Opinion: In wrangling over a new anti-corruption law, India is missing the forest for the trees.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - August 23, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — Tens of thousands of protesters rallied across India on Monday, as social activist Anna Hazare's indefinite fast against corruption entered its seventh day and the government scrambled for forge a compromise.
But by focusing so narrowly on the nuts and bolts of the bill, the protest leaders, and the politicians they oppose, appear to be missing the forest for the trees.
No law will ever be enough to root out corruption from Indian society. But the mass movement itself — whether it is democratic or anti-democratic — may offer the germ of the broad cultural change needed to accomplish what no supercop could do. That is: Make corruption, which has always been illegal, also socially unacceptable.
The government has already capitulated to Hazare's demand for an anti-corruption law and his insistence that members of his coterie be included in the drafting process — though some objected that this granted undue influence to “representatives” who had never stood for an election. But now that members of parliament have developed a draft bill to create the anti-corruption office, Hazare is again fasting in protest because the government's draft does not grant the ombudsman power over the prime minister or the judiciary.
No doubt there are merits in the arguments of both sides, however wrapped up in the abstractions of “democracy,” and “the constitution,” they may be. But the nuts and bolts of the ombudsman law are immaterial when it comes to its actual purpose. India's weakness has always been in enforcement, not in legislation.
Corruption is so pervasive that the ombudsman's staff would have to be as large as the bureaucracy it is intended to police in order to sort through the reams of complaints it would have to process. And there is precious little to suggest that the regulatory superstructure would be any more inclined to honesty than the bureaucrats it's charged with monitoring — other than the fantasy of officers whose reputations are “above suspicion.”
Yet there is still promise in the Annapalooza under way at New Delhi's Ramlila Ground — which is usually reserved for annual dramatizations of the Hindu epic Ramayana. With the atmosphere of a rock concert crossed with a religious revival, Hazare's movement has encouraged India's much-maligned middle class to engage with the political system — though the crowd thinned with the end of a three-day holiday weekend on Tuesday. And, however naïve their us-versus-them formulation — which holds “the politicians” alone responsible for the corruption that plagues the country from top to bottom — Hazare's people have established a beachhead for morality where there was none.
And that could be where the beginning of a solution is to be found.
The “corruption” evoked at Annapalooza is nebulous and generic — drawing no distinction between the bribe accepted by a policeman to overlook a traffic violation, the side payment that an official at the passport office demands before he will process your documents, and the kickback paid by a company in exchange for a government contract (or telecom license). The common citizen is held to be a helpless victim of a grinding system where everybody is on the take, and the reviled politicians are held to be responsible for every link in the chain, as though every bribe ended up in some member of parliament's pocket.
But there is a vast difference between the bribe extorted from a citizen who is only asking for something he is due, like the grain allotted to below poverty line families by the public distribution system, and the bribe paid to jump to the head of the line or to get away with disobeying the law. If you get stopped for a traffic violation, the cop will take less than half the amount you'd have to pay for the official fine. If the building inspector finds a violation, his bribe will miraculously work out to 10 percent of the cost you'd have to pay to get up to code. And if you're compelled to bribe the telecom minister to get a license, well, you can bet the bribe amounts to a lot less than the money it saves you.
Through blurring these distinctions, Hazare has brought India's normally apathetic middle class onto the streets. But he will have to make clear what's really at stake if his mass movement is to have any impact. Passing another law or creating another regulator will be useless unless Hazare — who has made Gandhi his model — can convince his followers to emulate his idol, too. Because the first step in ending corruption will mean waiting in line, following the rules, and paying the fine.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Hollyworld: India in 3D
One savvy Indian entrepreneur bets against MGM, Sony, Disney, Warner Bros ... and, well, just about everybody.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - August 11, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — A few months ago, bargain-basement Bollywood filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt released India's first 3D film, a schlocky teen horror flick called "Haunted."
Against the odds, it was a sleeper hit — but not because of stellar performances or even slick marketing. Its success was due, largely, to one Indian entrepreneur's decision to take on the biggest Hollywood studios in the business.
The Indian film industry — until recently a "single genre" business of epic song-and-dance family tearjerkers — has never been much for costly special effects. But as Hollywood's biggest guns put their muscle behind 3D and Indian producers began pushing the envelope with films like Bollywood's "Krrish" and Tamil cinema's "Robot," Sanjay Gaikwad saw the glimmer of an opportunity for a cheap, Indian-made rival to Hollywood's 3D technology..
"In Hollywood, when they create the movies their main revenue comes from North America and they look at territories like India as incidental business, so the critical mass [for 3D] was coming from somewhere else," Gaikwad said.
"But in India, the kind of response that 3D content got was phenomenal, so obviously there was a lot of interest generated among Indian movie producers."
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the number of 3D releases in India has increased steadily over the past two years. Globally, eight of the top 20 grossing films in the first eight months of 2010 were 3D, compared with only three in 2009 and one in 2008, and the consultancy believes that the trend is set to continue despite risk of weak films diluting audience interest.
Meanwhile, 3D has already emerged as the biggest driver for Gaikwad's other business — the digitalizing of cinema screens.
As CEO of Mumbai-based UFO Moviez, Gaikwad had already revolutionized India's film distribution business by convincing thousands of single-screen theater owners in the hinterland to convert to digital — creating his own, cheaper alternative to the technology being promoted by Hollywood's Digital Cinema Initiatives, a virtual cartel comprising Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros.
So, when he saw James Cameron's "Avatar" fill multiplexes with audiences ready to pay a 25 percent premium for 3D, it was like deja vu.
"When we started our digital cinema business in 2005, we knew that when everything got digitized moving to 3D would be much easier than during the analog days," said Gaikwad.
"Eventually, it was proven when Hollywood studios started releasing a large number of 3D movies over the last two, two-and-a-half years. That is the time we realized 3D is here to say."
Ten years ago, Gaikwad convinced theater owners to convert to digital so they could download new releases instantaneously — filling seats by beating local pirates to the punch. But with 3D, it was a tougher sell.
Apart from a handful of multiplexes in metropolitan cities, Indian movie theaters earn 90 percent or more of their revenue from Indian films — not Hollywood blockbusters like "Avatar." After a decade of effort by DCI, the Hollywood cartel had only managed to sign up 76 theaters.
Meanwhile, until this year, no Indian had ever made a 3D film, and as long as only a handful of big city screens had the technology to show them, they weren't about to start, either.
"Unless you have that critical mass, you can't spend that additional budget for 3D content, and if you don't have any 3D content then people are not interested in investing in 3D infrastructure, so it was becoming like a chicken and egg story," said Gaikwad. "That is the time we decided to do something different."
To bridge the gap, Gaikwad's UFO Moviez spent a year-and-a-half creating its own 3D technology, which doesn't require a silver screen and costs about a third of what Hollywood's DCI 3D technology costs to install. Then, because the DCI agreement meant that he wouldn't be able to show films produced by the big seven Hollywood studios, he approached Indian cinema owners and offered to give them his 3D projectors for free, in exchange for a modest cut of the proceeds for upcoming movies — at 10-15 rupees per ticket.
"The capital cost is borne by UFO, whether it is changing the screen from the white screen to silver screen or by putting this 3D box and the additional projector," Gaikwad said. "Only when 3D movies are played do we recover our costs. That is how we started aggressively going into the market."
The bet is already paying off — at least in terms of expansion.
Currently, UFO Moviez has inked deals to install its 3D projectors in 200 Indian cinema halls, and Gaikwad says they will be up and running in 500 theaters by March 2012. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. UFO Moviez has tapped around $60 million in financing from Providence Private Equity. And with a planned investment of around $20 million, UFO is targeting 1,500 screens by the end of next year, ready to cash in on a wave of new Indian 3D content.
Ten made-in-India 3D films are reportedly slated for release this year, and according to the Bollywood rumor mill — "Haunted" made a big enough splash that the upcoming 3D films may well include the third installment of the blockbuster "Dhoom" franchise ("Dhoom 3 in 3D") and superstar Shah Rukh Khan's much anticipated superhero film "Ra.One."
The company will recoup its costs after just 10-12 Indian 3D releases. But can UFO Moviez go head to head against the DCI cartel and make money? Yes and no, says Gaikwad.
"The Hollywood Content has a [different] audience profile, whereas we still see 90 percent [revenue] from Bollywood movies and there's a large number of single screen theaters," Gaikwad said.
"Obviously, the single-screen theaters cannot afford the technology which is recommended by Hollywood studios so they are looking at the most cost effective without any compromise on quality. That is the solution which we have provided."
At the same time, though, UFO Moviez has cracked the window for Hollywood filmmakers who haven't pledged their souls to DCI to get their 3D films into more theaters across India, and the makers of movies like "Drive Angry," "Sanctum," and the "Nutcracker" have already leapt at the opportunity.
"Barring those seven studios, the other independent movies which come out of Hollywood are getting released on the UFO platform whether in 2D or 3D," Gaikwad said.
Of course, with only one film in the can, it's hard to say for sure if Gaikwad's 3D bet will pay off. He could sink or swim on the basis of a few terrible 3D movies, and Indian producers are notorious for their hit-or-flop, scattershot approach to the business. But the results from "Haunted" suggest that 3D could give an added boost to future genre-breakers in the vein of "Krrish" and "Robot."
An otherwise unimpressive film with C-list stars, "Haunted" had the biggest box office opening of any horror film to date in India, grossing around $3 million and nearly doubling its producers' investment. Meanwhile, theater owners reaped the benefits not only through packed houses but also through charging a 25-30 percent premium for tickets. Overall, 3D screen revenue was five times that of 2D screen theaters.
"Three to five years down the line, when we reach a critical mass of 1,500 to 2,000 theaters equipped with 3D, at least 5 percent of the content, or 100 films in Hindi and regional languages, will be released in 3D. At least 10 to 15 will do really serious business."
By that time, Hollywood may well have changed its tune.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - August 11, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — A few months ago, bargain-basement Bollywood filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt released India's first 3D film, a schlocky teen horror flick called "Haunted."
Against the odds, it was a sleeper hit — but not because of stellar performances or even slick marketing. Its success was due, largely, to one Indian entrepreneur's decision to take on the biggest Hollywood studios in the business.
The Indian film industry — until recently a "single genre" business of epic song-and-dance family tearjerkers — has never been much for costly special effects. But as Hollywood's biggest guns put their muscle behind 3D and Indian producers began pushing the envelope with films like Bollywood's "Krrish" and Tamil cinema's "Robot," Sanjay Gaikwad saw the glimmer of an opportunity for a cheap, Indian-made rival to Hollywood's 3D technology..
"In Hollywood, when they create the movies their main revenue comes from North America and they look at territories like India as incidental business, so the critical mass [for 3D] was coming from somewhere else," Gaikwad said.
"But in India, the kind of response that 3D content got was phenomenal, so obviously there was a lot of interest generated among Indian movie producers."
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the number of 3D releases in India has increased steadily over the past two years. Globally, eight of the top 20 grossing films in the first eight months of 2010 were 3D, compared with only three in 2009 and one in 2008, and the consultancy believes that the trend is set to continue despite risk of weak films diluting audience interest.
Meanwhile, 3D has already emerged as the biggest driver for Gaikwad's other business — the digitalizing of cinema screens.
As CEO of Mumbai-based UFO Moviez, Gaikwad had already revolutionized India's film distribution business by convincing thousands of single-screen theater owners in the hinterland to convert to digital — creating his own, cheaper alternative to the technology being promoted by Hollywood's Digital Cinema Initiatives, a virtual cartel comprising Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros.
So, when he saw James Cameron's "Avatar" fill multiplexes with audiences ready to pay a 25 percent premium for 3D, it was like deja vu.
"When we started our digital cinema business in 2005, we knew that when everything got digitized moving to 3D would be much easier than during the analog days," said Gaikwad.
"Eventually, it was proven when Hollywood studios started releasing a large number of 3D movies over the last two, two-and-a-half years. That is the time we realized 3D is here to say."
Ten years ago, Gaikwad convinced theater owners to convert to digital so they could download new releases instantaneously — filling seats by beating local pirates to the punch. But with 3D, it was a tougher sell.
Apart from a handful of multiplexes in metropolitan cities, Indian movie theaters earn 90 percent or more of their revenue from Indian films — not Hollywood blockbusters like "Avatar." After a decade of effort by DCI, the Hollywood cartel had only managed to sign up 76 theaters.
Meanwhile, until this year, no Indian had ever made a 3D film, and as long as only a handful of big city screens had the technology to show them, they weren't about to start, either.
"Unless you have that critical mass, you can't spend that additional budget for 3D content, and if you don't have any 3D content then people are not interested in investing in 3D infrastructure, so it was becoming like a chicken and egg story," said Gaikwad. "That is the time we decided to do something different."
To bridge the gap, Gaikwad's UFO Moviez spent a year-and-a-half creating its own 3D technology, which doesn't require a silver screen and costs about a third of what Hollywood's DCI 3D technology costs to install. Then, because the DCI agreement meant that he wouldn't be able to show films produced by the big seven Hollywood studios, he approached Indian cinema owners and offered to give them his 3D projectors for free, in exchange for a modest cut of the proceeds for upcoming movies — at 10-15 rupees per ticket.
"The capital cost is borne by UFO, whether it is changing the screen from the white screen to silver screen or by putting this 3D box and the additional projector," Gaikwad said. "Only when 3D movies are played do we recover our costs. That is how we started aggressively going into the market."
The bet is already paying off — at least in terms of expansion.
Currently, UFO Moviez has inked deals to install its 3D projectors in 200 Indian cinema halls, and Gaikwad says they will be up and running in 500 theaters by March 2012. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. UFO Moviez has tapped around $60 million in financing from Providence Private Equity. And with a planned investment of around $20 million, UFO is targeting 1,500 screens by the end of next year, ready to cash in on a wave of new Indian 3D content.
Ten made-in-India 3D films are reportedly slated for release this year, and according to the Bollywood rumor mill — "Haunted" made a big enough splash that the upcoming 3D films may well include the third installment of the blockbuster "Dhoom" franchise ("Dhoom 3 in 3D") and superstar Shah Rukh Khan's much anticipated superhero film "Ra.One."
The company will recoup its costs after just 10-12 Indian 3D releases. But can UFO Moviez go head to head against the DCI cartel and make money? Yes and no, says Gaikwad.
"The Hollywood Content has a [different] audience profile, whereas we still see 90 percent [revenue] from Bollywood movies and there's a large number of single screen theaters," Gaikwad said.
"Obviously, the single-screen theaters cannot afford the technology which is recommended by Hollywood studios so they are looking at the most cost effective without any compromise on quality. That is the solution which we have provided."
At the same time, though, UFO Moviez has cracked the window for Hollywood filmmakers who haven't pledged their souls to DCI to get their 3D films into more theaters across India, and the makers of movies like "Drive Angry," "Sanctum," and the "Nutcracker" have already leapt at the opportunity.
"Barring those seven studios, the other independent movies which come out of Hollywood are getting released on the UFO platform whether in 2D or 3D," Gaikwad said.
Of course, with only one film in the can, it's hard to say for sure if Gaikwad's 3D bet will pay off. He could sink or swim on the basis of a few terrible 3D movies, and Indian producers are notorious for their hit-or-flop, scattershot approach to the business. But the results from "Haunted" suggest that 3D could give an added boost to future genre-breakers in the vein of "Krrish" and "Robot."
An otherwise unimpressive film with C-list stars, "Haunted" had the biggest box office opening of any horror film to date in India, grossing around $3 million and nearly doubling its producers' investment. Meanwhile, theater owners reaped the benefits not only through packed houses but also through charging a 25-30 percent premium for tickets. Overall, 3D screen revenue was five times that of 2D screen theaters.
"Three to five years down the line, when we reach a critical mass of 1,500 to 2,000 theaters equipped with 3D, at least 5 percent of the content, or 100 films in Hindi and regional languages, will be released in 3D. At least 10 to 15 will do really serious business."
By that time, Hollywood may well have changed its tune.
Monday, August 08, 2011
Will the US lose Pakistan to China?
Analysis: Why India's biggest fear could offer salvation.
Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - August 8, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — With a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan on the horizon, India has been caught between cheering Washington's moves to rein in Pakistan's military and bewailing the possible fallout if America "loses" Pakistan to China.
Unlike the United States, which can take its guns and go home, India will have to deal with the fallout of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistani radicalism for the next decade.
A resurgent Taliban and the return of a radical Islamic regime in Kabul could create a new safe haven for anti-Indian terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba — the Pakistan-based terrorist organization responsible for the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai.
Some analysts fear that even as Islamabad works to bring the Taliban on board for a peace deal in Afghanistan, the Taliban leadership may help broker a settlement between Pakistan and various domestic terrorist groups like the Tehrik-i-Taliban, uniting the various jihadi organizations to focus on India, according to Indiana University professor Sumit Ganguly.
Realistically, the United States won't cut and run in 2014, but it will reduce its presence and convert its counterinsurgency operations into "counterterrorism plus," says Christine Fair, a professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies.
The recent move to freeze $800 billion in military aid to Pakistan is probably as much a signal to Congress that the State Department knows what it's doing than an indicator of any real plans to change horses midstream.
But let's play what if.
Despite concerns about China's rising influence in the region, losing Pakistan — an unlikely, if not impossibly bold maneuver — could be the most profitable move Washington has made in the War on Terror since Sept. 11. And India could benefit even more than the United States.
The conventional wisdom in New Delhi is that China uses Pakistan as a tool to thwart India's rise as a regional power, while Beijing sees the growing strategic partnership between India and the United States as part of a broader effort to prevent China from developing interests any further afield.
But even though there is more than a little truth in those perceptions, the United States may have an opportunity to create a paradigm shift in the politics of the region with a change in the way it views Pakistan — paradoxically gaining influence by ceding power.
For 50 years, America has endeavored to create a strong, democratic ally in Pakistan by doling out billions of dollars in economic and military aid, only to watch with horror as it emerged as one of the most virulently anti-American countries in the world and a covert sponsor of terror, Lawrence Wright argued convincingly in a recent issue of the New Yorker.
Because aid flows through the military establishment and the Inter-services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), it seems, American cash has empowered a shadowy regime of spooks and soldiers at the expense of the legitimate civilian government. But that's not the only compelling case for turning off the tap now, as Islamabad attempts to extort a dominant role for Pakistan in post-war Afghanistan.
Washington could save billions of dollars a year and stick Beijing with the bill at a single stroke, even as it alleviates Chinese fears of containment or encirclement by granting it equal responsibility for guaranteeing security in its own backyard.
More importantly, granting China that responsibility would likely compel Beijing to take a leadership role in managing and reforming Pakistan, rather than stirring up trouble with the confidence that the U.S. is riding herd. It would also address a simple reality: China already exerts more influence over Pakistan than the United States.
"I don't think the Americans have done enough to reach out to China," said Fair. "I don't think they've done enough to reach out to Saudi Arabia. They have a lot more influence than we do."
Moreover, paranoid fears aside, Beijing has repeatedly shown it has no interest in pushing Pakistan over the brink. In 1999, the Chinese thwarted Gen. Pervez Musharraf by refusing to support him in the Kargil War against India, for instance. Likewise, it was Beijing (not Washington) that induced the Pakistani government to send troops in to root out Islamic militants barricaded in the Lal Masjid in 2007.
And, most recently, when Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani sought a Chinese pledge of support following Washington's decision to freeze $800 billion in military aid, Beijing maintained a studied silence.
"It is Pakistan that wants China more than China wants Pakistan," said Suba Chandran, director of the New Delhi-based Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.
Neither the United States nor India can match China when it comes to playing hardball with Pakistan's military establishment. But both strategic partners could do a great deal more to promote Pakistan's civilian institutions if they focused on trade, according to Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council.
For instance, by expanding so-called "reconstruction opportunity zones" — where manufacturers enjoy preferential tariffs for exports to the United States — America could reduce the need for humanitarian aid at the same time it strengthens its economic ties with civilian Pakistanis. Similarly, removing various roadblocks could boost trade between India and Pakistan from today's $2 billion to $42 billion a year — creating a strong, new economic impetus for peace that might well spill over into Afghanistan.
"The pressure will grow on the military establishments to tone down their rhetoric and stop talking to each other as adversaries as the two countries economies are increasingly going to be linked," Nawaz said.
Meanwhile, said Chandran, a comparable increase in Sino-Indian trade promises to make China and India economic partners in the upcoming "Asian Century."
If, that is, China and India can resolve a niggling border dispute and Washington can convince Beijing that the Indo-U.S. strategic partnership is not part of a secret plan to keep China down.
Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - August 8, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — With a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan on the horizon, India has been caught between cheering Washington's moves to rein in Pakistan's military and bewailing the possible fallout if America "loses" Pakistan to China.
Unlike the United States, which can take its guns and go home, India will have to deal with the fallout of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistani radicalism for the next decade.
A resurgent Taliban and the return of a radical Islamic regime in Kabul could create a new safe haven for anti-Indian terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba — the Pakistan-based terrorist organization responsible for the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai.
Some analysts fear that even as Islamabad works to bring the Taliban on board for a peace deal in Afghanistan, the Taliban leadership may help broker a settlement between Pakistan and various domestic terrorist groups like the Tehrik-i-Taliban, uniting the various jihadi organizations to focus on India, according to Indiana University professor Sumit Ganguly.
Realistically, the United States won't cut and run in 2014, but it will reduce its presence and convert its counterinsurgency operations into "counterterrorism plus," says Christine Fair, a professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies.
The recent move to freeze $800 billion in military aid to Pakistan is probably as much a signal to Congress that the State Department knows what it's doing than an indicator of any real plans to change horses midstream.
But let's play what if.
Despite concerns about China's rising influence in the region, losing Pakistan — an unlikely, if not impossibly bold maneuver — could be the most profitable move Washington has made in the War on Terror since Sept. 11. And India could benefit even more than the United States.
The conventional wisdom in New Delhi is that China uses Pakistan as a tool to thwart India's rise as a regional power, while Beijing sees the growing strategic partnership between India and the United States as part of a broader effort to prevent China from developing interests any further afield.
But even though there is more than a little truth in those perceptions, the United States may have an opportunity to create a paradigm shift in the politics of the region with a change in the way it views Pakistan — paradoxically gaining influence by ceding power.
For 50 years, America has endeavored to create a strong, democratic ally in Pakistan by doling out billions of dollars in economic and military aid, only to watch with horror as it emerged as one of the most virulently anti-American countries in the world and a covert sponsor of terror, Lawrence Wright argued convincingly in a recent issue of the New Yorker.
Because aid flows through the military establishment and the Inter-services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), it seems, American cash has empowered a shadowy regime of spooks and soldiers at the expense of the legitimate civilian government. But that's not the only compelling case for turning off the tap now, as Islamabad attempts to extort a dominant role for Pakistan in post-war Afghanistan.
Washington could save billions of dollars a year and stick Beijing with the bill at a single stroke, even as it alleviates Chinese fears of containment or encirclement by granting it equal responsibility for guaranteeing security in its own backyard.
More importantly, granting China that responsibility would likely compel Beijing to take a leadership role in managing and reforming Pakistan, rather than stirring up trouble with the confidence that the U.S. is riding herd. It would also address a simple reality: China already exerts more influence over Pakistan than the United States.
"I don't think the Americans have done enough to reach out to China," said Fair. "I don't think they've done enough to reach out to Saudi Arabia. They have a lot more influence than we do."
Moreover, paranoid fears aside, Beijing has repeatedly shown it has no interest in pushing Pakistan over the brink. In 1999, the Chinese thwarted Gen. Pervez Musharraf by refusing to support him in the Kargil War against India, for instance. Likewise, it was Beijing (not Washington) that induced the Pakistani government to send troops in to root out Islamic militants barricaded in the Lal Masjid in 2007.
And, most recently, when Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani sought a Chinese pledge of support following Washington's decision to freeze $800 billion in military aid, Beijing maintained a studied silence.
"It is Pakistan that wants China more than China wants Pakistan," said Suba Chandran, director of the New Delhi-based Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.
Neither the United States nor India can match China when it comes to playing hardball with Pakistan's military establishment. But both strategic partners could do a great deal more to promote Pakistan's civilian institutions if they focused on trade, according to Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council.
For instance, by expanding so-called "reconstruction opportunity zones" — where manufacturers enjoy preferential tariffs for exports to the United States — America could reduce the need for humanitarian aid at the same time it strengthens its economic ties with civilian Pakistanis. Similarly, removing various roadblocks could boost trade between India and Pakistan from today's $2 billion to $42 billion a year — creating a strong, new economic impetus for peace that might well spill over into Afghanistan.
"The pressure will grow on the military establishments to tone down their rhetoric and stop talking to each other as adversaries as the two countries economies are increasingly going to be linked," Nawaz said.
Meanwhile, said Chandran, a comparable increase in Sino-Indian trade promises to make China and India economic partners in the upcoming "Asian Century."
If, that is, China and India can resolve a niggling border dispute and Washington can convince Beijing that the Indo-U.S. strategic partnership is not part of a secret plan to keep China down.
Monday, August 01, 2011
Cold Comfort
Soft adventure in Ladakh may be harder than it sounds
JASON OVERDORF
Outlook Traveler - Aug. 1, 2011
From the high ridge overlooking Khaltse, a tiny village some 100 kilometres from Leh along the road to Kargil, I stopped in the shadow of a towering boulder to gaze down on the peaceful Lamayuru monastery, set amid the sweeping, khaki-coloured rocks known as ‘the moonland’. Panting in the thin air, with sweat dripping down my back despite Ladakh’s dry climate, I let all thoughts of Delhi and deadlines drift away, listening to nothing but the sound of the wind. This is what I’m here for, I thought. Solitude. Silence. Peace. All of which are growing ever harder to find, even in the remote fastness of Ladakh.
On a last-minute, five-day blitztour, this day hike from Khaltse to Wanla was the closest I’d come to the big empty desert, and I felt my chest swell with desire for more. I’d hoped to tap the new market for so-called ‘soft adventure’ to knock the carbon monoxide out of my lungs and wipe the monsoon grease off my skin. But I’d had to scale back my plans when I landed in Leh, and the thin air reminded me that those lungs I was so keen to overhaul had aged ten years since my first visit. It would take at least two days for my body to adjust to the height, warned Milind Bhide, the 45-year-old owner of Countryside Adventure Holidays, who’d come from Mumbai to shepherd me through the trip. No matter how fit you think you are, 3,500 metres in altitude will kick your ass—even on a supposed ‘comfort trek’.
“Altitude-wise, all the treks in Ladakh are moderate to tough,” Milind told me on my first day in Leh. You don’t need to be an elite marathoner to survive a walk in the mountains, of course. But working out in the gym for 45 minutes three or four times a week was no preparation at all for four hours of hiking to 4,000 metres or more—the minimum standard set for most comfort treks. Without time to acclimatise, it would be better for me to travel by jeep. However, Milind assured me that we could still map out an itinerary that would get us off the well-worn path and incorporate a little adventure.
That was welcome news.
Since I first came here in 2002, the number of travellers visiting Ladakh has grown dramatically—from around 10,000 to some 80,000 tourists a year—and I noted the signs of the boom everywhere. Leh’s bustling market, once the sole purview of Israeli hippies and gap-year backpackers, now teemed with Indian travellers on package tours. Checklist sites like the Shey Palace and Thiksey monastery, which I first visited virtually alone ten years ago, were now surrounded by Sumos and Safaris and crawling with camera-toting tourists. Don’t get me wrong. Ladakh is still amazing. But the message is clear. Go now, before the Leh Bazaar gets any closer to the Shimla mall, and be prepared for long drives and a little sweat if you want to find your own piece of emptiness.
On our first ‘real’ day of travelling, for instance—not counting a day spent acclimatising in Leh—photographer Parth Sanyal and I woke at 5am to make the long drive up to the region’s second highest pass, on the road to Manali, before the light became too harsh for the camera. And by the time we returned—visiting the monasteries at Hemis, Stukla and Thiksey on the way back to the small village of Sabu, a few kilometres from Leh—it was nearly eight o’clock. The next day we were up at six for a day hike from Sabu to Leh and then a six-hour road journey over the world’s highest motorable pass at Khardung La and down into the Nubra Valley to see the sweeping sand dunes and two-humped Bactrian camels before sunset. And again the next morning we were up at dawn for the drive back to Khardung La, cycling down the winding road to Leh, and another five hours by jeep to the trekking hub of Temisgam.
To make sure we avoided the tourist conveyor belt, Milind had thoughtfully arranged for us to stay in quaint, tranquil surroundings each night. In Sabu, for instance, we stayed in the same cosy tents enjoyed by Aamir Khan and the prime minister’s daughter (on separate occasions!) at the lovely Ladakh Sarai. Similarly, in Nubra, we slept between a bubbling brook and a vegetable garden at the Organic Retreat, while in Temisgam we enjoyed some of the best vegetarian food I have ever eaten, at the Namra Hotel—a little Tibetan-style gem built to match the monastery on the hill above.
Meanwhile, the long journeys were as exhilarating as they were exhausting. Ladakh’s forbidding landscape is not for everyone—after four or five beers, a Slovenian friend cursed it as nothing but brown, brown, brown—but for me this is only the difference between what eighteenth-century climbers like John Dennis and Joseph Addison described as the beautiful and the sublime. The stark contrast of khaki and copper rocks jutting into the brilliant, cloudless sky sings like the call to adventure. Anything but monotonous, in a certain slant of light the rocks take on infinite patterns: the branches of a tree seeming to grow up the side of the mountain, the stretched faces of the moai statues of Easter Island, the spires of a thousand cathedrals. And there is a primal, muscular majesty—something more than the inviting beauty of a pretty meadow—in the narrow palette of slate, khaki, copper, black and gold.
Amid this bleak landscape, the tiny villages, each with its own monastery, are teardrops of green nestled in the stone. On our first long drive, we stopped at a solitary farmhouse beside the Manali-Leh highway, where mustard was flowering yellow in the fields, and watched a young Ladakhi woman working in the field with a baby strapped to her back. I am not a religious person. But with the silver-leaved poplar trees swinging in the wind, and a mountain stream tumbling down the rocks, it was easy to fantasise a life for myself here of tranquil self-reflection (however out of character).
I ordinarily have no time for cathedrals, temples and mosques. But in Ladakh I had no complaints about visiting two or three monasteries a day—from the bustling throng of Hemis, where a special prayer ceremony had drawn hundreds of locals in yak-wool robes and turquoise jewellery, to the white wedding cake of Thiksey, reminiscent of Lhasa’s Potala Palace in design. Perhaps it’s the contrast between these silent, idyllic refuges and the bleak proof of the earth’s tremendous power that surrounds them; nowhere is the upheaval from the crash of continents more plainly seen.
At no time was the evidence of this power more dramatic than on my first brief day hike from Sabu to Leh. From the small stupa overlooking the village, we followed the destructive path of the floodwaters from last year’s cloudburst into the mountains, where the torrent had carved a deep ravine, sending great boulders spinning down into Sabu, washing out a bridge and destroying the homes of several families. The flash flood had left behind a dry riverbed as flat and smooth as a highway, but even here the altitude starved my lungs of air and Parth—a two-pack-a-day smoker who prefers paranthas to press-ups—turned back before we’d even started uphill.
He didn’t know what he’d be missing. Although we were only a short distance from Leh, after a few minutes of huffing and puffing, Milind and I might as well have been hundreds of miles from the nearest plug point. As we walked, my body seemed to adjust to the altitude a little more with each step, so that when we crested the last jagged ridge and looked down on the Leh Palace and the dotted green of guesthouse kitchen gardens, I felt ready for four hours and 4,000 metres.
Sadly, that was not to be. A five-day trip to Ladakh requires tough choices, and well-rested Parth and I had many hours ahead of us.
Dropping Milind at his office in Leh, we barrelled on for Khardung La, where I put some of my newfound energy to work scrambling up the rocks above the tiny monastery for a better view of the glacier, using the prayer flags as guy-wires. And then we plunged down into the Nubra Valley, where the terrain changed abruptly from jagged, slate-coloured rock to sweeping sand dunes and blue-green seabuckthorn bushes along the Shyok river. A few miles outside Diskit, the tiny village that is the centre of activity in the valley, the river swelled to a wide, shallow lake in a broad alpine meadow. A pony herd was grazing in the wet, marshy grass, and the still, clear water reflected the snowcapped peaks in the distance like a mirror.
With the sun setting, we roared through Diskit to Hunder, where we joined the horde of Indian and foreign tourists queuing up for rides on the region’s famous Bactrian camels (now critically endangered in the wild). Though I would probably give the camel rides a pass next time, after a day in the mountains, alone on the winding road, the commonplace hilarity of tourists being tourists was unexpectedly welcome. A busload of Ladakhi kids—in the valley for a school camping trip—sat patiently on the sand, laughing when a shaggy camel pissed a steaming protest against the working conditions on an American girl’s sandals, and smiling at a Punjabi woman’s startled screams when her camel lurched see-saw fashion to its feet. Finally, when everybody else had sloped off to their guesthouses, the camel pullers announced that it was time for the school kids to ride, and the 150-bucks-for-ten-minutes tourist trap was instantly transformed by their unfiltered enthusiasm.
From that point on, the trip just kept getting better.
The next day, Milind met us at Khardung La with a pickup truckload of mountain bikes, so that we could cycle down the winding road from the pass into Leh, a trip of about forty kilometres. Parth remained steadfast in his no exercise policy, this time on professional grounds (he had to take our snaps). But Milind had been selling the ‘ride up, cycle down’ package for some time without having tried it himself and one of his friends, Kim, was in town from Manali, so he’d decided to give it a whirl.
Unlike trekking, which requires youth or fitness, no matter how easy the route, I soon discovered that the only requirement for downhill cycling is a bit of nerve. The first few kilometres down are rutted with potholes, so you have to keep an eye on your speed to avoid taking a tumble, but the only muscles you need are the ones that squeeze the handbrakes. Really. If I’d wanted to, I could have made it all the way to Leh without cranking the pedals once, but around halfway to the checkpoint at South Pullu, when the road turned to pristine blacktop, I couldn’t resist amping it up a bit. In no time, I was clocking sixty kilometres an hour, my full concentration focused on squeezing those brakes in time to lean into the next hairpin. I don’t think you could find a speed freak anywhere who’d object to this sort of soft adventure.
The highlight of the journey, though, was still to come. After forging on toward Kargil, past where the Indus meets the Zanskar river, we spent the night in the lovely, remote town of Temisgam and set off for Lamayuru at first light. Though we didn’t have to sweat to get there, this area was devoid of tourists, apart from a handful of foreigners making the five-day trek from Khaltse to Chilling, because all the Indian groups follow the Three Idiots route to Pangong lake, in the opposite direction. We wound up the jalebi road to Lamayuru without seeing a soul. In the distance, the monastery looked like a vision set amid a fantasy landscape—waves of white sand that look like cake frosting turned with a knife. No one else was visiting the monastery, either, and only when Milind and I took our first rest break on our short hike from Khaltse to Wanla did we run across any other tourists: a father and son from Britain trekking behind two heavily laden donkeys.
It wasn’t exactly an expedition, I reflected as I looked down on the moonland below. But unlike most adventures—chiefly enjoyed in retrospect, according to the ever so wise Bilbo Baggins—I found myself wishing it could go on just one more day.
JASON OVERDORF
Outlook Traveler - Aug. 1, 2011
From the high ridge overlooking Khaltse, a tiny village some 100 kilometres from Leh along the road to Kargil, I stopped in the shadow of a towering boulder to gaze down on the peaceful Lamayuru monastery, set amid the sweeping, khaki-coloured rocks known as ‘the moonland’. Panting in the thin air, with sweat dripping down my back despite Ladakh’s dry climate, I let all thoughts of Delhi and deadlines drift away, listening to nothing but the sound of the wind. This is what I’m here for, I thought. Solitude. Silence. Peace. All of which are growing ever harder to find, even in the remote fastness of Ladakh.
On a last-minute, five-day blitztour, this day hike from Khaltse to Wanla was the closest I’d come to the big empty desert, and I felt my chest swell with desire for more. I’d hoped to tap the new market for so-called ‘soft adventure’ to knock the carbon monoxide out of my lungs and wipe the monsoon grease off my skin. But I’d had to scale back my plans when I landed in Leh, and the thin air reminded me that those lungs I was so keen to overhaul had aged ten years since my first visit. It would take at least two days for my body to adjust to the height, warned Milind Bhide, the 45-year-old owner of Countryside Adventure Holidays, who’d come from Mumbai to shepherd me through the trip. No matter how fit you think you are, 3,500 metres in altitude will kick your ass—even on a supposed ‘comfort trek’.
“Altitude-wise, all the treks in Ladakh are moderate to tough,” Milind told me on my first day in Leh. You don’t need to be an elite marathoner to survive a walk in the mountains, of course. But working out in the gym for 45 minutes three or four times a week was no preparation at all for four hours of hiking to 4,000 metres or more—the minimum standard set for most comfort treks. Without time to acclimatise, it would be better for me to travel by jeep. However, Milind assured me that we could still map out an itinerary that would get us off the well-worn path and incorporate a little adventure.
That was welcome news.
Since I first came here in 2002, the number of travellers visiting Ladakh has grown dramatically—from around 10,000 to some 80,000 tourists a year—and I noted the signs of the boom everywhere. Leh’s bustling market, once the sole purview of Israeli hippies and gap-year backpackers, now teemed with Indian travellers on package tours. Checklist sites like the Shey Palace and Thiksey monastery, which I first visited virtually alone ten years ago, were now surrounded by Sumos and Safaris and crawling with camera-toting tourists. Don’t get me wrong. Ladakh is still amazing. But the message is clear. Go now, before the Leh Bazaar gets any closer to the Shimla mall, and be prepared for long drives and a little sweat if you want to find your own piece of emptiness.
On our first ‘real’ day of travelling, for instance—not counting a day spent acclimatising in Leh—photographer Parth Sanyal and I woke at 5am to make the long drive up to the region’s second highest pass, on the road to Manali, before the light became too harsh for the camera. And by the time we returned—visiting the monasteries at Hemis, Stukla and Thiksey on the way back to the small village of Sabu, a few kilometres from Leh—it was nearly eight o’clock. The next day we were up at six for a day hike from Sabu to Leh and then a six-hour road journey over the world’s highest motorable pass at Khardung La and down into the Nubra Valley to see the sweeping sand dunes and two-humped Bactrian camels before sunset. And again the next morning we were up at dawn for the drive back to Khardung La, cycling down the winding road to Leh, and another five hours by jeep to the trekking hub of Temisgam.
To make sure we avoided the tourist conveyor belt, Milind had thoughtfully arranged for us to stay in quaint, tranquil surroundings each night. In Sabu, for instance, we stayed in the same cosy tents enjoyed by Aamir Khan and the prime minister’s daughter (on separate occasions!) at the lovely Ladakh Sarai. Similarly, in Nubra, we slept between a bubbling brook and a vegetable garden at the Organic Retreat, while in Temisgam we enjoyed some of the best vegetarian food I have ever eaten, at the Namra Hotel—a little Tibetan-style gem built to match the monastery on the hill above.
Meanwhile, the long journeys were as exhilarating as they were exhausting. Ladakh’s forbidding landscape is not for everyone—after four or five beers, a Slovenian friend cursed it as nothing but brown, brown, brown—but for me this is only the difference between what eighteenth-century climbers like John Dennis and Joseph Addison described as the beautiful and the sublime. The stark contrast of khaki and copper rocks jutting into the brilliant, cloudless sky sings like the call to adventure. Anything but monotonous, in a certain slant of light the rocks take on infinite patterns: the branches of a tree seeming to grow up the side of the mountain, the stretched faces of the moai statues of Easter Island, the spires of a thousand cathedrals. And there is a primal, muscular majesty—something more than the inviting beauty of a pretty meadow—in the narrow palette of slate, khaki, copper, black and gold.
Amid this bleak landscape, the tiny villages, each with its own monastery, are teardrops of green nestled in the stone. On our first long drive, we stopped at a solitary farmhouse beside the Manali-Leh highway, where mustard was flowering yellow in the fields, and watched a young Ladakhi woman working in the field with a baby strapped to her back. I am not a religious person. But with the silver-leaved poplar trees swinging in the wind, and a mountain stream tumbling down the rocks, it was easy to fantasise a life for myself here of tranquil self-reflection (however out of character).
I ordinarily have no time for cathedrals, temples and mosques. But in Ladakh I had no complaints about visiting two or three monasteries a day—from the bustling throng of Hemis, where a special prayer ceremony had drawn hundreds of locals in yak-wool robes and turquoise jewellery, to the white wedding cake of Thiksey, reminiscent of Lhasa’s Potala Palace in design. Perhaps it’s the contrast between these silent, idyllic refuges and the bleak proof of the earth’s tremendous power that surrounds them; nowhere is the upheaval from the crash of continents more plainly seen.
At no time was the evidence of this power more dramatic than on my first brief day hike from Sabu to Leh. From the small stupa overlooking the village, we followed the destructive path of the floodwaters from last year’s cloudburst into the mountains, where the torrent had carved a deep ravine, sending great boulders spinning down into Sabu, washing out a bridge and destroying the homes of several families. The flash flood had left behind a dry riverbed as flat and smooth as a highway, but even here the altitude starved my lungs of air and Parth—a two-pack-a-day smoker who prefers paranthas to press-ups—turned back before we’d even started uphill.
He didn’t know what he’d be missing. Although we were only a short distance from Leh, after a few minutes of huffing and puffing, Milind and I might as well have been hundreds of miles from the nearest plug point. As we walked, my body seemed to adjust to the altitude a little more with each step, so that when we crested the last jagged ridge and looked down on the Leh Palace and the dotted green of guesthouse kitchen gardens, I felt ready for four hours and 4,000 metres.
Sadly, that was not to be. A five-day trip to Ladakh requires tough choices, and well-rested Parth and I had many hours ahead of us.
Dropping Milind at his office in Leh, we barrelled on for Khardung La, where I put some of my newfound energy to work scrambling up the rocks above the tiny monastery for a better view of the glacier, using the prayer flags as guy-wires. And then we plunged down into the Nubra Valley, where the terrain changed abruptly from jagged, slate-coloured rock to sweeping sand dunes and blue-green seabuckthorn bushes along the Shyok river. A few miles outside Diskit, the tiny village that is the centre of activity in the valley, the river swelled to a wide, shallow lake in a broad alpine meadow. A pony herd was grazing in the wet, marshy grass, and the still, clear water reflected the snowcapped peaks in the distance like a mirror.
With the sun setting, we roared through Diskit to Hunder, where we joined the horde of Indian and foreign tourists queuing up for rides on the region’s famous Bactrian camels (now critically endangered in the wild). Though I would probably give the camel rides a pass next time, after a day in the mountains, alone on the winding road, the commonplace hilarity of tourists being tourists was unexpectedly welcome. A busload of Ladakhi kids—in the valley for a school camping trip—sat patiently on the sand, laughing when a shaggy camel pissed a steaming protest against the working conditions on an American girl’s sandals, and smiling at a Punjabi woman’s startled screams when her camel lurched see-saw fashion to its feet. Finally, when everybody else had sloped off to their guesthouses, the camel pullers announced that it was time for the school kids to ride, and the 150-bucks-for-ten-minutes tourist trap was instantly transformed by their unfiltered enthusiasm.
From that point on, the trip just kept getting better.
The next day, Milind met us at Khardung La with a pickup truckload of mountain bikes, so that we could cycle down the winding road from the pass into Leh, a trip of about forty kilometres. Parth remained steadfast in his no exercise policy, this time on professional grounds (he had to take our snaps). But Milind had been selling the ‘ride up, cycle down’ package for some time without having tried it himself and one of his friends, Kim, was in town from Manali, so he’d decided to give it a whirl.
Unlike trekking, which requires youth or fitness, no matter how easy the route, I soon discovered that the only requirement for downhill cycling is a bit of nerve. The first few kilometres down are rutted with potholes, so you have to keep an eye on your speed to avoid taking a tumble, but the only muscles you need are the ones that squeeze the handbrakes. Really. If I’d wanted to, I could have made it all the way to Leh without cranking the pedals once, but around halfway to the checkpoint at South Pullu, when the road turned to pristine blacktop, I couldn’t resist amping it up a bit. In no time, I was clocking sixty kilometres an hour, my full concentration focused on squeezing those brakes in time to lean into the next hairpin. I don’t think you could find a speed freak anywhere who’d object to this sort of soft adventure.
The highlight of the journey, though, was still to come. After forging on toward Kargil, past where the Indus meets the Zanskar river, we spent the night in the lovely, remote town of Temisgam and set off for Lamayuru at first light. Though we didn’t have to sweat to get there, this area was devoid of tourists, apart from a handful of foreigners making the five-day trek from Khaltse to Chilling, because all the Indian groups follow the Three Idiots route to Pangong lake, in the opposite direction. We wound up the jalebi road to Lamayuru without seeing a soul. In the distance, the monastery looked like a vision set amid a fantasy landscape—waves of white sand that look like cake frosting turned with a knife. No one else was visiting the monastery, either, and only when Milind and I took our first rest break on our short hike from Khaltse to Wanla did we run across any other tourists: a father and son from Britain trekking behind two heavily laden donkeys.
It wasn’t exactly an expedition, I reflected as I looked down on the moonland below. But unlike most adventures—chiefly enjoyed in retrospect, according to the ever so wise Bilbo Baggins—I found myself wishing it could go on just one more day.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
India meets the Motor City
Can Royal Enfield, the world's oldest motorcycle maker, finally achieve commercial success?
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - July 19, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — On a sweltering July afternoon, bikers roar around the tight circle drive of the Ashok Country Resort outside New Delhi. The signature thump of India's most beloved motorcycle — the single-cylinder, Royal Enfield Bullet — multiplies, escalating to a roar.
Across the hotel compound, other riders, still mud-spattered from their journey, tinker with bikes that have just returned from the 1,500-mile "Himalayan Odyssey."
The Odyssey, organized by Royal Enfield Motorcycles, goes from Delhi to a high mountain pass called Khardung La in the Ladakh region, and back again. Riders from all over India participate in the legendary ride, which started in 2003.
"It was positively the greatest experience of my life," said 27-year-old Khurum, a business consultant who hails from Pune, Maharashtra, having just completed the ride.
"I had a smaller bike earlier, but I always wanted to pick up an Enfield. ... When you have that kind of power between your legs, it's a different feeling."
Royal Enfield, born in Britain and transplanted to Chennai, is the world's oldest motorcycle company. But even though its Bullet motorcycle is perhaps the most recognized and beloved brand in India, for many years the company seemed doomed to eke out an existence as a kind of curiosity. Commuters swore by the bike, but it never quite achieved mass appeal.
Then came foreign competitors like Harley-Davidson, Triumph and Ducati, revving their engines on Enfield's home turf and threatening to leave the company in the dust.
But just as Enfield's prospects might appear at their darkest, the firm may actually be poised to turn its cult following into something it has always fallen short of: commercial success.
"We're at a very, very interesting inflexion point," said Royal Enfield chief executive Venki Padmanabhan, who was named to the position in February, in an interview with GlobalPost.
"Royal Enfield, if you track it through its 100 years of history, has been like a wannabe brand. It's got appeal, and it's always on the brink of commercial success, but it never gets over the hump. ... But since 2000 Siddartha [Lal], the owner, has really grappled with the demons of the brand."
Not long ago, Royal Enfield — which once made rifle parts for the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield, Middlesex — sold only around 25,000 bikes a year, while the 100 cc commuter bikes of competitors like Hero Honda sold in the millions.
But this year, under the guidance of Padmanabhan, schooled in Detroit's automobile industry, Royal Enfield aims to increase output to 70,000 bikes from last year's 52,000. A new factory capable of building 150,000 bikes a year will come online next year, and a second plant capable of building another 350,000 bikes a year is slated for three to five years down the road.
Considering this year customers had to wait a whopping eight months for delivery after placing an order for a new bike, it's about time.
"I'm writing on my blog: I'm making 40 percent more bikes than I did last year," Padmanabhan said. "If the waiting period's not budging, don't mistake us, we're not insensitive to it. But obviously we're not doing enough."
At the same time, the company aims to add three or four dealers a month to its present network of 180 sellers over the next three years, while boosting international sales in countries like the U.K., France, Italy, Spain and the United States. Royal Enfield sold only 2,500 bikes abroad in 2010, but wants to add another 11 markets to the 29 countries where the brand currently has a small presence by next year.
It's a big opportunity. India's market for two-wheelers is already huge — with buyers picking up around 12 million bikes and scooters a year. Experts forecast continued double-digit growth for years to come.
Foreign competitors like Harley and Triumph may pose a serious threat down the road, but for now Padmanabhan sees their entry as spurring demand for bigger, more stylish bikes and driving interest in motorcycling as a hobby and a lifestyle choice, rather than a cheap way to commute.
"The fact that all these big guys are coming in just means that leisure motorcycling will become a significant interest among young men," Padmanabhan said.
But is the Bullet biting off more than it can chew?
Padmanabhan says that the aggressive targets may seem sudden, but Royal Enfield has been putting the pieces in place for the better part of a decade. It started when 37-year-old Siddartha Lal — scion of the family-owned group, Eicher Motors, which owns Enfield — took the helm in 2000. Enfield had been losing money, and Lal's father, Vikram, was keen to shut it down. But Siddartha, a passionate Bullet lover, convinced Vikram to give him two years to turn the firm around — and then embarked on a crusade to reinvent the engine that had made it famous.
For decades, Royal Enfield's 350 cc and 500 cc Bullet was the only "big bike" available. Its classic British design — framed around a four-speed, single-cylinder, iron-barreled engine that harks back to the heyday of BSA, Norton and Triumph — remained essentially unchanged for 50 years. Fans forged a cult-like following that endured even as faster, cheaper and more reliable Japanese designs stormed onto the scene.
But that classic character was at once Enfield's greatest strength and its biggest weakness: It ensured that the Bullet attained an iconic status, like Levi's 501s or Harley-Davidson's Sportster, yet it also guaranteed that it would never sell in big enough volumes for commercial success.
The 50-year-old engine also had technical difficulties, according to Padmanabhan. "The fact was it was not reliable. It seized. It leaked," he said.
In 2007, however, Royal Enfield unveiled a new design with an integrated gearbox and fuel injection. To the dismay of hardcore fans, the company also moved the gears and brake — which had always been "backwards" — so that the gear pedal was now on the conventional left-hand side of the bike.
Designers worked long hours to make sure that the new engine still looked old, so that when the company launched the Bullet Classic 500 in 2009, it would appeal to the faithful as well as new converts. But there was one crucial problem: You can make a modern engine look old, but you can't make it sound old. Aluminum just won't thump like cast-iron.
A quick internet scan suggests that the reviews were mixed. Some called the muffling of the classic thump "blasphemy" and "complete suicide" for the brand. Others said the modern features are a good trade.
And sales numbers for the Classic — a retro-looking Bullet with the new engine and electronic fuel injection — suggest that even if Enfield has lost a few die-hards, it's gaining a foothold among young riders looking for a stylish bike that spends as much time on the road as it does at the mechanic.
Perhaps it's time for Royal Enfield to finally live up to the swagger of its old-school slogan: "Made like a gun ... goes like a Bullet."
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - July 19, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — On a sweltering July afternoon, bikers roar around the tight circle drive of the Ashok Country Resort outside New Delhi. The signature thump of India's most beloved motorcycle — the single-cylinder, Royal Enfield Bullet — multiplies, escalating to a roar.
Across the hotel compound, other riders, still mud-spattered from their journey, tinker with bikes that have just returned from the 1,500-mile "Himalayan Odyssey."
The Odyssey, organized by Royal Enfield Motorcycles, goes from Delhi to a high mountain pass called Khardung La in the Ladakh region, and back again. Riders from all over India participate in the legendary ride, which started in 2003.
"It was positively the greatest experience of my life," said 27-year-old Khurum, a business consultant who hails from Pune, Maharashtra, having just completed the ride.
"I had a smaller bike earlier, but I always wanted to pick up an Enfield. ... When you have that kind of power between your legs, it's a different feeling."
Royal Enfield, born in Britain and transplanted to Chennai, is the world's oldest motorcycle company. But even though its Bullet motorcycle is perhaps the most recognized and beloved brand in India, for many years the company seemed doomed to eke out an existence as a kind of curiosity. Commuters swore by the bike, but it never quite achieved mass appeal.
Then came foreign competitors like Harley-Davidson, Triumph and Ducati, revving their engines on Enfield's home turf and threatening to leave the company in the dust.
But just as Enfield's prospects might appear at their darkest, the firm may actually be poised to turn its cult following into something it has always fallen short of: commercial success.
"We're at a very, very interesting inflexion point," said Royal Enfield chief executive Venki Padmanabhan, who was named to the position in February, in an interview with GlobalPost.
"Royal Enfield, if you track it through its 100 years of history, has been like a wannabe brand. It's got appeal, and it's always on the brink of commercial success, but it never gets over the hump. ... But since 2000 Siddartha [Lal], the owner, has really grappled with the demons of the brand."
Not long ago, Royal Enfield — which once made rifle parts for the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield, Middlesex — sold only around 25,000 bikes a year, while the 100 cc commuter bikes of competitors like Hero Honda sold in the millions.
But this year, under the guidance of Padmanabhan, schooled in Detroit's automobile industry, Royal Enfield aims to increase output to 70,000 bikes from last year's 52,000. A new factory capable of building 150,000 bikes a year will come online next year, and a second plant capable of building another 350,000 bikes a year is slated for three to five years down the road.
Considering this year customers had to wait a whopping eight months for delivery after placing an order for a new bike, it's about time.
"I'm writing on my blog: I'm making 40 percent more bikes than I did last year," Padmanabhan said. "If the waiting period's not budging, don't mistake us, we're not insensitive to it. But obviously we're not doing enough."
At the same time, the company aims to add three or four dealers a month to its present network of 180 sellers over the next three years, while boosting international sales in countries like the U.K., France, Italy, Spain and the United States. Royal Enfield sold only 2,500 bikes abroad in 2010, but wants to add another 11 markets to the 29 countries where the brand currently has a small presence by next year.
It's a big opportunity. India's market for two-wheelers is already huge — with buyers picking up around 12 million bikes and scooters a year. Experts forecast continued double-digit growth for years to come.
Foreign competitors like Harley and Triumph may pose a serious threat down the road, but for now Padmanabhan sees their entry as spurring demand for bigger, more stylish bikes and driving interest in motorcycling as a hobby and a lifestyle choice, rather than a cheap way to commute.
"The fact that all these big guys are coming in just means that leisure motorcycling will become a significant interest among young men," Padmanabhan said.
But is the Bullet biting off more than it can chew?
Padmanabhan says that the aggressive targets may seem sudden, but Royal Enfield has been putting the pieces in place for the better part of a decade. It started when 37-year-old Siddartha Lal — scion of the family-owned group, Eicher Motors, which owns Enfield — took the helm in 2000. Enfield had been losing money, and Lal's father, Vikram, was keen to shut it down. But Siddartha, a passionate Bullet lover, convinced Vikram to give him two years to turn the firm around — and then embarked on a crusade to reinvent the engine that had made it famous.
For decades, Royal Enfield's 350 cc and 500 cc Bullet was the only "big bike" available. Its classic British design — framed around a four-speed, single-cylinder, iron-barreled engine that harks back to the heyday of BSA, Norton and Triumph — remained essentially unchanged for 50 years. Fans forged a cult-like following that endured even as faster, cheaper and more reliable Japanese designs stormed onto the scene.
But that classic character was at once Enfield's greatest strength and its biggest weakness: It ensured that the Bullet attained an iconic status, like Levi's 501s or Harley-Davidson's Sportster, yet it also guaranteed that it would never sell in big enough volumes for commercial success.
The 50-year-old engine also had technical difficulties, according to Padmanabhan. "The fact was it was not reliable. It seized. It leaked," he said.
In 2007, however, Royal Enfield unveiled a new design with an integrated gearbox and fuel injection. To the dismay of hardcore fans, the company also moved the gears and brake — which had always been "backwards" — so that the gear pedal was now on the conventional left-hand side of the bike.
Designers worked long hours to make sure that the new engine still looked old, so that when the company launched the Bullet Classic 500 in 2009, it would appeal to the faithful as well as new converts. But there was one crucial problem: You can make a modern engine look old, but you can't make it sound old. Aluminum just won't thump like cast-iron.
A quick internet scan suggests that the reviews were mixed. Some called the muffling of the classic thump "blasphemy" and "complete suicide" for the brand. Others said the modern features are a good trade.
And sales numbers for the Classic — a retro-looking Bullet with the new engine and electronic fuel injection — suggest that even if Enfield has lost a few die-hards, it's gaining a foothold among young riders looking for a stylish bike that spends as much time on the road as it does at the mechanic.
Perhaps it's time for Royal Enfield to finally live up to the swagger of its old-school slogan: "Made like a gun ... goes like a Bullet."
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Mumbai blasts complicate talks between India and US, Pakistan
Analysis: Three consecutive bombings in Mumbai set stage for tough Indian stance before Hillary Clinton's visit.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - July 13, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — India has so far refrained from blaming Pakistan for the three serial blasts that struck Mumbai Wednesday.
But the apparent terrorist attack will harden New Delhi's stance in upcoming peace talks with Islamabad, not to mention the next round of so-called "strategic dialogue" with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday.
Pakistan's newly appointed foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, is slated to visit New Delhi to meet with Indian foreign minister S.M. Krishna on July 26.
Islamabad responded immediately to Wednesday's blasts by issuing a statement of condolence.
"President Asif Ali Zardari, prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, the government and the people of Pakistan have condemned the blasts in Mumbai and expressed distress on the loss of lives and injuries," the statement read.
But however carefully politicians tread on both sides of the border, the danger these bombings pose to peace in the region — not to mention successful U.S. negotiations of the issues surrounding India's and Pakistan's competing visions of their roles in post-war Afghanistan — can hardly be exaggerated.
On Wednesday, three nearly simultaneous explosions rocked India's financial and film capital, killing 21 people and injuring more than 100. All three bombs were planted in garbage heaps in some of the most congested parts of the city.
Government officials immediately said that the explosions bore the hallmarks of a terrorist attack, and local police named two notorious terrorist groups, the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and Indian Mujahideen. Officials called the Indian Mujahideen, which has used similar methods in the past, the prime suspect. Most often described as an indigenous Indian terrorist group, the Indian Mujahideen also receives support from Pakistan, according to India-based terrorism experts.
Though nearly three years have passed since the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai, and the two nations have made progress in re-establishing so-called confidence-building measures designed to prevent a shooting war, India's anger toward Pakistan remains intense, and Mumbai, a beloved city, is an extremely sensitive flashpoint.
Immediately following the killing of Osama bin Laden, for example, the more hawkish media outlets here pumped army officials about India's own ability to conduct a similar commando raid on Pakistani soil. And it has been said countless times through informal channels that India cannot guarantee it will respond with the same stoicism it showed after the November 2008 attacks if confronted with another terrorist attack clearly linked to Pakistan's intelligence agency.
Yet however desirable they might seem, nobody expected much from the most recent round of talks, or any in the near future, between India and Pakistan. It's India's strategic dialogue with the United States where the damage might be done.
The U.S. decision to halt some $800 million in aid slated for Pakistan's military — much of it reimbursement for costs incurred in the fight on that country's border with Afghanistan — has pushed Islamabad into a position where it will be tempted to respond forcefully to further condemnations from New Delhi or Washington.
Presumably, the timing of that slap on the wrist was no accident. And announcing immediately before Clinton's visit to New Delhi that Pakistan's army has to fight for the right side if its generals want to keep cashing American checks was intended to add weight to the message.
To avoid granting terrorists undue sway over the content of the India-U.S. dialogue, Clinton and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cannot blink. The danger of escalation, or of squandering any small progress that may have been made in ironing out a plan for post-war Afghanistan, is strong.
But the risk of missing the moment is even stronger. Washington's recent signals that it is willing to play hardball with Islamabad have the potential to be a game changer in south Asia, but only if the United States holds fast.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - July 13, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — India has so far refrained from blaming Pakistan for the three serial blasts that struck Mumbai Wednesday.
But the apparent terrorist attack will harden New Delhi's stance in upcoming peace talks with Islamabad, not to mention the next round of so-called "strategic dialogue" with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday.
Pakistan's newly appointed foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, is slated to visit New Delhi to meet with Indian foreign minister S.M. Krishna on July 26.
Islamabad responded immediately to Wednesday's blasts by issuing a statement of condolence.
"President Asif Ali Zardari, prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, the government and the people of Pakistan have condemned the blasts in Mumbai and expressed distress on the loss of lives and injuries," the statement read.
But however carefully politicians tread on both sides of the border, the danger these bombings pose to peace in the region — not to mention successful U.S. negotiations of the issues surrounding India's and Pakistan's competing visions of their roles in post-war Afghanistan — can hardly be exaggerated.
On Wednesday, three nearly simultaneous explosions rocked India's financial and film capital, killing 21 people and injuring more than 100. All three bombs were planted in garbage heaps in some of the most congested parts of the city.
Government officials immediately said that the explosions bore the hallmarks of a terrorist attack, and local police named two notorious terrorist groups, the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and Indian Mujahideen. Officials called the Indian Mujahideen, which has used similar methods in the past, the prime suspect. Most often described as an indigenous Indian terrorist group, the Indian Mujahideen also receives support from Pakistan, according to India-based terrorism experts.
Though nearly three years have passed since the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai, and the two nations have made progress in re-establishing so-called confidence-building measures designed to prevent a shooting war, India's anger toward Pakistan remains intense, and Mumbai, a beloved city, is an extremely sensitive flashpoint.
Immediately following the killing of Osama bin Laden, for example, the more hawkish media outlets here pumped army officials about India's own ability to conduct a similar commando raid on Pakistani soil. And it has been said countless times through informal channels that India cannot guarantee it will respond with the same stoicism it showed after the November 2008 attacks if confronted with another terrorist attack clearly linked to Pakistan's intelligence agency.
Yet however desirable they might seem, nobody expected much from the most recent round of talks, or any in the near future, between India and Pakistan. It's India's strategic dialogue with the United States where the damage might be done.
The U.S. decision to halt some $800 million in aid slated for Pakistan's military — much of it reimbursement for costs incurred in the fight on that country's border with Afghanistan — has pushed Islamabad into a position where it will be tempted to respond forcefully to further condemnations from New Delhi or Washington.
Presumably, the timing of that slap on the wrist was no accident. And announcing immediately before Clinton's visit to New Delhi that Pakistan's army has to fight for the right side if its generals want to keep cashing American checks was intended to add weight to the message.
To avoid granting terrorists undue sway over the content of the India-U.S. dialogue, Clinton and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cannot blink. The danger of escalation, or of squandering any small progress that may have been made in ironing out a plan for post-war Afghanistan, is strong.
But the risk of missing the moment is even stronger. Washington's recent signals that it is willing to play hardball with Islamabad have the potential to be a game changer in south Asia, but only if the United States holds fast.
India's injectable vasectomy
Birth control for men just took a giant step forward. Note the size.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - July 13, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — About 400 years ago, a bright spark came up with the idea to sheath his sword in a piece of sheep's intestine.
And the condom was born.
Since then, male birth control has mostly been tinkering with this initial design. Until now.
After a more than 30-year struggle, an unassuming Indian engineer named Sujoy K. Guha is on the brink of what could well be the most revolutionary contraceptive technology since the pill — and this time it's for men.
Called RISUG, which stands for "reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance," it essentially offers men a surgery-free, injectable vasectomy, which is good news in itself.
Better still, research on animals, including monkeys, has shown that this vasectomy is easily reversible. So what you get is a one-time, hormone-free sperm blocker that you can turn off whenever you want.
The impact could be huge for India, where sterilization is still the most often used method of birth control.
The numbers say it all. Today, only 3 percent of women are on the pill and 5 percent of couples use condoms. Meanwhile, some 37 percent of women undergo the comparatively dangerous tubectomy operation, while only 1 percent of men get vasectomies.
No wonder the drive to convince men to get conventional vasectomies is so intense that states like Rajasthan have offered cars, motorcycles and TV sets — not to mention gun licenses — as incentives to undergo the procedure.
"The fact that it does not involve cutting a body part and throwing a piece away carries a lot of psychological impact," Guha said. "That is one of the very major appeal points of RISUG. The second, of course, is the potential of reversal."
Guha's injectable vasectomy is not quite ready for prime time. But after laboring in obscurity for decades, the Indian scientist is now getting close to the finish line.
Stage three clinical trials — i.e. testing on people, not monkeys — are already underway in India. Some volunteers have been using the new form of birth control without a hitch for 15 years. The treatment could be available in limited release as early as 2012, though reversibility has not been established by human testing yet.
And thanks to an unusual alliance between Guha and Elaine Lissner, a San Francisco-based activist who has been pushing for better contraception for men since the 1980s, RISUG may also be coming to your U.S. doctor's office one day soon — under the trade name Vasalgel.
"In 2005, I got the chance to lead a small foundation and put some money towards what we'd been talking about all these years — to actually do something about it!" Lissner said via email.
"The foundation doesn't have a lot of money — just enough to do the first studies and show that it really works. But RISUG is so far advanced," she said. "It's the only non-hormonal method that's already been in use by hundreds of men — that it seems like a crime to ignore it."
As a result, even as RISUG clears the final hurdles for a commercial launch in India, Lissner's Parsemus Foundation is scaling up production of Vasalgel and preparing for preclinical trials in the U.S. The expectation is that the first U.S. clinical trials could begin as soon as 2012, though the foundation needs at least another $4 million in funding to shepherd the treatment all the way through the approval process.
Despite the remaining obstacles, Guha couldn't be happier.
"When I proposed this idea, I was laughed at and ridiculed," he said in a telephone interview with GlobalPost. "So it gives me a kind of good feeling that the concept may finally lead to some practical product."
It's been a long haul. In the early '70s, Guha was working on a project to kill the dangerous microbes in well water using a material that created an electrical charge in the pump mechanism.
When the government's family planning drive prompted him to focus instead on birth control, it occurred to him that the same principal could be applied inside the vas deferens — the vessel that's normally snipped in a conventional vasectomy.
It didn't take him long to discover that a polymer called styrene maleic anhydride, or SMA, would adhere to the walls of the vas deferens and create a positive electrical charge that zapped the negatively charged sperm as they passed through the vessel — killing or immobilizing them.
But proving that the treatment is safe and effective has been a long, arduous process of trial and error, hampered by bureaucratic sloth and a pathetic budget.
"We had no support from industry," Guha said. "And basically neither I nor my colleagues were really knowledgeable and experienced with respect to new drug development."
Part of the problem was the elegance of Guha's design, which from a marketing perspective was, frankly, too effective.
"To men, an ideal method would be cheap and long-lasting. To company shareholders, an ideal method would be expensive and temporary," Lissner explained by email.
"Pharmaceutical companies have no incentive to develop a cheap long-lasting method, and we can't expect them to take the lead. Men will get one if, and only if, they demand it of their governments," she said.
Not if Guha has anything to say about it. Having confirmed to his own satisfaction that the "injectable vasectomy" works and will also be reversible, he's now working on adapting the technology to provide additional benefits aside from contraception, so that more men would opt for the procedure.
At the top of his list are some very heavy hitters: HIV/AIDS and prostate cancer.
Guha believes the same gel used for RISUG can be used to deliver one of the most promising drugs in the fight against prostate cancer directly to the gland — eliminating the large doses and unpleasant side effects when it is taken orally.
Similarly, he proposes that at a lower dosage than the one used for contraception, the gel may be able to zap HIV so that men infected by the virus can ensure that it won't be passed on to their children or their partners.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - July 13, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — About 400 years ago, a bright spark came up with the idea to sheath his sword in a piece of sheep's intestine.
And the condom was born.
Since then, male birth control has mostly been tinkering with this initial design. Until now.
After a more than 30-year struggle, an unassuming Indian engineer named Sujoy K. Guha is on the brink of what could well be the most revolutionary contraceptive technology since the pill — and this time it's for men.
Called RISUG, which stands for "reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance," it essentially offers men a surgery-free, injectable vasectomy, which is good news in itself.
Better still, research on animals, including monkeys, has shown that this vasectomy is easily reversible. So what you get is a one-time, hormone-free sperm blocker that you can turn off whenever you want.
The impact could be huge for India, where sterilization is still the most often used method of birth control.
The numbers say it all. Today, only 3 percent of women are on the pill and 5 percent of couples use condoms. Meanwhile, some 37 percent of women undergo the comparatively dangerous tubectomy operation, while only 1 percent of men get vasectomies.
No wonder the drive to convince men to get conventional vasectomies is so intense that states like Rajasthan have offered cars, motorcycles and TV sets — not to mention gun licenses — as incentives to undergo the procedure.
"The fact that it does not involve cutting a body part and throwing a piece away carries a lot of psychological impact," Guha said. "That is one of the very major appeal points of RISUG. The second, of course, is the potential of reversal."
Guha's injectable vasectomy is not quite ready for prime time. But after laboring in obscurity for decades, the Indian scientist is now getting close to the finish line.
Stage three clinical trials — i.e. testing on people, not monkeys — are already underway in India. Some volunteers have been using the new form of birth control without a hitch for 15 years. The treatment could be available in limited release as early as 2012, though reversibility has not been established by human testing yet.
And thanks to an unusual alliance between Guha and Elaine Lissner, a San Francisco-based activist who has been pushing for better contraception for men since the 1980s, RISUG may also be coming to your U.S. doctor's office one day soon — under the trade name Vasalgel.
"In 2005, I got the chance to lead a small foundation and put some money towards what we'd been talking about all these years — to actually do something about it!" Lissner said via email.
"The foundation doesn't have a lot of money — just enough to do the first studies and show that it really works. But RISUG is so far advanced," she said. "It's the only non-hormonal method that's already been in use by hundreds of men — that it seems like a crime to ignore it."
As a result, even as RISUG clears the final hurdles for a commercial launch in India, Lissner's Parsemus Foundation is scaling up production of Vasalgel and preparing for preclinical trials in the U.S. The expectation is that the first U.S. clinical trials could begin as soon as 2012, though the foundation needs at least another $4 million in funding to shepherd the treatment all the way through the approval process.
Despite the remaining obstacles, Guha couldn't be happier.
"When I proposed this idea, I was laughed at and ridiculed," he said in a telephone interview with GlobalPost. "So it gives me a kind of good feeling that the concept may finally lead to some practical product."
It's been a long haul. In the early '70s, Guha was working on a project to kill the dangerous microbes in well water using a material that created an electrical charge in the pump mechanism.
When the government's family planning drive prompted him to focus instead on birth control, it occurred to him that the same principal could be applied inside the vas deferens — the vessel that's normally snipped in a conventional vasectomy.
It didn't take him long to discover that a polymer called styrene maleic anhydride, or SMA, would adhere to the walls of the vas deferens and create a positive electrical charge that zapped the negatively charged sperm as they passed through the vessel — killing or immobilizing them.
But proving that the treatment is safe and effective has been a long, arduous process of trial and error, hampered by bureaucratic sloth and a pathetic budget.
"We had no support from industry," Guha said. "And basically neither I nor my colleagues were really knowledgeable and experienced with respect to new drug development."
Part of the problem was the elegance of Guha's design, which from a marketing perspective was, frankly, too effective.
"To men, an ideal method would be cheap and long-lasting. To company shareholders, an ideal method would be expensive and temporary," Lissner explained by email.
"Pharmaceutical companies have no incentive to develop a cheap long-lasting method, and we can't expect them to take the lead. Men will get one if, and only if, they demand it of their governments," she said.
Not if Guha has anything to say about it. Having confirmed to his own satisfaction that the "injectable vasectomy" works and will also be reversible, he's now working on adapting the technology to provide additional benefits aside from contraception, so that more men would opt for the procedure.
At the top of his list are some very heavy hitters: HIV/AIDS and prostate cancer.
Guha believes the same gel used for RISUG can be used to deliver one of the most promising drugs in the fight against prostate cancer directly to the gland — eliminating the large doses and unpleasant side effects when it is taken orally.
Similarly, he proposes that at a lower dosage than the one used for contraception, the gel may be able to zap HIV so that men infected by the virus can ensure that it won't be passed on to their children or their partners.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
India: Wikipedia's next frontier
Wikimedia Foundation taps India for first foray into developing world.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - July 10, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — With growth slowing in the United States and Europe, Wikipedia has settled on India for the beachhead of its next round of expansion — which will see the seemingly ubiquitous online encyclopedia storm into the developing world for new users, and new contributors, in a host of languages.
The Wikimedia Foundation — which administers the online encyclopedia — is set to open its first foreign office in New Delhi in a matter of months.
The nonprofit has already mushroomed here in its typical guerrilla style. Wikipedia is the fourth most visited website among India's 100 million internet users.
Contributors and editors to Wikipedia are few in number compared with the United States and Europe, but the quantity of entries that they produce can be remarkable. One contributor alone said he had edited more than 14,000 pages and created so many that he's lost count.
That kind of enthusiasm is vital for Wikimedia. By 2015, the foundation aims to increase the monthly visitors to its sites to a billion people from around 400 million today, while boosting the number of articles available online to 50 million from 20 million, according to its latest strategic plan.
But the number of contributors — "the lifeblood of Wikimedia projects" — has plateaued around 100,000 active editors.
India's real promise, therefore, lies in its huge, young population and the rapid growth of internet penetration. Its 100 million internet users will as much as double by 2015, according to some estimates, as web-ready smart phones draw more mobile users online.
And due to a dearth of libraries and the infrequent revisions of government-mandated school textbooks, the demand for Wikipedia promises to be greater here than virtually anywhere in the world.
"Wikimedia is like an alternative market response to the failures of the state in India," said Anirudh Singh Bhati, a member of the executive council for the Wikipedia India chapter. "If a student needs information which is up to date they use mainly Wikipedia to get it."
To tap that potential, Wikimedia is working to promote 40 individual encyclopedia sites in Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, as well as mobilizing volunteers for programs like "Campus Ambassadors," which are designed to turn users into contributors, said Bishaka Datta, a Mumbai-based documentary filmmaker who was recently appointed to Wikimedia's board of directors.
"In India there are thousands of languages, so if you want to reach somebody who's been to school and studied in Malayam entirely, then that person has to be reached in Malayalam," Datta said.
That presents its own challenges. Nagging software issues make it difficult to enter text in Indian languages — none of which use the English alphabet. Discussions about the accuracy and neutrality of the encyclopedia entries must often be conducted in multiple languages.
And even though the non-English sites are vital for expansion, the advance guard of contributors and editors has come mainly from the portion of the population that speaks English (along with another language), so the number of entries on the Indian language sites has not grown as rapidly as it might have.
The Malayalam Wikipedia languished with only around 400 entries for its first three years, for instance, even though it is spoken by some 36 million people — most of whom live in Kerala, a state with an unusually high literacy rate.
India's desperate need for basic research materials, however, has already begun to act as a stimulus to the growth of the editing community, both in English and Indian languages. Last month, a Wikimedia team led by Hisham Mundol — a development sector expert recently hired to drive the expansion of readership and editor base in India — visited the university hub of Pune, Maharashtra to roll out the first Campus Ambassadors program outside the United States.
Academics like Rimi B. Chatterjee, a novelist and historian who teaches at Kolkata's Jadavpur University, are pioneering ways to leverage students' reliance (and over-reliance) on Wikipedia to motivate habitual rote learners to think about their research papers in new ways.
And the government of at least one state, Kerala, has embraced the online encyclopedia as an educational tool that can save it from using vital resources from its meager budget essentially to reinvent the wheel — a move that helped boost the number of entries on the Malayalam Wikipedia from 400 in 2005 to more than 18,000 today.
"I think the potential [for India] is huge," Datta said. "Platforms like Wikipedia can really equalize access. People in the [developing] countries of the Global South have always lacked access to knowledge and institutions. Something like this can really erase that inequality of access."
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - July 10, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — With growth slowing in the United States and Europe, Wikipedia has settled on India for the beachhead of its next round of expansion — which will see the seemingly ubiquitous online encyclopedia storm into the developing world for new users, and new contributors, in a host of languages.
The Wikimedia Foundation — which administers the online encyclopedia — is set to open its first foreign office in New Delhi in a matter of months.
The nonprofit has already mushroomed here in its typical guerrilla style. Wikipedia is the fourth most visited website among India's 100 million internet users.
Contributors and editors to Wikipedia are few in number compared with the United States and Europe, but the quantity of entries that they produce can be remarkable. One contributor alone said he had edited more than 14,000 pages and created so many that he's lost count.
That kind of enthusiasm is vital for Wikimedia. By 2015, the foundation aims to increase the monthly visitors to its sites to a billion people from around 400 million today, while boosting the number of articles available online to 50 million from 20 million, according to its latest strategic plan.
But the number of contributors — "the lifeblood of Wikimedia projects" — has plateaued around 100,000 active editors.
India's real promise, therefore, lies in its huge, young population and the rapid growth of internet penetration. Its 100 million internet users will as much as double by 2015, according to some estimates, as web-ready smart phones draw more mobile users online.
And due to a dearth of libraries and the infrequent revisions of government-mandated school textbooks, the demand for Wikipedia promises to be greater here than virtually anywhere in the world.
"Wikimedia is like an alternative market response to the failures of the state in India," said Anirudh Singh Bhati, a member of the executive council for the Wikipedia India chapter. "If a student needs information which is up to date they use mainly Wikipedia to get it."
To tap that potential, Wikimedia is working to promote 40 individual encyclopedia sites in Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, as well as mobilizing volunteers for programs like "Campus Ambassadors," which are designed to turn users into contributors, said Bishaka Datta, a Mumbai-based documentary filmmaker who was recently appointed to Wikimedia's board of directors.
"In India there are thousands of languages, so if you want to reach somebody who's been to school and studied in Malayam entirely, then that person has to be reached in Malayalam," Datta said.
That presents its own challenges. Nagging software issues make it difficult to enter text in Indian languages — none of which use the English alphabet. Discussions about the accuracy and neutrality of the encyclopedia entries must often be conducted in multiple languages.
And even though the non-English sites are vital for expansion, the advance guard of contributors and editors has come mainly from the portion of the population that speaks English (along with another language), so the number of entries on the Indian language sites has not grown as rapidly as it might have.
The Malayalam Wikipedia languished with only around 400 entries for its first three years, for instance, even though it is spoken by some 36 million people — most of whom live in Kerala, a state with an unusually high literacy rate.
India's desperate need for basic research materials, however, has already begun to act as a stimulus to the growth of the editing community, both in English and Indian languages. Last month, a Wikimedia team led by Hisham Mundol — a development sector expert recently hired to drive the expansion of readership and editor base in India — visited the university hub of Pune, Maharashtra to roll out the first Campus Ambassadors program outside the United States.
Academics like Rimi B. Chatterjee, a novelist and historian who teaches at Kolkata's Jadavpur University, are pioneering ways to leverage students' reliance (and over-reliance) on Wikipedia to motivate habitual rote learners to think about their research papers in new ways.
And the government of at least one state, Kerala, has embraced the online encyclopedia as an educational tool that can save it from using vital resources from its meager budget essentially to reinvent the wheel — a move that helped boost the number of entries on the Malayalam Wikipedia from 400 in 2005 to more than 18,000 today.
"I think the potential [for India] is huge," Datta said. "Platforms like Wikipedia can really equalize access. People in the [developing] countries of the Global South have always lacked access to knowledge and institutions. Something like this can really erase that inequality of access."
Friday, July 08, 2011
CSI India: Forensics reach new low
A court case against Delhi's top forensics lab reveals scientists faked credentials to get hired.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - July 7, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — It's hard to believe that India was once at the forefront of forensic science.
And yet, it's true. Once upon a time, 19th century British civil servants helped pioneer the use of fingerprints for criminal investigations in India.
Let's just say it's been downhill since then.
Rudimentary foul-ups routinely derail high-profile cases, like the unsolved 2008 murder of 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar. In everyday investigations of killings in rural India, officials most often avoid even a cursory autopsy in the interest of keeping crime statistics down.
And now, new allegations have emerged that suggest the malaise runs deeper.
Nearly a quarter of the scientists in New Delhi's top forensic investigation lab submitted fake documents or exaggerated on their applications in order to secure their jobs, whistleblowers have alleged.
"They chose people who did not have relevant experience in the field, particularly leaving out people who are available [and who have] relevant experience," said Delhi High Court lawyer C. Mohan Rao.
Rao represents two plaintiffs who allege that they were passed over for jobs at Delhi's state-run Forensic Science Laboratory that were instead given to unqualified recruits.
Seasoned observers can hardly be shocked by the allegations.
"In most cases, even if evidence is collected it may not be evaluated as quickly as possible," said Dr. Jagadeesh Narayanareddy, professor of forensic medicine at Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences, Bangalore. "Usually the waiting period is three to six months, and if the evidence was not preserved properly, then definitely the results will not come properly."
By the numbers, killers were convicted in only about 45,000 of the 130,000-odd murders committed in India between 2005 and 2009 (the most recent year for which statistics are available) — which makes for a conviction rate of about 36 percent, or about half the success rate of most U.S. states.
But anecdotal evidence suggests that when suspects don't wilt under the third degree and forensic science is required to prove their guilt, that conviction rate drops precipitously.
In the past, these failings have been attributed to poorly trained junior police officers. In the Aarushi case, for instance, the Central Bureau of Investigation has claimed that police in the New Delhi satellite town of Noida, Uttar Pradesh, destroyed as much as 90 percent of the crime scene evidence.
But poorly trained police aren't the only problem, it now appears.
"In India, we only have government-run forensic science laboratories," said Narayanareddy. "That means that the government has to appoint the scientists. Recruitment takes their own sweet time ... [and] it's like any other government agency: They also hire substandard people."
According to four separate court cases filed over the past few months, at least 15 of the 70 scientists employed by Delhi's Forensic Science Laboratory allegedly got hired based on fictitious or irrelevant job experience and fraudulent certificates, India's Mail Today newspaper reported.
All of the scientists whose credential are in question were hired between August and December 2009, during which time 33 new scientists were recruited.
Using India's Right to Information Act, the plaintiffs learned that an apartment complex stood where the private lab cited on a job application was supposed to be.
Similarly, a former lab assistant in chemistry and a contract worker from the ballistics department were hired as experts in forged documents and cyber crime, respectively.
Meanwhile, a new recruit was hired to work in the lie-detection department based on experience she claimed to have gained working there herself — during years that the unit wasn't even up and running.
So far, no one has challenged any of the criminal cases that the lab has been involved in over the past 18 months, but these new allegations raise serious suspicions as to integrity of investigations conducted during that time.
In the past, the lab has been asked to make determinations in many high-profile cases, including the alleged gang rape of a 22-year-old woman by police officers in 2009.
"[If they hired] people who are not qualified, that is really a concern because then there would be a question mark about all their investigations," said Narayanareddy.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - July 7, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — It's hard to believe that India was once at the forefront of forensic science.
And yet, it's true. Once upon a time, 19th century British civil servants helped pioneer the use of fingerprints for criminal investigations in India.
Let's just say it's been downhill since then.
Rudimentary foul-ups routinely derail high-profile cases, like the unsolved 2008 murder of 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar. In everyday investigations of killings in rural India, officials most often avoid even a cursory autopsy in the interest of keeping crime statistics down.
And now, new allegations have emerged that suggest the malaise runs deeper.
Nearly a quarter of the scientists in New Delhi's top forensic investigation lab submitted fake documents or exaggerated on their applications in order to secure their jobs, whistleblowers have alleged.
"They chose people who did not have relevant experience in the field, particularly leaving out people who are available [and who have] relevant experience," said Delhi High Court lawyer C. Mohan Rao.
Rao represents two plaintiffs who allege that they were passed over for jobs at Delhi's state-run Forensic Science Laboratory that were instead given to unqualified recruits.
Seasoned observers can hardly be shocked by the allegations.
"In most cases, even if evidence is collected it may not be evaluated as quickly as possible," said Dr. Jagadeesh Narayanareddy, professor of forensic medicine at Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences, Bangalore. "Usually the waiting period is three to six months, and if the evidence was not preserved properly, then definitely the results will not come properly."
By the numbers, killers were convicted in only about 45,000 of the 130,000-odd murders committed in India between 2005 and 2009 (the most recent year for which statistics are available) — which makes for a conviction rate of about 36 percent, or about half the success rate of most U.S. states.
But anecdotal evidence suggests that when suspects don't wilt under the third degree and forensic science is required to prove their guilt, that conviction rate drops precipitously.
In the past, these failings have been attributed to poorly trained junior police officers. In the Aarushi case, for instance, the Central Bureau of Investigation has claimed that police in the New Delhi satellite town of Noida, Uttar Pradesh, destroyed as much as 90 percent of the crime scene evidence.
But poorly trained police aren't the only problem, it now appears.
"In India, we only have government-run forensic science laboratories," said Narayanareddy. "That means that the government has to appoint the scientists. Recruitment takes their own sweet time ... [and] it's like any other government agency: They also hire substandard people."
According to four separate court cases filed over the past few months, at least 15 of the 70 scientists employed by Delhi's Forensic Science Laboratory allegedly got hired based on fictitious or irrelevant job experience and fraudulent certificates, India's Mail Today newspaper reported.
All of the scientists whose credential are in question were hired between August and December 2009, during which time 33 new scientists were recruited.
Using India's Right to Information Act, the plaintiffs learned that an apartment complex stood where the private lab cited on a job application was supposed to be.
Similarly, a former lab assistant in chemistry and a contract worker from the ballistics department were hired as experts in forged documents and cyber crime, respectively.
Meanwhile, a new recruit was hired to work in the lie-detection department based on experience she claimed to have gained working there herself — during years that the unit wasn't even up and running.
So far, no one has challenged any of the criminal cases that the lab has been involved in over the past 18 months, but these new allegations raise serious suspicions as to integrity of investigations conducted during that time.
In the past, the lab has been asked to make determinations in many high-profile cases, including the alleged gang rape of a 22-year-old woman by police officers in 2009.
"[If they hired] people who are not qualified, that is really a concern because then there would be a question mark about all their investigations," said Narayanareddy.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
India: Is free speech on the way out?
India faces new threats to freedom of speech as technology advances and citizens gain more access to information.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - June 29, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — With a vibrant, critical press and a strong culture of dissent, India stands out as one of Asia's strongest champions of freedom of speech.
But even as new technologies give citizens greater power to exercise that freedom, the government is making efforts to the contrary.
On the one hand, Indian authorities are capitulating to extremist groups and political parties that demand the banning of books and films claimed to be offensive. On the other, they are flirting with outright curbs on freedom of speech — with new laws governing internet content and the print media.
It's a dangerous cocktail.
“The risk of abuse of these laws to silence speech is going to be very, very high.”
~Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch
In recent months, India drafted new rules for the web that will allow anyone to demand that internet sites and service providers remove supposedly objectionable content based on a sweeping list of criteria.
Charges of sedition were used to try to silence author Arundhati Roy and activist Binayak Sen, two of the country's most prominent citizens. Sen spent two years in jail before the Supreme Court freed him on bail this April.
Joseph Lelyveld's controversial biography of Gandhi joined the list of hundreds of books to be banned with little regard to their actual contents. And Maqbool Fida Husain, one of the country's most feted artists, died in exile imposed on him by legal harassment and death threats from extremist groups that objected to some of his paintings.
Even before the rules for internet speech were notified under the IT act in April, the Department of Information Technology had quietly blocked 11 websites, the Center for Internet and Society discovered through a recent Right to Information (RTI) request.
Bloggers and social media activists fear that the new rules, which also regulate posts on YouTube, Facebook and similar sites, will set off a constant battle against bans. While the law requires these sites to remove so-called "objectionable content" within 36 hours of receiving a complaint, critics say there's no mechanism for the site or initial user to defend the posting.
Moreover, the definition of objectionable content — which includes anything that is "harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, pornographic, libellous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, disparaging, racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable, relating to money laundering or gambling" — is vague enough that anything at all might meet the criteria for a ban.
"It [the new list of rules] is in direct violation to the freedom of speech," Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court lawyer who specializes in cyber law, told the Times of India.
At the same time, even as the rapid expansion of television news channels, newspapers and magazines suggest that India's free press is as vital as ever, critics argue that certain stories have become more difficult to tell.
Early this year, the information and broadcasting ministry urged print publications to write more positive stories, even as it proposed amendments to the Press and Publications Act giving the state greater control over content. Among other measures, the amended law would allow local officials to suspend publication and bar anybody convicted of terrorist acts or any other act that endangers the security of the state from printing a newspaper or magazine.
And while the broadcast ministry continually calls for "self-regulation," other forces ensure that self-censorship remains rampant.
Various media outlets have begun the practice of accepting payment for certain types of news — even political reports — while journalists who expose crime and corruption regularly face violent attacks.
Though police this month apprehended several suspects in the slaying of a Mumbai crime reporter, most of the assaults on journalists go unremarked and unpunished, according to a recent report by the India-based Media Foundation. The alleged perpetrators range from political parties to corporate thugs to the police themselves, according to a press release.
Meanwhile, the legal and financial obstacles to reporting from India's poor rural areas are greater than ever, according to Shubhranshu Choudhary, a former BBC journalist who now runs a mobile phone-based radio news network in Chhattisgarh. Most rural Indians can't read the newspaper and can't afford television, for instance. But even though the government recently allowed FM stations and community radio, news broadcasts are still banned across the dial — apart from the government-friendly reports by state-owned All India Radio.
Newspaper reporters based outside of major cities are paid a percentage of the advertising revenue they collect, rather than a straight salary, so they are beholden to local corporations rather than their readers or editors. And, increasingly, television rating points (TRPs) rather than editorial standards define the value of news, Choudhary said, citing several television channels' recent decision to remove their reporters from Chhattisgarh — seat of a Maoist rebellion which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and others have described as the greatest threat to India's security.
"Chhattisgarh does not have even a single TRP box," Choudhary said. "They're very clearly saying, whatever happens in Chhattisgarh, why should we bother?"
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - June 29, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — With a vibrant, critical press and a strong culture of dissent, India stands out as one of Asia's strongest champions of freedom of speech.
But even as new technologies give citizens greater power to exercise that freedom, the government is making efforts to the contrary.
On the one hand, Indian authorities are capitulating to extremist groups and political parties that demand the banning of books and films claimed to be offensive. On the other, they are flirting with outright curbs on freedom of speech — with new laws governing internet content and the print media.
It's a dangerous cocktail.
“The risk of abuse of these laws to silence speech is going to be very, very high.”
~Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch
In recent months, India drafted new rules for the web that will allow anyone to demand that internet sites and service providers remove supposedly objectionable content based on a sweeping list of criteria.
Charges of sedition were used to try to silence author Arundhati Roy and activist Binayak Sen, two of the country's most prominent citizens. Sen spent two years in jail before the Supreme Court freed him on bail this April.
Joseph Lelyveld's controversial biography of Gandhi joined the list of hundreds of books to be banned with little regard to their actual contents. And Maqbool Fida Husain, one of the country's most feted artists, died in exile imposed on him by legal harassment and death threats from extremist groups that objected to some of his paintings.
Even before the rules for internet speech were notified under the IT act in April, the Department of Information Technology had quietly blocked 11 websites, the Center for Internet and Society discovered through a recent Right to Information (RTI) request.
Bloggers and social media activists fear that the new rules, which also regulate posts on YouTube, Facebook and similar sites, will set off a constant battle against bans. While the law requires these sites to remove so-called "objectionable content" within 36 hours of receiving a complaint, critics say there's no mechanism for the site or initial user to defend the posting.
Moreover, the definition of objectionable content — which includes anything that is "harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, pornographic, libellous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, disparaging, racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable, relating to money laundering or gambling" — is vague enough that anything at all might meet the criteria for a ban.
"It [the new list of rules] is in direct violation to the freedom of speech," Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court lawyer who specializes in cyber law, told the Times of India.
At the same time, even as the rapid expansion of television news channels, newspapers and magazines suggest that India's free press is as vital as ever, critics argue that certain stories have become more difficult to tell.
Early this year, the information and broadcasting ministry urged print publications to write more positive stories, even as it proposed amendments to the Press and Publications Act giving the state greater control over content. Among other measures, the amended law would allow local officials to suspend publication and bar anybody convicted of terrorist acts or any other act that endangers the security of the state from printing a newspaper or magazine.
And while the broadcast ministry continually calls for "self-regulation," other forces ensure that self-censorship remains rampant.
Various media outlets have begun the practice of accepting payment for certain types of news — even political reports — while journalists who expose crime and corruption regularly face violent attacks.
Though police this month apprehended several suspects in the slaying of a Mumbai crime reporter, most of the assaults on journalists go unremarked and unpunished, according to a recent report by the India-based Media Foundation. The alleged perpetrators range from political parties to corporate thugs to the police themselves, according to a press release.
Meanwhile, the legal and financial obstacles to reporting from India's poor rural areas are greater than ever, according to Shubhranshu Choudhary, a former BBC journalist who now runs a mobile phone-based radio news network in Chhattisgarh. Most rural Indians can't read the newspaper and can't afford television, for instance. But even though the government recently allowed FM stations and community radio, news broadcasts are still banned across the dial — apart from the government-friendly reports by state-owned All India Radio.
Newspaper reporters based outside of major cities are paid a percentage of the advertising revenue they collect, rather than a straight salary, so they are beholden to local corporations rather than their readers or editors. And, increasingly, television rating points (TRPs) rather than editorial standards define the value of news, Choudhary said, citing several television channels' recent decision to remove their reporters from Chhattisgarh — seat of a Maoist rebellion which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and others have described as the greatest threat to India's security.
"Chhattisgarh does not have even a single TRP box," Choudhary said. "They're very clearly saying, whatever happens in Chhattisgarh, why should we bother?"
Sunday, June 19, 2011
India: deadly drug trials
A $400 million market for clinical trials puts desperate Indian patients at risk.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - June 19, 2011
CHENNAI, India — India's huge population, many of whom have hardly been exposed to medication, makes it one of the world's most promising markets for drug research.
But as the $400 million business accelerates, critics say it is exposing the dark side of the country's health-care sector.
"The regulations are weak, implementation is nonexistent, and ethics seem to be taken very lightly," said Anjali Shenoi, a researcher with a New Delhi-based women's health advocacy group called Sama.
"We feel like it is a growing problem, especially with India growing as a clinical trial hub, and more and more research being conducted by CROs [contract research organizations]."
Last week, the drug controller general of India — the top industry regulator — officially censured nine firms for failing to compensate the families of patients who died during clinical trials over the past year. But critics say the real story lies in the overall numbers, and the drug controller's tardiness in taking action.
According to the official figures, more than 1,500 Indians have died in the course of clinical trials since 2008 — 670 last year alone. And even though few of those deaths were reported to be treatment-related, there is no independent audit system to investigate the fatalities that occur during clinical trials.
Some see the booming industry as a ticking bomb.
Indians are desperate for affordable medical treatment. The government accounts for only 15 percent of health spending, and some two-thirds of patients pay the entire cost of care out of pocket. More than half of the poorest 20 percent of the population must sell property or borrow money to pay their medical bills, and yet, government spending on health care has declined.
Meanwhile, and instead of national health insurance or more widely subsidized health care, the government is promoting clinical research — the target of which is its poorest people.
Since India amended its laws governing drug research in 2005 to allow companies to conduct clinical trials in India at the same time as they are being conducted abroad, the research industry has expanded dramatically. Clinical trials are up to 60 percent cheaper to conduct in India than in developed countries, and companies are cashing in.
According to the drug controller, the number of Indian contract research organizations registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has nearly tripled since the early 2000s, from 60-odd to 150. And more than 1,000 clinical trials are officially registered with the Indian Council of Medical Research, though that number is low compared with the number of trials underway in the United States.
As high as Indian authorities are on the industry, critics say that the method of oversight — which relies on decentralized, independent ethics committees — is woefully inadequate.
Thousands of institutions are involved in drug testing, not only in major cities but in small provincial towns across the country, according to Amar Jesani of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. But while companies are required to register the trials themselves, there is no comparable system for registering the ethics committees charged with evaluating their research protocols.
Only a handful of the hundreds of ethics committees have any official accreditation, which means that most of the supposed watchdogs have never been evaluated or audited by any outside agency themselves. Most of them do not publish any details about the number of clinical trials they have evaluated or what methods are used to monitor drug testing.
"There's a complete mystery about how they function," Jesani said.
But they aren't functioning very well, a trickle of press reports suggests.
Last year, after seven young girls died during testing of a new vaccine for the Human Papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease that can cause cervical cancer, Sama and Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, another non-governmental organization (NGO), conducted a fact finding study. The NGO probe allegedly found evidence of serious ethical violations in the design and execution of the project — which was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and carried out by PATH, an internationally respected nonprofit.
Sama and Jan Swasthya Abhiyan alleged that for "informed consent" researchers routinely relied on school officials, for example, claiming the parents of the research subjects were not available. Parents and girls who participated in the study said they were told that the vaccine would prevent uterine cancer — though they were not clear about what that meant.
Some may not have understood the nature of the project, as the NGO report quotes one mother as saying, "Since it was a vaccine being given by the government, we all trusted it blindly and considered it reliable, like any other vaccine that was given as part of the immunization program."
A subsequent government investigation found that the seven deaths were “most probably unrelated to the vaccine." And though it upheld most of the NGOs' findings in its report, the government described the ethical violations as "minor deficiencies" — downplaying the importance of informed consent, the most vital aspect of medical ethics for clinical trials.
PATH defended the way the study was conducted.
"PATH and its Indian collaborators worked with two ethical review committees in India and one in the United States to design study protocols and informed consent materials," Dr. Christopher Elias, president and CEO of PATH, said in statement following the controversy. "PATH is confident that these procedural safeguards informed and guided all aspects of study implementation and conduct."
Similarly, an independent study of clinical research sponsored by the Mumbai-based Center for Studies in Ethics and Rights, found that multinationals like GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca also skirted the boundaries of medical ethics.
Evaluating clinical trials of drugs for breast cancer, acute mania and schizophrenia, journalist Sandhya Srinivasan and researcher Sachin Nikarge found that the pharmaceutical companies took advantage of patients who were desperate for any kind of medical care and, in the case of psychiatric patients, probably incapable of providing genuine informed consent.
While AstraZeneca did not respond to the journalists' inquiries, Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline defended their research practices.
"We have well trained physicians and scientists to explain protocols to patients and answer any questions to obtain and document informed consent ... with particular attention to relevant language, literacy, cultural and societal issues," Johnson & Johnson said in response to questions emailed by Srinivasan and Nikarge. "Our trials are open to internal and external audit. We don't enroll anyone for whom appropriate consent is not given."
"Global study protocols are ... designed to ensure appropriate local standards of care are provided to eligible participating patients," GlaxoSmithKline said in a similar statement.
Yet in each of the trials that Srinivasan and Nikarge investigated, they had concerns about whether some patients were denied effective treatments for their illnesses because of their participation in the research project.
For instance, the Center for Studies in Ethics and Rights report claims that psychiatric patients suffering from mania and schizophrenia were denied the normal treatment for their diseases and given placebos during clinical trials — likely because placebo-controlled studies are faster and more conclusive than studies that compare the experimental drug to an existing treatment.
And, though the company concluded it was “not considered treatment related," one schizophrenic patient in the placebo group committed suicide during the trial of an anti-psychotic manufactured by AstraZeneca, the report says.
"The moral of the whole story is the regulators are sleeping," Jesani said. "They are doing nothing."
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - June 19, 2011
CHENNAI, India — India's huge population, many of whom have hardly been exposed to medication, makes it one of the world's most promising markets for drug research.
But as the $400 million business accelerates, critics say it is exposing the dark side of the country's health-care sector.
"The regulations are weak, implementation is nonexistent, and ethics seem to be taken very lightly," said Anjali Shenoi, a researcher with a New Delhi-based women's health advocacy group called Sama.
"We feel like it is a growing problem, especially with India growing as a clinical trial hub, and more and more research being conducted by CROs [contract research organizations]."
Last week, the drug controller general of India — the top industry regulator — officially censured nine firms for failing to compensate the families of patients who died during clinical trials over the past year. But critics say the real story lies in the overall numbers, and the drug controller's tardiness in taking action.
According to the official figures, more than 1,500 Indians have died in the course of clinical trials since 2008 — 670 last year alone. And even though few of those deaths were reported to be treatment-related, there is no independent audit system to investigate the fatalities that occur during clinical trials.
Some see the booming industry as a ticking bomb.
Indians are desperate for affordable medical treatment. The government accounts for only 15 percent of health spending, and some two-thirds of patients pay the entire cost of care out of pocket. More than half of the poorest 20 percent of the population must sell property or borrow money to pay their medical bills, and yet, government spending on health care has declined.
Meanwhile, and instead of national health insurance or more widely subsidized health care, the government is promoting clinical research — the target of which is its poorest people.
Since India amended its laws governing drug research in 2005 to allow companies to conduct clinical trials in India at the same time as they are being conducted abroad, the research industry has expanded dramatically. Clinical trials are up to 60 percent cheaper to conduct in India than in developed countries, and companies are cashing in.
According to the drug controller, the number of Indian contract research organizations registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has nearly tripled since the early 2000s, from 60-odd to 150. And more than 1,000 clinical trials are officially registered with the Indian Council of Medical Research, though that number is low compared with the number of trials underway in the United States.
As high as Indian authorities are on the industry, critics say that the method of oversight — which relies on decentralized, independent ethics committees — is woefully inadequate.
Thousands of institutions are involved in drug testing, not only in major cities but in small provincial towns across the country, according to Amar Jesani of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. But while companies are required to register the trials themselves, there is no comparable system for registering the ethics committees charged with evaluating their research protocols.
Only a handful of the hundreds of ethics committees have any official accreditation, which means that most of the supposed watchdogs have never been evaluated or audited by any outside agency themselves. Most of them do not publish any details about the number of clinical trials they have evaluated or what methods are used to monitor drug testing.
"There's a complete mystery about how they function," Jesani said.
But they aren't functioning very well, a trickle of press reports suggests.
Last year, after seven young girls died during testing of a new vaccine for the Human Papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease that can cause cervical cancer, Sama and Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, another non-governmental organization (NGO), conducted a fact finding study. The NGO probe allegedly found evidence of serious ethical violations in the design and execution of the project — which was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and carried out by PATH, an internationally respected nonprofit.
Sama and Jan Swasthya Abhiyan alleged that for "informed consent" researchers routinely relied on school officials, for example, claiming the parents of the research subjects were not available. Parents and girls who participated in the study said they were told that the vaccine would prevent uterine cancer — though they were not clear about what that meant.
Some may not have understood the nature of the project, as the NGO report quotes one mother as saying, "Since it was a vaccine being given by the government, we all trusted it blindly and considered it reliable, like any other vaccine that was given as part of the immunization program."
A subsequent government investigation found that the seven deaths were “most probably unrelated to the vaccine." And though it upheld most of the NGOs' findings in its report, the government described the ethical violations as "minor deficiencies" — downplaying the importance of informed consent, the most vital aspect of medical ethics for clinical trials.
PATH defended the way the study was conducted.
"PATH and its Indian collaborators worked with two ethical review committees in India and one in the United States to design study protocols and informed consent materials," Dr. Christopher Elias, president and CEO of PATH, said in statement following the controversy. "PATH is confident that these procedural safeguards informed and guided all aspects of study implementation and conduct."
Similarly, an independent study of clinical research sponsored by the Mumbai-based Center for Studies in Ethics and Rights, found that multinationals like GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca also skirted the boundaries of medical ethics.
Evaluating clinical trials of drugs for breast cancer, acute mania and schizophrenia, journalist Sandhya Srinivasan and researcher Sachin Nikarge found that the pharmaceutical companies took advantage of patients who were desperate for any kind of medical care and, in the case of psychiatric patients, probably incapable of providing genuine informed consent.
While AstraZeneca did not respond to the journalists' inquiries, Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline defended their research practices.
"We have well trained physicians and scientists to explain protocols to patients and answer any questions to obtain and document informed consent ... with particular attention to relevant language, literacy, cultural and societal issues," Johnson & Johnson said in response to questions emailed by Srinivasan and Nikarge. "Our trials are open to internal and external audit. We don't enroll anyone for whom appropriate consent is not given."
"Global study protocols are ... designed to ensure appropriate local standards of care are provided to eligible participating patients," GlaxoSmithKline said in a similar statement.
Yet in each of the trials that Srinivasan and Nikarge investigated, they had concerns about whether some patients were denied effective treatments for their illnesses because of their participation in the research project.
For instance, the Center for Studies in Ethics and Rights report claims that psychiatric patients suffering from mania and schizophrenia were denied the normal treatment for their diseases and given placebos during clinical trials — likely because placebo-controlled studies are faster and more conclusive than studies that compare the experimental drug to an existing treatment.
And, though the company concluded it was “not considered treatment related," one schizophrenic patient in the placebo group committed suicide during the trial of an anti-psychotic manufactured by AstraZeneca, the report says.
"The moral of the whole story is the regulators are sleeping," Jesani said. "They are doing nothing."
Friday, June 17, 2011
Blame Gandhi: Did the great pacifist kill India, Inc.?
To avert a disastrous impending labor shortage, India needs to train 500 million skilled workers by 2022.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - June 17, 2011
Editor's Note: The Shiva Rules is a year-long GlobalPost reporting series that examines India in the 21st century. In it, correspondents Jason Overdorf and Hanna Ingber Win will examine the sweeping economic, political and cultural changes that are transforming this nascent global power in surprising and sometimes inexplicable ways. To help uncover the complexities of India's uneven rise, The Shiva Rules uses as a loose reporting metaphor Shiva, the popular Hindu deity of destruction and rebirth.
NEW DELHI, India — Not too long ago, a scandal of sorts hit Indian newspapers.
Though millions of Indians remain unemployed or underemployed, the country's lagging brick-and-mortar industries had imported tens of thousands of Chinese workers — on business visas, no less — to build and operate power plants, steel mills and telecommunications towers.
"The Delhi airport was built by Chinese labor," said Dilip Chenoy, chief executive of India's National Skill Development Corporation, referring to the most prominent example of India's efforts to improve its dismal infrastructure.
But the uproar didn't last long for the simple reason that India can't afford to shut down.
Despite its huge working-age population, India faces a potentially debilitating shortage of skilled workers.
According to one emerging vocational education firm, only about 5 percent of India's 400-million strong labor force has received any formal training, compared with 70 percent in Germany and 95 percent in Korea. Importing skilled workers from China — on or off the books — is only the most dramatic manifestation of the problem.
Across the board, the shortage of skilled laborers has reduced productivity and cut into profits. Poaching workers from competitors has become a common practice that drives up wages, threatening to derail India's manufacturing revolution before it has even begun.
The wrong revolution
The crux of the problem is that India has never really industrialized.
India's service-related businesses account for more than half of GDP, while manufacturing contributes only 15 percent. And though China's economy is only four times larger than India's, its manufacturing sector is 50 times larger. Meanwhile, China has some 500,000 vocational training centers, compared with India's 10,000 obsolete Industrial Training Institutes.
Blame revolutionaries. Brutal Mao Zedong killed millions with his Great Leap Forward in China, but his drive for steel and obsession with collectivization arguably kickstarted the country's industrialization. China's ghastly Cultural Revolution terrorized intellectuals, but it also lionized laborers and solidified the building blocks of the nation.
Meanwhile, in India, there was Mohandas K. Gandhi, pacifist with a spinning wheel. Gandhi's insistence that his followers spin their own cloth as a protest against British imperialism laid the groundwork for decades of socialist policies.
While these policies provided the poor with jobs that saved them from starvation, they also discouraged technology and restricted companies from developing economies of scale. This more robust growth may have pulled India's masses out of poverty once and for all.
Gandhi's kinder, gentler revolution also left the caste system intact, assuring that there would be no prestige in physical labor for the rest of his century.
For decades India's industrial policies channeled Gandhi. Hundreds of products were reserved for small-scale companies to manufacture. Because these small-scale companies were too numerous to regulate, the policy effectively nurtured hundreds of thousands of sweatshops.
Thanks to India's ongoing economic reforms, many products — including some with a high growth potential, like apparel — are no longer reserved for small-scale industry. Still, many of the sweatshops persist.
Where large companies make money through economies of scale, sweatshops increase profit margins by paying low wages and cutting corners. And the Indian workers — and Indian industrialization drive — continue to pay the price.
That's because at the same time that India inadvertently created a breeding ground for sweatshops, it also passed strict labor laws that set minimum wages, mandate safety standards and make it very difficult to fire workers.
Sweatshops are only economically viable as long as they flout India's strict rules. But large companies can't fly under the radar and must comply. If they can't fire workers when the going gets tough, it doesn't make much sense to hire them in first place. What does make sense is contracting the work out to the very sweatshops that flout the rules.
The upshot is that only a handful of industries — like automobile and motorcycle manufacturing — have managed to attain economies of scale and begun to compete on the global stage.
More than 90 percent of India's work force is still employed in the so-called "unorganized sector," where neither safety standards nor minimum wage laws can be enforced. Where there is no money for boots and hardhats, there is surely none for technology or training.
"It varies a lot by sector, but we are seeing shortages anecdotally in several areas," said Ramya Venkataraman, head of the India education practice at the consulting firm McKinsey. "In some cases it [the skilled labor shortage] is constraining growth, and in some cases it is increasing the cost of doing business.
"At the current capacity, we'll be able to skill about 50 million people in 10 years," said Venkataraman, "versus the 500 million we need to train. So there's a severe shortage."
The opportunity in crisis
To avert disaster, India's normally ponderous policy makers have acted with speed and creativity.
Recognizing that the country needs to train 500 million skilled laborers by 2022 if its current economic growth is to continue, the government has mobilized private industry to solve its own impending crisis. A new corporation has emerged to identify and fund vocational education businesses, much like a development bank.
Economic planners may well have turned India's biggest headache into its most lucrative business opportunity — estimated at more than $20 billion.
Designed to help create large-scale, for-profit vocational training companies and funded with around $300 million in seed capital, India's National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) has already lured companies like Global Talent Track, TeamLease Services and Manipal Education's IndiaSkills into the sector. The hook: NSDC offers low interest-rate loans and support in developing certification standards, providing financial aid for students and promoting vocational education.
Among the largest players, Centum Learning, an associate company of telecom billionaire Sunil Mittal's Bharti Group, has partnered with NSDC to form Centum Workskills India, a joint venture that aims to train 12 million people across 11 states by 2022. Similarly, Everonn Education has teamed up with NSDC to train another 15 million. And Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services has inked a joint-venture deal with NSDC to build 100 skill development centers over the next five years.
In all, NSDC has so far approved $150 million in funding for 29 ventures that will train 40 million youth in diverse trades over the next 10 years. But this isn't by-the-numbers government work — with companies looking to get their front feet in the trough. And it's not charity work, either.
With 51 percent private sector funding and eight out of 12 of its board members representing private industry, NSDC offers better terms than commercial banks, but it takes a hefty 27 percent stake in exchange. It also demands that its partners guarantee job placement for 70 percent of their trainees.
Meanwhile, the big guns aren't getting into the business out of so-called "corporate social responsibility." They're in it to make money.
"It's not easy to monetize this space, so the motivation cannot be only revenue and profit," said Sanjeev Duggal, chief executive of Centum Learning Ltd. "But definitely our objective is by our fourth year to be crossing 500 crores [$110 million] in revenue."
The most needed job skills indicate how high the stakes are for India's economy.
According to estimates by ICRA Management Consulting Services, by 2020 India's construction industry will need 33 million more skilled crane operators, electricians, welders, masons and so on; the textiles and clothing industry will need 26 million loom and sewing machine operators; and the automobile and autoparts manufacturing industries will need 35 million machinists, mechanics, salesmen, etc.
In short, India's aspirations of boosting manufacturing output to 25 percent of GDP by 2025 — creating 100 million jobs and bringing hundreds of millions more people out of poverty in the process — may well hang in the balance.
"We have to build in skill-training capacity now," said NSDC's Chenoy. "We can't wait. In the next two to three years we have to put in place a skill-training capacity of at least 40 million people a year."
By connecting training programs more closely to employers, India hopes to ensure that courses are designed to meet industry's needs and to introduce an effective certification system so that employers recognize the value of a trained and certified welder, say, and are willing to pay more for him than for an someone who went through the informal apprentice system.
Changing the image of skilled labor
But those in the vocational education market say there are many more challenges to overcome, starting with convincing young people that a marketable skill can be more valuable than a college degree — at least when industry considers three out of four engineering graduates unemployable.
"Over the years vocational training has always been looked down upon and thought of something that's meant for losers," said IndiaSkills' chief executive Hari Menon, who expects his business to grow tenfold in its second year of operations. "Everybody chases a Bachelor's of Commerce or Bachelor's of Arts, however unemployable that makes them."
The trouble is that India can't afford to rely on supply and demand in the labor market to drive young people into vocational education — that would mean the full impact of the crisis had already hit. That's why NSDC plans to blanket the country with ads designed to put the pride back in blue collar work, said Chenoy.
But it will take more than slogans. The private sector needs to overhaul vocational education, starting with knocking down the artificial wall between academic degrees and skills certifications, said Neeti Sharma, an executive at TeamLease, India's largest staffing company. Currently, there are no community colleges in India, so there's no such thing as a vocational "degree." Moreover, once a student enters the vocational track there's virtually no way for him to get back into the university stream — and vice versa.
That's why TeamLease is working in Gujarat to set up the country's first vocational university. Similarly, Global Talent Track, which has partnered with multinational computer networking firm Cisco Systems Inc. and some 900 colleges across 15 states, recently tied up with the University of Kashmir to train degree students with the job skills that employers are looking for.
"In this country, traditionally, skills and education have always followed two different paths," said Global Talent Track chief executive Uma Ganesh.
Without question, skilled workers get paid more than unskilled ones, and vocational training can mean the difference between work in the unorganized sector — without benefits or job security — and a future with a growing national firm. But even though training firms say their graduates earn 10 to 50 percent more as a result of their training, recruiting isn't easy.
Employers pay more for skills, but so far they haven't started paying extra for workers with training certifications, and students are still reluctant to pay for training outside of "glamor programs" like computer programming and flight attendant schools.
Moreover, the companies and nonprofits that offer vocational education programs say that government-funded programs that are free for students are only partly effective: It helps them get students through the door, but doesn't ensure that they graduate. According to the head of one vocational program, the dropout rate for students on complete scholarships is as high as 70 to 80 percent. It falls to 10 to 20 percent among students paying all or part of the fee themselves.
"Today, the biggest challenge is that industry is not mandating certification," said IndiaSkills' Menon. "So the prospective learners feel that I can always walk into a company and get a job, and even if I'm certified it doesn't create any differential or positioning for me in industry when it comes to pay."
Even young people who are desperate for jobs don't necessarily understand the value of skills training, said Girish Singhania, who started Edubridge Learning to bring rural Indians into the modern job market in 2009.
Recruiters have to be equal parts salesman and social worker to get prospects to enroll. After enrollment, the company has to cajole them to stay on to graduate, encourage them to migrate and take a job at the end of the program, and then coach them on the importance of working hard once they're on a company's roster.
"The most important challenge we face is the mindset of the people living in these areas," Singhania said. "The mindset is just to accept things as they are and not try to change their careers."
To make India an industrial powerhouse, the mindset of the entire country will have to change.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - June 17, 2011
Editor's Note: The Shiva Rules is a year-long GlobalPost reporting series that examines India in the 21st century. In it, correspondents Jason Overdorf and Hanna Ingber Win will examine the sweeping economic, political and cultural changes that are transforming this nascent global power in surprising and sometimes inexplicable ways. To help uncover the complexities of India's uneven rise, The Shiva Rules uses as a loose reporting metaphor Shiva, the popular Hindu deity of destruction and rebirth.
NEW DELHI, India — Not too long ago, a scandal of sorts hit Indian newspapers.
Though millions of Indians remain unemployed or underemployed, the country's lagging brick-and-mortar industries had imported tens of thousands of Chinese workers — on business visas, no less — to build and operate power plants, steel mills and telecommunications towers.
"The Delhi airport was built by Chinese labor," said Dilip Chenoy, chief executive of India's National Skill Development Corporation, referring to the most prominent example of India's efforts to improve its dismal infrastructure.
But the uproar didn't last long for the simple reason that India can't afford to shut down.
Despite its huge working-age population, India faces a potentially debilitating shortage of skilled workers.
According to one emerging vocational education firm, only about 5 percent of India's 400-million strong labor force has received any formal training, compared with 70 percent in Germany and 95 percent in Korea. Importing skilled workers from China — on or off the books — is only the most dramatic manifestation of the problem.
Across the board, the shortage of skilled laborers has reduced productivity and cut into profits. Poaching workers from competitors has become a common practice that drives up wages, threatening to derail India's manufacturing revolution before it has even begun.
The wrong revolution
The crux of the problem is that India has never really industrialized.
India's service-related businesses account for more than half of GDP, while manufacturing contributes only 15 percent. And though China's economy is only four times larger than India's, its manufacturing sector is 50 times larger. Meanwhile, China has some 500,000 vocational training centers, compared with India's 10,000 obsolete Industrial Training Institutes.
Blame revolutionaries. Brutal Mao Zedong killed millions with his Great Leap Forward in China, but his drive for steel and obsession with collectivization arguably kickstarted the country's industrialization. China's ghastly Cultural Revolution terrorized intellectuals, but it also lionized laborers and solidified the building blocks of the nation.
Meanwhile, in India, there was Mohandas K. Gandhi, pacifist with a spinning wheel. Gandhi's insistence that his followers spin their own cloth as a protest against British imperialism laid the groundwork for decades of socialist policies.
While these policies provided the poor with jobs that saved them from starvation, they also discouraged technology and restricted companies from developing economies of scale. This more robust growth may have pulled India's masses out of poverty once and for all.
Gandhi's kinder, gentler revolution also left the caste system intact, assuring that there would be no prestige in physical labor for the rest of his century.
For decades India's industrial policies channeled Gandhi. Hundreds of products were reserved for small-scale companies to manufacture. Because these small-scale companies were too numerous to regulate, the policy effectively nurtured hundreds of thousands of sweatshops.
Thanks to India's ongoing economic reforms, many products — including some with a high growth potential, like apparel — are no longer reserved for small-scale industry. Still, many of the sweatshops persist.
Where large companies make money through economies of scale, sweatshops increase profit margins by paying low wages and cutting corners. And the Indian workers — and Indian industrialization drive — continue to pay the price.
That's because at the same time that India inadvertently created a breeding ground for sweatshops, it also passed strict labor laws that set minimum wages, mandate safety standards and make it very difficult to fire workers.
Sweatshops are only economically viable as long as they flout India's strict rules. But large companies can't fly under the radar and must comply. If they can't fire workers when the going gets tough, it doesn't make much sense to hire them in first place. What does make sense is contracting the work out to the very sweatshops that flout the rules.
The upshot is that only a handful of industries — like automobile and motorcycle manufacturing — have managed to attain economies of scale and begun to compete on the global stage.
More than 90 percent of India's work force is still employed in the so-called "unorganized sector," where neither safety standards nor minimum wage laws can be enforced. Where there is no money for boots and hardhats, there is surely none for technology or training.
"It varies a lot by sector, but we are seeing shortages anecdotally in several areas," said Ramya Venkataraman, head of the India education practice at the consulting firm McKinsey. "In some cases it [the skilled labor shortage] is constraining growth, and in some cases it is increasing the cost of doing business.
"At the current capacity, we'll be able to skill about 50 million people in 10 years," said Venkataraman, "versus the 500 million we need to train. So there's a severe shortage."
The opportunity in crisis
To avert disaster, India's normally ponderous policy makers have acted with speed and creativity.
Recognizing that the country needs to train 500 million skilled laborers by 2022 if its current economic growth is to continue, the government has mobilized private industry to solve its own impending crisis. A new corporation has emerged to identify and fund vocational education businesses, much like a development bank.
Economic planners may well have turned India's biggest headache into its most lucrative business opportunity — estimated at more than $20 billion.
Designed to help create large-scale, for-profit vocational training companies and funded with around $300 million in seed capital, India's National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) has already lured companies like Global Talent Track, TeamLease Services and Manipal Education's IndiaSkills into the sector. The hook: NSDC offers low interest-rate loans and support in developing certification standards, providing financial aid for students and promoting vocational education.
Among the largest players, Centum Learning, an associate company of telecom billionaire Sunil Mittal's Bharti Group, has partnered with NSDC to form Centum Workskills India, a joint venture that aims to train 12 million people across 11 states by 2022. Similarly, Everonn Education has teamed up with NSDC to train another 15 million. And Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services has inked a joint-venture deal with NSDC to build 100 skill development centers over the next five years.
In all, NSDC has so far approved $150 million in funding for 29 ventures that will train 40 million youth in diverse trades over the next 10 years. But this isn't by-the-numbers government work — with companies looking to get their front feet in the trough. And it's not charity work, either.
With 51 percent private sector funding and eight out of 12 of its board members representing private industry, NSDC offers better terms than commercial banks, but it takes a hefty 27 percent stake in exchange. It also demands that its partners guarantee job placement for 70 percent of their trainees.
Meanwhile, the big guns aren't getting into the business out of so-called "corporate social responsibility." They're in it to make money.
"It's not easy to monetize this space, so the motivation cannot be only revenue and profit," said Sanjeev Duggal, chief executive of Centum Learning Ltd. "But definitely our objective is by our fourth year to be crossing 500 crores [$110 million] in revenue."
The most needed job skills indicate how high the stakes are for India's economy.
According to estimates by ICRA Management Consulting Services, by 2020 India's construction industry will need 33 million more skilled crane operators, electricians, welders, masons and so on; the textiles and clothing industry will need 26 million loom and sewing machine operators; and the automobile and autoparts manufacturing industries will need 35 million machinists, mechanics, salesmen, etc.
In short, India's aspirations of boosting manufacturing output to 25 percent of GDP by 2025 — creating 100 million jobs and bringing hundreds of millions more people out of poverty in the process — may well hang in the balance.
"We have to build in skill-training capacity now," said NSDC's Chenoy. "We can't wait. In the next two to three years we have to put in place a skill-training capacity of at least 40 million people a year."
By connecting training programs more closely to employers, India hopes to ensure that courses are designed to meet industry's needs and to introduce an effective certification system so that employers recognize the value of a trained and certified welder, say, and are willing to pay more for him than for an someone who went through the informal apprentice system.
Changing the image of skilled labor
But those in the vocational education market say there are many more challenges to overcome, starting with convincing young people that a marketable skill can be more valuable than a college degree — at least when industry considers three out of four engineering graduates unemployable.
"Over the years vocational training has always been looked down upon and thought of something that's meant for losers," said IndiaSkills' chief executive Hari Menon, who expects his business to grow tenfold in its second year of operations. "Everybody chases a Bachelor's of Commerce or Bachelor's of Arts, however unemployable that makes them."
The trouble is that India can't afford to rely on supply and demand in the labor market to drive young people into vocational education — that would mean the full impact of the crisis had already hit. That's why NSDC plans to blanket the country with ads designed to put the pride back in blue collar work, said Chenoy.
But it will take more than slogans. The private sector needs to overhaul vocational education, starting with knocking down the artificial wall between academic degrees and skills certifications, said Neeti Sharma, an executive at TeamLease, India's largest staffing company. Currently, there are no community colleges in India, so there's no such thing as a vocational "degree." Moreover, once a student enters the vocational track there's virtually no way for him to get back into the university stream — and vice versa.
That's why TeamLease is working in Gujarat to set up the country's first vocational university. Similarly, Global Talent Track, which has partnered with multinational computer networking firm Cisco Systems Inc. and some 900 colleges across 15 states, recently tied up with the University of Kashmir to train degree students with the job skills that employers are looking for.
"In this country, traditionally, skills and education have always followed two different paths," said Global Talent Track chief executive Uma Ganesh.
Without question, skilled workers get paid more than unskilled ones, and vocational training can mean the difference between work in the unorganized sector — without benefits or job security — and a future with a growing national firm. But even though training firms say their graduates earn 10 to 50 percent more as a result of their training, recruiting isn't easy.
Employers pay more for skills, but so far they haven't started paying extra for workers with training certifications, and students are still reluctant to pay for training outside of "glamor programs" like computer programming and flight attendant schools.
Moreover, the companies and nonprofits that offer vocational education programs say that government-funded programs that are free for students are only partly effective: It helps them get students through the door, but doesn't ensure that they graduate. According to the head of one vocational program, the dropout rate for students on complete scholarships is as high as 70 to 80 percent. It falls to 10 to 20 percent among students paying all or part of the fee themselves.
"Today, the biggest challenge is that industry is not mandating certification," said IndiaSkills' Menon. "So the prospective learners feel that I can always walk into a company and get a job, and even if I'm certified it doesn't create any differential or positioning for me in industry when it comes to pay."
Even young people who are desperate for jobs don't necessarily understand the value of skills training, said Girish Singhania, who started Edubridge Learning to bring rural Indians into the modern job market in 2009.
Recruiters have to be equal parts salesman and social worker to get prospects to enroll. After enrollment, the company has to cajole them to stay on to graduate, encourage them to migrate and take a job at the end of the program, and then coach them on the importance of working hard once they're on a company's roster.
"The most important challenge we face is the mindset of the people living in these areas," Singhania said. "The mindset is just to accept things as they are and not try to change their careers."
To make India an industrial powerhouse, the mindset of the entire country will have to change.
Thursday, June 09, 2011
India: yoga's inflexible guru
Analysis: How Baba Ramdev's hunger strike undermines the anti-corruption movement.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - June 8, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — The tragedy of Indian politics is that it usually plays as farce.
So it was this past weekend, when a police raid on a popular guru's hunger strike turned violent, and then abruptly comical. The guru dressed like a woman to escape but was nonetheless captured and whisked away to his Himalayan retreat.
Swami Baba Ramdev, a television yogi with a mass following in India, had organized the fast in New Delhi against corruption in India. He has called on the government to introduce tough anti-corruption legislation and to pursue billions of dollars in illegal funds abroad.
On Sunday, police dispersed the crowd of 40,000 people using batons and tear gas, leaving at least one protester in critical condition. Ramdev was exiled to the Hindu pilgrimage city of Haridwar, where he continues his fast to compel the government to bring back so-called "black money" stashed in secret foreign bank accounts.
A rustic and conservative figure, Ramdev has over the past five years built a health and philosophy empire comprising some 34 companies, which brought in an estimated $250 million last year, according to Indian press reports. Preaching simple yoga techniques, he has rapidly amassed an audience of millions for his televised yoga program, now supported by two broadcasting firms.
But by classing homosexuality as a psychological failing and making the unsubstantiated claim that his breathing exercises can cure cancer and HIV — not to mention grow hair — he has ensured that most of his followers are conservative, rural and small-town Hindus who are being steadily left behind in India's climb toward modernity.
As such, his presence may actually hurt the anti-corruption movement more than it helps — as he has insisted on measures that are impractical or irrelevant, such as eliminating notes higher than 50 rupees (about $1) in denomination, or introducing the death penalty for corrupt officials.
But as ridiculous as Ramdev makes the debate, like Rush Limbaugh, he raises the volume so much that he cannot be ignored. Gurus and babas — whose claims of asceticism inspire absolute trust from their followers — have often intervened in Indian politics, mobilizing mass movements to block the reform of religious laws and even bring down governments.
So it came as no surprise that within a matter of hours, nearly every politician felt compelled to take a position on Ramdev in order to gain or defend political capital. Nearly every opposition politician had something to say against the brutal crackdown, while the Congress slammed Ramdev and his attempt to enact laws without the inconvenience of votes.
Old-timers from the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) resurfaced to join the fun. A journalist tried to whack a Congress Party spokesman with his shoe (he was thrashed soundly for his trouble).
A delegation of opposition Bharatiya Janata Party leaders — so pleased with the way the wind was blowing that one of them broke into a jubilant jig outside Mahatma Gandhi's mausoleum — met the president to call for an emergency session of parliament to browbeat the government.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh delivered a defensive public apology for the crackdown. “It is unfortunate that the operation had to be conducted, but quite honestly, there was no alternative,” he told journalists.
And Ramdev himself, once again clad in his characteristic orange garb, again returned to center stage — via television news — to grin, roll his eyes and hint that a mysterious "secret mission" had caused his normally omnipresent right-hand man to disappear.
As mad as it sounds, however, the situation is serious.
Singh's Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government has been pounded by corruption accusations even before Ramdev began his fast, and neither its jailing of the former telecom minister nor its capitulation on including prominent members of civil society in the drafting of a powerful new ombudsman law has succeeded in muting the anger.
So, when Ramdev entered the fray, what had up to this point appeared to be a naive and altruistic effort turned overtly political.
Although Ramdev and the Hindu-nationalist RSS party have denied any affiliation, the guru's Hindu identity, his right-wing politics and his strong sense of nationalism make them natural allies. And with Ramdev's move to take over the anti-corruption movement — which was earlier championed by social activist Anna Hazare, who also launched an anti-corruption hunger strike — the symbolism of the struggle changed abruptly.
However critical he was of the government, Hazare, with his white suit and Gandhi cap, symbolized change from within the tradition of the Congress Party, though he is not a member. Ramdev's orange robes, on the other hand, stand for the BJP — known colloquially as "the saffron party" — even though Ramdev is not a BJP party member either.
The government's crackdown on Ramdev's fast has completed the movement's shift, and many observers are calling it a foolish miscalculation.
Until now, the anti-corruption agitation has existed outside mainstream politics, since the average Indian was convinced that the entire political class was equally corrupt.
Meanwhile, the BJP has been riven by factionalism and struggled to find an issue that would excite voters and make it stand out. Now, the BJP is not only united behind a popular issue, but in Ramdev it may also have discovered a new way to mobilize faithful Hindus.
The leading ideologues of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism), who spearheaded the faith's first rise to power in the 1980s, have now taken prominent positions in the post-crackdown protests.
Former BJP president L.K. Advani, for instance — once accused of inciting the mob that destroyed the Babri mosque, believed to have been built at the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram — rose from the almost dead to lead the delegation that called for an emergency session of parliament.
Uma Bharti is another whose fiery speeches whipped up passions in the late 1980s and early '90s, when the Hindu-Muslim riots erupted across the country. She was invited to rejoin the BJP on Tuesday after more than five years in the wilderness, following her ousting for defying the party's central leadership in 2005. Other stalwarts are waiting in the wings.
That's where the farce turns tragedy again.
Hazare's protesters might have been naive to think another law could solve India's all-pervasive corruption problem. But at least they were sincere.
The entrance of saffron-clad Ramdev into the fray, and the scent of blood from the government's crackdown on his supporters has left behind, put an end to that sincerity, replacing it with cold, political calculation. It's no longer about fixing the problem, in other words, but using it to gain political mileage.
Thus, on Monday, representatives of Hazare's so-called "civil society" movement against corruption boycotted meetings to discuss the very law that Hazare had fasted to secure. Leaders of not only the BJP but also the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and Communist Party of India (CPI) declined to provide their views on six outstanding issues hampering the bill, sandbagging until an actual draft appears for them to oppose.
And the government itself, worried that the public is beginning to believe that it is stonewalling, now aims to push the bill ahead before July with or without Hazare's men.
Whatever form that law takes, and whatever chicanery it takes to pass it, the moment that it might have made a difference is over. Now it's just politics as usual.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - June 8, 2011
NEW DELHI, India — The tragedy of Indian politics is that it usually plays as farce.
So it was this past weekend, when a police raid on a popular guru's hunger strike turned violent, and then abruptly comical. The guru dressed like a woman to escape but was nonetheless captured and whisked away to his Himalayan retreat.
Swami Baba Ramdev, a television yogi with a mass following in India, had organized the fast in New Delhi against corruption in India. He has called on the government to introduce tough anti-corruption legislation and to pursue billions of dollars in illegal funds abroad.
On Sunday, police dispersed the crowd of 40,000 people using batons and tear gas, leaving at least one protester in critical condition. Ramdev was exiled to the Hindu pilgrimage city of Haridwar, where he continues his fast to compel the government to bring back so-called "black money" stashed in secret foreign bank accounts.
A rustic and conservative figure, Ramdev has over the past five years built a health and philosophy empire comprising some 34 companies, which brought in an estimated $250 million last year, according to Indian press reports. Preaching simple yoga techniques, he has rapidly amassed an audience of millions for his televised yoga program, now supported by two broadcasting firms.
But by classing homosexuality as a psychological failing and making the unsubstantiated claim that his breathing exercises can cure cancer and HIV — not to mention grow hair — he has ensured that most of his followers are conservative, rural and small-town Hindus who are being steadily left behind in India's climb toward modernity.
As such, his presence may actually hurt the anti-corruption movement more than it helps — as he has insisted on measures that are impractical or irrelevant, such as eliminating notes higher than 50 rupees (about $1) in denomination, or introducing the death penalty for corrupt officials.
But as ridiculous as Ramdev makes the debate, like Rush Limbaugh, he raises the volume so much that he cannot be ignored. Gurus and babas — whose claims of asceticism inspire absolute trust from their followers — have often intervened in Indian politics, mobilizing mass movements to block the reform of religious laws and even bring down governments.
So it came as no surprise that within a matter of hours, nearly every politician felt compelled to take a position on Ramdev in order to gain or defend political capital. Nearly every opposition politician had something to say against the brutal crackdown, while the Congress slammed Ramdev and his attempt to enact laws without the inconvenience of votes.
Old-timers from the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) resurfaced to join the fun. A journalist tried to whack a Congress Party spokesman with his shoe (he was thrashed soundly for his trouble).
A delegation of opposition Bharatiya Janata Party leaders — so pleased with the way the wind was blowing that one of them broke into a jubilant jig outside Mahatma Gandhi's mausoleum — met the president to call for an emergency session of parliament to browbeat the government.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh delivered a defensive public apology for the crackdown. “It is unfortunate that the operation had to be conducted, but quite honestly, there was no alternative,” he told journalists.
And Ramdev himself, once again clad in his characteristic orange garb, again returned to center stage — via television news — to grin, roll his eyes and hint that a mysterious "secret mission" had caused his normally omnipresent right-hand man to disappear.
As mad as it sounds, however, the situation is serious.
Singh's Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government has been pounded by corruption accusations even before Ramdev began his fast, and neither its jailing of the former telecom minister nor its capitulation on including prominent members of civil society in the drafting of a powerful new ombudsman law has succeeded in muting the anger.
So, when Ramdev entered the fray, what had up to this point appeared to be a naive and altruistic effort turned overtly political.
Although Ramdev and the Hindu-nationalist RSS party have denied any affiliation, the guru's Hindu identity, his right-wing politics and his strong sense of nationalism make them natural allies. And with Ramdev's move to take over the anti-corruption movement — which was earlier championed by social activist Anna Hazare, who also launched an anti-corruption hunger strike — the symbolism of the struggle changed abruptly.
However critical he was of the government, Hazare, with his white suit and Gandhi cap, symbolized change from within the tradition of the Congress Party, though he is not a member. Ramdev's orange robes, on the other hand, stand for the BJP — known colloquially as "the saffron party" — even though Ramdev is not a BJP party member either.
The government's crackdown on Ramdev's fast has completed the movement's shift, and many observers are calling it a foolish miscalculation.
Until now, the anti-corruption agitation has existed outside mainstream politics, since the average Indian was convinced that the entire political class was equally corrupt.
Meanwhile, the BJP has been riven by factionalism and struggled to find an issue that would excite voters and make it stand out. Now, the BJP is not only united behind a popular issue, but in Ramdev it may also have discovered a new way to mobilize faithful Hindus.
The leading ideologues of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism), who spearheaded the faith's first rise to power in the 1980s, have now taken prominent positions in the post-crackdown protests.
Former BJP president L.K. Advani, for instance — once accused of inciting the mob that destroyed the Babri mosque, believed to have been built at the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram — rose from the almost dead to lead the delegation that called for an emergency session of parliament.
Uma Bharti is another whose fiery speeches whipped up passions in the late 1980s and early '90s, when the Hindu-Muslim riots erupted across the country. She was invited to rejoin the BJP on Tuesday after more than five years in the wilderness, following her ousting for defying the party's central leadership in 2005. Other stalwarts are waiting in the wings.
That's where the farce turns tragedy again.
Hazare's protesters might have been naive to think another law could solve India's all-pervasive corruption problem. But at least they were sincere.
The entrance of saffron-clad Ramdev into the fray, and the scent of blood from the government's crackdown on his supporters has left behind, put an end to that sincerity, replacing it with cold, political calculation. It's no longer about fixing the problem, in other words, but using it to gain political mileage.
Thus, on Monday, representatives of Hazare's so-called "civil society" movement against corruption boycotted meetings to discuss the very law that Hazare had fasted to secure. Leaders of not only the BJP but also the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and Communist Party of India (CPI) declined to provide their views on six outstanding issues hampering the bill, sandbagging until an actual draft appears for them to oppose.
And the government itself, worried that the public is beginning to believe that it is stonewalling, now aims to push the bill ahead before July with or without Hazare's men.
Whatever form that law takes, and whatever chicanery it takes to pass it, the moment that it might have made a difference is over. Now it's just politics as usual.
Monday, June 06, 2011
India: after Osama bin Laden
America's biggest victory in the war on terror changes nothing for India's lonely battle.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - June 6, 2011
Editor's note: The killing of Osama bin Laden has changed everything. Or has it? In this ongoing series Al Qaeda: What's Next?, GlobalPost senior correspondents worldwide investigate the uncertain future of global terrorism and religious extremism – from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Egypt, India, China, Africa, Southeast Asia, the former Soviet republics and beyond.
NEW DELHI, India — In the immediate aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden, India was torn between hopes and fears about how his death might change the rules of America's war on terror.
Initially, there appeared to be definitive proof that Pakistan's military establishment, if not its civilian government, was aiding and abetting terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda.
Given this proof, optimists in India's security establishment hoped that the U.S. might take aggressive steps to rein in the rogue state — perhaps even cut off the flow of military aid or move in to tackle Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group responsible for the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai.
At the same time, pragmatists feared the vacuum left by Osama would allow a new militant leader to emerge, one who would force India into the cross-hairs.
Worse, it looked like this new leader might well be Pakistan's Ilyas Kashmiri, Al Qaeda's third-highest commander. But preliminary reports of Kashmiri's death by U.S. drones on Saturday has all but quashed that expectation.
In the weeks since the bin Laden raid, however, Washington has backed off its accusations that the top brass of the Pakistani army or the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) played a role in hiding Osama.
And as Washington back-pedals, India's hopes wither, leaving only the fear behind.
When U.S. President Barack Obama visited India in November, he made much of the "strategic partnership" between the United States and India. Just last month, U.S. Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano visited Mumbai and New Delhi to pay lip service to joint efforts in counterterrorism.
Despite these claims, however, Osama's killing has driven the point home: India is alone in its own war on terror.
"For decades, no movement of terror in India was acknowledged by the Americans," said Ajai Sahni, head of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management.
"Two thousand-plus people would be killed in a theater, and you'd be reporting two incidents, three incidents, five incidents with 20 killed, 25 killed — that's it. We used to laugh."
The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same.
India has suffered more terrorism-related casualties than perhaps any other country since Sept. 11, 2001 — none of them directly related to Al Qaeda.
In more than half of the 21 incidents in which the attackers could be identified, they represented Pakistan-based terrorist organizations like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) — all of which evidence suggests are supported, at least to some degree, by the Pakistani army and intelligence.
Confessed terrorist David Headley, testifying in the Chicago trial of an alleged co-conspirator, identified two active ISI officers who provided training and logistical support for the Mumbai attacks, though he later claimed that the spy agency's top leadership may not have known about the plan.
And from the U.S. diplomatic cables obtained and published by Wikileaks, it is clear that regardless of what they might have said publicly America's representatives in the region have never been naive about Pakistan's role in encouraging terrorists.
Yet almost before Osama's blood was dry, Washington signaled that it would continue to support its military regime, first with a damage control visit by Sen. John Kerry, and then with a surprise visit by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The message was clear.
"[Lashkar-e-Taiba chief] Hafiz Saeed is sitting pretty in [Pakistan], spewing venom, and the Obama administration is still thinking of devising the next financial fix to try and persuade Gen. [Ashfaq] Kayani to do the right thing," said Sumit Ganguly, a political scientist at Indiana University. "Our gullibility and cowardice in forthrightly confronting this duplicitous regime is simply boundless."
India's problem has never been Al Qaeda, and its enemy No. 1 was never Osama bin Laden, Ilyas Kashmiri or even Hafiz Saeed.
India's war on terror is a war against the military-intelligence establishment of Pakistan, which means that its enemy No. 1 enjoys the financial backing of the richest and most powerful nation in the world.
"Terrorism in India is a proxy war," said Sahni. "It's a covert war in which Islam has been used as a mobilizing force by the Pakistani army and Pakistani intelligence services and the Pakistani civil governments."
But even as America continues its policy of vociferously condemning and tacitly accepting Islamabad's insistent distinction between the terrorist groups whose efforts are focused on India and those waging global jihad, some of the most recent developments suggest that their ideologies are steadily converging. India-focused groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba may already be conducting joint operations with Al Qaeda itself.
Last week, for instance, Headley testified that he shifted allegiance from Lashkar to Al Qaeda at the urging of a former Pakistani military officer who told him Lashkar was "conducting the ISI's jihad and we should conduct God's jihad."
One of the central claims of the book published by Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad just before he was murdered last week was that it was actually Al Qaeda No. 3 Ilyas Kashmiri who sold the script for the Mumbai attacks to the ISI, which then tapped Lashkar-e-Taiba to carry it out.
And bin Laden himself may have been working to establish a "grand coalition" of Pakistan-based terrorist groups under the umbrella of Al Qaeda when he was killed, according to the Guardian.
"LeT is not a franchise [of Al Qaeda]. Neither is JeM or HuJI," Stephen Tankel, a terrorism expert affiliated with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"[But] these groups coordinate and collaborate with Al Qaeda to varying degrees. All of them are part of the global jihad. They are also heavily influenced, especially in LeT's case, by the bilateral India-Pakistan relationship," he said.
At least from India's perspective, that puts America — which is trying to play both sides — on the wrong one.
By Jason Overdorf
GlobalPost - June 6, 2011
Editor's note: The killing of Osama bin Laden has changed everything. Or has it? In this ongoing series Al Qaeda: What's Next?, GlobalPost senior correspondents worldwide investigate the uncertain future of global terrorism and religious extremism – from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Egypt, India, China, Africa, Southeast Asia, the former Soviet republics and beyond.
NEW DELHI, India — In the immediate aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden, India was torn between hopes and fears about how his death might change the rules of America's war on terror.
Initially, there appeared to be definitive proof that Pakistan's military establishment, if not its civilian government, was aiding and abetting terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda.
Given this proof, optimists in India's security establishment hoped that the U.S. might take aggressive steps to rein in the rogue state — perhaps even cut off the flow of military aid or move in to tackle Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group responsible for the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai.
At the same time, pragmatists feared the vacuum left by Osama would allow a new militant leader to emerge, one who would force India into the cross-hairs.
Worse, it looked like this new leader might well be Pakistan's Ilyas Kashmiri, Al Qaeda's third-highest commander. But preliminary reports of Kashmiri's death by U.S. drones on Saturday has all but quashed that expectation.
In the weeks since the bin Laden raid, however, Washington has backed off its accusations that the top brass of the Pakistani army or the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) played a role in hiding Osama.
And as Washington back-pedals, India's hopes wither, leaving only the fear behind.
When U.S. President Barack Obama visited India in November, he made much of the "strategic partnership" between the United States and India. Just last month, U.S. Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano visited Mumbai and New Delhi to pay lip service to joint efforts in counterterrorism.
Despite these claims, however, Osama's killing has driven the point home: India is alone in its own war on terror.
"For decades, no movement of terror in India was acknowledged by the Americans," said Ajai Sahni, head of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management.
"Two thousand-plus people would be killed in a theater, and you'd be reporting two incidents, three incidents, five incidents with 20 killed, 25 killed — that's it. We used to laugh."
The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same.
India has suffered more terrorism-related casualties than perhaps any other country since Sept. 11, 2001 — none of them directly related to Al Qaeda.
In more than half of the 21 incidents in which the attackers could be identified, they represented Pakistan-based terrorist organizations like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) — all of which evidence suggests are supported, at least to some degree, by the Pakistani army and intelligence.
Confessed terrorist David Headley, testifying in the Chicago trial of an alleged co-conspirator, identified two active ISI officers who provided training and logistical support for the Mumbai attacks, though he later claimed that the spy agency's top leadership may not have known about the plan.
And from the U.S. diplomatic cables obtained and published by Wikileaks, it is clear that regardless of what they might have said publicly America's representatives in the region have never been naive about Pakistan's role in encouraging terrorists.
Yet almost before Osama's blood was dry, Washington signaled that it would continue to support its military regime, first with a damage control visit by Sen. John Kerry, and then with a surprise visit by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The message was clear.
"[Lashkar-e-Taiba chief] Hafiz Saeed is sitting pretty in [Pakistan], spewing venom, and the Obama administration is still thinking of devising the next financial fix to try and persuade Gen. [Ashfaq] Kayani to do the right thing," said Sumit Ganguly, a political scientist at Indiana University. "Our gullibility and cowardice in forthrightly confronting this duplicitous regime is simply boundless."
India's problem has never been Al Qaeda, and its enemy No. 1 was never Osama bin Laden, Ilyas Kashmiri or even Hafiz Saeed.
India's war on terror is a war against the military-intelligence establishment of Pakistan, which means that its enemy No. 1 enjoys the financial backing of the richest and most powerful nation in the world.
"Terrorism in India is a proxy war," said Sahni. "It's a covert war in which Islam has been used as a mobilizing force by the Pakistani army and Pakistani intelligence services and the Pakistani civil governments."
But even as America continues its policy of vociferously condemning and tacitly accepting Islamabad's insistent distinction between the terrorist groups whose efforts are focused on India and those waging global jihad, some of the most recent developments suggest that their ideologies are steadily converging. India-focused groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba may already be conducting joint operations with Al Qaeda itself.
Last week, for instance, Headley testified that he shifted allegiance from Lashkar to Al Qaeda at the urging of a former Pakistani military officer who told him Lashkar was "conducting the ISI's jihad and we should conduct God's jihad."
One of the central claims of the book published by Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad just before he was murdered last week was that it was actually Al Qaeda No. 3 Ilyas Kashmiri who sold the script for the Mumbai attacks to the ISI, which then tapped Lashkar-e-Taiba to carry it out.
And bin Laden himself may have been working to establish a "grand coalition" of Pakistan-based terrorist groups under the umbrella of Al Qaeda when he was killed, according to the Guardian.
"LeT is not a franchise [of Al Qaeda]. Neither is JeM or HuJI," Stephen Tankel, a terrorism expert affiliated with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"[But] these groups coordinate and collaborate with Al Qaeda to varying degrees. All of them are part of the global jihad. They are also heavily influenced, especially in LeT's case, by the bilateral India-Pakistan relationship," he said.
At least from India's perspective, that puts America — which is trying to play both sides — on the wrong one.
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