India: Cash for the poor, no strings attached

India aims to convert its massive welfare system from subsidies to cash. Here's why that isn't all good news.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost - December 23, 2012)

NEW DELHI, India — India wants to overhaul its massive, creaking welfare system, replacing subsidies with cash. The idea is to circumvent corruption, streamline the process, and ultimately provide 720 million welfare-recipients with more of the benefit they were originally intended.

At least that's the idea.

Critics from across the political spectrum have voiced their concern. They worry the government is underestimating the challenges involved. Or, worse, simply floating a feel-good policy that promises to please both reform-minded economists and the massive voting block represented by the poor.

“It's made out to be a magic bullet to control corruption, because the money will go directly into bank accounts,” said Reetika Khera, a development economist from the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi).

Currently, most recipients get a reduced price on goods like rice or kerosene if they have a ration card proving their income puts them below the poverty line. And they receive monetary benefits like scholarships and pensions through universities or local government offices, rather than direct payments.

“But there are problems associated with cash,” Khera added.

The stakes are high.

India spends up to 14 percent of its gross domestic product on various welfare programs. As of now, much of that money is wasted on administrative costs or stolen by corrupt officials. Rich and poor alike frequently complain that only one cent out of every dollar that India spends on its poor reaches the target. Though that is an exaggeration, it's not so far off the mark.

“Direct cash transfers, which are now becoming possible through the innovative use of technology and the spread of modern banking across the country, open the doors for eliminating waste, cutting down leakages and targeting beneficiaries better,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at the end of November.

Finance Minister P. Chidambaram clarified recently that the government will convert 34 out of 42 welfare schemes to cash transfers across 43 districts starting Jan. 1.

That said, India's most costly welfare program, and the one where economists and activists are most concerned or excited about the conversion to cash, is the food subsidy – where new “right to food” legislation promises to expand coverage to more than 60 percent of the population. But the only programs that have been mentioned by name for conversion to cash transfers are scholarships, pensions and subsidized cooking gas. And leaders have reportedly decided to hold off on the most important programs — food, fertilizer and kerosene — according to India's Business Standard newspaper.

“I don't think anyone knows what is going on, or what is intended to go on,” said Bibek Debroy, an economist with the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, an independent think-tank.

The power of cash

The experts may be wary, but at least one below-poverty-line couple, Ramesh Kumar and his wife, Amarthi Bhen, is watching the calendar in anticipation.

In 2011, when a nonprofit offered 55-year-old Amarti Bhen and her husband the chance to receive about $20 in cash every month instead of their usual rations of food and kerosene, the couple leapt at the chance.

Slum dwellers who eke out a perilous existence collecting, repairing and then selling second-hand clothes, Bhen and her husband had actually been receiving their allotment of 15 kilograms of wheat, 5 kilograms of sugar and 6 kilograms of rice — unlike millions of destitute families.

But there was no telling when the supplies would arrive, so they wasted hours tramping to the shop to see if the sugar or wheat had come in. And the quality of the grain was so poor that they practically had to thresh it themselves — wasting valuable hours they could otherwise have spent sewing.

Once they began receiving their benefits in cash — as part of a pilot program set up by the nonprofit Self-Employed Women's Association and the Indian government — they saved time by buying their supplies at the local market. They also were able to use part of the money to buy nutrient-rich foods, such as chickpeas and lentils, instead of only wheat and rice.

“When we were getting cash, we got all the money at once and could buy all our supplies at the same time,” said Kumar. “We could also buy other things we needed more than rice and wheat, like daland tea and detergent [which they use for washing the clothes they sell].”

Conditional vs. unconditional

It is that proposal to allow the poor to decide how to spend their welfare benefits that makes the Indian scheme particularly bold — and controversial.

Until now, the largest cash transfer schemes, implemented with dramatic success in Brazil and Mexico, among other countries, were based on so-called conditional payments, issued to encourage the poor to take advantage of government services, rather than grants allowing them to shop on the open market. (Under Brazil's Bolsa Família or “family allowance” program, for instance, poor families receive payments from the government in exchange for enrolling their children in school or getting them vaccinated against contagious diseases).

In contrast, India appears poised to give the poor cash with no strings attached. Many in the development sector — and many of the poor themselves — fear that freedom of choice will allow men to take cash intended for food, cooking gas or school fees from their wives and spend it on liquor.

“Last year we did a survey in nine states where we asked what the people would prefer and why,” said Khera. Two-thirds of the poor opposed the changeover, citing worries about inflation, concerns about the distance to banks and markets, and fears about how they themselves might manage the money.

“Those who argue for cash say we shouldn't be patronizing, we should let the people decide,” Khera said. “But when we went and asked these 1,200 households, they all said they want food ... The men we were talking to [about getting cash instead of rations] said, 'No, no. We'll drink it up.'”

Some say the new scheme only addresses part of the problem.

Consider the food grain program. The government buys massive amounts of rice and wheat from farmers at a minimum support price (usually higher than market rates) to protect them from market fluctuations. Then it sells grain at below-market rates to the poor. So giving the poor cash instead of vouchers could change the dynamics of supply and demand — as happened in one pilot program in which residents of rural Rajasthan were given cash instead of kerosene.

It's also possible that cash transfers could accelerate a tilt toward the idea, already popular with a section of the elite, that privatization is the panacea for all of India's problems. Paying the poor instead of guaranteeing them services, for instance, might speed the wholesale abandonment of public education and health care that is already underway. (The public education system is already so terrible that the state is now compelling private institutions to provide scholarships to the poor — who are fighting desegregation-era-style impediments to entry, seemingly on a daily basis).

“In Brazil, they had public health centers, they had public schools, and people were not using them, so this was a way to get them to come,” said Khera. “Here, they want to say we'll give you money, and you just go and find your own [schools and hospitals].”

Don't believe the hype?

The prime minister may be right about technology opening doors. But walking through them will be easier said than done.

Despite a massive, ongoing government effort, only around 13 percent of rural households are connected to the banking system. A huge project to provide every Indian with a biometric-based ID number, called Aadhar, is progressing at a snail's pace. And the government has made no attempt whatsoever to cross-reference its paltry list of ID numbers with an income survey that would identify those living near or below the poverty line. (Currently, the list is in such a shambles that development economists like Delhi University's Jean Dreze argue that subsidized grain should be made available to anyone who wants it).

“I think they've just got their facts wrong — even on what linking with Aadhar can do and cannot do,” said Khera. “They've been told again and again about the sorts of issues that biometrics can and cannot deal with, and yet somehow the penny doesn't seem to drop.”

More from GlobalPost: Is growth enough for the Indian economy?

For all the hype, nobody has endeavored to figure out how much of the so-called “leakage” from welfare systems stems from fictitious recipients on the below-poverty-line rolls — the area where biometric identification could have an impact. But experts like Khera suspect that accounts for a small part of the losses.

That isn't the only reasons for skepticism. The announcement at the end of November that a sea change in policy will begin in January suggests a plan concocted in the world of fantasy, rather than messy old India. And the vagueness of the scheme — with only three out of a proposed 29 programs announced to the public — give it the distinct whiff of campaign rhetoric or a populist bid for voters' allegiance in 2014.

"The scheme reflects sympathy of [United Progressive Alliance] (UPA), Congress and the Delhi government for the poorest section of people on the issue of food security," Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi said last week.

Meanwhile, her son, Rahul Gandhi, likely candidate for prime minister in the next election, laid out the stakes for Congress Party workers.

“If we get this program right, we will win the next two general elections," Rahul reportedly told a meeting of Congress Party leaders from the districts where benefits are slated to be converted to cash in the first phase.

Booze and blankets have long been a staple of India's get-out-the-vote drives, after all. Direct deposits of cash money, facilitated by the miracle of technology, would save everybody a lot of trouble.

India confronts its own brazen and spectacular violence

As Americans cope with Sandy Hook, Indians soul-search over a gang rape on a public bus, among other horrific crimes.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost - December 19, 2012)

NEW DELHI, India — As America mourns children and teachers killed by a gunman at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary, India is confronting brazen and horrific acts of violence, too — though the problems here are not as directly tied to guns or mental illness.

Perhaps the most brutal such incident happened Sunday — even as America's tragedy still occupied television stations here — with the horrifying gangrape of a 23-year-old physical therapist in a New Delhi bus. The victim is now fighting for her life.

As the curtained bus floated ominously through the city, the victim, currently in critical condition, was raped repeatedly and sliced with a knife by her seven attackers before being beaten with an iron rod and finally dumped on the roadside. The young man with her, a 28-year-old software engineer, was also beaten within an inch of his life.

The brutality of the assault prompted doctors at New Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital to describe it as “probably the most grievous” rape case they had ever encountered — noting severe injuries to the woman's head, and abdominal wounds so vicious that while they attempted intestine repair surgery, “there was not much that could be done.”

Ostensibly committed to teaching the couple a lesson after the young man objected to comments that “only prostitutes choose to travel with men at night,” the crime prompted street protests and a parliamentary debate on Tuesday.

“The reason it's become such an emotive issue is that the expression of violence, particularly gender violence, is in a way a public event,” said Delhi University sociologist Radhika Chopra. “This is not secret violence. This is not happening in a dark corner of a street or shady corner of a park. It's on a bus. It's in broad daylight. It's on flyovers. It's in the most public spaces of all. And there are always people there.”

But the spectacular act of violence is only the latest in an obscene string of blatant crimes, committed almost casually, apparently without shame or fear of prosecution, that have prompted soul-searching here in India, similar to the kind that is under way in the US.

Last week, a gang of thugs beat up two men with whom they had a dispute over property outside a Haryana courthouse. Then, in broad daylight, the gang stormed the Gurgaon hospital where their victims had been admitted and shot them in their beds — paying no mind to the hospital staff and other witnesses.

Last month, liquor baron Ponty Chadha and his brother were killed in a Scarface-style hail of bullets on the outskirts of Delhi.

In September, a jilted lover in New Delhi went on a shooting spree, killing four people, including his ex-girlfriend, before putting a bullet in himself, while another woman was gunned down by men on a motorcycle after what witnesses described as a heated argument.

Incidents in which a Good Samaritan attempting to stop goons from harassing a woman gets stabbed or beaten to a pulp — as happened to a journalist with India's NDTV network last week — seem too numerous to count.

And rapes and other violence against women (and children) — often in plain sight — are reported at a rate of two per day in the nation's capital.

“Trials take almost eight to nine to 10 years, depending on the situation. Trials don't go to complete fulfilment and the conviction rate itself is fairly low,” said Pinky Anand, a New Delhi lawyer who works frequently on cases involving such violence.

“Given all these factors, the accused feel they can get away with this in society and will not be brought to book.”

The difference between India's tragedies and America's, of course, is that India has some of the world's strictest gun control laws, and these crimes don't have as direct a connection with mental illness.

Though civilians here are prohibited from owning all but the most rudimentary revolvers and shotguns — and licenses for even those weapons are very difficult to obtain — guns feature regularly in India's daylight crimes.

But it is rape, not shootings, that has prompted India's soul-searching. India is not known for quality mental health care, but it is radical socioeconomic change, rather than a public health failure, that underlies India's violence problem, experts say.

More from GlobalPost: Gun culture in India

Sociologists argue that the vicious rapes and other public acts plaguing India's National Capital Region — which includes New Delhi as well as neighboring areas of Haryana and Uttar Praesh — reflect a subconscious struggle for power.

On one hand, globalization and urbanization have brought new opportunities for women and the lower castes, putting pressure on traditional hierarchies. On the other, rampant corruption and the growing nexus between crime and politics — where both money and muscle are needed to win elections — have turned the “goonda” (hired thug) into a figure to cower before, rather than report to the police.

“The goon is, if you will, a very iconic figure of the fear, the anxiety, and the fact of power which cannot be controled, which has a nexus you have no sense of,” said Delhi University's Chopra.

“The exercise of power requires a public display of it and a public acknowlegement of it. These spectacular forms of violence in highly public spaces is part of this notion of power that can be used without any stopgate.”

According to Prem Chowdhry, a sociologist who has worked extensively on the intersection of gender, violence and caste, women of traditionally conservative states like Haryana are now leaving the house for work, attending universities, and asserting their right to property. Meanwhile, in these same areas, the practice of aborting female children has led to a skewed sex ratio. So the number of bachelors and the quantum of sexual frustration and resentment is rivaled only by underemployment as a social force.

When that resentment boils over, “rape is taken as a form of revenge or control,” Chowdhry said.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/121218/violence-rape-guns-sandy-hook-newtown-shooting

Archaeologists confirm Indian civilization is 2000 years older than previously believed

Indian archaeologists now believe the ancient Indian civilization at Harappa dates back as far as 7500 BC.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost - November 28, 2012)

NEW DEHLI, India — When archaeologist KN Dikshit was a fresh-faced undergraduate, in 1960, a remarkable discovery pushed back the origin of civilization in the Indus River Valley by some 500 years. Now, he claims to have proof that pushes India's origin back even further — making Indian civilization some 2,000 years older than previously believed.

“When Bhirrana [Rajasthan] was excavated, from 2003 to 2006, we [recovered artifacts that provided] 19 radiometric dates,” said Dikshit, who was until recently joint director general of the Archaeological Society of India. “Out of these 19 dates, six dates are from the early levels, and the time bracket is forming from 7500 BC to 6200 BC.”

Since the early excavations at Harappa and Mohenjodaro, in what is today Pakistan, the Indus Civilization has been considered among the world's most ancient civilizations — along with Egypt and Mesopotamia (in what is today Iraq).

In recent times, archaeologists divided the Indus Civilization into the pre-Harappan, mature Harappan and late Harappan periods. The pre-Harappan period was characterized by a primitive, Stone Age culture, while the late Harappan period featured sophisticated brick cities built on a grid system, with granaries, toilets and an as-yet undeciphered written language.

But the six samples discovered at Bhirrana include relatively advanced pottery, known as “hakra ware,” that suggests the ancient Harappan civilization began much earlier than previously believed — and that its epicenter lies in the Indian states of Harayana and Rajasthan, rather than across the border.

As Dikshit and his colleague, BR Mani, current joint director general of the ASI, write in a recent note on their findings:

“The earliest levels at Bhirrana and Kunal yielded ceramics and antiquities ... suggesting a continuity in culture, right from the middle of the eighth millennium BCE onwards ... till about 1800 BCE.”

That suggests the Harappan civilization is nearly as old as sites from West Asia such as Jericho, where evidence of a neolithic city has been found to date from as early as 9000 BC. But it also means that Harappa, with new proof of hakra ware dating to 7500 BC, may have been more technologically advanced — bolstering India's claim to the title of the cradle of civilization.

“When [John] Marshall excavated the Indus Valley Civilization [in 1922], he gave it the date of about 3000 BC,” said Dikshit. “But when [Mortimer] Wheeler came in 1944, he gave a shorter chronology and put the Indus Civilization between 2450 BC and 1900 BC. Those dates were also supported when Carbon-14 dates started to come from other parts of the world.”

More from GlobalPost: Mumbai on high alert with right-wing leader Bal Thackeray in critical condition

“In 1960, in Kalimanga, we were only able to push it back a few hundred years. But with these dates [from Bhirrana] things have entirely changed.”

Both Dikshit and Mani downplayed competition between India and Pakistan for bragging rights over the Indus civilization — where the best archaeological site for tourists is in Mohenjadaro, in Pakistan's Sindh province. But the ancient has a way of bleeding into the modern, as various controversies have shown over the years.

Most prominently, perhaps, the so-called “horse theory,” rooted in N.S. Rajaram's fraudulent claim that he had deciphered the Harappan script, introduced horses into a concocted history of the Harappan period in order to provide a missing link to the Vedic period in which the oldest scriptures of Hinduism were written.

Noted for his ties with the loonier side of Hindu nationalism, Rajaram pieced together a tale that suggested “Babylonian and Greek mathematics, all alphabetical scripts, and even Roman numerals flow out to the world from the Indus Valley’s infinitely fertile cultural womb,”according to Harvard Indologist Michael Witzel and comparative historian Steve Farmer.

But for Dikshit and Mani, manufactured controversies of that kind belong in the realm of politics, not archaeology.

“These things should not be raked up,” said Dikshit. “I just don't want to give any statement on this. People are talking. There was an Aryan invasion, then Aryan immigration, then horse theory — this theory, that theory. They are simply wasting their time.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/121116/indus-civilization-2000-years-old-archaeologists

India: 'Scarface'-style shootout showcases gangland democracy

Uttar Pradesh liquor baron's death shakes the shadowy corridors of power.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost - November 23, 2012)

NEW DELHI, India — A hail of bullets cut down one of India's most powerful businessmen last weekend, turning the country's rough-and-tumble liquor trade upside down and bringing new scrutiny to one of the oldest ties binding crime and politics.

Liquor baron Gurdeep Singh Chadha, known as “Ponty” Chadha, was killed in New Delhi in a “Scarface”-style shootout involving his brother and the two tycoons' security personnel.

The best touchstone for outsiders to use to understand the carnage may be Showtime's prohibition-era gangster series “Boardwalk Empire.” India's own Nucky Thompson — the fictional character, based on New Jersey political boss Enoch Johnson, played by Steve Buscemi — Chadha had built a vast fortune.

His billion-dollar business empire spanned real estate, film production and electricity generation, but his power remained firmly rooted in the liquor business, where political manuevering won him a monopoly over distribution in India's most populous and arguably most lawless state, Uttar Pradesh.

“Before Ponty Chadha got all these big contracts, they were distributed district-wise in each state,” said Rajinder Singh, a Delhi high court lawyer who represents several large clients in the liquor business.

“Ponty Chadha changed the entire scenario. He somehow managed to bag the contract for the entire state of Uttar Pradesh. And earlier Punjab also.”

Chadha — who was riddled by 12 shots to the back, abdomen and chest — was killed as part of a family dispute with his brother Hardeep, who was also killed. His death highlights the deep roots of India's gangland democracy, as graft, “black money” and the so-called criminalization of politics emerge as the biggest talking points for the upcoming national election in 2014. 

The inner workings of the liquor trade that built his empire illustrate how systemic flaws, rather than a simple lack of policing, have created and entrenched corruption in the world's largest democracy.

“A liquor baron has power over politicians, he has power over industry, he has power over many things. It's the power of loose cash,” said Harish Damodaran, author of “India's New Capitalists,” a book about India's new entrepreneurs.

Recent, high-profile corruption cases in the allotment of telecom licenses and coal mining blocks, together with the hammer-and-tongs campaign against graft led by activist Arvind Kejriwal, have created the impression that India has never been so crooked. But that is not really the case — even though the dollar amounts involved are much larger due to the growth of India's economy.

In a sense, Chadha's liquor empire represents a throwback to the days before India's economic liberalization in 1991, when the so-called “License-Permit Raj” gave the nation's politicians and bureaucrats a free hand to extort bribes from any business that wanted to do something as innocuous as step up production.

Economic reforms dismantled most of those regulations, making Indian business, though still flawed, fairer than it has ever been. But not in areas like mining or telecommunications, where the government is responsible for allotting a public resource. And not in the liquor business, thanks to a hangover of the temperance movement and the grim reality of alcoholism — especially among the destitute.

Championing a prudishness about alcohol to avoid awkward questions from the public, political parties of every hue use arcane excise laws to limit the sale of alcohol to a handful of licensed shops. The artificial scarcity guarantees that the business remains profitable. And the doling out of licenses as patronage ensures that politicians have a ready source of money and muscle power when it comes time to campaign.

“Liquor is a highly controlled industry, and that itself [creates these conditions],” said Damodaran. By its very nature, since everything is controlled or prohibited, it suits the political class. When you declare something as sinful, everybody takes their eyes from it, and everybody can earn something on the side.”

But as the weekend shootout suggests, India's prohibition-like restrictions have spawned prohibition-like thuggery in the booze business.

“This level of violence is very rare. In the liquor business you have gang wars between various factions to control the liquor vends or for getting the licenses for selling the liquor,” said Singh.

Chadha's influence on policy was extraordinary, to say the least. Prior to his death, Chadha enjoyed a monopoly over Uttar Pradesh's $2.5 billion liquor trade, controlling nearly every warehouse and booze shop in the state, thanks to a 2008 government ruling that created a special excise zone on his behalf.

In the past, he'd held a similar stranglehold over liquor distribution in Punjab. And he'd ruled the trade in the so-called “millennium city” of Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi in the state of Haryana, for eight years before the state began allotting liquor licenses through a lottery system in 2006.

The liquor baron was no stranger to the legal system. In 2011, for instance, opposition parties called for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into his purchase of five state-owned sugar mills, alleging that then-Chief Minister Mayawati had sold them to him for one-tenth of their nearly $400 million worth.

Tax authorities accused Chadha of squirreling away some $32 million in unrecorded income after a raid on one of his cinema complexes earlier this year. And in 2009 rival firms accused him of rigging the bid system to ensure that one of his firms received a lucrative government contract for a supplementary nutrition program for the poor — a bid he secured once again this year in a deal worth $1.85 billion. 

Though the situation may be particularly bad in Uttar Pradesh, which grows most of India's sugar cane, self-serving policies govern the trade across the country, Singh argues. In the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, for instance, the government has itself taken over liquor distribution, and imposes a stiff luxury tax, in the name of curbing alcoholism.

But in the state capital of Chennai, the filthy government-owned shops allow patrons to drink on the pavement outside — sometimes from bargain-priced plastic bags of off-brand hooch — so there is nearly always a derelict passed out in the gutter with his pants around his ankles. Meanwhile, even in Delhi, where the taxes on liquor are among India's lowest, anybody with the slightest social status has a bootlegger on speed dial.

“The problem is the excise laws in India are very tough,” said Singh. “Some states have now been changing their policies to avoid these kind of people getting into the trade, but most of the states have the same kind of policy.”

The reason is that the politicians who make the laws have a vested interest in maintaining control over the liquor trade — as well as the rough characters who run it.

“Whatever you're selling is all cash ... that makes it more amenable to fund elections and those kind of things,” said Damodaran. “That is what attracts politicians to this. Cash is easier to spend in elections. It doesn't leave any trail.”

“If you want to have a political rally and get people, you have to pay people in cash. That's why politics and the liquor business go together very well, and not politics and say, software.”

As Delhi state police continue to investigate the circumstances of the shootout — which occurred Nov. 17 at Chadha's sprawling estate on the outskirts of the capital — the exact number and type of weapons used in the gun battle remains a mystery, according to the Times of India. Investigators have allegedly recovered spent shells and bullets from banned weapons and confirmed that the entourages of both Chadha and his brother included serving members of the Punjab state police — information that hints at a disturbing blurring of official and unofficial power.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/121121/indian-gangster-ponty-chadha-liquor-al-capone-scarface

Just outside India's Camelot: Character assassination by gossip

An excerpt from Tavleen Singh's new book hammers Sonia Gandhi for being human, rakes up "foreign-born" charge with 40-year-old evidence

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost - November 21, 2012)

An excerpt from columnist Tavleen Singh's new book, Durbar, in this week's Open reads exactly like what it is: Character assassination by gossip.

In a much-belated portrait of life just-outside India's Camelot, Singh rehashes ancient slams on Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi--depicting her as a frivolous and aloof socialite who was "as foreign as any foreigner I had ever met." (Note: Sonia was rejected as a potential prime minister, and subsequently bowed out of the contest, when the Congress Party won power in 2004).

According to Singh, who is sometimes called "the Saffron Sikh" for her apparent enthusiasm for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party or its positions, as the young wife of Rajiv Gandhi and daughter-in-law of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Sonia was both ignorant and "terrified of India in a deep, deep way." 

How so? She was so concerned that her babies would contract malaria that she burned mosquito coils under their cribs until a doctor advised her that the smoke was unhealthy. And she was shocked and appalled by the poverty and filth of an Indian village where she observed a baby playing with a piece of cow dung and giving it a few sample chews.

More serious, in Singh's transparent slam-piece, are the charges that India's Camelot was infested with "foreigners," whom the Indians treated with so much deference that even Sonia's inability to speak proper English -- after all, she was Italian -- was excused.  ("We were deeply impressed by all things foreign not just because we had been ruled by White men for so long but because secretly we believed that Western culture and civilization was superior to ours," Singh writes, in a transparent effort to make her charges more credible through the form of the confessional).

The trouble here is not that Sonia Gandhi is a great figure or sincere person, though some Indians would certainly argue that point. Rather, it's Singh's refusal to allow for the possibility of her personal development, and her implied insistence that what someone once was determines who she will always be. (That's leaving aside the implied suggestion that Sonia must have had some involvement in the Bofors defense scandal, because she and Rajiv seemed so cosy with arms dealer Ottavio Quattrocchi and his wife, Maria).

On the one hand, Singh would have readers decry a past when "we were deeply impressed by all things foreign," while on the other hand she invests foreign-ness with undue importance -- as if India still has much to fear and simply by associating with foreigners one might lose one's way. Moreover, rather than laud Sonia for her subsequent embrace of the country -- whether founded in a sense of opportunity or a debt to her assassinated husband -- at least in this excerpt Singh chooses to rake up observations from a handful of 40-year-old parties to imply that her current avatar is some kind of false posture.

Clearly, that is not the case. Regardless of your views on Sonia's rights, as an Italian-born citizen of India, to the prime minister's chair, you can hardly deny her credit for her work in India since the assassination of her husband, Rajiv, in 1991. Not all of it was done out of a disinterested love for the country, of course: She was also fighting for her family's legacy and the personal power associated with heading India's oldest political party. And it's trivializing to home in on "foreignness" she displayed in the distant past.

Sonia was aloof, Singh concludes, essentially, because she and Singh herself didn't become fast friends, and Singh was unable to overhear many soul-bearing comments when she was lurking in the background at these socialites' parties. But surely one is aloof with people one hardly knows, when one's English is halting and Hindi non-existent, and when one's every utterance has implications for the serving prime minister.

The twofold argument seems to be obvious: Sonia is an Italian and the Gandhi family is a form of democratic royalty. But those are things nobody needed socialites' gossip to confirm.

India's secret shame: Owl sacrifice mars Hinduism's biggest holiday

On Diwali, tantriks kill threatened species for the promise of future wealth.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost - November 10, 2012)

NEW DELHI, India — As the rest of India celebrates Hinduism's festival of lights on Tuesday, unscrupulous witch doctors known as “tantriks” will sneak into the country's dark corners to kill some of its rarest and most majestic birds of prey. 

It's India's secret shame — unknown even to most devout Hindus. But the religion's most important holiday, Diwali, marks a supposedly auspicious time for the sacrifices of threatened and even critically endangered owls — a rite that some believe can win favor from the goddess of wealth, Lakshmi.

“You take the leading newspapers of today itself, there will be 50, 20, 30 ads from tantriks advertising remedies of almost all kinds,” said Abrar Ahmed, an expert on the trafficking of birds.

“When people can be milked out, these tantriks will prescribe something which is difficult to get — they'll say an owl of 5 kgs or a certain weight or certain size. There is where they make money.... They are the ones creating a demand.”

India is home to 32 species of owls, 13 of which Ahmed discovered being sold as part of the illegal trade in wild birds. Most, if not all, are included on International Union for Conservation of Nature's “Red List” of threatened species, while at least one, the forest owlet, is critically endangered, according to “Imperilled Custodians of the Night,” a report Abrar wrote for Traffic in 2010.

The most common species sold is the spotted owlet, which has adapted to living in cities and is therefore in little danger of dying out. But threatened species like the brown fish owl can also be found for sale, and the threatened rock eagle owl is the “most preferred” by witch doctors — a bad omen for its future survival.

According to Ahmed, trafficked owls and their body parts are primarily used for supposed black magic — which still claims several lives for human sacrifice each year, if newspaper reports from the hinterland are to be believed. There is a regular, organized trade in live owls. In tribal areas, where the majority of people believe that owls can ward off evil spirits, feathers and talons are placed in amulets, and owls can be found piled up for sale at local fairs. And in cities and towns, even the country's wealthiest industrialists and politicians visit tantriks — in the hope of having a son, curing illness or infertility, or amassing a magic-assisted fortune.

For most Hindus, Diwali is a joyous festival. Families festoon their homes with electric lights and burn small candles or oil lamps, called diyas, to commemorate the victory of the god Ram over the demon Ravana and Ram's return home with his stolen wife, Sita — a foundation myth told in the Ramayana, one of Hinduism's most important epics. Friends get together to gamble. The markets overflow with “Diwali hampers” filled with chocolates, nuts, and traditional Indian sweets — gifts to be exchanged, Christmas-style.

But even if the Diwali lights are meant to represent the victory of good over evil, as well as a welcoming beacon for Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, the five day festival is the most deadly time of all for the owls.

The reason: The amavasya, or new moon night, of Diwali is claimed to be the most auspicious time for owl sacrifices, Ahmed found after nearly two years of research he conducted for Traffic — a joint body that monitors the illegal wildlife trade for the World Wildlife Fund and International Union for Conservation of Nature.

“The practice happens throughout the year, but the kalratri [the eve of Diwali] is considered auspicious,” said Ahmed. “That makes the tantrik very rich in terms of hoodwinking people to pay their price. If they don't have a deadline, if they don't have a reason for the practice to happen at a particular moment of the year, people will be casual in their attitude.”

Indians who are free of superstition remain ignorant of the illegal trade. But the trafficking of thousands of species of wild birds — including owls intended for these sacrifices — happens just out of sight, even in the bird market of Old Delhi. Though the traders are smart enough not to display their owls alongside the hundreds of parakeets and wild song birds for sale, all it takes is a few whispered queries and a seller will offer not only to procure the owl but perhaps even to perform the sacrifice. A one-stop shop, poaching and black magic for as little as $150, according to a recent investigation by the Sunday Guardian's Abhimanyu Singh.

“People will say, we will deliver the owl on Thursday morning — whenever you need it for that matter — because it's a bird that has to be fed on a crow or a parrot,” said Ahmed. “It was made to be delivered on our doorstep.”

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There are at least 50 hubs for the selling of wild birds, including owls, across India, according to Traffic. And 21 of them are major trafficking centers, with an estimated turnover of 20,000 to 50,000 wild birds per year.

Worse, the Diwali sacrifices are only the most visible part of the owl trade — at least for urban India.

Traveling through the tribal regions of states like Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — where indigenous peoples from the Damora, Bhil, Munda and countless other groups still live in the forest much as they have for thousands of years — Ahmed found piles of owl carcasses at local fairs. He witnessed local shamans performing rites with live owls. And he learned from tribal bird trappers how owls are captured and reared to catch other birds — which will “mob” the captured owl when the trapper mimics the desired species' distress call.

So, too, the superstitions surrounding owls go much beyond Diwali sacrifices.

In a survey of bookstores selling religious texts, Ahmed found prescriptions for telling the future using a live owl, hypnotizing an enemy by feeding him an owl's feather or blood, making yourself invisible using an owl's heart and other body parts, cursing an enemy's family with an owl's skull, and countless others.

But perhaps the darkest revelation of all was not the depth and prevalence of these superstitions among India's poor and illiterate, but their prominence even among the educated urban elite.

“Last week, a big horned owl was stolen from Chatbir Zoo [in Chandigarh, Punjab],” said Ahmed. “Do you see the correlation of the time? Even in a very big zoo — and this has happened in two other zoos also — the owl is not safe.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/121109/india-diwali-hinduism-tantrik-owl-sacrifice

The man hundreds of Indian children call Papa

American Paul Wilkes has transformed poorly funded orphanages into “Homes of Hope.”

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost - November 4, 2012)

HYDERABAD, India — Blinded in one eye by the so-called “beggar mafia” so she'd be a better earner, 6-year-old Reena was used to wearing sunglasses. 

But when American Paul Wilkes and his wife, Tracy, came to visit Reena in the Home of Hope orphanage in Kerala, India, she took off her shades and smiled up at them beatifically.

Wilkes, a contemplative Catholic and author of several books on religious faith, knew then and there that it was time to stop writing about faith and start doing something about it.

He had his work cut out for him.

Across the country, as many as 400,000 Indian children live on the streets. Some of them have no families. Others are the victims of traffickers who buy and sell them for sex or slavery. Some ran away from drunk and abusive fathers. Others were cast out or fled because their families had nothing for them to eat.

They all have one thing in common: They are grave and imminent danger living on the streets, as Reena's missing eye attests.

The local chapter of the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco — a Catholic order of nuns that has been offering refuge to street children since the 19th Century — took Reena in off the streets and provided refuge at the Home of Hope orphanage.

“If they are left on the street, by the age of 10 they are already raped,” said Sister Annakutty, mother superior at the Maria Ausilatrice orphanage in Hyderabad's Mahendra Hills. “They will be misused by someone. At that early stage itself they'll have one or two babies. ... And those children will go on to the same life.”

Since 2006, Wilkes, who used to regularly contribute to the New Yorker magazine, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the orphanages and schools run by the Salesian Sisters in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala.

At a cost of around $300,000 apiece, his charity “Homes of Hope” has built two orphanages from the ground up in Kochi and Maradiyur (in Karnataka) — and laid the foundation stone for a third one in Hyderabad.

By supplementing the Salesian Sisters' dedication with new ideas and added funds, they've dug wells, bought jeeps, and provided books, computers and other educational materials for 20,000 students — as well as provided safe, caring homes for more than 400 orphans and neglected girls.

On a recent afternoon at the Navajeevana Home for Street Girl Children in Hyderabad, some 50 girls, ranging from 5 to 15 years old, crowded the driveway to greet Wilkes when his jeep arrived from a neighboring school.

“Good afternoon, Papa!” “Hi, Papa!” “Good afternoon, Uncle!” their piping voices called out. Joy, and a kind of heartbreaking desperation, was plain to see on their faces.

“The children really care for him,” said Sister Crocetta Thomas, mother superior at the Navajeevana orphanage. “Since they have no parents, they call him Papa.”

Wilkes has done his best to play father to hundreds.

“We don't run anything,” said Wilkes, walking through the Auxilium school in Hyderabad. “We're the add-on. We're the pure water. We're the generator that's going to go right there.”

Tapping funds from local US Rotary clubs, for instance, Homes of Hope has supplied 15 schools and orphanages with solar-powered water purification systems — addressing one of the leading causes of disease in India. The charity has provided 18 library-deprived schools with more than 250,000 books.

“We don't open the doors every day,” Wilkes added. “But I can come and see what's going on and see what they need.”

More from GlobalPost: Cambodia tries to solve its baby-stealing problem

When a dentist from Wilkes' native North Carolina announced that he was retiring, they packed up the entire office and shipped it to India, where it now operates as a free clinic inBangalore. When a group of North Carolina surfers offered to pitch in, the charity pioneered “surfing safaris” on the Indian Ocean as a confidence builder for orphan girls — and nuns (how's that for a mental image?) 

And in the charity's latest venture, Wilkes is working with Dr. David Paige, an assistant professor of education at Louisville, Ky.-based Bellarmine University, to design a training program for teachers to help transform India's rote learning oriented schools to encourage creative and analytical thinking.

“I consider our little organization very entrepreneurial,” Wilkes said. “It isn't just buying a bag of rice. You really want to push the envelope.”

Before and after pictures attest to the impact the Salesian Sisters and Homes of Hope has had on the children rescued from the streets. "Graduates" are constantly calling the mother superior at one of the orphanages to report that their marriages are going well — perhaps a new baby was born, or their family has moved into a larger home.

The success stories never get old. Take Pinky, who came to the Homes of Hope after she was cast out by her family. The oldest of three daughters, she was taught early how well India values women, when her mother suffocated her fourth daughter shortly after birth and forced Pinky to help her bury the body.

This May, Pinky will graduate with a degree in nursing, ensuring that she'll never face poverty, or question how much she's worth, ever again.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/121102/india-street-children-wilkes-aid

Metal heads in India

They might not have long hair or head bang, but they love Iron Maiden all the same.

By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost - October 3, 2012)

NEW DELHI, India — An hour before the Metallica concert in Bangalore last year, the event's organizers came to 26-year-old Chintan Chinnappa, a lawyer at Dua Associates, with some bad news. The program — running, naturally, on Indian Stretchable Time (IST) — was behind schedule. Chinnappa's all-Indian band,Inner Sanctum, would not be opening for his thrash metal heroes after all. 

“That really killed us,” Chinnappa said. “You dream about this, and then your dreams are shattered.”

Then, a few minutes before Metallica was supposed to take the stage, Inner Sanctum was back on the program.

“I don't know how it happened exactly,” Chinnappa said. “The guy doing sound had heard us before, and he recommended us to the organizer. He said, 'Listen, they're a band that Bangalore loves, and you must get them on stage.'”

“After the event, the management of Metallica spoke to us, and they were so thankful, because otherwise the crowd was so frustrated, because there was rain and all of that and they were waiting for bands to perform. After we performed, the response was massive.”

Surprised? Don't be. It may be better known for saccharine Bollywood love songs and Hindu devotional tunes, but India has an enduring love for rock-metal acts that have fallen off the radar in the United States — if they're even still alive.

For college graduates from 22 to 45 years old, forgotten bands like Deep Purple, Dire Straits and, yes, Iron Maiden remain immortal — thanks largely to the country's legion of engineers.

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“Engineering college computer servers have been crucial to the propagation of heavy metal in India,” music critic and concert promoter Arjun Ravi wrote recently in India's Sunday Guardian.

As a result, metal heads here — weaned on math homework and raised with an eye to the software industry — can look radically different from the headbangers of the American heartland or the costumed nihilists of Swedish death metal.

Hard rock and heavy metal is associated (rightly or wrongly) with working class anger in the United States and Europe. But in India, love for thrash, doom, speed and death almost always requires a college degree.

Headbangers still live with their parents, who tolerate music they call “noise” as long as it doesn't interfere with their kids' jobs or marriage prospects. And many rockers like Chinnappa, a buttoned-down lawyer, look and dress accordingly.

“There are two types of fans,” said Vibhas Venkatram, the 24-year-old drummer for Eccentric Pendulum. “There are these guys who believe metal heads are supposed to be some [certain] way. Even if they're working in a software company or a bank they have long hair and they come on stage with that long hair and head bang.”

“But there are these other guys who are short-haired, with glasses, completely geeky looking yuppies, I guess you could call them,” added Venkatram, a graduate student with a modest ponytail and a goatee who until recently was working with the Indian Institute of Astrophysics.

“At the end of the day, we're all just metal heads.”

More from GlobalPost: India's new license to rock

At the same time, metal acts like Chinnappa's are pushing beyond classic thrash, even as Indian electronica thrives on the club scene. And while this year's concert program features geriatric rockers like Megadeth, Slayer, Guns-N-Roses and even Carlos Santana, there are signs of change on the horizon.

Earlier this year, contemporary metal headliner Korn played Bangalore and New Delhi. Along with the Slayer-Santana “Rock 'n India” concert in Bangalore later this month, the “Bacardi NH7 Weekender” will bring rock-metal fans together with fans of folk and fusion music, as well as dubstep, drum and bass and reggae in a massive, six-stage event that will hit Delhi, Bangalore and Pune, Maharashtra. And trance-haven Goa's 5-year-old Sunburn Festival will this year bring its signature mix of Indian and international electronica to Delhi and Mumbai.

“I used to call it 'Third World Rock,'” said Ravi, who also runs a music website calledindiecision. “You had bands like Deep Purple, the Scorpions, Aerosmith, all these bands [that were well past their prime] coming to India. But now, over the last four or five years, there has been an influx of more contemporary popular acts.”

Along with Korn, contemporary metal acts like Australian rockers Karnivool, French death metal band Gojira and the Prodigy are now hitting Indian shores, Ravi said. And in the world of electronic music, India is already a regular feature on the concert circuit, with David Guetta, Afrojack, Armin van Buuren and Avicii performing over the past year or two.

“This year, for example, it's such a great year for metal, because so many more contemporary acts are coming to India,” Ravi said. “And it's all because of these kids. None of this stuff is available in stores.”

“You're not going to go to Planet M [Indian music store chain] and get a Gojira album or a Karnivool album,” he added. “[They're coming here] because these kids have discovered these bands over the internet. And they're obsessive about these micro-niches — doom metal, black metal, and all the other many forms of metal that exist now have audiences in India.”

Blame the nerds. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campus festivals from Mumbai to Madras were the first to feature international acts like Finland's Ensiferum, Sweden's Katatonia, Opeth and Hammerfall, according to Ravi. And the metal heads have never looked back.

Indian bands like Bangalore's Inner Sanctum, Kryptos, Eccentric Pendulum and Slain, or New Delhi's Undying Inc, Skyharbor and IAFWAY are starting to make a splash, too. After opening for Metallica, Inner Sanctum is dotting the i's on a deal to play a major European metal festival later this year. Skyharbor's Keshav Dhar has drawn praise from industry heavyweights like ex-Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman by uploading his tracks to sites like Soundcloud, resulting in collaborations with Ex-Tesseract vocalist Daniel Tompkins and a contract with UK-based Basick Records, according to Ravi.

“Within the domestic metal scene the shape and sound of metal is changing,” said Ravi. It's not just that dated, budget version of Iron Maiden or budget version of Mettallica anymore.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/121002/heavy-metal-rock-music-iron-maiden

India's new Muslim baby boom

A thriving domestic market for in vitro fertilization has made India the go-to spot for patients from Africa, Afghanistan and beyond.
By Jason Overdorf
(GlobalPost - September 13, 2012)

NEW DELHI, India — Business is booming at Dheerendra Singh's New Delhi-based medical tourism outfit, CureMax. But his biggest client base — Afghanistan — might come as something of a surprise.

“Every month, we do IVF [in vitro fertilization] for around 50 patients from Afghanistan,” Singh said. “They also come for other infertility-related procedures. And in the peak [winter] season [when the weather is more comfortable], we have 60-70 patients a month.”

Afghanistan isn't the half of it. Though infertility is commonly associated with the changing lifestyles of the West — where more and more women are putting off childbirth until their late 30s — India's IVF clinics are testimony that the trend is growing in developing countries and conservative societies as well.

Along with the much-talked-about medical tourist trade from the US and Europe, India is seeing an influx of patients from Muslim countries in Africa and the Middle East, thanks to a thriving, low-cost domestic fertility industry and cultural connections that make India a comfortable place for conservative Muslims, medical tourism professionals say.

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Statistics aren't readily available on the total number of patients coming to India for fertility treatments from predominantly Muslim countries. But anecdotal evidence from various doctors and other agents like Singh — as well as a thriving business in the Afghan refugee colony in New Delhi — suggests that the phenomenon is significant.

According to India's Outlook magazine, for instance, fertility experts like Dr. Kaberi Banerjee number their patients from places like Iran, Iraq, Uzbekistan and Tanzania in the hundreds. Meanwhile, companies like Care Medical say they see 10-15 foreign patients from Islamic countries every month, according to managing director D. Mahendran.

“Overall, we see [medical tourism] growth of about 15-20 percent annually, and I believe roughty the same kind of number holds for IVF,” said P.R. Ramesh, the chief executive of Aaarex Medical Services, another medical tourism firm. “But we're seeing a larger number of Muslim people than previously, including Muslims from Arabic countries and Muslims from countries like Nigeria and Tanzania and so on.”

Various factors help explain the baby boom. Because of India's massive population, and the cultural importance of bearing children here, private fertility clinics have mushroomed in recent years — until there's an IVF signboard on virtually every street in the upscale neighborhoods of New Delhi.

Reputable clinics offer a high standard of care for a small fraction of the cost of IVF in the West. A typical IVF procedure, for instance, runs to $3,000 in India, compared with $8,000 in the US or Europe, said CureMax's Singh. And patients receive more attention from doctors.

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To regulate fly-by-night outfits that have begun sprouting up, the Indian Council of Medical Research recently drafted regulations and began to crack down.

“Here in India, people take IVF very serious, and they give personalized care,” said Mahendran.

But there are other reasons India is attracting patients from Muslim countries.

Proximity and historical ties link India with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries of Central Asia in ways that are impossible for other medical tourism hotspots, like Thailand, to match. Standards of dress and behavior are similar, for instance. And the long dominance ofBollywood movies in the target region means that patients there are comfortable with Indian culture, and, especially in Afghanistan, can often already speak Hindi.

Because fertility treatments can be time consuming, the low cost of living, and the ease of blending in and finding halal meat and other familiar foods, is also a factor. In New Delhi, for instance, CureMax and other medical tourism outfits connect IVF patients with landlords operating serviced apartments in neighborhoods in Lajpat Nagar and Jangpura, which are already home to Afghan refugees who migrated here to escape the fighting at home. By cooking their own meals — and buying Afghani naan from the local shop — they avoid exorbitant hotel costs.

More from India: First comes fraud, then comes marriage

Similarly, certain Iranian and African communities have ties with India that make it a more familiar destination than its competitors.

“India has got a large Muslim population, and there are many communities in Africa which relate very closely to their counterparts in India,” said Aaarex's Ramesh.

“For example, there is a community called the Ithna Asheri community in Tanzania, with strong connections to the same community in India. Many of these communities are Indian in origin. To some extent there are also family links.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/120911/IVF-in-vitro-fertilization-muslim-baby-boom-medical-tourism