from worst to near first

How India's most desperate state transformed itself to become a model for the rest of the country.

By Jason Overdorf | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Feb 22, 2010

For centuries, it seems, the northern Indian state of Bihar has been plunging downhill. Once the seat of one of the world's most glorious empires, the state was first devastated by colonial policies that enshrined feudal landlords, then shunned by a succession of Indian governments, and finally riven and destroyed when the seeds of caste and class conflict matured into a small-scale civil war in the 1970s. As the militias of upper-caste landlords clashed with revolutionary guerrillas fighting for the oppressed, and caste-based political agitations threw up a series of incompetent and allegedly corrupt governments, state services ground to a halt, highways disintegrated, bridges crumbled, and career criminals ascended from the back rooms of party offices to take seats in the state legislative assembly, and even the Indian Parliament itself. By the 1990s, brazen and deadly highway robberies put an end to traveling after nightfall, and as business activity plummeted, kidnapping for ransom was declared the state's only growth industry. The so-called Republic of Bihar—viewed as a criminal fiefdom beyond the purview of the government of India—was effectively a failed state. "Institutions had collapsed," says Nand Kishore Singh, a member of the upper house of Parliament. "Law and order had come to a grinding halt."

This January, however, Bihar posted some stunning statistics that go a long way toward confirming that, since taking office in 2005, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has done the impossible. Despite the economic crisis and three years of droughts and floods, Bihar posted 11 percent average annual economic growth over Kumar's five years in office, making it the second-fastest-growing state in India, the second-hottest major economy in the world after China. In what were once impassable badlands, the administration laid 6,800 kilometers of roads, built 1,600 bridges and culverts, and cut journey time in half in many areas. Car sales eclipsed kidnappings, as crimes by roving bandits fell steadily from 1,297 to 640 and kidnappings for ransom dropped from 411 to 66 between 2004 and 2008. In a state that many Delhi residents once feared to visit—despite its allure as home to Bodh Gaya, the site where the Buddha attained his enlightenment—the number of foreign tourists shot up from 95,000 to 356,000 over the past two years.

These figures were so astounding that critics lost no time in belittling them. How could backward Bihar be growing nearly as rapidly as booming Gujarat, a longstanding leader in industries ranging from textiles to pharmaceuticals? The economic growth in Bihar stems from state spending, not investment, many pointed out. All Indian states collect and report their own economic figures to the Central Statistical Organization, and Kumar must have cooked the books in Bihar, others alleged. Those charges are almost certainly wrong. There's a small margin for error. But large-scale reporting fraud is unlikely, and things have indeed changed dramatically in Bihar. "We never had a functioning state—neither before independence nor after independence," says economist Shaibal Gupta, who heads the Asian Development Research Institute in Patna, the state capital. "Under Nitish Kumar, for the first time the state started functioning marginally. And with the improved functioning of the state, things have dramatically improved."

Kumar's nascent success represents more than just the light at the end of the tunnel for one failed state. It could be a guide for other states that are struggling with many of the same issues. Almost 20 years ago, after a visit to a site in Bihar where a guerrilla army of untouchables had slaughtered a village of landlords with harvesting sickles, the travel writer William Dalrymple bemoaned the collapse of Bihar. But he also suggested that the state was not so much backward, as India's newspapers often described it, as it was forward: a trendsetter for the rest of India that presaged ballot-rigging, caste-based social upheaval, and the criminalization of politics as national phenomena. This dismal view appeared to be correct, as India's vaunted democracy descended into simple caste-based gerrymandering, knee-jerk -"anti--incumbency" made mockery of the accountability that free elections are meant to enshrine, and an ever-increasing number of alleged gangsters made their way into the national legislature. "In the '80s and '90s, there was a wave of caste-related politics, where development didn't seem to matter," says Baijayant "Jay" Panda, a member of Parliament from Orissa, a state that has faced similar problems. "But I think that was a phase. We have matured as a democracy. Voters today are going beyond those concerns and looking at issues like good governance and development and electoral promises being kept."

Like his main rivals, Kumar, 58, is a career politician, who served three terms as a minister in the central government since the late 1980s. A teetotaler known for his simple lifestyle, he has a reputation for probity that propelled him to the helm of Bihar's government in 2005. Because he did not appear to have amassed any fortune or to have used his position to bring any family members into the usually lucrative business of politics, voters perceived him as outside the established patronage system. In a state that had been dominated by politicians catering to an alliance of the Muslim and middle-caste Yadav vote, Kumar set out to build a "coalition of extremes" that includes the high-priest and warrior castes and voters from among the erstwhile untouchables. Even as he did so, however, he sent voters a message that he was more committed to developing the state than protecting his caste fellows, and that he would end the 15 years of increasingly hostile class war under Lalu Prasad Yadav, a charismatic demagogue who as chief minister exploited lower-caste hatred for the state's unreformed feudal landlords. With a brio worthy of Falstaff, Yadav had enshrined his relatives and caste fellows in positions of power, and observers blamed him for his cronies' excesses. His brothers-in-law, Sadhu Yadav and Subhash Yadav, for instance, have figured in police investigations of the alleged embezzlement of millions of dollars in flood-relief funds and the alleged abduction and torture of an official of one of India's state-owned banks. Neither has been convicted of any crime. Lalu himself was accused of complicity in the embezzlement of millions of dollars in state funds intended for fodder, livestock, and farm equipment, for which he was in and out of jail several times before he was acquitted of amassing "disproportionate assets" for a man of his position in 2006.

Kumar changed the rules. He reversed Bihar's plunge into chaos by doing something that was highly unusual in the state—and indeed in all of India: he focused on competence over patronage. To improve delivery of government services, Kumar broke the long trend of overcentralizing state powers, and delegated more financial and administrative powers to officials in the field. He updated archaic rules that made civil engineers seek minister-level approval to spend absurdly low amounts of money. These moves eliminated the huge backlogs of simple matters piled up on senior officials' desks. He also reestablished the cabinet meeting as a weekly event, held every Tuesday, where in years past the cabinet sometimes did not meet for months.
Kumar then redefined the basic functions of institutions, essentially requiring offices to do the work they'd been assigned. He ended the widespread "transfer industry," which sold coveted bureaucratic posts to the highest bidders, and handpicked bureaucrats known for their competence. He ensured them that he would honor the set three-year tenure of postings rather than shuffling them around before they could deliver. One such official built 259 bridges and turned around a loss-making state-owned infrastructure firm during his three-year watch; as a reward, he's been charged with building the state's new roads and hospitals. To speedily fill thousands of vacancies in the police force that had left the state at the mercy of criminals, he tapped already trained personnel from among the state's ex-soldiers—who in India retire in their 40s. He publicly supported the police after they made high-profile arrests of criminals who had previously enjoyed political protection. Those jailed included not only a member of Parliament from the state's main rival political faction (who had dared the state police chief to arrest him on live television) but also an assemblyman from Kumar's own party who had made his own TV spectacle, threatening to have a group of reporters killed for filming his drunken altercation with the staff of a local hotel. Kumar managed to redress the state courts' abysmal conviction rate by instituting fast-track courts and working with the judiciary to focus on career criminals' most easily prosecuted offenses to ensure that they swiftly found themselves behind bars. The moves resulted in nearly 39,000 convictions between 2006 and 2009, compared with an average of less than 10,000 in previous decades. Those convicted included a dozen state legislators and members of Parliament like Mohammad Shahabuddin, Pappu Yadav, and Munna Shukla, all three of whom are now serving life sentences for crimes including kidnapping, intended murder, and murder.

Rebuilding the police and courts has reaped clear economic benefits. Now rickshaw drivers say they earn more money because people are traveling after 8 p.m. Shopkeepers say their take has increased because they no longer have to bribe the police or pay off local thugs. By retooling the bureaucracy in charge of implementing state projects, Kumar has been able to boost spending on government programs. Bihar's outlays on projects ranging from building roads to training new primary-school teachers rose from $320 million in 2001 to $3.5 billion last year, significantly outpacing the growth in central government funding for Bihar. "Earlier, the funds were not even reaching to the district level," says Manoj Rai, Delhi director of the Society for Participatory Research in Asia. "If you take the old quote that out of one rupee, only 15 paise reaches to the people, in Bihar, it was not even reaching to the district [administrators] from the state." Among other things, that increase meant more -teachers—more than 100,000 added in the primary schools since Kumar took office—and better oversight of doctors and staff working at rural health centers. Primary-care centers that used to see 30 patients a month now see 3,600—because people have a reasonable expectation that the doctors have shown up for work.

Still, Bihar continues to rank dismally on every major social indicator, and there are few signs that the poorest of the poor have benefited much from the new economic growth. More than half of Bihar's 82 million people live below the poverty line, compared with about 40 percent for the rest of India; both the infant-mortality rate and -maternal-mortality rate are higher than the national average; and some 70 percent of the state's inhabited areas are not linked by motorable roads.

Bihar's course correction may well mark a watershed moment for India. At a time when coalition politics limits centralized control, the nation needs competent, accountable provincial governments to continue its emergence as a global power. There are similarly encouraging signs from other local and regional leaders. Delhi's Sheila Dikshit has staved off her opponents by successfully tackling pollution and improving city infrastructure; Gujarat's Narendra Modi has retained power by attracting investment and creating jobs, despite his alleged role in deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002; and Orissa's Naveen Patnaik has won an unprecedented third term in one of India's laggard states by improving law and order, stimulating industry, and cracking down on corruption. The common thread is that political leaders are realizing that anti-incumbency and gerrymandering aren't insurmountable: they can win reelection by delivering economic development and ousting the corrupt or incompetent from their parties' dockets.

Because of his state's longstanding reputation as a basket case, Kumar, perhaps more than any other, has shown that even India's darkest corners can make progress against crime, corruption, and caste- and creed-based demagoguery. In recent days, Kumar faced a rebellion from within his own party that may illustrate one of the costs of dismantling the patronage system. But if he can hold onto power in the state elections this fall, and perhaps even if he can't, the trendsetter state will confirm that India's democracy and its voters have reached a new stage of evolution.

"Whether he wins or loses, the signal has gone out very clearly," says PRIA's Rai. Kumar's predecessor, Lalu Yadav, "used to say development does not help you to win elections. Now the same man has started using development jargon." Whoever takes office next term will have to do it on the promise of electricity, roads, and jobs, and they'll be accountable for their promises now that Kumar has broken the perception that all politicians are the same and change is impossible. "Politically, Kumar has won," says Rai. "Electorally, he may lose. But that's not important."

What's vital is that India's most backward state is now finally moving forward.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/233502
© 2010

bollywood gets real

By Jason Overdorf | NEWSWEEK
Published Nov 27, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Dec 7, 2009

Midway through Vishal Bhardwaj's 2009 movie Kaminey (Scoundrels), the hero is captured by thugs looking to recover $2 million in stolen cocaine. As the goons torture him to find out where he's hidden the drugs, they run into a problem: he stammers so badly that they can't get a word out of him. So sing, they say. Out come his answers, to the tune of a popular song. Problem solved. Except the hero the thugs have captured isn't the thief. His twin brother, who lisps, stole the dope. And the twins haven't spoken to each other for years.

For those unfamiliar with Bollywood films, the scene, like the rest of Kaminey, plays as if it were directed by Guy Ritchie. From the tortuous plot twists to the ludicrous double speech impediment, Bhardwaj treads the tightrope between comedy and camp—keeping it just straight enough for the audience to suspend disbelief. But for aficionados of the Hindi-language genre, Kaminey is a revolutionary manifesto. It takes classic Bollywood tropes—estranged brothers, a case of mistaken identity, high drama approaching slapstick comedy—and presents them with Hollywood-style realism instead of Bollywood's wink-nudge mix of melodrama and posturing. At the same time, Bhardwaj makes clear that he sees Kaminey as a counterpoint to the terrible films Bollywood has churned out over the past two decades. The song that the stutterer uses to answer his interrogators, for instance, comes from Karan Johar's schlocky 1998 romantic comedy Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Happens). To Bollywood fans, the message is clear: Bhardwaj is staking a claim as the true heir to the industry's classic legacy. "I have grown up on these kinds of films," the director says. "They are there in me, and there is nothing wrong with them. They have high kitsch value. It's just a matter of presentation."

For years, as competition from satellite television and Hollywood has hardened audiences to the old formulas, Bollywood producers and directors have been striving to create a new idiom that retains the charm of the genre's classics but is fresh enough to pack thea-ters. With a few exceptions, they've failed. But now a new crop of young directors, led by Bhardwaj, is reinventing the Bollywood film. Their movies still have songs, but the characters no longer lip-sync, and the dance sequences have a natural, unchoreographed feel. They've scrapped the cheesy multicolored costumes and are more likely to set their films on gritty streets than in glamorous mansions. "Kaminey would be able to compete with any film in the world in terms of its design, per-form-ances, inherent narratives, editing, pace—everything," says the Indian-born Hollywood director Shekhar Kapur, whose 1998 film Elizabethwas nominated for seven Academy Awards.

The stakes are higher than ever. The Indian entertainment and media industry is projected to grow 11 percent a year from 2009 to 2013, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers—well above the global average of 2.7 percent. Hollywood studios, encouraged by the global success of India-inspired projects like The Namesake and Slumdog Millionaire, want a piece of that pie. This year UTV inked an agreement to distribute movies for Walt Disney Pictures in India, following Disney's $200 million investment in UTV in 2008. With the release of this year's Chandni Chowk to China, Warner Bros. became the third major Hollywood studio to produce a Bollywood film. Indian billionaire industrialist Anil Ambani recently formed an $825 million joint venture to produce films with Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks. And early next year Ambani's film company, Reliance Big Entertainment, will release the multicultural romance Kites. Starring Bollywood hunk Hrithik Roshan and set in Las Vegas, Kites—purported to be India's costliest film ever—will get a heavy push in the U.S. market. "Indian companies are starting to realize that there's a world outside India, and you can make a difference by looking at the global market," says Timmy Kandhari, who heads Price-water-house-Coopers's India Entertainment and Media practice.

The new wave of competent, realistic, story-driven films is already beginning to overshadow the big-budget projects at the box office. This year both Anurag Kashyap's Dev.D and Kaminey outperformed Chandni Chowk to China. In 2008, little, innovative flicks like the terror-plot drama A Wednesday and Rock On!, the story of a Mumbai rock band reuniting for one last gig, earned better returns than more conventional Bollywood fare like the superhero action flick Drona.

Some of the biggest stars of the old-style genre films—Shah Rukh Khan, Amir Khan, and Priyanka Chopra, among others—have begun to embrace the new medium. Even Johar, who as the director of the glitzy but vapid films Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham remains the poster boy of everything wrong with Bollywood, has begun to show interest in coherent stories and realistic acting. "We're doing three movies with Karan Johar right now, and all three are much more heavy on script," says Ronnie Screwvala of UTV Motion Pictures. "Every single emotion in there is real."

As Kaminey's playful use of classic Bollywood tropes suggests, the best of the new movies still have at heart a self-reflexive interest in the old films. Kashyap's Dev.D, for instance, is the 10th remake of one of Bollywood's most successful classics, Devdas. Kashyap plays off previous treatments, which depicted the title character as a doomed romantic, to explore modern India's ideas about female sexuality. In his version, the elegant courtesan Chanda becomes a sex worker in Delhi's grimy ghetto, and the dreamy Dev is a filthy drug addict. But where prior versions condemned them to a tragic end, Kashyap allows them to find redemption in sexual love. And by practically throwing the audience's beloved story in its face, he turned a movie with the whiff of the art house—ordinarily the kiss of death in India—into a box-office hit. "Everybody thinks they know what Bollywood cinema is, and they often [associate it with] commercial Hindi cinema," says Emmanuel Grimaud, an anthropologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, who worked on the film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. "But nobody really knows what it is because it is changing so much. 'Bollywood' is just a label."

It's a label that still carries a lot of weight. Everyone is trying to lay claim to the new Bollywood, whether through feebly acted, poorly written films like A. R. Murugadoss's Ghajini or savvy hits like Kaminey. But the challenges remain great. "The headwind we got on Kaminey was incredible," says Screwvala. "It took everything we had to keep it going and market it and get it out there." It's the kind of triumphant ending that makes you want to break into song.

With Anita Kirpalani in New York

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/224587

singh's rural employment schemes lead to inflation

By Jason Overdorf
Newsweek (October 2, 2009)

Even as India's government pours $5 billion into a scheme to ease rural unemployment, its plan may be contributing to an inflationary spiral that's making the cost of living more burdensome for the country's poor. According to a new report from the National Council of Applied Economic Research, the rate of rural wage increases doubled to nearly 8 percent after 2006, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh implemented his rural-employment guarantees. However, the rural poor didn't benefit as much as expected, because the price of basic commodities rose just as fast. Critics blame Singh's program for the bout of inflation, while proponents argue that the total outlay amounts to less than 1 percent of GDP─hardly enough to cause India's inflation woes. Either way, the plight suggests that the rural poor need not just more jobs but better ones. If they could produce more with the same amount of labor, that would increase the amount of basic goods available and bring down prices. But there's another sticking point: the government has amassed mammoth food reserves, which critics say has created an artificial shortage─and higher prices. Singh is eager to help India's poor, but good will doesn't guarantee good results.

Singh's 100-day plan to revolutionize India

He may be shy, but his 100-day plan for India is strikingly bold.

Jason Overdorf and Sudip Mazumdar
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jun 15, 2009
For much of the past 15 years, Indian politics were so chaotic that a prime minister would spend most of his first 100 days focused on a single objective: holding onto power. But Manmohan Singh's surprisingly decisive victory in last month's election—coupled with the global economic crisis—has suddenly put him on an American president's schedule: you have 100 days, now get to work fast.

Believing that the Congress Party's near-majority in Parliament will free Singh to slash red tape and spur growth, bankers, columnists, lobbyists and think tanks have spent the time since the poll results were announced on May 16 issuing a torrent of to-do lists for the prime minister. But probably the boldest and most innovative agenda has come from Singh himself. Conceived during the election campaign, at a time when nobody else had much faith in him, his 100-day plan is filled with specific, substantive measures that range from selling stakes in state-owned companies to restructuring rules on public-private partnerships to removing bottlenecks that have delayed some $15 billion worth of road projects to enacting a new food-security law. Together, the advances might just amount to the big-bang reforms that India has been awaiting for nearly a decade now. And having vanquished his foes on the left and the right and earned the unquestioning faith of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, his party's leaders, Singh might even manage to get it all done.

Not everyone is happy with his plans. Despite being best-known as the architect of India's economic opening in 1991, today the prime minister's got other things on his mind. He, Sonia and Rahul are intent on reforming—or transforming—India, but not in a way prescribed by international moneymen or CEOs. Instead, under the shorthand "inclusive growth," they aim to carve out a new path that, if successful, could provide a road map for developing countries worldwide.

Central to their goal are measures some people might not consider reforms at all. First among them are a National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and a Right to Information Act (RTI). Decried by some economists as a populist sop, the NREGS is in fact designed to revolutionize India's leaky bureaucratic mechanism for dispersing money and to free the poor from exploitative middlemen by channeling an unprecedented level of funds (and decision-making power) to village-level elected officials. Singh believes that, like Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, this stimulus plan will put money in the hands of the people most likely to spend it well and will create a social safety net that will help unleash their productive capacities. Meanwhile, Congress plans to expand the use of the RTI, which was enacted in 2005, and to pass a few new laws to make bureaucrats, politicians and judges more accountable by shining a bright light on their activities.

In a country where even the trash in a government wastebasket is frequently considered classified information, the RTI is groundbreaking. Under the law, ordinary people can for the first time get a look at the books of their local ration shops, say, or at government departments—and see what corrupt officials have been skimming off the top, delivering to fictitious beneficiaries, or just plain stealing. And because the information must be made available within 30 days or the official in charge will face immediate punishment, whistleblowers get results from RTI cases much faster than they would from India's progressive but slow-as-molasses legal system.

Still, until recently, no one has pushed RTI far enough to enjoy its full potential. Now Rahul is striving to do just that by urging youth to storm the barricades of the bureaucracy with an ever-expanding number of RTI cases. The effects could be revolutionary. In Uttar Pradesh—India's largest state and a place where the Congress Party made a huge and unexpected surge in the recent election—Shailendra Singh, a former police officer who now heads the party's RTI cell, became such an irritant in September that the state's chief minister, Mayawati, had him arrested. With the rise of Rahul's youth brigade, there could soon be thousands of other gadflies just as irritating.

This isn't to suggest that the prime minister's 100-day agenda is only aimed at the poor and destitute. It also includes controversial measures that bankers have been advocating for a long time, such as the sale of state-owned enterprises. Though Singh himself has only said that disinvestment of public-sector units "will be tackled by the finance minister in the budget," sales of shares in Oil India Ltd. and the hydropower firm NHPC Ltd.—which were approved for IPOs of 10 percent and 5 percent, respectively, in 2007 but then blocked by the left—are reported to top the agenda. Deregulation of the oil industry—another move the left opposed because it would mean higher prices at the pump—is now also expected to be put before the cabinet within six to eight weeks. Instead of a vague pledge to increase capacity, the Power ministry has promised to deliver 5,600 megawatts of new power by the end of August and to unveil three 4,000 megawatt projects in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Orissa within 100 days. Investors have already taken note, pumping more than $4 billion into Indian equity markets in May and sending the benchmark Sensex on a 28 percent climb.

It's no small irony that all these measures are being driven forward by such a humble, soft-spoken man. At public gatherings Singh often seems to step backward and offer the microphone to someone else. The modest prime minister was denigrated during the campaign as the weakest leader in India's history. But he has turned his apparent shortcomings as a politician—his poor oratorical skills and incapacity for court intrigue—into strengths. His reputation for honesty is unparalleled in a country where a fourth of the legislature faces criminal charges or investigations and politicians have come to be generally reviled. Singh's name has never been mentioned in association with any scandal. And his refusal to trumpet his achievements or play political games has endeared him to the public and given him a reputation for impartiality, which has allowed him to build consensus and should help him implement his agenda. "He's been a very good arbiter when two departments disagree, or there's a disagreement between ministers," said Transport Minister Kamal Nath, who was Commerce minister in charge of World Trade Organization negotiations during Singh's first term.

The prime minister has another big weapon helping him in his current campaign: he knows what he's talking about. The Oxford-educated economist has served as governor of India's central bank, head of its planning commission and as finance minister—a unique résumé for a world leader and an especially potent one during the current crisis. "Others have to depend on so many inputs, and have to be briefed and have to try to understand. He briefs the others. He's a man who understands the subject better than any world leader today," says Nath. In these economic times, it turns out, you can afford to speak softly—if you carry a big calculator.

Just as important as his own qualities, though, is the degree of support that Singh now enjoys from Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul, the dynasty's emerging heir apparent. Singh today is not so much India's prime minister as the leader of its first triumvirate. Yet the clear division of responsibilities makes him more powerful, not less. With Sonia managing the internecine rivalries within the party and Rahul focused on rebuilding Congress's grassroots network, the prime minister can concentrate on policy, not the party's next campaign. It's a unique political formulation for India and, as the recent election showed, a formidable one. While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was derailed by divisions among its various leaders, Sonia and Rahul squashed internal efforts to undermine Singh's candidacy, performed the heavy lifting for him on the campaign trail and protected him from opposition attacks. Since concerns about her Italian birth forced Sonia to make Singh her surrogate in 2004, the two have developed a strong relationship built on mutual trust and respect. That good feeling facilitated Rahul's entry into their troika and should help when he someday assumes the top spot. "Singh needs Sonia as much as Sonia needs him. And they work very well in tandem," says a senior Congress leader who asked not to be identified.

Singh is far from Sonia's puppet, as some allege. This became especially clear during the negotiation of the nuclear pact with the U.S. last year. Though there was much domestic pressure to scrap the deal, Singh managed to convince Sonia that it would end India's isolation and make it a much larger player in world affairs, even offering his resignation if the pact were scuttled, according to one of his former aides. Since then, with the emergence of Rahul, the team has become more effective. Though outwardly very different, the three leaders have much in common. For example, all are sensitive to the plight of India's minorities: Singh because he is a Sikh, Sonia because she was born a Christian and Rahul because he is linked through his grandfather to the tiny Parsi community. All three share a loathing for the Hindu supremacist rhetoric of the rival BJP. And all three are courteous and humble, traits that have endeared them to an electorate accustomed to imperious behavior from its pols.

Now the triumvirate's big challenge is living up to expectations. They face a slothful political system that is a holdover of the colonial mindset and they must contend with a culture of bureaucratic obstructionism that has outlasted many previous would-be reformers. Entrenched interests within Congress itself will also no doubt seek to derail Singh's programs and the Gandhis' efforts to make the party more democratic and to allow fresh faces to emerge. But with his newly enhanced grip on the reins of government, Singh knows that his 100-day deadline is a nominal one intended to light a fire underneath his subordinates. He has a full five years to perform. That said, the stakes couldn't be higher. This is more than Congress's big chance; it is India's. Failing to capitalize on it would be costly indeed, for the party, the country, and most of all, for its citizens.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/200866

the house in ill repute

New rules have exposed just how many thieves and murderers sit in India's Parliament.

Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK
March 16, 2009

Indian members of Parliament went home last week amid hoots and howls, derided as the sorriest lot ever to disgrace the halls of the world's largest democracy. The 14th Lok Sabha, or People's House, met for only 46 days in the past year—the fewest ever—because of disruptions caused by its many dubious members. One in 10 members didn't participate in a single debate. Eleven M.P.s were expelled for taking bribes. The coal minister was compelled to step down when he was convicted of murder (though he was later acquitted on appeal). And when the opposition called for a confidence vote, several members had to be transported to the People's House from the big house—where two of them are serving life sentences for murder—to participate. As the legislators adjourned last week, House Speaker Somnath Chatterjee wished them good riddance: "You do not deserve one paisa [cent] of public money," he scolded. "I hope all of you are defeated in the next election."

That's not likely. Parties in India have long used allies with shady pasts to influence voters. But as the power of the national parties waned—accelerating in the late 1990s—because of the rise of caste- and ethnicity-based regional players, alleged and convicted criminals began to play a broader role. No single party has won enough parliamentary seats to govern alone since the Congress party did so in 1984, and the number of seats won by India's six national parties—which include the Congress, the BJP and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)—fell from 477 in 1991 to 388 in 2004. Now, in many constituencies, there are four or five significant parties, and the share of the vote needed to win a seat has fallen as low as 15 percent. As a result, criminal strongmen no longer need to throw their support behind a leading politician, because the number of votes they need is small enough that they can win elected office themselves. With regional players well positioned for the next general election on April 16, there is some chance that a politician who has undergone a criminal investigation could become the prime minister.

The 14th Lok Sabha was the first in which it was crystal clear just how many members were alleged crooks. Thanks to new rules pushed into law by a group of fed-up college professors after years of resistance from dozens of political parties, candidates for the Lok Sabha for the first time had to disclose their assets and criminal records. The disclosures seemed to have little impact on the 2004 election: 128 of the 543 winners had faced criminal charges, including 84 cases of murder, 17 cases of robbery and 28 cases of theft and extortion. Many face multiple criminal counts—including one M.P. who faces 17 separate murder charges—and no major party is beyond reproach. Because the disclosure requirement is new, it's impossible to plot a trend line, but most experts say the situation is deteriorating. "The general opinion is that the influence of criminals in politics is steadily increasing," says Himanshu Jha of the National Social Watch Coalition.

Indian law bars convicted criminals, not alleged criminals, from running for office, but a loophole allows even convicts to continue in politics as long as the case is under appeal. In India, that can mean 25 or 30 years, the course of an entire career. And the problem goes well beyond alleged criminals who hold elected office.

Due to a fractured electorate and rampant flouting of campaign-spending limits, gangsters have muscled into positions of influence close to Parliament, and the problem is spreading. While the middle class protests, party workers distribute liquor and cash to woo voters in the slums. In lawless states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, thugs intimidate poor farmers into toeing the line. In riot-torn Gujarat and West Bengal, party cadres are alleged to harass and threaten nonsympathizers, sometimes confiscating their voter-registration cards. And elsewhere, aspirants like Raj Thackeray of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena—known for beating up migrants coming to Mumbai to hunt for jobs—use vandalism masked as street demonstrations to raise their political profiles. "Whether you call them goons or you call them political activists," says Jha, "it is becoming a blurred line."

The havoc created by India's criminal politicians is wide-ranging. Criminals seek political office to enrich themselves and gain protection from prosecution, and they easily pervert the police and the administration to their private purposes. When police officers or magistrates attempt to enforce the law, a powerful M.P. can engineer their transfer; in 2005 M.P. and convicted murderer Mohammed Shahabuddin of Bihar arranged the transfer of a magistrate who had sought to bar Shahabuddin from the district as a threat to public order.

Even on a matter as vital as last year's nuclear pact with the U.S., the alleged criminality of key politicians is believed to have made a crucial difference in the path India chose. When Singh and the Congress party opted to go ahead with the pact, their allies from the left parties withdrew their support for the government, forcing a confidence vote. After some frenzied horse-trading, the legislators of the Samajwadi Party—whose leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav, was under scrutiny for corruption by the Central Bureau of Investigation—switched positions to support the nuclear pact and volunteered to replace the left parties in the coalition. The government survived, and the pact went through. But soon after, stories of mysterious briefcases full of cash traveling from party offices to the homes of M.P.s began to circulate. The CBI—often criticized for acting as a political tool of the ruling party—dropped its case against the Samajwadi Party leader. And the probe into the "cash for votes" scandal fizzled before it even started.

The major parties are not above all this. In the outgoing Parliament, 26 Congress M.P.s and 29 BJP M.P.s faced criminal charges. About a fifth of the representatives of the two major parties were under investigation. Nor has either party been shy about giving ministerial posts to politicians accused of serious crimes. For example, Congress installed Shibu Soren as coal minister even though he was at the time under trial for the alleged kidnapping and murder of his former personal secretary and the alleged massacre of 11 people in sectarian violence. (He was later acquitted in both cases.) "The sole criterion for a candidate has become what they call 'winnability,' not his character, not his performance, not his competence, not his ability to assess national issues," says Arun Shourie, a former journalist who is now a leading member of the BJP. "In this way, people you would not give a job to—in fact, you'd make sure that they don't come near your organization—have become part of the legislature."

Come April, experts agree, the list of candidates competing for office is likely once again to be significantly shorter than the list of criminal charges against them. Even the mainstream political parties have resisted change. When the college profs first mobilized as the Association for Democratic Reforms in 1999, filing suit to force candidates to disclose criminal records, it sailed through the Delhi courts. Then the BJP, the Congress and 20 other political parties united to stymie the new rules through legal technicalities, delaying implementation for years. ADR member Jagdish Chhokar says the official resistance proved two things: that "the political establishment can be united" on an issue they care about and "that the government can be efficient," at least in defense of thugs in office.

Standards have indeed fallen so low that neither the BJP nor the Congress have pledged to eliminate even violent offenders from their rosters and instead must rely on the argument that their criminals are cleaner on average than others'.

"Neither the Congress nor the BJP have people with serial, cognizable offenses," says BJP spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy, arguing for a distinction "between crimes of moral turpitude" and "heinous" crimes. Congress spokesman Satyavrat Chaturvedi says, "I can't say there's never been a case where a criminal has been given a ticket, [but] professional criminals, habitual criminals, those people will not get tickets."

It makes one wonder: How many murder charges are required before you're considered unfit to represent the good people of India?

With Sudip Mazumdar in Kolkata

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/188166

the boom from the bottom

Isolated from world trends, India's aspiring poor will help it grow through the credit storm.

Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jan 19, 2009

Though it may not look it on the ground at times, India is one of the few bright spots in a global economy with decidedly dim prospects in 2009. It is forecast to grow at a robust 5 to 6 percent this year—which is faster than it averaged in the 1990s, and nearly double the rate of expansion over the country's first three decades of independence. Yes, its stock market has crashed, unemployment is spiking, swaths of the real-estate market have more than a passing resemblance to Miami Beach and it now turns out that Satyam Computer Services—one of the country's top five IT companies—has been cooking its books. But a one off incident of fraud in the flagship IT sector won't knock the country off the rails. India boasts an unlikely growth driver all its own: legions of poor whose incomes have risen just enough in recent years to create powerful demands for basic goods and services.

The rise of India's aspiring middle—a group that lives above the poverty line but hasn't yet attained true membership in modern consumer society—is hardly a new story. But what's surprising is the resilience of this cohort, and the extent to which it has counterbalanced the global credit crisis and the slump in the global export economy of which India is a key player. In part, this is a consequence of New Delhi's past failures; policymakers were never able to make India the export powerhouse that China has become over the past three decades, so now they don't rely nearly as heavily on growth driven by investment and demand from foreign markets.

Yet Indian planners deserve some credit, too, for avoiding a national addiction to cheap credit and creating "growth multipliers" like roads and telecom networks that now link the country's vast interior to modern cities. "The basic component of domestic demand [in India] is consumer demand, because people still have incomes to earn," says Saumitra Chaudhuri, chief economist at ICRA, an Indian credit-ratings agency affiliated with Moody's. "And those incomes are not substantially influenced by international developments."

The idea that Indian backwardness is a plus may sound absurd. But it is always easier to grow from a poor base, so the fact that India is not yet a major economy is an advantage in a downturn. A population so large that subsists at such a low economic base is a powerful economic driver if it can be mobilized. India's has been, and it is proving resilient to the prevailing headwinds in the global economy. "It's kind of a self-sustaining process," says Subir Gokarn, chief economist at Crisil, the Indian arm of Standard & Poor's. "There's a huge, huge underpenetration of most commodities and services, and you have enough people at the bottom experiencing enough of an increase in income to sustain growth."

So even as middle-class consumption wanes in India—signified by a sharp drop in auto sales, airline travel and fine restaurant dining since mid-2008—domestic demand remains strong thanks to aspiring consumers, many still tied to the farms, who spend their rupees on essentials like soap, medicine and the shoes and clothing that they wear to work. As Gokarn puts it: "If you go back to the economic textbooks, they will tell you that the poorer you are, the stronger your propensity to consume."

The contrast with China, Asia's other economic giant, is stark. Domestic demand makes up three quarters of the Indian economy, compared with less than half for China, which is "why, relative to East Asian economies, India is somewhat insulated from the global trade slowdown," says Shankar Acharya, a former chief economic adviser to the government. Another Indian mainstay—agricultural growth—should remain steady this year, and the services sector, which now accounts for about 55 percent of India's GDP, is expected to be "more resilient" than manufacturing, says Acharya.

Despite the financial crisis, the nation's IT sector managed to grow some 20 percent in 2008, according to India's National Association of Software and Services Companies, and IT companies have already extended 100,000 new job offers for 2009. "For whatever reason, China has been highly focused on the export market, while Indian business has been highly focused on the domestic market, and their exports have been incidental," says Chaudhuri. Which makes India, more than China, a master of its own destiny.

The conventional wisdom has always held that India failed to become an export-driven dynamo on the Chinese model because its democratic system couldn't deliver the hard infrastructure and soft labor laws needed to manufacture competitively. While there is some truth to that, what is often overlooked is how much India's current growth multipliers—all of them linked to infrastructure—resemble China's in the 1980s.

One example: India's ambitious program to expand the national highway system, launched in 2003, which is now adding about 100 kilometers of highway per day to the grid. Each new strip of pavement links additional villagers to urban markets, allowing them to fetch more for what they grow or make and to travel farther afield for wage-paying jobs. Capitalized at a whopping 5 percent of GDP in 2000, India's rural roads program will ultimately connect all Indian villages of more than 500 people to one another with all-weather roads. Fewer than half of these villages had roads of any sort when the project started. Similarly, in a six-phase national project, the National Highway Authority plans to add or upgrade nearly 30,000 kilometers of highway, which would expand the existing system by a third.

Telecommunications has made faster inroads. In 2008 the subscriber base for India's national telecom network topped 350 million people, and India's telecom market is now growing faster than even China's. Charges have dropped to less than 50 U.S. cents per call. That connectedness has a huge potential impact on incomes in a job market "extremely sensitive to how quickly one can get information," says Gokarn. There's also the IT sector itself to consider. It has created 1.8 million jobs directly over the past decade, and as many as 6.5 million more support jobs for drivers, security guards and gofers with primary or high school educations. That has put rupees into the hands of people "more likely to spend it rather than save it," says Gokarn, and though job creation will slow as the IT sector cools off, the huge workforce creates a good deal of momentum.

India's bottom-up boom can't drive the economy at full speed, to be sure. But it is largely immune to the downturn that's evident higher up the consumer chain. The stock bust hasn't affected the aspiring underclass because its members are not invested in the markets, and they're not to blame for the drop in auto sales because they're too poor to afford cars. Even the housing bust is far removed from them; despite the glut of top-end condos in places like Mumbai and New Delhi, India as a whole is suffering an acute housing shortage. The problem: construction companies all aimed for the top of the market, leaving the lower tiers underserved. According to the National Planning Commission, urban India needs an additional 24.7 million ordinary homes to satisfy current demand. As evidence of this unquenchable thirst, when the Delhi Development Authority held a lottery last year to find buyers for 5,000 affordable flats it built in the city, some 500,000 applications flooded in.

The mismatch illuminates India's way forward. Like many other governments, New Delhi recently announced a major new spending package aimed at bolstering growth. And it, too, seeks to spur domestic demand. Yet the main target isn't the urban middle, as in China or the United States, but the poor. In October, Parliament approved additional spending of about $50 billion (or 4.5 percent of GDP) to boost salaries of government workers, waive farm loans, further fund the rural-employment-guarantee program and finance petroleum bonds so that oil and fertilizer companies can keep prices low. "While there are legitimate concerns about the long-term impact of some of these measures," says Gokarn, "they will undoubtedly help boost consumption spending, particularly by lower income households, which in turn will help shore up growth in the immediate future."

India avoided a U.S.-style housing bust and is better positioned to pump money into the cash-starved financial system today because its much-maligned central bank was never wooed by the allure of easy money—no matter how loudly industry clamored for faster growth. When the central banks of other countries were essentially offering free money, India's realized that, as a democracy of mostly poor voters, it couldn't afford to grow at 10 percent a year if that meant skyrocketing prices for essential commodities like rice and flour. For that reason, the central bank constricted the money inflating the real-estate bubble (and prices for everything else) by raising interest rates to a peak of 12.5 percent last summer, which earned it criticism for being out of step with more aggressively growth-oriented central banks. Because of this, India has ample ground clearance to lower rates and reduce reserve requirements for banks to spur growth and avert deflation.

The private sector is in pretty solid financial shape, too. The central bank kept a close eye on both state-owned and private banks, preventing them from leveraging to perilous heights by keeping the cash reserve ratio high, limiting the use of securitizations and derivatives and essentially barring the off-balance sheet vehicles that U.S. banks used, disastrously, to hide their debt. As a result, India's banks aren't sitting on a mountain of bad loans, which makes them freer to lend to companies in need. Indian companies, cognizant of the cash crunch that burned them in the late 1990s, didn't overextend this time, either. "[One] great source of strength is India's corporate sector, who have much stronger balance sheets [than in the past]," says Chaudhuri.

One sign of that is companies that are putting their wealth to work. In December, India's Wipro Technologies purchased Citigroup's captive IT services firm Citi Technology Services for $127 million in cash, and in October, Tata Consultancy Services was able to buy Citi's business process outsourcing business, Citigroup Global Services, paying $505 million. Both moves suggest that reports of the IT sector's demise in India are greatly exaggerated.

The biggest risk to India in 2009 at this point may not be the global economy but domestic politics. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's United Progressive Alliance will see its term expire in May, and India's election rules mean that he can no longer enact any significant policies—a measure adopted to prevent incumbents from stacking the deck with populist sops. That means as much as five months of paralysis, precisely when speedy, creative action is the order of the day. Moreover, though the nemesis of Singh's Congress party—the Bharatiya Janata Party—mostly favors similar policies, a change in government would likely result in some further slowing of infrastructure projects that are already running behind schedule. And elections in India can be tricky. In the last one, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance lost despite racing economic growth, because poor voters rejected the BJP's campaign claims of an "India Shining."

With the light bulb flickering, Singh's Congress may face an even bigger challenge winning them over. The poor don't care how much faster than other nations India is growing, only whether their lives are better than they were five years ago.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/178814

from bollywood to hollywood

The "Mozart from Madras" is ready for his close up after winning a Golden Globe for "Slumdog Millionaire."

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
January 12, 2009

NEW DELHI — Calling India's A.R. Rahman — who won a Golden Globe award for the score of "Slumdog Millionaire" last night — the best composer you've never heard of is beyond understatement.

Known locally as "the Mozart from Madras," Rahman has sold over 200 million albums worldwide: more than Madonna and Britney Spears combined. But the truth of the matter is you probably can't hum one of his songs. That's about to change.

"There are a number of gifts that single [Rahman] out as special. His handling of rhythmical elements is astonishing and his solutions very South Indian," said Ken Hunt, one of the authors of the upcoming third edition of "The Rough Guide to World Music." "His melodies are catchy, clever and reveal a command of theatrical music techniques," Hunt adds. "He was pretty much ready for the big time from the get-go."

And now the big time is ready for him. With a multicultural soundtrack unlike anything he's ever done for Bollywood, the 43-year-old composer-singer-producer might be on his way to becoming America's hottest new hand on the mixing board. Indian-origin DJs in New York and London have been saying it for years, but now it just may be true. Brown is the new black.

As far as Indians are concerned, it's about time. Audiences here, where "Slumdog Millionaire" has not yet been released, have been overjoyed by the film's surprise victories at the Critics' Choice and Golden Globe awards. Here's one tribute: Only three Indian films ever have been nominated for an Oscar in the foreign language category, "Mother India" (1957), "Salaam Bombay!" (1988) and "Lagaan" (2001). None took home the prize.

So even though "Slumdog" — written by Simon Beaufoy and directed by Danny Boyle — is not technically an Indian production, or even a Bollywood-style film, the accolades for Rahman have provided some validation for the larger-than-life musicals that Indians often simply call "our films."

Rahman, who started to learn the piano at the age of 4, is something of a Slumdog Millionaire himself. After his father died, he was forced to start work as a keyboard player to support his family at just 11 years old. He later dropped out of high school to pursue his music career. About that same time, he converted from Hinduism to Islam, a brave choice in a country where Muslims often face persecution. But he says Islam "set [him] free."

From his humble beginnings, Rahman swiftly became one of Bollywood's biggest money spinners — a kind of Indian Quincy Jones — virtually owning the industry for more than a decade. His hits, like Chaiya Chaiya, Chhoti Si Asha and Thee Thee, have as much enduring appeal as any Beatles standard, and not only for Bollywood fans. "A.R. Rahman is nothing short of a melodic genius," Andrew Lloyd Webber has said. "I admire his unique sense of harmony, his staggering rhythms and his melodies that take an unexpected twist that no Western composer would dream of."

Bollywood insiders know that kind of staggering genius can make or break a film in India. "In Indian cinema, the music is such an important part of it that music can save a mediocre film," says film critic Jai Arjun Singh. "With Rahman, it happens frequently."

That's not an overstatement. Marketers use song-and-dance numbers from movies for the trailers, videos on Channel V and MTV drive repeat business, and soundtrack sales and music video rights account for a significant part of the picture's revenue.

That's why Indian producers swear by him. "He has demonstrated fusion of west and east more than most musicians over the world," said Ronnie Screwvala, chief executive of UTV Motion Pictures, one of India's most successful film production companies. "All our tent pole [productions] have always been Rahman [films]—from Swades to Rang De Basanti to Jodha Akhbar and Delhi 6."

Nevertheless, though he performed with Michael Jackson and wrote the music for Webber's Broadway musical Bombay Dreams and the stage production of the Lord of the Rings, Rahman was virtually unknown to Western fans until last night.
Now he has to be considered a frontrunner for an Oscar, and a raft of offers from record companies and producers in the U.S. music industry.

Here comes the close up.

buying peace of mind

India turns to the private sector for security New Delhi can't provide.

Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Dec 22, 2008

India's private-security industry has exploded in recent years, thanks to the country's longstanding terrorism problem and its inept police forces. Now business is likely to grow even faster in the wake of the Mumbai killings.

Just ask Vikram Singh, India's best-known private detective. Singh, who favors natty clothes and a Hercule Poirot mustache, has had a career that embodies the meteoric growth of his profession. Now chairman of the Central Association of the Private Security Industry (CAPSI), the 60-year-old former intelligence officer bet on the security business 30 years ago, when the Indian industry had no major players and security meant hiring an untrained guard with a club and a whistle. But Singh saw potential, and in 1995, he talked George Wackenhut, founder of the U.S.-based Wackenhut Corp., into forming a joint venture. Six years later, Singh sold his stake to focus on his own investigation agency, Lancers, which is now India's top-rated risk-consulting firm.

Now others are trying to get into the world's hottest market for private security, valued at $2 billion to $3 billion and employing 5.5 million personnel. Even before the Nov. 26 Mumbai attacks, the Indian industry was growing at an astounding clip of 35 percent. This year alone saw the founding of 200 new companies, and the sector expects to add 1 million new employees in 2009, which would make it India's largest employer. And that figure dates from before the attacks. Six international companies from Israel and Germany have also approached CAPSI about providing antiterrorism training, and surveillance-equipment companies are flocking in.

The reason is simple, says terrorism expert Ajai Sahni. India's police are dramatically understaffed, ill equipped and overburdened. "Our public systems are collapsing because there has for decades been insufficient investment in agencies meant to protect civilians," Sahni says. India has 1.45 police for every 1,000 citizens, less than half the global average, according to the United Nations. Meanwhile, the gap between rich and poor, sectarian tensions and external terrorist threats have all intensified, driving demand for protection. India's crime rate is rising, and incidents like the recent lynching of a multinational's CEO have stoked fears. Then there are the more than 4,000 terrorist attacks India suffered between 1970 and 2004.

The government's failure to respond has left the field open for private operators. But that's raised its own problems. The quality of many firms is questionable; around 200 Indian firms approach international standards, at least on paper, but 15,000 more operate under the radar without much training or background checks for personnel. Poorly enforced regulations mean that most guards earn less than the legal minimum wage. "It's by and large an exploitative industry, with poorly qualified, poorly trained recruits being flogged out by largely mercenary security agencies," said Sahni. The rent-a-cops are also barred by law from carrying guns, which can make them poor substitutes for the real deal.

Post-Mumbai, many Indian companies are demanding more sophisticated protection and better-trained, better-educated guards. Consumers are also migrating to globally recognized brands. "In the U.S. or Europe, security professionals get paid $25,000 to $60,000 a year," Arjun Wallia, chairman of Walsons-Securitas, said. "Whereas in the security industry here you get $100 a month. You pay peanuts, and you get monkeys."

The central government has also finally stepped in and, and after 10 years of lobbying by CAPSI, introduced legislation that requires firms to get a license and set norms for training and compensation. Among other things, the new law requires companies to give their guards a minimum of 160 hours of training. CAPSI is also making improvements voluntarily. It has formed agreements with three state governments to organize job fairs in rural areas and provide training facilities, and it is in talks with four other states.

In the meantime, business is booming. Singh says that about 25 percent of the work done by India's police could be outsourced. Already New Delhi is considering entrusting CAPSI with access control for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, and high-ranking police officers are keen to farm out grunt work. The Army chief of staff estimates that 80,000 troops currently work as security guards and is considering outsourcing some of those jobs at noncritical locations, says Singh.

If these programs succeed, private security firms, rather than the beleaguered public sector, could soon become the country's first line of defense. In many ways, they already are.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/174525
© 2008

no fanning the flames

India avoids lashing out at Pakistan and its own Muslims after the Mumbai attacks.

Jason Overdorf and Sudip Mazumdar
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Dec 15, 2008

Most people probably expected the Nov. 26 terrorist attacks on Mumbai to lead to another showdown between India and Pakistan. After all, the last time Islamic militants carried out such a major attack, on Delhi in 2001, the Indian government massed troops on the Pakistani border. Now as then, evidence suggests that the militants were trained and equipped by groups operating in Pakistan. And to dampen the flames, Washington has so far done little more than suggest that Islamabad cooperate with the Indian investigation and crack down on suspects.

Last week, when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the region, thousands of Indians did take to the streets of Mumbai, Delhi and other cities to protest. Yet while there were a few scattered chants of "Death to Pakistan," the marchers, who carried roses, candles and posters, directed most of the ire not at India's perennial enemy, the terrorists, or the ruling Congress party. Their anger was reserved for India's politicians in general. The protesters' slogan: "Enough is enough."

The marchers had plenty to be mad about. According to the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database, India has suffered more than 4,000 terrorist attacks since 1970, with an average of about one killing per day. But India's leaders have taken little action to protect the population, even while ensuring themselves heavy security. The government also appeared clueless in the face of the Mumbai attacks and took hours to respond.

Yet there's been remarkably little jingoism in the overall reaction. India's leaders, its media and its population—even the far right—have largely rejected the kind of anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim rhetoric the terrorists must have hoped for. This forbearance won't last forever, especially if Pakistan fails to cooperate with India's demand for a crackdown on militants. But for the time being, India is surprising many Western observers—and even some Indian ones—by maintaining a resolute calm and refusing to rattle its saber.

Despite comparisons in the Indian media, the nation's reaction so far to "26/11" has differed profoundly from America's response to 9/11, Spain's to 3/11 or London's to 7/7. Indians have neither rallied round their leader and demanded he pull up the drawbridges, as Americans did to George W. Bush, nor rushed to throw out a bungling government, as the Spanish did to José María Aznar after he misled voters about the involvement of Basque separatists.

There have been no clashes between Indian Hindus and Muslims. Nor has there been a swing to embrace Hindu nationalism. Indeed, opposition politicians who have sought to capitalize on the mayhem have been roundly punished for it. For example, Narendra Modi, the BJP chief minister of Gujarat, rushed to Mumbai after the attacks to lionize the slain head of Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad. But Mumbai denizens greeted Modi with boos and accused him of political opportunism.

The official response, meanwhile, has been studiously measured. India's home minister and both the chief minister of Maharashtra and his deputy have resigned. A review of India's intelligence system has begun and New Delhi has called on Pakistan to extradite 20 suspects. Pranab Mukherjee, India's foreign minister, has sent mixed messages in recent speeches, first ruling out military action against Pakistan and then, during Rice's visit, reversing tack and warning that India will use "all the means at [its] disposal." But overall, the government's behavior has been anything but warlike.

The reason, says Mahesh Rangarajan of Delhi University, is that "India has learned that a hysterical response does not serve any purpose." Experience shows that rash action only makes things worse. Congress party sources point out that massing troops on the border, as the BJP-led government did following terror attack on India's Parliament in December 2001, accomplished nothing—except to ensure that the BJP was roundly criticized for raising tensions. Senior government sources also admit that India can't behave like America did after 9/11 because India is "not a superpower and does not have that kind of capability," says a senior government official.

Out of necessity, then, New Delhi has turned to realpolitik. That's taken the form of "maintaining the pressure, getting the U.S. and other allies to put equal pressure on Pakistan without actually ratcheting up tension and weakening [Pakistani President Asif Ali] Zardari's position too much," says a top official who asked to remain nameless because he wasn't authorized to speak to the press.

In eschewing militarism, India is placing tremendous faith in the United States and the international community. Pundits, for example, have called on India to make its case against Pakistan at the U.N. Security Council. But this strategy is risky, for India will feel betrayed if the international or U.S. response remains tepid. And so far, the signals from Washington haven't been promising. Rice, on her visit to New Delhi, said that "there has to be direct and tough action," but she seemed—at least to Indians—to water down that message when she visited Islamabad.

Indians are already frustrated with Pakistan's behavior and its rejection of India's call to extradite the suspects. "What is disquieting is that the Pakistanis are resorting to a technical response by saying, 'Give us evidence and we will respond'," says former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal. "They're resorting to the old, stock responses, and that is sending a negative message and raising demands on the Indian side to hurt Pakistan."

Should this continue, domestic pressure will mount from the public, as well as the BJP and the radical Hindu nationalist right—especially with a national vote looming next year. The BJP will begin hammering Congress for its failure to stop terror, and if there is no action in Pakistan that, too, will come into play. "The BJP pitches its whole propaganda on that terrain," says Delhi-based political analyst Praful Bidwai.

For the time being, though, Indians are watching and waiting. The details of Rice's visit remain unclear. But unless she asked for and received quiet assurances that Islamabad intends to take some immediate, concrete steps, conditions could worsen for all parties, America included—after all, the terrorists who strike at India also work on Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan. As for India, if it feels that its forbearance has yielded nothing, this sense of betrayal could cause events to spiral out of control, bringing India and Pakistan—nuclear-armed nemeses—back to the brink once more.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/172610

a jolt to the middle classes

Rage over the Mumbai attacks is changing the nation's politics.

Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE

When Adlai Stevenson remarked that in a democracy, people get the government they deserve, he could have been talking about India. This country's middle class is reknowned for its apathy at the polls. By ceding the electoral process to the uneducated, poverty-stricken masses, they have allowed opportunistic politicians—many of whom face criminal charges—to thrive by encouraging riots and distributing booze. The crisis in Mumbai may have jolted middle-class voters out of their torpor. As Condoleezza Rice made a lightning trip to the subcontinent this week to keep tensions between India and Pakistan from spiraling out of control, thousands of middle-class Indians in Mumbai, Delhi and other major Indian cities took to the streets to protest against India's politicians, regardless of the party they belong to or whether they were in or out of power. The movement was spontaneous and amorphous, but the anger was palpable. Milind Deora, who at 32 years old is among the youngest members of the Indian Parliament, was the only politician who dared show his face among the throng. He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jason Overdorf about how the middle class anger against politicians—which included calls to vote "none of the above" in the next election and to stop paying taxes—could become a real force for change. Excerpts:

Newsweek: What do you think about the protests in Mumbai and other Indian cities against the country's politicians?

Milind Deora: In Mumbai, at least, it was a welcome step to see India's urban middle class out on the street protesting and demanding accountability from the government. I, too, took part in the protests at the Gateway of India. I went there as someone who has lived in the city, who was born in the city, and not as a member of Parliament or a politician. I think that anger and frustration and perhaps that feeling of being violated and let down by the government is definitely justified. But there has to be some solutions in place, and people have to be much more constructive. The kind of messages going around, which were all politicians are bad, and governments are bad, won't do anything to help the situation. If this is not channeled in the right way, we'll lose an opportunity.

Did the people there perceive you as the enemy, because you are a politician, or were you spared because of your youth?

There were some people who were saying, "You are a politician, and you guys have failed us." There was this anti-politician rage, for sure. But the majority of people were happy to see me. They were shaking my hand and saying, "Milind, get us out of this."

At some level, there are many things that only the government can do, and the government, by nature is made up of politicians. How do you think the protesters can take their enthusiasm for action and make it matter?

The solution is to have more powers given to local governances; a devolution of powers from the state government to Mumbai. This is an opportune moment to demand that. If there's one thing that people should demand of the government, it's that, because tomorrow this anger could be about a collapse in terms of civic infrastructure, not a terrorist attack necessarily. We need to fix the governance system and use this as an opportunity to do that.

Some politicians tried to use the attacks to gain political mileage, but they were greeted with disgust by the people. Is it possible that a politician who focuses on these administrative issues you're talking about could capitalize on this anger?

I think they could, and I'm trying to do that. But it is unfortunate. If people were disgusted by [the blatant political opportunism] then they should give these politicians and their parties a befitting reply in elections. The sad thing is, I think that once this is over and the dust settles, not only will politicians get back to their politics, but so will the electorate.

The kind of action that needs to be taken to improve security is complex, so it's difficult to sell as an election platform. Has there been talk about how to boil these complex reforms down into a campaign message?

Right now the focus is not on our communications strategy. Right now the aim is to focus on what the government is trying to do—to overhaul the entire system. The political communication part of this will come much, much later.

Your party, the Congress, sacked the home minister, as well as the chief minister and deputy chief minister of Maharashtra. Does that kind of action send a message that politicians will be held accountable, or is it just a game of musical chairs?

I think that removing chief ministers and home ministers who failed to reassure the people and failed to lead from the front can help. But 90 percent of the difference will come from re-looking at the security establishment, and that means much more than just the home minister. That means the entire bureaucracy, the intelligence agencies, the policing capability, all of that needs to be looked at and realigned.

Were you encouraged that this protest was directed at all politicians, rather than the ruling Congress party?

I didn't go there and think of it as what is the political mileage for the Congress and what is the political mileage for me. I still haven't got down to thinking of it in that sense. Even if I had not been an MP, I would have been there. I felt it was my duty to be there and show solidarity with what is happening. For me it was encouraging to see the middle class out on the street protesting, but it was also saddening to see their blind rage against politicians and the government.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/172352

down but not out

Despite the bloodshed, India's confidence is already shining through.

Jason Overdorf and George Wehrfritz
NEWSWEEK (November 28, 2008)

You couldn't strike a blow closer to the heart of Indian finance. Mumbai's downtown waterfront—the setting of the terror attacks—has been the national economic gateway since the days of the British Raj; its stock exchange sits between the two hotels besieged by gunmen, and the country's largest business groups are all headquartered nearby. So one might imagine that the gunmen who killed at least 155 people had done grave damage to one of the world's fastest growing major economies—and they'd be wrong. "There are far more important things going on in the global economy at the moment than terrorism in India," says Daniel Melser, senior economist with Moody's Economy.com in Sidney. As horrific as the attacks were, he adds, "the economic impact will be secondary."

In the coming days and weeks, India's resilience will be on full display. The show of confidence actually began Friday, when Mumbai's main stock exchange—open even as Indian commandoes were still clearing the area of terrorists—rose slightly on the day, in contrast to the NYSE post 9/11, or London markets after the 2005 bombings, which fell sharply. It may well fall further as the full impact of the worst terror attacks to hit Mumbai since a coordinated bombing campaign destroyed the stock exchange, targeted the main railway station and killed some 250 people in a single day back in 1993, but most experts agree that the jitters will eventually subside. "In the short term I'd expect that the effect will be completely negative," said Saumitra Chaudhuri, a member of the prime minister's economic advisory council. "People who do business with India will think twice about visiting, and they'll also think twice about taking any Indian exposure. But all this will pass in a month or two, [and] I don't think in the medium to longer term there will be any lasting damage."

The attacks, in short, haven't changed the India "story" that investors find so alluring. The country remains a standout among emerging markets for its large middle class, thriving service sector and low export dependency. Unlike much of the rest of Asia, its economy is driven mainly by household consumption, which makes it uniquely resilient in today's global downturn. And with growth centers in a variety of industries and geographic locations across the country, the economy isn't vulnerable to a knockout strike of the sort any terror group could deliver. All of which should keep domestic growth relatively robust and prevent foreign investors from growing too skittish—provided Indian authorities quickly reestablish order. The latest attacks "obviously escalated things … so threat perceptions [will] go up dramatically," says Subir Gokarn, chief economist at Crisil, the India arm of Standard & Poor's. "One could take New York, which despite 9/11 got back on its feet, as an example. I think Mumbai will do the same, provided the system responds strongly. That's where the uncertainty is now."

India's tourism industry is unlikely to escape a major shock. "Incredible India"—the government's flashy tourism promotion campaign—is now virtually certain to fall short of its goal of doubling arrivals from last year's five million by 2010. It may even move backwards, as did Bali's tourism trade after the 2002 nightclub bombings, losing more than a third of its traffic overnight. Yet in truth, Indian tourism is anything but incredible in a numerical sense, so all the specter of terrorism can do is erode its already small base. By comparison, Bali alone will garner 2 million foreign visitors this year, and China is expected to improve upon the 137 million it attracted in 2007. With India's GDP at about $1 trillion and tourism contributing just more than $10 billion of that, the impact of even a major slowdown would be minor.

Experts are focused on two real risks. One is that India's counterterrorism preparedness won't improve. The challenge is to remake a tiny national police force comprised mainly of high-school graduates trained to do little but wield sticks to keep unruly crowds in order. The second risk is that terrorists like the ones who paralyzed Mumbai will incite sectarian unrest between India's Hindu majority and their Muslim neighbors, who make up just 14 percent of the country's 1 billion people. Indeed, with national elections due next year, the incentive is there for leaders of political parties divided along religious and geographic lines to ramp up the extremist rhetoric to rally their core supporters—regardless of what it does to India's business climate.

So far most politicians seem to be taking the high road. L.K. Advani, leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has toned down his oft-vitriolic Hindu nationalism and called for a unified response to the terror attacks from all political parties. Gokarn says the accommodating tone is "very encouraging" but adds that, to be effective, bipartisanship must beget "an institutional framework that the next government can very quickly act on, regardless of who is in office." If not, and additional terror attacks create the impression that India's security situation is deteriorating, the gloss that its economy emits could start to come off the India story.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/171141

the rise of the hindu right

Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Dec 1, 2008

It's election season in India, and that's bad news for the hapless Congress party. Six states go to the polls in the coming month, in what some experts are calling a bellwether for next year's general election. And though the races are too close to call, some pundits say Congress is likely to fare poorly. But that's not the worst of it. The slack in four of the contests may be taken up by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—a Hindu nationalist organization that's surging in strength in a new, more aggressive form. In an especially worrisome twist, police say they recently uncovered possible links between BJP-associated Hindu nationalist organizations and suspected Hindu terrorists—a first for a mainstream Indian party.

The BJP's renewed appeal can be explained, at least in part, by timing. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is not known for his political acumen, Congress has lost the last eight state elections in a row. Now the worldwide financial crisis has sent inflation spiraling and slowed growth, further damaging the government's chances. The BJP hopes to capitalize on the bad economic conditions when voters head to the polls in Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Rajasthan this month. While nothing's guaranteed, many observers expect Congress to get trounced. "Their machine is in tatters," says Mahesh Rangarajan, a Delhi University political analyst.

While that's bad for Congress, it wouldn't necessarily be a problem for India—but for two things. First, the state elections could well forecast the fate of the Congress-led ruling coalition, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), in next nationwide poll, which must take place before May 2009. (The UPA's own rural-development minister recently said the state votes represented a "mini general election.") And second, the BJP has taken a nastier turn since it last led the country in 2004.

To get a sense of the shift, consider the BJP's candidate for prime minister this time around. Lal Krishna Advani is an aging rabble-rouser who in the mid-1990s helped gather a huge Hindu mob that tore down the 16th-century Babri Mosque, leading to riots that killed more than 2,000 people (Advani was later cleared of criminal charges). He is far more radical than his predecessor, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who served as prime minister from 1998 to 2004. And Advani's heir apparent is Gujarat's chief minister, Narendra Modi—who has been denied entry to the United States for his alleged role in the 2002 riots in Gujarat that killed more than 1,000. Not long after the riots, Modi warned a crowd that Muslims were trying to erode India's Hindu majority by having many children. "We have to teach a lesson to those who are increasing the population at an alarming rate," he said.

Then there's the alleged terror link. Since Oct. 24, the state of Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad has arrested 10 Hindu nationalists—including a lieutenant colonel in Army intelligence, a prominent Hindu spiritual leader and a former party worker from the BJP's student wing—for suspected involvement in a 2006 attack previously blamed on Muslim extremists. The case has yet to come to trial and the suspects maintain they are innocent. But the news, if true, would mark the first known terrorist bombing in India's history involving Hindu extremists—rather than Muslim radicals, separatists or Maoist revolutionaries—and the story has shocked the country. Rather than disown the suspects, however, BJP grandees have leapt to their defense. On Nov. 10, party president Rajnath Singh said that "whosoever believes in nationalism cannot be a terrorist," and on Nov. 12 he complained that "this government is targeting Hindu spiritual leaders without evidence … We find this investigation very suspicious."

The explanation for the BJP's rightward tilt lies with its increased reliance on its parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). During the Vajpayee years and in the run-up to the 2004 national elections, the BJP generally tried to divorce itself from anti-Muslim vitriol and the RSS. But the debacle of that campaign—in which Congress won a stunning victory despite the consensus that the BJP had presided over an economic boom—gave nationalists the upper hand. The BJP's defeat reminded its leadership that it remains a cadre-based party united by its ideology, not a charismatic leader. And the bulk of those cadres come from the 4.5 million-member RSS. The RSS advocates a philosophy known as Hindutva and favors turning India into a Hindu state (the country's population is 80 percent Hindu) and designating religious minorities as second-class citizens. Without its nationalist ideology it wouldn't be clear what the BJP stood for. On most issues, the party's positions are actually very similar to Congress's (both parties advocate further economic reform and increased ties to the United States, for example).

The RSS is now suspected of connections to terrorism. Some of the current suspects belong to a heretofore-unknown group called the Abhinav Bharat, which is not officially linked to the RSS but espouses an identical Hindutva ideology. And the Anti-Terrorism Squad claims to have established links between the suspects and official RSS outfits. "You actually have for the first time evidence linking all kinds of front organizations of the [RSS family]," says political analyst Praful Bidwai. Since the '90s there have been several incidents of "accidental explosions at bomb-making operations run by [Hindu] fanatics," Bidwai says. "But this is the first time … the RSS has been linked to a conspiracy."

You might assume that such ties, unless repudiated, would hurt the RSS's popularity and the BJP's electoral chances in India, which is the world's largest democracy and a secular one at that. Unfortunately, that's not how things have transpired in the past. In fact, some of the BJP's prior electoral victories followed bouts of incendiary anti-Muslim hatred and actual violence. Vajpayee was first elected prime minister following the Babri Mosque riots, for example, and the mayhem in Gujarat in 2002 helped Modi win a thumping victory in that state, even though—or because—he was blamed for delaying police action to protect Muslims. Now, by casting the government's terror investigation as an anti-Hindu conspiracy, the BJP hopes to repeat this formula today and unite the faithful. "The various wings of the [RSS]—and it's a vast organization—will rally together," says Rangarajan.

If the electorate follows suit, it could lead to another big victory for the BJP—but a big step backward for India as a whole.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/170301

an underpoliced society

Jason Overdorf
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
In a terrifying attack that held India riveted for the past 48 hours, a group of highly trained and deeply committed terrorists seized top Mumbai hotels and a prominent downtown building Wednesday, holding more than 200 people hostage for the better part of two days. As special-forces operations to rescue hostages and flush out terrorists wind down, investigators are only now beginning to piece together how the attackers got into the city and took over the properties. India's foreign minister and others within the government are beginning to point the finger of blame at Pakistan—whose intelligence service India believes is a habitual sponsor of terrorist activities on Indian soil.

NEWSWEEK's Jason Overdorf spoke with Ajai Sahni, editor of the South Asia Intelligence Review and executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, a New Delhi-based think tank that studies terrorism, about the implications.

Newsweek: How are these attacks different from previous terrorist attacks on Indian soil?
Ajai Ajai Sahni: First is the fact that the sheer scale of attacks is unique. We've had similar kinds of attacks in Jammu and Kashmir fairly regularly, commando-terrorist attacks. We've also seen something comparable in terms of the type of attack in Delhi and the attack on Parliament in 2001. So the pattern is not completely new to certain areas. But it is certainly new in Mumbai, and the sheer scale is unprecedented.

Moreover most attacks outside Jammu and KASHMIR—with the exception of the Parliament attack—have been bomb attacks, usually improvised explosive devices variously placed in soft targets. This is the first time we've seen something like this in a major urban center with quite as many participants. We're certainly looking at between 40 and 50 terrorists who appeared to have landed and launched the attack on Mumbai.

I saw a quote from intelligence sources that an attack of this nature would take 2-3 months to plan. Does that sound like a reasonable assessment?
It's not only a question of a plan. I would like to suggest that [the attack] would have taken a much larger time to mount because the kind of training that is evident and the degrees of motivation that are evident in these terrorists would take literally years to generate.

So this is probably the most organized attack we've seen in India?
You see there are different types of organizations. In the Mumbai blasts in 1993, you had extremely meticulous planning required. What I'm talking about here is a much longer gestation in terms of preparation of manpower—compared with what would be required for the mere placement of bombs.

What conclusions do you draw from that if any?
Well, you've had fedayeen-type attacks in other theaters in India—certainly in Jammu and KASHMIR and in the Parliament attack in Delhi. But this represents a simple escalation of scale in such attacks that will create definitive problems. And what it has also demonstrated is the enveloping vulnerabilities of the Indian system; we do not really appear to have the necessary defenses in place to quickly contain the impact. Even if we are not able to prevent such attacks (and no country can expect to completely exclude the possibility of such strikes), certainly the capacity for containment of the attack is extremely wanting.

News reports suggest that Israelis, Americans and Brits were singled out, segregated and held—possibly for hostage negotiations. What is the significance of this focus on foreigners?
The significance of this focus on foreigners is these are regarded as the prime enemy group, so to speak, by people who are engineering these attacks. Beyond that there does not seem to be any intention on the part of the terrorists to negotiate for any kind of deals or concessions, or the release of prisoners. No such thing has been discussed. It appears that they seem to have come here simply to kill and to die. So we do not see any meaningful kind of effort to initiate negotiations during these attacks.

At this point does there seem to be any kind of signature that could link these attacks to any group that Indian intelligence is already tracking?
There are several little factors that tell you [the perpetrators are] among a certain limited group of suspects. But there are no hard signatures. Fedayeen attacks of this nature on a much smaller scale have been often witnessed in Jammu and KASHMIR and the groups responsible have mainly been Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. If you look at the Parliament attack case, it was principally JEM involved there. What we are seeing is that the possibility of a large number of Indian citizens may also have been involved. There is no definitive identification at this juncture, although several people have been arrested and several of the terrorists have been killed. So we are looking at the usual group of suspects but we are still not definitively clear about their identity.

An outfit called Deccan Mujahedeen is taking responsibility.
That does not exist. That's a red herring intended to divert attention, an effort to project that this is an internal Indian problem, that this has nothing to do with outside forces. Whether Indians were involved in this or not, this could not have been executed without outside assistance or backing.

What are the major repercussions of this attack? The head of Mumbai's antiterrorism squad and several other top cops were killed. Is that a major foul up by law enforcement, to have such key figures exposed on the front lines?
The difficulty here is that once again we have a force that is barely learning how to cope with these things. This is, as far as Mumbai is concerned, an unprecedented pattern of attack. They haven't had something like this before. And the problem in India is that we do not have any systems in which large proportions of force and force leaderships are trained to respond to terrorist attacks. You've basically got a system where you learn on the job. And regrettably the price for that kind of extremely inefficient system is usually paid in blood.

Intelligence sources are saying the attacks bear the hallmarks of an international conspiracy. Do you read that as a precursor to claims that Al Qaeda or Pakistani intelligence may be involved in these attacks?
It would be one or other. I don't know if it would be Al Qaeda per se. But it could be Al Qaeda-related groups, certainly. Even Lashkar-e-Toiba is under the umbrella of Al Qaeda. All these groups we are speaking of as suspects are in some sense linked historically to Al Qaeda. All these groups are also linked to the Pakistan intelligence establishment. So we don't see the possibility of an operation of this scale being mounted without the backing of groups that either currently or historically have links with Al Qaeda or Pakistan intelligence.

In last couple of years, the scope of domestic involvement in terrorism has come as a wake-up call to Indian intelligence. Do you think there is always a reluctance to look inside India's borders first?
I think there is a problem of perception over here with Indian media rather than any problem with the intelligence or law enforcement agencies. Because they have been identifying and neutralizing Indian groups for certainly the past two decades, including Islamist groups in India. So there is no suggestion that they only look for outsiders. It is clearly recognized that even where outside agencies are involved, there are Indian facilitators … as partners or participants in terror attacks. And now we find Indian initiators. But I don't see any proclivity to try to brush this under the carpet in enforcement agencies. They follow what they find as leads. Yes, in certain cases you might find there is a tendency to start looking at groups that have international linkages at the very outset, but that's because of precedent rather than bias. If groups that have been involved in the past have been Pakistan-backed or Pakistan-based, then when a new attack of a certain pattern occurs, it is natural to look in that direction. That becomes the principle line of your investigation, but it doesn't necessarily dictate your conclusion.

What is significance of the timing? Elections are underway.
No significance whatsoever. Because if you take a look at the pattern of attacks, you will always find something or the other happening—elections, big international meetings, etc. These are post facto linkages that we try to establish in trying to determine unique motives. There are no unique motives. The motives of these attacks is basically to inflict the most harm on the system as is possible. And to propagate the extremist cause to the widest possible audience. That's it. This is a long war. Every time a new sort of bullet is fired you don't ask why these people are shooting at us. It's basically part of that long war.

A hostage situation like this is relatively unusual for India. Are there any precedents or policies in place about whether or how to negotiate?
Hostage situations are per se not new. But unfortunately there seems to be no clarity or consistency in the actual policies adopted. After such an event, there is usually a great deal of posturing, and declarations that there will be "no negotiation with terrorists" are made. But the particular government or particular negotiators on the ground and their perceptions determine the direction and outcome of any particular hostage crisis. So I'm afraid even if there are policy declarations, they have never been consistently followed.

In 1993 India saw terror attacks that were a response to anti-Muslim rioting. Do you think the opposite could happen now—i.e., community unrest because of these attacks?
Mumbai has been seeing many such attacks. Ever since 1993, there have been attacks of varying magnitudes every year or two—more than one a year. In each case … there has not been [major] rioting. If there has been rioting at all, it has been occasionally by the community that has lost a lot of people. For example, after the Malegaon bombing [an attack on the predominately Muslim town of Malegaon last September], there were Muslims rioting against the police or rioting in general against public property or private property. There have been no riots targeting the other community. So I would like to suggest that a certain measure of maturity has been visible in the popular response to this. I cannot say the same for certain elements of the extremist fringe groups who seem to be rather eager to prove their machismo and aggression.

Is an investigation into alleged Hindu terrorists a political powder keg, or are most people still relatively even-keeled about the situation?
I personally think people are still relatively even-keeled. If anything, this should impose a greater measure of restraint on the political parties that have been going a bit overboard in politicizing the issue of terrorism, whether it is perpetrated by Hindu extremists or Muslim extremists. As far as mainstream parties are concerned, I think there will be pressure for moderation after these attacks. There has been a very, very slow inching towards a consensual understanding of terrorism. Unfortunately it has not yielded a consensual policy as yet. But I suspect this will build greater public pressure on political parties to stop playing partisan politics, and get down to the fundamental issue of how best to respond …

The fact of the matter is you have Hindus who are terrorists. You have Muslims who are terrorists. You also have Christians who are terrorists. And you will find several other denominations that have proven their capacity for terrorism. We must realize that terrorism is simply a method by which civilians are intentionally targeted. That's it.

This is the sixth attack this year and the political party BJP is claiming the government is soft on terror. But the media is also wondering if India has become a soft target. Is India vulnerable to terror attacks because of any particular failure in the police system? Or is that because it is such a huge place it is difficult to police?
I think India is extremely vulnerable. And the fundamental reason for that is that this is a state that has neglected security for decades. Investment in policing was considered a nondevelopmental—and consequently wasteful—expenditure. We are one of the most under-policed societies in the world. We have a ratio of 126 police per 100,000, whereas the Western ratio is 250-500 plus per 100,000.

Also, our police are under-equipped and under-resourced across the board. There is no really hard counterterrorism core to policing in India, despite our decades of experience as a target of terrorism. Consequently there is absolutely no doubt that India is vulnerable to terrorism and will remain so in the coming years.

I think this government as well as its predecessor has been equally inept and equally neglectful on the issue of terrorism …The principle task of law enforcement and law-and-order management and counterterrorism is the state's under the Indian constitution. It is the responsibility of the state governments that are run by various parties in the country. All major parties have some states under their control. With very rare exceptions, the quality of counterterrorism has been abysmal.

This is one of the first times in recent years that such high-profile places have been attacked. Will that have an impact in drawing more attention to the issue?
This is not first time. There have been several attacks that have targeted the elite. The most significant of these was the Parliament attack, where the core of system of governance, the democratic polity itself, was attacked. And that did see a much higher quantum and quality of response than any preceding attack. So it is correct to believe that attacks on elite targets tend to provoke a greater and more effective response on government's part.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/171113