A nation that cannot uphold its law cannot preserve its order. When Anderson was smuggled out to safety, the authority of state abandoned the responsibility of state. Excuses, evasions and lies have shifted over 26 years; this central truth has not.
It is odd that the government should have chosen law and order as its final alibi after some exhausting self-laceration in its search for a credible explanation for the escape of Union Carbide’s Warren Anderson on December 7, 1984.
Why do we say “law and order” rather than “order and law”? Simple. Law comes before order. Law defines the nature of order. Law is the difference between civilization and chaos. Law is evolutionary: the edicts of tribes, chiefs and dynasties lifted human societies from scattered peril to structured coexistence. The laws of democracy have vaulted us to the acme of social cohesion, for they eliminated arbitrary diktat and introduced collective will. The divine right of kings is dead; it has been reborn as the secular right of an elected Parliament.
A nation that cannot uphold its law cannot preserve its order. When Anderson was smuggled out to safety, the authority of state abandoned the responsibility of state. Excuses, evasions and lies have shifted over 26 years; this central truth has not.
Unsurprisingly, Anderson sneered at the establishment that knelt before him; contempt is the umbilical chord of the colonial, or neo-colonial, relationship. The crux of the Bhopal tragedy is summed up in a few sentences uttered by Anderson as he was escorted out of India on December 7, 1984: “House arrest or no house arrest, or bail or no bail, I am free to go home…There is a law of the United States… India, bye bye, thank you.”
‘House or no house arrest’: he could not care a damn about those funny-looking policemen (in lathis and khaki shorts?) who had dared to arrest a pillar of the American corporate establishment. ‘Bail or no bail’: what was a rotten piece of paper signed in an Indian court worth to a lord of Wall Street? Not even the decency of silence. Anderson was publicly, even proudly, contemptuous of those who did not have the courage to interrupt his freedom for a mere industrial disaster in which a few thousand semi-slave Indians had been gassed to death within hours and thousands more would die over years.
‘There is a law in the United States’: Anderson had twigged on to a basic truth that the law is a malleable reality for those who are “well-connected” in India. How could Anderson have respect for India’s law when those entrusted with its sanctity had defiled it? Anderson laughed at Indian law, and jeered at the Indian state. Compare this with the fact that his company was scared witless at the prospect of an American trial. Carbide fought hard, and successfully, with predictable help from a comprador Indian establishment, to shift the trial from America to India. Their subsequent collusion with Indian courts touched Supreme heights.
British Petroleum knew the perils of entanglement with American justice and shelled out within six weeks of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Big Oil (which is far bigger than Big Chemical) has been forced to put aside $20 billion for the repair of the environment after an ecological disaster that has not killed a single innocent human being. Technically, BP need not have paid more than $75 million. The first demand on Carbide, 26 years ago was for $15 billion. It has paid the equivalent of just one billion dollars (at today’s prices) for the death of nearly 20,000 people and the horrific maiming of over 100,000.
Barack Obama slipped on a bit of oil himself when the spill began. He thought playing to the gallery would subdue the clamour, while BP contained the damage. He upped the ante (it became an environmental 9/11) even while his National Guard helped BP by hiding affected bird-life from media cameras. Obama began to taunt the British in British Petroleum, perhaps because he found it easier to attack a nation than a multinational; but public opinion was not to be mollified by rhetoric.
BP paid America out of fear, not because of a demand order from its conscience. Carbide had nothing to fear, and never possessed a conscience. QED. BP will not pay a dividend this year. Carbide paid a dividend even after Bhopal.
‘India, bye bye, thank you’: those famous last Anderson words. Bye bye; this is a divorce, not a separation. There might be some alimony in it, but don’t start shopping until the cheque is in the bank.
Accusation is the easy exit route from Bhopal. Introspection will take us back to the beginning. Betrayal is impossible without trust. We did not trust Carbide to be honest. We trusted our political class, and it continues to search for new and inventive ways to betray us again.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Sporting gods
Not all the misplaced genius of the Lalit Modis and the Sharad Pawars of our land can generate the drama and passion football inspires. India is a net loser in becoming a cricket-only country. On the one hand, it destroys the spirit of cricket itself by turning it into a crass money machine. On the other, it leads to the neglect of glorious games like hockey and football.
Cricket covers but a few countries; football is universal. Cricket is colonial; football is democratic. Cricket, especially today’s commercialised format, is an artificial creation; football is utterly natural. Cricket needs cheer leaders; football doesn’t. Cricket corrupts; football enlivens. Cricket produces heroes; football makes gods – like Pele, Maradona, Zidane, Kaka, Messi, Drogba..
And so be it. Football is the true people’s game, the anywhere–anyhow game. You don’t need expensive equipment to kick a ball around. In the slums of the world kids play football without shoes and without a proper ball. From one such slum emerged today’s highest paid footballer, Samuel Eto’o of Camaroon (who earns $ 13 million a year). Football is a great leveller.
Not that football does not have its unpleasant side. A whiff of corruption hit FIFA, the all-powerful governing body of the game, in 2001-2. A case reached the Swiss courts, but was eventually dropped. Ever since, FIFA’s bosses have been extra careful about keeping their hands clean. At the other end of the scale, beer-guzzling “football hooligans” were a phenomenon in Europe until recently, going literally wild in their enthusiasm.
Money is the engine of international football as well. Some clubs, like Chelsea and Barcelona, are immensely rich. The clubs buy and sell players. Barcelona paid Valencia $ 48 million to buy Spanish star David Villa; Real Madrid paid as much as $ 132 million to buy Christiano Ronaldo. As usual TV rights and corporate sponsors are the principal fund providers. In the 2006 World Cup, the TV audience was estimated at 26 billion, that is, 26 times he population of India. No wonder that sponsorships alone added up to $ 875 million; FIFA’s profit that year was an impressive $ 1.8 billion.
Figures like that help us understand why Lalit Modi and the BCCI itself went salivating at the prospect of minting money with “club” cricket. But they reckoned without that powerful institution that sustains the integrity of football – the Coach. The best coaches are dictators, but dictators who are admired for their dictatorship. For they are professional to the core. The bosses may think money, but the players under the command of coaches think football. Meritocracy reigns supreme.
Those who play politics with cricket must think about this. All sports in India is an extension of politics. That is why we flop except in individual events (as distinct from team sports) – in tennis, chess, shooting, boxing. In football we are nowhere in the picture. Which is astonishing when we think of Africa’s rise.
The average African footballer trained in the most primitive conditions. We were miles ahead with clubs like Mohan Bagan and East Bengal and playing fields like the Cooperage. But we never produced a magician – like Eusebio of Mozambique who scored four out of five goals for Portugal against North Korea for a 5-3 win in 1966, one of the most thrilling games in football history. Almost all European clubs today are performing well because of the Africans they have recruited. With natural talent, speed and footwork skills that are unique to them, Africans have made football their own.
For a month from now in South Africa, the self-confidence and newfound pride of Africans will enliven the spectators’ stands as well as the field. They have a typical style of enjoying football, not the hooligan style, but singing and dancing with spontaneous rhythm. An African team may not go home with the trophy, but this year’s World Cup will be one of the most exciting ever. And deservedly so.
Cricket covers but a few countries; football is universal. Cricket is colonial; football is democratic. Cricket, especially today’s commercialised format, is an artificial creation; football is utterly natural. Cricket needs cheer leaders; football doesn’t. Cricket corrupts; football enlivens. Cricket produces heroes; football makes gods – like Pele, Maradona, Zidane, Kaka, Messi, Drogba..
And so be it. Football is the true people’s game, the anywhere–anyhow game. You don’t need expensive equipment to kick a ball around. In the slums of the world kids play football without shoes and without a proper ball. From one such slum emerged today’s highest paid footballer, Samuel Eto’o of Camaroon (who earns $ 13 million a year). Football is a great leveller.
Not that football does not have its unpleasant side. A whiff of corruption hit FIFA, the all-powerful governing body of the game, in 2001-2. A case reached the Swiss courts, but was eventually dropped. Ever since, FIFA’s bosses have been extra careful about keeping their hands clean. At the other end of the scale, beer-guzzling “football hooligans” were a phenomenon in Europe until recently, going literally wild in their enthusiasm.
Money is the engine of international football as well. Some clubs, like Chelsea and Barcelona, are immensely rich. The clubs buy and sell players. Barcelona paid Valencia $ 48 million to buy Spanish star David Villa; Real Madrid paid as much as $ 132 million to buy Christiano Ronaldo. As usual TV rights and corporate sponsors are the principal fund providers. In the 2006 World Cup, the TV audience was estimated at 26 billion, that is, 26 times he population of India. No wonder that sponsorships alone added up to $ 875 million; FIFA’s profit that year was an impressive $ 1.8 billion.
Figures like that help us understand why Lalit Modi and the BCCI itself went salivating at the prospect of minting money with “club” cricket. But they reckoned without that powerful institution that sustains the integrity of football – the Coach. The best coaches are dictators, but dictators who are admired for their dictatorship. For they are professional to the core. The bosses may think money, but the players under the command of coaches think football. Meritocracy reigns supreme.
Those who play politics with cricket must think about this. All sports in India is an extension of politics. That is why we flop except in individual events (as distinct from team sports) – in tennis, chess, shooting, boxing. In football we are nowhere in the picture. Which is astonishing when we think of Africa’s rise.
The average African footballer trained in the most primitive conditions. We were miles ahead with clubs like Mohan Bagan and East Bengal and playing fields like the Cooperage. But we never produced a magician – like Eusebio of Mozambique who scored four out of five goals for Portugal against North Korea for a 5-3 win in 1966, one of the most thrilling games in football history. Almost all European clubs today are performing well because of the Africans they have recruited. With natural talent, speed and footwork skills that are unique to them, Africans have made football their own.
For a month from now in South Africa, the self-confidence and newfound pride of Africans will enliven the spectators’ stands as well as the field. They have a typical style of enjoying football, not the hooligan style, but singing and dancing with spontaneous rhythm. An African team may not go home with the trophy, but this year’s World Cup will be one of the most exciting ever. And deservedly so.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
My Fav Singers
Heard lots and lots of music last year covering almost all possible genres..
and my favourite singers at present in India.
Male:
Srinivas
Karthik
Benny Dayal
Female:
Shreya Ghoshal
Hamsika Iyer
Neha Nair
Fortunate to have some of my favourite singers for our dear Patchwork !!!
and my favourite singers at present in India.
Male:
Srinivas
Karthik
Benny Dayal
Female:
Shreya Ghoshal
Hamsika Iyer
Neha Nair
Fortunate to have some of my favourite singers for our dear Patchwork !!!
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Q: Who cannot fly planes ? A: Politicians, IAS
Details of the Mangalore airport catastrophe make heart-rending reading. A split-second error – then horror. But one factor has received only passing attention, yet it is a central factor: In the civil aviation sector the south of India is grossly discriminated against. Equipment is inadequate, regulatory mechanisms virtually absent and services exploitative.
Not that local politicians can be absolved of responsibility. The present location in Mangalore was chosen because of the political pressure exerted by the local MP in the 1940-50s. The site technical experts preferred was a flat land nearer Udupi, two kilometers from the sea. Politicians discarded this and chose Bajpe where the runway area on top of the cliff plunges at the edges to valleys upto 300 feet below. Kozhikode also has a table-top, wirepulled by politicians and their land mafia cronies. In Bangalore itself Devanahalli was not the best choice available. It was very fertile land and a source of water for Bangalore. Whitefield or Bidadi would have made better sense. But political-real estate interests prevailed.
Once these sites were selected, the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had its mandatory functions to perform. This is where lapses crept in. Among top priorities is a regulatory system that keeps an eye on safety-related problems. The DGCA’s South Zone has “no proper regulatory system in place”, as an unnamed senior official told Deccan Herald. He mentioned in particular “poor monitoring of airlines, improper and inadequate training, below-par aerodrome surveillance and lack of manpower” as the consequence of DGCA’s “stepmotherly treatment” of the South Zone’s air safety division.
Mangalore airport does not have a Precision Approach Radar, essential to alert the pilot if he is not properly aligned to the glide path. In 2006 the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s safety audit confirmed that the South Zone had lagged behind on air safety.
The neglect on the technical front is multiplied on the service front where the carrier comes in direct contact with the passengers. Air-India/Indian Airlines is a habitual offender in this area. Typical was the callous way in which they made relatives of the Mangalore crash victims wait at Dubai airport for more than a day before ferrying them to the accident site. This attitude of arrogance and disinterestedness routinely faced passengers from our West Coast to the Gulf and back. The bulk of these passengers are from the “working class”. Although they are a mainstay of the coastal community’s as well as the airline’s economy, our national carriers treat them as less than economy class.
There are also well-founded arguments that private airlines bribe government airlines (never the other way round) to make the latter’s aircraft and flight timings unattractive to passengers. Aircraft serving Mangalore-Kerala sectors from the Gulf usually has economy class capacity for 125 or less. These fly full. But aircraft serving Mumbai and Delhi have more than 150 economy seats and usually go from 30% to 40% empty. Our national carriers also have the most inconvenient departure and arrival timings which directly drive passengers into the waiting laps of Jet, Kingfisher and various Arab carriers.
This happens because AI-IA is run like a government department. Typical bureaucratic lack of accountability covers the airline from top to bottom. The minister’s daughter could simply pull her weight, cancel a scheduled passenger flight and divert it as a charter for the IPL where she was a paid employee. And what was the Minister’s response? “She is a little girl,” said Praful Patel. IAS managing directors have been equally irresponsible. One of them, after retirement, is said to have started a private recruitment company supplying foreign pilots to Indian airlines. He is not concerned with foreign pilots’ language problems with airtransport controllers, a major safety hazard. What concerns him is the profit he can make. Our national carriers will have no future unless they are saved from the clutches of politicians and bureaucrats.
Not that local politicians can be absolved of responsibility. The present location in Mangalore was chosen because of the political pressure exerted by the local MP in the 1940-50s. The site technical experts preferred was a flat land nearer Udupi, two kilometers from the sea. Politicians discarded this and chose Bajpe where the runway area on top of the cliff plunges at the edges to valleys upto 300 feet below. Kozhikode also has a table-top, wirepulled by politicians and their land mafia cronies. In Bangalore itself Devanahalli was not the best choice available. It was very fertile land and a source of water for Bangalore. Whitefield or Bidadi would have made better sense. But political-real estate interests prevailed.
Once these sites were selected, the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had its mandatory functions to perform. This is where lapses crept in. Among top priorities is a regulatory system that keeps an eye on safety-related problems. The DGCA’s South Zone has “no proper regulatory system in place”, as an unnamed senior official told Deccan Herald. He mentioned in particular “poor monitoring of airlines, improper and inadequate training, below-par aerodrome surveillance and lack of manpower” as the consequence of DGCA’s “stepmotherly treatment” of the South Zone’s air safety division.
Mangalore airport does not have a Precision Approach Radar, essential to alert the pilot if he is not properly aligned to the glide path. In 2006 the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s safety audit confirmed that the South Zone had lagged behind on air safety.
The neglect on the technical front is multiplied on the service front where the carrier comes in direct contact with the passengers. Air-India/Indian Airlines is a habitual offender in this area. Typical was the callous way in which they made relatives of the Mangalore crash victims wait at Dubai airport for more than a day before ferrying them to the accident site. This attitude of arrogance and disinterestedness routinely faced passengers from our West Coast to the Gulf and back. The bulk of these passengers are from the “working class”. Although they are a mainstay of the coastal community’s as well as the airline’s economy, our national carriers treat them as less than economy class.
There are also well-founded arguments that private airlines bribe government airlines (never the other way round) to make the latter’s aircraft and flight timings unattractive to passengers. Aircraft serving Mangalore-Kerala sectors from the Gulf usually has economy class capacity for 125 or less. These fly full. But aircraft serving Mumbai and Delhi have more than 150 economy seats and usually go from 30% to 40% empty. Our national carriers also have the most inconvenient departure and arrival timings which directly drive passengers into the waiting laps of Jet, Kingfisher and various Arab carriers.
This happens because AI-IA is run like a government department. Typical bureaucratic lack of accountability covers the airline from top to bottom. The minister’s daughter could simply pull her weight, cancel a scheduled passenger flight and divert it as a charter for the IPL where she was a paid employee. And what was the Minister’s response? “She is a little girl,” said Praful Patel. IAS managing directors have been equally irresponsible. One of them, after retirement, is said to have started a private recruitment company supplying foreign pilots to Indian airlines. He is not concerned with foreign pilots’ language problems with airtransport controllers, a major safety hazard. What concerns him is the profit he can make. Our national carriers will have no future unless they are saved from the clutches of politicians and bureaucrats.
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