Sadhus and Snake Charmers - India in the British Media

Over the past month I have been reminded that the British have an insatiable appetite for two South Asian exports: Bangladeshi food and outlandish news stories.

By bizarre news stories, I mean those of the ‘snake-charmers and sadhus’ variety. No matter what else is happening in Subcontinent, whether it’s a big economic story or yet another nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan, the British media always manages to make space for the ‘weird news’. Stories of the bizarre and fantastic, such as Jesus appearing in a chapatti or sightings of Nepal’s mysterious ‘Buddha Boy’, have always jostled for space with more heavy-weight coverage over here.

Here are my three favourites from the past month:

Indian athlete fails gender test

Hindu wedding ceremony for dogs called off

Indian tribals in same-sex marriage

If you follow UK coverage of South Asia for a while you do notice the ratio of ‘weird’ to ‘serious’ news is rather skewed towards strange and potentially laughable events. True, if you trawl through the BBC you find some fairly bizarre stories from the rest of the globe, but I do feel that India in particular seems struggle with a reputation as a land of the wacky and wonderful more than most ‘emerging’ countries.

Historically, us Brits love nothing better than a good juicy story from the subcontinent, replete with jaw-dropping and fantastic details. Philip Meadows Taylor’s Confessions of a Thug (1839) was a runaway success in Britain. It records the ‘true’ confessions of Ameer Ali, a member of the notorious thugee cult. Ali shares his recollections of murdering and robbing 750 people, apparently without remorse. The demand for gross-out, astonishing tales of India didn’t die with the empire – Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, an 80’s favourite, featured some completely over-the-top depictions of blood-sacrifices, if I remember rightly.

I have no problem with the odd quirky story every now and again, but I do worry sometimes that journalists and editors pander a little too much to a perceived demand for ‘off-the-wall’ stories about India among UK readers. If you want ‘serious’ India news, there are plenty of places to go where you can go to escape from tales of yogis and abnormal bodily functions (I think the FT is a pretty good option on this count, and Justin Huggler, the South Asia correspondent in the Independent is generally very good).

I don’t wish to start slinging accusations of ‘Orientalism’ around left, right and centre; this was a favourite pastime of my fellow students when I was an undergrad, and became fairly tedious after a while. (When I told classmates that I was off to SOAS to do an MA in South Asian Area Studies, a girl from my postcolonial literature seminar told me, with a completely straight face, that I was clearly suffering from ‘colonialist fantasies’ of the East.)

However, feel that, given our colonial ties, it is only healthy for the UK media to question what exactly it considers to be ‘news’- and why-when it comes to the Subcontinent. The problem is, given the historical relationship between the UK and India, having a good laugh about canine weddings or Jesus appearing in a chapatti can not be taken as wholly innocent any more.

Inventing Ireland and India

Inventing Ireland by Declan Kiberd, a kind of Saidian look at the creation of Irishness and modern Ireland in literature, entertained me over the Christmas period. It combines amusing detail with jargon-free lit crit. Chapter fourteen on 'Ireland and the End of Empire' explores fascinating (to me) links between the 1920s Irish and Indian decolonisation struggles. There's bits on the Yeats-Tagore mutual admiration society, Yeats' theosophical friend and Congress president Annie Besant, Irish fascination with Indian and eastern wisdom, and, inevitably, Kipling's Irish Kim. Though there never was a united Irish-Indian anti-imperialism plenty of political links were forged too. Around 390 Irish soldiers in India went on mutiny during 1920 after having heard about events in Ireland. Substantial co-operation occurred in America where de Valera regularly shared platforms with Indian nationalists, particularly during 1919 and 1920. Apparently 'a large party of Indian Hindus in native dress walked in the St Patrick's Day parades of New York: and Irish sailors on the high seas carried messages and intelligence between Indian nationalists at home and abroad.' In his typically mystical and odd way Yeats believed that ‘until the Battle of the Boyne Ireland belonged to Asia’. Yeats was implying 'a common racial and linguistic link between Indo-European peoples: a theory which, however far-fetched, was widely endorsed by leading Indian writer such as Lokmanya Tilak’. Not many in either Ireland or India agreed with Yeats, however, with distance, racism and the immediate needs of the struggle halting sustained anti-imperial co-operation between the two nations.

Indians in Afghanistan: Kabir Khan's 'Kabul Express'

Films that depict heroic foreigners struggling in poor, disease- and war- ridden countries are usually the province of the West. In the more benign of these stories these characters are elevated over the local populace by their wealth, foreign passport and colour of skin (white). Their culture is of the metropolis and the natives – aware of their music, movies and other cultural products – look upto them as symbols of aspiration. The locals exist to cater to their needs (after all there is money to be made doing so) and offer them admiration and respect. Unless of course the foreigners are colonialists or, their modern day counterparts, soldiers from the American army sent to blighted regions far from home to ensure by force that the locals firmly accept their place within the global order. Then they are resented and bitterly resisted. But even then the foreigner’s cultural dominance is undeniable. Failing superior rationality and modern weaponry, there is always the all-powerful foreign passport to whisk them home.

Impulses towards this genre of films exist in India as well. The films that show rich Indians singing and dancing in expensive Western cities exist not only, as is commonly believed, to satisfy the desire for exotic locations among the home audience. They exist also to feed the fantasies of power of the Indian middle-class. To attain some kind of cultural and economic domination over the richest countries in the world, to insidiously engineer a kind of reverse colonization: that is perhaps the dominant unspoken fantasy of the Indian middle-class (and their diasporic cousins) today. Typical of such fantasies is Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. With Priety Zinta as a desi replacement for Anna Wintour, she represents the Indian diaspora’s second-level aspirations. Having satisfied the first-level of aspirations – achieving success in solidly middle-class occupations – they now seek to penetrate and influence the cultural tastes of the metropolis. Watching wealthy and powerful Indians strut confidently through Western capitals, commanding the respect of the white man, seems to be so thrilling for so many Indians, that films like these seem to have established themselves as a lucrative sub-genre within Hindi cinema.

But Indian cultural dominance over places like London and New York is so implausible that these films can only remain in the realm of wistful and outrageous fantasy that Bollywood is so good at producing. But now the king of these fantasies, Yash Raj films, has released a film, Kabul Express, that has a more documentary feel to it and does not include any song and dance routines. It is also unique for being set in Afghanistan, a country poorer than India. It is, however, similar to those foreign-set fantasies in displaying the impulse towards a display of Indian dominance over the local culture.

Because India does have some dominance over Afghanistan (many people there speak Hindi, watch Indian films, India is one of the largest donors to the Afghani government), Indian cultural hegemony can be represented through a realistic mode. Because this dominance does exist, it would be in very poor taste to glorify this fact. Kabul Express tries to downplay Indian hegemony and demonstrates some sensitivity to Afghani culture.

The film is set in post-Taliban Afghanistan, soon after the 2001 American invasion. Two mid-level Indian journalists – Suhel Khan (John Abraham) and Jai Kapoor (Arshad Warsi) – fly into Kabul hoping to find stories that will take their careers up a notch. These two journalists and their Afghani driver get taken hostage by Talib Imran Khan Sifradi (Salman Shahid) who makes them take him to the Pakistani border. Along the way Suhel and Jai develop an affinity with the Talib, who turns out to be a member of the Pakistani army sent to fight for the Taliban, but now abandoned because of Pakistan’s withdrawal of support to the Taliban. The Indians and the Talib have comical arguments about whether Imran Khan or Kapil Dev is the greatest cricketer of all time, sing Hindi songs together and share cigarettes. This is in contrast to their driver and other Afghanis who feel only a vicious antipathy towards the Taliban. In the end it is the Indians who help the Talib escape from Afghanis intent on killing him. Here, then, comfortable in their status as representatives of the regional hegemon, the Indians are shown as being able to rise above Afghanistan’s internal squabbles. As in those hundreds of films made in the West, where the foreigner is able to bring together opposing factions with his neutral, superior wisdom (Lawrence of Arabia, anyone?).

This is not to say that the Indians in this film are equivalent to Europeans or Americans in Asia or Africa. Interestingly, one of the main characters in Kabul Express is an American journalist Jessica Beckham (Linda Arsenio) for Reuters, who joins Suhel and Jai for part of their journey. The chief reason for this character’s existence seems to be to demonstrate the differences between the Western and Indian journalists attracted to Afghanistan. She is first shown complaining loudly about how decrepit Afghanistan is and how she is sick of eating kababs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In contrast the Indians handle the entire situation with great equanimity and tolerance. Partially because of the cultural similarities between Afghanistan and India they are not as fazed by the situations they get into. To the director’s credit, however, Jessica is shown possessing more than the stereotypical American characteristics of arrogance and ignorance. She is much more intrepid and courageous than the Indians are, with a purposefulness that is in direct contrast to the Suhel’s and Jai’s laid-back and often bumbling manner.

In its goodwill towards all people, Kabul Express’ message seems to be that India, in countries over which it has influence, will never act in the condescending manner of the Western powers. Yet for people in India’s surrounding countries this message will seem to hide a more irksome aspect of India’s regional dominance. Like those American characters sent to solve crises in poor nations (think the Quiet American), the Indian journalists in Kabul Express are guilty of foolhardy optimism and naivety. But this is not to deny that Arshad Warsi’s significant comic talent shines through consistently, lends charm to his clumsy innocence, and makes Kabul Express an enjoyable film to watch.

In praise of....Manchester's Curry Mile - #1

in the rain by Mike Duff
i don't care if you're black, chinese white or tan
don't care if you're old, gay, a woman or man
you can sit down next to me
if you're mancunian
(winner of 2004 Poem for Manchester)

Normally I'd be very sceptical if somebody said that one street is a shining example of multiculturalism. But the 'Curry Mile' in Manchester is something just that. From the centre you head south pass the great domed Central Library, all the huge university buildings, BBC North HQ and several ancient museums. You do all this right on the busiest bus route in Europe. Suddenly the neon-lighted curry cathedrals come into view! Perhaps 40 or 50 curry restaurants are here representing all of South Asia (excepting Bhutan and the Maldives!). Plus take-aways. And prices to suit the student pocket as well special places for richer folk. A number of excellent 'sweet houses' are nearby to finish things off. The food is one thing but the energy is another. I've been down at 2am and been told to wait for service.

But the people make the place, not vice versa. Daytimes are dominated by students, nightimes by all Manchester; all of the multi-coloured and different Mancunians in the poem above. The Curry Mile now has an Irish pub at the start and several Arab-run shops. A large Jamaican and West African community lives nearby and eats out. Kurds, Palestinians plus Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and the rest share the experience. Elderly Jamaican pensioners joke with Indian students who laugh at goras eating chillies. Though the mix at night is intense its only here that labels and identities truly seem to matter least. Nothing is perfect in the rest of Manchester. Racism is pretty rife. But in one mile in one part of the city the main competition is between curries and not cultures!

Nepal's new Interim Constitution - Did the Maoists lose out?

I’ve been somewhat puzzled about the Interim Constitution that was finally promulgated on Saturday after months of difficult negotiations between the mainstream political parties (especially the Nepali Congress) and the Maoists. The promulgation of the constitution was delayed because there were a number of points on which the Congress and the Maoists hadn’t been able to come to an agreement. Then suddenly on Saturday the new statute was declared, and it appeared that the Maoists had conceded all their last minute demands. The last leg of the negotiations, at least, seems to have been won by the Nepali Congress and their allies.

Granted, some of these articles are not in themselves of immense importance. Beginning from the least important: Despite the Maoist aversion to symbols of Hinduism, the national animal remains the cow. Somewhat more important: The Maoists had been arguing for education, health and employment provisions to be made part of the constitution’s “fundamental rights”. The Congress argued that such a measure would lead to unwanted “populist” mobilizations. So these provisions are part of the state’s “directive principles” instead. Meaning, I suppose, that they will be easier to ignore.

The two most important articles concern the head of state and the formation of the interim government. The Maoists had been arguing that the speaker of the house should be made the interim head of state. The Congress was staunchly opposed to this. In the end they decided to make the prime-minister the interim head of state. Most attention in the media has been focused on the fact that this will make the prime-minister more powerful than any person in Nepal since the last Ranas. Personally, I see it as a delaying tactic on the part of the Nepali Congress. If a person occupying a separate position, say the speaker of the House of Representatives, had been given the position, it would have made it difficult to replace him in the future. Having the prime-minister temporarily occupy that position means leaving it essentially vacant, and thus leaving open the possibility that the King occupy that position, should he not lose the referendum to be held during the first stage of the Constitutional Assembly elections in June. The Maoists were initially adamant about installing a separate head-of-state precisely to weaken the King’s position. The Nepali Congress was adamant about not doing so to leave the possibility of a ceremonial monarchy open.

The final disagreement regarded arms management. Contrary to their earlier demand, the Maoists have agreed to the provision that they will join the interim government only after their arms have been locked up and their cadre placed in camps under the supervision of the United Nations. This is quite a bold move on their part. It means that they are confident of gaining political support without their intimidating and coercive militia.

The Maoists may have decided to accept the Nepali Congress’ demands because, as an editorial in today’s Kathmandu Post argues, not to have done so would have led to a further delay that could have had an adverse affect on the morale of the Maoist cadre. This could possibly even lead to the disintegration of their party. They are also probably very keen to redefine the character of their party. A headline today described the efforts made by the Maoists to change their party structure from a “war-centric” to an “election-centric” party. The commitment to the new constitution and the proposed changes to their party structure betray great hope on the part of the Maoists. They may have temporarily agreed to conditions laid down by the Nepali Congress, but they implicitly believe that they will have the power to change things in the future. Their promises to their cadre are hinged on the phrase “When we form government…”

C.K. Lal has argued that Maoists have sacrificed too much in the negotiation process and the political parties (chiefly the Congress) have been “astonishingly ungrateful” in return. Their words and actions, he states, seem bent on delaying or obstructing the mainstreaming of the Maoists. I don’t know whether this is true, but it seems to me that the Maoist strategy is much more subtle than Lal gives them credit for. Through demonstrating their capability for sacrifice and consensus-building, the Maoists hope to temper their war-mongering reputation. They know that they need to attract votes based on their social and economic platform, not force people to vote for them, if they are to retain political legitimacy.

Military aid to Burma - India goes a step too far

What kind of game is India playing with its neighbours?

I knew that India already sent a steady stream of aid to unscrupulous neighbour, Burma, for infrastructure projects. However, I was shocked to see that the army has just agreed to give the military junta a substantial amount of aid to combat insurgencies. Investing in electricity plants and motorways in one of the world’s most vilified regimes is one thing, but giving money to its army so that they can keep unruly ethnic minority groups in check is quite another.

Air Force chief S.P Tyagi offered the a multi-million dollar aid package to Burma’s military when he visited the new administrative capital, Nay Pyi Taw, on November 22nd. The aid package includes helicopters and upgrades on Russian- and Chinese-donated planes. This follows Indian army chief of staff J.J Singh’s recent pledge to train the Burmese army in counter-insurgency tactics.

NGO Human Rights Watch was the first to speak out about the deal, which doesn’t seem to have been picked up by the mainstream western press. HRW’s Brad Adams says that the aid is likely to be used against civilians as the junta does all it can to stamp out dissent from groups such as the Chin and Mon.

India’s rationale seems to be a desire to curb Chinese influence in the military-run state (A number of Burma’s ethnic minority groups are allegedly pro-China). But this is really going too far.

I am not knowledgeable at all about the political situation in Burma, but this development really worried me. It also made me want to find out some more about the dire lack of human rights in Burma. I was reading this report of the UN Special Rapporteur, written in September this year, and was really horrified at how bad the situation is there. The report mentions that the army has a terrible reputation for recruiting child soldiers and torturing dissidents. It also points out that the army has a horrendous record of sexually abusing women, particularly those from ethnic minority groups:

In 2004, the Special Rapporteur received report of 125 cases of rape in Kayin State over a period of one year and half. In 2005, he received reports of 37 cases involving sexual violence against 50 women
and girls in Mon areas between 1995 and 2004. In 2006, he has received information about 30 cases of rape against Chin women. This trend of sexual violence is particularly alarming, bearing in mind that the figures provided are likely to be far lower than the reality as many women do not report incidents of sexual violence because of the trauma attached to it. [link]

One can only guess at the level of human misery that India’s hand-out is going to cause in Burma. I remain completely baffled by India’s decision to prop up the army of what is effectively an international basket case.

What makes matters worse is the way that India behaved during Chinese premier Hu Jin Tao’s recent state visit to India. India was at pains to dumb-down the question of human rights abuses in Tibet. The government went as far as to ban the well-known exile activist Tenzin Tsundue from leaving his home in Dharamsala, for fear that he would cause a major embarrassment by protesting in Delhi during the visit. This move was widely criticised by human rights groups.

So, we have India cosy-ing up to China on the one hand, and then forming highly suspect alliances with the Burmese Junta behind their back to make sure that their influence doesn’t spread. And in the meantime, human rights and a commitment to democracy and free speech are completely forgotten.

Their decision to fund the Burmese military is truly shabby. What happened to India acting the liberal, stable democracy in an unstable region?

Nepali displeasure at Kiran Desai's 'The Inheritance of Loss'

“Everyone knows,” said the cook. “Coastal people eat fish and see how much cleverer they are, Bengalis, Malayalis, Tamils. Inland they eat too much grain, and it slows the digestion – especially millet – forms a big heavy ball. The blood goes to the stomach and not to the head. Nepalis make good soldiers, coolies, but they are not so bright at their studies. Not their fault, poor things.”

Lola: “It’s an issue of porous border is what. You can’t tell one from the other, Indian Nepali from Nepali Nepali. And then, baba, the way these Neps multiply.
[…]
Mrs. Sen: “No self-control those people. Disgusting.”

-- Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

Nobody noticed Kiran Desai’s book until it won the Booker prize. Now everyone seems to have read it and there’s an outcry in the Nepali press about the writer’s portrayal of Nepalis. D.B. Gurung wrote a scathing review of the book in the Kathmandu Post that revolves solely around Desai’s apparent mis-representation of Nepalis as “as crooks, dupes, cheats and lesser humans breathing amid a perpetually looming poverty.” Then there were the many letters in support of Gurung that were published in the following days. A certain Hiramani Ghimire dared to disagree with Gurung, saying that negative opinions about Nepalis were offered mostly by the Bengali characters in the book whose snobbery is itself subject to Desai’s mockery. The next day he was immediately put down (bottom of page) by another letter writer who “doubt[ed] whether Ghimire is a Nepali at all - if not, he is a Nepali Kancha with a mind colonized by the Indians.”

Quite apart from the fact that the Inheritance of Loss is a wonderful novel that is actually very sympathetic to the Nepalis of West Bengal who haven’t been given their due, it always pains me to see the intense reactions that apparent insults from Indians always provoke here. Luckily this time the target was a literary novel that most people did not have access to. The reaction was limited to the newspapers. Unlike the demonstrations and riots that occurred when Hritik Roshan and Madhuri Dixit made what were in fact innocuous remarks about Nepal.

Having little idea of the lives of ethnic Nepalis living in Kalimpong and Darjeeling, I thought Desai’s novel offered an insightful account of a community treated as a minority in a place where they were the majority. I had only very vague memories of the agitation led for an autonomous Gorkhaland in the 1980s, which is the central political backdrop of the novel. I remember that as a child of seven or eight growing up in Kathmandu I had heard of Subhash Ghising, the leader of the movement, and harboured ambiguous feelings towards him. I felt pride (because he was a Nepali standing up to an ever domineering India) mixed with (the very middle-class) fear and disapproval (of any threat to the status quo). Then his movement died out and I have no recollection of ever thinking of him until I recently read Desai’s novel.

I have to agree with Desai’s Nepali critics, however, when they say that Desai is not very familiar with the Nepali culture in Kalingpong and Darjeeling. She sympathizes with the Nepalis and understands why young under-privileged people may be attracted to violent political causes. But the Nepali story is presented as a somewhat abstract background to the life and concerns of her middle- and upper-class Bengali characters. When she does write about details that are part of Nepali culture, she often commits minor mistakes. Once she refers to tongba, that warm drink made by pouring hot water over fermented millet, as chhang, which is in fact milky rice beer served cold.

There are some wonderful descriptions however. I particularly like this one:

Kathmandu was a carved wooden city of temples and palaces, caught in a disintegrating tangle of modern concrete that stretched into the dust and climbed into the sky.

If I had to write a review of the novel I would say that it is wonderfully compassionate and humane, deliciously funny at times, while suffused with the pathos of the alienated and impoverished during others. But Pankaj Mishra already wrote the definitive review of the novel in the New York Times.

Does India need the World Bank?

The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the World Bank released its Annual Report of Development Effectiveness 2006 on December 8. Among other findings, the IEG states that the World Bank has consistently overemphasized growth rates at the expense of poverty reduction measures, especially in rural areas.

Only two in five borrowing countries have recorded continuous per-capita income growth over the five years 2000-05, and just one in five did so for a full ten years, 1995-2005…The Bank has found it challenging to help countries formulate and implement strategies that effectively reduce rural poverty. About half of the Country Assistance Strategy reviews carried out by IEG over the past four fiscal years concluded that the Bank’s assistance in rural areas had either not led to satisfactory outcomes or that rural poverty reduction required increased attention. [link]

The report is written in careful bureaucratese that refrains from strongly linking the policies of liberalisation and privatisation that the World Bank advocates to the failure in reducing poverty. Independent though it may be, the IEG is still closely affiliated to the World Bank and shares the latter’s ideology. The implicit assumption throughout the report seems to be that the policies advocated by the Bank are not in themselves to blame. The problem lies in inadequate preliminary studies of the consequences of reform measures and development interventions. Thus, the report states:

The Bank has not always paid sufficient attention to the distributional effects of growth enhancing reforms. As a result, the effects of the pro-growth reforms it supported were not always cushioned by safety net intervention. In trade reform, for example, the Bank often failed to conduct sufficient analysis to inform its policy advice and lending about the employment and poverty effects of reforms. Consequently, trade-related projects did not adequately attend to these effects. Similarly, in many transition economies, price and exchange rate liberalisations were not accompanied by the necessary offsetting measures to protect food security and provide social safety nets. In its support for reforms of pension systems, the Bank’s assistance focused primarily on improving the fiscal sustainability of pension systems, but it often failed to sufficiently address the pension system’s primary goal of reducing poverty and providing adequate old-age income within fiscal constraints.

Later:

To support growth strategies that more consistently translate into poverty reduction, the countries, the Bank, and their partners will need to further strengthen their understanding of what keeps the poor from participating in growth in each country, what prevents growth from reaching particular regions and sectors, and how urban-rural linkages and intersectoral mobility can be enhanced. [link]

The report states that the bulk of reduction of the world’s poverty over the past decades has taken place in China and India. Yet even in India: “The Bank had limited impact on fiscal and other structural reforms and failed to develop an effective assistance strategy for rural poverty reduction through much of the 1990s.”

The management of the World Bank objected to the IEG report on the grounds that it “paints an overly bleak picture of developing country growth and poverty reduction, failing to fully reflect both strong global growth trends over the last five years and broadly favourable prospects.” They go on to state that they have developed a new development strategy that is more sensitive to the rural poor in recent years. The results of this strategy will take some time, they believe, to become evident.

I am sceptical that the World Bank can incorporate more of the poor into the growth process by being more sensitive to their needs and conditions. The ideology of liberalisation and privatisation is so powerful that in many cases these processes will be pushed forward almost instinctively. In any case, many cost-benefit analyses that the World Bank has undertaken, as in the case of the Narmada Dam, have been revealed to be heavily biased towards the benefits while understating the costs. The presence of vested interests in most World Bank projects – local business elites, international consultants and construction companies etc. – is a well known fact.

The controversy that surrounded a proposed water supply and sanitation project in Delhi in 2005 is instructive. The aim of this World Bank funded project was to make water supply in Delhi reliable and available at all times to most of the city’s population. Parivartan, an Indian NGO, used the Right to Information Act to gain access to documents relating to the project. What they found was that the project aimed to do little to remove existing inequalities in water supply. Instead, the project offered “plenty of scope for super-profits for a few water companies.” [link]. The operational expenses were to be picked up by the consumers through their water bills. Parivartan estimated that “if the project is accepted, a typical family may find its water bills increasing five times over.”

As if that was not bad enough, other reports in the press show that the World Bank repeatedly interfered in the tendering process, to ensure that PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) gained a contract. To this charge the World Bank has responded that they interfered because the original shortlist did not contain any consultancies from the developing world (under World Bank procuring rules, they state, at least one firm from a developing country has to included in any shortlist).

Whatever be the case, the fact remains that in this project, as in most of its other projects the World Bank was primarily concerned to recover the costs spent on the project as quickly and efficiently as possible, without regard for the burdens placed on the consumer. The Bank has stated that while the tariffs on water would increase, these increases would not "remotely approach" 800-900% as quoted in the press. They have also advocated targeted subsidies to ensure that the poor have access to water.

The Bank, then, advocates a balancing between efficiency and the recovery of costs on the one hand and targeted subsidies on the other. Because the emphasis, as evident from the IEG report quoted above, is heavily tilted towards the former, there are grounds to believe that in this project as in others, considerations of equity have been obscured.

After all, heightened sensitivity towards the poor would not have eliminated either the World Bank’s tendency to quickly embark on the road to profit or the vested interests in search of those profits. Without a thorough shake-down of the ideologies and vested interests that dominate the World Bank, it is difficult to see how simply paying more attention to rural-poverty reduction can bring about more inclusive growth.

I am not one of those leftists who perceive only the negative aspects of globalization and condemn the World Bank as an imperialist organ that enters poor countries to suck profits from the masses. And I am sure that the World Bank has good intentions when they speak of showing more sensitivity to the needs and concerns of the poor. What I am saying, however, is that the World Bank may be structurally incapable of ensuring broad-based growth. After all, their host of consultants and other firms often do not often come from the places they serve and may lack the requisite incentive to ensure that the benefits to society and the growth it allows are broad-based. In a world where quantitatively respectable growth rates are difficult enough to produce, institutions like the Bank which are under great pressure to achieve results, are dazzled by volume of returns alone.

Noone but the governments of individual countries can ensure that growth is inclusive. And it is their responsibility to ensure that this remains so even in World Bank funded projects. Because it is not always easy to dictate terms to the World Bank it is perhaps wise to accept loans only when they are absolutely necessary and there are no other options open. In the case of India (and China), where the state is financially solvent enough to fund many development projects, projects from the World Bank should be considered on the grounds of whether it can provide something that other, locally funded projects cannot. This may involve locally-unavailable technology or knowledge. Eventually perhaps, as this editorial from the Hindu argues, it may be in India’s interests to phase out borrowing from the Bank altogether.

Film review: Greater Nepal

I recently saw a documentary organised by London Chhalphal called Greater Nepal. The film suggests Greater Nepal needs to be reclaimed. It was ‘lost’ in the 1816 Treaty of Segauli by which British India gained areas of border land which Manoj Pandit’s documentary suggest should be returned to Nepal. For those who know Greater Nepal was defined as stretching from the Teesta river in the east to Kangra Fort in the west.

The film is let down by a weak first historical half. Pandit’s view of Nepali history focuses on wars, military battles and the ‘great men’ of the past. History for Pandit is a collection of unchanging facts to be used in the service of a nation. The usual roll call of ‘heroes and builders of Nepal’ appears with the assumption that they are heroes for every Nepali today (not true). In typical nationalist fashion the military expansion of the early Gorkhali state is portrayed as unequivocally heroic. Those who were conquered by the Nepalis might have something to say about that. The late Nepali historian, Mahesh Chandra Regmi, certainly did and spent a large part of his career writing about the imperial, extractive and oppressive nature of the Gorkhali empire. Many Nepalis today might also contest Pandit’s rastriya itihaas (national history), let alone those now living in lands claimed by the Greater Nepal movement.

The film is full of other sympathetic academics and quite disturbing Greater Nepal activists who each invoke human rights, factual ‘proof’ and spurious legal arguments to attack the 1816 Segauli Treaty and claim the land back. One particularly bad scene invokes the Gorkhaland movement in 1980s Darjeeling. Contrary to Pandit’s claim this movement certainly didn’t wish to become part of a Greater Nepal. Fortunately the film’s second half is better since Pandit travels around Nepal and interviews people who clearly care about seeing their fields and homes snatched by India. Clearly many people on the border do feel threatened in various ways. Amidst all this there is one funny tale of Nepali surveyors who abandoned their jobs at one section on the border to ‘go to Darjeeling for amusement’! This laziness left the sneaky Indian surveyors to claim more land in India’s favour.

On the surface the film only highlights the director's ignorance of Nepali history. The work of Regmi is ignored but so is the more recent work of many other Nepali historians. But this documentary, however, like the Greater Nepal movement in general, isn’t really interested in academic arguments. The film also never once mentions the Maoists and only (cheaply) fits in the recent People's Movement at the end. It actually is a call to return to a different kind of debate. When all is unstable and change is in the air then, for Pandit and others, it is easier to put the blinkers on and return to good old-fashioned nationalist and anti-Indian thoughts. The film does raise interesting questions when it looks at Nepali realties on the border today. But Pandit’s historical arguments and the Greater Nepal movement’s central aims represent something of a last desperate revival of the old certainties, and a late attempt to change the debate. Fortunately history and politics in Nepal seem to have moved on.

Dharamsala Mourns Pandit Blakey

Dharamsala, HQ of the Tibetan Government in Exile, is in shock after the murder of charity worker Michael Blakey.

I was horrified to hear the news from a friend on Thursday morning. I worked with Michael in the summer of 2004, when we were both volunteering with a Tibetan charity in our summer vacations. Michael was reading for his BA in development studies at Swansea at the time, where he went on to get a first. He was an overwhelmingly decent guy, who always wore his learning lightly. He also had a typically dry 'northern' sense of humour. I really cannot think of any motive for this killing. One theory that has been floating around over the past few days is that it was the work of Chinese spies trying to discredit the Dalai Lama.

My thoughts are really with Michael's friends and family - and the communities he worked with in Dharamsala - as they try to come to terms with this senseless loss. This really is such a waste of a brilliant young life.

He was teaching English with me at The Multi-Education Centre an adult education centre which provides Tibetan refugees with training in English and Hindi language. He was also heavily involved in research for a project to help street children in lower Dharamsala when I knew him. I am assuming this was for the Tong Len Charitable Trust, which he was working for this year.

While there has been a steady stream of foreign support to Tibetan refugee charities in McLeod Ganj ('upper' Dharamsala, where most of the monasteries and back-packer hangouts are), vulnerable Indian communities in Lower Dharamsala have been something of aid blind-spot. There was an unusually large slum community in this part of town, mainly of migrant labourers who had fallen on hard times. However, while McLeod Ganj prospered, no-one seemed to be particularly concerned about the conditions further down the mountain, which were shocking even for India. I feel that this displayed real foresight and fresh thinking on Michael's part.

I have to disagree violently with Carol Sarler's piece in The Times on so-called aid tourists in developing countries. Sarler's piece compares Michael's death with that of Rachel Corrie, an American student who was killed while working as a 'human shield' in the Gaza Strip. Sarler winges about dewy-eyed young people heading out to the developing world armed with backpacks and a resolve to save the world. 'Bloody adrenalin junkies', she rants.

This is a lazy piece of journalism if ever there was one. Michael was no thrill seeker. Nor was he some left-leaning bore who had 'like, totally fallen in love' with India. This was a realistic, hard-working and intellectually rigorous guy who spoke good Hindi and was due to start a PhD in London next year. The phenomenon of 'aid tourists' definately exists, but anyone looking to Michael Blakey as a 'news hook' for a diatribe on tedious do-gooders is way off the mark.

Some of the papers have also made cynical noises about Mike's Christian faith. Although I only knew him as a friend and colleague for a short time, I can safely say that he was in no way naive or fundamentalist in his beliefs. I feel a twinge of annoyance that the British media is incapable of seeing strong personal faith as anything other than a sign of mild insanity or a source of embarrassment. But I must re-iterate - he was no bungling missionary type, but a compassionate guy who genuinely strived to put Christian teaching into action in his all-too short life.

Michael, you will be sorely missed. We need more like you, yarr...

Nepal's new national anthem

Nepal has a new national anthem. The old one had repeatedly come under criticism because it sang the glories of the King and referred to all Nepalis as his subjects. After he was removed from power a National Anthem Committee was founded to choose a new one. Out of 1271 submitted entries from across the country, the committee chose one penned by Byakul Maila (real name: Pradeep Kumar Rai) from Okhaldhunga. There has been much celebratory commentary about the fact that the poet is a janjati from a relatively remote part of Nepal. I suppose he is to be taken as a symbol of the new inclusive Nepal.

This is a rough translation of the song:

We are hundreds of flowers, but one garland Nepali,
Sovereign, spread out from the Mechi to the Mahakali.
Rich in natural beauty, enriched with natural resources,
Due to the blood of the braves, independent and immovable.

Land of wisdom, land of peace, the plains, the hills, the mountains,
Indivisible is this beloved motherland of ours Nepal.
Of many great ethnicities, languages, religions and cultures,
Forward looking nation of ours, long live Nepal.

I had particular problems translating the third line Prakritika koti koti sampadako aanchal. Anchal refers to the edge of the sari that is often wrapped around the head. I suppose sampadako aanchal means something like wrapped warmly in natural resources. The word I’ve translated as ‘ethnicities’ in the seventh line is jati. Some years ago I would have unthinkingly translated it as caste. (Prithbi Narayan Shah’s “char jat, chhattis varna” was always translated as “four castes and thirty-six sub-castes” in the textbooks of my childhood.) Now that the janjati andolan has made people aware that many jatis are not happy to be included within the caste system, ethnicity seemed like a better choice of word. Although that too is inadequate. All jatis are not necessarily different ethnicities.

Ever since the new anthem was made public a week ago the letter pages of Kantipur have been swamped with letters praising or criticising it. (A collection of the letters can be viewed here.) The fourth line seems to have attracted the most criticism. Feminists have attacked the use of the word bir (brave) for being a masculine noun and thus disregarding the role of women in the history of the nation. Others have objected to the word ragat (blood) in the same line. It apparently reminds them of the violence of the past ten years that the nation is now trying to leave behind. There are also objections to the word agragami (forward-looking) in the last sentence. This word, according to critics, has become worn out and clichéd through repeated use by politicians. One commentator thought it should be replaced by pragatishil (progressive).

Other criticisms hold that many of the words are more typical of Sanskrit and Hindi than of colloquial Nepali, that there is no reference to essential Nepali symbols like Sagarmatha, the Buddha and the moon and the sun on our flag. Many others have accused the song of being bland, of not possessing the intensity of feeling that a national anthem requires. These critics often point to the song Rato Ra Chandra Surya by Gopal Prasad Rimal as an example of such a song, and they ask why it wasn’t chosen as our new national anthem.

Rato Ra Chandra Surya is indeed a rousing song, but I feel that it overemphasises the martial nature of the Nepali people and their success at keeping intruders (read: the British, the Indians) away. Nationalism there is defined primarily as against the aggressor and it is thus not an adequate anthem for today’s Nepal. Whatever the flaws of the new anthem, I think that it has at least adequately captured the diversity of Nepal’s people without imposing a minority's idea of nationhood upon the entire population.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that there is no reference to the deposal of the monarchy. Given that the song was written in the post-janandolan 2 context, I was expecting some embarassing references to the “great people's revolution that unshackled the chains of tyranny". Also curious is the reference to the “blood of the braves, who made our nation independent and immortal.” Looks to me like a direct reference to the ancestors of King Gyanendra and the chhetri clans surrounding them. Is there no escape from the Shah dynasty in the mythology of this country after all?

The song seems to adequately capture the diversity and fundamental equality of all people in Nepal, but it does seem somewhat bland. Perhaps I should withhold overall judgement until it has been set to music.

A piece regarding the suitability of the song can be found here. An old Himal article on the old national anthem is here.

Kathmandu after a year's absence

When I arrived in Kathmandu last week, after a year’s absence, I felt disoriented by the stories and issues on TV and newspapers. I was of course aware of the new political context – the ousting of the King, the negotiations between the political parties and the Maoists, the recently signed peace agreements between them – but I was not prepared for the social changes that accompanied the political ones. For stories that are not one-off events but which unfold from day to day – and this is especially true of newspapers in South Asia – there is a serious lack of background information to help ground the newcomer.

One of the major stories currently unfolding is about massive protests all over Nepal by students who vehemently oppose a bill that was recently passed by the House of Representatives. There have been a number of violent clashes between groups of students and the police. What these students oppose in this ‘Education Bill’ is a provision that gives scores of teachers in public schools across the country the opportunity to gain permanent status after sitting for examinations. The demonstrating students hold that such a scheme would prevent current students from acquiring employment in the teaching sector in the years to come.

What is interesting is that the bill was passed after days of protests by teachers demanding permanent status. No sooner were their demands accepted and they ceased protesting did the masses of students begin their protests.

Protests are a significant part of life in Nepal these days. And are violent clashes: between protestors and the police, between rival student unions (the latest was between the Congress and Maoist student unions). The feeling of liberation given by the second janandolan has spilt over into all aspects of life and everyone seems to feel free to express their needs or resentments. The other day a group of scruffy men in their twenties was holding up all traffic on the street in front of my house. They were demanding money, ostensibly as donations for an orphanage, but it was obvious that the only place that the money was going was into their pockets. There has also been a surge in criminality. There is a news story of a house looted in Kathmandu almost every day. People I’ve been talking to have told me that there has been a dramatic rise in the theft of parked motorcycles.

However, this is not to say that the security forces are completely ineffective. Levels of crime have decreased compared to the period immediately following the removal of King Gyanendra’s regime. The demoralisation of the security forces then had apparently led to an almost complete breakdown in law and order. Now, the army may have been removed from the streets but the police are regaining control. During the years of the war the police were emasculated by the Maoists and replaced by the army as the state’s chief security apparatus. Now it appears they have more credibility than the army, are stepping up their operations and regaining some respect.

The greatest gain in respect, at least among the middle and upper classes of Kathmandu, has been for Girija Prasad Koirala. That leader of the Nepali Congress had managed to antagonise Kathmandu’s entire population during his three terms as prime-minister between 1991 and 2001. He had a reputation of being corrupt, arrogant and undemocratic. Now in his fourth term, the frail 84 year old has brokered a peace deal with the Maoists and gained a reputation as a skilled and shrewd negotiator. Many people I’ve talked to since I’ve been back have said that if it wasn’t for him the Maoists would have had the upper hand during negotiations and by now completely dominated the state. Many of these people only two years ago professed nothing but contempt and hate for Koirala and wished that the King would take a stronger role in public affairs. Now the middle and upper classes are full of gratitude towards this figure who saved the country from Maoist domination. Although it is unlikely that Koirala will run for elections, his new popularity is a boon for the Nepali Congress. It is generally agreed that the Congress or the Maoists will win the forthcoming elections and set the country’s agenda for the next decade. The other large Nepali party the UML seem confined to the sidelines for the time being.

Warrior Gentlemen in Wales

By sheer luck I recently met some Nepali ex-Gurkha soldiers in Wales (England's smaller and sheep-filled neighbour). They were in Wales to drive buses! Many of them started with the bus company featured here but soon lost their jobs and now work for other bus companies. By the way these linked BBC reports are full of Gurkha stereotypes!

The UK is these days, I think, quite hostile to anyone looking vaguely different or dark. Outside of London's resigned tolerance life for immigrants can be very hard. Often they live alongside equally poor white communities and segregation, violence and racism are all too common. However, Nepali ex-Gurkhas seem to get a better treatment than most and are a special case in the UK immigration debate. Even one normally anti-immigrant national daily newspaper consistently supports the efforts of Gurkha ex-servicemen to get equal pay and a visa settlement from the British government. Perhaps this has to do with strong support for British troops of any colour and also the simple moral case of Gurkha military service requiring adequate reward. It has also something to do with the construction of Gurkha values (best covered in Caplan's excellent book Warrior Gentlemen).

The Gurkhas do seem to have complete support from the British public. In turn I think the Gurkhas play up to this role, a role, perhaps, they have been doing since the recruiting major came to their hill village long ago. The ex-Gurkha men I met constantly talked of their time serving the British army and the skills it had given them. As far as I can see the whole extended family, including wives and children of Gurkhas, live in this disjointed world between Kathmandu and Hong Kong (or, in this case, Kathmandu and Cardiff!). Even compared to the lives of other South Asian immigrants it must be a strange existence. But the men seemed to miss army life and were keen, with me, to praise the UK. Some of the bus drivers I met had actually learnt Welsh! All of the ex-Gurkhas quickly identify themselves as Gurkhas, often making the point that they are not like all those other South Asian immigrants.

Perhaps the Gurkhas' special place in British society has something to do with the Britain-Nepal 'special relationship'. However, I think the situation also owes something to the successful attempt of one immigrant community to pull up the ladder and distinguish itself, as a collective community from the competition. Whether public support can be converted into governmental acceptance of Gurkha demands remains to be seen.

Call-centres - the end of an era?

India’s position as the world’s back office is under threat. Call-centres are no longer a budget option for multi-nationals, who are now beginning to move their operations to cheaper locations such as Eastern Europe and North Africa. Salaries in locations such as Bangalore and Mumbai have been creeping up, and competition for high-quality graduates has become fierce. Apparently 60% of all new Indian call-centre recruits quit within the first year.

Some western companies have given up on outsourcing their call-centres altogether – UK insurance company Churchill now proudly tells customers that they have only British call centres. So is India going to lose out from this in the long term? Present indicators seem to suggest not. Indian outsourcing companies are starting to shun low-margin call-centre work in favour of more high-powered and lucrative contracts in research, product development and business processing.

British and American consumers may not like the idea of talking to call-centre staff in India, but the truth is that Indians don’t particularly want to talk to them either, according to this article by Manjeet Kripalani et al in Businessweek

Kripalani and co point out that there’s a big shift going on in the way multinational companies look at the Indian workforce. The big players are starting to realise that India isn’t just a supply of cheap labour – it’s a talent pool.

This article was written back in July, but the topic of changes in the outsourcing industry has become topical once again. I recently heard that US software giant Cisco Systems are going announce plans this month to open a second corporate HQ in Bangalore. This is pretty big news, as it’s the first time that a foreign IT company has actually devolved such a big share of power to the guys in India. Slowly but surely, India is gaining some serious clout in the global IT market.

Multinational IT companies such as IBM and Cisco are now starting to outsource far more sophisticated (and better paid) work to India. Both companies have been cutting down on their call-centre operations in India and pouring vast sums of money into research and development (R&D) instead. Fearing a looming skills shortage, IBM have also started to make some substantial investments in further education.

The truth is that the great tradition of the Indian call-centre isn’t working for either party any more. Western companies are out of pocket as overheads creep up, and young, overqualified Indians are fed up of working unsociable hours in a menial and frustrating job.

Stories abound of Indian grads earning double the salaries of their parents in call-centre jobs. But isn’t it rather depressing to think that some of India’s brightest and best work in such stultifying jobs?
Ashim Ahluwalia’s 2005 film John and Jane, which takes a candid look at the souls of the outsourced, shows the darker side of call-centre work: “totally very Americanized” young people living double lives and struggling with disillusionment. (I haven’t actually seen this film yet but have read rave reviews of it– if anyone knows how I can get hold of this in the UK or find it online, please let me know!) It’s not so much that call-centres are exploitative – they are just a very poor use of the talent that is out there.

So does Cisco’s decision mean that the IT world is getting ‘flatter’? Well, for the sake of young Indians fed up with accent-neutralisation classes (or indeed, anyone who’s ever had to endure the wrath of my certain members of my family phoning up from London with a computer disaster), lets hope so…

Bollywood's growing economic clout

The Observer recently carried two articles on India’s film industry as part of a special report on India. One of them was a profile of Amitabh Bachchan of the standard type that seems to be published periodically in the British press: where the writer has little idea of the actor's work but is somehow aware of his wide audience. The other piece by Amit Chaudhury is a much more interesting appreciation of Mumbai's cinematic output.

Chaudhuri’s article is remarkable for rising beyond the normal parameters within which discussions on Bollywood are often held. Those whose aesthetic sensibilities are honed by American and European film are mostly dismissive of Hindi cinema. While sometimes recognizing that Hindi cinema has become more technologically sophisticated in recent years, there is still a tendency to treat the wild exuberance of Bollywood as infantile fantasies that are an affront to good taste. “Bollywood's song and dance numbers have enormous charm and vigour,” writes Neil Spencer, “but the paper-thin plots, daft dialogue and fairy tale settings are, at best, an acquired taste, especially over three hours.” Those somewhat familiar with Hindi cinema in the western world – and there are not many who are – are able to enjoy these films only after they have been sanitized by irony and contained tightly within the category of camp. As Chaudhuri writes in his article, this audience wraps Bollywood’s entire output within quotation marks and looks upon it with knowing superiority.

To all this, fans of Hindi cinema respond that while it is true that these films bear little relationship to reality and are escapist, they offer entertainment to masses of poor Indians who wish to be transported into fantasy realms far from the drudgeries of their daily lives. This is hardly an adequate critical response. For one, it implicitly agrees with the critics that Indian films occupy a lower level of taste than American and European cinema.

Chaudhuri transcends this argument in his remarkable piece by showing that those aspects of Hindi cinema that appear embarrassing are not merely escapist fantasies but evoke the ultimate unrecognisability of life itself:

“What, then, is the difference between Hollywood and Hindi film, if one were to risk a generalisation? It's not a question of songs and dances on the one hand and plausible human behaviour on the other. Hollywood gives us a cocooned universe; it leaves intact the beliefs that were fostered in us by our parents and our school - that the world can be understood; that you can control your fate. It often does this metaphorically; by making reality persuasive but simple, by making the protagonist free of family and bodily functions. We emerge from watching it, whatever devastation we might have witnessed in it, with our childhood convictions essentially unthreatened - however many buildings and even countries have been blown up, the world is the place we were taught it was.

“Unlike Hollywood, Hindi film is not an innocent genre - it knows that the notion that we control our destiny is a myth. This isn't just the wisdom of the ancients; it's a realism quite different from anything in Hollywood. This doesn't mean Hindi cinema is fatalistic - its exuberance is indispensable to its conviction that life is an unrecognisable rather than categorisable thing. Time reveals this to us gradually as individuals, and the way Bollywood reveals it to its audience is through a series of devices: for example coincidences, doubles, brothers separated at birth. These devices make the Hindi film embarrassing but also, at its best, very moving; sometimes they make it embarrassing and moving at once.” (link)

However insightful Chaudhuri’s piece may be, it is unlikely that anyone dubious of Hindi cinema will become converted after reading it. In the West, Bollywood remains a distant rumour: people are vaguely aware of it but it remains largely confined to desi populations. However, the rumour is getting louder; in London Hindi films have escaped from theatres in desi ghettos like Southall, Wembley and Ilford to all of one central London cinema, the Cineworld Shaftesbury Avenue at the Trocadero. What is interesting is that the rumour of Hindi cinema has become louder not because of any critical approval it has gained in the mainstream media, but because the masses of South Asians across the world have given it a certain economic respectability. Bollywood is now money, and money gives power.

The Western world is generally reluctant to accept another regions mass culture, especially not if the country is poor. There have no doubt been filmmakers like Iran’s Abbas Kiarostami and Hong Kong’s Wong Kar Wai who have received immense critical acclaim in the West, but their appeal is not commercial and their sensibilities are palatable to the purveyors of good taste. These filmmakers have been individually picked from their native lands and have been adopted into the Western canon. And in no way have they seeped into popular mass culture. Other mass cultures like that of Korea have been able to captivate regional markets, but Hollywood remains the only one that traverses the globe.

As Hindi films become more visible it is likely that they will jar more sensibilities in the Western world (the rest of the world is more accepting of Bollywood’s cinematic conventions) and perhaps even force a kind of re-evaluation of it. The New York Times has already begun to carry serious reviews of Hindi films that do not treat them all as camp. As globalisation progresses, Western audiences will find it increasingly difficult to contain Bollywood within quotation marks.

Sanjay Gadhvi's super-flash Dhoom 2

You will be disappointed if you go to see Dhoom 2 with the intention of watching a tightly plotted cop and robber story. But to do so would be to miss the point of the film. Dhoom 2 is a series of heavily stylized tricks, stunts, chase scenes and dances strung together on the flimsy and clichéd plot-premise of a sophisticated international criminal on the run from the police. The criminal is Aryan (Hritik Roshan). The cops Jai (Abhishek Bachchan) and Ali (Uday Chopra). Failing to catch Aryan from right under their nose in Mumbai, they recruit former criminal Sunehra (Aishwarya Rai) to gain Aryan's trust and then betray him. They all move to Rio, which gives the director the opportunity to parade a bikini clad Bipasha Basu on the beach. Needless to say Sunehra falls in love with Aryan and the cops are never able to capture them.

Other reviewers have mentioned how Hritik and Ash steal the show from Abhishek and Uday. The entire film is constructed to do precisely that. Dhoom 2 is mostly a showpiece for the physical beauty, athletic and dancing talents of the charismatic Hritik and Ash. The rest of the cast (Abhishek, Uday and Bipasha) revolves around them, and while possessing some charisma of their own, serve chiefly to set off the radiance of the two. The entire film is like a well choreographed but under-edited Bollywood dance number: initially dazzling but eventually tiring in its unrelentingness.

The film has other flaws. The jokey banter between Jai and Ali never works as well as in the first Dhoom and the songs are not very memorable. Hritik dances with supple virtuosity but at a lower caliber than in films like KKKG and Lakshya (this has the perhaps deliberate effect of making him appear less camp than usual). Because all emphasis is on style and less on the development of character, the romance that blossoms between Hritik and Ash in the second half of the film falls flat. And Ash is embarrassingly unconfident in her attempt to imitate American valley girl speak.

But Dhoom 2 may be worth watching if only to see her in an uncharacteristically assertive, vampish role. Besides, the action sequences are among the best ever in Hindi cinema and the songs still get your heart pumping and pulse racing. And there is no denying the sheer star power that the main actors possess.

Drugs become more expensive in the poor world

Wired has a story this month about a reform in India's intellectual property law that makes various medicines more expensive. The Indian pharmaceutical company Cipla had in the past, according to this report, taken advantage of a law that was passed by parliament when Indira Gandhi was prime minister. This law governing drug patents applied not to the chemical compound of the drug, but to the process that was used in manufacturing it. This allowed Cipla to freely manufacture various drugs that were patented in the West, as long as they found a different process to do so. Over the years this allowed Cipla to produce cheap drugs and supply them to poor countries. "Cipla is still the medicine cabinet to the developing world," the Wired report states. " As much as 40 percent of the AIDS patients in poor countries who take medications take Cipla drugs."

Now, in its drive to liberalise the Indian economy and attract foreign investment, the Indian government has changed the law governing drug patents to make them more compatible with those of the West. Now it is illegal for companies like Cipla to produce drugs that are newly patented in the West. This effectively makes many drugs unaffordable for the majority of the population of India and other developing countries. "This is a disaster for the common man," Yusuf Hamied of Cipla says.

However, the processes of globalisation and liberalisation are in this case not only harming people in poor countries. In an ironic twist Cipla is actually benefiting at the expense of big pharmaceutical companies in the West. Globalisation has allowed Cipla to supply cheap generic drugs with outdated patents to rich countries like the United States. "What is the frightening scenario for America, and also a very interesting scenario for America, is the fact that if more and more companies enter the American generic market, the local generic industry will die," Hamied says. "And the people in Medicare and the old-age pensioners will benefit." Forget copycatting; the real action is in legitimate generics sold back to a drug-hungry West.

The beneficiaries here, as in many other instances of globalisation, are the industries in the poor countries and the consumers in the rich ones. The losers industries in the rich countries and the consumers in the poor ones.

The Wired article is very interesting and worth reading in its entirety.

Informal aid to Nepal or online yak donations

Post-Make Poverty History it seemed that everyone was going Africa crazy and nations like Nepal, were going to miss out in the aid game. I think Africa, somehow, feels instinctively poorer for the average British person (to paraphrase: everybody loves a good telly drought). Despite this obsession in the west with Africa I think I vastly underestimated informal aid to Nepal. I'm not talking here about government aid but the people-to-people kind of aid.

This probably began when the first European mountaineers in Nepal donated their equipment to Sherpas and continues today in post-trek promises to 'do something for Nepal'. And it is vast. To take one example: hostels are popular with sponsors and so are children. Unsurprisingly Kathmandu has hundreds of hostels for children supported and managed by westerners. Typically the children are 'rescued' from the street or some kind of child labour. And then educated as best as possible. Back home in the west lots of fundraising activities take place for these kind of activities. Many of the charities undoubtedly do an excellent job, many don't.

The good intentions and huge sacrifices of the westerners involved in supporting these type of projects are clear. In fact I feel a little awkward about raising some questions around their activities (many involved are my friends). The will to do good here, as elsewhere, perhaps shuts down any kind of critical debate. And this type of informal aid does seem to promote odd attitudes. Typically those involved hold a somewhat naive and Lonely-Planet-sized view of Nepal and Nepali culture. By which I mean that Nepal, unlike the west, doesn't have a history (except of vast corruption and endless, caste-ridden, poverty). In fact, with only a little exaggeration from me, those involved act like Nepal exists partly in order for them to do good works. Typically their local Nepali staff soon become the main problem and have to be treated firmly or 'they don't understand'. Learning to speak Nepali is unimportant but pleasing sponsors is everything (yaks, by the way, can be donated to Nepal for Christmas here).

Back in the west the old ladies fundraising in a coffee morning for the charity mutter about the inequities of the caste system; their knowledge of Nepal almost solely reliant on desperate literature from the charity. The business executive running a marathon for the charity only has to mention the word 'Nepal' and, thanks to endless sponsor feedback from informal aid charities like these, other people immediately think: poverty (then Everest!). I know Kathmandu's modernity came as a shock to many sponsors on one trip - 'It was supposed to be poorer'. In this way, through informal aid and with no extra help from the UK government, people make Nepal into another Africa: another vast region without hope which needs your help NOW!