Trump on visas for certain Islamic countries, which was later shot down by several courts in the US. That found him allies in Europe, the middle-east, and Asia. His party’s stand on racism is equally significant and radical. Witness this open declaration.
“Diversity is one of our greatest strengths and has contributed significantly to our country. We recognize the need to counter all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination and we are taking action to address the ongoing challenges and discrimination that still exist in our society,” said Simon Ross, a spokesman for Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly. “We will also be consulting with Canadians to develop a national strategy to combat racism in Canada, and we look forward to speaking with experts, community organizations, citizens and interfaith leaders to find new ways to collaborate and combat discrimination as we develop this strategy,” he said.
In India, the civil society, undoubtedly wanted more of this man and his family, with his lovely kids. That got quite a bit of them in his reasonably long, nondiplomatic stay, across many towns and cities of the country. ‘Next time,” said a professor, “ they should just enter a metro and sing a Canadian song.
In the first instance, let me let you that I am not from any of the Muslim countries you so selectively hate, whose citizens’ entry into America you had tried to ban as one of your first Islamophobic/ xenophobic executive orders after you became president. I am also not from Mexico, whereby you have declared umpteen times during your election campaign that you will make a long and tall wall, “really great, beautiful and gorgeous”, paid by the Mexicans, to stop them entering into your country. To the best of my knowledge, people across the border in Mexico, nor its government, are in no mood to make any such sort of payment for your imaginary wall, which, observers believe, is a Typical Trumpeted Trump Card, destined to never see the light of the day.
Your campaign and public conduct have been singularly lacking taste and imagination. You seem to wallow in what political scientists say the post-truth of mass phobia, shifting all the depressions and anxieties of your own botched up economy, vast economic deprivations, huge disparity in income and wealth, massive adult and teenage illiteracy due to the exorbitant cost of higher education, denial of health care to the middle classes and poor, especially the older citizens, the homeless on the streets, especially Afro-Americans, into the politics of xenophobia. If the blacks are poor, it is because racism is rampant in America, isn’t it? If the white working class is feeling deprived and left out of the economy, marginalized by the rich and powerful, surely, neither the blacks nor the Latinos are responsible; surely, not the Muslims?
If American capitalism, post-recession, has proved to be a failing, faltering economic model in the era of globalization and liberalization, with the downward filter theory a pipe dream for all to see, why blame the poor, the homeless and the jobless, who have no formal stakes in the economy? Surely, they can’t even enter the lounge of the many Trump towers all over the big cities of America in what is the real estate boom of a handful of white rich Americans, including Donald Trump. I hear that there is a scramble by the dirty rich in India too, for upwardly mobile space in a luxurious Trump Tower, in Gurgaon, the industrial and semicapitalist hub near the capital of India. That sounds addictive, isn’t it? I hope your engineers have taken care of the water problem, the sanitation issues, law and order and traffic bottlenecks?
So, tell me then, why are you blocking Indians and others from entering and working in America, for long or short stints, by creating all kinds of black holes in the H1B visa? Is it part of your another cooked up fantasy of ‘Make America Great Again’? As of now, watching the 60 minutes of Stormy Daniels on CNN, all it seems is that the tweeterati is deriving a lot of perverse and vicarious pleasure from another campaign right now in the pubs and bars across America, complete with dancing shoes an inuendoes: “Make America Horny Again’. That’s sounds good.
Isn’t America a country of immigrants, great or otherwise, in future or in past? Even the whites arrived from England and Ireland, etc. Even the blacks came in millions chained in slave ships, most of the dead on the hard, hungry, brutal journey from Africa, their dead bodies thrown to the sharks into the swirling waters.
Surely, no American can claim that they are the original, indigenous people, in the short history of the American dream. And what did you all do to the indigenous, the red Indian, of the great civilizations of nature-worshippers who inhabited the vast landscape of the north and south American continent? You eliminated them in one genocide after another, sold them as slaves, destroyed their culture and civilization, and, finally, dumped them as second class, invisible, non-citizens in the ‘reservations’, outside the gaze of ‘Great America’, often trapped in alcohol and the casinos you gave them, uneducated, unemployed, underground. Now, don’t tell me that they are worse than the immigrants. Are they?
While denying H1B visa, or banning citizens from other countries, or delaying the work permit, or green card, or blocking refugees to enter your borders and inhabit the vast and empty land spaces across the vast and empty hinterland, you seem to forget that America is nothing other than the magnificent narrative and synthesis of the immigrants. Even Barack Obama’s ancestors came from Africa. The best colleges, think-tanks, corporates, universities, professional institutions, success stories — they are all the stories of a synthesis of white with many colours: coloured, brown, yellow, black, you name it. Indians, Latinos, Mexicans, Chinese, Pakistanis, Middle-easterners, Central Asians and Africans, Asians, even South and North Koreans, they have all made this dream a reality for America.
And, if globalization is the only mantra of post-truth capitalism, then why this sudden obsession with ghettoisation? If you can’t create jobs for your own jobless, why blame outsiders? If your economy is outsourced, if your manufacturing sector is located outside, including in Mexico on goddam low wages, why the hell should you blame ‘others’ for your own exploitative brand of capitalism? If your many wars have doomed your economy, and created mass guilt, why stop professionals to enter and work in your country when you know that your specialized industries need them so much more?
Under the new rules, reportedly, US firms will perhaps electronically register for visas that are subject to an annual cap of 85,000-65,000 for foreigners coming in from abroad and 20,000 for foreigners with advanced degrees from US colleges and universities. Almost 70 percent of H-1B professionals arrive from India, including those working for US companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook. There is speculation that the Trump regime might withdraw an Obama-era rule that allows work-permits to spouses of H-1B visa-holders who are seeking permanent residency, otherwise known as the green card. This was in line with the Trump campaign: Buy American, Hire American.
There is also speculation that high priority will be given to only those with high salaries, basically to prevent US employers from hiring foreigners for low-paying jobs. In other words, the Mexican wall might not come up really, but other walls will.
That is why, as a young Indian professional, who loves her own country, I have only one thing to tell you, Mr President, Knowledge has no barriers, it can’t be shackled by geographical barriers, it can’t be holed up with electronic or concrete walls. There will always be a Rabindranath Tagore who will go across to Princeton to be warmly welcomed by Einstein. There will always be an Orhan Pamuk, Jhumpa Lahiri, Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy who will draw huge audiences in the US, along with Amartya Sen, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. There will always be a Beatles and a Ravishankar who will enthrall the American crowds, even as Satyajit Ray is fondly remembered and admired, and bestowed the lifetime achievement award at the Oscars.
Make America Great Again, surely. However, don’t forget, 200 years is too short a history. And the original civilizations still have a memory. As do immigrants and refugees
The Indian Premier League was designed in a way by Lalit Modi to bring in the young and opulent cricket loving crowd of India together. A twenty-over-each-side carnival that has all the ingredients was like a circus coming to town. The Indian Premier League is in its 11th season and it is undoubtedly India’s most success story because of its business module. It was an enticing concept but the revenue outcomes were never guaranteed. In the end, the huge bets have mostly paid off. The Board of Control for Cricket in India is many times richer and the brand value of the IPL, according to Duff & Phelps, is currently about $4.2 billion. And most important thing is that the Indian cricketers have benefited the most. They have earned good money — cricketers across all formats — and cricket is now seen as a career option. Other sports in India are also trying the franchise-based league model.
Lalit Modi, had conceptualised the league a decade back when he had the right amount of star power by signing on the world’s best players. He then garnered broadcasting and Bollywood support to make the event a huge potential success.
The reason for the formation of this league was mainly due to the two landmark events of 2007.
The first being India’s magical victory in the 2007 inaugural T20 World Cup, under Dhoni and the second was Subhash Chandra’s attempt to do a Kerry Packer. He tried to end the BCCI’s monopoly on cricket in the country by starting a rival Indian Cricket League. A few marquee international players who joined the ICL were banished but soon the BCCI had realized that they would soon have to offer something better. And this is when Lalit Modi crafted the IPL.
India’s rich and famous came together to form their respective franchises, and the presence of Bollywood stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta helped create the buzz and frenzy.
The future of the league was a bit uncertain, though, when bids were called for from eight would-be IPL franchises at the base price of $400 million, in January 2008. But BCCI was more than pleasantly surprised when $724 million was paid, just to buy the brand names!
But simultaneously very innovative strategies were developed to raise money. The franchises sold every nook and corner on players’ jerseys and kits. Additional breaks called ‘Strategic Timeout’ were taken during the games for teams to strategize. The format twenty-twenty, in essence, is meant to be a fast paced game and strategic timeout only delayed it. IPL, was meant to be a money spinning machine and the timeout was in fact strategically placed to gather maximum views and for generating extra advertisement spots. The television commentators were made to utter the sponsors’ name with every six hit and each catch taken. The sponsors have continued to keep their faith in Brand IPL. For instance, the current title sponsor Vivo has paid about the same amount for two years that the first title sponsor DLF paid for five years.
The success hasn’t come without costs. The tournament has had its darker side surface regularly in the past few years. N. Srinivasan then senior board official later rose to become BCCI president and also the director of India Cements, the company which owned the Chennai Super Kings franchise had conflict of interests as the former captain of the CSK team, M.S. Dhoni, was an employee of the same company. Srinivasan’s son-in-law, Gurunath Meiyappan, was indicted by the Mudgal committee on charges that amount to insider trading. Raj Kundra, a part owner of the Rajasthan Royals franchise, faced similar charges
Players have been arrested and suspended on charges of spot-fixing. Lalit Modi has himself admitted to rigging the players’ auction in favour of N. Srinivasan, his former boss. Recently the Supreme Court of India had to step in and had ordered running Indian cricket through a Committee of Administrators.
The mighty Brahmaputra’s mighty sweep is a sight you cannot easily forget. Just barely a short walk from the quaint Circuit House on stilts in Dibrugarh on a monsoon evening the raging Brahmaputra looks like the ocean. Little wonder that most of Dibrugarh have been swallowed by this gigantic river moving inwards as the years go by. Not far from Dibrugarh lies the town of Jorhat once the capital of the Ahom kingdom. From Jorhat, one can unravel the puzzle of Majuli.
Beached amid the mighty Brahmaputra River’s ever-shifting puzzle of ochre sandbanks is Majuli,which at around 450 sq km is India’s largest river island. For a place continually ravaged by the primal forces of nature (much of the island disappears under water every monsoon), Majuli flaunts unparalleled scenic beauty. The island is a relaxed, shimmering mat of glowing rice fields and water meadows bursting with hyacinth blossoms.
The two main villages are Kamalabari, 3km from the ferry port, and Garamur, 5km further north. Highlights of a visit here include birdwatching (nearly 100 species live here) and learning about neoVaishnavite philosophy at Majuli’s 22 ancient satras (Hindu Vaishnavite monasteries and centres for art).
Surveys indicate that, at current levels of erosion the island will cease to exist within the next two decades.
It is one of Assam’s best-kept secrets, the riverine island of Majuli with its green cover and old traditions. In fact, the legend goes that Radha and Krishna had once decided to elope and checked out many places among which was an emerald isle floating on the Brahmaputra. It is said that Radha was so enchanted by the island that Krishna said it would be the next Dwarka, the kingdom of the creator. Such are the fables that envelop this little gem and once there you will appreciate the Krishna legend and agree with it.
The island has been the centre of the neoVashnavaite culture that you find all across Assam. The little island is more than 300 km from the state capital Guwahati but you can reach the shrinking island after a half hour ferry ride from Jorhat. The island is home to not more than two lakh people with a great mix of races as varied as Brahmins, Kalitas, Misings, Deoris among others.
With the island attracting tourists from around the world, one can now take a cruise on luxury vessels but its another experience to hop on to the ferries which the locals take to cross over every day. Laden with cars, bikes and people these sputtering boats take you from Neemati Ghat to Kamalabari Ghat. The short hop is quite an adventure for the first timers to watch daily passengers settle down for a game of cards.
Next, you drive across paddy and mustard fields on your way to your hotel or guest house but what holds your attention are these unique looking bamboo homes built on stilts as the mighty Brahmaputra keeps flooding the island. These houses of the Mising tribe have a fireplace at the centre of the house and one can see the Mising women working at their looms made of bamboos and cycle wheels.
The Misings are known to weave some fine Mekhela Chador, the two-piece sari worn by Assamese women but here they weave them for their own use unlike the people of Sualkuchi village which is known for its lovely silk Mekhela Chadors. The men keep themselves busy by making beds out of bamboo and other furniture when they are not farming or fishing.
Communications could become a challenge as the locals don’t speak any other language but their own but they are never short on warmth and hospitality and even the poor will invite you to their homes and offer a cup of tea and the local sweet pancake or pitha with a smile and a come again invite.