US-India bridge of friendship

A bridge of friendship

From The Statesman

The civilian nuclear deal is a bridge to the world of sophisticated technology not only in the United States but also in Japan, Europe and Russia. Access to high-end technology depends upon trust.
The world can trust India.
Indian diplomats had to overcome strong opposition in the US, which cut across party lines as well as scholarly and journalistic communities. By letting India bypass the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and benefit from “full civilian nuclear energy cooperation,” President George W Bush made a most courageous act of statesmanship and took a firm step in establishing long-term strategic and economic relations with India. The Bush administration has accepted India as a “responsible state with advanced nuclear technology,” recognising it as an exception to the rule, and that India should “acquire the same benefits and advantages as other such states.” India is at par with China and other nuclear powers. Why does the Indian Left want it otherwise?
The pragmatic partnership to let India grow and play its rightful constructive role in global affairs is not about containing any other rising power; it is about having faith in India to develop as an alternative model of economic growth without compromising fundamental freedoms. That’s how Japanese Prime Minister Abe’s metaphor “Arc of freedom and prosperity” should be understood.
Rapid economic growth of the Indian economy, 9-10 per cent a year for the next few decades, primarily through the efforts of its rising entrepreneurial class, will lift millions of Indians out of poverty. An economically dynamic India on a perpetual growth curve will make the containment of any rising Asian power unnecessary. More the number of equal players in the Asian theatre, less will be the possibility of a single hegemonic power rising and dwarfing others.
The deal will remove hurdles in India’s search for alternative energy sources to fuel its growing economy. Moreover, as Ratan Tata told Karan Thapar of CNN-IBN: “Over time this will give India tremendously powerful position in the knowledge industry, in research and development, in high technology.”
From a poor 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.
After successful negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), India will be able to buy nuclear fuel for its existing nuclear power plants and shop for building scores of new ones.
In the course of time as trust in partnership increases and diplomatic relations improve further, a whole new world of sophisticated global technology, European, Japanese and American, will be opened to India, enabling it to leapfrog decades of past sluggish economic growth. In return India has agreed to do what other nuclear powers have been doing under the nonproliferation treaty, that’s, open some of its civilian nuclear power plants to inspection and continue to observe abstinence on nuclear testing. Its nuclear deterrent will remain off limit.
Critics in India who fear that the deal would create co-dependency relations with the US need to consider how China has benefited from strong economic partnership with the US without compromising its sovereignty.
Of course there is no such thing as absolute sovereignty in an interdependent world.
There is more power in the American shopping cart than in all the Chinese manufacturing plants, as the recent crisis of confidence in the safety of its products shows.
China had greater sovereignty in the days of Mao Zedong than today when it has more than a trillion dollar in foreign exchange reserves.
A country’s currency is a symbol of its sovereignty but China has tied up its currency, Renminbi, to Uncle Sam’s dollar. Whither sovereignty?
The Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline will not be enough to meet India’s gargantuan need for energy. Clean coal technology, nuclear energy and solar power are practical alternatives for which the US has opened its doors to India.
France gets 80 per cent of its energy from civilian nuclear plants. In the next 15 years China plans to build 30 new nuclear power plants at a cost of more than $50 billion.
Why should India be left behind? 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 youthful millions. Nuclear energy would reduce excessive dependency upon oil from the Middle-East, a most unstable region.
Prime Minster Manmohan Singh was very perceptive when he said that Indo-US partnership is based “both on principle as well as pragmatism.”
Democracy, multiethnic diversity, and human rights are some of the values that bring the two countries together, but equally important is the fact that India, Europe and the US need one another for fighting global terrorism.
As the recent bomb blasts in Hyderabad show, terrorism is alive in India. India cannot fight terrorism alone.
Whether it is the Congress or BJP that rules India, for decades to come India will have no choice but to put a single-minded focus on one primary goal: speedy economic growth, which the partnership with Europe, the US, Japan and Australia will hasten.
The Indian Left might force a hasty general election, but that will not be the end of the civilian nuclear deal. The next political party in power will pick up the threads and consummate the deal, perhaps the greatest achievement of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whom historians will rank with Jawaharlal Nehru.
(ND Batra is professor of communications and diplomacy at Norwich University and is the author of Digital Freedom)

The paradox of freedom

The never-ending battle of ideas

From The Statesman

On his recent visit to the United States, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “We must undercut the terrorists’ so-called ‘single narrative’ and defeat their ideas. At home and abroad we must back mainstream and moderate voices and reformers, emphasizing the shared values that exist across faiths and communities.”

No one can ever say that the battle of ideas has been finally won. When the Soviet Union, for example, collapsed in 1989 and the Cold War was over, it was not the end of the battle of ideas but the beginning of a new one.

Many people see history as a linear progression, something rising from the bottom and going to the top. But one can also imagine history as an uninterrupted landscape, where past, present and future co-exist in a dynamic tension, where the battle of ideas continues. Even if militant Islamic jihadism is beaten, some new dangerous ideology will arise that threatening peace and our most cherished ideals of freedom.

China is presenting its own model of development - development without democracy - and its explosive energy born of nationalistic mercantilism is becoming an attractive ideology.

China has a powerful narrative: Harmony and peaceful rise, without the noise and chaos of democracy. The whole world is watching with fascination.

Some people, especially those trained in advertising and public relations, believe that all that the United States needs is a new image and therefore it must re-brand itself, just as corporations do. That shows poverty of thinking.

To a great extent a corporate nations like China can control its message and its image because it is the sole source of information about itself. But you cannot control the image of an open society because there are so many independent actors, institutions and corporations; for example, Hollywood, US military, corporate America; Guantanamo Bay, Wal-Mart, Microsoft; all contributing to the US image abroad. And now add to all this hotchpotch of impressions the daily carnage from Iraq, the horrific images of people being blown up daily. The US image abroad is an “emergence” and its quality depends upon how much of the United States is present in a country. A country that is exposed to only Hollywood violent movies and video games is likely to have a distorted image of the United States. But add to it a GE, university campus, cultural centre, and apparel factory; you see the image of the United States in that country begins to change.

Keeping the emergent nature of the image, it should not be difficult to understand why the public image of the United States differs from one country to another. The image depends upon the quality and the extent of its presence and its usefulness to the country. Even the smartest public diplomacy campaign won’t change perceptions overnight, especially when the United States is deeply engaged in multifarious actions abroad. Events might occur beyond its control, which could further blur the image in some countries. No quick-fix crisis communication would help.

China’s presence in the United States is huge but the recent recall of millions of China-made toys following the scandals of tainted pet foods and defective tyres has tattered its image of a reliable manufacturer. No amount of corporate public diplomacy will help China unless it realises that good products are manufactured by countries where free Press rules, where there is political and corporate transparency.

The always-on 24-hour global communication, blogs, instant messaging, chatrooms, and news cycles make it impossible for practitioners of public diplomacy to devise a central strategy to impose a message discipline, as it can be done in advertising campaigns for a product or a political candidate. Nor is public diplomacy like a political campaign, where negative campaigning could kill an opponent with a devastating effect. In an environment of uncontrolled communications, you might still control the message, but you cannot control the meaning when instant alternative interpretations, Al-Jazeera, for example, are available. Each nation is different, so what works in Turkey may not work in Indonesia or Uzbekistan. The challenge is to find the right vehicle to embody the message for a specific local audience.

Al-Qaida has used local clerics to champion and spread its Jihadist message. Public diplomacy practitioners must use local leaders to champion and advance their cause and they should do in such a manner that it makes the local people feel good about themselves, while at the same time generating goodwill toward the country that is using information culture to foster goodwill. There was a time when Hollywood was the best cultural export, but now many people believe that the US popular culture, due to proliferation of senseless violence and explicit sex, creates negative impressions in foreign audiences, in spite of the fact the world has been spending billions of dollars importing American entertainment, filmed and taped programmes, as well as box-office hits.

The paradox is that in spite of negative feelings about American popular culture that it depicts profanity, nudity, mayhem and crime, piracy of popular cultural programmes, even in the Arab and Muslim world, remains unabated. In any case, practitioners of public diplomacy, who want to win over the hearts and minds of the people in the Arab world, should not count upon Hollywood’s popular culture as the nation’s goodwill ambassador. US corporations, educational institutions, and non-profit organisations represent most precious American values such as individual initiative, innovativeness, entrepreneurship, freedom of speech, and competition. Wal-Mart, Microsoft and Warren Buffet embody as much of what America stands for, as does Hollywood. America is what Americans do at the workplace, its ultimate source of strength.

Will China with its model of nationalistic mercantilism without freedom and democracy ever match the soft power of the United States, Europe and India?

(ND Batra, professor of communications and diplomacy at Norwich University, is the author of Digital Freedom, published by Rowman & Littlefield)

India is the place to be

Young, vigorous and creative at 60

From The Statesman

Last week, the Wall Street Journal carried a front-page story about how Kishore Biyani adapted India’s culture of order-in-disorder to transform his company Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd. into the largest retailer in the country.

Biyani’s shopping malls are crowded and Indians love them. Unlike Americans, Indians prefer crowded places where they can hear and smell each other. India has reached the tipping point, a state of collective will when the forces of economic growth have begun to dominate society. The call of the marketplace is trumping everything else, including religious and ethnic communalism.

The way to prosperity is not through OBC but through entrepreneurship. For quite some time, India has been exciting the world’s imagination and many investors have begun to have a fresh look at the country and explore its potentials.

Many global investors in fact are excited that there is another avenue of growth and diversification where they can put their resources to productive uses instead of putting all their hopes in the Far East.

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 Service, Infosys Technolgies and Wipro are not the only companies for which India has become a world leader.

There is the growing field of biotechnology, petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals, where, for example, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd., Ranbaxy, Reliance Industries Ltd. and others have become international brand names. These companies are creating a global buzz, an image of India that it is full of talented young people, who can perform competitively. India’s self-esteem is rising and so is the motivation to excel.

Today a young Indian with a PhD from an American university may want to work for Chevron but soon he will find that Reliance Petro is much better. He will return to India as thousands of others are doing.

The sentiment that India is the place to be is spreading. India has entered a new threshold of knowledge economy and is gradually emerging as a global hub for specialised knowledge processing for global corporations.

Knowledge economy depends upon extracting and creating new knowledge from data bases and is in a sense value-added outsourcing. Although India is far from becoming a full-fledged knowledge economy, this is an emerging trend, apart from other growing fields such as auto, genetic engineering, and high-tech healthcare that will hasten the transformation of India in the next decade.

Probably the most exciting field of growth is healthcare, which, according to a Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) study, will add 7-8 per cent to GDP and create nine million jobs by 2012. But much more needs to be done to sustain India’s 9 per cent plus growth than giving the industry fiscal incentives by setting up special economic zones.

One of the biggest hurdles for rapid economic growth in India, according to several observers, is the red tape; it takes myriad forms, such as expectations of illegal gratification, fear of the loss of bureaucratic power due to privatisation and apprehensions about foreign direct investment, as the recent protests against the entry of Wal-Mart shows.

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 depend upon agriculture. For millennia rural India has been held hostage to nature’s vagaries, but it need not be so. Technology can break nature’s stranglehold and break its curse on the poor.

Don’t be surprised if the little chirping thing, cell phone, might bring about a rural revolution in India.

Most of the rural workers should be absorbed into agro-industries, manufacturing and service industries, and that again will necessitate massive investment in building new infrastructure and modernising the existing one.

That is why the coming of global retailers like Wal-Mart into India is so important.
Let Pantaloon and Wal-Mart compete for the Indian shopping cart.

Growing prosperity in India and rising expectations abroad “that India can do” are creating compelling conditions for the government to put its act together. India must get out of the political inertia, upgrade its clogged roads and overcrowded airports, eliminate frequent power outages and scuttle the red tape.

India is becoming an integral part of globalised economy and is clearly thriving on the synergy between multinational corporations and its indigenous strengths, which come from a high quality of education from its top universities, democratic institutions that create transparency, and the ingenuity of its people for innovative solutions to complex problems. Ingenuity means transcending a system’s limitations by finding an alternative route to reach the same goal. A creative and ingenious mind becomes restless when he hits a wall and asserts, there has to be another way; and he improvises by transferring intelligence from one application to another. But individual entrepreneurial ingenuity has its limitations.

Bangalore could transcend the limitations of its poor infrastructure, power and transportation by building captive power plants and satellite communications to reach its outsourcing clients in the United States and elsewhere. Now the challenge is whether India’s ingenuity can be applied to undertake collective action to build reliable highways, ports, railroads, power plants and airports. Corruption is a serious problem in every society.

The source of corruption is unaccounted exercise of power, of course. Elected officials can be removed, though one might say cynically, only to be replaced by another bunch of corrupt people. 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. Secondly, privatisation could act as an antidote to 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. Fighting corruption is a never-ending process, as is the case with poverty. The responsibility of the Indian government is to create conditions that encourage risk taking and reward entrepreneurship.

It is only through free spirited entrepreneurship that India can meet the challenge of becoming India that the whole world can look up to.

(ND Batra is professor of communications and diplomacy at Norwich University. He is the author of Digital Freedom)

Tagore:Thou Hast Made Me Endless

Thou Hast Made Me Endless – Part V

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: rajarch@cal3.vsnl.net.in
Poem: Garthikani (Anonym) of the book Prahasini (Satirist) written in 1938, 3 years before the Poet’s death.

[Translator’s note: The poem is a reply from the Poet, while he was in Kalimpong, to the letter from a girl who had written to him in poetry (It appears, the girl has a long face as she heard that the Poet at the hill station was being attended by too many ladies around and, for that reason, she prefers to be aloof not to add to the Poet’s disturbances, enough of which he was having already, and the Poet in his letter was trying to mollify her). Maitrayee Devi’s book Mangpute Rabindranath (i.e. Rabindranath at Mangpu, a hill station near Darjeeling which was her husband’s workplace, translated by Maitrayee Devi herself into English with the title “Tagore by Fireside”) gives translation of a few lines of this poem while she depicts the Poet’s vivacity even at his old age, when he was her guest at Mangpu, as follows - ]

“I despise that hapless wretch who grows decrepit
Just because of age.
So even if I am at my last breath
I tell you not about my falling strength.

The truth of these lines was known to all, who knew him personally. At the age of eighty, the Poet remained an image of youth- no physical weakness or disability or illness could touch his mind. During these days, when he was filling our home with such gay laughter and entertaining repartee, and was reading out to us hour after hour in the evenings, he was not keeping well physically. An illness was slowly spreading its roots inside him. He sometimes had fever, but didn’t care; and if others expressed concern, he would resent it. He suffered but concealed his pain by an ever springing flow of poetry, a fountain of songs and merry laughter. That human existence can glow with such unbounded happiness and warmth, we would have never known, had we not seen him. The few days that we had the good fortune to be near him, we lived as life should be lived. Our youth would never have been so affluent, if we had not been near him. “Even if at my last breath, I tell you not of my failing strength!” – the truth of this we experienced every day.”]


High pitched and aimless your chatter
In this solitude my peace does shatter.
My onus, the Grandpa designate
On what plea do I negate?
You daring, in rhymes have written your letter,
Be paid in your own coin, that is better.
You knew well in your mind astute,
Prose would never my pride dilute.
The pen was a horse of mighty breed,
Though now aged, it limps a bit indeed.
There to you is my loss of face,
May I hide it and pass with grace.
Your pen trots lightly hence
Mine will pace in the same cadence-
Though breathless, yet I’ll not daunt
To keep it up lest my age you taunt.
Yet, in my heart is the apprehension
Of pride shattering Lord Madhusudan. (=Lord Krishna)
One who feels old just for age
On that unfortunate is my rage.
So, even though my soul seeks exit,
Betrayal of fatigue I do not permit.
But what confuses me,
You take a poet always as silly!
They do disturb me, people various
In ways very diverse;
That I endure them you’ve seen clearly
For that reason you keep wary,
You said so tenderly
Which I do note, not lightly.
Yet, I know, you know this,
Disturbances come in varieties.
With the poets the God has been kind,
So, the sweets the sisters bring I don’t mind.
Some compose sweet words flattering,
While some fetch milky sweets endearing.
In cuckoo voice some pitch an acrimony,
Some enchant just in musical harmony.
So, I think, if God out of sympathy,
Just to protect my tranquility
Would all these hassles free,
This parched life would a bigger torture be.
Let me explain with a simile –
The mountain there- the poles of electricity
Struck on its chest, emit light
More to prick human sight.
If the moon will so mortify,
To emit its bright fight shy,
Would it be a good plight,
Does mere heat always bring light?
That is my letter all about,
No, not as my vigor has run out;
Only I am wiser – it’s no fake –
Now realize, shelling words without brake-
Those may be widened with chatter,
May be flattened either.
Too much is with too little at par,
Rather than shout, better to whisper.
Unaware of this, the Bengalis miss
Both their price and lungs’ ease.
As outcome of their shouting mania
Bengal environs always with hysteria.
The unsaid itself is the art,
Mere chatter is that is overt.
Look here, your name latent,
Excels the price of fame’s patent.
But what a farce by Bharati - (=Goddess of Learning/Art)
Chattering is not arty –
To explain it, I’ve already yielded an epic,
Will the Goddess of Art excuse this act heroic?
The truth needs confession,
The row that senility has caught Rabi (*) on – (* Rabindranath)
In protest thereof is this challenge thrown,
All the chatter from my mouth blown.
So I talk on, not a moment to spare,
This is like dying my hair –
The grey inside hidden
By the outward green (implying freshness)
In feeble voice so I battle,
Why juveniles alone tittle-tattle?
To a brat I’ll surrender not
That ego I still have a lot.

-----------------------------------
Listen to Rabindra Sangeet

India: Free and Fearless

India at 60 is home sweet home

From The Statesman

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

For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is so much common between India and the United States that I can’t love one without loving the other.

Freedom deeply rooted in secularism makes every one a productive citizen in the United States. The reason is simple: When an individual cannot assert his superiority or make a special claim on the basis of his race or religion, he has no choice but to show his natural born abilities and talents to succeed, which has turned the United States into a merit-based society, more or less. It is gradually happening in India too, especially in Bangalore and Bollywood, where only the most creative and brilliant minds can shine.

The idea that success, in whatever terms it is defined, is possible for any one with talent, from Wall Street to ballparks, Silicon Valley to musical bands, is the essence of what is essentially the American Dream. It is a secular version of: “If you knock, it shall open until unto you.” The price of not knocking at the door is that you are left in the cold. There’s no choice but to try and try again and succeed.

Secular freedom has proved productive not only in economic terms but in every which way you can imagine. It breeds in you a sense of equality, dignity and self-worth, and your heart cries out, Go and take the risk. Every field of human endeavor in the United States teems with talented people drawn from various nationalities, cultures, races, and colors. Americans are so unafraid of the otherness of “others,” though it has not always been so if you recall the burning of witches to Japanese-Americans’ incarceration during World War II and the McCarthyism of the Cold War era.

The foundation of secular freedom was laid in the United States with the Declaration of Independence. It happened in India when Jawaharlal Nehru evoked India’s “Tryst with Destiny” at the mid-night hour on the 15th of August 1947. It has been a long struggle to keep up with the demands of secularism, freedom and equality in the USA, as it has been in India. It isn’t over yet. It will never be over.

But India is full of new hopes and new dreams. It has been a long struggle when you consider how much it has taken for African-Americans to reach their present status. A generation ago it would have been impossible to think of an African-American occupying one of the most powerful political positions in the United States. The rise of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of the United States demonstrates the truth that freedom has many possibilities, as does the rise of a woman, Pratibha Patil, to become the President of India.

A country that joyously accepts Sonia Gandhi and Mother Teresa as its own is a most blessed nation and a great hope for mankind.

In the United States, now it is time for Hillary Clinton to show women the way to the White House. But the elevation of a few from the dungeon of invisible oppression might also give a misleading impression that all American Blacks and Hispanics are upwardly mobile. Far from it.

The painful truth is that racial profiling is a common occurrence in the United States, which prompts the police to shoot first then ask a question.

In India the equivalent of racial profiling is caste-and-religious profiling. A Muslim might be under suspicion for no reason except that he bears a Muslim name. Sometimes I wonder if Bangladeshi Muslims living in India were to assume Hindu names, would they be still regarded foreigners and illegal infiltrators? Just a creative thought.

But consider this: that a large number of Indian restaurants, with Indian names, in the United Kingdom and the United States are actually owned by Bangladeshis and they are doing extremely well. This proves the point that prejudice is sometime very shallow. Like the United States, India has a long way to go to eliminate blind and irrational prejudice, though the most heartening aspect of it is that no one is giving up the fight. Look at the slow transformation of political parties including BJP in India.

Acceptance of diversity has become a necessary condition for political survival both in India and the United States, another fascinating parallel between two great democracies founded on diversity, multiculturalism and secularism. For me freedom has no meaning unless it breeds equality in the sense of equal opportunities for everyone, a level playing field where a person can prove his best and give his best and be rewarded for it.

Consider it from India’s national interest. You can’t have a strong market economy on a perpetual roll unless the best people are allowed to come forward and compete for economic opportunities.

India needs brains and the marketplace does not care whether the brainpower comes from a Sikh, Muslim, Christian, Parsi, Dalit or Brahmin.

Open marketplace, of goods and ideas, not one’s caste or religion, should determine the competition and reward the best. The government’s obligation is to build infrastructure, maintain law and order, and take care of the poor because the marketplace does not solve all problems.

The government should get out of the way of the people and let them create wealth for the nation.

That is the only way everyone from Kashmir to Kanyakumari will call India: “Sare jehan se achha yeh Hindustan hamara.”

(Dr ND Batra, the author of Digital Freedom, is working on a new book, This is the American Way).

IF YOU CAN'T FACE YOUTUBE, GET OUT OF THE RACE

Facing the YouTube generation

From The Statesman

Hardly has the conspiratorial expression “Let’s Google him” settled in as a sizzling hot potato on the American tongue-in-cheek civic discourse when there is another linguistic gatecrasher “YouTubing” into American culture and consciousness, as last week’s Democratic debate showed. The YouTube questioning began with a street expletive, “Wassup?”

It was a remarkable event technologically speaking since this is certainly the beginning of a new era when television and the Internet have begun to converge into a seamless medium used by the Internet hoi polloi and potential voters who asked all kinds of questions ranging from gun control and global warming to healthcare, sex education for children, gay marriages, Darfur (Sudan), and Iraq war.

Experts could not have asked better questions of the candidates, and as author James Surowiecki might have said, it was a sample of the wisdom of the crowd made visible by YouTube. Therefore, to say that it was nothing more than another digital town hall meeting is to miss the point: the challenge of the emerging new media to traditional media gatekeepers and professional pundits. It was a surge from the earth gone flat; and there will be more to come.

The questioners it seemed had already “Googled” the Democratic presidential candidates’ past track records on various issues and using their home videos equipment they personalised controversial issues and uploaded them to YouTube for the debate, which was in actuality candidates’ reactions to questions rather than they debating among themselves.

But there were faces, ethnically heterogeneous, the Democrats could not ignore. Nor will the Republicans when they confront the YouTube generation on 17 September at St. Petersburg, Florida, though one of them, Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, said in an interview: “I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.” But Republicans cannot escape the tech savvy YouTube generation or they will be left behind.

Out of 3,000 questions ranging from the serious to the absurd, CNN, the all news cable network, selected 39 for hosting to Democratic presidential hopefuls, who had gathered on the campus of the military college, Citadel, South Carolina, deep in the Bible belt. An animated video clip of Snowman with his snowball kid created a stir when it asked a question about global warming, which even former Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth could not have done better.

Then there was a gun-toting wise guy who held an automatic guerrilla-style gun and calling it “my baby” asked whether it would be taken away if a Democrat were to occupy the White House. “He needs help. I don’t know if he’s mentally qualified to own that gun,” said Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, one of the eight candidates on the stage. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the issue of gun control receded into the lower depths of American consciousness, though gun violence has not abated.

But Senator Biden missed the irony: The assault weapon guy was mocking the Second Amendment, the American people’s right to bear arms like “my baby.”

Regarding questions about Iraq war and withdrawal of US troops, Democrats as expected were united in condemning President George W Bush in misleading the country and mismanaging the post-war operations. Moreover, they were equally united about how soon to withdraw, soon enough but in a phased and gradual manner in order to protect the troops and not leave a hellhole behind, which Iraq has already become. Some set tentative dates while others were judiciously ambiguous, which showed once again how deeply confused and divided Americans are about Iraq.

In response to a question whether he or she would meet with the leaders of Syria, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea in his or her first year as President in order to promote diplomacy, Democratic candidates took this as another opportunity to hit at the Bush administration’s reluctance to use diplomatic tools for advancing national interest.

Senator Barack Obama, a leading candidate among Democrats and the biggest challenge to Senator Hillary Clinton’s ambition to go to the White House, sharply rebuked the Bush administration saying that it’s nothing short of ridiculous to believe that not talking to countries is a kind of punishment to them. He said he would readily talk to them as John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan continuously did with the Soviet Union.

Senator Clinton’s thoughtful and measured response to the question made her look and sound presidential. She said that she would not rush to meet with them in her first year without knowing what their intentions were and certainly she would not like to give them a chance to use the meeting for propaganda purposes. The President of the United States cannot behave like a used car salesman ready to talk to anyone.

The reason why some Republican candidates are reluctant to face the YouTube debate format is that they are not sure what kinds of questions might get into the YouTube pool and what questions CNN might select.

To minimise the CNN effect, questions could be randomly selected. Politicians are control freaks and do not want to lose control over their professionally designed, customised and controlled messages, which they can drumbeat through television commercials and for which they have to raise millions of dollars. In this sense, the Internet is a very different medium because it empowers people. In the future instead of holding a Press conference, politicians might be asked to hold a YouTube conference.

(Dr ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University and is the author of Digital Freedom)

Corporate CEO as diplomat

The art of being a corporate diplomat

From The Statesman

The days of autocrat corporate CEOs are gone.

Even a powerful man like Rupert Murdoch, the most powerful global media tycoon who is trying to take over Dow Jones, the company that owns the **Wall Street Journal**, is conducting himself as a superb corporate diplomat. It is not easy wrenching control of one of the most influential global newspapers from a family (the Bancroft family) that has owned it for more than hundred years. Whether he succeeds or not, it will be a good lesson for practitioners of corporate diplomacy.

Writing in **Harvard Business Online**, Michael Watkins, says: “The rise of corporate diplomacy is a global phenomenon, but it’s being driven by different forces in different regions. In the United States, one driving force is the decline of the imperial CEO resulting from the constraints imposed on senior executives by Sarbanes-Oxley and activist boards.”
The necessity of being a good diplomat arises from the fact that there are other powerful forces, not only NGOs and the government, but public interest groups and influentials who make it their business to mount a challenge when they see a corporation growing too big or indulging in unethical practices.

There is another important reason for doing corporate diplomacy. Since the foreign policies of a country can put a damper on its international commerce, multinational corporations must have their own corporate diplomats and protocol officers for business development abroad, as POSCO and other international corporations are doing in India, for example.

Corporate diplomacy is crucial to the credibility of a company in explaining, positioning and carrying out its business, especially in these times when the image of the Unite States abroad is not bright. International commerce depends upon the goodwill of the public, which must be continuously built so that it works as a shock absorber when some unforeseen calamity occurs and crisis communication strategy has to be deployed. The creation and the development of this intangible and valuable asset, the public goodwill, is the function of corporate diplomacy.

In the 21st century, doing business in a foreign country must be much more than making profits. In his keynote address to Owens Corning Executive Summit at Tampa, Florida, Bill Shireman, President and CEO, Future 500, said: “The world is demanding a lot of the modern corporation.” When a company captures market share, he said, it also captures mind share, the deep support of the people. When the host population perceives a corporation as a good citizen, it produces collateral benefits for the home country.

A good corporation in a foreign country can become a goodwill ambassador for the home country. On the other hand, when the local population perceives a country as hostile, foreign businesses could be hit hard. The foundation for grassroots public diplomacy, which is more than show-and-tell visits by celebrities, must be patiently laid as China has begun to do. Resentment against US foreign policy has been contaminating the image of US corporate brands, especially in Arab-Muslim countries, which requires corporate America to do its own public diplomacy.
Doing effective global corporate diplomacy requires local knowledge, competencies and tools for implementing strategic communications to deal effectively with foreign publics. The overarching goal of corporate diplomacy is to develop an effective corporate voice and to learn to use all available means of persuasion, media and human networks, to shape public opinion as well as policies of the government in the host country. KFC, McDonald’s and Coca Cola cannot depend upon their international brands to survive in hostile environment. They must engage local communities in meaningful activities that enhance the quality of life. They have to engage in creative business-to-people diplomacy.

Global business needs a new kind of corporate diplomat, one who must be responsive and effective in communicating with different publics, interest groups, activists, governments and stakeholders in international settings by using various media forms - print, radio/television and the Internet. The corporate diplomat must be able to create a powerful corporate identity that serves the mission of the corporation as a responsible global corporate citizen and at the same time support the culture of the host country.

Developing intercultural sense and sensibility will enable the practitioners of corporate diplomacy to develop culturally sensitive best business practices throughout the supply chain. Special focus must be placed on: developing strategic communications for foreign media; maintaining brand reputation; developing rapid response crisis communication strategies; developing corporate advocacy for environment, open trade and free markets; using philanthropy and community relations to counter negative sentiments; dealing with foreign bureaucracy, influentials, activists and opinion leaders. Above all, emphasis must be on maintaining corporate integrity abroad; and being a good global citizen. A corporate diplomat is a renaissance person, an enlightened opinion leader whose job is to educate stakeholders, including customers, lawmakers, the news media and NGO’s about the company’s commitment to social responsibility.

Developing a multicultural mindset, ability to use intelligence and tact, tolerance for ambiguity and contradictions, and being articulate and media savvy are some of the attributes of being an effective corporate diplomat

(ND Batra is professor of communications and diplomacy at Norwich University. He is the author of Digital Freedom: How Much Can You Handle?)

Let history judge George W. Bush

Bush stands firm like a rock

From The Statesman

President George W Bush - not public opinion polls - is the prime political mover in the United States. Foreign policy of course cannot run on public opinion polls, which go up and down so often that it will be politically unwise to be solely guided by them.

National leaders some time take measures that are unpopular, nevertheless, necessary according to their perception of the problem the country faces and their political vision. The hope that the excesses of the Bush administration, if any, will be corrected by the Democratic control of both houses is yet to be fulfilled.

Some thought Democratic Congress would redirect the president’s policy of keeping the course in Iraq, but Bush keeps going. He says it his job to conduct the war, not for Congress. He will listen to the generals, who haven’t given up on Iraq, not yet. The generals hope the new strategy in Iraq needs time to show results.

Democrats realise that they have failed to make a strategic use of their newly attained political power to persuade the president to find a workable solution how to stabilize Iraq and bring about troops withdrawal without damaging the US long-term interest in the region. They don’t have veto-proof strength in Congress to tie up the president or force him take actions against his best judgment.

Democrats are also feeling helpless for failing to put forward their own national agenda to strengthen their control over Congress as well as prepare for winning the White House in 2008. Iraq is playing as much a significant role in the 2008 presidential election as it did in the mid-term elections. Iraq is keeping the country divided. No one believes that Iraq, Afghanistan or terrorism would go away soon, which means that Democrats whether they control Congress or the White House or both in 2008 will have to deal with Iraq and international terrorism, even when they claim that the mess was created and aggravated by the Bush administration.

There is a broad national consensus, nonetheless, that the United States cannot just pack and run away from Iraq. Not only Iraq would continue to be a bloody hell for decades but also the United States would never recover from its humiliating shame and failure, if US troops were withdrawn without a plan for peace and stability. The limited goal has been to control Sunni-Shia sectarian killings and bring about a reasonable level of law and order and political stability that could justify withdrawal of the US troops from Iraq. Unfortunately it has not been happening.

Of the several benchmarks Congress set for evaluation of progress in Iraq, only a few have been met satisfactorily.

While Kurds in the north who have enjoyed autonomy since the first Gulf War due to the no-fly zone restrictions imposed on Saddam’s regime by the United States are not ready to give up their gains including the region’s oil wealth, Sunnis aided by some neighbouring Arab countries and Shias with the full backing of Iran are locked in a deadly struggle for supremacy. Division of the country into three separate independent states would leave the oil wealth with Shias who dominate the south and with Kurd who control the north, leaving Sunnis empty but full of bitterness and vengeance, which would not bring sectarian violence and terrorism to an end.

Negotiations based on equitable distribution of oil resources and a federal-type political structure that keeps balance amongst three regions as the basis for reconciliation and unity and national reconstruction has not made much headway.

So when Congress leaders especially Democrats ask the president to get out of Iraq quickly, they are not being realistic. Getting out of Iraq will not be the end of Al-Qaida, which has become resurgent as the recent events in Pakistan’s Lal Masjid and the arrests of eight terrorists, most of them doctors, in the UK shows.

Writing in **Foreign Affairs**, Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis said sometime ago: “The terrorists of September 11 exposed vulnerabilities in the defences of all states,” which necessitated for Bush to preside over “the most sweeping redesign of US grand strategy since the presidency of Franklin D Roosevelt. The basis for Bush’s grand strategy, like Roosevelt’s, comes from the shock of surprise attack and will not change. None of FDR’s successors, Democrat or Republican, could escape the lesson he drew from the events of 7 December, 1941 (Pearl Harbor): that distance alone no longer protected Americans from assaults at the hands of hostile states. Neither Bush nor his successors, whatever their party, can ignore what the events of 11 September, 2001, made clear: the deterrence against states affords insufficient protection from attacks by gangs, which can now inflict the kind of damage only states fighting wars used to be able to achieve.”

Terrorism breeds in failing states. Pakistani military rulers know that breeding and financing terrorists can bite back. Britain and other European countries too have begun to realise that Islamic terrorism is growing in their midst and must be purged whatever the cost. Even lionising a glib satirist like Salman Rushdie can be hazardous.

No one will disagree with President Bush that war against terrorism is a struggle for civilisation. He has many successes and has made many mistakes, but now it is a question of consolidating the gains in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is unthinkable that the US will totally withdraw from the Middle East and Central Asia. Strategically speaking, there’s too much at stake in the region and the US Congress must realise it.

(ND Batra is professor of communications and diplomacy at Norwich University. He is the author of Digital Freedom: How Much Can You Handle?)

China's sullied image

A strong global reputation matters

From The Statesman

Let’s see how long it will take China, Inc. to refurbish its sullied image of selling contaminated toothpaste, farm-raised catfish, shrimp, eel, pet foods (responsible for numerous deaths), toys (with lead paint), electric goods, and poor quality tyres responsible for hundreds of accidents in the United States.

Since China’s economic boom depends upon exports, China, Inc. is dumping poorly inspected goods on the global market. India, Inc. should be on the alert about the quality of its products and services. The whole world is watching.

Reputation matters. Reputation is the foundation of trust and loyalty, which gives people confidence in dealing with a corporation or for that matter a country. A strong reputation and endearing image of a company or a country can help it to rise from any serious crisis. A company’s identity and its image are the building blocks of its reputation.

Identity is a company’s assertion of its individuality and embodies the company’s vision, its reason for being there. It re-enforces its business case. The image of a company on the other hand is the distinct memorable impression in the minds of the people as they interact with the company. Together, identity and image raise the profile of a company, its reputation, its significance beyond commercialism and profit-making. People’s perception of a company, however, emerges from the totality of the impression created by the company, sometimes in spite of itself.

While a company could do its utmost to build and control its identity, it cannot totally control the image, the impression, the perception, the public has about it. A company’s identity and its image are never the same, but closer they are, better is the reality, which is the basis of the company’s reputation. A company’s name, symbols, products, services, employees, buildings, all its tangibles and intangibles, are not merely a cluster of facts; rather, they constitute a dynamic system that creates specific values and meanings for the stakeholders.

While it is possible and desirable to achieve consistency in identity, Apple’s (iPod, iTune and iPhone), for example, the image of a company should no be expected to be the same in every country. McDonalds’s and Pizza Hut are two of the many fast food chains in the United States but in India they have the image of a desirable American food, in spite of the fact that the identity of the company, its sounds and images, are by and large the same in India as in the United States. The corporate identity of a company must embody its core values and the sums and substance of what is called its business case. Identity as the visualisation of a company’s mission answers the unasked question: Who are we, and what are we doing here? Through logos, mottos, slogans and brands, a company enacts the drama of self-presentation and builds its image and perception in the mind of the public and various stakeholders.

While a consistent and well-defined identity of a company and the image it projects before the public helps it to build a perception of the company what it stands for, the reputation is built over time and depends upon how the company conducts itself in conformity with its identity and image.

China-Darfur, China-Olympics, China-slave labour are in the same perceptual domain.

A strong reputation matters because it enhances a company’s attractiveness, softens criticism, and creates public support for the company’s activities. Customers don’t mind paying a little extra for a product when it comes from a company with a strong reputation for reliability. It becomes easy for a company to implement changes and introduce innovations based on the trust created by the company’s good reputation.

A company with a strong reputation attracts talented employees, who like to stay with the company for personal and professional growth. The likeability of a company by its employees and their day-to-day interaction with various stakeholders adds to the reputation of the company. Employees become the corporeal identity of the company embodying its values and mission. But when a CEO is found with his pants down or his hand in the cookie jar, the reputation comes crashing down.

Corporate advertising can be a very effective communications tool for projecting the image of a company in support of its business case. Moreover, it can be an uncensored and unfiltered voice of a company, especially when the company comes under media attack. Institutional advertising can be used to express a company’s views on various political, social, and environmental issues as well as in support of its corporate vision.

When two companies merge to form a new company, corporate advertising can be effectively used to inform stakeholders about the new vision of the emergent company. The newly merged company needs to forge an image and identity that are new and at the same time incorporate the past trust and traditions of the original companies. A case in point is AT&T corporate advertising that presents its new global vision symbolised by the space image of the earth and the company’s networking abilities. Building on the strength of the two telecommunications companies (AT&T and SBC), the new company began to create a new brand image and identity for itself.

AT&T has now become associated with iPhone and its reputation will rise and fall with the quality of service it provides to customers. Issue or advocacy advertising is very important for companies, especially when they come under a threat from special interest groups, civic society activists, and the government. Since issue advertising deals with controversial topics, it should be handled very carefully. Issue advertising reaches the stakeholders of a company directly; therefore it can counteract the unfriendly opinions of journalists who have negative views of the company. An imaginative and creative corporate advertising programme can enhance the reputation of a company and increase its likeability in the minds of various stakeholders.

Likeability generates goodwill and creditability, which are very precious assets for a company to attract and retain good and highly skilled employees.

In some ways countries that depend upon external trade are no different from global corporations. They depend upon international public goodwill. While China may suppress public opinion at home, it cannot tell Americans to shut up and accept whatever shoddy goods it exports to the country.

ND Batra is the author of Digital Freedom: How Much Can You Handle?

Tagore: Such is Thy pleasure

Thou Hast Made Me Endless
Part IV

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: rajarch@cal3.vsnl.net.in

Poem No: 10 of Patraput written at Santiniketan in 1935, 6 years before the Poet’s death.

[Translator’s note: Through his various dissertations Tagore lucidly explained different parts of Upanishada, the scripture for mankind left by the Indian sages 4000 years back. Like me who do not have access to the original Upanishada for lack of command over Sanskrit, the language in which it was composed, may find Tagore’s essays/poems as the best guide to Upanishada. Thus is one of the numerous annotations on Upanishada by Tagore -]

“Those who are craven take this world as comprising impediments only which impair their vision and hope. So they know only the impediments as the truth, but not the real truth. But he who is great, sees the truth instantly beyond all impediments. That is why there is a gulf of difference between their thoughts. When everybody is in chorus that they see only darkness, he can assert- “Beyond all darkness I have seen Him who is great and luminous." (Upanishada)

This annotation resounds in this poem also which helps us share the poet’s glimpse of the ultimate truth beyond the daily torments of this mortal world.

For long is carrying my body
Small moments’ rage, enmity and anxiety –
Overshadowing soul’s liberty
With his own ambiguity.

With Truth’s mask Truth he will conceal,
His doll with Death’s clay build he will;
Yet, Death will trace in it if,
It will be his grief.
His play is for self deception,
But that it is play is never his conviction.
Offerings to Death he will relentlessly pile,
Spin in rotations of tear and smile;
With the steam and bubbles of woos
And ignominies he boos.
Daily his ego shoots fiery missiles
Only the ashes from void piles.

In search of my inner self
Into the light I delve
That every morning will reveal,
In it, Creation’s serenity to feel.
I take apart my soul from this body
Out of all futile anxiety
Caught in the soiled trap of many an hour
There for ablution in heavenly shower;
Where rests the silent mail
Whose invitation never did I hail.
Then I recall – O Sun,
The saints’ prayer ages back done –
“O Luminous, shrouds your golden bowl
Truth, our final goal;
Unfold it O Gracious!”
Of which I be conscious –
To extend my awakening
Along His rays from horizon every morning.
I pray- O Sun, lift this lid, my body
Comprising atoms and molecules shoddy
Of your radiating mass
That hide the Ultimate enormous –
Be that mystery revealed in my vision clear;
Your holiest exuberance may I peer.
My innermost truth that was latent
In your vastness without an extent
Along with the un-devised earth
Is yours only, at your mirth.
At your splendor’s brim
Humans sighted their nobility supreme –
That from age to age you did compile
By the Persian Gulf, Himalayas or Nile.
Said they – “Sons of the Immortal we are –
Did vision that Superman
From beyond the darkness, blazing golden.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Also listen to: Hridoy Amar Prokash Holo (Tagore song) - Paromitar Ek Din

Innovate or perish

Keep innovating or you’ll perish

From The Statesman

Technological and economic forces are generating innovations like iPhones. They are creating new opportunities, new wealth and new billionaires.
Global corporations must be opportunistic.
They must always be on the lookout for new ideas and the possibilities of their practical applications; and moreover they should be ready to do so before anyone else does. That is the only way a corporation can go from one exponential change to another and always be on the cutting edge of technology and management.
For global businesses, the best strategy is to look for a technology, an idea or a business method that creates new market space and a cyber-niche that never existed before, and establish market dominance until another one appears and makes it obsolete. But a company doesn’t have to be inventing newer technologies; instead it should be on the lookout for them and adopt them. This is one of the reasons that the US companies are offshoring their businesses abroad because offshoring is inshoring and extension of brainpower.
By offshoring work to India, the United States is gaining brainpower. If we network the world’s best brains, the rate of innovation should increase dramatically. But that also means that the rate of obsolescence too would increase, leading to a state of turbulence, which could be a source of self-renewal or self-destruction.
File sharing in creative expression, for example, in music recording, has been generating turbulence that has necessitated new business models, since lawsuits against piracy don’t work very well. The Internet is challenging old business models. Businesses, however, flourish in a stable environment.
Whatever good or evil Microsoft Corp. might have done because of its monopoly practices, Windows operating system has provided a universal standard and created desktop stability. But some time a unique application could be replaced with a clone without adverse effects or disruption. For example, Netscape’s Navigator, which had reached a critical mass, was overtaken by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
In the digital age, one cannot count on the blessings of killer applications for too long because they have a short life span. Just as transistors transformed the global economy from industrial to an information age, mobile computing and the Internet are transforming the information age to virtual age. Gordon Moore predicted that every 18 months, computing power will double at constant cost and his law has held its sway. The same has been true of the bandwidth, which is becoming faster and cheaper.
Miniaturisation, mobilisation, and speed have gone hand in hand with the power of networks, whose value increases dramatically with each additional node and hotspot. From subways to highways to public buildings, inexpensive digitisation has begun to penetrate all things, enabling them to network and collaborate and become sentient in a manner of speaking. Whatever is digitised can be networked and shared.
Every human activity can be digitally designed and built with an Internet connection. In short, whatever can be networked makes it both a consumer and a supplier of information, which makes the global supply-chain system of information an inexhaustible source of further value added information.
Networked databases can profile potential customers, for example, for greater marketing efficiency through target marketing. Offshoring reduces transaction costs but of course global corporations should have a larger vision than merely reducing transaction costs more effectively. A horizontal or hetrararchical core and ring management structure - a dynamic and stable core of top executives and a fluid and flexible ring of disposable employees, such as outsourced contractors or offshored workers - is the emerging shape of a modern business. And from this point of view, a global corporation is dynamic network of mutually beneficial and productive relationship with workers, business partners and customers. Not bricks and stones, only digits shall rule. That’s the future.
Let’s keep in mind that the networked world, a world of collaboration first began when telegraph reached a critical mass in 1843, making possible the rise of Associated Press, the first network of collaborative information gathering and distribution. However, not all ideas and inventions have the same impact on society.
Chinese invented the moveable clay and metal type printing press in 1041 with little social consequences for the Chinese society. But when a German craftsman Johannes Gutenberg re-invented the movable type printing press in 1436-1440 and published the Bible in 1452, he couldn’t have predicted the unintended consequences. In the hands of Martin Luther, printing became a revolutionary application, which he used with a devastating effect against the Church and unleashed Protestant Reformation that led to prolonged civil strife in many European nations.
We do not know how the convergence of innovations and emergence of newer practical applications will impact our daily lives and the networked economy in which we work today. For example, how iPhone and its competitors will change the real world as they incorporate the virtual social worlds of Second Life, MySpace and YouTube and the mirror worlds of Google Earth is difficult to say. But an innovative corporation will be on the lookout for a killer application emerging from the great convergence that is taking place now and adapt to its own advantage before anyone else does it.
(ND Batra is professor of communications and diplomacy at Norwich University and is the author of Digital Freedom)

Keeping young minds open

Letter from university campus

From The Statesman
When I look at the face of a student sitting in my class, I do not think that one day he might become a corporate killer, a drug peddler or a suicide bomber. I firmly hope my students will become proud and successful professionals, parents and responsible citizens as most of them do.

Once upon a beautiful day at Morehead State University, long ago, a school nestling in the rolling hills of eastern Kentucky and Daniel Boone Forest, I was teaching an undergraduate class when I heard a gentle knock at the door. As I opened the door, I saw two cops standing solemnly and one of them, after apologising for the intrusion, said that they would like to speak to one of my students, John Doe. He asked politely and authoritatively: “Is he there?” It’s a drug inquiry, the other said. I was shocked and puzzled. Should I turn in one of my students to the cops, or turn them away making a plausible excuse for his absence?

The classroom, unlike a temple or church, is not a sanctuary; but nor is it a public forum. It is a place of awakening and certainly my students were awakened that beyond the world of textbooks there is another world, with which they are not totally unfamiliar. I closed the door behind me and returned to the class. The students, most of whom were girls, devoured me with their inquisitive and anxious looks and after a moment of extreme embarrassment and discomfort I asked John to leave the classroom. He looked at the window but understanding his drift I said, no, go from the front door. After two weeks of absence John returned, presumably on bail, and asked me if he could do the makeup work and continue in the course. As per the university rules, it was for me to decide whether to allow him to return to the class after such a long unexcused period of absence.

By this time the campus had learnt the truth about John, and I felt that it wasn’t exactly like allowing a confessed killer to sit in my class; nonetheless, it was somewhat of an ethical dilemma. Most people think that ethics is about what’s right and wrong within a given moral system into which they are born, but it is more than that. Ethics sometimes is about making a choice between two equally competing values or between two wrongs, and choosing the lesser one in compelling circumstances. Consider for a moment the ethical dilemma of a doctor who has two equally desperate patients and both likely to die, but he has only one kidney available for transplant. What should be the basis of his decision when the Hippocratic oath enjoins him: “First do no harm”? His decision, however rational it might sound, would let one of them die, which probably would remind you of George Bernard Shaw’s play, Doctor’s Dilemma.

I begin my fall semester law and ethics class at Norwich University with the ethical dilemma posed by Immanuel Kant, the eighteenth century philosopher. If a man with a handgun knocks at your door, asking about another man who is hiding in your basement and with whom he wants to settle an old score, what would you do? Will you let him in and drag the man out to be shot, or tell a lie to save his life?

Both killing and lying are morally wrong according to the Christian morality, the framework within which my students have been growing up. Whatever the post-modernists might say, I think moral relativism is a worst form of immorality. But what was my moral framework under which I made the ethical choice to let John sit in my class, in spite of his dubious past? I am personally a mixed-up person. I grew up in a Hindu family where karma, compassion and truth are regarded as the highest virtues; nonetheless, the superstructure on this foundation has been that of post-Christianity Western secular humanism. And when John confronted me with the ethical dilemma, I recalled Oscar Wilde’s notorious words: “The difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” John would have a future if he completed his education, but if he were dismissed from the university he might become a drug dealer and harm the society and self-destruct.

I wasn’t bargaining like a game theorist.

Norwich University, once upon a time, faced an ethical dilemma about the presence of the Indonesian military-sponsored students. The American people used to watch on television the atrocities committed by the Indonesian military against innocent people of East Timor (before their independence) and some in the media accused the university of unintentional complicity. Should the university have let the students continue in the programme hoping that they would return to Indonesia as good citizen-soldiers in service of their country rather than killers of the innocent? A private university depends upon the public goodwill and must be accountable for its actions, including its investment decisions and foreign collaborations. The university gave the Indonesian students a chance and let them continue hoping that they would do good to their country when they returned.

Today American campuses, in spite of a diffused threat of terrorism, remain open and welcome everyone to their portals. The United States needs a steady inflow of talented young people without whom its brainpower will dwindle and its Silicon Valley will dry up.

(Dr ND Batra is the author of Digital Freedom: How much Can You Handle?)

With a friend like China, who needs enemies?

Not easy sleeping with a friend like China

From The Statesman

China is not an easy country to deal with. Chinese diplomats are tough negotiators; they use whatever leverage they have and in the process create more opportunities for themselves, as the American, Australian and European experiences show.

On a recent visit to the United States, the Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi yielded not an inch in negotiation, not on the revaluation of the Chinese currency, Yuan, which gives China an undue advantage; not on trade surplus, which has ballooned to $232.5 billion last year; and not intellectual property, which costs Americans billion of dollars. The U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former head of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., who took over the job last year, believes that Chinese are more likely to respond to negotiations than to trade restrictions, and has refused to call them currency manipulators, hoping against hope that they would come around.
He instituted Strategic Economic Dialogue with China and the second meeting, which was held in Washington with Wu in May, produced no results regarding currency or any other economic issue. China has all the advantage, why should it give up anything? China is heavily invested in US Treasury notes, which enables Americans to get cheaper loans for buying home mortgages and Chinese goods.
The mounting trade surplus threatens American security and weakens American diplomatic power. China has developed tremendous leverage against the United States, which it uses to its advantage in trade negotiations and to exercise its influence in international conflicts, for example, Iran and Sudan.

China never hesitates to leverage trade advantages for political gains. Australia’s Trade Minister Warren Truss was quoted saying that free trade negotiation with Beijing have “become tortuous,” and insisted that regardless of trade Australia will “deplore abuses of human rights, wherever they occur in the world, even if those abuses occur in countries where we have a strong trading interest.” Chinese have raised serious objections about the current 11-day visit of the Dalai Lama to Australia, warning that the bilateral relations could be adversely affected. “We express our strong dissatisfaction and stern representations over Australia ignoring China and insisting on allowing the Dalai Lama to engage in activities in Australia,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said.
China is now Australia’s biggest trading partner and its most important commodity destination. So far Australia has not yielded to Chinese arm twisting. Keeping with the tradition of openness, Australia’s foreign minister Alexander Downer told Australian television: “China has a very different political system from Australia. I’ve asked the Chinese to respect the way our culture and our political system works. It’s just not a proposition for us to refuse to give someone like the Dalai Lama a visa to visit Australia.” Nonetheless, it is to be seen how long Australia can keep up with its rhetoric on China. Trade might trump decency one day.

China-European relations are entering a difficult phase after more than a decade of upsurge, according to David Shambaugh, Professor and Director, China Policy Program, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, and a fellow at The Brookings Institute. He wrote that the European Commission’s October 2006 white paper, Communication, regarding trade and investment, asked China to change its international behaviour, which included, among other things, requests to: “open its markets and ensure fair market competition”; “protect intellectual property rights”; “end forced technology transfers”; “stop granting prohibited subsidies”; “[ensure] more accountable government”; be more “results oriented with higher quality exchanges and concrete results” in the human rights dialogue; ratify the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; enter into formal dialogue with the EU and “improve transparency” concerning aid policies in Africa; “maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”. Although EU-China dialogue on Partnership and Cooperation Agreement has been continuing, nevertheless, according to Professor Shambaugh, “the EU documents do reflect a change in tone, substance, and approach to China from past precedent.” European Union has begun to take a more realistic look at Chinese trade aggressiveness and nationalistic mercantilism camouflaged as “China’s Peaceful Rise.”

Last week, Ma Ying-jeou, opposition Kuomintang (KMT) presidential candidate in Taiwan, visited India on an officially approved private visit. In the light of China’s blatant claim that Arunachal Pradesh - more than the total area of Ireland (and don’t forget Aksai Chin) - belongs to China, and denial of a visa to an IAS officer from the state, one among a hundred Indian officials purported to visit China, the Taiwan leader’s visit takes a diplomatic significance. It is time for India to understand Chinese soft-gloved aggressiveness and start building its own alliances. A former KMT chairman and a two-term mayor of Taipei, Ma met Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and Rajnath Singh, president of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, for wide-ranging talks. He also visited India’s IT technology centres stating that cooperation between India’s software industry with global pre-eminence and Taiwan’s prominence in computer hardware could be mutually beneficial.
Taiwan and India do not have official diplomatic relations but they have maintained business ties with trade amounting to $3 billion dollars, a pittance compared with the $100 billion between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. It is time for India-Taiwan relations to grow. “Certainly we appreciate the opportunity to come here, particularly as a candidate for the presidential election. This is a very sensitive role,” Ma said. “But on the other hand, I also appreciate the pragmatic attitude in doing that.” Taiwan needs breathing space and relations with India will serve both the countries. Mark his words in Delhi: “I stand for the Renaissance of Taiwan,” said Ma. “If Taiwan has to move forward it has to open up to the rest of the world including China,” he said.

In dealing with China, India cannot depend upon the generosity of “our greatest neighbour,” as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a spirit of irrational exuberance, in fact another form of Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai-ism of the Nehruite era that led to the 1962 humiliations. Dr Singh is certainly well versed in Adam Smith but it is time for him to read Kautilya’s Arthashastra. India must develop diplomatic and economic leverages to negotiate with China, including building durable international alliances, strong missile defence deterrence, creative public diplomacy, and double-digit economic growth with special attention to north-eastern states, the neglected seven sisters.
(Dr ND Batra, the author of Digital Freedom, teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University,USA)

Global Talent Hunt

Keeping global knowledge workers happy

From The Statesman

“It’s foolish to believe today that the smartest people are in one nation,” said Henning Kagermann, chief executive of SAP (Germany) in an interview with Steve Lohr of The New York Times. SAP has 3,000 software engineers in India.
And thank God there is no quota and reservation system in the private industry in India. A global company can select the best. But the question is how do you keep them since competition for headhunting is severe.

In a piece, Beyond the Information Revolution, published in The Atlantic Monthly (1999), Peter F Drucker, the management guru, said that “bribing knowledge workers,” who are leading the Information Revolution, with stock options and other incentives may in the long run prove nonproductive and even disastrous for the United States in the 21st century. We need to revamp the status of the class of workers who have many career choices.

A strange fate hit the Victorian England, where most of the technologies of the Industrial Revolution were developed, Drucker noted. Because of the British class system which valued a “gentleman” more than engineers, traders and entrepreneurs, the industrial leadership passed on to the United States and Germany as early as 1850s. England bred Cecil Rhodes, Robert Clive, East India Company (a trading rather than a manufacturing venture) and commercial banks but no venture capitalist, like JP Morgan in the United States, a person “who has the means and mentality to finance the unexpected and unproven.” Drucker’s observation about the 19th century England might be questionable, especially when you consider that with the crushing of the Indian Mutiny in 1857 (or the First War of Independence, as some Indians are calling it today), Britain had become the master of the world, almost. The British lords and ladies could not hug their sweaty traders and technologists into their bosoms; instead they sent them overseas to build an empire for her Majesty. Their “mental geography” had become a captive of the empire, not of the railroads as it had happened in the United States.

Drucker was right about the venture capitalist who has been mostly responsible for the information technology growth in the United States, though we should not forget the role of the federal government because initially The National Science Foundation and the Pentagon financed the development of the Internet. More than the venture capitalist and the blossoming e-commerce, it is the idea of the Internet — open standards and communal sharing of software — which has bred the Information Revolution.

Drucker wrote that at the heart of the Information Revolution is not the computer, which at best is a tool to routinise information processes; nor is it software, which is nothing but “the reorganization of traditional work, based on centuries of experience, through the application of knowledge and especially of systematic, logical analysis.” It is the creation of knowledge that is fueling the current wave of the Information Revolution. It is time to re-evaluate what social position knowledge workers should occupy and what recognition should be given to their value system. If the United States treats knowledge workers as England treated its engineers and traders, as social inferiors, the 21st century, warned Drucker, would be the beginning of its decline and fall.

About two decades ago, Paul M Kennedy of Yale issued a similar warning in his book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Economic Powers (1989) that since the United States had become a global cop and was spreading its economic resources too thinly, it too would meet the fate of the earlier imperial powers, which had declined by overextending themselves. But instead of economic and political decline, the United States has been going through one of the most unprecedented economic growth periods in human history.

And since Professor Kennedy’s forecasting, the US has continued to be the sole superpower with $13 trillion plus growing economy, in spite of terrorism and the Iraq war. Although it is important to study the past, history cannot predict the future.

The future economic growth, Drucker wrote, would not come from the booming stock market and Internet industry; rather from those industries where knowledge worker would be more important than the financier or the capitalist, such as in biotechnology where the gestation period is long and rewards for workers cannot be stock-market driven. He suggested that since “performance in these new knowledge industries will come to depend upon running the institution so as to attract, hold, and motivate knowledge workers,” we have to do something else, something symbolic. Call knowledge workers “fellow executives and partners.”

But the problem will not go away with symbolic gestures. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Tamara J Erickson, the president of the Concourse Group (Boston) and Lynda Gratton, a professor of management practice at London Business School, recognised that finding and retaining top talent is tough. Companies must communicate to their highly mobile footloose employees, “what it means to work here,” by providing them “signature experience,” something more than compensation schemes, health care benefits, “a visible, distinctive element of an organisation’s overall employee experience.” It is “bringing distinctiveness to life,” along with attractive salary and fringe benefits that can “dramatically improve employee engagement and performance” and also retain them.
Nonetheless, in the knowledge hubs of the 21st century there will be “hired workers.” You may call them principals and partners and give them flexible work hours or freedom to work-wherever-you-go with BlackBerrys, iPhones and wireless laptops. But there will still be the need for command and control and the need for a corporate vision that holds global knowledge creators together in a digital beehive. To paraphrase JM Barrie, the Scottish playwright, there will always be hewers of wood and drawers of water from the digital well.

(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University, USA)
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Amidst the eternal bonfire: Tagore

Thou Hast Made Me Endless
Part-IV

From RAJAT DAS GUPTA
Calcutta
rajarch@cal3.vsnl.net.in


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. Poem No: 5 of the book Janmadine (On My Birthday) written in April 1940, shortly before the Poet’s death in 1941

[Translator’s note: The two visions of the Poet that may be noted in this poem are, the cosmic origin of man’s existence and his progress for a supreme goal as an international community, both being the intent of the Creator and both of which we miss in our mundane life. He never lost sight of this panorama even amidst his severe ailments for quite long before his demise when he wrote this poem. He reveals this broadness of vision in his book Viswa Bharati (=World University) while explaining this objective of education in his University (chapter 6 of the book) as follows –
“ I know, to work up such an attitude in our students’ mind is a great object. That man has been born in a vast family in this earth with such a great heritage – orientation toward this perception should be firm. In these miserable days of our country, object of education to many is a job. This deprives us of the treasures of the world, stifling the link of Anandam (Heavenly joy) with mankind as a whole. But man must know where is his right. Just as he has to harmonize his mind with nature, so he should for a union with the entire mankind.
……that is why in their search for knowledge humans are rushing to the North Pole, to the interior of Adrica accepting unbearable pain and even risking life. In search of work, wisdom and idea, they have taken rugged paths. They have known ‘Bhumeba Sukham’ [i.e. Man’s happiness lies on the paths of pain- Upanishada (ancient Indian scripture in Sanskrit language)]. We, in our country, have forgotten this and so we have crippled our soul within our narrow objectives for a limited living.
While establishing this University, at the outset I thought of liberating our students from their narrow outlook and cowardice. The Ganges, that has originated at the mountain top, flows through various lands and its water may be put to small and big purposes. Similarly, the knowledge that springs from the heights of human perceptions, directed towards the infinite along various directions perennially, should not be confined within narrow limits of our personal interests; but we should take dip in it for our ablution where it is boundless in its universal dimension.
‘sa tapohatapyata sa tapostapta idam sarbamasrijita yadidam kincha’ i.e. ‘the Creator is on meditation to create everything’ (Upanishada). His meditation is inherent in every atom and molecule and so there is continuous friction, rush of energy and ceaseless orbiting among those. Man’s meditation too flows along with the Creator’s and he is not a mere onlooker. Because, Man is also a creator and his main mission is creation. That he piles up is not his best revelation, which is in his sacrifice and there is his true self. That is why God’s universal seat of meditation is also his. Man is a sage which he is to appreciate and must perceive as truth all the dedications of everybody of every time and of every country.”]

As the eightieth year I enter
Of my life, it is my wonder –
The silent millions of stars –
Their ceaseless showers
Rush in bewildering speed
The infinite space, aimlessly to feed.

Within that boundless dark
My existence abruptly did spark
Amidst the eternal bonfire
In the chain of centuries never to tire.
In that earth I did appear, where
At the seabed from the swamps mere
On the vast lap of the inanimate
Life in slimes did vibrate
In its myriad branches to flower
To divulge its profound wonder.
The dusk of inchoate existence held firm
A stupor for ages on the animaldom;
On whose meditation
At countless days’ and nights’ completion
Appeared in slow pace
Man in life’s stage with his grace?
Lamps lit up there one by one
Newer significance to earn;
Amidst vast illumination
Man observes his future in brilliant revelation.

On this earth’s stage
To evince from age to age
Act by act, Man’s wisdom
There I too did come
As that drama’s performer
Along with many a other.
I too had my role
That curtain to up roll;
That is my marvel utmost-
Mother Earth that does host
The heavenly soul;
For what goal-
In her sky, light, air,
Soil, seas and mounts bear
What deep resolve
Around the Sun to revolve?
Stitched in that mysterious string
On this Earth I did spring
Eighty years ago,
A few more to go.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Poem: To Bloom [Phool Fotano in Bengali by Rabindranathnath Tagore from his book ‘Kheya’ (Ferry) (1906-1907 period)].

[Translator’s note: However much man may try to emulate God in creating beautiful things, his creations can never match God’s. The seemingly simplest entity in God’s animate world (and even the inanimate one)), is an object of wonder, a flower being exemplary thereof which manifests from God’s meditation for it over ages. The pragmatists may try to explain this phenomenon by Darwin’s ‘theory of evolution’ or like dogmas to gauge this unfathomable mystery of creation, yet, at the back of their mind they know –
“…..The path of Thy creation
Thou have strewn with deception….”

There may never be dearth of braggarts to beguile themselves with the belief that man has caught up with God, if not for anything else, but at least for his ability to-day to ‘clone’ even a human being, what to speak of a lamb or flower! This complacence notwithstanding, the fact is, the great feat of ‘cloning’ wholly stands on the biological base evolved by God over eternity, which man can never brush aside to start from the scratch. Man is simply a captive to the Arcanum of God’s creative process, being its infinitesimal bye product, thus ever incapable to perceive the whole of it, though often with height of audacity that he is God’s peer, maybe to His amusement. So, all brilliance of man notwithstanding, in whichever field, the poet’s ‘no confidence’ in man, as this poem depicts, is hardly belied.]

Bloom you can’t,
None of you –
Verbose however,
Despite all endeavor,
All your flaunt,
Passions day and night
And strokes at the stalk
With all your might,
None, with all your power
Can bloom a flower.

With your relentless sight
Its tenderness you may blight,
Its bunches you may tear apart
In dust to smart.
Amidst your babel
If its lips will reveal
Its hue and fragrance
Will not radiate thence.
So, by no means oh man,
Flowering a bud you can.

But, He who can bloom
Does as His boon –
Only opens His eyes
And, as their ray lies
On the bud there,
Spells of animation bare;
So, He who can bloom,
Of His own can groom
The flower tender
With all its wonder.
At His breath, in an instant,
The flower does bend,
Poised for a flight
Stretching its wings light
Of the leaves
As the wind heaves.
With décor of many a hue
Pining for a passionate clue
How one to entice –
Spreads its fragrance nice.
He who can bloom a flower,
At ease graces the bower.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *