Pursuing the American dream

Pursuing the American dream without racial preferences

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Senator Barack Obama’s rise in the US political firmament has been captivating global audiences, though it is too early to say that he will enter the White House. Many commentators see him metamorphosing American society in the manner of John F Kennedy.

His soaring eloquence sometime echoes Martin Luther King Jr, who audaciously hoped that one day the US would become a just society. But apart from idealism, there are other forces at work. An open democratic society like the US, which thrives on innovation and marketplace competitiveness, needs the best to rise to the top to manage its affairs.

Discrimination on the basis of race and gender are handicaps to a merit-based society and they are becoming less important. No wonder the US is the place to dream impossible dreams and make them real.Everyone talks about the American dream, but what is it? The American dream is a heightened state of aspiration that drives a person to break barriers and achieve his or her goals, regardless of the background the person comes from. The emphasis is upon hard work, ingenuity and education. It is a challenge of the marketplace: to compete and create space for oneself as perhaps it has begun to happen in India to some extent.

You can see it in the life of a man like Andy Grove, who escaped the Nazis and the communists and came to the US as a refugee. He built a microchip empire, Intel, which runs the information superhighway and serves America’s global interests. But he did not do it through the benefits of affirmative action and racial quotas. Nor does Intel, of which he was the CEO, hire people based on quotas, racial preferences, compensatory guilt, or the need for diversity.

The American dream thrives on competitiveness, not on affirmative action.But don’t affirmative action preferences create a just society? It has been argued that the rise of General Colin Powell, who reached the top in the US military with an extraordinary record of achievements and served the Bush Administration as Secretary of State in a very difficult era of US diplomacy, wouldn’t have been possible without affirmative action. Affirmative action might have opened the door for General Powell, but it did not push him to the top and make him one of the most esteemed Americans living today. In his book, My American Journey, he wrote, “Equal rights and equal opportunity...do not mean preferential treatment. Preferences, no matter how well intended, ultimately breed resentment among the non-preferred. And preferential treatment demeans the achievements that minority Americans win by their own efforts.”

Consider the achievements of stage-screen actor and author Bill Cosby, pop culture’s global icon Michael Jackson, basketball’s most glorious athlete Michael Jordan, and golf’s incomparable Tiger Woods. Their rise was powered by their guts and talents. Such remarkable achievements would be diminished if they were associated with racial preferences and quotas.What Americans ask for is a level playing field to build their dreams on. As General Powell said, “If affirmative action means programs that provide equal opportunities, then I am all for it. If it leads to preferential treatment or helps those who no longer need help, I am opposed. I benefited from equal opportunity and affirmative action in the Army, but I was not shown preference.”General Powell rose to the top on the strength of his character and intelligence in an institution ~ the US military ~ that thrives on these qualities. But what about those who live in ghettos, inner cities and poor rural areas? “If a history of discrimination has made it difficult for certain Americans to meet standards, it is only fair to provide temporary means to help them catch up and compete on equal terms. Affirmative action in the best sense promotes equal consideration, not reverse discrimination,” wrote General Powell.In spite of the spectacular rise of Mr Obama, race and religion do matter in America.

Prejudice is widely prevalent; sometimes it is the colour of your skin, not the content of your character or merit, which determines where you live and work; and how a policeman treats you in the middle of night when he sees you at a street corner; or when you go to the airport and you are “randomly selected” for special inspection because you look like a Muslim. But these are the imperfections of a dynamic society.

Decades of affirmative action policy, which in reality amounted to creating preferential quotas for minorities, have not created a colour-race-gender blind society. No wonder affirmative action has been falling into disfavour as public policy. In 1998, California voters ended preferential treatment based on race and gender for public employment, education and contracting by approving a ballot initiative.

The University of California, Berkeley, and other top schools of the California higher education system no longer admit African-Americans and Hispanics by lowering admission standards. For a long time, the dominant mood in the country has been: end racial preferences because they create reverse discrimination.Why is diversity ~ of race, religion, and opinion ~ important?

Diversity is socially desirable because it breeds new ideas that enrich society; and, moreover, it encourages tolerance and the acceptance of the idea that the US is increasingly becoming multicultural and multiracial. The challenge is to use limited affirmative action to give some deserving people a headstart without creating entitlements, to make possible the rise of people like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and General Powell.

But look at millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere. They do not ask for affirmative action or preferential treatment. All they ask for is a chance to work and build a good life for their families and in the process they add to the US’s wealth.That is what Mr Obama has done. He hoped and believed in the essential goodness of the US and is now generating new hope in the hearts of people.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Indians lagging behind in corporate social responsibility

From The Statesman

ND Batra
Last week BBC World News carried a report on how in the midst of plenty hundreds of thousands of children in India are dying of malnourishment. The dinnertime videos of wasting children in Madhya Pradesh were heart-wrenching. The same day, The New York Times published a report about high-towered, gated communities in Gurgaon and other places in India rising amidst sprawling shantytowns. You wonder where the 9 per cent annual growth has been going.

With food and oil prices going up every day and the spectre of starvation rising in many poor developing countries, the governments cannot talk about gross domestic product (GDP) without assuring the public that it is being distributed equitably. Nor can global corporations keep themselves aloof from the sufferings of the people. They cannot afford to look after only shareholders’ interests. Some global corporations have begun to realise that their social responsibility goes beyond profit-making.

Addressing a shareholders’ meeting last week, Mr H Lee Scott Jr, the chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores, said, “People’s expectations of us ~ and of corporations in general ~ changed…. It is clear that today people look at Wal-Mart as a solution. And we want to be seen that way. We want to act that way.” Society will hold Mr Scott’s feet to the fire on his promises.

The global retailer ~ which generates sales of $374.5 billion ~ buys cheap and sells at low prices. It was perceived a few years ago as a damned sinner, one of the worst global exploiters. But today with its avowed mission of protecting the environment and with a $4 prescription healthcare drug plan its image has improved along with its profits.

That’s how Reliance and the Tatas should be judged, not only because they grab MTN or bring Jaguar/Land Rover to India and fulfil the fantasy of the elite about India becoming a superpower.

“Regardless of who wins the election in November ~ and what party they are from ~ we stand ready to work with the new President and the next Congress,” Mr Scott told shareholders. Have you ever heard Indian corporate executives talk with such confidence about their companies’ social responsibilities? Corporate social responsibility is a form of business to people ~ diplomacy, an effort to win the hearts and minds of the people, which is essential in an open society.

A corporation’s report about its social responsibility, which can stand public scrutiny, should be the goal. Some corporations use their social responsibility activities as a means of building social capital and goodwill. If a company has a code of ethics, it should be known to the public how the company is following the code. Of course, every corporation should have a code of ethics.

The European Union (EU) might seem a loosey-goosey congeries of states, but when it comes to dealing with US global corporations like GE, Microsoft, Apple, for example, or an export juggernaut like China, EU takes a united stand. One should not underestimate the growing power of Brussels in spite of the recent setback when Ireland voters refused to ratify the proposed governing treaty. Instead of getting help from Washington, US global corporations have been developing their corporate outreach programmes to be seen as people-friendly.

All major corporations, Boeing, Microsoft, Google, for example, have their own corporate diplomats who use the same tools and talents as political diplomats do in dealing with international crises. Many of them are retired ambassadors, state department officials and military officers; and they know how to communicate with global stakeholders. In The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy, Mr TR Reid wrote, “The Europeans were concerned with bigness itself ~ the fear that a company with an overwhelming presence in certain markets would use its sheer size to drive out competitors, and then drive up prices for consumers.”Since some crisis or the other is likely to hit a global corporation, what kind of corporate policy will work?

Instead of pulling out in a huff it is better to lie low and wait for the situation to improve. Even in Venezuela, the fifth largest oil-producing country, some oil companies have decided to stick around, hoping that the situation will get better. In some countries, for example, KFC and McDonald’s outlets have been set on fire, demolished or boycotted by anti-global activists; nonetheless, business operations on the whole have continued. Instead of quitting altogether, holding back further direct investment or even curtailment may have a salutary effect. At the same time a global company should do what Wal-Mart has been trying to do in these economic distressful times ~ become part of the solution.The home government’s backing is important but help should be sought only when all other avenues have been explored.

Global companies should develop their own diplomatic resources, including relations with the local news media and coalition-building with local interest groups. Europeans, like Indians, are very sensitive to US government interference on behalf of its global companies.

Although an early awareness system could help predict many problems before they turn into crises, not every catastrophic event can be predicted. No one thought the long simmering Tibet problem would suddenly erupt when China was getting ready to shine on the world stage as an upcoming superpower; nor that an earthquake would devastate an entire province. Such events fall into the category of what Mr Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls the “Black Swan”, nevertheless, if a corporation has built enough social capital, people are likely to support it in a crisis.

Sustainable growth, affordable healthcare and poverty-reduction are the chief concerns of society, which corporate leadership cannot ignore. Perhaps there is money to be made in reaching out to people at the bottom of the pyramid, in slums and shantytowns, as Mr CK Prahalad and other management gurus have been saying.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

Gathering Wisdom from Web 2.0

Mining wisdom from Web 2.0 collaboration

From The Statesman
ND Batra

The wisdom of the government is limited by its hierarchical structure, which restricts free flow of ideas, thus creating myopia. That is perhaps one of the reasons for recurrent man-made catastrophes, for example, terrorist attacks. Every time there is an attack, the government makes the same analysis and comes to the same conclusion.

If the government were to seek information from all available sources, not only from its officials who are segregated into departments and agencies but also from the people at large, intelligence, forecasting and decision-making could be better and problem-solving more socially satisfying. That is equally true of large corporations and institutions that have a top-down power structure, which may be good for command and control but is destructive of creativity.

In a knowledge-driven, networked world, creative ideas can arise anywhere. An innovative solution to a problem could be the consequence of collaboration among a dispersed group of people working on a project or the work of a genius. Wikipedia is an example of how collaboration can create a pretty good compendium of knowledge. A similar collaborative platform could be created for predicting future events, for example, a market bubble or a terrorist attack.

The most important point in the age of social networking and collaborative problem-solving is that geographically dispersed people and those who traditionally worked in isolated dens now have the means, such as constantly evolving digital platforms, to work together and enhance innovation, creation of knowledge and engage in cutting-edge scholarship. This is what is called Web 2.0, the next evolutionary stage of the Internet that makes social and collaborative networking such as Facebook, YouTube and blogging possible. Keeping in mind that crowds can be fickle and unreliable (vide Julius Caesar), it is still possible to tap into the collective wisdom of a large group of people for problem solving.Of course, we need both higher-level creativity and routine knowledge-creation and innovation. The modern world of globalised business cannot survive without higher or lower ends in the knowledge supply chain. We need the wisdom both of experts and of the masses. While you have to pay for experts, the wisdom of the masses can be mined via Web 2.0 collaborative platforms. In their own interest, many corporations are facilitating and encouraging their employees to build networks, share ideas with their peers and collaborate on projects even though they are divided by time zones, continents and cultures. Corporate blogging is one of the means of gathering grassroots intelligence.

In order to maximise innovation, collaborating organisations, governments and institutions need to break barriers of poor communication and insularity without which dispersed expertise cannot be leveraged to create new ideas that can be turned into products and services for marketing or increased organisational efficiencies.

In the digital age, poor communication occurs because of structural and bureaucratic barriers and because people who have expert power in one field fail to appreciate new ideas in others. One reason why intelligence agencies could not foresee the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US was poor collaboration. But that situation has been remedied to a great extent. Sometime collaboration fails because it is limited to very few people in partnering organisations, so if some key expert decides to leave, the network is weakened or collapses.

To build collaboration for innovation it is essential to make an inventory of individual expertise and figure out how they complement each other and bring them into an informal platform to share ideas.The challenge is how to integrate innovation activities and unique knowledge around the world as effectively as global supply chains integrate labour, raw materials, finance and marketing. Networking has the potential to combat inertia because a node (a knowledge group) cannot sit idle too long.

Collaboration need not be limited to regional or national organisations in the age of outsourcing, when it is possible to have a 24-hour workday with three or four knowledge hubs spread across the globe. Work must flow constantly across times zones, building on shared brainpower, each knowledge hub validating (checking upon each other’s errors) and adding value to the work done by the other, thus, hastening testing, vetting, shaping and completing the final project. In cyberspace, time zones can be turned into an asset.

Another challenge for IT geeks in knowledge hubs is to create a system that is capable of aggregating and accessing available sources of knowledge and mining all modes of information, whether audio, video, cartographic or textual in the form of a visual map, a landscape.And finally an IT system should be capable of customising knowledge as per individual or group needs. For example, an IT system should be capable of automatically converting a report about a disaster such as an earthquake or a terrorist act into various formats, such as newspaper, radio, television, as well as for mobile devices such as cell phones to which editorial value can be added subsequently. This is a way of bringing experts and non-experts together to utilise each other’s wisdom.

In the age of Web 2.0 globalisation, leadership success lies in exploiting and pooling brainpower within the organisation as well as outside and creating an environment of enthusiasm and participation for solving problems, whether of energy or insurgency.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

India needs an Iron Man

Why a ‘Jaipur’ will never happen in the USA

From The Statesman

ND Batra

Unlike their Indian counterparts, American law-enforcement authorities are absolutely convinced that terrorism can be prevented. Whenever an attack occurs anywhere in the world, the US Homeland Security authorities redouble their vigilance and refurbish their plans to meet any contingency. Grim determination is writ large on their hawk-eyed faces. That’s why “Jaipur” will never happen in the United States.

In October 2007, President George Bush issued an updated ‘National Strategy for Homeland Security’, which emphasised that “we cannot simply rely on defensive approaches and well-planned response and recovery measures. We recognize that our efforts also must involve offense at home and abroad” (italics added).

In contrast, Indian authorities are essentially reactive, not even defensive. They wait for a calamity to hit before they stir themselves with a few public statements of outrage, promising action but letting apathy and amnesia take over until another terrorist attacks occurs. India is in the grip of a vicious cycle.

In contrast, the US strategy “provides a common framework” through which not only the federal, state and local governments work but also “the private and non-profit sectors, communities, and individual citizens” are actively included in homeland security efforts. The strategy aims at developing a “Culture of Preparedness that permeates all levels of society ~ from individual citizens, businesses, and non-profit organizations to Federal, State, local, and Tribal government officials and authorities”.

I have not heard anyone in India talking about a cultural of anticipation and readiness.The Department of Homeland Security is always on the lookout for terrorists in order to pre-empt any kind of attack. Apart from the federal government, every state has a list of potential terrorist targets for which there are contingency plans. The federal and state governments work hand-in-glove to fight crime and terrorism. For example, in July 2006, authorities had discovered a plot to blow up the underground tunnel system that connects New Jersey with New York City. The discovery of the plot was not a serendipitous occurrence but the result of an early awareness system.In the US, as well as in Europe, there has been a grand shift in thinking.

The policy is not only to nip the evil in the bud but also to eliminate the evil at the pre-natal stage by establishing an early awareness system. The strategic thinking that what’s anticipated and imagined can be prevented especially applies to terrorism of which the Jaipur serial bombings were the latest manifestation in India. Pre-emption is preventing terrorists’ acts at the inspiration and pre-planning stage before they become a tragedy. Call it paranoia, but as Intel’s ex-CEO Andrew S Grove said in another context, only the paranoid survive.

Terrorists in India know that nothing serious will happen to them even if they were apprehended. Politically and financially they are well protected; otherwise they would not have been in business so long.Uncovering the terrorists’ domestic supporters ~ political, religious, financial ~ requires the kind of commitment one sees in the US. Unless India adopts and ruthlessly executes a policy of total elimination of terrorists and their local supporters, using all the available means to hunt them under the law, Indians will be wondering where the next “Jaipur” will erupt.

India needs to re-balance its priorities ~ civil liberties and domestic security ~ as has been done in the US. In 2006, the US Congress renewed the draconian anti-terrorism law ~ The US PATRIOT Act, albeit with some changes. Personal liberties have been somewhat affected, especially in big cities, though most of the US is as free as ever. Living in the US is safe ~ safer than anywhere else in the world.

The PATRIOT Act, which allows intelligence and law-enforcement authorities to go into places of worship, the working of charities, telecommunications of suspected militants and libraries, is not what an ideal free society should do. But it is a lesser evil than letting terrorists take advantage of constitutional freedoms to commit mass murder. Fighting terrorism is not for softies. Open societies need not be handcuffed by their enlightened doctrines when law-enforcement authorities try to locate and destroy terrorist cells functioning openly or clandestinely in their own backyards.

Superb intelligence gathering, pre-emptive and preventive measures and anticipatory disaster plans could go a long way in minimising the damages if India wants to take terrorism as seriously as the US does and if politicians are prepared to pay the price, instead of depending upon criminals and their vote-banks for survival.India has much to learn about how comprehensively and efficiently the US goes about managing its homeland security by keeping perpetual vigilance.

Following the pre-emptive policy of dealing with terrorists, US Attorney David E Nahmias said, “We no longer wait until a bomb is built and is ready to explode.” For example, the plot to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago was at a stage “more aspirational than operational”, according to the FBI, when the plotters were apprehended in June 2007.What can India do? Fighting terrorism must be giving the same priority as building national infrastructure. Just as economic growth has several metrics (GDP, for example), terrorism reduction must have its own metrics. Without measurement, there is no accountability. Without accountability, there is no freedom and democracy.

It is imperative for India to have an anti-terror federal agency, as recommended by the Indian Chief Justice. I wish Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was more forceful and determined when he said, “We should explore all possibilities for recognising crimes like terrorism, white-collar crimes and human trafficking as federal crimes and setting up a federal agency which is fully equipped to discharge the onerous function of dealing with it.”

Perhaps India needs much more than wishy-washy recommendations. India needs an Iron Man, someone like Sardar Patel. Have you forgotten him, ladies and gentlemen?

(ND Batra is professor ofcommunications at Norwich University)

Homophobia is global

Gay unions: Time to take a stand

From The Statesman
ND Batra

This is an election year and no politician who seeks public office can escape the question of gay marriage. President George W Bush has said unequivocally that marriage is between a man and a woman, but he is not running for office.

The Democrat presidential candidates, Ms Hillary Clinton and Mr Barack Obama, as well as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mr John McCain, are opposed to recognising gay marriage, though they favour civil unions. Nonetheless, they cannot ignore what the California Supreme Court ruled on 15 May.

Writing for a 4-3 majority, Chief Justice Ronald M George said: “In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”

The decision overturned California’s 1997 law (which was reaffirmed by the Californians’ 2000 statewide ballot initiative) banning same-sex marriage.California, of course, has bestowed the same rights and obligation on civil unions of same-sex couples as on traditional heterosexual married couples. The court majority, nonetheless, said that although couples bonded in a civil union or a traditional marriage have the same legal rights and obligations, the use of separate terminology for gay people and heterosexuals to establish a family was discriminatory and violated the constitutional right of equal protection.

Semantics can create psychological segregation.

The California Supreme Court drew inspiration from a 1948 inter-racial marriage case in which the court had ruled that the law banning inter-racial marriage was unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. “The right to marry represents the right of an individual to establish a legally recognized family with a person of one’s choice and, as such, is of fundamental significance both to society and to the individual,” Mr George wrote for the majority.

If the will of the people overwhelmingly expressed in popular ballot initiatives or legislative actions imposed a ban on same-sex marriage as it did on inter-racial marriages, it violated people’s fundamental right to form a family of choice.

Neither the will of the people nor tradition could supersede the Constitution. Democracy was much more than a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The will of the people can be become tyranny.

Homophobia is a global phenomenon.

In the face of scientific evidence, most Americans consider homosexuality to be a cultivated lifestyle and fondly hope that one can be weaned away or de-programmed out of it. Every year schools witness fierce battles between parents and teachers as to what kind of books children should read, which sometime instigates the banning of books related to homosexuality.

Homophobia has led to violence and the killing of innocents.

In 2006, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed its earlier decision that gay people had the legal right to marry, some people were jubilant, while others went crazy. It sounded like the beginning of a cultural war.

Nothing has divided the American people so painfully since the question of slavery as the issue of what to do with gay people and lesbians, who have been outing themselves in hordes and getting their faces in everywhere ~ in television sitcoms, school textbooks, magazines covers, dance floors and legislatures.

Soon after the court decision, stand-up comedian and talk-show hostess Ellen DeGeneres announced on her show that she was planning to get married to her long-time girlfriend, actress Portia de Rossi. The audience cheered her lustily.

Although Americans by and large oppose gay marriages, they are inclined to accept civil unions for same-sex couples that would grant them the same rights as heterosexuals have.

Vermont was the first state to recognise civil unions for same-sex couples but only after the state’s highest court ruled that gay people were being deprived of constitutionally guaranteed equal rights and enjoined the state legislature to eliminate this discrimination. The Vermont court did not rule on marriage, rather it ruled on equal rights for all citizens, which included healthcare benefits, inheritance and other rights that go with marriage.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court went to the extreme and challenged the very definition of marriage. If marriage is essentially a union of hearts, a commitment between two people ~ Evelyn and Madeleine, Ivan and Isaac ~ the concomitant rights and obligation of such a commitment must be respected.

But that’s not what the Bible or Koran says. That’s what the interpreters of the Constitution say.

It is only in Hollywood movies and mass media that you see the US as a homogeneous country. In reality, it has always been a house divided, which is its primary source of its dynamism and creativity.

Adding to the confusion, several states have passed laws that recognise only heterosexual marriages. So what would happen to a Californian gay married couple, let’s say with adopted children, when the family moves to a non-gay marriage state like Alabama?

The Californian Supreme Court seems to be saying that the state should choose a common nomenclature that captures the essence of both traditional marriage and civil union, so that gay people do not feel segregated or discriminated against. Maybe it is time to get rid of the ideologically and emotionally loaded words husband, wife and marriage and replace with them with spouse and domestic partnership.The final word on the meaning of marriage of course lies with the US Supreme Court, the ultimate arbiter.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

Nuclear Energy: Why should India be left behind?

India must broaden nuclear freedom

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Last week Russia and the US signed an unprecedented civilian nuclear power deal under which companies in both countries would have access to nuclear technology through joint ventures. The pact opens Russia’s massive uranium reserves to US companies and gives Russian firms access to the multi-billion dollar US nuclear energy industry.

The agreement happened in spite of US app-rehensions about Iran’s growing nuclear ambitions, about which Russia does not seem to be overly concerned. “The US and Russia were once nuclear rivals; we are today nuclear partners. What this agreement allows us to do is to implement some very creative ideas that both Russia and the US have put forward to deal with the growing challenge of proliferation of nuclear weapons,” says Mr William Burns, US ambassador to Russia. The head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Mr Sergei Kiriyenko, who signed the agreement, was equally rosy in his outlook. “The signing of this agreement opens a gigantic field of opportunities for economic cooperation in the large and growing businesses linked to the civilian use of nuclear energy,” he says.

The US has a similar deal with China. To meet its increasing energy needs, China plans to build 32 nuclear power plants by 2020 at a cost of about $50 billion, Ariana Eunjung Cha of the Washington Post wrote last year. It’s an undertaking that can be accomplished only by acc-essing nuclear technology and markets in the US, Europe, Japan and Russia. China has signed uranium deals with Australia and the Niger.

India too must complete the nuclear deal with the US agreed upon by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George Bush in 2005. It would give the growing economy reliable and uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel, in spite of the fact that India is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nuclear freedom comes from collaboration, not isolation. The completion of the civilian nuclear deal will open to India the world of sophisticated technology developed by the glo-bal nuclear powers ~ the US, Japan, Europe and Russia, with whom India has growing commercial relations. Access to high-end technology is imperative to keep India globally competitive.

Indian diplomacy has succeeded in muting and overcoming strong anti-India prejudice and opposition in the US. By making India an exception to the rule it has created opportunities for the country. The agreement will let India grow and play its rightful role in global affairs ~ it is not about containing anyone, it is about having faith in India to develop rapidly without compromising fundamental freedoms.

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. Without plentiful and reliable energy sources, however, poverty cannot be eliminated. Besides, an economically dynamic India on a perpetual growth curve will make Asia more economically dynamic.

Apart from removing hurdles in India’s search for an alternative energy source to fuel its growing economy, the deal will give India a strategic platform in the knowledge industry and en-courage research and development in clean-energy technology.

Becoming a great knowledge power is everyone’s dream in India. India must go beyond information technology outsourcing and capture other chances, as it has begun to do. After successful negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, India will be able to buy nuclear fuel for its nuclear power plants and shop for building scores of new ones.In the course of time when trust in the partnership increases and diplomatic relations deepen, a whole new world of sophisticated global technology will be opened to India, en-abling it to spur its economic growth further. In return, India has agreed to do what other nu-clear powers have been doing under the Non-proliferation Treaty ~ open some of its civilian nuclear power plants to inspection and continue to observe abstinence on nuclear testing. Its nuclear deterrent will remain off limits. India’s sovereignty can’t be compromised, if the country is economically and politically strong.

The Indian opposition to the nuclear deal, especially the Left, fears the deal will create subservient relations with the US. But it is im-portant to consider how China has benefited from strong economic relations with the US, without in any way compromising its sovereignty. Of course there is no such thing as ab-solute sovereignty in an interdependent world. China had greater sovereignty in the days of Mao Zedong when it fought the US in Korea 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 to the dollar. Chi-na has no place to park its massive foreign exchange reserves except in US and European treasuries. Sovereignty is not isolation.Iran-Pakistan-India and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India oil pipelines will not be able to meet India’s gargantuan needs for energy. Clean-coal technology, nuclear energy and solar power are alternatives, for which the US has opened its doors to India. France, for example, gets 80 per cent of its energy from nuclear plants and is ready to collaborate with India in nuclear power development. Nuclear energy will cut excessive dependence on oil from West Asia, a most unstable region.

India needs hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign investment in building power plants and infrastructure to increase its manufacturing base and create employment opportunities for its growing young population.

Today the Left might have a stranglehold on Indian politics, but it certainly cannot be the end of the civilian nuclear deal. The next government will have to pick up the threads and consummate the deal. Why should India be left behind?

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

The World Is Too Much For America

It’s gloomy in the USA

From The Statesman

ND Batra

I asked one of my graduating students if she had received an encouraging response from any prospective employer. Not yet, she said, though she had sent resumés to several and was still waiting. She is not the only one. There are thousands of others who have not even been able to hold on to their jobs due to the slowing economy. In April, another 20,000 Americans lost their jobs.The American political mood is getting gloomier and more unpredictable. There is a profound feeling of loss of control. Most Americans today ~ 73 per cent according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, think that the country is heading in the wrong direction. Democrats say it’s primarily due to President George Bush’s inability to do much about the economy sliding into recession and gasoline and food prices rising.

There is also the fact that in spite of spending billions of dollars, and losing over 4,000 US troops and hundreds of thousands of others, including civilians, there is no end in sight to the Iraqi or Afghan insurgency.Perhaps fixing all that is expecting too much from Mr Bush, who under the dark shadow of the 9/11 terrorist attacks succeeded in engineering a national consensus and ordered the Iraq war, but has had little control over its aftermath. Or over the dynamics of global financial structures, credit markets, the global food crisis and the relentless hunt for oil and other natural resources by growing economies.

This world is too complex, too much for a lone ranger.

In the first quarter of 2008, US’s GDP grew by 0.6 per cent, while the number of unemployed workers swelled, albeit a trifle less than what was expected. Since the price of a barrel of oil is tied to the dollar, its fall has been causing pain and anxiety. Consumer confidence is down. People shrink from spending on consumer durables. The housing market has become an auctioning block.Don’t worry, says Mr Bush. The check is in the mail. Under a multi-billion dollar stimulus plan 130 million households will start getting, beginning next week, $600 to $1,200 from the government. This will encourage consumer spending and hopefully lift the sagging economy. Of course, with gas prices going up, extra money in the pocket will be helpful.Sounding like a cheerleader, Mr Bush said last Thursday in a radio address: “No temporary setbacks can hold back the most powerful force in our economy ~ the ingenuity of the Ameri-can people. Because of your hard work and dedication, I am confident that we will weather this rough period and emerge stronger than ever.”

But let’s see how effective the levers of power in Washington are in reviving Wall Street and main street. Americans’ feelings of prosperity, the collective sense of well-being, is tied to the prices of their homes, which makes one think that economics is about psychology of fear and hope. Falling prices create depression, though experience shows that what goes down, comes up, hmm, most of the time.Due to poor home mortgage lending practices, banks began to give loans on low adjust-able interest rates to less creditworthy people, hoping that since home prices were going up borrowers would re-finance their loans on the basis of increased home equity. But lenders and borrowers began to lose mutual trust. What seemed to be a robust market turned into a bubble that burst.

The American dream begins with owning a home. There’s nothing more painful for a person, say, a single mom, than lo-sing her home to foreclosure; it’s heartbreaking.Falling housing prices create not only negative feelings but also negative equity, which means the mortgage relative to the value of the house is much greater. Some people who bought houses with small or no down payment have simply walked away, because their houses were worth much less than the original price. Foreclosures add to the market glut, so home prices keep sliding down; and Americans feel less wealthy, less worthy. They don’t feel like spending on non-essential goods ~ going to restaurants, buying a new sofa, for example; and they postpone buying a new car for another six months or even a year.

Bedsides, when home prices go down, the homeowners’ ability to borrow money against the equity value of their homes in order to buy expensive commodities or go on vacations also goes down. Banks shrink in fear lest consumers default, so they become too cautious in lending, which further adversely affects economic activity.Mr Bush says the economic stimulus package “will help American families increase their purchasing power and help offset the high prices that we’re seeing at the gas pump and the grocery store”. But it is not only that the market that ignores him. Congress too doesn’t respond to his repeated admonitions to lift the economy by making his first-term tax cuts permanent (they are due to expire in 2010).

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

Tagore

Thou Hast Made Me Endless
Part XIV


Tagore on ‘Death’ (3)

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941 AD) Nobel Laureate of 1913(Some translated pieces from his Bengali works)

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

In the second chapter under this caption published on 30 March 2008, it has been mentioned that Tagore’s concept of life and death is based on Upanishada (more than 4000 year old Indian scripture). Consistently, his conviction was that life and death are only integral parts of the continuous process of creation. The following two wonderful poems help us lesser beings to share this conviction of the Poet.

Poem No: 22 of the book Rogsajjay (In Sick Bed)

[Translator’s note: Tagore’s conviction was that human life is only a part of his endless journey which is consistent with the Hindu belief in re-incarnation. Maitrayee Devi’s depiction of the Poet’s séances in her book ‘Mangpute Rabindranath’ (Translated version – ‘Tagore By Fireside’) as she heard directly from the Poet, makes interesting reading. Amazingly, manners of the replies by the respondent souls (at least so believed) over the planchetté to the queries put to them matched with their wont as noticed in their lifetime, as the Poet exemplified. He is thus inclined to believe that there is a link between the pre and post-mortem stages of mortals and it might be that the latter is for a much wider fulfillment, though not evident in earthly life, as he holds in this wonderful poem. The poem was written only a month before his death in 1941]

At midday, while somnolent,
Maybe I just dreamt,
That the shell of my existence
Shed off as redundance
Into a river stream- I know not its name,
Along with all its celebrity and fame;
Whatever wealth of the miser
All ignominy’s memoir.
Records of all gratification,
Glory or humiliation,
Swept along the billows –
I couldn’t reverse its course.
Reasons my selfless self,
As into my losses I delve;
Which one struck me severest?
No, not in my past was my best –
With which my days and nights
Passed in euphoria and blights;
That is in my future
Which I could never capture –
In which is my desire latent
As the seed underground dreamt
Through the long night
For the arrival of the light.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Poem No: 8 of the book Janmadine (On my birthday) written on Poet’s 80th birthday at Mangpu, a hill station near Darjeeling.

[Translator’s note: On his 80th and last birthday in 1940 the Poet happened to be at Mangpu as a guest of Maitrayee Devi. I would give as follows the context of this poem which, hopefully, will help the readers better understand its message. It is only a quote from the book ‘Tagore By Fireside’ by Maitrayee Devi –
“The twenty-fifth Baisakh (this month on the Bengali calendar synchronizes with the mid-April to mid-May period of the Gregorian calendar) – the Poet’s birthday – was near. It was our good fortune that he would be at our home that day. Yet, this was a small village, consisting mostly of illiterate people. We rocked our brains about how to celebrate this day properly. Finally we decided that the labourers should be invited- all illiterate hill-folk and we would have same kind of festival that they have. Amiya-babu said, ‘I know he will like it. There have been enough functions with high-brow, there will be a charm in this festival with the simple people.’ The Poet was waiting eagerly for the function. He was never too old for any new experience……..The grand old man of the village, a Buddhist, squatted in front of him, burnt incense and sang a hymn to Buddha. The Poet answered him by reading from Upanishada (more than 4000 year old Indian scripture), which of course the Buddhist did not understand. That afternoon the Poet wrote three poems, all were titled ‘Janmadin’ (Birthday). He mentioned the old Buddhist in one of them. In the evening people streamed in – poor hill folks, our neighbours. Sanai (a type of flute) was played and everyone stood silent, as the Poet was wheeled in his chair among them; clad in yellow garments, garlanded and bedecked in sandal paste, he looked a heavenly figure. The chair was pushed slowly along the garden walk, the hill folk came one by one, bowed and offered him flowers. The Tibetans offered Kharda (a scarf meant for high Lamas) instead of garlands. In the end he was almost hidden behind the mass of flowers. Afterwards he was helped to sit under the chestnut tree and the Bhutanese people started a vigourous devil dance. Hundreds of people sat in rows - food was served to them on leaf plates. The Poet said to me- ‘You serve them yourselves’. After the function was over, he said –
‘How do you feel, tired?’
‘Why should I feel tired?’
‘Shouldn’t you? You started from before daylight- now go and have a good sleep.’
‘We could never imagine that you would be among us on this day.’
‘That is called lack of imagination.’
Next day we all sat around him. He was to read the poems that had been written the day before. But Sudhakanta-babu had come to tell him the unhappy news; the Poet would have to be told about the death of his dearest nephew. ‘Listen to the poems- here is a memoir of Mangpu – ‘………”
He then read out two of the poems he had written the previous day. A little after the reading was over, Sudhakanta-babu said – ‘here is a bad news’. ‘Bad news? What bad news? Is Suren’s (the Poet’s dearest nephew) condition worse?’ ‘He is no more. The news came yesterday, but I did not tell you among the crowd of people.’ ‘If you had done, I shouldn’t have been able to hold up my head’.
We left him to himself. He sat quietly- with his eyes closed. I watched him from behind, silently disciplining his emotion. The whole day he did not speak, though he went on doing his work as usual. In the evening he wrote a poem and called it ‘Death’. Giving it to me he said,- ‘Let this one also go with the ‘Birthday’ poems to Prabasi (a renowned monthly literary Bengali magazine of that time).’
He was sitting in the balcony in the darkness. I felt the acuteness of the pain he was bearing with patience. Once he said,-
‘No one will ever know what an extraordinary man he was. One so great, one so good, one the very best among men, was hidden from people’s eyes and went away unknown. Only those who knew him, know how rare it is to find a man like him.”

To-day, on my birthday,
Piercing through it ceremonial gay,
Has reached the death news,
Of my dear one , with grief profuse;
Its smouldering fire
My spirit does inspire;
As in the dusk the setting Sun
Anoints the forehead with its burn,
On the evening sky,
With crimson, it to glorify –
The face of the coming night
Turns golden bright;
So does its burning passion
To my life’s western horizon.

In its light
Perennial life came to my sight
That with death is integral
Its glory divulged in brilliant dazzle;
Eclipsed so long by my fate miser
Now to reveal its divinity for ever.

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

Who is looking after your children?

Let’s talk about little children

From The Statesman
ND Batra
Long before children in the US enter school, they have already been exposed to thousands of hours of television shows including commercials. Seventy per cent of day-care centres use television, according to KidsHealth, a website giving medical information for parents. In fact, children spend more time in front of the idiot box than in school.Several studies have shown that excessive television watching unaccompanied by parental supervision causes not only violent behaviour but obesity. Why obesity? Because children become couch potatoes, especially those from the middle class who are likely to keep snacking and drinking sodas. Obesity leads to type 2 childhood diabetes, according the National Institute of Health.Worse still, a study published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics said that excessive early exposure to television increases the risk of attention disorder in children. Children’s brains undergo rapid development in the early years and exposure to television might interfere in the natural process of neural wiring.

Research at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center at the University of Washington, led by Dr Dimitri Christakis, concluded that for every hour of television viewing by children in the 1-3 age group, the risk of attention disorder increased by 9 per cent. The research didn’t mention what kind of content caused attention disorder, however.

Perhaps some programmes for pre-schoolers may have a more salutary effect than animated shows.Before we get panicky, it should be kept in mind that a child having attention disorder doesn’t necessarily suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). ADHD children suffer from a chemical imbalance in the brain. They can’t stay still or control their actions, chatter incessantly, get bored easily, forget things and can’t finish work begun. To some extent, all children show such tendencies; therefore, parents should not jump to hasty conclusions. Attention disorder is a matter of degree. At some point, it becomes a serious illness.

The question is what kinds of television shows cause or aggravate the condition. Or could some shows reverse attention disorder?While the University of Washington study concluded that indiscriminate early exposure might skew brain development, a study in the late 1980s showed television had great learning potential for toddlers. The researchers found that toddlers as young as 10 months can learn when they watch television.

The right kind of shows promote intellectual development and can help children acquire language skills , such as matching names to the objects, and do things by watching them being done on television. The research on language acquisition done on infants by psychologist Mabel Rice of the University of Kansas indicated it was as possible for children to learn from television as from a book if programmes were designed for learning. Unfortunately, they aren’t.To be sure, fast-paced Saturday morning children’s shows that are nothing but marketing ploys for toys and sugary cereals are not going to help children. All they will do is turn them into consumers in the multibillion-dollar toy and cereal marketplace.

But how do we explain the apparent contradiction between Dr Christakis’s research that television may cause attention disorder and Dr Rice’s that it has the potential to teach infants? Apparently, it matters what is put into a show, the purpose and the content. Television is an extraordinary pliable tool that can be used for senseless entertainment or for brain development. Children’s television programmes should not be left to the marketplace entirely. Parents and teachers should have the final say.The American Psychological Association (APA) has suggested steps that could be taken to neutralise the undesirable impact of purposeless violence on children. It says watch at least one episode of the show the child watches to know how violent it is; watch together and discuss the show with the child, why the violence happened and how painful it is. Ask the child how the conflict could have been solved without violence; explain how violence in entertainment is not real; and encourage children to watch shows with characters that cooperate and care for each other. APA also suggested making television violence “part of the public health agenda (like smoking and drunken driving) and publicizing its perils and effects”.

Since each television show in the US is rated for violence and sex, and all sets have a show- and channel-blocking device called V-Chip, it is left to parents to protect children from bad television. But a survey shows that parents are not as proactive as expected, partly because of the grinding pressures of daily life. Besides, there is very little choice on television because all shows are made with commercial recipes. Sometimes I feel fundamental freedoms have been overpowered by commercialism.

In this election year, none of the three candidates, neither Democrat contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama nor the Republican nominee John McCain, has seriously talked about children, except occasionally about the lack of universal health insurance.

So far as parents are concerned, there are much weightier issues: flight of jobs and growing insecurity, bleak prospects for retirement, mortgage crises, rising healthcare costs and out of control gasoline and food prices. And how can anyone forget the burden of Iraq, today and tomorrow?

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University.)

The pope, Islam and Tibet

Speaking in two voices: The pope, Islam and Tibet

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the US came at a very critical time. Just before his visit, the American people had witnessed massive global protests about the Olympic torch, which has increasingly become a symbol of Chinese repression against Tibetans and their religious beliefs rather than a celebration of freedom.

The 81-year-old pontiff summed up the crisis of faith in the modern world of unbridled free market capitalism when he asked, “Who can deny that the present moment is a crossroads?” He was admonishing his followers that while the church’s path is known, there is a danger of people taking the road less frequented. In spite of the promises of rising economic prosperity and globalisation, “we see clear signs of a disturbing breakdown in the very foundation” of the social order. American society accepts unmarried couples, unwed mothers, bachelor fathers, same-sex civil unions, multiple sex partners and all kinds conjugal or parental arrangements. Some Americans claim it their religious right to be polygamous. All lifestyles cannot be equally acceptable, according to the church orthodoxy.

The pope asked a meeting of bishops: "Is it consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday and then during the week promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those beliefs? Is it consistent for practising Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalised, to promote sexual behaviour contrary to Catholic moral teaching or to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death?” His views on abortion and homosexuality appeal to a much wider audience than 67.5 million American Catholics, the largest single religious denomination in the US. Although the pope opposed the Iraq war in 2003, on abortion and homosexuality he has a kindred soul in the White House, where he was treated as a most honoured guest.In spite of the settlement of thousands of cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, which cost the church $2 billion, the pope’s visit was overshadowed by a haunting sense of shame and embarrassment. But I wondered if he was trying to spread the blame across all of American society when he asked, “What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?” Although he met some people who were sexually abused as children by clerics, there was no profound sense of atonement in his speeches to the American public. It seemed he was trying to do damage control ~ the way a multinational corporation does when it is hit with a scandal ~ and bring the faithful back to the fold.

Throughout his visit, the pontiff talked about protecting individual rights without any reference to the recent bloody events in Tibet. Perhaps the pontiff does not think much of Buddhism, the Dalai Lama or other religions. He has pooh-poohed the idea of ‘relativism’, which means that other religious paths are not as good Catholicism. Last December the scheduled meeting between Pope Benedict and the Dalai Lama was cancelled because China protested that the meeting would “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people”. The Vatican has been trying to restore diplomatic ties with China and assert its supremacy over the Catholic Church there, which of course China won’t accept.

While calling “for a dialogue of the Christian faith with the modern world, and for a dialogue between all cultures and religions”, Pope Benedict uttered unpardonably inflammatory words against Islam, at the University of Regensburg in Bavaria, Germany, in 2005. He quoted Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, who in an exchange with a Persian scholar said, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”The pope failed to imagine the reaction such an insulting statement would have caused and later tried to apologise. “I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims. These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought,” he said.

Papal apologists on both sides of the Atlantic did not succeed in assuaging the outraged Muslims.
But what was the pope thinking when he chose a text that did not represent his own or the Catholic Church’s views? When on 19 April 2005, Cardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger became the pope, he became the defining voice of the Catholic Church. He could not have been unaware of what he was saying.No doubt the pope was trying to warn the global Catholic community about the gulf that separates it from Islam. His views are not very far from those of President George W Bush, who told the National Endowment for Democracy a few years ago that “Islamic terrorist attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane. Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism.” The Vatican like most of the West does not look at Islam as a humane, gentle and kind religion.

In spite of his ambivalence about other religions and his diplomatic attempts to avoid offending China, the pope in his address to the UN called for outside intervention if a state failed to protect human rights: “If states are unable to guarantee such protection the international community must intervene with the juridical means provided in the United Nations charter and in other international instruments.”

Perhaps the pontiff should put his words into action, meet with the Dalai Lama and condemn Chinese atrocities in Tibet. Would the pontiff dare?

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)

As security increases, would freedom decline?

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Last Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a plan for a nationwide text messaging system that would alert Americans on their cell phones about terrorist attacks, natural disasters, campus shootings (like the one that occurred in Virginia Tech in 2007), child abductions or a killer on the loose.

The initiative originates from a 2006 federal law, the Warning Alert and Response Network Act (WARN Act) that requires upgrading the national emergency system. Cell phone subscribers won’t be charged for the alert messages they receive from Uncle Sam; nonetheless, they could opt out. Although the wireless industry has endorsed the plan, according to news reports, service providers’ participation is voluntary. Target date for fully implementing the FCC plan is 2010.

Any organisation, private or public, that mass-distributes information instantly can also collect it from its users instantly. Search companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL and others collect and archive huge amounts of personal data from which can be profiled the behaviour of the user. They also cooperate with authoritarian governments as a price for working in their countries, especially when the lure of profits is irresistible.

There are cases of Internet search companies that have inadvertently released from their archives millions of search queries. Even if the names were not released, it would not have been difficult to put together the profile of searcher XYZ, for example, and what was motivating his search. The questions XYZ asks and the searches he makes online or in real life would reveal his mind. Web users everywhere are quietly submitting to whatever brings them a feeling of comfort and certainty. Protests against intrusiveness by the government and businesses into our personal lives have become muted. We are lapsing into a non-obtrusive surveillance society.

Every time there is a terrorist attack text message, we would feel that the government might be right. Online surveillance devices are being increasingly used by businesses to track users when they surf their Websites. Tracking is done inconspicuously and the user can never suspect that he is being watched.

Most of us are familiar with cookies, Web bugs, small software programs the advertisers put on our hard drives to track where we surf so that they can customise the most fitting advertising message for us to achieve target marketing, reaching the right person with right message. But a Web bug can be programmed to collect whatever data is required without the knowledge of the user. When you look at your online financial statement, or a health Website, the digital bug too could be monitoring it. Some companies do inform their visitors about the tracking devices they use and for what purposes. A Web beacon can track whether a particular message, including junk mail, has been opened and acted upon. Any electronic image that is part of a Web page, including a banner ad, can be programmed to act as a beacon and spy on the user.

Companies claim that the information enables them to personalise the surfing experience when a frequent user visits their portal. Users can opt-out, but most of them don’t know whether the option is available; nor do many of them pay attention to the privacy statement. Clandestine observation technologies are not limited to the Net. Several companies are using biometrics, face recognition, radio frequency and global positioning system (GPS) technologies to keep a watch on their properties and track suspects. Many car rental companies in the United States use GPS to keep track of their rental cars. If a car is stolen or is involved in an accident, the company would know the exact location of the car. But can a company withhold information from the police?

Many airports have started using digital fingerprint identification technology to conduct background checks without any protest from employees. Face recognition technology is being extensively used not only in airports but also in ballparks, banks and other business establishments. If a suspect turns up, his face is digitally matched in seconds with the image database. It is not a foolproof system. So far we don’t know how many terrorists have been apprehended by face recognition technology, but the security business is booming in the United States.

The US Customs and some airports are using low-dose X-ray machines, such as Body Search, to electronically scan a person for drugs, bombs and contrabands. Body Search electronically strips a person naked and projects the image on the screen for scrutiny without the person being asked to take her clothes off ~ all in the name of security. Hundreds of air travellers, including women, are randomly subjected to electronic Body Search.

An interesting security tracking technology is the radio-frequency identification tag (RFID), which is attached to a suspect’s baggage as he checks in. The tagged baggage is automatically routed to a security area where it is screened with special cameras and sensors for explosives and other hazardous materials. Depending upon the level danger alert, along with our baggage we too might have to wear radio-frequency ID tags so that we can be monitored as we move from one airport to another, from country to country via GPS. From centralised text messaging on cell phones to radio frequency ID tagging, government and global corporate interests are converging.

Imagine the possibilities ~ good and evil!
What might a democratic country with a base of 300 million cell phones do?
Or think of an authoritarian rising super power texting a message to its captive billions: Beware of the devil in monk’s clothing preaching compassion.

(ND Batra, the author of Digital Freedom, teaches communication and diplomacy at Norwich University)

Brand India

Becoming a global brand and keeping it

From The Statesman
ND Batra

It is doubtful if Ford Motor Company would have sold a high-profile brand portfolio like Jaguar and Land Rover to a Chinese auto company. Tata is embedded in a multicultural open society where workers’ rights cannot be easily trifled with. Besides, Tata knows how to communicate in a global environment.

Tata is good because India is good.
Mittal Steel adopted a global corporate diplomacy to persuade Europeans that the Mittals were no carpetbaggers; they’re coming as partners. Mittal Steel’s takeover of Arcelor might have made Tata acquisitions of global brands comparatively smooth.

As corporate India expands globally, it must communicate well. Excellent communication is the key to effective corporate public affairs and global diplomacy. Without a comprehensive communications strategy that embraces all important stakeholders, who interact with the company and form its business environment, global corporate diplomacy cannot be effective. In this age of global transparency enforced by the “always on news cycle”, the Internet, the YouTube, and reporting standards established by global watchdogs like Global Reporting Initiative, multinationals can neither run nor hide.

Companies just cannot afford not to communicate about an issue that concerns stakeholders in their business environment. And since they have to communicate, they must do it efficiently. Corporate communication is essentially persuasion, even when a company is just trying to inform stakeholders.

Power to persuade is the soft power that transnational companies apply to win the hearts and minds of not only consumers but public at large. But to do so in a multichannel-Webbed environment over which they don’t have much control, companies need to be diplomatically smart, especially when a company has to operate in a foreign environment.

There are many reasons for doing so. For example, companies have become de-localised (Tata, Mittal Steel, IBM, Wipro, for example). They are no longer woven into the fabric of local communities only as they used to be in the pre-Internet age. Company employees do their work in a virtual environment and their mobility makes them less concerned with what is happening in their neighbourhood. In an environment like this it would take extraordinary efforts for global companies to communicate and present their position in a persuasive manner.

That’s why Sovereign Wealth Funds are so threatening. They are faceless behemoths and who knows they may have hidden political agendas. Perception is reality and many people perceive global companies as more powerful than the government, which draws enhanced critical scrutiny from the media and NGOs. The image of power, which global companies project, raises expectations as well as fear in the minds of the people. Growing expectations of corporate responsibility create unusual challenges for corporate communications and diplomacy. Because of corporate mismanagement and scandals in the United States (the subprime crisis that has rocked global finance) and Europe (Siemens corruption is the latest), public watch groups expect greater openness and transparency from companies.

A corporation in India may get away with any kind of behaviour, but that may not be acceptable in the United States or Europe. Since expectation of corporate behaviour differs from country to country, corporate communications strategies must take such variables into account. It is necessary to point out that effective communication takes place in a cultural context.

Understanding the host country’s political culture is very important for corporate communication and diplomacy to be effective, a lesson corporate India must learn quickly. Political culture includes the legal system, and the rules and regulations, which must not be violated in the host country. Good corporate behaviour may not be rewarded; bad behaviour is not only punished but also sullies the reputation of the company.

Since each country has its own enduring cultural symbols and icons, doing effective global corporate communication is quite a challenge. What is culturally and politically correct in one country may not be so in another country. Not understanding national cultural differences can create a nightmare for companies doing business abroad. Moreover, global corporate communication in order to be effective must be aimed at specific groups or audiences especially relevant to the company. They are: customers, financial analysts, government authorities, and non-business stakeholders such as NGOs.

Customers are the most important constituency for a company. They are the reason for doing the business and a very important source of a company’s strength. In a competitive environment, where one product may not be qualitatively much different from the other, keeping the customer coming back to the company requires communication at multiple levels ~ product, price, image, trust and most of all reputation the company.

Trust and reputation are the basis of communication with customers. Communicating effectively with market analysts and financial journalists is very important because it is through them that a company manages its image of financial strength and growth.

Raising false expectations for short-term benefits can destroy a company’s reputation. And sometime when analysts and financial journalists instead of being impartial and objective reporters and critics become part of the vicious conveyer belt, they destroy public trust and provoke harsher regulations. Corporate behaviour is regulated by rules and regulations, which are framed in the public interest and in consultation with the industry. But once the rules are in place, not only authorities but also public interest groups, many of which have established global network to monitor compliance, closely watch companies’ errant behaviour.

Recent Microsoft ordeal in Europe for anti-trust violation is a case in point. The US transparency law (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) was enacted in the aftermath of Enron’s collapse and other scandals.

There are thousands of global NGOs who have made it their business to scrutinise the behaviour of local, regional and multinational companies to protect the public and environment from exploitation. With clear and well-defined demands, global NGOs with huge and broad-based financial and legal support system can swing into campaign mode against a corporation and even a country very quickly and very efficiently.

Think how NGOs are pressuring governments and global corporations to boycott the Beijing Summer Olympics unless China lifts its stranglehold on Tibet. China has yet to understand the power of the shopping cart, especially in Europe which values quality as well as human rights.

(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University)

China's enemy not in Dharamsala

China’s enemy in cyberspace

From The Statesman

ND Batra

The ongoing struggle in Tibet shows how new Web technologies — cell phones, digital photography, texting and e-mail — are making it harder for the Chinese Communist authorities to control the struggle for self-rule and freedom. Wireless global networks are shrinking space and time, turning geographic space into cyberspace, and bringing people together for collaboration in the international political space. Since the renewed struggle began in early March with the Buddhist monks’ demonstrations in Lhasa, the whole world has been experiencing the agony of Tibet in a virtual environment created by global networked communications. As China dreams of Olympic glory, Tibetans don’t want to be left behind and they dream of the Dalai Lama returning to his homeland.

Telepresence technologies help us improve our awareness and responsiveness to the human condition in remote corners of the world. Every human activity — from Tibetan monks crying in public, “We have no freedom, we have no freedom”, to the most complex mathematical problem — is nothing but information. Every human activity that takes place in the real world can be turned into a digital stream and instantly distributed globally through networks, thus extending the reach of humans. Digital images can be stored, retrieved and replayed anywhere, as you see today in all major US and European newspapers which not only archive printed stories but also videos of the ongoing struggle in Tibet.

Of course, the same information can also be transformed into intelligence about human behaviour regarding commerce, national security or any other social or political activities. Political discourse, slogans, chants and cries for freedom become indistinguishable as they converge in a digital flow and surge through cyberspace. The Chinese may be prevented from seeing Tibet on YouTube but the rest of the world will be playing it again and again. If a picture is worth 10,000 words, video is forever.

Convergence, instantaneity and feedback make the Internet the most powerful medium of communication and resistance ever developed. Since the traditional media, including books, television, newspapers, magazines, radio, music and interpersonal communication (instant messaging), are converging on the Internet as a multimedia stream into which anyone can plug in, their power increases manifold and in ways whose implications the Chinese authorities still don’t understand. YouTube, for example, has given Tibet a constant state of telepresence in the European and American political and public discourse.

Normally we talk of offshoring manufacture and outsourcing research and development and other forms of intellectual and professional work to other countries; but China, because of its paranoid nationalism, has been offshoring the Tibetan people’s struggle and Buddhism to Europe and the USA, thus globalising Tibet. The Internet, thus, is revolutionary in the sense that it is lowering barriers for cross-border convergence of cultures.

Although ancient people tried to abridge space and time by sending messages, especially in wartime, through drums and smoke signals, not until the invention of the telegraph was it possible to think about communication in terms other than transportation. Like goods, messages were communicated from place to place at a speed that the best transportation system of the time — for example, the pony express or the railroad — made possible. The telegraph altered the geography-based metaphor of communication, which ceased to be synonymous with transportation. As the telegraph triggered the development of new technologies in the early part of the 20th century, as the telephone, radio, and television became ubiquitous, communication became increasingly liberated from the constraints of space and time. Computer networks and the Internet have further altered our view of space and time. A networked organisation or an individual with texting and instant messaging has a different feel of space and time than those of the pre-digital era. The mobile phone is the door to cyberspace and once you are there, you are simultaneously in a synchronous and asynchronous world, a world that gives a a greater sense of freedom and control than the real world. That’s how international organisations in the forefront of Tibetan liberation are helping the Tibetan people to continue their resistance.

The Chinese dilemma is that as more and more people experience Tibetan resistance in cyber media, the authorities don’t know what to do about it. Under the advice of public relations firms, China conducted a controlled tour for journalists but that would not help to “re-educate” the untamed minds and hearts of the Tibetan people.The enemy of China is not in Dharamsala but in cyberspace.

Canadian scholar Herald Innis said in The Bias of Communication that a new medium of communication created a specific cultural shift and changed our concept of space and time, with tremendous cultural consequences. “A medium of communication has an important influence on the dissemination of knowledge over space and time and it becomes necessary to study its characteristics in order to appraise its influence in its cultural setting.”

The Chinese public relations offensive included inviting a handful of selected diplomats on an officially-controlled trip, a visit that came after foreign journalists on a tour of Lhasa encountered a group of 30 Buddhist monks shouting that there was no freedom in Tibet. The Han Chinese “demographic aggression” into Tibet, which the Dalai Lama referred to last Saturday, was glaringly apparent during the monks-led anti-Chinese demonstration that began on 10 March, on the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese occupation.

Besides its crude public relations propaganda and diplomatic intimidations, China is also fighting a cyber campaign with its Operation Golden Shield, the so-called Great Firewall of China. Of course, technologies of freedom can also be used for repression, especially inside China. But there is a cyber-world beyond China, over which no one has any control.

(ND Batra teaches communication and diplomacy at Norwich University and can be reached at narainbatra@gmail.com)

Tagore on Life and Death

Thou Hast Made Me Endless- Part XIII

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941 AD) Nobel Laureate of 1913
(Some translated pieces from his Bengali works)

Translator:RAJAT DAS GUPTA: Calcutta: e-mail: rajatdasgupta53@yahoo.com
rajarch@cal3.vsnl.net.in

Tagore on ‘Death’ (2)
In the first chapter under this caption published on 2nd March 2008,. it has been mentioned that Tagore’s thoughts on ‘Death’ are mostly Upanishad (more than 4000 year old Indian scripture in Sanskrit language) based. We have Tagore’s interpretation of this Upanishada aplenty in his book ‘Santiniketan’ (in Bengali) an extract from which is translated below.
[…..From age to age Man is deriving wisdom through ignorance, he is gaining bliss by annihilation of sin and blight. Through strife he is getting Truth, there is no other means for it. Those who think that this ‘light’ is untruth, Utopia is a mere fiction, had they been right, Man would remain same as he was on the day of his advent on this earth, he would not grow any more. Because Amritam (Immortality) is inherent in him, man has made way through Death to radiate his Immortality;. Through the narrow outlet of Death, Amritam founts. Those who had visualized this, gave their call- “Be not afraid; this darkness is not true, neither Death is; you are successors of Amritam. Don’t accept serfdom to Death; if you surrender to your physical instincts, you’ll insult your inheritance to Immortality”. As insects nibble the flower, so does your physical instincts to your Immortality. He Himself had said –“Thou art the sons of Immortal; like Me.” Shall we belie his words every day?
…….’Whatever we piled up, we shall guard for ever’; what sort of piety is this? Just as our penchant for our torso to guard which our relentless frantic attempts go futile. However much we may pine for it, because our relation with it is for long, we cannot protect it, as to do so is to protect Death itself. We have to kill Death only by shunning our body……………….]
Thus, in Tagore’s dissertations on ‘Death’ we more hear about ‘’Life’ and his songs/poems on ‘Birth’ and ‘Death’ are hand in glove. A few examples follow.

1) A Tagore’s song on birthday:

He nutan dakha dik arbar
Janmero prathama subhakshan
……………………………….
[Note: There has been a boom of celebration of birthday parties of young and adults alike in the Western style even in our country with the trite song ‘Happy birthday to you …..etc.’ preceded by the ritual of cutting/eating of delicious birthday cakes to be followed by sumptuous dishes and, of course, the incumbents are flooded with costly gifts from their guests. Thus, the birthday parties do provide plenty of enjoyment. However, it may be interesting to compare this ethos with that which pervades the whole of Bengal during the Kabi Paksha (Poet’s fortnight) which starts on the 25th day of Baisakh (this month in the Bengali calendar synchronizes with the mid April to mid May period), the birthday of the Poet, when the entire clime here is inundated with Tagore’s songs/recitals etc. in various functions taking us deep into the perception of Creation’s mystery, which we badly miss in our said birthday rituals which, one may feel, are in utter mediocrity once one has experienced the ecstasy and philosophical height in Kabi Paksha. Out of many other recitals relevant to the profundity of ‘birthday’ the following song is sure to be heard on this occasion ]

O Ever New, may Thee reappear
Through Life’s holy primal hour;
With the mist torn
Like Sun be Thy manifestation.
From the midst of inane
Thy victory be over its bane.
Let be hailed by Thy glow
And my heart’s trumpet blow;
Music of Life’s marvel
Infinity’s eternal wonder to reveal;
The clarion call to the Ever New be sent
At the advent
Of Baisakh the twenty fifth
For its un-blighting gift.

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

Poem No: 39 of the book ‘Sesh Saptak’ written in 1933, about 8 years before his death in 1941 at the age of 80.

[Translator’s note: Tagore’s wonderful interpretation of Upanishada is found in a large number of his essays which helps us understand this oldest scripture of mankind in Sanskrit which founted from the profound spiritual inspiration of the sages of ancient India more than 4000 years back. The following quote from Tagore’s essay ‘Dukkha’ (=Woe) is a sample of such interpretation which also appears to me very relevant to this poem on Death, the extreme form of woe according to the limited perceptions of lesser mortals like us. Only a saintly frame of mind, as the Poet had, can perceive Death in the vast canvas of Creation where Death’s severity is so diluted.
“Those who lack in spiritual and devotional power, want to perceive as total truth the manifestation of God only amidst happiness, pleasure and wealth. They say, wealth and fame are gift of God, beauty evinces Him and that worldly success is His blessing and reward for our virtuosity. Benevolence of God, to them, is tender and piteous. These infirm with their euphoric reveries take the mercy of God as an aid to their greed, delusion and cowardice with their fragmented fads. But O Awful, where do I confine Your mercy and joy? Only in my happiness, wealth and a panicles life? Shall I have to split woes, hazards, fear and death to juxtapose against You for my knowledge about You? Not so. O Lord, You are sorrow, hazard, fear and death. The blazing flames of Your face are gutting out the mortals, Your vigour is warming up the whole world. O Terrible, we can get rid of the illusion of grief and death only by sighting Your awful form. Else, in Your world we have to go around with a coward’s inhibition, failing to surrender totally to Truth. Then I address You as Benevolent and implore Your mercy and, on its denial, complain against You and lament for my protection from You. But O Terrible, I beg of You that strength which will enable me to deem Your mercy not for my self-comfort and narrow utilities to deprive myself with Your incomplete perception. Let me not deceive myself by approaching You with a trembling heart and a moistened eyes to earn Your compassion. From age to age You are rescuing Man from untruth to Truth, from darkness to illumination, from death to immortality, the journey for which is not one of comfort, but of the severest ordeal.”]

They came to me to say –
“O Poet, tell us about Death, pray”.
Said I, “Death is my very intimate,
Its rhythms my heart vibrate;
Entangled in my vein
Joy of its flow in my blood lain.

Says He – ‘Go ahead
With your burdens shed;
Go on dying every second,
At my pull, on my moment.”

Says, “if you sit static
Everything to grip –
In your world flowers will harsh
Rivers will marsh,
The stars will fade –
Stop not” – so He said;
“Don’t look back –
Get across the old, ruins weary that slack.
I’m the Death shepherd
Driving Creation’s herd
From age to age
Pasture to pasture to graze.

When Life’s stream flowed,
I followed.
Allowed it not to ditch,
Lured it past the guard of its beach;
Led it to the vast sea,
That is none but me.

The Present aims permanence,
Imposes on you hence
All its load; all your virtues
To this glutton you lose.
On its surfeit, this monster
Craves a stall in wakeless slumber.

The Creation to rescue from the grip
Of this hibernate Present, is my severe sweep;
That eternal stumbling block
To smash with my disastrous shock,
To pave the way for the pageant perennial
Of the yet to appear, those newcomers to hail.”

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

Poem” Punarabartan (Re-incarnation) from the book Geetali (Music) written in Buddha Gaya in 1914.

[Translator’s note: The Hindu belief in re-incarnation may conflict with the scientific mindset if we try to interpret it in a physical sense. But even scientists will never be able to explain the mystery behind the mortal life which apparently terminates while new life re-appears. Are these totally isolated phenomenon or linked up? The Poet is inclined to accept the latter. Incidentally, recital of this piece goes both as a poem as well as a song, the starting of which in Bengali is as follows –

Abar jadi ichcha karo abar ashi phire,
Dukkha sukhar dheu khelano ei sagarer tire….]

Here I revert to if you’ll wish so
This shore dashed by the waves of weal and woe.
Float my boat again,
On the dust play my game –
Run after the elusive golden deer
Only to flood in tear.
In the dark night, on the road thorny
Again I start my journey –
Either to succumb to my injury
Or survive its fury.
Again in disguise me to beguile
You play with me all in smile;
With my renewed mirth
Again I love this Earth.

CAN CHINA CRUSH TIBET?

Globalisation of Tibet

From The Statesman

ND Batra

China will once again succeed in crushing the Tibetan uprising which has spread from the politically reorganised region known as the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) to the outlying provinces, Gansu, Sichuan, and Qinghai, where Tibetans have a significant presence.

Once again silence would descend upon Tibet and its people would retreat into their hearts and prayers. But that would hardly be a remarkable achievement for a rising global power, especially when it is trying to show off to the world how the country’s stupendous economic growth has transformed the lives of the people, including, as China claims, those who for centuries suffered the “tyranny of Tibetan feudalism”.

During more than half a century of total domination over Tibet and its cultural and religious institutions, including the massive settlement of ethnic Chinese and their businesses into the heartland of Tibet, China was supposed to have reformed and re-educated Tibetans into total submission to China’s “superior culture”, not to mention hegemony. Why, then, has one of the most authoritarian states the world has ever known failed to brainwash and control the minds of a tiny minority of six million mostly illiterate and leaderless people? Why would these “wretched Tibetans” listen to the voice of the “splittest” from Dharamsala?

After all, the mighty Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was able to crush innumerable uprisings including the bloodiest students’ and workers’-led brief revolution on 23 October 1956 in Hungary. The USSR, as China is doing now, sent in tanks and troops and, in spite of the fact that there were worldwide protests against the Hungarian suppression including in India, the Soviets succeeded in re-establishing their yoke on Hungary. That was an era of Cold War, a balance of terror and mutual annihilation, and the USA and the Soviet Union had other battles to fight. Hungary was forgotten in the vast oblivion until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989.

Tibet’s storyline is different. First, in 1959, after the failure of the Tibetan uprising, the Dalai Lama along with 80,000 Tibetans escaped to India; and thanks to the Gandhian spirit still alive in India at that time, the Nehru administration let the young Tibetan leader gradually establish an international political and spiritual presence instead of turning him and his people into perpetually ghettoised refugees. Since the Great Escape, Tibetans ~ young and old alike ~ have been braving the hazards of Chinese occupation forces and have kept coming to Dharamsala. This year, another 2,500-3,000 Tibetans will escape to India. Many of them eventually go to Europe and the USA, where they imbibe the spirit of freedom and keep the spirit of Tibet alive.

The rise of the Dalai Lama as a global spiritual leader is an amazing phenomenon. Nothing has diminished him. How could this man who has been termed by a top Chinese official as a “wolf wrapped in a habit, a monster with a human face and an animal’s heart”, whose people are suffering a cultural genocide, still be so forgiving and so loving?

Visiting the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, the Speaker of the US Congress, Nancy Pelosi, one of the most powerful, courageous and compassionate women living today in the USA, told her audience that Chinese atrocities against Tibetans were “a challenge to the conscience of the world”. Was she chiding India for being chicken-hearted? “If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world,” she admonished.

Last September, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel received the Dalai Lama in her office, Chinese authorities were enraged because it amounted to giving the monk recognition as the political leader of Tibet. But Sino-German relations had begun to mend until the peaceful protests by Buddhist monks in Lhasa turned into a spontaneous eruption in the entire greater Tibet region and suddenly lifted the massive public relations smokescreen that the Chinese had succeeded in casting over the world about the “improvement” in its human rights record.

Through the miracle of cell-phone video, the Internet and YouTube, the whole world watched what the Chinese authorities were doing to Tibetans. Of all the Europeans, Germans are the most sensitive about human rights issues. The Genocide and Holocaust are eternally etched into their collective consciousness and historical memory. German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul was quoted as saying, “Violence can never be a solution. The two sides can only arrive at a solution through dialogue.” But there can be no dialogue between two sides unless they accept each other. Tibet’s Communist Party secretary, Zhang Qingli, told regional officials, “We are engaged in a fierce battle of blood and fire with the Dalai clique, a life-and-death struggle between the foe and us.” Whatever happened to China’s pretensions to a “peaceful rise” and the “journey of harmony”?

While Germany has been more outspoken about China’s oppression in Tibet, even suspending environmental technology aid talks, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been no less bold in his decision to meet the Dalai Lama when he visits London. He told parliament about his phone conversation with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao wherein he urged him to ensure that there “had to be an end to the violence in Tibet”. He also said that he “called for constraint” and “an end to the violence by dialogue between the different parties”. But China considers the Dalai Lama a runaway rogue and trouble-maker rather than a party to the dispute.

China has two alternatives.
It may attempt to “resolutely crush” the Tibetan people’s uprising as the Communist Party’s official daily newspaper has urged the government to do and turn Tibet into an Orwellian Panopticon, much like the Soviet Union had done in Hungary and its other satellite countries. But in the age of wireless mobility, texting, networking and decentralised global organisations fighting for human rights everywhere, the Communist leadership may not succeed in using the great Chinese propaganda machine and the digital firewall to control the Tibetan mind without doing the same to the rest of the population.

Alternatively, China may consider establishing a genuine dialogue with the Dalai Lama and restore to Tibet internal sovereignty and autonomy and in the process transform itself into one country, multiple systems ~ as is the USA, India or the evolving European Union.

(ND Batra, the author of Digital Freedom, teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University. He can be reached at narainbatra@gmail.com)