Take the juice of one tender coconut...
Odds and ends for your weekend
"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen"
That is Lenin, describing the last two weeks we have lived through. I was scrolling through the news items I had clipped to my Roam folder from this period and by the time I got halfway through, it felt like trying to drink water from a firehose.
Record heatwaves have been replaced, almost overnight, by disastrous floods and landslides; railways, roadways, airports, our infrastructure in general, is crumbling on a daily basis; the economy is going precisely nowhere; the government’s idea of how to set things right is to produce a shoot-the-messenger Broadcast Bill, now in draft stage, that is aimed to stifle any and every voice of dissent… (While on the bill, read Apar Gupta in The Hindu, Tanishka Sodhi in Newslaundry, and this video explainer by Meghnad.)
In the midst of all this, one item of news caught my eye. During a visit to Tokyo, Minister for External Affairs S Jaishankar told the media that India’s relationships with China “are not doing very well.”
No shit?! On 31 July, a body called Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) met to “review the current situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC)”. It was the thirtieth meeting of the WMCC — a committee dedicated to the task of asking China to please get the hell out of Indian territory — and the headline news is that it was happening for the first time in Delhi. That is a baby step forward, I suppose, though I am not entirely sure what difference the venue makes.
The discussion at the meeting was in-depth, constructive and forward-looking. Both sides agreed to maintain the momentum through the established diplomatic and military channels.
That is diplomat-speak for ‘we talked a lot but made absolutely no progress’.
Progress on what, though? As recently as the recent election campaign, no less than Home Minister Amit Shah was going around the country claiming that under PM Modi, China couldn’t encroach on even “a single inch” of Indian territory, a blatant lie that evokes memories of Modi’s infamous 2020 statement that na koi ghusa hai, na koi ghusega.
“The ball is in the PLA’s court and it remains to be seen how much India can bargain by holding further military and diplomatic-level talks to find a resolution to the ongoing border standoff,” The Telegraph quotes a retired lieutenant general as saying, in a piece wherein military veterans mourn the “abject capitulation” by India. (Also, listen to Sushant Singh in this video interview.)
The day before the meeting, the media headlined the news that as per satellite imagery, China has completed the construction of a 400-metre bridge, work on which had begun in 2022. (Unlike those in Bihar and elsewhere, there is no likelihood of this one collapsing, worse luck.)
NDTV reports that motor traffic across the bridge has begun. Military experts say this is intended to link the two banks of the lake in order to be able to quickly move personnel and military equipment from one side to the other.
All this is, of course, the fault of Pandit Nehru.
Does India have a China policy — military, or economic, or both? As far as the military side is concerned, the policy seems to be one of denial and obfuscation. On the economy side, things are even worse, hard as that is to imagine.
The Economic Survey, tabled the day before the presentation of the Budget, said India should work to bring in more FDI from China. Asked about this, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said while she hadn’t written the survey, she wasn’t disowning the suggestion. Her colleague Piyush Goyal, Minister for Commerce, says there is no question of supporting any move to attract direct investment from China. The government is speaking in tongues.
It was, as Harry Belafonte sang, as clear as mud, but it covered the ground/And the confusion made me brain go 'round.
The only time there is absolute clarity is when it comes to Modi’s capitalist cronies.
On 29 June 2020, a little over a month after Indian and Chinese troops clashed in Galwan, the Indian government famously banned nearly 60 Chinese apps in a move one of the more prominent government cheerleaders, Arnab Goswami, on his late night show lauded as ‘typically Modi — swift, strong, decisive’.
One of those apps was that of the Chinese fast-fashion brand Shein, on the grounds that this, in common with 58 other apps, was “involved in activities detrimental to India's sovereignty, integrity, defence, and security.”
Early last month, the Economic Times reported that Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance will launch ‘Shein’ products in India through its brick and mortar shops and apps.
Elsewhere, Business Standard and other media houses reported in late June, after the NDA government had taken office for a third term, that the Adani Group had asked the government to expedite visas for Chinese workers needed to handle operations of the group’s solar plants.
The group based its request on the grounds that India did not have sufficiently skilled workers, and that the solar equipment in use was, in any case, manufactured by China. (The realisation of India’s skill deficit comes nine years after PM Modi launched, with much fanfare and considerable expense, the Skill India program on 15 July 2015 to address precisely this deficit. The move was “widely hailed” by India, Inc.)
Just two weeks after the Adani group made its request, the Economic Times and other media reported that the government was finalising rules to fast track visas for Chinese workers, and cut the processing time from 5-6 months to 30 days. This, the report said, was in response to complaints from businesses that existing restrictions were hurting the country’s ability to become a manufacturing hub. So much for people complaining that this government moves slowly, if at all.
Like Sitharaman, I am not “disowning” the move to bring in Chinese workers to help revamp India’s manufacturing — particularly the MSME sector that, god knows, could do with some refurbishing. The case for importing skilled labour from China, however, has been made with far more insight by Ashoka Mody in a recent column for The Hindu, which please read.
The only reason I bring this up is to point to the fact that India’s China policy seems non-existent, unless and until it gets a bit of a shove from one of our top two oligarchs.
That reminds me: I am about halfway through Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want To Run The World. The nut graf of the book is right there in its introduction:
All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of an autocratic state. There is a bad man at the top. He controls the army and the police. The army and the police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.
But in the twenty-first century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays autocracies are run not by one bad guy but by sophisticated networks relying on kleptocratic financial structures, a complex of security services — military, paramilitary, police — and technological experts who provide surveillance, propaganda and disinformation. The members of these networks are connected not only to one another within a given autocracy but also to networks in other autocratic countries, and sometimes in democracies too. Corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another. The police in one country may arm, equip, and train the police in many others. The propagandists share recourses — the troll farms and media networks that promote one dictator’s propaganda can also be used to promote another’s — as well as themes: the degeneracy of democracy, the stability of autocracy, the evil of America.
Does any of this remind you of a country you know?
Bits and bytes
The instinct to cut off access to sources of information is apparently universal. As Wayanad district reeled under a devastating landslide, the state Disaster Management Authority’s Principal Secretary found time to send out a notice to all science and technology institutions in Kerala to neither undertake field trips to the area, nor to share their studies and opinions with the media. Field trips are how scientists and researchers working in the environment sector study a problem; sharing informed opinion with the media is what helps to keep the public informed — and absent such authoritative information, rumour and speculation rushes in to fill the vacuum. Chief Minister Pinnarayi Vijayan went what the hell, and ordered the Chief Secretary to immediately revoke the order — but the puzzling bit is, who asked for the order to be passed in the first place? Did the bureaucrat do it on his own initiative and if so, what was he afraid would come to light?
Staying with Wayanad for a beat longer, the cluelessness of Delhi-based media drives me up the wall. Case in point: Rajdeep Sardesai’s post on what he calls the “Wayanad wake-up” — a rah-rah opening to a note on how, a day after the landslides, the Centre has issued a fresh draft notification declaring over 56,800 square kilometres of the Western Ghats as an Ecologically Sensitive Area. The problem? This is not new — it is, in fact, the sixth time the draft notification has been issued, the first dating back to 2013 and the fifth in 2022. There is a pattern to this (which I’ll go into in more detail in a longer post later), and it goes thus: Centre issues draft notification. Every single one of the six states along the Ghats raises objections and asks for a reduction in the notified area of their state, arguing “development”, mining requirements, etc. (Note: Just earlier this month, Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra asked for such reductions). A committee is formed, but it rarely if ever meets. After a certain period of time, a draft notification has to be framed into a law — so just before that deadline, the notification is reissued and rinse, repeat. The rapaciousness of governments at both central and state levels and across party lines is subject for that longer post; what bothers me right now is these “hot takes”, issued without even a cursory attempt at research. Under this government, lack of reliable information and data is endemic, and problematic — must we add thoughtless misinformation to the mix?
Ram Charit, a cobbler in Sultanpur, woke up one morning and found himself famous when Rahul Gandhi, who was in the city to appear in court in connection with a defamation case, stopped by his little shop to get some running repairs done to his shoes. While there, Gandhi apparently helped Ram Charit work on a slipper he was then repairing (and on hearing of his troubles, sent him a sewing machine and some financial aid). This triggered a barrage of posts on social media, like this one. This has become something of a thing now — breathless posts about Rahul Gandhi eating a slice of pizza, or stopping at a roadside outlet for a glass of tea, or meeting someone or other — all prefaced with ‘BIG BREAKING’ and similar labels, most of them lit up by lightning-flash emojis and hearts and similar festoons. I like this version of Gandhi, I really do — he appears to have found his metier, erased the ‘pappu’ label so painstakingly foisted on him by the BJP’s propaganda machinery, and is emerging as a credible, viable alternative. I wish his blue-tick cheerleaders would stop with the breathlessly adulatory commentary though — we have a body of evidence to show what happens when a human being, with all his faults and foibles, is deified. The last thing we need to do is to replace one demigod with another. And yes, I get that part of this is an attempt to reclaim social media mind space — but a little restraint, a little grace, would not be out of place.
Do you have to have a single digit IQ to join the BJP, or do you get that way after you sign up? The question came to my mind while watching this clip of Bangalore North MP Shobha Karandlaje commenting on the Olympics. Per the Minister of State for Labour, India had never won an Olympic medal till 2014, when Modi was sent down from heaven to… *sigh* Props to the voters in the supposedly well-educated Bangalore constituency for choosing, by a thumping majority, a professional gaslighter (An earlier piece on one of her efforts, that led to riots, here) over Professor Rajeev Gowda.
That the spanking new Parliament building, part of Modi’s ongoing attempt to erase history and build a capital city in his own image, has sprung a leak is hardly surprising. The Lok Sabha Secretariat provided a leavening of unintended humour when it “clarified” that the leak occurred because the adhesive holding the roof’s dome in place had “become displaced”. Adhesive substances are supposed to keep things from getting displaced, no? It is literally the job description. A town-planner friend told me that this is to be expected when schedules are based not on construction requirements but on a politics-driven propaganda schedule. Anyway — bridges are collapsing, newly inaugurated roads are developing potholes, airport roofs are falling, newly constructed buildings are leaking, existing potholes are becoming pothills… For all the bombast about building infrastructure comparable with Shanghai, or Singapore, what we are getting is a very unfunny, and hugely expensive, joke. My social media feed threw up the best visual metaphor for the state of our infrastructure — an airline pilot being conveyed in a luggage cart across flood waters covering the entrance to Jaipur airport. You want more? Here — water being pumped out of the premises of the Institute of Town Planners India, in Delhi. How did that Byronic line go? ‘And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'Tis that I may not weep’.
Barbara Smit’s Sneaker Wars, on Adi and Rudi Dassler, the brothers who set up Puma and Adidas and ended up in a vicious feud, is one of my favourite books on big business. (Bonus, it reads like a thriller.) Here comes Kerala, with its own home brewed story of sibling rivalry — over umbrellas. Not quite as incident packed as the Dasslers’ story, but fun — Malayalis in particular will instantly connect with ‘Popy kuda’.
Siri, define ‘swag’
No noise-cancelling earphones, no bespoke spectacles with a special lens for the shooting eye and a piratic eye-patch over the other, no coverall over the uniform — just jeans, a regular t-shirt, a casual shooting style more suited for a reimagined James Bond or a professional hitman than an Olympic athlete gunning for gold… Here, watch him shoot.
A tweet (archived version here) has an origin story, almost every line of which is jaw-dropping. Quote:
Dikec Yusuf, who only recently took up shooting after a particularly heated argument with his ex-wife, credits his success to his newfound passion for seeing his kids and a relentless drive to prove his ex wrong.
"I never thought I'd be here," Yusuf said, shrugging nonchalantly. "I was just aiming for a weekend with the kids."
The 52-year-old, who works as a mechanic in a small garage in Istanbul, first picked up a gun during a particularly frustrating divorce mediation. His unorthodox approach – no specialty gear, no training regimen, and a wardrobe consisting of his everyday jeans and a T-shirt – has baffled professional shooters. "He just shows up, shoots a near perfect round, and then asks if there's a smoking area nearby."
After winning silver, Yusuf stood emotionless on the Olympic podium and declared, "Sharon, if you're watching this, I want my dog back."
Not a word of it is true — but damn, how I wish it were. The guy who came up with should be writing for the movies.
Eye Candy
Back when she was trying to teach me photography, one of Arati Kumar-Rao’s lessons was to think of how to frame a familiar story in new, and arresting, ways. I was reminded of that when I came across this post on my twitter feed, featuring Indian table tennis star Manika Batra as she prepares to serve. I wish the post contained the name of the photographer, so I can look for more of her, or his, work — if you do know, LMK in the comments. Meanwhile, here, visual perfection:
An announcement: Write with me
Besides comments, this newsletter has in its brief existence produced a ton of mails from business people, retired bureaucrats, the odd political activist, sports fans, tech experts —the gamut. And what struck me is how uniformly well informed they are about their special subjects.
Hence this invitation: If you have something to say, consider guest-posting. You can send your post as a word document to my email address; I’ll help with edits, and publish under your byline.
Some conditions:
Original thoughts in your own voice only, please — no AI-generated posts, no plagiarism.
You are entitled to your opinions, but not to your own facts. In other words, don’t make stuff up
Submission is no guarantee of publication (and while on that, no thanks, to content factories who regularly spam my inbox with offers of “incredible insights” and “exclusive opeds”). I get to decide whether something gets published, so a good way to save yourself heartburn is, mail me a note on what you would like to write about, and we will take it from there. I’m good at responding to emails, so you should hear back within 24 hours, 48 max if I happen to be traveling.
I might make up other rules as we go along, depending on the inputs I get. And one final note:
Sorry, you don’t get paid. This is a free newsletter, and I am not financially where I can pay out of my own pocket. As a freelance journalist myself, I absolutely hate asking people to work for free — so, note, this is entirely voluntary; an experiment in crowd-sourcing.
Have a good weekend.
Big fan, appreciate what you do. Thanks, be well.
"Smoke Signals" is my new favourite! Your Yusuf Dikec story is a hoot - even if it's not true. Your advice for RG is sound. But then we are a people that likes to worship.