The Sacred and the Profane

Heavenly and earthly seductions

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Is militant Islam creating psychological conditions under which a person’s desires and dreams become compelling needs?

According to psychologist Abraham Maslow, there is a hierarchy of five primal needs that drive human beings to action to seek satisfaction. The motivating needs include physiological, safety, social, esteem and self-actualisation. Maslow said that a person would tend to fulfil his physiological needs for food and shelter first before he sought to satisfy other higher order needs. But experience shows that once the basic needs of food and shelter are satisfied, some people would seek to satisfy other needs simultaneously instead of seeking their satisfaction one after the other in a hierarchical order, as Maslow propounded. In fact the need for self-actualisation, realising one’s potential, summed up best in the slogan “We shall meet in Paradise,” may become so paramount in a person due to indoctrination that he may minimise or even forego other needs. For example, extreme skiers and mountain climbers do forego safety for the sake of their highest need, self-actualisation, doing the impossible, climbing Mount Everest.How advertisement, one of the most widely practised forms of indoctrination through seduction, creates and transforms our desires and wants into compelling needs is a fascinating field of study that should not be ignored by counter-terrorism experts. Just as the culture of consumption has been driving the Chinese people from Mao’s Thoughts to KFC and Pizza Hut (the owner Yum Brands is the biggest restaurant chain in China), the culture of eternal life/ Paradise that Islamic militants, Al- Qaida and its decentralised networked franchises, preach to the Muslim youth, has been driving them to jihad suicide. Both cultures promise fulfillment: here or the hereafter; as did Communism. The subliminal seductions of jihad are no different in the final analysis from what Communism had to offer in the bloody days of Leninism and Maoism; but you know what happened to the Soviet Union and Mao’s China.

Communism could not withstand the onslaughts of free society consumer culture and its endless capacity for self-renewal. Communism collapsed as a dream falsified. So would militant Islam if confronted the same way. In other words, those fighting terrorism must understand that they will not be able to win the battle against terrorism without replacing the promise of afterlife with the promise of gratification and fulfillment that liberal culture offers today. Mass media and advertisement have turned the West, as it is happening in India and China, into a culture of choices, although it wasn’t always so. Beginning with the Penny Press in the early part of the nineteenth century and later on through yellow journalism of Randolph Hearst, American news media began to depend increasingly on advertisement revenues.

Business and industry needed advertising to reach the masses in order to increase sales. Thus began the symbiotic relations among the three ~ the media, advertising and industry ~ to create the mythical American consumer whose desires must be measured and valued and be transformed into compelling needs. By turning malls into places of work, leisure and pleasure, marketers and advertisers have been transforming shopping into an enjoyable experience. Shop until you shop again, leaves little time for any thought for the afterlife. In the next few weeks India will be celebrating Diwali, which, like Christmas in the West, is gradually becoming a secular marketing experience and a major driving force for the economy. And Id-ul-Fitr festivities are going the same way, blending the sacred and the secular. Just look at Dubai.

By bringing consumers into a desirable media mix, by segmenting population into demographics and psychographics and by demanding media companies to create cultural programmes that not only support commercial products but also create a cascade of gripping needs, advertisers have created a culture of desire that makes people work harder so that they can buy and consume more. Every year, for example, the auto industry comes up with new models with varied psychological appeals and lucrative incentives for the consumer to get rid of his old car even if it is in a good condition and go for a newer model.

In the United States, advertising industry created “soccer and hockey moms” and told them that they needed a van to chauffer their children from school to the ballpark. Until the oil crunch, admen had made SUVs a vehicle of choice for many Americans. After 9/11, auto-manufacturers saw the consumer need for greater security and SUVs gave a feeling of strength and power like armoured vehicles. So even if everything goes well with Tata’s Nano, how long will the Indian consumer with rising income be satisfied with the four-wheel itsy-bitsy contraption? Advertisement is nothing but using all the available means of persuasion, to paraphrase Aristotle. Advertisers have been using target marketing to reach and persuade their audiences effectively. Similarly, instead of looking at the Muslim population of a country as a monolithic mass, it should be segmented demographically for specific messages. For example, the message for a Muslim woman with her overpowering needs for family and children has to be different from what is aimed at the youth.

No Muslim woman wants her son to be blown to pieces in a suicide mission so that he could go to Paradise.

Ultimately militant Islam like Communism would wither away by the seductions of consumer society with its promise of happiness in a world of here and now rather than the false glory of Paradise that jihad promises through press-button sudden death experience. It is going to be a long hard struggle, but the battle must be fought in the battlefield of ideas, desires, wants and needs. The news media and satellite networks that do not hesitate to broadcast messages from Islamic militants would have no problem, if paid well, for airing captivating commercials that persuade Muslims to reach for their wallets rather than explode remote-controlled bombs.Earthly seductions would ultimately win over the destructive culture of the myth of afterlife.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

End of free-market capitalism?

Surviving the financial tsunami

From The Statesman
ND Batra

What will be US President George W Bush’s legacy to the world: an unfinished war on terrorism and global financial meltdown? In a subdued voice all that he could say initially was: “The American people are concerned about the situation in our financial markets and our economy, and I share their concerns.” But of course the government is doing much more than simply watching Wall Street blow up. Earlier the government took control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored gigantic home finance agencies, not only to help promote market stability and to ensure a housing market recovery but also to assure foreign debt buyers that their investments were safe. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury acted not too soon to prevent the collapse of one the world’s biggest financial companies, the American International Group (AIG), a development that could have given a fatal blow to global financial markets.

When a $13-14-trillion economy shakes, it causes a global earthquake. No one is even trying to stop the spiral of gloomy news. The mighty dollar has been falling in value, causing pain and anxiety. Consumer confidence is down and people are holding back from spending on durable goods such as cars, appliances, business equipment, electronic equipment, home furnishings and fixtures, and house wares and accessories. There are fewer buyers of houses even though house prices have declined substantially during the last two years. To stem the slide, Mr Bush and Congress came up with a $152-billion stimulus plan under which most taxpayers got from the government $300 to $1,200; but consumer spending did not lift the sagging economy.

Only six months ago, Mr Bush ritualistically said, “We believe in a strong dollar policy and we believe, and I believe, that our economy has got the fundamentals in place for us to be, to grow and continue growing more robustly, you know, hopefully more than we are growing now.” But the global market does not listen to Uncle Sam any longer. In fact when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned during the second day of his semi-annual testimony before a congressional committee that even some banks might fail due to bad real estate loans, the stock market shrank in mortal fear. And no one believed him when he said that the overall banking system was in good shape, when Merrill Lynch had gone begging for billions of dollars of cash infusion from foreign government-controlled sovereign wealth funds. The levers of political power in Washington DC have little effect upon Wall Street, which runs on its own convoluted logic, alternating between illogical exuberance and uncontrollable panic.Today uncertainly and fear rule, though the recent massive infusion of liquidity by the Federal Reserve and European and Japanese central banks have firmed up the market for the time being.

It is rather strange that for Americans prosperity is so much tied up with the economics of the housing market. Market finance, in spite of all econometric models and theorising by economists, is essentially nothing more than a herd psychology of fear and hope.

Due to poor home mortgage lending practices verging on greed, banks started giving loans on low adjustable interest rates to people with poor or even no credit, hoping that since home prices were going up borrowers would re-finance their loans based on increased home equity.But sometime in this hope-and-faith-based financial system the weakest link snapped, lenders and borrowers started losing mutual trust, and whatever earlier seemed to be a blooming housing market turned into an empty myth, a speculative bubble that burst resulting in stampede and panic.

As the low initial interest rates on adjustable subprime mortgages were re-adjusted, borrowers defaulted and foreclosures began to rise. Even for the good borrowers, interest rates went up. Falling housing prices created negative equity, which made the mortgage relative to the value of the house much greater. Some people who bought houses with small or no down payment simply walked away, because their houses were worth much less than they originally bought for. There is nothing more humiliating for a person than losing his home to bank foreclosure, but many people swallowed their pride.

Foreclosures added to the market glut, so home prices kept sliding down and Americans began to feel less surefooted. Spending on non-essential goods, going to restaurants, buying a new a sofa, for example, seemed less necessary to many; and they postponed buying a new auto for another six months or even year. Banks shrank in fear lest consumers defaulted, so they pushed up the lending bar thereby reducing credit availability, which adversely affected economic activity further. So when Mr Bush thought that a tax refund would bring back spending and stimulate the economy, it was on the assumption that millions of small trips to malls would have an escalating effect, preventing the much-feared nightmare of recession from becoming a reality.

But neither he nor his advisors understood what was happening until they saw even trillion-dollar financial institutions with global tentacles like Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG in danger of being sucked into the black hole.Now that the unbridled trust in the self-correcting mechanism of free-market capitalism has been belied, the US government’s massive intervention to save the financial system from total collapse, you might say, is no different from what an authoritarian government, socialist or capitalist, would have done in similar circumstances.

The point is that in an increasingly globalised financial system, the role and the authority of the government, instead of decreasing, has become more important than ever. If the state ~ the ultimate saviour ~ were to wither away, who would come up with a trillion-dollar rescue package to mop up the toxic assets created by global corporates?

(ND Batra is professor of communicationsat Norwich University)

America: A nation divided for good reasons

The US is a nation divided for good reasons

From The Statesman
ND Batra

The American people observed the seventh anniversary of the 11 September terrorists’ attacks under the patriotic triangulation of God, the USA and Terrorism. The triangulation, the equivalent of space-age global positioning systems, enables the American people to be aware of the threat to their existence, the American way, relative to the known positions and undeclared intentions of the US’s enemies, and makes Americans see the world differently, whether they support Senator Barack Obama or Senator John McCain for the presidency.

If you are visiting the US for the first time, you might feel there’s too much of God here. That’s perhaps the first cultural shock you might feel on arrival but very soon it wears away because the American people don’t give much meaning to it, not as much as does the Islamic militants’ resounding cry, Allah O Akbar. And Americans invoke God often because sometime they have nothing else to say. Driving through the Pennsylvania Dutch countryside, a visitor would find it hard not to notice the billboard admonishing: “Everyone shall give an account of himself to God.” The US dollar bill says, “In God We Trust.” When someone takes an oath of office, he or she has to repeat after the person who administers the oath, “So help me God.” If you sneeze, someone will say, “Bless you,” even if the person does not know you.

Most Americans invoke God as a social crutch, much as a Frenchman would say bonjour (which, perhaps means, pardon my ignorance, that French wine and women are the best), unless Americans feel stressed and threatened as happened in the aftermath of the 11 September terrorist attacks when they mixed God with patriotism to make heady booze that would have blown your head off. It is also true that, more than ever, American political discourse, including whatever wisdom spouts from the White House, is suffused with references to God despite the constitutional brick wall between the church and the state.

You can’t live in fear and be free and so invoking God makes you feel free from fear. But to be free means to make your choice. Making a choice also includes choosing your own God, monotheistic or polytheistic; or even the God-particle that the CERN lab in Switzerland is trying to discover. It is not the government’s business to tell an American what God to choose, thus spake the US Constitution, and so ruled the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on 26 June 2002. The decision came after a lawsuit filed by a physician, Dr Michael Newdow, an atheist who complained that his elementary school daughter’s First Amendment rights to be free from God were violated when she was given no choice but to “watch and listen as her state-employed teacher in her state-run school leads her classmates in a ritual proclaiming that there is a God, and that ours is ‘one nation under God’”.That does not mean that atheists have no place in these US, except that they should not take their atheism too seriously.

Not all states require the Pledge of Allegiance to be included in the school day but half of the state legislatures have made its inclusion a requirement. Making the situation murkier is a 1943 US Supreme Court ruling that children cannot be forced to recite the pledge, though the school’s public address system may recite it. In matters of religion, the government shall remain uninvolved, that is the constitutional mandate. Until 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance included the phrase “one nation indivisible”, but to fight the godless communism, the Soviet or Chinese variety, Congress changed the pledge to include “one nation under God.”

The wall between church and state seemed to some extreme secularists to crack a little bit. And since then God, not a sectarian one, Catholic or Protestant, but a generic God, a mythical Supreme Deity, has found a frequent place in public discourse. In a 2-1 ruling, Judge Alfred T Goodman of the Circuit Appeal Court ruled that the pledge that we are a “nation under God” is identical to saying that we are a nation “under Jesus”, a nation “under Vishnu”, a nation “under Zeus”. Such a profession violated the First Amendment mandate that the government shall stay neutral in matters of religion. It would send a wrong message to impressionable children that if they did not participate in the recitation of the pledge, they might become “outsiders”, the judge wrote.

The court discovered a glaring contradiction in what the US Constitution professes and what the American people want to believe and practise. The pledge excludes some polytheists who worship multiple gods and goddesses; atheists and agnostics; or those like the Buddhists, who believe in nirvana, a state of supreme bliss, tranquillity and purity that is attained when the self is absorbed into the Infinite. It has been argued that the recitation of the pledge that includes “one nation under God”, is psychologically coercive, because it forces people to accept monotheism as the sole religious path available to them. The pledge not only violates the Constitution but also negates cultural pluralism. It violates freedom of choice. We should return to the original wording in the pledge, “one nation indivisible”, so it is argued.

Most Americans, like the dissenting Judge Ferdinand F Fernandez, however, dismissed the fear that the US might become a theocracy because of the inclusion “under God” in the pledge. The appeal court’s ruling was overturned by the US Supreme Court decision in 2004.

Late Justice William Rehnquist said, “To give the parent of such a child a sort of ‘heckler’s veto’ over a patriotic ceremony willingly participated in by other students, simply because the Pledge of Allegiance contains the descriptive phrase ‘under God’, is an unwarranted extension of the establishment clause, an extension which would have the unfortunate effect of prohibiting a commendable patriotic observance.”

But Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, the young and the feisty running mate of Mr McCain for the presidency told Mr Charlie Gibson of ABC News last week that “God has a plan”.

Let’s see whether God’s plan is descriptive or prescriptive, evolutionary or intelligent.

(ND Batra is professor of communicationsat Norwich University)

Behold US Diplomatic Might

NSG waiver: This day will live in glory for India

From The Statesman
ND Batra

If you had any doubt about the global power and reach of the US diplomacy, you should ponder the one-off waiver that the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) gave in connection with the India-US nuclear deal in Vienna on Friday. The NSG was established in 1974 after India’s first nuclear test to exclude the country from access to nuclear fuel.

Ironically, the same exclusive 45-nation club has now decided to allow India full access to nuclear fuel for civilian purposes, in spite of the fact that India never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The international group’s opposition to the deal came not only from China, as was expected, but also from a handful of smaller nations including Austria, Ireland and New Zealand, who wanted to give India conditional access, which of course India would not have accepted. A nick-of-time diplomatic iteration of India’s long-standing nuclear policy by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee that “India has a long-standing and steadfast commitment to universal, non-discriminatory and total elimination of nuclear weapons”, and that India would observe a voluntary nuclear test moratorium was enough to clinch the deal.

Commending the atomic club action, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “It marks the end of India’s decades-long isolation from the nuclear mainstream and of the technology denial regime.” The decision will be Dr Singh’s greatest political achievement apart from giving India the momentum of a dynamic 8-9 per cent sustainable annual economic growth. Few politicians have done so much for India as Dr Singh in spite of the fact that he is perceived so unglamorous, non-assertive and ordinary looking.

In some ways India’s nuclear deal with the US is not unusual. In early May, Russia and the US signed a civilian nuclear power deal under which companies in both countries would have access to nuclear technology through joint ventures. The agreement would open up Russia’s huge uranium reserves to US companies and give Russian companies access to the US’s multibillion-dollar nuclear energy industry. From being great nuclear rivals to becoming nuclear partners would be a giant step, if Russia’s recent missteps in Georgia do not dampen the deal.

As the head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Mr Sergei Kiriyenko, said at that time, “The signing of this agreement opens a gigantic field of opportunities for economic cooperation in the large and growing businesses linked to the civilian use of nuclear energy.” That’s what India should also expect from the nuclear deal with the US.

China too is going ahead forging nuclear deals to meet its increasing energy needs. China plans to build 32 nuclear power plants by 2020 at a cost of about $50 billion, an enormous undertaking which can be accomplished only by accessing nuclear technology and markets in the US, Europe, Japan and Russia. China has signed uranium deals with Russia, Australia and Niger. So will India, hopefully.

The nuclear deal will assure India’s growing economy reliable and uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel, when the last mile, the US Congress approval, is done. The civilian nuclear deal will open to India the world of sophisticated technology developed by the global nuclear powers, the US, Japan, Europe and Russia, with whom India has growing diplomatic and commercial relations.Access to high-end technology is imperative to keep India globally competitive.

The Indo-US deal is about having faith in India to develop as an alternative model of rapid economic growth without compromising fundamental freedoms. Rapid economic growth of the Indian economy will raise millions of Indians out of poverty. Without plentiful and reliable energy sources, however, poverty cannot be eliminated.

An economically dynamic India on a perpetual growth curve will lift its neighbours in South Asia and help make the world more economically dynamic.

Apart from removing hurdles in India’s search for alternative energy sources to fuel its growing economy, the deal will give India a strategic platform in the knowledge industry and encourage research and development in clean energy technology. As Mr Ratan Tata told Mr Karan Thapar of CNN-IBN a little over a year ago, “Over time this will give India a tremendously powerful position in the knowledge industry, in research and development, in high technology.”

From a humble agricultural power to a great knowledge power is every man’s dream in India. India must go beyond information technology outsourcing and capture the corporate global, as it has begun to do, for example, in automobiles and pharmaceuticals.

Clean coal technology, nuclear energy and solar power are practical alternatives for which the US and other advanced countries will open doors to India. France, for example, gets 80 per cent of its energy from civilian nuclear plants and is ready to collaborate with India in nuclear power development. India needs hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign direct investment in building power plants and world-class infrastructure to increase its manufacturing base in order to create employment opportunities for its growing young population.In the course of time a whole new world of sophisticated global technology will be opened to India, enabling it to spur its economic growth further. In return, India has agreed to do what other nuclear powers have been doing under the nonproliferation treaty, that is open some of its civilian nuclear power plants to inspection and continue to observe abstinence on nuclear testing. Its nuclear deterrent will remain off limits.

India’s sovereignty cannot be compromised, if the country continues to be economically and politically strong.
Poverty compromises national sovereignty. Poor, failed states have little sovereignty.

Regardless of who comes to power at the Centre next year, India should have one prime political goal: domestic harmony based on rapid economic growth in the range of 9-10 per cent that reaches the bottom of the pyramid, India’s not so silent masses that need more than the Nano and cell phones and slogans of azadi and freedom.

(ND Batra is professor of communicationsat Norwich University)

Kashmir and Arundhati Roy

Deconstructing Arundhati Roy and her tribe

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Ms Arundhati Roy, writing in The Guardian (UK) about the trouble in Kashmir, makes an interesting self-observation, with an aura of exceptionalism, saying, “For someone like me, who is not a Muslim”, the Islamic idea of freedom is hard to accept. Ah! But what if she were Muslim?

Islam would have been an unbearable burden upon someone born with a free spirit, 451-degree Fahrenheit imagination and a big incendiary mouth (“India’s many torture centres and Abu Ghraibs in Kashmir… The Indian military occupation of Kashmir makes monsters of us all”) for the simple reason that Islam (a non-pluralistic religion with an uncompromising claim for truth about one God the Greatest, the Prophet and the Holy Book), and secular freedom, as she has understood it, do not chime together. It is the same reason why Ms Taslima Nasreen, the Bangladeshi writer, does not find any Muslim country comfortable and has returned to India claiming, “India is my home though Kolkata is where my heart is.” If you open the door, all Bangladeshis will come to India because India has much greater freedom than any Muslin country. India has a future. Only the blind don’t see it.But what is wrong with Kashmiri Muslim separatists who do not find India comfortable as the rest of 150 million Muslims do? Ms Roy is puzzled and wonders, “Those who wish to turn to the Qura’n for guidance will no doubt find guidance there.

But what of those who do not wish to do that, or for whom the Qur’an does not make place?” Uttering such words about the Holy Book (no place in Qur’an?) would have been blasphemous if she were in Saudi Arabia, where as a Muslim apostate she would have been stoned to death or would have been running from one hiding place to another as Mr Salman Rushdie did for years after he had supped with Satan. Unquestioned obedience (to the religious doctrine) is freedom in Islam as it is in the traditional Christianity of which the historical consequences have been authoritarianism, intolerance and the Inquisition; not freedom and democracy which developed only after the Western mind began to unshackle itself from medieval religious orthodoxy.

Visiting the Kashmir Valley on the wings of poetic eloquence and with fire in her belly during the recent protests, Ms Roy hyperventilated about Srinagar, “The city floated on a sea of smiles. There was ecstasy in the air.” Kashmiris were free from fear. All they wanted was freedom from democracy by exercising their right for self-determination so that they could live according to the Shariat as the Taliban are trying to do in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But Ms Roy’s free spirit turned fearful and she began to wonder what would happen to the Hindus of Jammu, when Kashmiris are finally allowed to quit “nanga bhhookha Hindustan” and bravely march to “jan se pyara Pakistan” led by the self-proclaimed supreme leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Would they too have the right to self-determination? “Will the hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits living in exile, many of them in terrible poverty, have the right to return?” she asks. And she knows the answer.

Kashmir has seen one of the worst ethnic cleansing in recent history but Ms Roy, like other Indian intellectuals, opinion-makers and politicos, is afraid to call a spade a spade. Amazingly she brackets the fringe people with great writers like herself. Listen to her falsetto agony and self-pity: “What will happen to homosexuals and adulterers and blasphemers? What of thieves and lafangas and writers who do not agree with the ‘complete social and moral code’? Will we be put to death as we are in Saudi Arabia?” (Italics added). That Kashmiri scenario of freedom will be an intolerable nightmare and Ms Roy wants India to wake up and get out of a hellhole: “India needs aazadi from Kashmir...” Half a million Hindus who visit Amarnath every year too will be free from the burden of treading the inhospitable mountains. And the poor Muslims of Jammu, who will be deprived of the blessings of Kashmiri azaadi, too will find their own freedom as rest of the millions of Indian Muslims have found.

Echoing Ms Roy’s revelation of how the militancy is miraculously changing to non-violence in Kashmir, Jug Suraiya of the Times of India wondered what India would do if Mr Geelani, and “his followers were to adopt the strategies of non-cooperation and satyagraha…” If Mr Geelani were to develop the true spirit of Gandhian sataygraah and non-violence, he would cease to be the Geelani we know, the man who has never stopped believing that Kashmir being a Muslim majority region belongs to Pakistan and there is no other way except the Islamic way, the doctrine Al Qaida and the Taliban want to impose on all Muslims. The only man who ever succeeded in following Mahatma Gandhi was Martin Luther King Jr, who said 45 years ago, “I have a dream...” And that dream has come true in the rise of Senator Barack Obama, the first Black to be nominated the presidential candidate of a major political party in the US. That is an example of a non-violent revolution.

Mr Suraiya asks rhetorically, “By letting Kashmir go peacefully would the idea of India be subverted? Or would it be enlarged and further endorsed? That is the real import of the so-called Kashmir question: it has become the question of the idea of India, and what that idea means to us.”

Letting Kashmir go peacefully into the belly of the beast, the Taliban, is not my idea of India.

Will “India minus the K-word” (Kashmir) or A-word (Arunachal Pradesh) or N-word (Nagaland) still be India? No. India will not be India. India is much more than a mere geographical, sociological or philosophical idea in the minds of the English-speaking intelligentsia living in their gated communities. India is unlike any other nation, a nation so sharply divided and so diverse, culturally, racially and linguistically, that the only way the sufferings of millions of people can be mitigated, the only way natural and manmade disasters can be confronted and overcome is to keep India together ~ whatever it takes. No nation can survive without statesmanship; or without force.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

Rabindranath Tagore

Thou Hast Made Me Endless- XV

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941 AD) the Nobel Laureate of 1913 was introduced to the West primarily through the collection of English translation of some of his poems/songs captioned as ‘Gitanjali’ (=Offering of Songs). More translations of his works followed by the poet himself and others after he had won the Nobel, including poems/songs, dramas, short stories etc. However, such efforts were sporadic and sluggish, mostly on individual initiative, which still remain so.

As a result, a vast volume of the poet’s works remains un-translated while, it appears, it is an impossible proposition to translate even a substantial part of the poet’s total works to permit those, not privileged by the knowledge of Bengali language, a reasonably broad view of his myriad creations where unfathomable perceptional depth of top grade aesthetics runs through, literally true to his song “Thou hast made me endless / Such is Thy pleasure”.

Notwithstanding this, an upsurge of Tagore translation took place in the last decade of the twentieth century by virtue of a good number of eminent poets/translators e.g. William Radice, Joe Winter, Ketaki Kushari Dyson, to name a few, all of whom left their valuable contribution to this oeuvre and my book THE ECLIPSED SUN is a modest addition to this. I have put stress on a few aspects of the poet’s works, particularly those in his twilight years, which seemed to me quite inadequately covered so far. The followings are presented mostly based on this book.

RAJAT DAS GUPTA: Calcutta: e-mail: rajatdasgupta@yahoo.com
rajarch@cal3.vsnl.net.in

Poem No: 8 of the book PATRAPUT written at Santiniketan, ( where the Poet’s University “Visva Bharati” situates) on 5th November 1935.

[Translator’s note: Volumes of philosophical dissertations might not have brought home better the Upanishadic perception of oneness of the trivia with the cosmos than this small poem.]

This wild seedling finds way to me,
Yellow and green in her leaves I see,
Flowers are violet, cups wily
To sip light delightfully.
But no answer anywhere
When her name I inquire
She is in the club of the anonymous
Where belong the heavenly stars inglorious.
So, I capture her in my pet name
Piali (*), in my privacy that is her fame. (*)

There, Fuchsia, Marigold and Dahlia golden,
Grace the ceremony of the garden.
But my Piali remains in liberty,
Though in utter ignominy –
Unfettered by distinction of class,
A Boul (**), unsocial, lost in the mass. (**)

But soon the flowers drop and dry
Without clamour or outcry.
Her horoscope – only a few moments’ combine,
The nectar in her heart a few drops fine.
In a short span of time is her journey done,
While ages engulf flaming petals of the Sun;
Her history noted at the corner of a tiny page
With a tiny quill by the Scribe of all age.

Yet, a massive history it does unfold,
From one page to other one can’t behold.
The centuries in their eternal stream,
Their ups and downs in slow rhythm
That raised and buried many a mountain range,
In oceans and deserts brought seas of change,
Along that Time’s flow eternal,
Advanced this flower’s vision primordial.

In this flower’s transience, this vision primordial
Lives all through fresh, dynamic and eternal.
Its end one is to sight yet,
That formless concept, the un-sketched portrait
Remains eternal in some unseen contemplation
That I try to conceive in my imagination.
In which unseen is held Mankind’s trend,
The future, past and present.

· * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

(*) ‘Piala’ in Bengali means ‘Cup’ from which the Poet has coined its feminine ‘Piali’ which also happens to be the name of many a girl/women, not necessarily relating them to a ‘cup’, unlike this flower where its similarity with a ‘cup’ is implied.
(**) Bouls are a sect of people in Bengal, whose concentration is most in the Birbhum district of W. Bengal where the Poet’s University “Visva Bharati” (=World University”) situates. Bouls are remarkable for their highly spiritual songs with their “Ektara” (a single stringed musical instrument) played in tune, which is their heritage for generations. Religious liberalism is also a remarkable feature of Boul song. These are notwithstanding the low educational level of the Bouls particularly in their earlier generations when singing and begging was their sole occupation. Bouls songs have profoundly influenced Tagore’s own music known as Ranindra Sangeet (=Rabindranath’s songs). In the nineties of the last century Purna Das Boul familiarized the Western world with Boul song by virtue of his performances there including America.

Nano: A poltical football?

Becoming a sustainable corporation

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Tata Motors’s Nano project’s difficulties in Singur triggered in my mind a stream of random thoughts as to how a global corporation should build a sustainable enterprise that takes into account not only the government but all stakeholders including the humblest farmer with a “two-bigha” plot of land. But this column is not about the great Tatas, the pride of India.

The idea of what constitutes a company’s individuality, reputation and trust is important. Image and identity contribute to these intangible assets. McDonald’s, Nike, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Chevron, and, yes, even ExxonMobil, for example, are powerful global brands and in many ways they project what the US is all about. Protecting brand reputation, when a crisis hits a company, big or small, is of paramount importance. Successful executives are great communicators and diplomats. They don’t threaten to walk away; they solve problems.

In the age of 24/7 media, corporations have become righteously obsessed with their reputation. Investigative journalists thrive on controversies and apart from serving their own self-interest, they serve a very useful social purpose. They keep corporate America on its toes. Imagine if Enron, WorldCom and other companies that went down the drain because of corruption had been subjected to an intense media scrutiny. Millions of people would have been saved from grief.

Before “60 Minutes” and similar television investigative programmes invite their subjects for an interview, they do their homework. Company whistleblowers and insiders supplement the news media’s own internal investigation.

The important point is that since corporate America cannot ignore the news media, the best thing is to make professional preparations to meet them and give them necessary cooperation. It is important to know how to communicate effectively and persuasively during a crisis so that the situation can be brought under control and remedial measures taken to re-establish the company’s reputation. Today all major corporations scan the burgeoning blogosphere and social networks. Most have their own blogs and they invite their stakeholders to contribute to them. NGOs and social activists have as much access to the news media as any big corporation.

Business culture in India has been changing rapidly and Indians are more open to global corporations today than they were a decade ago. And like Europeans, Indians too demand that global companies maintain the same high standards as they do in the US.One cannot underestimate the importance of the perpetual news cycle for the corporate global and the necessity of having an adequate response structure in place in order to take corrective measures in case the news media inadvertently damage the company’s reputation.

Many corporations use institutional advertisement to inform the public about facts that might have been ignored by the news media. Advertisement is a very important tool not only for promoting products but also for advancing a company’s vision of its social responsibilities. This is one form of communication over which a company has full control. During a crisis, a transnational company should hire the services of local agents and public relations companies. Local knowledge is very important during crises.

A corporation should report to the public about its social responsibility activities in a manner that can stand public scrutiny. Some corporations use their social responsibility activities as a tool of corporate diplomacy to build social capital and goodwill. They use their social capital when hit with a crisis. If a company has a code of ethics, let it be known to the public as to how the company is following the code. Of course, every corporation should have a code of ethics.

Europe might seem to us a house divided against itself, but when it comes to dealing with US global corporations like GE, Microsoft, Apple, et al, or a country like China, EU takes a united stand. Instead of getting help from Washington, global corporations develop their corporate diplomacy. All major corporations, Boeing, Microsoft, Google, for example, have their own corporate diplomats who use the same tools and talents as political diplomats do in dealing with international crisis. Many of them are retired ambassadors, state department officials, and military officers; and they know their jobs.

Not pulling out but lying low and waiting for the situation to improve might be a better option for transnational companies when in trouble. Even in Venezuela, the fifth largest oil producing country, some oil companies have decided to stick around, hoping that the situation will improve. In some countries, for example, KFC (Pakistan) and McDonald’s (France), outlets have been set on fire, demolished or boycotted by anti-global activists; nonetheless, business operations on the whole have continued.
Instead of quitting altogether, holding back further direct investment or even curtailment may have a remedial effect. Perhaps Tata Motors should think again these lines. The government’s backing is important but help should be sought as a last resort. Global companies should develop their own public relations, including relations with the local news media and coalition-building with local interest groups.

Although an early awareness/warning system could help predict many problems before they turn into crises, not every catastrophic event can be predicted. An early awareness system shows the potential of various issues that might emerge.If an issue has already emerged and if preventive measures are not taken before it reaches the take off stage, the issue will turn into a full-blown crisis involving NGOs and the news media.As a corporate public affairs expert, one has to cultivate public goodwill and manage public perceptions. Public goodwill is a valuable asset for a global corporation.

The complexity of dealing with multiple stakeholders is very important in understanding the parameters of doing business abroad. Monsanto, for example, had a setback in Europe but not in other countries such as China, India and Brazil. Cultural differences even in India cannot be ignored.
Were Tata Motors an American company planning an operation in India, they wouldn’t have allowed Nano to become a political football.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

Pakistan Today

If Musharraf couldn’t do it, who could?

From The Statesman
ND Batra
Pakistan and its humongous problems won’t go away. In fact they are spilling into neighbouring countries and beyond.

In its six decades of bloody history, one of the country’s prime ministers Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged like a thug and two others, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, were unceremoniously booted out from power and forced into exile. When under the pressure of “friendly persuasion” by outside powers, the two political rivals, with no love lost between them, were allowed to return to Pakistan, Mrs Bhutto, a darling of the West, was killed in an election melee and the other returnee, Mr Sharif, has been plotting revenge against the (ex)General who humiliated him in a 1999 putsch.

ince the 1980s when General Zia-ul-Haq seized power, Pakistan has been gradually turned into a nation with a fundamentalist mindset. In varying degrees, every institution, including the Pakistan armed forces and the ISI, has been infused with the fundamentalist virus that spread from Saudi-financed Wahabbi schools. Islamic fundamentalists and the US-financed Afghanistan armed resistance ultimately drove the Soviets out and also factored into the final collapse of the Soviet Union.

When the United States withdrew its presence from Afghanistan leaving well-armed guerrillas behind, the ISI in collusion with Al-Qaida and its financial resources raised the Taliban that overran the country, imposing brutal order on the war-ravaged nation. By any historical standard the ISI-Taliban control of Afghanistan was a remarkable achievement of the Pakistan armed forces. No less significant has been the development of nuclear weapons, which made Pakistan a nation that could not be ignored in the light of proliferation threats and Islamic militancy.

On Christmas Day in 2003 when suicide bombers hit Mr Musharraf’s motorcade ~ certainly not the last attempt to kill him~ many analysts wondered what good was the mighty General to the United States in its global mission of fighting terrorism if he could not protect himself. Against all odds, Mr Musharraf put up a face of being a steadfast ally of the United States in its fight against Al- Qaida terrorism. He cautiously responded to peace overtures from India. But many in the West began to be impatient with him. Some wondered whether Mr Musharraf was fully committed to fighting Al-Qaida; or had another agenda.

But the United States saw no alternative to the man who seemed to control both the military and civilian life.

In the beginning, Mr Musharraf had an aura of “exceptionalism” about him, as if he were a man of destiny. He led a bloodless coup in 1999, promising to end political corruption and take Pakistan into a new direction. He conjured the vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as to how he had liberated Turkey from Islamic orthodoxy and made it a modern country. But Mr Mushrraf’s dream died too soon.

When the events of 9/11 forced him to reluctantly break away from the Taliban (whose control over Afghanistan had created an illusion of strategic depth for Pakistan) and join the US war against Al-Qaida, Mr Musharraf invoked the Prophet Muhammad’s political alliances and strategies (even with the enemies) and the Prophet’s final triumph.

Unfortunately, Mr Musharraf’s opportunistic alliance with Islamic parties to build a political base to keep his secular rivals, Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), out of power backfired; he unwittingly allowed extremism to grow. In 2002, Mr Musharraf assumed wide-ranging powers, including the power to amend the Constitution and dismiss Parliament. Under the new deal, which Parliament approved with the help of the ruling coalition and the Islamic alliance, the Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Mr Musharraf’s seizure of power, including all orders and ordinances, could not be questioned “in any court or forum on any ground whatsoever.” Not even the US President has so much immunity for his actions.

The General who would become a civilian one day would continue to have the power to dissolve Parliament ~ though with the subsequent approval of the Supreme Court ~ until his term ended in 2007. The Supreme Court seemed the last best hope for democratic aspirations in Pakistan but he fired the Chief Justice and several judges who might have gone against him and overturned his election as President in 2007 for another five years. Out of fear, like Richard Nixon, he over-reached himself. The lame duck National Assembly passed the constitutional amendment in three days and the Senate rubber-stamped it. Transition to democracy seemed safe for Mr Musharraf’s continuation as a powerful head of the state. But the February parliamentary elections brought his political enemies, the slain Bhutto’s PPP and Mr Sharif’s PML-N, into power.

Initially, Mr Musharraf’s goal might have been to pursue his grand vision of making Pakistan a modern progressive Muslim nation. Apart from developing working relations with the secular parties whose leadership remained exiled and barred from political participation, Mr Musharraf kept up the momentum of building peaceful relations with India through dialogue, trade and cultural exchanges.

Even the Kashmir problem seemed solvable.

But Mr Musharraf failed to comprehend and control two contradictory forces in Pakistan, the militant Islamic extremism that is not only prevalent in the tribal belts of the Northwest but also in the main street as well as the barracks; and the so-called growing legal-eagle educated classes who benefited from the 6-7 per cent economic growth but who saw their last best hope for freedom and democracy in the judiciary not in his authoritarian rule.

On Pakistan’s Independence Day, Mr Musharraf, under the threat of impeachment, begged his political enemies for reconciliation. “If we want to put our economy on the right track and fight terrorism then we need political stability. Unless we bring political stability, I think we can’t fight them properly… Political stability, in my view, can only be brought through a reconciliation approach as opposed to confrontation,” Musharraf said.

During most of the nine years since he seized power, Mr Musharraf exercised absolute power; nevertheless, Pakistan saw little peace and stability. Now with the return of chaotic democracy, Pakistan is still “the most dangerous country in the world,” which the United States cannot ignore. Nor can India.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

It is India again!

Ring out the gloom on 15th August

From The Statesman

The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.
Jawaharlal Nehru

Freedom from fear is the freedom
I claim for you my motherland!
Rabindranath Tagore

India’s lumbering democracy has much to celebrate on the Independence Day, notwithstanding whatever happened in Kabul, Ahmadabad and Naina Devi. A rising power knows how to put down petty fires here and there.
India’s culture of “order-in-disorder” and free enterprise keeps gradually transforming the country into a vibrant economy; and in spite of the slow down, the economy is still likely to grow 7.5 to 8 percent for the year ending March 2009, though die-hard optimists still believe that 9 percent will be within the reach.

Quite a few years ago India crossed the critical juncture, that indefinable and momentous point when economic growth became irreversible, regardless of who would govern the country. Now with the realignment of political forces after the Dr. Manmohan Singh’s UPA government won the vote of confidence over the issue of nuclear agreement with the United States, liberalization of the economy will hasten.

The forces of economic growth and the marketplace have begun to dominate and would trump everything else including provincial and religious communalism. Indians of all karma, Dalits, Muslims, Brahmins and others, have come to understand that the way to prosperity is through entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur is a connector, a network builder, a boundary breaker. Look at Kumari Mayawati of Uttar Pradesh, for example.
India has not stopped exciting the world’s imagination and investors keep exploring its potentials. For many global investors India offers another boulevard of growth and diversification where they can put their resources to alternative productive uses. International investors want growth with protection for their shareholders and India seems attractive because its legal system including property and contract law is well developed. Tata Consultancy Services, Reliance conglomerate, Infosys Technologies, and Wipro are not the only companies for which India has become a world leader. There is a growing field of auto industry, biotechnology, petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals, where Indian companies have built international brand names.

The global buzz that India is full of talented young people who can perform competitively continues. India’s self-esteem is rising; and so is the motivation to excel. Today a young Indian with a professional degree from an American university may want to work for an American company in the beginning of his career but eventually he dreams of returning to India and setting up his own business. Do not call it a reverse brain drain; rather it is the reinforcement of India’s brain power with fresh blood from abroad, a kind of perpetual loop.


India is gradually emerging as a global hub for specialized knowledge processing for global corporations. Knowledge economy depends upon extracting and creating new knowledge from databases and is in a sense value-added outsourcing. Although India is far from becoming a full-fledged knowledge economy, this is a persistent trend, apart from other growing fields such as genetic engineering and high-tech healthcare that will hasten the transformation of India in the next decades. But much more needs to be done to sustain India’s 9 percent growth.

One of the biggest hurdles for rapid economic growth in India, and no one can deny it, is the red tape, which takes nefarious forms such as expectations of under the table money; fear of the loss of bureaucratic power due to privatization; and apprehensions about foreign direct investment (The East India Company syndrome).

Let’s not forget that the primary goal of rapid economic growth and its ultimate measure is poverty reduction by generating opportunities for employment, especially for the rural population, who mostly depending upon agriculture. For centuries rural India has been held hostage to nature’s uncertainties. Technology can break nature’s stranglehold on the poor farmer. Most rural workers should be absorbed into agro-industry, manufacturing and service industries and that again will necessitate massive investment in building rural and urban infrastructure and upgrading the existing one.

Rising expectations at home and abroad are creating compelling conditions for the government to put its act together and become pro-active. India has no choice but to get out of the political inertia, upgrade its clogged roads and overcrowded airports, eliminate frequent power outages and scuttle the red tape.


India is increasingly becoming an integral part of globalized economy and is clearly thriving on the synergy between multinational corporations and its indigenous strength, which come from its top universities, democratic institutions and the ingenuity of its people for innovative solutions to complex problems. That is why the coming of global giants such as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation to broadcasting and Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks to Bollywood is so important. Let there be collaboration and competition for India’s eyes and ears.


What is Ingenuity? It means transcending a system’s limitations by finding an alternative route to reach the same goal. When a creative and ingenious mind hits the wall, he or she gets fired up to find another way and improvises by transferring intelligence from one application to another. The challenge therefore is whether India’s ingenuity can be applied to undertake collective action to build reliable highways, ports, railroads, power plants and airports speedily enough to handle rapid growth.

Corruption is a serious problem in every society. The source of corruption is unchecked exercise of power, of course. Elected officials can be removed, though one might say cynically, only to be replaced by another bunch of hoodlums. But democracies do have methods of dealing with corrupt people in high places. There is a two-fold solution to the problem. Public accountability through media exposure, especially the Internet and television, as the American experience shows, is a strong corrective. Former US senator John Edwards, a hopeless seeker of the White House, for example, has been exposed by the news media for having an extra-marital affair while his wife has been fighting breast cancer.


Secondly, privatization could counter official corruption because it takes power away from bureaucrats and gives it to entrepreneurs and corporate leaders. But they too, as the American experience shows, abuse power. Nevertheless, if laws were enforced rigorously, the corrupt would find their rightful place in jails as many American CEOs have discovered. War against corruption and poverty will never come to an end.


On this Independence Day, let not gloom and doom take hold of us. It is our moral responsibility to create conditions that encourage risk taking and reward entrepreneurship. It is only through free spirited and full-blooded entrepreneurship that India can meet the challenge of becoming an India that our children and grandchildren can be proud of and the whole world can look up to.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

China Today

Beyond Beijing Olympics

From The Statesman
ND Batra

China seems to be a nation that is inebriated with great expectations about its future, while rest of the world is just struggling to get along with bad debts, spiralling prices and random bursts of terrorism.

From die-hard communism to marketplace capitalism has been a long march indeed, though not what Mao Zedong might have conceived. But that is in fact a great tribute to China’s genius, its adaptability and resilience, creating the perception of China’s relentless and inevitable rise to a global superpower. Today China is healthier, better-educated, richer and more optimistic about its progress than most other developing countries. A recent Pew Global Attitudes Project survey showed that 86 per cent of the Chinese said they were happy with their country’s direction provided by the Communist Party.

China fascinates the global corporate with its controlled narratives of boundless opportunities and more so with the power of its ruling party’s collective will that rules 1.3 billion hardworking, entrepreneurial and yet obedient masses. China has come to believe that since the world cannot do without its inexpensive goods and talents, there’s not much to worry about intellectual property, currency manipulation to boost exports, massive trade surpluses, and rising foreign exchange reserves that end up as US Treasury notes, so no harm done.

Now the whole world is waiting for the 2008 Games to open ~ hopefully ~ under Beijing’s clear blue skies “to refashion the Olympics from a sports and merchandising extravaganza to an engine of political and social change”, as The Wall Street Journal had optimistically put it once upon a time. China won the right to host the Games in spite of its record about human rights of the people of Tibet, the followers of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, and political dissidents and scholars, some in jail waiting for a fair trial. Doing business with China is more important than human rights, though Americans along with rest of the world go on paying lip service to the issue. The US House of Representatives passed a near unanimous resolution (419-1) last Wednesday criticising China’s human rights record. President George W Bush will be attending the Olympics but last Tuesday he met a group of Chinese dissidents and promised to raise the human rights issue. China of course protested, and that’s the end.

Trade and the Olympics had little humanising effect upon Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union; therefore, to expect wonders to happen in China because of the Olympics in 2008 or increasing international trade is expecting too much from China’s monolithic system. It is doubtful if rising prosperity would persuade China’s Communist Party to loosen its control over power and become less authoritarian. Since China took the road to capitalism about three decades ago, its economy has been opening up and growing rapidly with its gross national product (GNP) rising to more than 9 per cent annually, which has made the Chinese, especially its elite and entrepreneurial classes, ultra nationalistic and patriotic.

Tiananmen has been wiped out from the nation’s historical memory.

Many long-term economic benefits would accrue from the 2008 Games because the whole enterprise has necessitated massive investment, billions of dollars in infrastructure and information technology to modernise and showcase Beijing for the events. Hundreds of thousands of tourists are pouring into China and the organisers hope that apart from enjoying the Games they would admire the rise of new China. China seeks global acknowledgement and respect for its achievements.

China feels that it can compete with the best without the noise and chaos of an open society like the United States, where the people demand accountability from their political leaders. No wonder Beijing with the help of US telecommunication companies, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Cisco, has been trying to expand its control into the digital domain. Social scientists say that large centralised political systems break down due to internal pressures triggered by communications technology, unless they have built-in capabilities for adjustment.

So it is too early to say what might happen in China in the age of the Internet, satellites, cell phones and hosts of other wireless, digital, and interconnected sensing devices that are becoming available to the masses. China might succeed in controlling the digital generation and guide it into a nationalistic upsurge as it happened during the recent Tibet protests. Some US corporations cannot stop thinking that by offering selective partnership to Chinese businesses they would be able to co-opt China’s brain-power. For example, after selling its ThinkPad to a Chinese company, Lenovo Group Ltd. in 2005, IBM alerted the public about the inevitability of China’s rise and the need to harness its strength for corporate America. A full-page advertisement amusingly admonished: “The future is a dragon. Do you hear it coming?” The IBM boasted of access to a global pool of Nobel laureates, research labs and no less than 3,000 scientists, engineers and technologists. Instead of paying the salaries of scientists and technologists to solve complex problems, the ad asked, wouldn’t it be great simply “to rent their minds?”

Renting brain-power from China for doing specific jobs may sound more acceptable than outsourcing, but post-Olympics China’s intellectual and manufacturing power may no longer be available for renting. The Japanese too have been hearing the dragon coming. In 2005, the Chinese government permitted loud and sometime violent protests against Japan in several big industrial cities, including Shanghai and Hong Kong, regarding Japanese insensitivities to their bruised feelings.

The Chinese claimed that their feelings had been hurt because some Japanese school textbooks showed no regrets about the atrocities the Japanese troops had committed against them during World War II. There were other reasons. Japan had begun to explore undersea oil and gas deposits in a disputed region of East China Sea; and of course Japan’s continuous strategic alliance with the US regarding the Taiwan issue has been an irritant. When Japan asked for an apology and compensation for vandalism and damage to its diplomatic and commercial property, China said it had nothing to apologise about. Before the street protests, the Chinese government had allowed an online petition drive by millions of Chinese against Japan’s effort to seek permanent membership of the UN Security Council. The unprecedented online phenomenon showed how China could mobilise its masses.

Just as the Chinese authorities aroused the Chinese to come out and protest against Japan, with the same speed they ordered protesters to shut up. The Communist Party is capable of generating and controlling mass enthusiasm through nationalism, as it is doing for the Games now. It will be interesting to see how the Games affect China as the world turns.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

Doing business transparently

How business can be media smart

From The Statesman
ND Batra

I am invariably asked how a company should deal with rabid journalists for whom “If it bleeds, it leads” makes a good story.

The news media have begun to play a very significant role in the conduct of both national and international business, as you see in the current global economic crisis that originated primarily in the United States bad lending practices but now has affected rest of the world economies. Television news in convergence with the Internet makes events live and spontaneous beyond the traditional editorial controls. Bloggers, online whistle-blowers and civic groups present alternative views of what companies are doing. Rumours spread fast on the Internet. The rumour about the health of Steve Job, Apple’s CEO, who had cancer surgery, for example, might have contributed to the recent sudden decline in the company’s stock.

Today business cannot be conducted beyond the public view. The reason for this increased interest in how companies do their business is not difficult to appreciate. The impact on people’s lives even if they are not directly invested in a company is tremendous. The very presence of Coca-Cola, Pepsi or Wal-Mart in a town raises apprehensions and expectations, which calls forth close scrutiny by the news media.

It is true that the news media is itself a global business and is subject to rules and regulations like any other business; nonetheless, being regarded as the fourth estate the news media has a privileged position. For example, the news media has the unique privilege of issuing corrective statements as the stories develop. While the reader or viewer might think this is the news, journalists regard news as events in progress, which they must report.

In the United States, it is extremely difficult to win libel damages against the news media because of the legal provision that plaintiff must prove “reckless disregard for truth.” Proving media negligence only is not enough to win libel damages. The near immunity from libel gives the news media large freedom and encourages investigative reporting and keeps the society healthy.

Because of the inescapable fact that our economic well being, pensions, retirement savings, environment and quality of life have become dependent on the marketplace, no business can escape media attention. Bigger companies invite healthy suspicion about their activities by the news media. Add to it millions of blogs that feed upon each other. Keeping silence is not possible in an open society, well, not for long.

So how should global companies deal with the news media? A company doing business globally has to become media savvy and must understand how news organisations work and how they produce stories. Corporate communicators have to understand the news media’s sources of information and their reporting methods and how to influence them by providing them correct information. Companies have been using adverting as a major method of influencing the public, as oil companies, BP and Exxon-Mobil, for example, have been doing to divert attention from the charge of extortion at the pump. Advertising if done properly is still a powerful mode of direct communication with the public at large. But advertisement cannot beat headline news, breaking stories, or special reports with which the news media try to draw the public attention distracted by too much noise. It is a big challenge to be heard when electronic media has limited attention span.

Corporate communicators should keep in mind that a reporter cannot turn a damaging story into a good one, especially in the time of crisis. News is a competitive business and no one can afford to keep silent over a story that impacts the public and also draws big audience. In good times, a company that has excellent working relations with the news media can strengthen its positions by presenting positive stories and thus enhance its reservoir of public good will. Consequently, when a crisis hits the company, it would be able to draw upon the public sympathy. Building intangible social capital is as important as building tangible market capital.

The traditional method of issuing press and video releases is still relevant especially in the local news media outlet, where the paucity of manpower resources might prompt a local television station or a newspaper to repackage a company’s story as a news item. This is a common practice in the United States. But at the same time we should keep in mind that national news media organizations are inundated with e-mail news tips, and video and press releases, therefore, they hardly pay attention to junk mail. It is important to target the right people in the news media. Steps for dealing with the news media effectively require research.

Smart corporate communicators take several steps to make their stories relevant; for example, they determine whether they have a worthwhile story and whether it needs to be told to the news media and why.

They know the audience for the story, which news media would be the best to reach and the reporters who normally cover such stories. Through their networks they know which reporter would be most sympathetic to their story and whether the reporter is accessible.

When the news media ask for information, reactions and comments, the company should offer full cooperation; and the spokesperson should be ready with facts and figures or promise to provide the data promptly to meet the reporter’s deadline. Whatever information is provided, it should be done thoughtfully and judiciously.

It is difficult to undo or delete the information once it is out, even though the news media promptly issue corrections. Providing reliable and prompt information is one of the best ways to build bridges with the news media; so when the need arises, the company could count upon the media good will. It pays to be on the right side of the news media.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

Who is afraid of cyber militia?

Blocking fraudsters, hackers and cyber militias

From The Statesman
ND Batra


A few months ago I received a very unusual email message from a well-regarded friend saying that he had lost his bag in Kuala Lumpur, where he had gone to attend an international conference on HIV, and asked if I could wire him some money which he would return as soon as he returned home. He asked me to respond promptly so that he could me give the hotel address where I could electronically transfer the money.

I looked at the email address and the name again ~ everything seemed genuine and my first impulse was to rescue my friend in distress but then a suspicion began to creep in. The last name was hyphenated, Ryan Douglas-Gagnon instead of Ryan Douglas Gagnon (a presumed name to protect privacy) as my friend normally writes it. Again I wondered why Ryan, an accountant by profession with an élan for poetry, would go to Kuala Lumpur when his business was limited to Kolkata, Delhi and Bangalore. Although he was involved with some local charities, I never heard him talking about any HIV international conference in Malaysia. I decided to cool it for a few days to see how urgent the need was before I regretted my decision. Two days after I received an email from the real Ryan Douglas Gagnon saying that his e-mail had been compromised and asked me to communicate with him on his new email address. Hackers must have used spyware to steal the password of his e-mail to commit a fraud on me; and I was almost taken in. What a relief.

In the past I have received email solicitations from strangers, perhaps based in Nigeria, Russia or somewhere else, asking me whether I’d accept their money for investment in return for a heavy commission paid up front. Though such fraudulent investment schemes are now well-known, some gullible people do get caught in the trap.I am not the only one paranoid about growing cyber threats.

Hackers and fraudsters are a growing menace in the ever-expanding and interconnected digital world. Last June, several members of US Congress complained that sensitive data from their computers had been stripped by Chinese hackers. Representatives Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) and Chris Smith (R-New Jersey) were quoted in the Hill, a congressional newspaper, saying the FBI had discovered that their staff computers had been hacked by people working out of China. Both congressmen have been dealing with human rights abuses in China and Tibet.

Chinese hackers have also been trying to penetrate defence establishment networks including Nasa, Sandia National Laboratories and the Naval War College during the past several years. “Computer systems control all critical infrastructures, and nearly all of these systems are linked together through the Internet. This means that nearly all infrastructures in the United States are vulnerable to being attacked, hijacked or destroyed by cyber means...The potential for massive and coordinated cyber attacks against the United States is no longer a futuristic problem,” Mr Wolf said.

Now that the corporate global is rushing to China for the Beijing Olympics, fears of cyber hacking too have been increasing. Ms Siobhan Gorman reported last week in the Wall Street Journal that the US government was extremely concerned about whether it would be diplomatically wise to openly warn businesspersons and travellers visiting China during the Beijing Olympics about Chinese hackers, said to be the smartest and the most dangerous in the world. Data can be stolen at hotels, airports or anyplace from cell phones, laptops, BlackBerrys and other electronic devices simply by wirelessly inserting spyware that is designed for stealthy removal of information. Although the US government issues warning about terrorism and health risks when Americans travel abroad, wrote WSJ, it does not issue warning about cyber threats.

Talking to an audience at Purdue University, Indiana, last week about various threats faced by the US in the 21st century, Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said building cyber defences would be one of his top priorities because information networks are “increasingly the backbone of our economy and our infrastructure; our national security and our personal well-being”. Mr Obama’s immediate concern seemed to be about terrorists using US computer networks “to deal us a crippling blow” rather than a “friendly” trading country like China, which has a vicious underground cyber hacker militia that cannot operate without the government’s knowledge and others attempting to steal trade and military secrets.

Acknowledging that cyber-espionage has been growing, Mr Obama said as President he would “make cyber security the top priority that it should be in the 21st century...declare our cyber-infrastructure a strategic asset, and appoint a National Cyber Advisor who (would)...coordinate efforts across the federal government, implement a truly national cyber-security policy, and tighten standards to secure information ~ from the networks that power the federal government, to the networks that you use in your personal lives”. Bravo.

Today no one is immune from cyber attacks. But what is the special challenge for India?According to the legend, India helped the US and rest of the world to overcome the Y2K crisis. India’s IT industry took up the challenge of Y2K and in the process triggered a new age of prosperity, catapulting India into the knowledge age. Today if the Indian IT sector could develop a universal ‘unhackable’ cyber security system that not only prevented but also pre-empted hackers, fraudsters and state-supported cyber militias, India would usher in a new era of global trade and prosperity.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

Buddhism

American Ruling Class

Paper Clips

Iran Matters

Iran sends a long-range message

From The Statesman

ND Batra
It was a spectacular display of missile firepower exceeded only by the Revolutionary Guard air force commander General Hossein Salami’s rhetoric. According to the official IRNA news agency, he said Shahab-3 and other missile tests should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind about Iran’s “resolve and might against enemies who in recent weeks have threatened Iran with harsh language...We warn the enemies who intend to threaten us with military exercises and empty psychological operations that our hand will always be on the trigger and our missiles will always be ready to launch.”

With a range of 1,240 miles (almost 2,000 km), Shahab-3 with a nuclear payload could cause massive death and destruction if it were to hit Israel; and hence the motivation for Israel to wipe out the nuclear enrichment facility before Iran is fully capable of developing weapons. Early June, Israel conducted an extensive military exercise over the eastern Mediterranean to prepare for a mission to pre-empt the nuclear threat and to send a message to Iran.

Not to be left behind, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent her own prompt message from Georgia, where she had gone to lay the groundwork for establishing an anti-ballistic missile system, asserting, “We will defend American interests and the interests of our allies...No one should be confused about that.” Israel is not expected to launch an attack on Iran without US approval, but with prevailing uncertainties occasioned by the impending presidential election, events might get out of hand. Both Iranian and US-British warships are conducting naval exercises at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 40 per cent of the world’s oil passes. If Iran blocks this strategic waterway, global economic consequences will be much more devastating than those triggered by the 1956 Suez War.

The only economic consequence of the firing of nine missiles has been the cancellation of the planned development of Iranian South Pars gas field by Total, a French oil company whose CEO, Mr Christophe de Margerie, was quoted in the Financial Times as saying, “Today we would be taking too much (of a) political risk to invest in Iran because people will say: ‘Total will do anything for money’.” If France retreats, however, China will surely spring forward. With oil prices hitting $145 a barrel, petrodollars are flooding Iran, the fourth largest oil producer.

Both Republican and Democratic presumptive presidential nominees, Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama, iterated their positions on Iran. Mr Obama said the missile tests show “the threat from Iran’s nuclear programme is real and it is grave”, which necessitates “direct, aggressive and sustained diplomacy”, including economic sanctions. Mr McCain on the other hand says working with “our European and regional allies is the best way to meet the threat posed by Iran”. He also supports President Bush’s anti-missile defence system. Neither candidate has ruled out force as an option if diplomacy fails and Iran persists in developing nuclear weapons.

Perhaps the situation is not as frightening as it seems to be. Undersecretary of State William J Burns told Congress that “while deeply troubling, Iran’s real nuclear progress has been less than the sum of its boasts”. Tough sanctions and incentives including technical and economic help might work, it is believed, in persuading Iran to suspend its nuclear activities. Two days after the missile tests Iran agreed to resume talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Geneva on 19 July.

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) based on the findings of the 16 agencies of the US intelligence community concluded “with high level of confidence” in its report released in 2007 that Iran was not engaged in the development of nuclear weapons. In fact, Iran halted the nuclear weapons programme in 2003, though it continued pursuing nuclear energy development for civilian energy purposes. But Iran has the necessary scientific, technological and industrial base and knowledge to make nuclear bombs. Suspending the programme does not mean that Iran has altogether given up its intention to build a nuclear arsenal in the pursuit of its strategic interests in the region.

The report said, “Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs.” Of course, the national interest calculations include both short- and long-term cost-benefit analyses. And Iran, taking into account the ruthless determination the Bush administration displayed in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, might have thought it unwise to continue with its nuclear weapons programme.

The 2007 intelligence report, which contradicted the previous alarmist findings about Iran’s intentions, has reinforced the arguments of those Americans, Republicans and Democrats, who believe that concerted international diplomacy will work. The report recommended that “some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressure, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might ~ if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible ~ prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.”

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has continued to operate 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear energy purposes, which could give it enough fissile material to produce nuclear weapons in less than a decade if its intentions change and it can avoid international scrutiny and pressure. With the long-range Shahab series, Iran already has a well-developed ballistic missile development programme. With its immense oil and natural gas resources and nuclear capabilities, Iran is a significant power in the region and should be acknowledged as such. Nonetheless, neither Iran nor any other power should be allowed to choke the Gulf region through which millions of barrels of oil flow everyday, which the growing economies of India and China and rest of the world need.

(ND Batra is professor of communication at Norwich University)

The Illusion of Democracy

US can’t bulldoze democracy into unready soil

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Islamic conservatism, as practised in Saudi Arabia and most Muslim countries, and nationalistic authoritarianism successfully exemplified by China and Russia, are the two powerful alternatives to democracy as political organising principles. Spreading democracy is a worthy goal but the US has to face complex challenges in this interdependent world, challenges that would compel policymakers, Democrats and Republicans, to act as pragmatist idealists.

Both Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama are gradually moving in that direction as they consider global threats: terrorism, failing states, soaring oil prices, nuclear weapons proliferation and environmental degradation. A “league of democracies”, as Mr McCain has described it, is not enough to solve global problems. Consider the present actualities. China has been growing at the rate of 8-9 per cent for the past two decades or so and is expected to become a powerful economic and military force, almost a superpower, in the coming decades. Since authoritarian rule has not held China back from growing at a dizzying rate, it is quite sensible to ask: How could China do so much in such a short time without freedom and civil liberties?

In a speech at the Hoover Institution on US foreign policy at Stanford University in Stanford, California, Mr McCain said about China that “despite miraculous economic growth and a higher standard of living for many millions of Chinese, hopes for an accompanying political reform have diminished. The ruling party seems determined to dominate political life, and as in the past, the talk is of order, not democracy, the supremacy of the party not of the people”.

Perhaps the Chinese people by and large don’t care for democracy; nonetheless, the US has no choice but to deal with China for commercial and diplomatic reasons.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a Japanese-American scholar, Mr Francis Fukuyama, gloated that it was nothing but “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”.
You can see the bonfires of such scholarly predictions all around.

The end of communism brought about a sense of misplaced euphoria, a massive illusion: this is the final triumph of democracy. But freedom did not happen in Russia after the Soviet Union disintegrated; and it did not happen in China in spite of rapid economic growth and broadening prosperity under state-controlled market capitalism couched in fervid nationalism.

The raging Beijing Olympic fever is about nationalism, not democracy and freedom. It is a corporate-hitched global propaganda about China rising under authoritarianism, not a new chapter on freedom and democracy.

Freedom did not spring like a long-awaited spring after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fact worldwide authoritarianism has increased. China has no doubt ceased to be an immediate threat since its economic growth has become increasingly tied up with search for energy and other raw materials, foreign direct investment, and exports, especially to Europe and the US.

Today China, paradoxically, is the US’s biggest foreign lender; and so, no wonder, human rights concerns, including Tibet, have ceased to be an issue in US-China relations. Whenever US trade officials visit China, they urge China to spend more on consumer goods and raise the value of its currency; they seldom mention democracy or Tibetan human rights.

For China, consuming what they manufacture is more important than political freedom. Democracy has not been rising in the Muslim-Arab world, where authoritarianism holds sway. Between the US and Saudi Arabia and other seemingly pro-American Muslim-Arab countries in the region, where fundamentalism has a large appeal, human rights and freedom are never a hot-button issue. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the US leveraged financial and military aid to make Pakistan an ally against Taliban and Al-Qaida terrorism.

And to maintain its hold over Pakistan, the US muffled the issue of even the black-marketing of nuclear technology by one of the world’s most notorious scientists, Mr AQ Khan, who recently implicated the Pakistan military in his nuclear wheeling and dealing.President Pervez Musharraf might have receded in the background because of the recent popular upsurge, but the military still rules the land. And the Taliban exercise control over a crucial border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The US cannot give up the realpolitik of dealing with non-democratic regimes, such as North Korea, regardless of its messianic fervour of spreading freedom universally. The song and dance of freedom and liberty seems to be a posture of public diplomacy for winning the hearts and minds of the Arab-Muslim world after its ruinous post-Iraq war handling of insurgency.

There is no gainsaying the fact the US remains vulnerable to terrorism so long as tyranny and the ideology of hate prevail abroad and for which, some experts believe, there’s no other solution except to expand the democratic form of government and its freedoms. But Arab/Muslims look at China, where 1.3 billion people work day and night to make goods for the entire world without much concern about freedom.

The US cannot bulldoze democracy into any country.

Elections in Afghanistan, the Palestinian Authority and Iraq raised some hope that eventually a sharing of power might bring about the beginning of democratic law and order. But freedom to vote is not enough because it does not mean the end of violence, poverty and unemployment, which provide fertile ground for more terrorism.

Look at Zimbabwe’s President, Mr Robert Mugabe, who told the world at the recent African Union forum to go to hell. Mr Mugabe looks to China, not the US or South Africa.

The rhetoric of democracy must include economic aid, including preferential trade for poor countries that have been making valiant efforts to grow economically and control terrorism at the same time. Instead of crouching toward China or Russia as a model, they should look to the US. That is the biggest challenge for US international diplomacy and the next President.


(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

If guns don’t kill people, who does?

Free to die in gun violence

From The Statesman
ND Batra
On several issues the US Supreme Court is as divided as the country itself. On the bench there are some justices who might be called constitutional fundamentalists or literalists, who believe that the Constitution means what it says, and they know it.

On Thursday, the US Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 majority that Americans have a constitutional right to own handguns for self-defence, giving its interpretation of the Second Amendment (the Bill of Rights) which was ratified in 1791. The amendment reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The question before the court was whether the right to own a gun was limited to service for the state military force or for personal use. Justice Antonin Scalia, a constitutional fundamentalist, writing for the majority, said the Constitution does not permit “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home”.

Justice Stephen Breyer, known as a liberal pragmatist constitutionalist, wrote a dissent in which he said, “In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.” All the 10 amendments that make up the Bill of Rights exist in dynamic balance and don’t confer any absolute right on Americans.For the last 32 years, Washington DC has had the strictest gun laws in the country.

Of course, that did not make the city free from crime. In fact the city, the seat of the greatest power on earth, earned the notoriety of being the murder capital of the country. The gun ban not only did not reduce violent crime but it also challenged some people who regard the Second Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights as a sacred trust. Of course, they had the support of the National Rifle Association, one of the most powerful lobbies in the country.

Both Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, Democratic and Republican presumptive presidential nominees respectively, were quick to endorse the US Supreme Court decision. No politician can challenge the gun lobby and survive in the US. The case arose in 2003, when Mr Dick Anthony Heller, an armed security guard, supported by constitutional fundamentalists, filed a suit against Washington DC, when the city turned down his application to keep a handgun at his home for self-protection under the provisions of the Firearms Control Regulations Act, 1975. Apart from banning handguns, the law required that all firearms be kept “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock”.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled for Mr Heller, striking down Washington DC’s handgun ban on the ground that Americans have a constitutional right to own guns and, therefore, a total ban on handguns infringes the right. The Supreme Court majority did not absolutely rule out gun regulation. As Justice Scalia said, the ruling did not “cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings”.

The justices in the ruling majority, Justice Scalia said, “are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country” for which Washington DC has “a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns”.

Every year, 30,000 Americans including children are killed in gun violence at home, in the streets, in schools, colleges, workplaces as well as by accidental shooting and suicide, in spite of a plethora of state and city laws ranging from licensing, registration and background checks to outright bans.

The culture of gun violence is reflected and reinforced by the media. Movies, television programmes and popular music do not always spur viewers to spontaneous action; but their delayed, cumulative effects are immense. Television commercials, for instance, impact viewers, which keeps the market economy thriving. If commercials make people buy, repeated violent programmes too can incite some viewers, especially children or those who are mentally disturbed, to kill people, especially when guns are available freely.

A few years ago, for example, Queen Latifa, the rap star, featured in Set It Off, an R-rated movie about four desperate women who go on a binge, shooting and robbing banks. The movie was linked with several copycat fatal shootings, including that of an 8-year-old girl, Tynisha Gathers of Bridgeport, Connecticut, who watched a bootlegged copy of the movie along with three other girls. Later while replaying a scene from the movie, Tynisha was shot in the head, as it was shown on the tape, with a .380 calibre semiautomatic handgun lying in the house. Imitation and role-playing, no doubt, excite all children. Tynisha’s 10-year old sister was held in custody and charged with manslaughter.

Gun-dealers and movie-makers hide behind their constitutional rights to bear arms and exercise unfettered free expression, of course, only to make money in the free marketplace. Unlike constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights, Americans have no fundamental obligations, except to pay taxes.The courts have been very reluctant to award damages in cases of personal injuries caused by the media, unless there is a definitive showing of “clear and present danger”, amounting to direct incitement of violence. Punishing the media for mere negligence, the courts have said in several media-related personal injury cases, would chill free expression and lead to self-censorship, thus negating the purpose of the First Amendment.

And they tell us again and again, I mean gun industry lobbyists, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. But this has not been a comforting thought to parents of children brought up in an environment of toy-guns (which look indistinguishable from the real ones) and senseless media violence. Every year hundreds of children either become victims of gun violence through media imitation or cause injuries to others. The US Supreme Court does not have any answer to such social dilemmas.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)