Posted by: John Elliott | July 12, 2011

Jairam Ramesh ousted from Environment in India reshuffle

Government’s image and top leadership problems remain unsolved

Two years of radical reforms aimed at protecting India’s depleted environment and changing the balance between rampant economic growth and sustainable development came to an end today when Jairam Ramesh (below), Minister for Environment and Forests since May 2009, was moved to another ministry in a government reshuffle.

This is a victory for businessmen and other government ministries that have objected to Ramesh’s often brash, but nevertheless well-intentioned, blocking of mining, infrastructure and other projects that breached hitherto largely ignored regulations.

He has put the environment firmly on India’s political agenda and has begun to clean up a previously highly corrupt ministry , setting up new environmental and conservation institutions, and transforming India’s impact on international climate change negotiations. In recent weeks, he has compromised on environmental approvals, particularly over coal mining projects, but that does not seem to have been enough to save him, with his often provocative decision-making and manner, from being moved.

His successor at environment and forests is Jayanthi Natarajan, who is an able Congress Party spokesperson. Though sometimes combative in television debates, she is expected be far less confrontational and more pragmatic than Ramesh. She will probably be less reform minded and will have to strike a balance between the often-conflicting demands of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s desire for projects that boost economic growth, and the more environment-oriented Sonia Gandhi, leader of the Congress Party and the coalition.

Ramesh has been appointed Minister for Rural Development and has been compensated for the move by being promoted to the cabinet – previously he was a minister of state. He can also console himself with the thought that he said when he first took the job that he would want to move on after two years.

Rural development is not usually a high profile post, but it is a high priority for Rahul Gandhi, heir to the Gandhi dynasty and who is seen as a future prime minister, as well as for his mother, Sonia Gandhi. Ramesh is thought to be close to them and can be expected to adopt a high profile and energetic approach to the needs of the rural poor.

That includes reforming often-wasteful and hugely expensive rural employment job and other aid schemes – his ministry has a massive Rs87,800 crore ($19.5bn – £12.2bn) budget this year, mostly passed on to the states to spend. He will also be involved in new controversial legislation on the use of land for industrial purposes – the issue that led to his clashes with companies at the Environment Ministry – and has said he intends to focus on developing areas controlled by Naxalite rebels.

Lacklustre reshuffle

Today’s otherwise rather lacklustre reshuffle follows an earlier one in January. It was partially necessitated by two ministers being sacked from the cabinet over a long-running telecoms licence scandal, and two others indicating they wanted to leave their jobs.

Notable among the appointments are Salman Khursheed, a leading Congress politician as Law and Justice Minister, replacing M.Veerappa Moily who was not a success. Dinesh Trivedi, an experienced politician from the Trinamool Congress takes over at Railways, succeeding Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee who became chief minister of West Bengal in May. Two fatal rail crashes earlier this week underlined the need for improved top-level management of the railways.

The reshuffle has come at a time when the government seems to have lost its way amid a series of corruption scandals and poor administration. As I wrote last week, India’s reputation for relatively good top political leadership and governance, together with gradual economic reforms and sustained economic growth, has taken a beating under the dual leadership of the rarely-seen Sonia Gandhi and the reticent Manmohan Singh.

The media has been preoccupied over the past few days about whether what it calls the “top four” in the government would be changed, sparked partly by Singh promising a significant reshuffle after the last one in January.

It had become clear however that there was virtually no prospect of any move for Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is the government’s leading political manager, nor Defence Minister A.K.Antony, nor Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram who, though controversial, has transformed his ministry. Gaffe-prone foreign minister S.M.Krishna also looked safe, probably because it would be difficult to find a senior-enough replacement who would bow to the wishes of Manmohan Singh in the one area where the prime minister can make a personal mark.

Problems are at the top

But this focus on the “big four” ignores the point that they are part of a “big six” and the government’s real top-level problems stem from the other two, Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh.

When Gandhi refused the prime ministership after the 2004 general election and put Singh in the job while retaining the leadership of the Congress Party and the governing United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition, it looked as if a good balance had been struck between dynasty and administration.

But the double act is no longer working well. Singh is taking the flak for presiding over a corrupt government with many poor-performing ministers. He is however severely limited in what he can do both by the constraints of Sonia Gandhi being in overall charge and by the demands of coalition parties that have little concern for national policies. He has little direct authority over ministers, especially those from coalition partners – a railways minister of state from the Trinamool Congress refused his instruction to visit one of the two crash sites.

The prime minister is also limited in what he can say publicly because of how it might be misconstrued by Gandhi and her courtiers, and in any case, he is not a good public performer.

Sonia Gandhi should therefore logically step forward and become the public front of the government, defending its policies and providing national leadership. But she is not willing to do this and remains, for the most part, hidden behind the walls of her central Delhi house. Her son and heir, Rahul Gandhi, makes forays into the state of Uttar Pradesh, where there are crucial assembly polls early next year, but has not developed a sustained public profile.

Arguably, therefore, the government’s image will not improve overall until either Sonia Gandhi or Manmohan Singh move on, and there is no prospect of that happening.

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Posted in environment, India, India corruption, India dynasties, India environment, India wildlife, Manmohan Singh, Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, Trinamool Congress | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | July 5, 2011

Could India jointly co-lead the Commonwealth and counter China?

Could India and Britain jointly revive the Commonwealth, not only to boost their own co-operation, but to form a significant international alliance of English-speaking democracies that span religious and ethnic boundaries? If they did this and brought the organisation’s other 52 member countries into an active association, could the Commonwealth emerge as a new influence in a world that will be increasingly dominated by China and sternly Islamic nations?

These ideas, which contrast with earlier suggestions (usually negative) about what to do with the largely ceremonial and British-dominated Commonwealth (logo, right), have been put forward by C.Raja Mohan, one of India’s leading strategic and foreign affairs analysts, in a book of essays by Indian and British writers.

Mohan has little time for the Commonwealth as it is now, saying it has been a “political bully that was incompetent at its best, impotent at its worst, and increasingly irrelevant on the economic front”. But he suggests that India should take over some of the leadership role from London because, as a rising power, it can influence the Commonwealth’s economic prospects, offering technical, economic and security aid to the smallest states.

“If Delhi and London don’t act together and decisively, they will soon find that China, whose commercial and strategic presence across different regions of the organisation has grown, will turn the Commonwealth into an historical footnote,” he says.

The book, Reconnecting Britain and India , was launched last month at a reception in London’s Downing Street. It has been edited by Jo Johnson, a former Financial Times India-based correspondent and now a Conservative MP, together with Rajiv Kumar, secretary general of FICCI, a leading Indian business federation.

It marks the first anniversary of a heavyweight ministerial visit to India led by David Cameron. That visit achieved little in real terms, and Cameron has complained in recent months (with little effect) to India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, about British business problems in India, notably Vodafone’s mobile phone tax liabilities and Cairn Energy’s delayed sale of gas assets.

The book lists more points that are currently wrong with India than it does about faults in Indo-British relations. This is not surprising at a time when India’s reputation for relatively good top political leadership and governance, together with gradual economic reforms and sustained economic growth, has taken a beating under the dual leadership of Sonia Gandhi, who heads the current governing coalition, and the reticent Manmohan Singh.

India foreign policy

Jo Johnson and Rajiv Kumar, in a joint introductory chapter, argue that India’s government should shed its complacency about the benefits of its young “demographic dividend” and that the private sector can thrive “despite the government”. They touch on the foreign policy theme that lies behind Mohan’s Commonwealth idea when they say that India will have to shed its “historically evolved self-perception of being a member of the ‘have-nots’ and allocate sufficient resources to the design and execution of a foreign policy commensurate with its newly acquired status”.

Manmohan Singh writes, somewhat grumpily, about “there always being room for improvement” in bilateral relations, calling for closer attention (implicitly by the UK) to areas such as fighting terrorism, and British investment in India.

More has been said about Indio-UK relations at other events in London over the past week that have included a visit by S.M.Krishan, India’s foreign minister, and Nirupama  Rao, the foreign secretary. Unsurprisingly, Rao did not even mention the Commonwealth during a speech on India’s foreign policy at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The last time that the role of the Commonwealth was debated in India was late last year when there was a row about whether Prince Charles, representing the Queen as the head of the Commonwealth, or India’s president, should perform the formal opening of the at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi – ultimately a compromise solution involved both people, but not before the future role of Britain’s monarch at the head of the Commonwealth was questioned.

I have found few supporter’s for the Raja Mohan (left) Commonwealth idea, but he is regarded as a serious down-to-earth policy analyst who would not idly fly kites, so I asked him to expand on what he had written. He acknowledges that the idea “is indeed new and does not have much currency at the moment” but says that, having studied foreign policy during the years of British rule, he sees it in the context of “the power calculus of a rising India”.

“I believe if and when India becomes a great power, its foreign policy might look a lot like that of the [British] Raj in terms of providing security to weaker states and preserving regional order,” he says. “A rising India must consider taking over the leadership of the commonwealth at some point of time”. At a time when it is competing with China around the world, it could work with English-speaking leaderships of Commonwealth countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

This links with an essay in the book by Sanjaya Baru, editor of the Business Standard, who was Manmohan Singh’s prime ministerial spokesman. He picks up a statement made at Oxford University by Singh in 2005 when the prime minister (controversially) acknowledged that there are some “beneficial consequences” of the former British rule, and added: “The sun may have set on the British Empire, but it shines continuously on the world of English-speaking peoples, thanks to India and the Indian diaspora spread across all continents and all oceans”.

Baru, who wrote the prime minister’s speeches in 2005, says that the two countries’ post-colonial relationship is remarkable for “the complete absence of rancour and obsession with past prejudices”. He notes that “the most powerful axis of this new world will, for a long time, be the world of the English speaking peoples”.

Two hurdles

There are of course two main and maybe insuperable hurdles for India to cross before it could be accepted as a leader of English speaking peoples, possibly through a rejuvenated Commonwealth. Firstly, the Commonwealth is moribund and inadequately led – in political terms by Britain and organisationally by a low profile retired Indian diplomat. Alongside its ceremonials, it has little more than some useful technical aid functions, and there seems to be little interest in changing that.

More importantly, India is dreadful at handling diplomatic relations and it is surely inconceivable, at least at present, that it has the diplomatic skills needed to become accepted as a leader by other Commonwealth countries. India is generally known for ineffectual heavy handedness on the world stage, perhaps stemming from its “have-not” instinct mentioned above, and for bullying its neighbours (apart from the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, it has good relations with none of them though there are improvements currently with Bangladesh).

Some individual Indian diplomats are of course admired, and the country does important work in the United Nations, including manning international security operations. But it hesitates to take firm lines, and rarely rises effectively to international challenges. Nevertheless, the ideas of trying to revive the Commonwealth, and unite English speaking peoples, as a new international force must be worth exploring even if, as seems likely, India fails to rise to the challenge.

* Reconnecting Britain and India – Ideas for an Enhanced Partnership. Edited by Jo Johnson and Rajiv Kumar. Published by Academic Foundation, Delhi, with FICCI

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Posted in India, India British relations, India China, India foreign policy | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | June 23, 2011

India’s modern and contemporary art market wobbles but Tyeb Mehta hits a record

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It looks as if the top end of the Indian modern and contemporary art market is wobbling. Recent auctions in London and on-line have shown mixed results, with works by recognised modern masters such as M.F.Husain, who died earlier this month, and F.N.Souza sometimes not selling well, while demand for Subodh Gupta, an Indian contemporary poster boy, has slumped.

On the other hand, Tyeb Mehta, a top member of the Husain and Souza-led Progressives’ group, hit a record sale price of £1.97m ($3.24m) including buyers’ premium at Christie’s in London earlier this month for an untitled figure on rickshaw (above), and also did well elsewhere.

A different sort of record was set last week by Mehta with Kali (below), which received a bid of $1m (on its way to a $1.31m sale) through a mobile-phone bidding application on Mumbai-based Saffronart’s on-line auction. Bids (successful and unsuccessful) totalling $3.86m were received on this mobile route, which Saffronart says is unique among leading auction houses.

Saffronart also reports new Indian buyers are emerging for works in the lower ranges around $150,000. Higher up the price ladder however, the news is not so good. Indian modern and contemporary art boomed in the early and mid-2000s, then slumped and began to recover two years ago.

Art Tactic, a London-based analysis firm, says that auction houses responded to disappointing results in this year’s March auctions by lowering estimates “to try to re-ignite buyer interest”. However the market is now moving on a “negative trend as other global markets are on the rise”, and the London auctions came in 21% below estimates and 18% below the March results.

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This underlines the fact that, despite its earlier boom, Indian art has never captured China’s level of international attention. A China record of $10.2m, more than three times India’s highest-ever price, was paid at a Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction in April for a three-panelled (triptych), Forever Lasting Love (below), by Zhang Xiaogang, a top contemporary mainland Chinese artist.

By contrast, Subodh Gupta, who leapt to the forefront of Indian contemporary artists in the mid 2000s with paintings and installations of shiny pots and pans and other apparent aspects of modern Indian life, has not done well. Last year in London an untitled 67x90in oil on canvas of an airport luggage trolley fetched only £180,000 ($250,000) at Sotheby’s, which was about a fifth of a 2008 price for a very similar trolley.

This year at Sotheby’s there were no bidders for a vast 16ftx12ft Gupta installation of stainless steel pails (estimated at £300,000-£400,000). An oil painting of saucepans pitched around last year’s trolley price also failed to sell. Two more works did not get buyers at Christie’s, while Saffronart wisely did not include him. Other Indian contemporaries however did better. A large Atul Dodiya painting of the artist’s father in Dodiya’s early photo-realist style fetched £265,250 at Christie’s. Jitish Kallat also sold at Christies and Sotheby’s but failed with one work at Saffronart

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Buyers have been nervous about India’s contemporary artists since the end of the boom and Art Tactic says that about half the works offered at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Saffronart failed to sell.

The main recovery has been among the moderns, with India’s record price of £2.4m ($3.5m) being achieved by Syed Haidar Raza, another leading veteran Progressive, at Christie’s in London last year. It is here that warning signs are emerging, with top names such as Raza, Souza and Husain sometimes failing to sell for works that are either not regarded as being an artist’s best or are over-priced. Prices for Husain, who died on June 9, the day of the Christie’s auction, are likely to be tested in New York auctions in September.

Hugo Weihe, who runs the Christie’s auctions, says that the results shows that it is “necessary to get the quality and the price right to achieve sales”. That of course is the usual line from auction houses when faced with mixed results, but it does look as if it is apt in the current market. Dealers talk about difficulty finding and persuading buyers to offer good works that will fetch top prices, partly because many have already been sold in recent years, and because of current economic uncertainty, especially in India with high inflation and a threatened slow-down in growth.

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The market has been flooded with works by Husain and Souza in recent years, which has affected demand. Last summer, Christie’s had a spectacular sale of Souza drawings and paintings that were being sold by his family’s estate. This year there were more works owned by the family, but they did not generate the same excitement or prices.

A splendid but somewhat over-priced Souza 1958 landscape (right) reached only £280,000 against a £300,000-500,000 estimate, but a pair of doors with his works inlaid as panels sold for £80,000, which was the bottom end of the price range.

Tyeb Mehta, who died in 2009, continues however to score well, partly because his works are so distinctive, often reflecting with strong shapes and colours the hard life of India’s poor, and partly because he was not nearly so prolific as other Progressives. In addition to the Christie’s record price for a rickshaw puller reclining on his handcart, and Saffronart’s fierce green Kali, Christie’s sold an untitled figure after the auction for a price near the bottom estimate of £180,000 ($280,000).

This is not a market for investors looking for quick profits, but it is good for committed collectors, newcomers and established buyers, with the best works selling well if offered at sensible prices. The market is waiting to discover what happens now to Husain – there are many of his works waiting to be sold but it is not clear yet when they will emerge, nor what the appetite will be.

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Posted by: John Elliott | June 12, 2011

Can India rise to the challenge of celebrating M.F.Husain’s legacy?

While India’s politicians squabbled about the perceived rights and wrongs of M.F.Husain’s virtual exile from India, the country’s most famous and prolific artist was quietly buried in the UK on Friday, and then remembered yesterday at a London teatime memorial meeting – both events attended by relatives, friends and admirers of his work. The family plans more memorial meetings in the next week or two in Delhi, Mumbai and Dubai.

Namaz-e-Janaza (prayers) took place at a modest Idara-e-Jaaferiya mosque off Tooting Broadway in south London on Friday morning, calmly and serenely, far away from the senseless noise in India.

MF, as he was known lay in an open simple coffin on the floor of the Shia mosque, surrounded by nearly 100 mourners – his family, including sons Shamshad, Mustafa and Owais and daughter Raisa, friends and people from the art world. The coffin was then driven to be buried at Brookwood Cemetery in Woking outside London, which has a dedicated area for Muslims.

Yesterday afternoon, at London’s Dorchester Hotel, tributes were paid by his son Owais and by friends who included London-based businessmen Lord (Gulam) Noon and Anwar Siddiqi, former tennis player Naresh Kumar, and N. Ram, editor of The Hindu. MF had suffered at least one recent “silent” heart attack in Dubai before being hospitalised in London, but and just a few hours before he died was telling Owais how he planned a family visit to Venice next March.

He was remembered at the meeting for the vast span of his life through most of the 20th century and into the 21st – from “bullock cart to Bugatti” as one family friend put it (there is a Bugatti Veyron 16.4 in his famous Dubai collection of cars). People noted his energy, which he passed on to those around him, and his general enthusiasm for life.

There has been some doubt about his age, with most reports saying he was 95, but his family tells me that he was 97 because he was born in September 1913 and not 1915 as is shown in his passport. According to the Muslim calendar, he was 100 last year.

Meanwhile people in India could still not make up their minds whether to honour this great painter or leave him forever exiled their minds. Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, who did little if anything during MF’s lifetime to encourage him to return home and defy right-wing Hindu fanatics who were attacking him and his paintings, had the gall to talk about the “national loss” of an “iconic artist….whose genius left a deep imprint on Indian art”.

Too late, the government offered to facilitate the return of the body. Right-wing political leaders, who had helped to keep him in exile while he was alive, also said controversies should now be forgotten and he should be brought back to India, but more fanatical voices continued to attack him on the internet.

An untitled work of a favourite subject – a horse and a woman – sold at Bonham’s last week

Friends of MF tell me that he definitely wanted to return to India – though he acknowledged that his wealth had grown substantially in recent years when news of his exile spread his fame and boosted his prices.

His family momentarily thought, just after he died in London last Thursday morning, of taking his body to Mumbai, but then decided to honour his specific wish to be buried wherever he died. How much better to be surrounded by family and genuine well-wishers in London than be flown into controversy in India!

But what will India do now about the memory and artistic legacy of this legend? There are three partly completed series of works. There is an Indian history – the Indian civilisation from the Maharabharata to Manmohan Singh as MF described it to me in an interview (pictured top) two years ago.

This has been commissioned by Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian-born London-based steel tycoon who was at Brookwood cemetery and at yesterday’s tea meeting. There is also a series on the Arab civilisation, commissioned by the ruling family of Qatar where MF took nationality last year, and a history of Indian cinema.

Can the India now rise above its feeble responses of recent years and recognise India’s most famous modem artist with a museum that will house his work? It gave Anish Kapoor, the Anglicised India-born artist a rousing welcome last year and Sonia Gandhi, leader of the governing coalition, said she hoped that “we may one day see Anish Kapoor’s installation in one of our cities”.

Rather more urgent than a Kapoor sculpture, surely, is an M.F.Husain Museum in Delhi or Mumbai.

June 13: Ideas for a museum are already developing. Mustafa Husain is quoted in the Hindustan Times this morning saying that the family is considering one in Mumbai, as is a local businessman. There are moves in Hyderabad too.

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see also MF Husain dies – lauded in exile by India’s artistic fraternity https://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/mf-husain-dies-%e2%80%93-lauded-in-exile-by-indias-artistic-fraternity/

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Posted in Contemporary art, Hindu extremists, India, Indian modern art, Manmohan Singh | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | June 9, 2011

MF Husain dies – lauded in exile by India’s artistic fraternity

It was a sad beginning to Christie’s annual auction of Indian modern and contemporary art in London’s Old Brompton Road this afternoon. Maqbool Fida  Husain, the doyen of that world, was not there to take his usual seat and see how his works were doing. MF, as he was known, died of a heart attack this morning in a London hospital, at the rich old age of 95, robbing the Indian art world of its oldest and most famous and prolific painter.

Obituaries will inevitably focus on Husain’s virtual exile from India for the past five years, following his controversial depictions of Hindu deities which led to death threats from right-wing Hindutva political groups as well as lawsuits and physical attacks on his paintings.

The contribution to Indian art, and to its image abroad, of this former movie billboard painter, who was sometimes dubbed the Picasso of India has however been far greater than that. At the auction, there was a minute’s silence after Hugo Weihe, a Christie’s director and today’s auctioneer, read a tribute that described Husain’s influence as “immeasurable” and said that his leadership and contribution to the art world could not be overstated. “He lives on forever in his art”.

There were two Husain works in this afternoon’s auction, and one of them – depicting the mythological Sita from the Ramayana (Christie’s image right) was the last item to be offered for sale. This was not a typical work and just exceeded the modest £50,000 low-end estimate to sell at a hammer price of £58,000.

Three of his works were sold in London last week at a Bonham’s auction for a total of over £300,000 (Rs 2.32 crore) including buyers’ premium. One (Bonhams image below right) was of a favourite subject – a horse and a woman – and it fetched £168,000 (Rs 1.23 crore).

The threats against him inIndia closed some exhibitions, and caused his works to be withdrawn or closely protected at other events. This led MF to live mostly in Dubai. He also had a base in Qatar, where he took nationality last year and was painting a mega series on the Arab civilisation for a new museum.

He was producing three series of works, some as large as 12ft x 4ft. A history of “Indian civilisation from the Maharabharata to Manmohan Singh” would, he said then, take two years to complete. Next was the Arab civilisation series commissioned by the ruling family of Qatar, plus a history of Indian cinema.

Amazingly Husain said he could sketch a new work in a few hours and add colouring equally quickly, completing a 6ft x 4ft painting in less than a day – “though not every day”! Explaining the speed, he told me that “after 50 or 60 years experience, my vision is there and I know what I want to paint”.

On his absence from India, MF said: “If I was 40, I’d have fought, but at my age I have an urge to create, so let them do what they like……..They have said I am a traitor because I painted the map of India in the shape of a woman” (left).

It was, he said, “purely party political” – not a single religious head had spoken a word against him. “They are extremists who want an agenda”.

MF said he had been used to opposition and criticism from the time when he and other members of the 1940’s Progressives group such as the late F.N.Souza and Tyeb Mehta “were not allowed to meet students because it was said we were a foreign influence”.

Both artists had works in today’s auction where sales totalled £4.3m. A Tyeb Mehta portrayal of a figure on a rickshaw (Christie’s image left) far exceeded the £800,000-£1.2m estimate to create a record price for the artist of £1.7m ($2.8m, Rs125m) or £1,97m ($3.24m) including the buyer’s premium. Husain’s highest ever price was $1.6m, achieved in New York in 2008 (when it was also an all-India record) for a monumental work, Battle of Ganga and Jamuna.

“The critics had wanted us to paint like the Bengal school” Husain told me, instead of breaking from tradition into new European-influenced after he and others spent time abroad.

Husain would have liked to return to India, but not with the risk of attacks on his work. “At this age, I’m happy and I’m working. What I plan to do is not possible in India…. “.

He will be buried in the UK near London tomorrow. There have often been criticisms of some of his works, and suggestions that he was too prolific, but no-one will question Husain’s enormous contributions to India’s artistic heritage. It is a condemnation of the influence that politically-inspired fanatics have in India that he never returned and that he died, and will be buried, in virtual exile.

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Posted by: John Elliott | May 29, 2011

Bhutan climbs a learning curve for happiness

Jigmi Yoeser Thinley, the 58-year old prime minister of Bhutan, (below) says he was rebellious when he was young with “hair below my shoulders”. In 1974, he even wore jeans to a royal coronation that took place in front of a golden Buddha in Thimpu’s majestic Tashichhodzong.

“Now I am a soldier of tradition” he says proudly – arguing, as do many Bhutanese of his generation, that the remote Himalayan kingdom’s unique traditions will not be undermined by consumerism, satellite television and other diversions that are currently spawning violent teenage gangs on urban streets with drug and other problems.

“Youth must be given an opportunity to experiment and have our support and tolerance for what may be worrying signs that what we value may be lost,” he told visitors to an India-Bhutan Mountain Echoes literary festival a few days ago. “Our youth are having their fling, but they will return”.

That optimism is based on the experience of the prime minister’s generation, who initially rebelled against their homeland’s traditions when they returned from education in neighbouring India and elsewhere abroad 30 or 40 years ago (Bhutan’s schools then were inadequate).

The outside pressures are now enormously greater, challenging the basic precepts of Gross National Happiness (GNH) that were first mooted more than 30 years ago by the then King Jigme Singye Wangchuck to initiate broader national priorities than economic growth-oriented GDP.

The GNH principles, which include maintaining traditional culture, good governance, and a sustainable environment, give a perspective and a policy framework for Bhutan’s parliamentary democracy that was introduced by the king three years ago. They are however being challenged, and not just by the young, as economic growth (mainly based on exporting hydroelectric power to neighbouring India) and prosperity breed corruption and greed that threaten to reduce the priority of GNH’s basically Buddhist values.

Bhutan’s new parliament will also inevitably become more party-political, with politicians looking for way to maintain their power and be re-elected rather than caring for tradition, and there will be large population movements from placid rural communities to tougher competitive urban centres.

Squeezed in the Himalayas between India and China, Bhutan and its tiny population of under 700,000 are on a steep learning curve, which would challenge the most sophisticated societies, as the country adapts and its rulers learn new roles.

“We are moving from being subjects to being citizens responsible for governance,” says Kinley Dorji, a prominent journalist who is now the government’s secretary for information. “Everyone is trying to figure out how we relate to each other,” says Pek Dorji, who runs the Bhutan Centre for Media and Democracy.

This was illustrated by 31-year old King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck when he opened parliament (and announced his plan to marry) on May 20 (above, with his fiancée, Jetsun Pema, later that day).

He told the ministers to “work together, not in competition” and asked them “to establish the practice of meeting regularly, sitting face to face every now and then, so that you will always be in collaboration as you carry out your separate responsibilities”.

Occasionally the learning goes awry, as it has just done over a ban on smoking and owning tobacco. Banning smoking appears to have popular (and Buddhist) support, even though it is described by the prime minister as “the tyranny of the majority”, but the law’s implementation is not popular. You can own tobacco and smoke it (privately), providing you declare where you bought it and don’t import too much from abroad, and smoke it quickly enough (import receipts are only valid for as month).

Those who get caught in the ill-thought-through and badly implemented Tobacco Control Act (TCA) could end up in jail – as a 23-year old young monk has done, sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for owning a small quantity of chewing tobacco (worth about £1.30 or just over two US dollars). He has recently lost an appeal against the sentence, and three more men have been similarly sentenced to jail in the past few days for smuggling a few packs of cigarettes.

Social media

This has unleashed a torrent of complaints on blogs, Facebook and Twitter.  Tshering Tobgay, the parliament’s opposition leader, spoke about the growing role in Bhutan of social media – including 43,000 people on Facebook – at a session I moderated during the Mountain Echoes festival.

There are only two opposition MPs in parliament, but Tobgay is emerging as a serious voice of constructive opposition, partly through his blog http://www.tsheringtobgay.com/  and Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/tsheringtobgay  activities. “I called the Tobacco Control Act draconian. It’s much worse. It’s utter madness. Amend the Tobacco Control Act. And stop this madness before our people go out of control,” Tobgay wrote this week.

On Twitter, maybe significantly, Dorji Wangchuk, director of the king’s Royal Office for Media, has backed the complaints. He runs a Royal Twitter page http://twitter.com/#!/RoyalBhutan , but a few days ago he said on his personal page : “I have written to my MPs to revisit certain provisions of the TCA. Wish I could also make my letter public”.

It looks as if this will be sorted out soon because the law is a muddle and the sentences excessive. The prime minister is likely to tidy up the border controls, and King Jigme, who appears to believe the penalties are far too harsh, could encourage legislative amendments and even pardon those jailed under his constitutional rights to command legislation and reduce sentences.

The significance of the saga is that it illustrates the hazards of the country’s learning curve. If such legislation were introduced in India, I would instantly assume that it had been designed to benefit specific tobacco companies, plus border officials who could take bribes for bending the rules. I don’t know enough about Bhutan to make such a judgement but, whatever the intentions, complex laws breed corruption.

Foreign investment

There are more problems looming. Tobgay has just tweeted on planned laws that would strangely give foreign investors bigger stakes (51%) in financial services than the (20%-30%) stakes allowed for Bhutanese individuals and companies. Looked at through my Indian prism, who is that supposed to benefit?

Tourism is planned to more than triple from 30,000 to 100,000 visitors annually within two years. That includes Indian visitors who have visa-free access, but it runs counter to Bhutan’s restrictive past GNH-oriented policies and is presumably intended to help hotel owners who have opened far more facilities than are needed.

There is also concern about growing traffic congestion, especially in Thimpu, the capital, but the government seems loath to regulate car buying through adequate taxation. An initial taxation proposal has been delayed because the government tried to introduce it without going to parliament. Tobgay (who is in favour of the tax) appealed to the supreme court that ruled against the government – another step on the learning curve.

The pressures on Bhutan to give up its traditions, sliding southwards to be subsumed in the Indian subcontinent’s social, environmental and other failings are therefore immense. As the king told parliament; “If even a small fraction of the problems that plague other nations appear in Bhutan, our small society will be forever afflicted and we may never regain our jewel of a nation”.

There is however one basic reason why this Buddhist country seems to have more hope than the rest of the subcontinent. Elsewhere – especially in India – governments fail even to bother to try perform, hoping that jugaad (‘we’ll manage’) and  kaam chalao ( “make do”) will carry them through – which they don’t.

Bhutan, on the other hand,   does seem to be positively planning for the future, debating (though maybe not yet widely enough) how the over-arching happiness creed should be adapted to modern life. The challenge is for the King to steer the government and the country on its learning curve.

* See http://www.bhutannewsservice.com/the-man-who-scooped-the-gnh-story/ for an interview last week in Bhutan’s Kuensel newspaper on my 1987 Financial Times interview with the then King on GNH

* I also wrote about that 1987 visit here – Bhutan’s king told me about his plans for Gross National Happiness

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Posted by: John Elliott | May 20, 2011

Bhutan’s King Jigme tells parliament he is to marry

THIMPU: There will be another royal wedding later this year to rival the colour and pageantry of Britain’s Prince William and Kate Middleton’s a marriage a few weeks ago.

Bhutan’s 31 year-old King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck (below) this morning told his country’s parliament that he would be getting married “later this year”.  

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Like Kate, his wife-to be, Jetsun Pema, is a commoner, the daughter of an airline pilot but with distant royal connections, who was educated in India and the UK as well as Bhutan.

The wedding will take place in October when this tiny remote Himalayan kingdom of just 700,000 people, squeezed between India and China, will celebrate the marriage of a young man who combines the revered status of a monarch with informality, modesty and active concern for his country’s development.

King Jigme – known in Bhutan as K5, the fifth king – is steering his country into a developed democracy which also meets the goals of Gross National Happiness (GNH). The happiness aims – focussing on goals such as good governance and protecting the environment as well as economic growth, was set some 30 years ago by his father – King Jigme Singye Wangchuck – who told me about them in a 1987 interview

The wedding announcement came at the opening of the parliament’s seventh session – parliamentary democracy was only introduced in 2008 when Bhutan took the huge step of moving from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy.

The king, who was crowned in November 2008, arrived in a procession (chibdrel) to the tune of long trumpets or horns. He knelt and kissed the parliament’s floor three times, then ascended his large golden throne. To the accompaniment of deep-throated slow chanting, a welcome ceremony (Zhugdrel Phuensum Tshogpai) was conducted with the members of parliament being given food, drink and token envelopes of money.

The programme said that at 11am “His Majesty the Druk Gyalpo [Dragon King] addresses the Parliament”, adding curiously in brackets: “If it pleases His Majesty to address the Parliament” – a remnant of an absolute monarchy, I imagine, where the King cannot be commanded!

Speaking without notes, the king dealt with issues such a tourism, industry, agriculture and hydro-power, adding that traditional values needed to be strengthened and combined with democracy to protect “our small society”.

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He then had a “small announcement” for the people – it was, he said, “time for me to marry”. He had chosen Jetsun Prema (together left, in an official photo), who was in his eyes “beautiful, humble, kind and compassionate” as well as “warm and kind in heart and character”.

Later he told me that he had felt quite nervous announcing his planned marriage – it was easier to talk about matters of state that such a personal event, he said.

Jetsun Pema was not in the ornate parliament building, but watched the ceremony from her home on television, waiting for her fiancé’s mobile phone call after the deed was done. Later, in the evening, she made her first appearance as her future husband’s fiancée, at a dinner to open Mountain Echoes, an annual India–Bhutan literary festival that starts tomorrow under the patronage of the Queen Mother, Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck.

The wedding, the king said, should not be a “grand celebration” but would be “simple in keeping with our age old traditions”. He was urged however by Tshering Tobgay, the leader of the parliamentary opposition, to have a large ceremony that could be enjoyed by people from all over the country. William and Kate’s wedding was also billed as being modest and not grand, in keeping with Britain’s economic constraints, but that did not stop it being a spectacular event watched by hundreds of millions of people on television around the world.

King Jigme‘s wedding will not capture the same television audience, but the setting of Bhutan and the elegance of its Buddhist buildings and national costumes and traditions, ensure that it will have grandeur and style, plus the king’s instinctive informality.

Pictures from Royal Office for Media, Bhutan

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Posted by: John Elliott | May 13, 2011

Communist defeat and land disputes dominate Indian politics

It’s been a great few days for hyper-activity in Indian politics, but whether it will lead to much improvement in the way that different parts of the country are ungoverned is hard to say.

The headline event of the week was supposed to have been today’s state election results, in which West Bengal’s communist-led Left Front has been decisively ousted from power after 34 continuous years of mostly undistinguished rule. Tamil Nadu’s regional DMK party, which has been using India’s telecom and other ministries as a multi-million dollar ATM machine for much of the past decade, was swept from power, and there were mixed results elsewhere.

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His jaunt switched public attention from the election results to next year’s assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh (UP), where Noida is located.

Gandhi is staking his as-yet unproven political abilities – after personal setbacks in Bihar assembly elections last year and far from good results today – on restoring the Congress Party’s poor standing in UP. To do that he needs to rival Mayawati, the current Dalit (“untouchable” in the caste system) chief minister, as the champion of the poor and under-privileged.

Together these events have brought Mayawati and two other regional women leaders into the spotlight – all temperamental, controversial and determined.

In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee (above, today), leader of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) that she broke away from the Gandhi’s’ Congress in 1997, achieved the overwhelming victory that was widely expected, winning 227 of the  assembly’s 294 seats and reducing the Left Front from 235 to just 62. Even Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the Left Front’s chief minister since 2000, lost his seat along with other key ministers.

In Tamil Nadu, Jayalalitha Jayaram (below), leader of the regional AIADMK, swept the DMK from power with her biggest ever victory, winning 202 assembly seats against the DMK’s 32. Jayalalitha has had an extravagantly self-indulgent and corrupt reputation when she has been chief minister twice in the past (1991-96 and 2001-06), but she has run effective administrations. She has also not indulged in such extensive nepotism and plundering of the central government coffers as the family and associates of Muthuvel Karunanidhi, the outgoing chief minister, when they have been India’s ministers for telecommunications, environment, shipping and other departments.

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The events have also underlined the importance of India’s most urgent and inflammatory social and political issue – the use of agricultural land for industrial and other projects. Banerjee built her political platform in West Bengal opposing land being used for a Tata Motors factory at Singur and a chemical complex at Nandigram.

The villagers’ protest that Rahul Gandhi joined is over the price they and others are receiving for land that will be used for private sector townships to be built near new UP highways.

India’s coalition government, presided over by Sonia Gandhi, Rahul’s mother, has been working on new legislation to set down basic land acquisition and compensation rules for projects that are in the national interest. Drafting of two parliamentary bills was however blocked last year by Banerjee, whose TMC is a coalition partner, because some clauses on compulsory land acquisition that ran counter to her stand at Singur and Nandigram. This meant that prime minister Manmohan Singh was not able to fulfil a promise he made earlier last year to Rahul Gandhi that legislation would be introduced in parliament.

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So while Gandhi was aiming his protest at Mayawati and her UP state government, he was in reality protesting against the failure of the government run by his mother and Manmohan Singh to move ahead with the new laws.

It is also questionable how successful such sudden public appearances are in boosting his political image.  He was shepherded around in Noida by Digvijay Singh, an experienced senior Congress politician (seen together, left).

He did not appear with government ministers the next day when they told the media in Delhi that the shelved land legalisation would be quickly revived. He  can of course take credit for triggering that statement, but a motor bike jaunt and courting arrest are curious ways for a party general secretary (the post he currently holds) to influence his own party’s ministers.

Overall, the Congress Party has not come out well from today’s election results, though as a government it has the advantage of a weakened DMK as a coalitioon partner . It is also back in power after in alliance with Banerjee in West Bengal and she will offer its assembly members posts in her government, but she will demand a consequential greater representation in the national government’s cabinet and will not be an easy partner. In Tamil Nadu, Congress was in alliance with the crushed DMK. In two other states’ elections, an alliance of parties it leads in Kerala won by a far smaller margin than it should have achieved, and only in Assam did it do well. It also suffered a significant defeat in a parliamentary by-election in Andhra Pradesh where it faces a serious split.

The focus will now be on how Banerjee, a populist street fighter with no real administrative experience, runs West Bengal. It is an agriculturally rich state where there has been growth of software and other service industries, but infrastructure and other investment is urgently needed. The rural poor, who have been largely ignored for years by the Left Front,  need development of basic services and an end to violent clashes between the Left and TMC gangs.

“This is a new independence day for West Bengal….it is not for me – it is a mission of the people,” Mamata, as she is generally known, said tonight. Let’s see.

Related post: https://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/west-bengal-hopes-for-a-communist-rout/

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Posted in India, India corruption, India farmers, India land, India Left, India politicians, India real estate, Manmohan Singh, Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, Rahul Gandhi, Singur, Tamil Nadu, Tata Motors, West Bengal | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | May 9, 2011

West Bengal expects a Communist rout this week

KOLKATA: A small rural village some 170 kms from here was yesterday a focal point for journalists covering the final stage of regional assembly elections that are expected later this week to end 34 years of often-brutal rule by the Communist-led Left Front government in the state of West Bengal. [MAY 13: See COMMUNIST DEFEAT ] 

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Four months ago, armed cadres (activists) from the main communist party, the CPI(M), shot and killed nine people during a mass demonstration in the village against young men being taken away to be taught how to handle guns. (Some of the shots were fired from the roof of the local CPI(M) leader’s large house – right.)

The journalists – I was one of them – were there, in Netai village, to check that there was no sign of unrest before polling takes place in the area tomorrow. Paramilitary forces patrolled the roads and nearby densely wooded countryside, known locally as jungle, and the area was tense with little of the noisy electioneering that has been happening elsewhere in West Bengal.

Netai is near Lalgarh, a town in West Midnapoor district that became famous in 2009 when it was occupied by armed Maoist Naxalite rebels. The Naxalites had taken over the area from CPI(M) cadres and were then themselves ousted by security forces.  The Indian government had till then had done little to halt the Naxalite advance, which had spread across a third of India’s remote and forested areas; but it suddenly became concerned that the rebels had conquered a semi-urban area so close to Kolkata.

Since then, there have been repeated armed clashes between the different groups, and with violent gangs belonging to the Trinamool Congress (TMC), West Bengal’s main opposition party that will almost certainly be running the West Bengal government by the end of this week.

The mass demonstration staged by the villagers of Netai against theCPI(M) illustrates how tired the people of the state are of being squeezed between the warring forces. Campaigning for the Congress Party in the state two weeks ago, India’s home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said the CPI(M) had “encouraged its cadres to acquire arms and spread violence”  and had created a “killing field”.

People are equally tired of the CPI(M)-led Left Front government which, after some pace-making land reforms 30 years ago, has become a cruel self-serving and corrupt administration that ignores the developmental needs of the people.

“We want peace and an end to terror,” I was told two years ago when I visited the state during India’s general election. Yesterday, a villager in Netai told me: “We have no proper drinking water, no deep well and the health centre does not function.” The local primary school was inadequate. Netai is in a prosperous multi-crop agricultural area but with a dusty un-made dirt road linking it to Lalgarh and inadequate basic amenities, the people cannot progress.

This is typical of the lack of development in villages across West Bengal. The electorate first showed their opposition to the CPI(M) and its aggressive ballot rigging in India’s 2009 general election when, for the first time in 30 years, they voted heavily for the TMC and the national Congress Party.

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The election count takes place on Friday May 13, and the Left Front is expected to be routed after high voter turn-outs of over 80%.  The forecast is that it will collapse from 235 seats in the 294-seat assembly to below 100 and possibly to below 70. [May 10: Exit polls published this evening support these forecasts]

That would be a devastating blow for India’s Left, which is also expected to do badly in assembly elections in Kerala, its only other power base.

But no-one I spoke to in West Bengal over the weekend expected much better performance from the TMC, whose fiery leader, Mamata Banerjee (see poster, right, by Netai memorial)is known more for her sharp temper and egotistical control of the party than for being able or willing to focus on basic development issues. She is currently India’s railways minister, a job she has largely ignored because of her focus on West Bengal politics

In 2008, she led opposition to a $35m Tata Motors car plant at Singur near Kolkata,  saying she was saving poor people’s agricultural land being used for industry. That proved a good political slogan which has helped her build up her winning political base, but it did nothing for development and Tata is now making its (not very successful) tiny Nano car in Gujarat. A year earlier, a battle between the Left Front and TMC for control of another area at Nandigram led to a proposed chemicals special economic zone moving elsewhere.

West Bengal urgently needs industrial development to adjust its agricultural-skewed economy so, assuming she wins, Banerjee will need to find a way of sanctioning new industry projects without upsetting the rural poor.

She could do this by deftly providing villages like Netai with the basic amenities they lack, while implementing compensation packages that adequately secure a future for those who have to move to make way for industry.

She won’t find governing easy. To begin with, her supporters are expected to wreak vengeance on CPI(M) cadres for past violence, and some observers forecast a killing spree that Mamata might decide should run its course. Then her policies will be opposed by the CPI(M) politicians and by the many bureaucrats who have enjoyed a lazy lucrative life over the past 30 years.

No-one is forecasting a sudden change for the good after the election results are announced, but at least there will be change – and that for the people of West Bengal is a step forward.

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Posted by: John Elliott | April 28, 2011

India takes a NAM-style route on $11bn fighter contract

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India used to be a proud leader of the old Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), standing notionally between the US and Soviet blocs, but always tilting towards Moscow.

It is therefore both apt and heartening to hear today reports that the government is taking a truly NAM-style route on an $11bn contract for fighter jets by rejecting bids from both America’s Lockheed Martin F-16s and Boeing F-18s and Russia’s MiG-35s.
 
This is a diplomatically brave decision that most observers never expected after India signed its nuclear power deal with the US in 2008. Numerous US officials from President Barack Obama downwards have lobbied hard for the $11bn multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) contract, indicating that it was expected as a nuclear thank-you. What seemed most likely therefore was that Lockheed or Boeing would be included – even though, as India knows, its supplies are unreliable – until the end of the process. Then the US would not give up until it had driven other bidders out of the contest.
 
The US offerings however did not match up to required standards during flight testing – nor did the MiGs. The F-18 failed tests in the cold and high Himalayas of Ladakh, and the F-16, flown by Pakistan, is long in the tooth. The Griffin fighter from Saab of Sweden has also been rejected.

The contest is now between Typhoon jets (above) from the four-nation EADS Eurofighter consortium (Germany, Spain, UK and Italy) and Rafale from Dassault of France. India’s MoD is believed to have been impressed with the Typhoon, while the IAF has strong links with Dassault, whose Mirage fighters have been successfully in service in India since the early 1980s and are now being upgraded.
 
Rejection of the US companies therefore shows a degree of sophisticated detached decision-making from the Ministry of Defence’s minister, A.K.Antony. Together with his senior acquisition officials, he seems determined to clear a logjam of pending defence contracts, and to do so in a way that shows rare integrity in a country that has become internationally infamous for widespread corruption. The “clean” record of Antony, and of at least some of his top officials, is important because there are bound to be allegations of corruption, especially since there was a scandal in the early 1980s over the Mirage deal.
 
Curiously the US ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer, chose today to announce his resignation – “for personal, professional and family considerations”. That is being widely interpreted as a reaction to the loss of the MRCA contract, as well as the failure of the India-US nuclear deal to generate increased defence co-operation between the two countries, plus nuclear power plant contracts for US companies.
 
However, I am told that Roemer’s resignation has been expected for some weeks because, as a senior Democratic politician, he is returning to the US to work on Obama’s re-election campaign. He has said there are also family reasons (his sons’ education) for his return, but it was surely silly to announce the departure today.
 
Billion $ sops

In any case the defence industry expects sops to be announced for the US very soon, notably a $5bn order for ten Boeing C-17 heavy-lift transport aircraft with an additional order for a further six aircraft, both being placed through the negotiated government-to-government foreign military sales (FMS) route without competitive tenders. Lockheed is also expected to receive further negotiated orders for its C-130J Hercules transport aircraft, six of which are already contracted. Russia might be disappointed that its MiGs have been rejected, but it already has substantial orders for current and future jet fighters.
 
Despite the personal and political angle for his departure, Roemer cannot have helped America’s cause when he was reported recently by WikiLeaks saying the India’s aerospace industry was “two to three decades behind the US and other western countries”, adding that Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL), the government’s aircraft manufacturing company, was “untested and suspect” as a partner for advanced aircraft. All that is true but it must have upset HAL and the defence establishment.
 
However, to come back to my main point, the decisions do show an unexpected independence from US influence that had not been expected when the nuclear deal was struck. It has not been a good year so far for India with all the current corruption scandals, but this indicates that, in international diplomacy, it is keeping the US firmly in its place.

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