Posted by: John Elliott | July 19, 2010

History repeated as Delhi judders leaderless towards the Commonwealth Games

 
Delhi, indeed India, faced a crisis 30 years ago. The Asian Games were to be held in the capital in 1982 and little had been done. Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, appointed her son Rajiv Gandhi, who had just entered politics, to take charge of organising the stadiums, hotels, highways and flyovers – which he did successfully, albeit at some cost to the city
 
For the last two years India has needed a “Rajiv Gandhi” to take charge of the Commonwealth Games (CWG) that are to be held in just over 70 days in Delhi, a city which is literally crumbling in monsoon floods, incomplete highways and metro railways, broken roads and pavements, collapsing drains, and unfinished and fault-hit sports facilities. 

Hindustan Times front page this morning

The best that can happen when the games are held in early October is that the city is patched up enough for the players and VIPs to be transported along barricaded roads to stadiums where slipping ceiling tiles and other building faults will be quickly rectified day by day. There is currently no guarantee that food will be served, not in any organised way, nor that the security services will operate effectively.

But who is in charge? Not it seems prime minister Manmohan Singh; not Sonia Gandhi, leader of the coalition and the Congress Party; nor any other national ministers – not even M.S.Gill, the distinguished bureaucrat turned politician who is sports minister and on Saturday berated the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) chief Michael Fennell for allowing several leading international athletes not to attend the games.
 
Also not in charge is Sheila Dikshit, an elderly-auntie political figure who is Delhi’s chief minister and seems to have neither the constitutional authority nor the stamina, muscle, guile and managerial ability needed to control Delhi’s rival and highly corrupt authorities.
 
Rahul Gandhi, Rajiv’s son and dynastically in line to become prime minister one day, might have been an good candidate, as his father was 30 years ago, because he would have had the authority, vested by his mother Sonia Gandhi, to over-ride the authorities and bureaucrats and force progress. A general secretary of the Congress Party, he has been holidaying abroad in recent weeks and is today in his Uttar Pradesh constituency of Amethi. 
 

Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium - venue for opening and closing ceremonies

Contrast the chaos with China’s stunning Olympic Games in 2008 or, as an example more in India’s league, look at South Africa where the brilliant FIFA World Cup ended triumphantly eight days ago.

“Pride for Africa as Spain strikes Gold” was FIFA’s website headline after the final in Johannesburg just over a week ago. “You have shown the world that you can achieve anything,” said FIFA President, Sepp Blatter. The Wall Street Journal wrote that South Africa defended itself against criticism about violent crime, disruptive labour strikes, and lacklustre organization ahead of the 2010 World Cup. “Now the country is winning widespread praise after a successful tournament, boosting its ambitions to host other major sporting events”.
 
There is no chance of such tributes being paid to India at the end of the Commonwealth Games.

unfinished Racecourse Station on Metro railway - today's picture

There are four main areas of concern:

1. incomplete stadiums and other infrastructure such as highways and metro lines, some already developing construction faults – leaving little time for test runs.

2. poor quality infrastructure construction – how much will fail during the ten days of the games?

3. dug-up roads, pavements, drains and cable ducts in the name of “street scaping” that cripple many roads and markets in the centre of the city – there is no question of these projects being properly completed, so will patching-up be sufficient for the Delhi to look more or less orderly?

4. the administration of the city during the games – can effective security can be put in place and some sort of steady traffic flow be organised?
 
The financing of CWG is in a mess – recent reports say sponsorship is falling far short of targets. Two months ago an independent report The 2010 Commonwealth Games: Whose Wealth? Whose Commons? – found that:

– “The budget for the CWG has risen from an initial projection of Rs1,899 crore [$422m at current exchange rate] to an official figure of Rs10,000 crore [$2.2bn] and independent expert estimates of Rs. 30,000 crore [$6.6bn].
– “The expenditure on sports infrastructure is already 2,160% of the initial projected budget.
– “The increase in the Union Budget allocation for the CWG from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports rose by 6,235% from 2005-06 to 2009-10.
– “Total expenditure on infrastructure, beautification projects, and security is unknown but likely to be hundreds of crores.
– “Funds from the 2009-10 Scheduled Caste Sub Plan (Special Component Plan) in Delhi have been diverted to cover CWG related expenditures.
– “Over one lakh [100,000] families have already been evicted due to CWG related projects. 44 more JJ clusters [slums] are to be removed before the Games and an estimated 30,000-40,000 families will be displaced.
– “There is rampant exploitation of workers at CWG construction sites, including low pay, inadequate living conditions, and lack of safety equipment.”

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As long ago as 2008, stories were beginning to do the rounds in Delhi (and abroad) about massive corruption and confusion at high levels in the games organization – I heard some first-hand from foreign visitors.

Not only were funds being creamed off contracts but, ironically, anti-corruption vigilance systems were adding to normal bureaucratic hassle because officials were scared not only to sign off on decisions but even to write notes on files.

Construction work on some stadiums is complete but on many it is still continuing, even on external structures. Aquatic and weightlifting events organised to test facilities have been cancelled in the past few days because arenas are not ready.

 The Hindustan Times this morning reports  (front page, top) that the main swimming events stadium (above), officially opened on Saturday with much fanfare, is incomplete and has some flooding. Embankments on a shooting range have collapsed, a false ceiling has fallen in another venue, and there is water seepage in a boxing stadium.
Such flaws are commonplace in India where construction firms have little notion of quality  and frequently bribe officials to accept poor work so that they can use below-standard material and fittings and make more money on repairs.

A crossing near Khan Market - has been in this state for months - today's photo

 

Bidding that started last year for catering contracts has just been cancelled and currently there appear to be no caterers, which means that some lucky well-connected firms will cream off huge profits (and pay huge bribes) on account of late ordering.

Corruption is at its most visible at streets and markets that have been “street scaped”. Connaught Circus at the heart of the city has been dug up for subways, only a few of which will be completed – the rest will be boarded up until later. The pavements of popular Khan Market are being dug up for a second time because highly polished granite that was laid a few weeks ago was too slippery.
 
Double-height grey kerbstones have been laid along all central Delhi roads. They are too high for slightly lame pedestrians to tackle but looked quite smart – until they were badly painted with black and yellow stripes that are now dirty (right). Central reservations have been dug up and similarly raised in height, adorned with metal fencing, and paved with fancy stones (below). Roads that have been completed are lined with rubble – not just small stones but sizeable lumps of granite. August 31 is the latest deadline set for a clean-up.
 
The quality of design is appalling. Uniform signage imposed on shops in a market off central Delhi’s Lodi Road looks like badly painted British design of the 1950s. The paved areas have ludicrous polished marble.
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Few people know precisely why all this has happened, but everyone is actually sure of the reasons. Contractors and suppliers have bribed officials to commission over-egged projects, and no doubt accept over-invoicing, so that both officials and companies benefit – and benefit all over again when slipshod work has to be replaced, and again when boarded-up incomplete work is completed.
 
It’s a sad case of history repeating itself because, though Rajiv Gandhi got the Asian Games facilities complete in time, the problems caused were very similar, as Ved Mehta recounted in a biography Rajiv Gandhi and Rama’s Kingdom. As now, there were vast numbers of overlapping government committees and over-spends, with construction workers leading miserable underfed lives.  
 
“The whole exercise is being transformed by unscrupulous entrepreneurs with political pull into a money spinning operation,” wrote The Hindu newspaper, quoted by Mehta. “It has led to widespread hoarding and black-marketing of construction material. pushing up costs and, in the process, filling the pockets of the privileged few……”

India may seem to have changed a lot since 1982 but the basics have not really changed at all – as will be seen in early October.

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Posted in Delhi, India, India corruption, India infrastructure, Manmohan Singh, Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, Rahul Gandhi | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | July 7, 2010

Security forces’ bullets for stones bring death and disaster to Kashmir

SRINAGAR: There is virtually no prospect in the foreseeable future of long-term peace coming to India’s disputed state of Kashmir, where the army has been called in today to quell a month of clashes between security forces and stone-throwing, mostly young, demonstrators

Kashmir mourners – Reuters July 6 ’10

The past month’s cycle of “bullets for stones” violence, has led to 15 people – most aged between nine and mid-20s – being killed in outrageous over-reactions by security forces.

The violence has been stalled by the army’s presence and a curfew, but there is no prospect of long-term peace. Local demands for some form of autonomy from India are unachievable till an overall agreement is reached by India with neighbouring Pakistan – and that will not happen any time soon, despite the current efforts of Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister.

Kashmir therefore seems doomed to many more years of uncertainty, with periods of violence alternating with relative calm. That means that prospects for the state’s youth are bleak, while the prospects of them becoming increasingly militant are considerable.

After two decades of troubles, generations of youth have grown up in a stone-throwing culture where baiting and attacking security forces, and being viciously attacked and killed in return, is part of regular life from the age of nine or 10.

There is a declining work culture, and job prospects are poor because there is no significant private sector investment. Most companies will not consider investing in an area plagued with such uncertainty. Unemployment is high – 50,000 educated youth registered as unemployed in 2007 and the total figure now will be much higher.

These are the gloomy conclusions I have reached after two visits to Kashmir in the past three months.

Srinagar’s Dal Lake – last Saturday evening

On my first visit in April, the mood was hopeful because there had been relative peace since state assembly elections in January last year. I was told everywhere that the time was ripe for Delhi to try to revive informal talks, stalled earlier this year, with leaders of Kashmir’s Hurriyat separatist movement about some form of autonomy.

“It is an ideal time because the government at the centre was elected only last year and the people here endorsed democratic processes (in the state election) so hope for a solution,” said Omar Abdullah, the state’s minister.

It was clear that such talks would not go far because the Hurriyat leaders would insist on including Pakistan in any formal discussions. Just having talks however would have been a positive development and could have led to confidence building measures, though Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a leading Muslim cleric and Hurriyat moderate, told me that he realised there was little chance of Delhi making significant moves such as repealing a despised special police powers act.

Yet hope was in the air and tourists – who have fled in the past few days and weeks – were flocking to Srinagar’s lakes and nearby mountains.

I visited an energetic and thriving school – DPS Srinagar (above) – that was opened in 2003 by the Dhars, a prominent Hindu family in Srinagar. Overcoming local opposition, they have demonstrated what can be achieved despite the backdrop of violence and uncertainty. There are now 3,800 students keenly learning in facilities as good as any in India.

Now DPS along with other schools is closed, as they have all been intermittently for weeks. It did not take long for the hopes of late April to be dashed by clashes between young demonstrators and the security forces, as I saw on my second visit last  weekend.

Kashmir roadblock – AP July 6 ’10

The current crisis began to escalate from June 11 when a 17-year old youth walking home past a demonstration was killed by a tear-gas shell. That triggered a cycle of events with protests, shootings, lathi charges and firing of tear gas shells, plus curfews, bandhs (political strikes that close down whole cities) and local leaders being put under house arrest.

This week’s violence started (after a quieter Saturday evening and Sunday – see Dal Lake picture above)  when a young man was drowned trying to escape from security forces, and a 25-year old woman was hit by a stray bullet at her home. There were then two more deaths, after which the army was called in and staged “flag marches” through key areas of Srinagar – the first time this has happened on the streets of the state capital since 1989-90.

The appalling excesses by security forces were underlined on Monday when cities across India were shut down by bandhs against petrol and other price rises. Buses were set on fire, police attacked, and politicians provoked security forces to arrest them. Yet nowhere in the country was anyone killed – though people were the next day in Kashmir.

Go India Go Back – Reuters July 1 ’10

The Kashmir police and India’s paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) are behaving as though they are still dealing with the Pakistan-backed insurgency and terrorism that hit Kashmir 20 years ago and died away towards the end of the last decade. They have received no training in how to deal with civilian street protests and thus treat them as threats that can be eliminated.

This points to the basic problem affecting the state. The mind-set of both the Kashmir and Delhi governments is still rooted in the days of the insurgency and neither politicians nor officials have adjusted to the fact that they are now dealing with protestors who have, to coin phrase, given up the gun and resort instead to stones. Yet the official response is still the gun.

It is scarcely surprising that “Go India Go Back” has become a current slogan, newly scrawled on walls and printed on banners.

Some facets of the Pakistan-backed insurgency of course continue. Pakistan is still allowing militants to cross its border into Kashmir. Officials say that the infiltrators carry money to help and encourage organisers of the demonstrations. There are also continuing military clashes on the border – two Indian troops were killed in the past couple of days during exchanges of fire in Jammu, south of the Kashmir valley.

In Pakistan yesterday, militant groups held anti-India protests. “I want to assure my brothers in Indian-occupied Kashmir that we will continue to support you until we liberate every inch of our motherland from Indian subjugation,” said Syed Salahuddin, a leader of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.

A weak Jammu & Kashmir government is also contributing to the problems. Abdullah, aged 40, has failed to live up to hopes that he would bring new energy and direction to the chief minister’s job. He has failed both to assert his authority and to strike a chord with the Mirwaiz, who is 37, and Mehbooba Mufti Sayeed, 51, the leader of the opposition who is more interested in undermining him.

Kashmir street battle – Reuters July 1 ’10

A few years ago, I was told by a senior British diplomat that peace could never come to Kashmir till the Indian government acknowledged, to itself and publicly, that its security forces had been involved in appalling human rights abuses. That, said the diplomat, was the lesson of Northern Ireland where London only made progress on a settlement after it made that acknowledgement.

Sadly, the behaviour of the security forces in just the last few days, let alone the last 20 years, shows that neither the current Kashmir government nor India’s Home Ministry is prepared for such a mea culpa on human rights abuses.

What hope is there then for the state’s youth? And what will they be throwing in the future if stones prove useless – grenades and bombs again, with Pakistan eagerly feeding their needs?

 

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Posted in India, India Pakistan, India security, Kashmir, Manmohan Singh, Pakistan, Pakistan terrorism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | June 23, 2010

Strong Raza, Tagore and Souza sales push buoyant Indian art auctions to $33m

Tagores hit record prices with works going to Pakistan, Bangladesh and UK

Tagore – portrait of a woman

It was never going to be easy for last week’s buoyant Sotheby’s and Saffronart modern South Asian art auctions to match up to the excitement of Christie’s Souza retrospective sale a few days earlier, but they certainly did well with prices which showed that the top end of the modern Indian art market is firmly on the rebound after the 2008-09 crash.

Sotheby’s scored with twelve rare offerings by Rabindranath Tagore and, together with Saffronart, made some notable sales of works by leading veterans, especially Syed Haidar Raza.

With many lots going well above modestly-priced estimates, Sotheby’s raised £5.5m ($7.9m, Rs375m) and Saffronart went to Rs300m ($6.7 million). Together with Christie’s two-day figure of £12.5m ($18.1m), this brought the total for June’s mainly-Indian sales by the three auction houses – two in London and one on-line – to £22.5m ($32.7m).

This was a considerable improvement on results achieved for India’s leading modern artists a year ago after prices had crashed in the previous year. The main buyers were serious collectors, along with leading galleries and dealers who expect prices to improve further.

In a bullish analysis of the three auctions published today ArtTactic , a London-based analysis firm, says that average auction prices (left) and volumes for modern Indian art “are now back to levels seen at the peak in June 2008”.

Prices had dropped 46%, and volumes 63%, between September 2008 and March 2009. Anders Peterson, who runs the firm, adds that “the return in confidence is at the high end of the market.”

ArtTactic also sees a recovery in Indian contemporary art where average prices dropped 85%, though that was less evident on the auction floors. Previously popular contemporary artists such as Subodh Gupta and Jitish Kallat are still lagging far below 2007-08 prices.

Raza’s Rajasthan

The stars of the three auctions were Souza for the Christie’s auction and subsequent sales, Tagore for the interest and prices achieved for his mostly figurative and small works from the 1930s, and Raza who hit an all-India record price at Christie’s and then topped the bidding at both Sotheby’s (right) and Saffronart.

This makes Raza, with his brightly coloured reddish-orange works that appeal especially to Indian buyers,  the most sought-after member of India’s 1950s Progressive group of artists. Also in the group are other big names such as Souza, M.F.Husain and Tyeb Mehta.

The twelve paper works by Tagore, a renowned poet and philosopher as well as an artist, who died in 1941, were special because he is one of nine “national treasure” artists whose paintings are not allowed to leave India, so are rarely available abroad. This collection had been held by the UK’s Dartington Hall Trust since it was received as a gift from Tagore in 1939, and it was being sold by the trust to raise funds.

Inevitably there was a rather sanctimonious furore and media frenzy in India before the auction, with the government being urged to buy the works so that they could return home – except of course that India never was their home because they were painted and gifted in the UK. But the extensive publicity was good both for Sotheby’s and Dartington, because the twelve realised £1.6m (including buyer’s premium), with most of the lots going for three or four times top estimates.

Tagore – portrait of a woman

Two of the works did even better and exceeded estimates six-seven times. Possibly the most appealing lot (top)– described by experts as a typical (13x9in) Tagore face and eyes – went for a hammer price of £185,000 (£223,250 including premium) against an estimate of just £25,000-£30,000.

The highest bid of £260,000 (£313,250 including premium) was a Tagore auction record and went for a 20x16in work (left) that had been estimated at £30,000-£40,000.

These were not just records for Tagore; they also set new records for any Indian works on paper of this size, says Siddhartha Tagore, owner of Delhi’s Art Konsult gallery and a great grand-nephew of the artist.

The buyers, both at the auction and bidding anonymously by phone, included two Bangladeshi and one Pakistani collectors, and a London-based Indian cardiologist, Abhijit Lahiri, who was in the hall and bought at least one lot. When pressured by reporters, Lahiri said he might take his collection to India one day – but not yet!

Vikram Bachhawat, who runs Kolkata’s Aakriti gallery and an auction house, says that most India-based collectors would have been reluctant to buy because of customs and other regulatory complications involved in bringing such categories of art back into the country.

Husain, unsold

Ten of the lots totalling Rs42m ($934,272) in the Saffronart auction were sold using the on-line auction house’s mobile phone system, via iPhones and Blackberrys. They included a $235,750 Husain. Saffronart says this is the world’s only live mobile bidding run by a major art auction house.

Dinesh Vazirani, who runs Saffronart, agrees with Art Tactic’s line on modern art and says auction prices are “reasonably close” to their 2008 peak. “Serious collectors are there and this is backed with confidence in the Indian economy, and with people investing as a hedge against inflation”.

As has been happening for the past year or so, the results show however that not all famous artists’ works do well. For example, a few Husain’s and Souza’s did not sell in these auctions – including, perhaps surprisingly, a rather striking 48x47in acrylic on board (above) by Husain, depicting human and animal figures, that Saffronart estimated at around $180,000-$200,000.

a Subodh Gupta luggage trolley

Illustrating the slump in contemporary prices, an untitled 67x90in oil on canvas by Subodh Gupta of an airport luggage trolley (right) fetched only £180,000 ($250,000) at Sotheby’s, which is about a fifth of his record price paid for a very similar trolley in 2008.

But he did better in the Saffronart sale, where a possibly more socially-conscious similarly sized study (below) of hardworking  doodwhalas – cycle milk sellers – doubled top estimates to fetch $494,500m (Rs2.2m) including premium.

“Auctions are now a filtered version of the reality in the art market,” says ArtTactic’s Peterson. “Lots that are likely to sell are works of high quality, rarity and outstanding provenance. Works that do not demonstrate these qualities are still selling at lower prices or not at all. Therefore the return in confidence is at the high end of the market.”

Subodh Gupta’s doodhwalas sold well

 

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

Posted by: John Elliott | June 14, 2010

In 1984 the US rescued Union Carbide’s Warren Anderson – and now dares vilify BP’s Tony Hayward

I was there in Bhopal on December 7,1984, when Warren Anderson, then the chairman of Union Carbide, was whisked away from the stricken city to Delhi and back to the US – and we all knew that it was happening with the help of Rajiv Gandhi, then India’s prime minister.

Since then Anderson has been protected by the US business-political establishment from being extradited to India to answer for the appalling human and environmental damage wrought by his company’s gas leak in Bhopal a few days earlier. That was one of the world’s worst industrial disasters,  leading to the death of over 5,000 people and continuing ill-health of over 500,000. (See my last visit and report six months ago).

Now that same American establishment that has protected Anderson has been pillorying Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, following BP’s oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. The tirade has been led by President Barack Obama, who has been behaving like a spoiled child for the past 50 or so days, casting around for someone to blame when it is his own officials who are primarily at fault.  

The wrecked Bhopal plant, Nov 2009

  These two man-made catastrophes have generated mega outbursts of irrational media coverage in India and the US in the past week, both fuelled by political cant.    

In Delhi, politicians and media have been in a frenzy over the Bhopal gas leak following a court judgement last Monday that eight Indian former Union Carbide executives should serve two-year prison sentences and be fined about $2,000 (subject to appeals that could take years).     

In neither case are the main political players really focussing on the primary issues – the appalling damage and threat to the environment in the Gulf, and health problems in Bhopal where thousands of people have suffered for over 25 years.     

In both cases it is the US that is making sure its interest are protected. On Bhopal, Anderson was airlifted out of India when he could have been detained, and has been protected ever since by the American business-political establishment. On the Gulf spill, it is America that has decided that BP and Hayward, not its own officials and companies, should be the target for abuse and penalties.  

“Who’s ass to kick?” 

Obama is frightened politically about the damage the spill will do to him and the Democrats. Consequently, he has been stoking anti-BP sentiment instead of steadying it, when the real culprits are officials in various US government organisations that for years have allowed oil companies to negotiate exceptions on environmental and safety procedures.   The New York Times explained this on June 6. It started by talking about the managerial muddle on the BP rig, with unclear lines of authority and control, but it then went on to report how US officials had allowed the catastrophic situation to develop. :    

 “Deepwater rigs operate under an ad hoc system of exceptions. The deeper the water, the further the exceptions stretch, not just from federal guidelines but also often from company policy. So, for example, when BP officials first set their sights on extracting the oily riches under what is known as Mississippi Canyon Block 252 in the Gulf of Mexico, they asked for and received permission from federal regulators to exempt the drilling project from federal law that requires a rigorous type of environmental review, internal documents and federal records indicate.”  

So when Obama said last week that he wanted to know “whose ass to kick”, the answer should have been American officials in the regulatory authorities. Sure, BP is massively responsible for what has happened, but for Obama to have personally attacked its chief executive, Tony Hayward, is mean and pathetic – and the president has ended up demeaning himself. 

On Bhopal, the court sentences passed on the eight men are of course ridiculously small – and 25 years late. But the Indian media, egged on by politicians, has gone off chasing who it was who allowed Anderson to escape instead of focusing on Indian and Bhopal authorities that allowed a potentially unsafe chemical plant to be built so near the city, then allowed slum housing to mushroom nearby, and then failed to carry out regulatory checks.  

Of the eight, the only well-known figure is Keshub Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra & Mahindra, one of the most respected and “clean” Indian groups. He was non-executive chairman of Union Carbide India at a time when such posts had no real corporate responsibility and were mainly involved in helping the company operate in the country. The other seven (including one who has died) were victims of an American management that had effectively walked away from the investment and wanted to dump it.

On the escape of Anderson, I was there in Bhopal at the time – December 7, 1984 –  and later learned about what happened from both government and company sources. 

Arjun Singh, then the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal is the state capital) heard that Anderson was flying into Bhopal from Bombay on a flight that stopped in Indore. So he ordered his police to the airport without (fearing leaks) telling them why, till the plane had taken off from Indore, when he told them Anderson should be arrested on arrival.

Anderson had planned his visit as some sort of mercy and goodwill mission. As the plane landed in Bhopal, he looked out of the cabin window and saw the police cars, so said to Mahindra, who was sitting beside him, how good it was of the state government to provide him with an escort. 

He was immediately arrested and taken to the Union Carbide guest house on a hill overlooking the city. Along with a crowd of Indian and foreign journalists, I stood that afternoon at the guest house’s front gates waiting for Anderson to emerge. Shame on us all, he was whisked out of the back gate without most of us seeing him, and was released on bail after being held for just six hours. He was put on a government plane to Delhi, and then flew to the US.

Although we did not know that afternoon whether Anderson was being flown to Delhi to be detained there, we had no doubt that Singh, a leading Congress politician, was acting on the orders of – or at least with the approval of Rajiv Gandhi, the Congress prime minister. The government is now saying that Singh sent Anderson out of Bhopal because he feared civil unrest if the executive was seen in the city. But that does not explain why, presumably at the behest of the US, Anderson was then allowed to leave the country.

But whether Singh or Gandhi were wrong to have done that is not now relevent. The real crime has been committed by the Indian and American authorities, and by Union Carbide and Dow which has now taken over the company, by not punishing the right people and cleaning up the health hazards in Bhopal.

Now there’s a cause where President Obama could usefully “kick ass”.

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Posted in Bhopal, India, India environment, India US relations, Union Carbide | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | June 10, 2010

Souza family’s £5.4m auction followed by £2.4m Indian record

LONDON JUNE 9: It could have been a sad and depressing occasion, with the eldest daughter in a debt-ridden squabbling family quickly disposing of the estate of one of India’s greatest artists – and doing so with such a massive sale that the auctioneers anxiously set estimates unusually low in order to attract bidders and keep them motivated.

But it didn’t happen like that, and today’s mammoth London auction of brilliant works by F.N.Souza, who died eight years ago, was a triumph for the artist, whose entire range of work sold well – from gentle village scenes and landscapes painted in his mid teens through decades of tension, love, anger and frustration to his final years.

This possibly unique example of an auction doubling up as a retsospective exhibition reflected the words of one of his three wives, Barbara, who said he painted “sex, violence and the mind”.  

Red Curse

It was a considerable success for Christie’s, the auction house, which was faced with so many works that it marked many estimates 40% below market prices, and had to group 25 or more drawings into single lots in order to avoid auction fatigue.  

As one specialist put it, to have offered each work individually would have “strained buyers patience and gone on long into the evening” – as it was, bidding continued for over four hours. The sale was the result of a court order that Souza’s estate should be wound up, despite objections from some of his offspring (four daughters and a son).

There were 152 lots – paintings, drawings, collages, watercolours and prints plus ten sketch books. Amazingly, all were sold apart from five minor items, and many went at twice the highest estimates or more. The auction produced hammer sales totalling £4.4m, which more than doubled the average of £1.6m-£2.3m estimates and, together with buyers’ (12-25%) premiums, realised a final total of £5.4m ($7.9m). 

A large and violent 1962 work, Red Curse (above), got the highest hammer price of £750,00, triple the highest estimate for the work. That yielded £881,250 ($1.3m) including buyers’ premium. “I would like my paintings to disturb the calm, the smug,” Souza once said, and he certainly does that here in this 70x45in work that was painted for special effect in oils on black satin.

Red Curse went to an anonymous buyer, one of many who bid from places as far afield as Taiwan, Hong Kong, California and Washington DC – two-thirds of the lots received on-line bids using Christies’ internet system and many bids were phoned in.

“This shows that the market for the Indian Progressive movement is strong,” said Hugo Weihe, Christie’s international director of Asian art . “This is a fantastic testament to the legacy of Souza who himself was a trailblazer within the Indian Progressives”.   

Goa village scene

 Most buyers were private Indian collectors and dealers, and many left with far fewer works than they expected because of the high prices. One prominent Delhi gallery owner took away five or six works, having expected far more, and at least one established collector ended with nothing.

I was unsuccessfully interested in four or five paintings at the lower end of the price ranges – aiming especially for a jolly 22x12in untitled nude (below right) painted in gouache on card in 1950 that was estimated at £2,500-3,500 and went for a hammer price of about £13,000 (£16,250, $23,595 including the premium).

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 The beat-the-estimate trend was set with the first lot, a happy Goan village scene (above -gouache on paper 10x15in) painted by Souza when he was 21. That was estimated at £4,000-6,000 and shot up to £22,000 (£27,000, $39,930 incl premium).

Soon after that, a Roman Catholic Phantom (below -polyvinyl acetate on canvas 32x22in) more than doubled its top estimate and achieved a final price with premium of £55,250, and a face of Christ 27x20in (oil on board) estimated at £50,000-£80,000 went for a final price of £349,250. Later a typical nude (oil on board 48x32in) from Souza’s 1960s period more than doubled estimates to finish up at £169,250.    

The auction came at a good time when the Indian modern art market is recovering from the crash of 18-20 months ago, especially for the best works, with serious collectors paying good prices. That reflects an international trend with a new world auction record of $106.5m (₤70.3m) being set for a Picasso at a Christie’s New York auction in May.

The record price for a Souza was set at Christie’s in June 2008, just before the crash, when Birth, a 1955 work, sold in London for £1.3m  (then $2,5m).  That was an exceptionally high price and yesterday’s auction results do not compare badly, given that prices are now beginning to recover. 

Roman Catholic Phantom

Strong results have been recorded in recent auctions in New York and Hong Kong, with a 1955 untitled painting by M. F.Husain, who ranks alongside Souza as one of India’s greatest modern painters, being sold at Sotheby’s in New York in April for $1m, over five times a very cautious estimate. 

In Mumbai, another market leader from the Progressives group, Tyeb Mehta, did well in March when one of his Mahishasura series fetched Rs40.56m ($900,000). That was well below his 2008 record of £982,000 (then $1.9m) achieved at Christie’s in London, but a valid example of good prices being paid for good works.

These auction results have been backed up by ArtTactic, a London-based analysis firm, which said last month that market confidence in modern Indian art was continuing to improve strongly. However Indian contemporary art, whose prices slumped by as much as 80% for some top over-exposed artists, was not doing so well and the gap between modern and contemporary was widening.

Mehta’s works will be tested tomorrow (June 10), along with Husain and another Progressive, Sayed Haider Raza, when the Christie’s annual London Indian art auction continues for another day. 

 But today was Souza’s and, although the reason for such a rare auction devoted to just one artist arose out of of family problems, it brought new stature and acclaim to one of India’s leading masters.

LONDON JUNE 10: A new record auction price for modern Indian art was set at Christie’s in London today when Saurashtra, a massive 79x79in acrylic on canvas by Syed Haidar Raza, one of India’s veteran masters, was bought for a hammer price of £2.1m – £2.4m ($3.5m) including buyer’s premium.  

Saurashtra

This beat slightly lower records set in the past two years by F.N.Souza, M.F.Husain, Tyeb Mehta and Raza – all prominent members of Bombay’s Progressive artists’ group of the 1940s and 1950s. Experts say this demonsrates that top collectors are prepared to pay very high prices for the best examples of modern Indian art. 

The work (right) was bought – along with Falling Bird, a 59x47in acrylic on canvas byTyeb Mehta that fetched £1m ($1.5m) – by Kiran Nadar for a Museum of Art she has built in Noida on the outskirts of New Delhi.

Nadar’s husband is the founder of HCL, one of India’s largest computer software companies and she has been paying top prices at several sales. Yesterday she was the runner up bidder for Souza’s Red Curse (image above). After today’s sale, she said both of her purchases were “seminal works of top quality”, but she also told me she was concerned from a market point of view, whether such high prices could be sustained.

Christie’s two-day auction of South Asian art realised a total of £12.4m which was a record for the region. This has set new benchmarks for a Sotheby’s annual South Asian London sale next week, which includes rarely seen works by Rabindranath Tagore, and an on-line SaffronArt auction.

ALSO SEE: An epic Souza exhibition begins to open up the elite world of modern Indian art -April 14 ’10    http://wp.me/pieST-Yq

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Posted in India, Indian contempoary art, Indian modern art | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | June 7, 2010

First-ever open debate on foreign investment in Indian defence

India’s business media thrives on reporting possible changes in foreign direct investment (FDI) limits that range over legally significant figures from nothing to 26% and 49%, and on to 50%, 51%, 74% and 100%. The figures give foreign companies varying degrees of control, and each level provides easy media stories and catchy headlines – and simple facts for sources to plant with minimal briefings on gullible journalists.

In the past the debates – or, rather, the pushes and pulls of (often suitcase-carrying) vested interests – have been invisible behind the headlines. But that has now partly changed. The Commerce Ministry’s industrial policy department (DIPP) has publicised a debate about whether FDI should be raised in defence production by issuing a discussion document that covers all the issues. More discussion documents are planned on FDI in retail and low cost housing and other subjects.

This is surely good. I wrote here in February last year that one of the biggest weaknesses affecting India’s economic liberalisation was the way that industrial and allied policies are made and changed without apparent reasoned analysis and debate. The biggest-ever changes in assessing foreign control for as FDI had then just been announced, leaving virtually everyone totally confused. The general conclusion was that the changes were designed to facilitate specific big company deals – and that big funds had accordingly flowed into the Congress Party’s election coffers. No-one denied it – how could they – but the then commerce minister Kamal Nath extolled the changes’ virtues without much clarity.

The government’s defence manufacturing discussion paper has raised the basic question of whether FDI is needed and, if so, how much. This is a good question, and it has rarely been asked on any Indian FDI in the past.

Responding to vested interests

Instead, responding to vested interests, the government has gradually opened the floodgates – for example in telecoms, but only after Indian companies such as Bharti AirTel had had time to establish a leading Indian presence. It has blocked it in general retail because of pressure from big Indian companies such as Reliance, Tata and the Future group, though Kishore Biyani who runs Future is believed to be changing his mind. It has also blocked it at 26% in insurance because of public sector resistance to a higher limit even though many private sector insurance companies urgently need foreign funds, and at various levels in media to please influential media interests such as the Times of India group.

Some of these decisions were surely sensible. Indian companies need time to establish themselves before FDI is allowed at such high percentages that foreign companies swamp the market and make India in effect a virtual subsidiary of powerful developed economies.

That is the issue now in defence – is it time to open up and how far? Currently the FDI limit is 26%, apart from a very few higher exceptions, and it is generally accepted that this is not enough to attract commitment, top executives and high technology from most foreign defence companies. A notable exception is the UK’s BAE Systems, which has a 26-74% joint venture with Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M ) for products (land systems to use the jargon) ranging from trucks to guns, which I mentioned about four months ago.

It is now fashionable to argue that it is illogical to restrict defence FDI because foreign companies from Russia, Israel, Europe and the US control the market by supplying about 70% of India’s defence equipment, as they have done for years. If there is already such foreign control goes the argument, why not let the suppliers into India with higher FDI. This would boost India’s auto industry-based and high-end manufacturing industry, generate employment, and enable the country gradually to become a defence equipment exporter.

Strengthening that argument is the government’s evolving “offset” policy that requires foreign defence suppliers to spend 30%-50% of a contract’s value on defence equipment investment and purchasing in India. This is making it more attractive for the foreign suppliers to set up joint ventures here, and is correspondingly leading to increased foreign pressure on the government for FDI above 51%.

CII-KPMG Defence FDI survey

The domestic industry, led by companies such as Larsen & Toubro (L&T), M&M and various Tata group businesses, however wants the limit raised only to 49% so that they maintain control and have a chance to grow, having been restricted till relatively recently from doing more than supply components. This view has been backed by a recent Confederation of Indian Industry-KPMG survey with 57% of respondents saying “yes” to a higher FDI limit and 26% more saying “maybe”.

There have been various unsuccessful attempts in the past ten years to reform India’s slothful defence manufacturing capability, which is dragged down by public sector corporations (DPSUs) and ordnance factories that dominate production, generally perform badly, and block change along with trade unions and the defence ministry. Currently, they are opposing any increase in the 26% limit.

India’s armed forces are however becoming tired of being saddled both with poor domestic equipment and by the defence ministry’s failure to award foreign contracts on time. As the government’s FDI consultation paper says, “only 15% of equipment can be described as ‘state of the art’ and nearly 50% is suffering from obsolescence”.National security coindserns

National security concerns

There is some concern that India’s security interests will be endangered if FDI is raised, but most of these can be dealt with by detailed regulations. For example, India will presumably pick and choose which countries to admit  – presumably not China, despite that country’s invasion of India’s telecoms equipment market. It will also need to insist (as it has done with media FDI) that Indian nationals hold top managerial posts, and that it also controls export destinations and have some influence over changes in foreign management control. (The US allows 100% FDI in defence but imposes security-related restrictions, including an ability to block takeovers).

There is also concern that a foreign-invested defence company might be forced by its owner to stop production, or not receive components from its home country, if India was involved in a war or other activity that did not get international backing. The US has blocked supplies, most recently after India’s 1998 nuclear tests. That risk however would presumably be no greater than it has been in the past with foreign supplies, and might turn out to be less serious.

The Commerce Ministry DIPP discussion document firmly recommends 74% – and does not oppose even 100% – in order to “have state of the art technology”. Raising it only to 49% might, it says, lead to accusations “by posterity of doing too little too late”.

Personally, I don’t agree with this. Indian companies need time to grow, as they have in telecoms and insurance, so the limit should be raised to just 49%. That would, I believe (having talked to many contacts), be sufficient to bring in commitment, management expertise and technology, despite foreign companies’ protestations to the contrary.

Unfortunately this seems unlikely to happen. The Commerce Ministry has started a public debate on the issue with a spectacular attempt to crack the defence establishment’s luddite grip on policy – but the decisions will be still dominated by the defence ministry cabal. I guess that means we can expect no more than a fudge of 49% in “special cases”, which will help a bit but lead to confusion and manipulation.

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Posted in India, India defence, India defence industry, India economic reforms, India FDI, Tata | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | May 28, 2010

Manmohan Singh displays his own and his government’s limitations

Whose fault is it if a press conference billed in advance as a major event is a muddled flop? Blame the person giving the press conference? Or his advisors, or the media for not asking perceptive questions? 

That question has being doing the rounds here since Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, (below) gave mostly dreary answers for more than an hour on Monday at what was supposed to be an important media event to celebrate the first anniversary of the coalition government that he heads. 

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 He said virtually nothing new and developed no themes on major issues – not on talks with Pakistan (which he is pushing), economic policy (he is a professional expert), nor on dealing with Naxalite rebels (he has for three years billed this as India’s major internal security problem). He thus failed to put his personal stamp of authority on a fragmented government. 

While his media and other advisers should certainly have made sure he was better focused and prepared, the real problem is Manmohan Singh’s own political nervousness and lack of authority over ministers who, for better or for worse, follow their own lines of thought and behaviour. 

The prime minister of course is not a natural politician. Some 25 years ago, I used to visit him for the Financial Times in Mumbai when he was the Reserve Bank of India’s governor. Always interesting, he would talk, among other things, about the challenges of trying to benefit everyone when developing a poor country. That helped me, as a new foreign correspondent, to grapple with this vast country, including the militant Khalistan campaign then raging in his home state of Punjab. Then he came to Delhi to run the Planning Commission and was equally discursive. 

Later, when I returned to India in 1995, I caught up with progress on economic liberalisation that had started in 1991 by listening to him make brilliantly argued, and sometimes even passionate, speeches about the need for India to open up. He was then finance minister, and he and Montek Singh Ahluwalia, then finance secretary and now head of the Planning Commission, were interchangeable as worthy speakers. 

Then Congress lost power and I found him gradually less and less open as he shrank back into the reticence of a guarded politician. Sadly, I went to see him less. 

That is the man who last Monday sat bizarrely alone on a huge stage at the government’s Vigyan Bhawan main conference hall (below), facing several hundred journalists in tiers of seats so remote that it was impossible to generate the mood of a participative press conference. Very few ministers turned up to support him, though he brought some top advisers from his office. 

‘Singh adds econ logic to Pak peace bid’ 

His most interesting remark was when he linked, publicly for only the second time I believe, the idea that India “cannot realise its full development potential unless we have the best possible relations with our neighbours – and Pakistan happens to be out largest neighbour”. He should have explained this thought in order to give shape and logic to his highly controversial policy of opening talks with Pakistan, despite its role as an anti-India terrorist base. 

Imagine the headlines – “Pakistan peace will boost India to 12% growth”, or “Singh adds econ logic to Pak peace bid”. That would have made international headlines. There might have been one or two negative pitches such as “Singh admits Pakistan stunting India’s economy”, but who’d care when the positive message would have been out. We might have all understood, at least partly, why the prime minister is so keen.

Singh does not have full party support for this initiative, and Sonia Gandhi has not spoken out on it in the supportive way that she did when he pushed through last year’s nuclear deal with the US. For some reason, the Gandhi’s were keen on that deal, but do not seem to see the same benefit in the Pakistan initiative, which of course has scarcely any chance of achieving much in the foreseeable future.

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 His worst answer was when he virtually condoned the widely recognised corruption of A.Raja, the telecoms minister, quoting Raja’s implausible defence that he was following government policy when handling suspect telecom licence auctions in 2008. Since he cannot sack Raja because of coalition priorities, this indicated that  the prime minister did not have the guile or courage to deal with such a sensitive issue with the media.

His most revealing remarks were when he said that questions of his retirement did “not arise” because of he had unfinished tasks to tackle – and then later agreed with a questioner that sometimes “younger people should take over”. In that context, he said he would be “happy to make way” if  and when the Congress Party decided he should. (The “young”  there of course was Rahul Gandhi, and “Congress” was his mother Sonia who heads the party). That showed how deeply conscious Singh is of being prime minister only at the pleasure of the Gandhi family.

He failed to develop themes on tackling Naxalite rebels at a time when his government is split about whether they should be seen as terrorists or a developmental problem. He also dodged questions about massive illegal mining in Orissa, government splits over whether people should have to declare their caste in a new national census,  and state-level disputes over scarce water resources.

The question on mining gave Singh a marvellous opportunity to give a broad-based answer publicly supporting Jairam Ramesh, India’s first non-corrupt policy-oriented environment minister for a decade. Ramesh is trying to stop illegal mining in several states. He is facing stiff opposition from politicians both within and outside the coalition, not only on mining but also other projects – many illegal and involving corrupt vested interests. He should have been given vocal prime ministerial support.

These omissions were significant because they are almost all issues that divide the government, where Singh does not have the political will or freedom to take the lead. This is  partly because Sonia Gandhi is in charge of party and coalition politics, and partly because, as I wrote last week, he does not dare (nor has the authority) to risk upsetting coalition partners.

When asked about his differences with ministers, he replied “It would not be proper for me to, I think, discuss these issues in broad public daylight” – sitting in the brightly lit the conference hall. “Then turn out the lights”, laughed one journalist. 

The government is of course functioning adequately despite all the policy problems, corruption, and lack of prime ministerial drive and authority. From Sonia Gandhi’s and the party’s point of view, keeping the coalition intact is a primary issue till the next general election due in 2014. What a lot India is missing as a result! 

“If wishes were horses even beggars would ride”, said the prime minister with a rare flash of whimsical humour when asked if he would rather have the more structured relationship of his 2004-09 Left-supported coalition than the current hotch potch of parties. 

If only they were……….. 

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Posted in dynasty, India, India Left, India mining, India Pakistan, India politicians, India politics, Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | May 24, 2010

The Ambani brothers’ cold war is over, let battle commence

Anyone who thinks that Sunday’s announcement of a so-called peace deal between India’s warring Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil, signals a family love-in must surely be mistaken.

The two extremely high profile businessmen split the massive Reliance Industries empire in 2005, three years after the death of their father Dhirubhai who originally founded what had become one of India’s biggest groups. They have been fighting each other ever since – until Sunday’s apparent truce.

Anil (left) and Mukesh, tense in 2006, with their father's picture

Now their rivalry can move openly into the marketplace because the gist of Sunday’s announcement was that they have cancelled non-compete agreements reached after their 2005 split.

These agreements, instead of keeping the brothers peacefully apart, led to many squabbles and bitter infighting. The worst upset was when Mukesh scuppered Anil’s plans two years ago for a share-swap merger with MTN, a large African telecoms company, saying he had first right to shares in Anil’s Reliance Communications.

The incentive for the brothers to sort out their troubles was a Supreme Court judgement earlier this month on a dispute over the supply and price of gas from one of Mukesh’s Reliance Industries (RIL) offshore fields to a power plant planned by one of Anil’s Reliance ADAG companies. The judgement favoured RIL on the price of gas and on its freedom to choose its customers, but also said a quick agreement should be reached by the brothers that would also protect the interests of ADAG’s shareholders.

Freedom to enter each other’s business areas will of course lead not only to visible competition but also no doubt to a continuation of the ruthless behind-the-scene influence seeking and peddling for which they are both renowned (as was their father). That could also hit other companies in areas that they target.

The two groups said on Sunday that the announcement would “provide enhanced operational and financial flexibility to both groups, and greater ability to participate in high growth sectors of the Indian economy, such as oil and gas, petrochemicals, telecommunications, power, and financial services”. There was an added line about RIL not entering into ADAG’s key area of gas based power generation until 2022.

Mukesh Ambani’s most successful business areas are oil and gas exploration and refining, textiles, and petro chemicals. He has been less successful with retail stores, petroleum retailing, and special economic zones, but all these businesses have growth potential, along with life sciences, and an investment in one of the controversial IPL cricket league teams. He has ample investment funds, and will almost certainly want to move into highly lucrative financial services plus infrastructure, media (where he is already active), and maybe telecoms.

Anil has had most success in financial services, where he has a $24bn mutual fund, India’s largest, but is facing tough competition in his other main area, telecoms that was originally started by Mukesh. He also has substantial plans in infrastructure, power, media, films, and healthcare, and might look at moving into oil exploration, which he was personally involved in before the split, and retail.

The eventual winner will be almost certainly be Mukesh, 53, who has more business acumen, managerial expertise, and political clout, and is more of a strategist, than Anil, 50. He has a head start because the $70bn-plus market capitalisation of his RIL group is three times the size of Anil’s ADAG.

Saturday’s statement said the two brothers were “hopeful and confident that all these steps will create an overall environment of harmony, co-operation and collaboration between the two groups”.

Maybe I’m being too cynical, but I don’t see that happening, though future clashes will probably not invade government policy as damagingly as they did over gas pricing.

Mukesh is never content unless he dominates whatever he is involved in, especially his core industries. On a personal level, Anil is part of his core family, so there is no way that Mukesh and his wife Nita would ever allow Anil to gain precedence. As the younger brother, Anil is of course always trying to be a player in the same big league.

Like so much in India, this is good theatre, and the country also benefits if corporate rivalry leads to two able entrepreneurs building empires faster than might otherwise happen.

But there is downside because the brothers’ extremely active political lobbying can upset the development of government policy. One senior civil servant said to me recently. “People are scared to take policy decisions because they might upset one of the brothers which will bring misery when they move against you”.

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Posted in Ambanis, Anil Ambani, India, Reliance Communications, Reliance Industries, Reliance Retail, RIL | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | May 20, 2010

How an IPL tweet exposed phone tapping, destabilised Tata’s pr advisor, and revealed prime ministerial weakness……

It’s amazing how a tiny public event in a complex and corrupt political and business society like India can have utterly unpredictable and wide-ranging domino effects.

A tweet on Twitter early last month by Lalit Modi, founder of cricket’s notoriously successful  India Premier League (IPL), has in a few weeks triggered a series of events that have laid bare how Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, and Sonia Gandhi, head of the coalition and of the Congress Party, are unable to sack or even control government ministers responsible for policies ranging from telecoms and aviation to railways, agriculture and fertilisers.

Modi’s tweet, which was directed at Shashi Tharoor, a gaffe-prone minister of state for foreign affairs, not only led to Tharoor losing his job and Modi being suspended, but quickly escalated into revelations about government phone tapping of businessmen and politicians.  

That led to a report (in Delhi’s Pioneer newspaper) on Nira Radia, the head of public relations firms that handle the country’s two biggest groups, Tata and Reliance (RIL) and who works closely with their two chairmen, Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani. The report, quoting phone-taps, said she had been involved as a “wheeler dealer” on controversial telecom licence allocations in 2008 and other political decisions. 

Nira Radia

Radia started legal action against the Pioneer. Her colleagues, who include influential senior retired telecom and other bureaucrats in three pr and lobbying firms, Vaishnavi, Neucom and Noesis, point out that she is a telecoms consultant, so it is hardly surprising that she talks to a telecoms minister.

The story led to extended media coverage on several leading lobbyist-fixers, questioning their propriety (my word-check neatly turned that into ‘prosperity’!), and revealing details that Radia and many others would rather have kept well below the radar. Photostats of secret and other government documents that allegedly detail Radia’s activities on behalf of Tata and others – many stemming from the phone taps – have been posted on the internet.

The Outlook news weekly magazine devoted ten pages to the subject, with profiles and caricatures of the main players (right). Some of them prefer to operate well below the radar, and Radia was expert at that, as are one or two others in Outlook’s article. Others profiled there mask their behind-the-scenes lobbying work with a smokescreen of high profile appearances on tv, in the social media, and around the party circuits of Delhi and other cities. 

 The Delhi-based Mail Today, which has delved far more persistently into the Radia story than most other newspapers, even dared cheekily to start an article with a spoof intro saying:  “The joke doing the rounds is that the other day Parliament was evacuated because of a suspicious package, but it was ok, it turned out to be a bag of cash dropped off by Nira Radia”.  

Radia first became known in Delhi about ten years ago as an aviation consultant. She was close to a Bharatiya Janata Party politician, Ananth Kumar, who was successively aviation and tourism minister, and she advised Tata on its unsuccessful bid with Singapore Airlines to privatise Air India. Her role in Tata, especially with Ratan Tata, expanded to such an extent that she even persuaded him in 2008 to let her take on Reliance (RIL), a Tata rival in many areas, as a client. Last month, Tata’s and Radia’s roles as client and publicist were amazingly reversed when Tata issued a statement recognising their “long and fruitful association”. 

 This has all been good theatre, annoying for those who would rather not be written about in such a way, but good fun for the rest of us, and  no doubt useful information to have out in the public arena. There is of course nothing new in all this. Fixers have existed for centuries across the world, and in some places, like Washington DC, they are institutionalised.  

But more importantly, the theatre has dominated much of the analysis of the government’s year in office since it was elected last May. It has focussed attention on how Singh and Gandhi cannot control cabinet ministers belonging to coalition parties because they need to keep these parties content. In most cases the parties virtually nominate who should be appointed and sometimes even what job they should have – targeting posts that generate large scale kickbacks, which has for many years meant ministries ranging from finance and defence to telecoms and aviation. 

A.Raja with Manmohan Singh

The list of ministers who thus cannot be removed starts with A.Raja, India’s notorious telecoms minister from Tamil Nadu’s DMK party who, the tapes revealed, has links with Radia. He survives in his job, even though he was a candidate to be sacked as along ago as 2008.

There was even a story circulating a year or so ago that Raja, when questioned by the prime minister about the way he was corruptly fixing  a 2G telecom auction for his friends, replied that he worked for his DMK chief minister. If the prime minister had any complaints, he should contact him. I believed the story when I heard and do so now, especially after the way that the government has failed to act recently. 

The government has worked round this by closely monitoring and switching responsibilities for some issues such as an auction for 3G licences, which has this week doubled expectations by raising $14.5bn, as well as controversial licence plans proposed by India’s telecom regulator. But that is a unsatisfactorily haphazard way of running policy.

Little wonder that Vittorio Colao, ceo of Vodafone, said publicly earlier this week, when referring to the company’s problems in India, that “there is a need for political leadership in shaping the industry”.

Also outside the Singh-Gandhi control are Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel, the under-performing agricultural and aviation ministers from the Maharashtra-based Nationalist Congress Party, who were named in the IPL scandal and for a time looked vulnerable. [M.J.Akbar, a veteran Delhi-based editor, on May 23 described India’s civil aviation as “the epitome of waste, glad-handing, smarmy middlemen and self-destruction“]

Aside from IPL and the tapes, non-performing figures include Mamata Banerjee, the railways minister, who is leader of the Trinamool Congress of Kolkata where she spends most of her time playing state politics, and M.K.Alagiri, the fertilisers minister from the DMK party who rarely comes to Delhi. 

There is nothing unusual of course in a prime minister having to cosset his coalition partners – watch how David Cameron, Britain’s new prime minister, handles his government’s Liberal-Democrat coalition ministers in months and maybe years to come. Cameron will however get Nick Clegg, the Lib-Dem leader, to agree to them being replaced if they under-perform – and even more so if there is corruption. 

But that is not the case in India, which tolerates an outrageously corrupt and inefficient polity. For many politicians, public office primarily means tapping the gravy train and its flow of illicit funds, partly for themselves and partly for their political parties. The prime minister does not dare impede the flow, fearing he will lose coalition partners.

This post is also on the FT website at
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af445328-6563-11df-b648-00144feab49a.html
and a Hong Kong-based news website
http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2482&Itemid=404

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Posted in India, India corruption, India politicians, India telecoms, Manmohan Singh, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Reliance Industries, Tata | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | May 6, 2010

Vote Lib-Dem or Lab – anything to keep Cameron out of Downing Street

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I can’t see how anyone could want David Cameron (left) and his elitist, neo-con, anti-Europe and inexperienced tribe to win today’s British general election. He’s inherited the self-superior look and style of the British shires – imagine what it will be like if this guy, who’s only ever worked in public relations and politics, becomes prime minister tonight! 

Britain certainly needs a change, and Tuesday’s Financial Times’ pro-Conservatives editorial neatly summed that up, starting with the point that Labour is tired and needs a rest. 

Basically the FT wants less government and state intervention, which it believes Cameron will give and Labour would not. It also wants political renewal which Cameron surely will not give, and economic and public sector reform and spending cuts. The FT hopes Cameron would do this, but I doubt he could without extensive labour and possibly social unrest. 

At the end of a long editorial, it says that “on balance”, the Conservative Party “fits the bill”. “On balance” are the most significant words in the editorial. They mean that the FT really wants none of the three main parties on offer, but has to choose one. Labour needs a rest, the Liberal-Democrats’ policies are an “uneasy mix of sanctimony and populism”, so what to do? On Balance Vote Conservative. What an unenthusiastic endorsement! 

The Economist was little more enthusiastic last weekend. It gave Brown long-overdue credit for his economic management last year, though tempered that since he helped to create the mess when he was Chancellor the Exchequer. Saying, like the FT, that Labour is “tired”, it believes a change of government “is essential”. 

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Nick Clegg, the Liberal-Democrats leader (left), is described as “clever and charming”, but The Economist rightly points out that Lib-Dem policies are muddled. So, it says with little apparent enthusiasm, “that leaves the Tories……who plainly have faults”, including their “Europhobic fringe” and overstatements about Britain’s “broken society”. Cameron, however, “would get our vote”. 

Both the FT and The Economist have backed Labour in the past. Both believe in open markets, social justice and small government. Both, to varying degrees, like Gordon Brown, though both say it is time for him to go. Clegg is not a realistic alternative, so vote Conservative! 

However, anyone who saw the tv debates between the party leaders over the past three weeks must surely have been impressed by Gordon Brown’s (below) grasp of economic issues and ability to govern. These prime ministerial talents are usually hidden behind his often grim looks and style, but he should be respected in the UK, as he is around the world, for his handling of last year’s international financial crisis. 

In my opinion (though I’m in a small minority here), he clearly outshone Cameron’s bland generalisations in the debates, though Clegg’s cheeky new guy on the block approach was harder to put down. 

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Brown’s appalling gaffe (rather Shashi Tharoor-ish!) last week when he said Gillian Duffy, a Labour supporter, was “bigoted”, has been unfairly used against him by virtually everyone. The actual gaffe was committed not by him, but by his staff who allowed him to be driven away with a live tv-linked microphone attached to his jacket. 

Geoffrey Goodman, a veteran political and industrial reporter who covered elections years ago, tells me that the things politicians said then would have finished many a career if they had become public: 

“In the old days when political leaders made nasty side comments no one was aware—or if they were the political reporter would discreetly make a note and not use it (except in his memoirs !!!). Not now.  Modern communications means instant disaster —or fame. Nothing in between.

“I recall the 1964 general election when I was with Harold Wilson for the whole campaign —  along with a Fleet street army that included Peter Jenkins (Manchester Guardian) who got smashed every night so he missed Harold’s comment about:  “those f…ing reporters from the Manchester Guardian—can’t even keep sober or write proper shorthand”.  Or for that matter Winston during the war who, Iam told, was constantly berating the generals behind their back but nobody would ever dared reporting it. I am also reminded of George Brown [dear old George] with whom I covered the 1970 election. He made comments about everybody that would have destroyed him on the spot in the present media culture.”

Brown was of course on the ropes long before the Gillian Duffy episode, and he has lost ground in the last two weeks. And in many ways I would agree with the FT and The Economist that it is time for Labour to be replaced in government. 

But that is surely not wise at a time when there is a need for capable and experienced handling of Britain’s growing economic problems. Today’s riots in Greece show the depth of unrest that is threatening mainland Europe. Personally, I’d rather have anyone but Cameron as prime minister in such a crisis. 

If I had a vote (which I don’t because I’m not registered in the UK), I would vote either Lib-Dem or Labour in order to defeat the Conservatives.

My ideal would be a Gordon Brown-led coalition government, with the Lib-Dems as a significant partner providing several Cabinet ministers to replace many of Labour current listless team. It probably won’t happen, but we’ll regret it if it doesn’t.

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