Posted by: John Elliott | January 2, 2011

Riding the Elephant’s 2010 in review

The stats people at WordPress.com, where Riding the Elephant lives, mulled over how the blog did in 2010 and gave this high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 93,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 4 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 44 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 235 posts. There were 257 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 104mb. That’s about 5 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was December 8th with 764 views. The most popular post that day was ‘Radia tapes’ highlight media flaws that fit with modern India .

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were asiasentinel.com, ft.com, blogs.ft.com, facebook.com, and twitter.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for indira gandhi, riding the elephant, dussehra, nira radia, and fatima bhutto.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

‘Radia tapes’ highlight media flaws that fit with modern India December 2010
14 comments

2

“Foreign Correspondent” – a best selling anthology September 2008
(the picture above – of foreign correspondents in 1991 pushing luggage trollies in strike-hit Kathmandu – is from the book.)

3

History repeated as Delhi judders leaderless towards the Commonwealth Games July 2010
17 comments

4

Nehru was lost for years in a trunk ……… October 2008
1 comment

5

The Gods will encourage you to gamble October 2007
3 comments

Happy New Year!

 

 

 

 

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Posted in India, India corruption, India politicians | Tags: ,

Posted by: John Elliott | December 23, 2010

Arty tigers raise awareness about saving iconic animals

Just in time to brighten up the city for Christmas and New Year celebrations, a ‘herd’ of colourful life-size fibreglass tigers are appearing around Delhi, emulating the Elephant Parade that adorned the streets of London in the summer.
 
Currently on public display at Rashtrapati Bhawan (the presidential palace), they will go next week to various locations for three months.
 
Called Art for Tiger, this is a charity campaign that aims to raise awareness of the plight of the tiger, and generate funds for the Ranthambhore Foundation which does good works around Ranthambhore national park. 

No-one knows how many tigers there are left in India, and poaching is rampant. The last official census in 2006-07 produced 1,165 at the low end and 1,657 at the top, and has been averaged out as 1,400, but the total is probably lower now.

Painted in a huge variety of styles and colours by well-known artists who include Anjolie Ela Menon, Paresh Maity, and Farhad Husain, the tigers have been acquired by 58 companies and other organisations for donations of Rs150,000 ($3,300). About half the Rs8.7m (nearly $200,000) raised will go to the trust, after payments to the artists and other costs.

 

WPSI’s elephant in London’s Green Park

Saving wildlife from a seemingly relentless path to extinction has suddenly become fashionable and socially acceptable. A week or so ago, the Indian tv station NDTV broadcast a 12-hour Telethon with film star Amitabh Bachchan as the Save the Tiger brand ambassador and others. This raised Rs48.6m (just over $1m) to finance rapid response teams for tiger emergencies.

London’s elegant Elephant Parade raised £4m ($6.2m) after the sculptures were auctioned, and the bulk of the proceeds went to various Asian Elephant conservation organisations.

The Art for Tiger organisers, led by Swapan Seth, who runs an advertising agency, Aparajita Jain of Delhi’s Seven Arts Gallery, and Nandita Baig, a social activist, now plan to stage events in other Indian cities with more ambitious fund-raising targets.
 
 

Elephant in Bond Street

Belinda Wright, founder director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), which received funds from the London elephant auction, is glad that conservation is becoming socially acceptable and even fashionable “providing the fireworks are reflected in positive action on the ground”.

“Through all the glitz, hopefully messages of substance are making people stop and think about important environmental issues, including the terrible consequences of loosing iconic species such as the tiger and elephant”.

That’s a good message for the New Year –

                              Merry Christmas!

                             

 

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Posted in environment, India, India wildlife, tigers | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | December 17, 2010

China and India quarrel despite $16bn economic carrots

The contours of the likely future relationship between India and its larger, more successful and more globally ambitious and aggressive neighbour China have begun to emerge as Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, this morning finished a two-day visit to Delhi and flew on to his ally Pakistan.

Economic and cultural ties will grow and trade will boom between the world’s two fastest expanding economies, but China will continue indefinitely to rattle India’s nerves in a variety of ways, not least by becoming closer to Pakistan and claiming territory in India’s northeastern mountains.

That was demonstrated by Mr Wen’s visit, which did nothing to improve relations and instead showed, as China’s ambassador to India put it earlier this week, that the two countries’ relations are “very fragile and very easy to be damaged”. 

looking different ways in a 'very fragile' relationship - photo AP

Mr Wen brought a weirdly large posse of 400 businessmen, and presided with Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh (above) over a flourish of $16bn business deals and joint agreements. His main speech, at the Indian Council of World Affairs, was full of talk about joint aspirations, friendship, co-operation and almost doubling two-way trade (despite considerable tensions) to $100bn a year by 2015. There was even a personal tribute to Mahatma Gandhi that rivalled President Obama’s similar line last month.

But he put India in its place as an unequal friend when he took a rigid line on the mountainous 48-year old border dispute saying it needed “patience” for a “long period of time”, with “sincerity and mutual trust”- and offered no help on other irritants. He also maintained China’s recently toughened pro-Pakistan line on Kashmir, which brought a tough response by a newly emboldened India (more on that below).

It is however important to note that Beijing will not see this economic carrot and diplomatic stick approach primarily as a China-India strategy because India is merely a (rather large) pawn in its overall ambition to become a super power, alongside and maybe one day replacing the US. That ambition necessitates keeping India, which is on course to become the world’s second biggest economy, in check because China is determined that it should not become a rival in terms of world power.

That analysis stems from a number of recent conversations with experts in Delhi, and over a longer-term elsewhere. In the late 1980s and early 1990s I was in Hong Kong watching (first as a journalist and then working in the territory’s government) Beijing’s manoeuvres as it prepared to take over the territory in 1997, dangling the UK for more than a decade on the end of a rope over the post-1997 constitution, just as it is dangling India now on the border and other issues. That is a classic China negotiating (a misnomer if ever there was one) tactic.

China’s line on India

A key to the analysis came from something a Chinese official recently told an Indian contact. He said India needed to understand three things:
– First, political differences would not impede economic growth and trade relationship between the two countries.
– Second, India should not meddle with its neighbours – meaning presumably that China will meddle in places like Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, but that India should neither object not try to counter its efforts.
– Third, India must accept China’s growing links with Pakistan which would continue –presumably because arming a nuclear Pakistan is a key way to keep India in check.

This means that, while China is content to see India’s prosperity grow and to participate itself in that growth, India should not try to become a regional power, much as the US might like it to do so. It also probably means that, though China is surprised and rather taken aback by India’s rapid economic and industrial advances over the past decade, and has also been rattled by growing close ties (and last year’s nuclear deal) between India and the US, it knows that it is way ahead in terms of overall development and regional power.

In 1995, I wrote one of the first India-China comparative reports (for the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies). That was a time when there was reason to question whether India or China would win the race to liberalise and build their economies. But that debate is now redundant, even though it continues to fill conference halls and newspaper columns. China has won in terms of development, efficiency, world-reach and significance, as any visitor can instantly see.

People used to warn that China might implode because of its authoritarian lack of democracy, but it has not done so despite social unrest and riots across the country as well as in the western and southern regions of Xinjiang and Tibet. India, on the other hand is slowed down by its widely corrupt democracy, and faces social unrest in the north-east, where China meddles, and with a growing Maoist Naxalite threat that covers a third of the country’s districts, making many areas ungovernable.

India’s progress is seriously impeded by the widespread inefficiency and corruption in both the central and state governments, as has been seen recently in the Commonwealth Games and the current Radia tapes scandal (which knocked Mr Wen’s visit off top headlines). Corruption of course is dealt with differently in the two countries: some of the Indian politicians and bureaucrats currently accused and under investigation would face the risk of being executed – shot – if they were in China. In India, they usually wriggle free.

China has growing military might and an expanding defence manufacturing base (see  China clones, sells Russian fighter jets by Jeremy Page  in The Wall Street Journal reporting from Beijing, though a counter-view datelined Moscow appeared later in The Washington Post). In India, the army and some other forces use obsolete equipment, and are often not trained to use more modern gear when it arrives. The public sector defence establishment fails to re-equip the forces because of a mixture of corruption-related blockages and fears of letting India’s efficient private sector into the market. 

It is therefore scarcely surprising that, though India would like to be regarded on a par with China, it does not rate. But it has to find a way of coping with its large neighbour which, in recent months, has become more aggressive regionally over the South China Sea being a “core asset” and in a clash with Japan, as well as with India because of its pro-Pakistan policy.

Friend or Foe?

When he made the fragile relations remark, China’s ambassador warned that India’s government should “provide guidance to the public to avoid a war of words”. That is reminiscent of the economic policy hectoring that India repeatedly hears from the US, but was rather more significant coming in a different context on the eve of Mr Wen’s visit.

Nirupama Rao, the foreign secretary and a former ambassador to Beijing, immediately replied that “Chinese friends” should get used to dealing with the “vibrant…noisy, nature” of India’s democracy. Yesterday, India was not prepared to repeat its usual acceptance of Beijing’s One-China policy, which recognises Beijing’s right to rule Tibet and Taiwan. This was because of China’s hardening pro-Pakistan stance, which has included a rather childish innovation of only stapling China visas into Kashmiris’ passports, and other similar irritants.

The long-term question of course for India and for the rest of the world is whether China will be a “Friend or Foe”, to quote the title of an excellent 14-page special report in last weekend’s Economist. Does China’s new (rather clumsy) regional belligerence indicate that the “foe” angle is gaining supremacy in Beijing, as the country becomes more economically powerful and sees the US courting its neighbours? The Economist‘s foreign editor asks whether a story about a fifth century warring Chinese king, who seeks revenge for earlier defeats, is an alarming parable about China’s ambitions.

The answer to  that question will run for decades, and it will affect the whole world, with India on the front line. So it is surely good that India is beginning instinctively not to kow tow.

Earlier India-China posts on this blog: 

China out-guns US in friendliness at Delhi conference http://wp.me/pieST-XL  March 21, 2010

China aims to block India’s place in the sun http://wp.me/pieST-JP  August 13, 2009

New Delhi in lockdown over Olympic Torch run http://wp.me/pieST-18  April 17 2008

 Demand from China kills India’s vanishing tigers http://wp.me/pieST-Z Feb 13, 2008

 

 

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Posted in India, India China, India corruption, India defence, India defence industry, India democracy, India economic reforms, India foreign policy, India US relations | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | December 3, 2010

‘Radia tapes’ highlight media flaws that fit with modern India

There’s been an awful lot of sanctimonious talk on Indian tv and in the media in the past week or so about the shock horror of discovering that Niira Radia, a prominent business lobbyist (who I last mentioned here), has used well known journalists and editors as messengers and influence peddlers on key issues such as coalition government ministerial jobs and allocation of telecom licences.

One leading editor said on television how shocking it was that the lobbyist was working for a big family controlled corporation to try to arrange that friendly politicians were given useful cabinet posts – and said this had never happened before.

That is rubbish – Dhirubhai Ambani, founder of the Reliance group, was doing it decades ago, long before his son, Mukesh Ambani, and Ratan Tata of the Tata group hired Ms Radia. As Hamish McDonald has recorded in his Reliance-Ambani’s history (with different wording in some editions) , in 1979 “Dhirubhai put his resources behind Indira Gandhi’s efforts to split the Janata coalition”, and did a similar exercise in 1990 (financing a campaign with other industrialists). In the late 1980’s he “swung the appointment” of a Reserve Bank of India deputy governor. Mukesh Ambani is reputed, on one of the Radia tapes, to have referred to the Congress Party as “apni dukaan” (our shop).

Another editor claimed Radia’s attempts at cabinet-fixing was the biggest story for a decade, which was just silly. He was using that argument to pillory Barkha Dutt, a leading NDTV anchor, whose excitable nature energises her chat shows and reporting, but sometimes interferes with her judgements. She is one of the journalists being attacked and was being criticised by Manu Joseph, editor of Open Magazine, which (along with Outlook magazine) has been running leaked audio tapes of Ms Radia’s conversations with influential contacts. Mr Joseph criticised Ms Dutt for not reporting on Ms Radia’s manoeuvrings. She agreed she maybe should have done so, but said – and I agree – that this was scarcely a serious professional misdeed.

Nor is it new or amazing that journalists get involved, either naively and innocently, or for financial or other gain, in listening to lobbyists and sometimes carrying out their wishes – though that has increased as the growth of tv news channels has turned journalists like Ms Dutt into celebrities. Another editor in the firing line, Vir Sanghvi, who has had a series of top jobs in the Hindustan Times group, was caught up in this – and he did seem to be taking dictation from Ms Radia on issues to do with the Ambanis. His explanation was that he also listened to what opponents of Radia’s client had to say.

India’s media not ‘free’

This sad tale surely casts doubt on the widely held assumption that India’s media is one of the most free in the world. Tina Brown, a British-born US magazine editor, who now runs the Daily Beast news website and edits Newsweek, believes (according to a blog on the Daily Beast) that Indian journalism is “vibrant, rich, and healthy”, in contrast with journalism in the West, which “is believed to be in the grip of an existential and financial crisis”.

The financial crisis point in the west is of course true. It is also correct that print media in India is expanding fast, but much of it is not very profitable for a variety of reasons that include domineering tactics used by market leaders such as the Times of India group.

It is also far from “vibrant rich and healthy” in terms of ethics – so much so in fact that I would argue that it is far from free because many editors and journalists are fed, in one way or another, by powerful businessmen and politicians. This influence means that editors are not free of outside influence, and it stops the Indian media being a watch dog curbing errant politicians and businessmen. The most interesting first question to ask, when a politician’s or businessman’s alleged misdeeds are exposed, is not whether the allegations are correct but who fed and encouraged the journalist or editor to write and run the story.

That is especially relevant in the current spate of corruption scandals and exposure of media links. Attacks on someone like Ms Radia do not run and run unless they are being encouraged by, for example, an opponent of one of her clients. In such cases, fingers usually point to one of Dhirubhai Ambani’s two estranged sons, Mukesh and Anil, though there are of course many others in the game.

None of this is new

But none of this is new. Nine years ago, in an article in the British Journalism Review, I wrote:

“A large proportion of what appears in the print media is ‘planted’ by vested interests – notably national and local politicians (who are becoming more arrogant in their use of power), bureaucrats (who are underpaid and becoming more avaricious), businessmen (who cash in on the above), and police (underpaid and greedy).

“Working in a highly status conscious society, editors and reporters are not so irreverent towards authority as their counterparts in many other countries – and they are far more flattered by the attention of people in important positions. They are thus more vulnerable to accepting ‘plants’ and to being persuaded not to run controversial stories. Most journalists ……welcome the bribes that are offered by politicians and businessmen with “brown paper envelopes” and other gifts…… One company, which is known to be the most adept at managing political and public opinion, is widely believed to even have journalists (as well as politicians and civil servants) on its payroll”

I also told this story: “When I was first in India for the Financial Times in the 1980s, S.P.Hinduja, the elder of the infamous Hinduja brothers, failed to persuade me to ghost-write articles for him, hinting at fat fees. When I returned in 1995, he and his brothers tried, again unsuccessfully, to get me to ghost-write a book on governments that they had dealt with around the world. Together with other journalists, I was later given a small tv set after a press conference [held in Mumbai’s Taj Hotel where I was staying] by the Hindujas’ cable tv company. I returned the set so fast [once I had got back to my room and saw what I had been given] that I forgot to note down what model it was, so could not put a value on the implied bribe.”

Such cameos, I wrote, were not in themselves very dramatic; but they illustrated one aspect of the sharp decline that had taken place in the standards of Indian journalism over the previous ten to 20 years. Most newspapers had become more trivial; many reporters had stopped checking stories and putting them in context; very few editors monitored the quality of news reporting; sub-editors did little sub-editing; and proprietors asserted more control over consumer-oriented content, usually through their advertising directors.

Paid news

That has worsened dramatically in recent years with the advent of “paid news”, where politicians and businessmen pay papers to run favourable news in their columns. This surfaced as a scandal in 2008-09 with the same sort of breast-beating that is happening this week. In last year’s elections, there were many reports of politicians paying for news coverage – and of newspapers and tv stations offering favourable coverage in return for substantial negotiable payments. The chief minister of Haryana state even admitted it (see this Outlook report in December 2009 for the details).

The Bennett Coleman group started paid news five years ago in its Times of India and Economic Times titles, and was followed by others including the Hindustan Times and the Bhaskhar group, India’s largest local language newspaper publisher. This was taken a stage further with a system called Private Treaties, where Bennett Colman acquires smallish financial stakes in companies in return for running favourable editorial and advertising.

Just as the media is now self-flagellating over the conversations and motives of Ms Radia with Ms Dutt and others, so it agonised earlier over paid news. The Press Council produced a report earlier this year saying that “the phenomenon of paid news has acquired serious dimensions,” and that “it is undermining democracy in India.” Aroon Purie, who runs the India Today media group, said a few months ago that paid news was self-destructive and one day would mark the “death of journalism”. But nothing has been done because those involved did not want anything done.  

It is therefore surely outrageous for journalists and editors to be parading through the television studios on the Radia story, claiming sanctimoniously that journalism has sunk to a new low, when many of them have been deep in that process of decline for years and the others have done little to improve general standards.

People close to India’s media know  it is “insular” and “corrupt”, as the Daily Beast blog I mentioned above says. Rajdeep Sardesai, who runs India’s CNN-IBN news channel and is a leading programme anchor, said at a seminar in Delhi this morning that journalists are “carried away by the wish to be power brokers” in a society where politicians and “corporate India will do anything to suborn the system”.

You might therefore say that India has got the media, and the Radia-style lobbyists, that it deserves. If that is so, it is unlikely to change until the society in which it operates also changes – and there sadly seems to be little prospect of that happening any time soon.

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Posted in Ambanis, Anil Ambani, Hinduja, India, India corruption, India general election, India media, India politicians, India telecoms, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | November 29, 2010

Anish Kapoor on show in India – a permanent public sculpture is planned

‘Finally, the art world’s most theatrical exponent is coming home – Return of the Prodigal’  

‘An artist returns to his roots’    ‘Anish comes home’

With these headlines Anish Kapoor, probably the world’s most famous (and richest) modern sculptor, has been welcomed back to India where he was born 56 years ago. He has lived in the UK since 1973 and is now a British subject. That mix, and his international fame, led Jawhar Sircar, India’s secretary for culture, to address him aptly at the opening of an incredible exhibition of his works in Delhi on Saturday as “Son of India, pride of Britain and wonder of the world of art”.

Anish Kapoor with Sonia Gandhi

Sonia Gandhi, leader of India’s governing coalition, opened the show – a rare accolade – and a dinner was hosted in the evening by Sir Richard Stagg, the British high commissioner. So both countries happily staked a claim, and Sir Richard expansively said the exhibition was probably Britain’s most important cultural event in India since independence in 1947.

Mrs Gandhi’s speech was significant not just for praise she levied on Anish Kapoor, saying that few artists had so successfully “captured the imagination of the world”. His works “explored illusion and reality, darkness and light …and simultaneously capture the mystery of artistic creation and the mystery of being”.

She also highlighted a current debate among India’s artistic fraternity about the need to make art more accessible to people. That would partly include commissioning public art, which is sadly lacking in India apart from distinguished old (and some new) monuments and statues. “It is a matter of regret that our public spaces have so little public art of any real distinction,” Mrs Gandhi said to spontaneous applause, adding she hoped that “we may one day see Anish Kapoor’s installation in one of our cities”, as well works by leading Indian artists.

Mrs Gandhi’s “hopes” often lead to action, and talks are in fact already under way about Mr Kapoor producing a major sculpture for a prominent site in India, maybe a city centre or possibly an airport.

Shooting into the Corner – 2009

He has mentioned this in media interviews, but his works are costly – a curiously tangled 370ft high steel structure, The Orbit (below) that he is building for the London 2012 Olympics will cost £19m ($30m, Rs1.35bn, Rs135 crore). Indian-born Lakshmi Mittal, who lives in London, is donating £16m and will be rewarded by the work being officially called Arcelor Mittal Orbit after the world’s largest steel company that he runs.

One of his most famous works is Cloud Gate, a £14.3m, 100-ton sculpture in Chicago (below)which is said to be the most visited public art work in the world. It is a rounded bean-like stainless steel structure that reflects its surroundings, passers-by, buildings and the sky, and has a ground-level arch to walk through.

So will an Indian-based company produce funds for a work in its home country? Other Indian businessmen based abroad – Anil Agarwal and his currently notorious London-based Vedanta metals group for example, or the Hinduja family – might not be so acceptable as Mr Mittal. Corporate backing for the current Kapoor exhibitions, which are being staged simultaneously at Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) and a Mumbai Bollywood film studio, came from Louis Vuitton and the Tata group, but neither of them seems a likely candidate.

Mr Kapoor was listed in The Times of London’s Rich List last January with wealth of £20m. The Times said his company, White Dark, showed an operating profit of £17.2m in 2008, up from £8.4m the previous year, and that he has homes in London’s Chelsea (a “glass, stone and shimmering stainless steel” structure says The Times), the Bahamas, and elsewhere.

.

Possibly his most important exhibition was at London’s Royal Academy (RA) last year. He was the first artist to be given all the galleries to display his works that ranged – as do those now in India – from smallish shimmering and reflective glass and steel shapes, through piles of pigments (below and on show in Delhi), to large symbolic mounds of muddy-looking dark red wax.

Inevitably the question that Mr Kapoor is asked most is what influence India has had on his work. In London last year at the time of the RA show, I heard that he was not very proud of being Indian, indeed that he played it down, preferring the life and accents of the UK.

Arcelor Mittal Orbit

But that, I discover, is not correct – even though, when I asked him walking around the NGMA on Saturday to explain “the Indianness” in his work, he replied “that is the one question I shall avoid answering”. Later, chatting at dinner in the high commissioner’s garden, he was more expansive, explaining that he didn’t want to tackle the question because it was “a struggle as a non-western artist not to be labelled” with one’s country of origin. “I’m Indian, My sensibility is Indian. And I welcome that, rejoice in that, but the great battle nowadays is to occupy an aesthetic territory that isn’t linked to nationality,” he told an Indian tv channel recently.

He is however clearly very conscious of his roots – being born in Mumbai to an Indian (Punjabi) Hindu father and a Baghdadi Jewish mother, educated at India’s ultra-elite Doon school, and working on an Israeli kibbutz, before going to art school in London UK. He is now a Buddhist.

He said on Saturday that he has ‘”internalised and mythologised” India, and undoubtedly the richness of India is reflected in the bright basic reds, blues and yellows of much of his work. “Red is a colour I’ve felt very strongly about,” he said in a 2003 BBC interview . “Maybe red is a very Indian colour, maybe it’s one of those things that I grew up with and recognise at some other level. Of course, it is the colour of the interior of our bodies. Red is the centre.”

The important point in all his sculptures, Mr Kapoor told me, is not whether there is “Indianness”, but what he and others see ”looking in”. In an excellent BBC film that is being shown at the NGMA, he says his work is “always about human relationships” within the space that he creates or modifies. That comes out most eloquently I think at the NGMA with pictures and models of landscapes and city scapes that he has transformed with massive sculptures – like a huge red trumpet-like funnel on a hill overlooking the New Zealand coast.

Shooting into the Corner, where an iron canon (above) shoots sticky chunks of red wax across a room repetitively every 20 minutes, also illustrates the “looking in” point. Mr Kapoor has dismissed this in the past as “almost a cliché – the artist just throws a bag of paint at a canvas and there it is”. When I watched it with an Indian friend and a crowd of other visitors at the RA last year, we were bemused, not quite seeing the point.

Cloud Gate, Chicago 2004

But now the cannon is firing in Mumbai, just after the second anniversary of the city’s devastating 2008 terrorist attacks, and it is being seen as symbolic of repetitive shooting and horrors of terrorism. On an Indian tv channel yesterday, Mr Kapoor toughened up his interpretation and said that the red colour was “full of darkness and danger”. He admitted it was “truly political” but with “no agenda”, adding that “art could take on the context of the bigger world”.

Similarly, visitors did not understand a massive tracked train-like block of blood-red wax, weighing more than 20 tons, that squeezed and oozed its way through doorways linking RA galleries. But the Jewish Chronicle last year, saw “references to blood and railways” that “must surely have a link to Holocaust” trains that carried Jews to death camps.

All this must please Mr Kapoor, and we will now wait to see what he produces for India, once corporate benefactors have been signed up. Meanwhile one can ponder the Arcelor Mittal Orbit at the London Olympics. I reckon it’s a steel Tower of Babel, with all the peoples of the world tangled up in knots, but coming together for the mega sporting event – there will no doubt be other interpretations.

Anish Kapoor with giant curved mirror sculpture in London’s Kensington Gardens – photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

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Posted in India, India British relations, Indian contemporary art, Indian modern art | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | November 25, 2010

Bihar election shows a better future as evidence of India’s corruption spreads

If anyone had any doubt about the Indian electorate’s ability to turn its back on corrupt non-performing politicians and vote decisively for development and good governance, yesterday’s overwhelming state assembly election result in Bihar should dispel them.

Nitish Kumar yesterday – AP photo

A coalition led by chief minister Nitish Kumar, 59, and his regional Janata Dal (United) party swept the polls with 206 out of 243 seats, routing both the Rashtriya Janata Dal party led by Lalu Prasad Yadav, an earlier highly corrupt folk hero, and the Congress Party, led in the Bihar election campaign by Rahul Gandhi, who is tipped as a soon-to-be prime minister.

It was a day when the financial markets were rocked by the arrest of eight top public sector banking and housing finance executives for a real estate loans scam, the hugely corrupt state chief minister of Karnataka refused to resign, and (probably thousands of) people listened to audio recordings on the internet linking an on-going telecom spectrum scam to top businessmen, journalists and politicians.

For Nitish Kumar, a socialist and former railways minister, to win so overwhelmingly on such a depressing day showed that there are at least some public figures in India whose primary aim is to do the job they were elected to do, rather than to liaise with big business and others to generate personal wealth.

Since he became chief minister in 2005, Mr Kumar has worked on a development agenda, improving economic growth, health services, education, infrastructure, governance, and law and order. This followed 15 years of mis-rule by Lalu Yadav, who thought that all he needed to do was to raise the image and self-confidence of his backward Yadav caste, while lining his own and his family’s pockets with millions of illicit dollars.

Starting from such a low base of neglect, it has been relatively easy for Mr Kumar to show statistical progress, but his job will be harder over the next five years because of raised expectations in a state that is still desperately poor and under-developed. His success also marks him as a possible prime minister of a future coalition government, but Bihar must hope he remains focussed on the state’s problems.

He has already managed to reverse comparisons between Bihar, which used to be regarded as one of India’s worst basket-cases, with Karnataka, which used to be respected because of the huge software and information technology successes in its capital of Bangalore (Bengaluru), led by companies such as Infosys and Wipro.

Karnataka political basket case

Now it is Karnataka that is a political basket case, hit by successive self-serving and corrupt administrations. The current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state government, led by chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, has been a disaster, dragged down by highly publicised illegal mining deals and land scams linking politicians and businessmen, and by Yeddyurappa’s nepotism on land deals and other issues. Yeddyurappa rarely bothers to deny such allegations, and was quoted a few days ago saying that he is only behaving (corruptly) as other chief ministers have in the past.

This is the BJP’s first state government in a southern state, so is specially important for the image of a party that used to pride itself on not being corrupt. The national leadership has been trying to oust Yeddyurappa, but several of the leaders have close links with key players in the state and the party now seems to have given up. The wisdom of that decision will be tested in coming local polls.

Elsewhere in the country, evidence of corruption and telecom policy fixing has been pouring into the newspapers, television programmes and the internet, generated by the forced resignation of Andimuthu Raja, the communications minister, that I wrote about last week  over a multi-billion dollar scam that has brought parliament’s proceedings to a halt for ten days.

Niira Radia, yesterday

A public relations consultant and corporate consultant (government policy fixer) called Niira Radia (right), who is a close adviser to the heads of India’s two biggest groups, Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani, lobbied on behalf of these and other clients with Raja.

Tapes of her conversations have been leaked for some time and are now easily accessible on Outlook news weekly’s website, where her conversations with Ratan Tata, Mukesh Ambani, top journalists, and television anchors and others on cabinet-fixing and telecom rivalries can be read and heard. Mr Tata’s involvement in this collection of names has caused most surprise.

Meanwhile Sonia Gandhi, leader of the Congress Party and India’s coalition government, has begun to speak up against corruption (coincidentally, no doubt) just a few days after I commented last week on her silence. Predictably she is trying to draw a distinction between Congress’s and the BJP’s records to try to avoid a swing against her party in future elections. On a broader front, she noted that “graft and greed” was increasing and was putting at risk “the principles on which independent India was founded”. She called for “greater probity” and transparency in government.

There is of course no hope of stopping corruption in India any more than in any other country. As Geoffrey Goodman, a veteran British journalist, pointed out in a comment on this blog last week, it is “a malaise of instant gratification, greed and the collapse of belief in moral values……the price we are paying for the global revolution in technology and the huge movement of peoples across the globe with massive social, economic and cultural change”.

In some countries, bribes speed up economic activity, but in India they are more about creating wealth for politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen who buy and sell patronage, favours and gifts with little care for any end result apart from personal power and gain.

That is the trend that Nitish Kumar has broken in the formerly sick state of Bihar. His success and victory is a rare example of good governance. Maybe the IT companies of Bangalore should move to Bihar, showing up the failures of Karnataka’s politicians and rewarding a state that is making positive progress.

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Posted by: John Elliott | November 22, 2010

A smiling Gordon Brown joins the international speakers’ circuit

A new smiling and entertaining Gordon Brown emerged on the international speakers’ circuit on Saturday when the former gruff British prime minister spoke on global economic crises at a big policy conference in New Delhi. As a beginner on the circuit, where his political friend-turned-foe Tony Blair has made many millions of pounds, Mr Brown did well.

Headlined “Lessons from the Last Global Crisis”, his strong theme was that, as a fast growing “knowledge super-power”, India should play a leading role in the G20 and other economic assemblies at a time. The world needed much more international co-operation to stem future crises and India should speak out on the international stage.

This is the theme of a book that he said he is writing, and it also links with his suspected ambition to head an international financial institution.

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“Your role at G-20 is absolutely critical. India is right at the centre of the discussions,” he told the Hindustan Times’ annual Leadership Summit (right). “Do not under-estimate your strength and your leaders’ ability to make a difference and to influence world affairs if you wish to do so”.

Mr Brown was of course right about what India should do; but this is not something the country has done very effectively in recent years, and it will be a challenge for its political leaders and diplomats to carve out an influential niche.

This was probably discussed earlier on the day when Mr Brown was the chief guest at a lunch hosted by Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister. There is a rapport between the two men, even though India was not high on Mr Brown’s list of priority countries when he was in office. Mr Singh is a former economics academic and has led India’s economic liberalisation for most of the past 20 years, while Mr Brown was Britain’s finance minister for ten years. (Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, does not have such resonance. Manmohan Singh could not recall his name when he spoke to the conference, even though Mr Cameron came to India with a flock of minister in July, as the Financial Times has has reported).

Mr Brown did not have the relaxed informal polish of former US vice president Al Gore, who also spoke on Saturday, but Mr Gore has been pounding the speakers’ circuit with a scary climate change message for many years.

Mr Brown was visibly trying very hard to be smart and relaxed. His hair had been brylcreamed into some sort of order, and he was genuinely amusing, even though he fluffed some of his jokes by delivering half the punchline first.

Iraq invasion

He also seemed to let slip his lack of interest in armed forces, which critics say led to under-funding of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Talking about leaders who had courage, he explained that “by courage” he did “not mean military battlefield bravado”, but the will power to stand up for “strong beliefs” that had been shown by leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

That was a good line for an Indian audience, but a British Labour Party veteran tells me that the slighting use of the word “bravado” may stem from Mr Brown’s early days on the radical Clydeside Left of the Labour Party, where armed forces were regarded with suspicion because military action and warfare were broadly seen as by-products of capitalism.

Mr Brown has travelled a long way since then, as his support for the Iraq invasion showed. Asked about the British involvement, he neatly distanced himself from Mr Blair and the US, while not opposing what had happened. He said he did not regret the invasion because Saddam Hussein had “broken enough rules” to be attacked; but he thought that it was for history to decide if the timing was right, or whether more diplomacy should have taken place first. He admitted that the job of reconstruction had been “badly done” with “no plans at all”.

Mr Brown may not have been a first choice for the conference, where other international speakers included the Dalai Lama as well as Mr Gore. Rumours suggest other possible speakers had included Richard Holbrooke, America’s Afghanistan and Pakistan trouble-shooter, and even David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary, who was recently beaten by his younger brother to take over the Labour Party leadership from Mr Brown.

If those speakers did decline, it was good news for Mr Brown – and for the conference – because he spoke with sufficient humour and passion to deserve a prominent spot on the lucrative international speakers’ circuit, and he had a strong message to deliver about international financial crises. He came to Delhi from Harvard university where he had been speaking on international development.

There are various estimates of what Mr Brown was paid, but around $75,000 (£50,000) seems the most likely for the 50 minutes he spent making the speech and answering questions. That is far below both the $300,000 that Al Gore commands and Tony Blair’s $400,000-500,000. A spokeswoman told the Daily Mail that Mr Brown’s fee would help to cover the running costs of a company set up to pursue his writing and lecture tours. 

The event also gave him a chance to deliver another dig at Mr Blair, who has just published his political memoirs. “Who said what to who doesn’t add much to history,” said Mr Brown, adding that he is writing a book on his theme of financial crises and the need for international co-operation. Also, he said, there would be no memoirs “because I feel young”.

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Posted by: John Elliott | November 15, 2010

India’s corruption crisis escalates

Nov 17, 2010: Corruption scandals have escalated into a potential political crisis since I wrote this post two days ago.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court criticised Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, for the government’s 16 months of “inaction and silence” over the wide-ranging telecoms scam that led to the sacking this week (see below) of the minister, A. Raja. Mr Singh now has to find a way of explaining that he could do nothing because the Congress Party, headed by Sonia Gandhi, did not want to upset Mr Raja’s DMK political party, which is part of its coalition government, so the minister was given free reign.
The Commonwealth Games corruption saga has gone a stage further with two arrested officials reportedly fingering Suresh Kalmadi, who heads the organising committee and is himself being investigated along with others involved.
Massive corruption in Delhi’s state and municipal authorities, which hit the headlines in the chaotic run-up to the Games, has been highlighted by the collapse of a badly constructed illegal residential building, killing 67 people  (photo below). The building owner was arrested yesterday but top officials including Sheila Dikshit, the chief minister, and Tejendra Khanna, the Lieutenant Governor, tried to dodge responsibility for building standards and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.

Global Financial Integrity, a US policy think tank, is reported today to estimate that $213bn (at least $462bn at today’s prices) was illegally transferred overseas from India between 1948 and 2008. That is not the total amount of black money raised from corruption because some was obviously kept in India, but it may indicate the scale of India’s lost resources.

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Another corrupt Indian politician sacked, but can anything ever change?

Nov 15: A top business executive visiting Delhi for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) conference asked me last night why the 800m or so Indians, who he assumed got no benefit from India’s massive corruption, didn’t mobilise a movement to stop it. I replied that many were themselves benefiting from the bribes and extortion that affect all levels of the 1.1bn population, because corruption had become so embedded in the country’s political and business culture.

That was not of course a complete answer. I should have said that, though they might not mobilise against corruption, there was evidence that the electorate rejects corrupt governments if individual politicians are seen or perceived to have benefited personally and not just used the money to fund their political parties. The most often-quoted example of that is the defeat of the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government in 1989 after it was believed that he and (or) his family and friends had been personally involved in a Bofors gun contract bribes a few years earlier.

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This I suspect is partly the reason why the Congress Party and its coalition government has in the past week forced the resignation of three politicians who, though they deny the charges, have been involved in highly corrupt deals to the tune of billions of dollars in telecoms, real estate and international sport.

Ashok Chavan, one of Congress’s supposedly bright younger politicians, was sacked last week as Maharashtra’s chief minister for being involved for nearly ten years in a scam involving up-market Mumbai flats bought from an army charity by well-connected public figures, including top army generals, at around one-tenth of property market prices.

The second was Suresh Kalmadi, who lost a minor Congress Party post as partial punishment for heading the bribe-ridden Commonwealth Games organising committee. Two of his close aides were arrested today and charged with forgery and cheating in connection with a London publicity and films contract – but this is only the tip of the games iceberg.

Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, is reported to have insisted on the dismissal of the third politician, Andimuthu Raja, the telecommunications minister, who “resigned” last night.Mr Raja had been resisting demands for more than two years that he should lose his job for favouring friendly telecom companies in 2008 when valuable 2G mobile telecom spectrum was sold at 2001 prices leading to vast and probably illicit profits.

It has been estimated by India’s Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)  that Raja’s various deals and favours lost the government revenues totalling as much as an incredible $30bn. Even if that figure is a vast over-estimate, it still looks like being the biggest corruption scandal ever to hit India, and one whose tentacles entangle many top political and business figures.

A.Raja applauding Manmohan Singh in happier days

The companies specially favoured by Mr Raja were Loop, Datacom, Unitech, Swan and Shyam.  The CAG report [published November 16] says Swan was secretly in league with Anil Ambani’s Reliance ADAG telecom company, which also received separate favours along (to a lesser extent) with a Tata telecoms company. Two of the others (Unitech and Swan) sold stakes to international telecom groups, Telenor of Norway and Etisalat of the UAE, which must have known their history. They had no prior telecom experience and had become friendly with Mr Raja in his previous post as environment minister (Mr Raja was one of a series of corrupt environment ministers who for a decade used the ministry as a cash cow).

As I wrote on this blog in November 2008, Unitech paid $350-400m for its spectrum allocation, and then sold a 60% stake to Telenor of Norway for $1.3bn, making a profit of about 700% in less than a year just for owning the spectrum without any customers or experience.

High profile corruption in India dates back decades. Historians quote an army jeeps’ contract scandal involving Krishna Menon, a famous and powerful Congress politician, in the 1940s as the first post-independence example. I can remember gossip about a French Mirage fighter deal when I first came to India in the early 1980s. Throughout this history, no-one has been punished for long and no-one is ever forced to pay back the illegal funds.

One more recent development is that politicians not only take bribes for letting things happen (or for stopping them to please competitors), but also become investors in the companies or projects that they help. Money accumulated abroad often comes back into India via (usually Mauritius-based) private equity funds.

The late Pramod Mahajan, a top Bharatiya Janata Party politician and “collector”, was widely believed to have investments in at least one leading private sector airline. Other current politicians are rumoured to have similar airline, airport, real estate and other investments. Andhra Pradesh politicians’ alleged involvement in Satyam, the Hyderabad software company that collapsed two years ago, and its sister Maytas property company, has been widely reported.

My WEF visiting executive was especially shocked last night when I told him that large numbers of people knew of such scams. I explained that Mr Raja’s activities had been gossiped and reported for years, and that I first heard about Commonwealth Games corruption more than two years ago. Very few politicians are “clean”, I said, and those that are have to tolerate what goes on around them in the political and government structure in order to get things done.

Manmohan Singh is widely credited with being “clean”, yet he has not been able to do anything about corrupt ministers and bureaucrats. He is now being criticised for not dealing with Mr Raja earlier. There was a story circulating a year or so ago that Mr Raja, when questioned by him about the telecom auction, replied that he worked (and “collected”) for his Tamil Nadu-based DMK political party chief. If the prime minister had any complaints, he should contact him.

Apparently, it was Mr Singh who finally decided over the weekend that Mr Raja had to go, even though the minister’s DMK party is an important member of the Congress-led coalition.

So does this mean that India is finally going to try to turn the tide on corruption?

Ratan Tata lost airline deal for not paying $3.5m bribe

Some people insist that they do not pay, and consequently lose business. Ratan Tata, who heads the Tata group, today said he lost a chance to set up a domestic airline  “maybe ten to 12 years ago” as a joint venture with Singapore Airlines because he would not pay a Rs15 crore (then $3.5m) bribe for the necessary government approval.

But will the government that Mr Singh presides over jointly with Sonia Gandhi, leader of the Congress Party, try to tackle the greed and selfishness that lies behind the problem?

Of course they will not, and it is not even clear which one of them regards the issue as their responsibility. As a result, there is a lack of national leadership on this, as on so many other issues, as Mr Singh’s reticence and lack of clout is combined with Mrs Gandhi’s mostly hidden presence. But Mrs Gandhi does have the power to do something about issues that concern her, as she has shown from time to time with edicts that are obeyed – one of the most famous and effective was a statement that the poor should not suffer by agricultural land being used for industrial development.

So why does she not lead a similar campaign on corruption? The answer is probably that the subject is just too big and overwhelming, that too many powerful people around her are deeply involved, and that all political parties including Congress need to collect funds.

But if no political leader is prepared to speak up and try to stop the rot, what hope is there – apart of course from those rare times when politicians judge that the risk of being voted out of power by a disenchanted electorate outweighs the advantages of collecting and becoming personally and politically rich.

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Posted by: John Elliott | November 9, 2010

Obama ends his India visit on a high, but challenges it to change

Manmohan Singh meeting Barack Obama at Delhi’s presidential palace

President Barack Obama met many of India’s hopes and aspirations towards the end of his three-day visit to Mumbai and Delhi, but he also challenged the country to change attitudes and policies if it really expects to be accepted as an emerging world leader.

In a powerful speech to India’s Parliament yesterday, the president came down firmly on India’s side in relation to Pakistan terrorism and involvement in Afghanistan, and also broadly backed its ambition to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

But as soon as he had drawn applause from the assembled members of India’s two houses of parliament over India’s future membership of the council, he bluntly stated: “Now, let me suggest that with increased power comes increased responsibility”. That especially applied to those (implicitly, like India) “that seek to lead in the 21st century”.

He said this meant ensuring that “the Security Council is effective”, and went on to a list of issues that India might not find easy to meet. Though India shares Obama’s expressed wish to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, it has always refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Obama specifically mentioned.

Obama also challenged India to forsake its friendship with Iran, when he suggested it should join the US in condemning the country’s nuclear weapons’ ambitions. He went on to say India should condemn the military regime in its neighbouring country of Burma (where rigged elections have just been held), especially the regime’s  suppression “of peaceful democratic movements”. India will be loath to do this because of regional priorities, including China’s growing role in the country.

Obama then seemed gently to be chiding India about some of its domestic failings, such as corrupt politicians, elections, and development schemes, and its poor education system. He said democracy should “deliver for the common man” and that “every person deserves the same chance to live in security and dignity, to get an education, to find work, and to give their children a better future” – something that hundreds of millions of Indians do not have.

The US views on NPT and Iran were not new, but it was significant that Obama linked them directly to India’s desperate wish to become a permanent member of the council after it finishes a two-year temporary membership. How and when the UN will be reformed, and the council membership opened to new countries, is not clear. It could take years, during which time the US will be able constantly to remind India of the Obama conditions.

But these strictures did not detract from a general welcome for the Obama speech at the end of what overall can be seen as a successful presidential visit. Obama has clearly been captivated by India, as has his wife Michelle. He also has a specially close relationship with Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, who he respects.

Following contracts and other initiatives announced when the visit began two days ago,  a wide range of joint agreements have been signed. India is obtaining increased access to high technology in the space and defence fields, even though the US has not got all it wanted in terms of either defence contracts and agreements or enlarged foreign direct investment access to India’s defence, retail and other industries.

President Obama toasts President Prathiba Patil at a State banquet – AP photo

Manmohan Singh also refused to agree with Obama that India should re-start talks with Pakistan on border and other issues.

Speaking at a joint press conference a few minutes after Obama had made the talks request, the prime minister firmly said that “you cannot simultaneously be talking and at the same time the [Pakistan] terror machine is as active as ever before”.  Once Pakistan moved away “from this terror-induced coercion, we will be very happy to engage productively with Pakistan to resolve all outstanding issues.”

A joint communiqué was issued, echoing the earlier statements. It marked the massive progress made since 2001 when President George W. Bush and prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee took tentative steps towards what they hoped would be a lasting partnership between the two hitherto-distant countries. Within a couple of years, that led to what was called the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP).

The visit ended with a formal banquet (above) in the presidential palace’s formal Mughal gardens. As Obama flies on to Indonesia, he will be satisfied that he has been able to announce 50,000 or more jobs back home (some say 72,000) stemming from Indian contracts with US firms. India has discovered that the president is steeped in admiration for its ancient history, as well as for its independence leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi. Both countries have laid the groundwork for immensely closer relations in the coming years, even if they do not always agree on matters such as Iran and Burma.

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Posted in India, India China, India corruption, India Pakistan, India politicians, India US relations, Manmohan Singh, Pakistan terrorism, terrorism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | November 7, 2010

Obama opens up after a dull first day in India

President Barack Obama’s three-day visit to India began to take shape today when a series of events in Mumbai and Delhi have shown different sides of the world’s most powerful politician.

Last night a London friend messaged me on Facebook asking how he was doing on his first day in India. “Not brilliant so far,” I replied, “dull droning speeches, and he trotted out pre-packed list of job-creating contracts for US companies. Seemed his mind was in the US not in India”.

Billboard welcome in Mumbai - photo AFP/GETTY

But I updated that today as he ended his time in Mumbai and flew to Delhi for the more political side of his trip. “He’s done better, much better, at Q&A sessions with school kids and students, away from his dreadful tele-prompter,” I wrote, “very focussed and relaxed – though inevitably not satisfied everyone on Pakistan”.

Yesterday’s sessions were far too stage-managed (in contrast to the lack of direction two weeks ago). Almost as soon as he arrived in Mumbai, his aides trotted out a $10bn package of 20 contracts – some old, some new, and some not yet concluded – which Obama later said would bring more than 50,000 jobs to the US.

Those that were not new included two for GE – an $820m order for Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter engines announced a month ago and $750m power station gas turbines announced (by Anil Ambani’s Reliance Energy) a week or so ago. Still awaited are an IAF $4.1bn Boeing Globe-master transport aircraft order, and a big railway locomotive contract that has two US bidders (including GE). The most recent order was from Spice Jet, a private sector airline, for $2.7bn Boeing aircraft – but airlines are adept at trotting very long-term orders out at headline-grabbing times.

Obama’s US worries

The contract list and its job-creating potential therefore need to be taken with a pinch of salt. With hindsight however, they did enable Obama to clear the decks of his worries about his drubbing last week in Congressional elections, and about allegations in the US that his trip is costing American taxpayers $200m a day.

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Job creation in America was his main theme yesterday and he aimed at least a third, if not a half, of a speech to businessmen at audiences in the US, stressing how his trip was generating jobs. “The whole focus,” Obama had said just before leaving Washington, “is on how are we going to open up markets so that American businesses can prosper, and we can sell more goods and create more jobs here in the United States.”

Obama and his wife Michelle also paid homage at Mumbai’s Taj Hotel yesterday to those who lost their lives in the November 2008 terrorist attacks. The Taj was the focal point of those attacks along with the Oberoi Hotel, where Obama addressed the business meeting.

But his speaking style was deadpan at the Taj, where he lacked emotion, and with the businessmen, where he lacked verve. This was vastly different from the inspirational orator who won the 2008 presidential election. He spoke from notes at the Taj, but was blighted by his two teleprompter screens at the business meeting and at his main address to students this morning where, as we have seen on tv for months, he swings his head from side to side, drops the end of his sentences, and fails to inspire.

He did however impress Indian businessmen. Anand Mahindra, who runs the Mahindra autos-based group, has tweeted: “He was energetic, attentive, curious&made the right intellectual connections. Has the makings of a great President but needs to win a 2nd term! Above all, I appreciated his informality & sense of humour. Frankly I believe leadership and a sense of humour are inseparable”.

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When Obama answered questions from students this morning at a free-ranging “town hall” style meeting at St Xavier’s School in Mumbai (right – FT photo), he appeared thoughtful, and focussed on his young audience and on what they could aspire to in the future.

A little earlier he had danced (above – AP photo) with young children during the Diwali festival – emulating Michelle Obama who enchanted schoolchildren yesterday. He also talked on a video-link up with villagers in Rajasthan about how e-conferencing can help them develop and sell their crops.

With the students, he dealt with questions well, walking around the crowd with a microphone and swigging water from a plastic bottle, having been introduced by Michelle Obama who encouraged the audience to realise they had the chance to influence what happens to future generations.

Pakistan an irritant

Yesterday he was criticised by commentators for not nailing Pakistan’s responsibility for the Mumbai attacks when he spoke at the Taj. Today he was criticised for again not condemning the country enough, when asked by a student why the US did not treat Pakistan as a terrorist state.

However his remarks were apt for both occasions. At the Taj, he talked about the horrors of terrorism in general and how it had to be fought. With the students, he gave a tutorial on the need to give support and friendship to Pakistan because terrorism was a “cancer that could engulf that country”. He also significantly said that India-Pakistan talks could maybe start on “less controversial issues”, meaning that Pakistan should not insist – as it has again today – that the disputed territory of  Kashmir should be tackled first.

He will come back to terrorism and Pakistan again tomorrow, first when he speaks at a midday press conference and then in an address to the Indian parliament later in the day. That will be after he has had extensive talks with political leaders, who will be urging him to be more firm with their increasingly unstable neighbour.

Obama is also expected formally to announce tomorrow that three Indian public sector defence and space organisations – the DRDO defence research establishment, ISRO space research organisation, and Bharat Dynamics defence equipment manufacturer – will be removed from a list of international entities that are banned from buying US high tech equipment useable for both civilian and defence purposes. The US is also to back India’s bid for a membership of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

These moves all follow on from President Bush’s 2008 nuclear deal with India and should have been implemented long ago. The delay in implementing them is, in Indian eyes, an example of how it cannot fully trust America.

India’s politicians and opinion formers will however never basically accept that the US’s avowed friendship with India is real and genuine until it finds a way of toughening its support-based influence on Pakistan, along with a more pro-India stance.

Obama has said that the US and India have one of the “defining relationships of the 21st century” – India is waiting for him to prove it.

Until he does so, the US will not get all the job-creating defence contracts it wants – notably an $11bn IAF fighter jet order – nor will it get defence communications and other agreements it is promoting because Delhi deeply distrusts Washington.

Tackling that is possibly Obama’s prime target tomorrow. He would win eternal praise if he backed India’s bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council, but the counter-terrorism and the Pakistan issues are paramount.

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