news views and analysis

It is perplexing how the world’s most populous democracy is so flawed. How can a country, whose elections are cited as an exuberant example of people-power, produce governments that serve their people so badly?

By JOHN KAMPFNER

John Kampfner is chief executive of Index on Censorship, London

As an outsider, it would be inappropriate to enter into the debate about India’s internal political structures. But the broader picture is troubling: the extent to which the aspirations and behaviour of citizens in the so-called democracies and authoritarian regimes have converged over the past 20 years of globalization.

From Mumbai to Shanghai to Dubai (to coin that phrase of whizkid financiers), via London and New York, we have witnessed the erosion of liberties in our seemingly insatiable quest for wealth and our urge for an illusory security.

The model for this new world order is Singapore. The city-state has a large number of well-educated and well-travelled people keen to defend a system that requires an almost complete abrogation of freedom of expression in return for a good material life. This is the pact. In each country it varies; citizens hand over different freedoms in accordance with their own customs and priorities. Read More

The image you see below is from a recent issue of GQ Magazine published in India. Arjun Rampal actor/model answers some candid questions and one of his answers is a boastful “I am one of the few people who have gone into the Agyari pretending to be a Parsi”.

This is really pathetic and obnoxious of Arjun Rampal. A little background. Arjun Rampal is married to Meher Jesia, ex Miss India.

Current rules state that only Parsis are allowed entry into their holy places, the Agiyaris and the Atashbehrams. And Arjun is not a Parsi. What right does he then have to break the rules of a community, just to satiate his own personal curiosity and boast about it.

Rules in religion are not always agreed upon. But as long as they exist one needs to respect them. I wonder if Arjun Rampal would dare to go to the Kaaba at Mecca, which is out of bounds to non-Muslims. No offence to Muslims, but I wish he would try that stunt and see the consequences.

Parsi fire temples are not guarded securitized places. Over the centuries there has been a certain respect/trust within the society, which respects the wishes of the Parsi community and not venture into their fire temples.

I am not a legal maven, but I wonder if a criminal case of trespass can be filed against this Arjun Rampal. He has knowingly desecrated a consecrated place, an agiary.

It also makes me wonder what sort of a person Arjun is, what moral standards he must have to take credit in publicly admitting such an act.

Cross-Posted on Parsi Khabar.

Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty is slated to be the Grand Marshall at this year’s India Day Parade here in NYC. This will be the 29th year of this parade.

To be held on Sunday August 16, 2009, the parade starts at 12:00 pm at 41st street @ Madison Avenue and ends at 28th Street. There is a big “mela” at the end with stalls selling everything from newspaper subscriptions to food, music, clothes and what not !.

Be there. It should be a fun-filled day, especially if the weather is good.

I am thrilled to inform you about the soon to be published Monograph on one of India’s foremost architects Nari Gandhi.

There is a personal connection here for me. The author of the monograph is Prof. H, Masud Taj my professor at Rizvi College of Architecture from 1992 to 1997,  and a dear friend.

This monograph is published and designed by Pranav Upasani, a fellow alumni from RCA and a good friend, and Prof. Y D Pitkar, a visiting faculty at RCA in the 90’s and a friend too.

Received via email from Pranav Upasani …

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Disclaimer: If you cannot take sarcasm and humor, please leave this site. This article is not intended or meant to be demeaning or insulting to anyone except self-righteous US Politicians having extra-marital affairs.

India is the outsourcing capital of the world. Of this there is no doubt. Of course all the outsourcing is intrinsically linked to IT. The BPO’s attest to that. Even the recent KPO’s have their roots in the prowess of India as a backend server to the corporations of the world.

However there is one area where we need to buck up.

In recent times American politicians have gone left right and center in having extra marital affairs. The pioneer of the current era was undoubtedly President Clinton. And since then there have been a whole bunch of politicians who have “sinned” in the very Christian sense. Funnily most of them are Republicans and “God-fearing” men of the faith. And at least one of them is a hypocrite of the highest order. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford voted to impeach President Clinton, but then still goes ahead and has one fulll blown affair and then confesses to having more than a roving eye with various other women.

However this very casanova Sanford may have created an opportunity for India. He outsourced his affair to a Latina from Argentina. As a late night comedian put it….”Oh what happened to the good old days when hot blooded US politicians had affairs with US women….are these US women now not good enough ?”.

Here is India’s chance. Indian women are some of the most beautiful in the world. Of that there is no doubt. And now there are direct flights to India that can get these US politicians to our shores in 14 hours!

So there I say, lets start advertising India as a great destination to have an affair. Market it to all the US politicians, be they Democratic or Republican. Issue them visas, give them sops, prepare custom made holiday packages and while at it, throw in “have one, get one free” deals.

More outsourcing power to India, what say ?

In the true notion of democracy, the most powerful name in India, the epicenter of Indian politics is a Parsi name. Religion and caste do play a big role in our country at all levels. Be it politics, government and even the private sector.

When APJ was President, we had a Muslim head of state, a Sikh Prime Minister, a Catholic foreign born national as the head of the ruling coalition, and a Parsi last name as the most powerful name in Indian Politics.

Below is quoted text from an Op-Ed titled “How religious do politicians need to be?” by Aakar Patel in The News Pakistan that highlights the point.

The name Gandhi comes not from the Mahatma but from Indira’s husband Feroze Gandhi, who was Parsi. The Parsi variation of the word Gandhi, which means grocer or merchant in Gujarati, is normally spelled Ghandy. That’s because Parsis, like some Gujarati communities, find it difficult to sound the soft ‘dh’ (as in ‘Dharna’) and use the harder ‘d’ (as in ‘Diet’) instead. But by a happy coincidence Feroze used the conventional spelling and the most powerful name in Indian politics was given extension.

Her marriage to a Parsi offended nobody, but because of it Indira Gandhi was denied entry into the temple of Jagannath in the state of Orissa. Jagannath means ‘Lord of All’ and the temple is to Vishnu, one of Hinduism’s three primary gods. Perhaps uniquely in India, the Jagannath temple’s priests have kept a ‘Hindus-only’ policy, which is counterintuitive if they think of him as Lord of All. But this bigotry comes from the days when only caste Hindus were allowed into temples, and the lower castes and untouchables kept out. The constitution and the Supreme Court have decapitated caste hierarchy in India, but some people are nothing without their prejudice.

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As a die-hard motorcyclist, news of a potential air bike is fantastic. A group of Indian engineering students successfully build a pollution-free motorbike designed to run on air pressure rather than petrol. Video courtesy of Reuters.

Hat Tip via Mickie Sorabjee.

The Emerging Exchanges: New Architectute of India conference was held last Thursday and Friday at the New School Campus here in NYC. Jointly hosted by the New School, India China Institute, and The Architecture League it brought together a great mix of practitioners from India.

Thursday’s first session was an introduction to the theme. Kazi Ashraf gave an overview of the current state of Indian architecture which was basically paraphrasing his article for the “Made In India” AD Issue of 2007. In showing a lot of proposals for projects he tried to cover ground about the typologies of emergent Indian architecture. However as Rahul Mehrotra pointed out later in the conference, most of them were just proposals and never ever left the drawing board. And sadly this would be a constant criticism of the conference over the next two days. More of that later in the article.

Some of the outstanding presentations were: Read More

Over the next two days I will be attending this conference at the Architectural League in New York City.

It’s been a while since an architectural-themed conference on India has taken place here in NYC and it should be interesting to see the dialogue that it generates.

Hosted at the New School auditorium, the conference sold out a few days ago. Nevertheless there are tickets available for the keynote address at the end of Day 01.

Participants include:

Himanshu Burte, Prem Chandavarkar, Kenneth Frampton, Soumitro Ghosh and Nisha Mathew, Sudhir Jambhekar, Rajeev Kathpalia, Anupama Kundoo, Reinhold Martin, Gurjit Singh Matharoo, Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha, Rahul Mehrotra, Geeta Mehta, Vyjayanthi Rao, Samira Rathod, Margie Ruddick and Tom Zook, Michael Sorkin, Neerja Tiku, and Billie Tsien and Tod Williams

The conference looks to understand the growth and development of Indian architecture and cities overall in the time frame of an overall growth in Indian economy, and its standing in the global scenario.

However the choice of participants seems to be a bit peculiar. There are the usual high profile “suspects” and then others that are probably there because the US-based co-chairs had heard about them. And somehow my feeling is that it does not reflect the ground realities.

As much as he is reviled in the architectural community in India, I would have loved to see Hafeez Contractor present and talk about the conference. As my friend and landscape architect Runit Chhaya of Design Cell NYC puts it “Hafeez is today, probably the only architect in India who gets buildings sold, just on his name and fame “.

I will be covering the conference in detail. If you are going to be attending, give me a shout in the comments section.

Yes I will not vote this Lok Sabha election. I understand that this one of the most powerful right available to me as a citizen of the world’s largest democracy. But I will not vote.

It is the right of every citizen of India to cast their vote. That’s what my civics textbook told me all those years ago in Standard 8. But I will not vote.

I am as proud a citizen of my country as anyone has ever been. I truly believe that through the power of the vote we can somehow change the destiny of our country. Idealistic as that may sound, it needs a very large number of us to exercise our vote to make the change happen. But I will not vote.

I have had the opportunity to see how smart sensible people can decide to make a change and cast their vote for what they believe is right, and in doing so create history. I saw it on November 04, 2008. But I will still not vote.

I will not vote because as a Non-Resident Indian, I cannot vote. In India, one can vote in person only. No chance of postal absentee ballots, because the concept does not even exist in India.

Would I have voted if it was. Hell, yes I would. You can say that me being away from the country on election day is something thats under my power. And yes I agree, that if I chose, I could have made sure I was in India on that day. And I won’t be.

That however does not change the fact that we as a democracy do not allow absentee ballots. India goes out of its way to welcome back the NRI financial repatriations and even the NRI’s themselves at all the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas. We even have a minister for overseas Indians. Why then have we not implemented a mechanism to allow people to vote via the post.

Hopefully this is the last Lok Sabha elections when I will not cast a vote. And in 2014, at the next logical election cycle, absentee ballots may be a reality, or I might be in India.