Bollywood Goes Overboard With Cannes Fashion?

By Natalia Ningthoujam

New Delhi: Just when will Bollywood ever get it right? As the world celebrates 100 years of Indian cinema, Indian stars, it seems, went a little overboard in projecting the ethnic, oriental look at the Cannes red carpet that saw Sonam Kapoor, Vidya Balan and Sherlyn Chopra either going big on bling or heavy on jewellery and embroidery.
Aishwarya Rai, who has been a regular at Cannes for 11 years, didn’t go for the Indian look but was panned for her choice of clothes and hair.

The display seemed surprising, considering that well-known designers like Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Anamika Khanna and Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla were helping the stars put their best foot forward at the Cannes International Film Festival, which began May 15 and ends May 26.

Vidya was part of the jury at the Cannes extravaganza, where India was the guest country this year. Rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ang Lee, Christopher Waltz and Nicole Kidman at the gala, Vidya looked sophisticated in a maroon and black lehenga-choli, but thereafter, her fashion choices only earned her brickbats.

If one day she wore an elaborate nose ring, on another she chose an ivory ensemble complete with a white dupatta on her head, prompting women back home to ask just what image of India she wanted to project.

Mukherjee said the idea was to dress her in “little embellishments” and to give her “a purist ethnic” look.

Even though the traditional suits Vidya, most of her looks at Cannes, barring one – a simple brown sari with a maroon blouse – failed to impress, say stylists.

“Vidya played safe by going traditional as it has always worked for her. What she had picked up was really good but badly styled. The choice of nose ring and the use of dupatta on the head were not required,” said fashion stylist Shane Lonen, who has worked with actresses like Sonakshi Sinha, Karisma Kapoor and Prachi Desai.

Another actress, Sonam, considered a fashion diva back home, seemed to have gone overboard too – be it with her stylised sari teamed with a full-sleeved jacket, oversized nose ring or bold eye makeup. She made it up later with a voluminous floral Dolce and Gabbana off-shoulder gown.

“Sonam has mostly been a delight to watch in all appearances, but not in Cannes. She went overboard with her efforts to keep her style quotient unique and high. Had she worn the sari as a standalone, minus her eye makeup and over-indigenous nose ring, she would have been endearing enough,” fashion stylist Saachi Vijaywargia said.

Aishwarya, said Cannes watchers, has improved in her choice of red carpet ensembles over the years. This year she played it safe with either black or a heavily embellished full-sleeved multi-pastel coloured ensemble by Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla, but she could have done with some more colour.

“I definitely think a dash of colour would’ve been nice for Aishwarya’s look,” said fashion stylist Nikita Rijhsinghani. The actress slipped into a metallic blue gown one day, but she didn’t leave a black clutch behind.

Some of India’s past representatives at Cannes have been subtle and simple in their fashion picks. Nandita Das and Sharmila Tagore before her have managed to turn heads with their simple, elegant saris and classic pieces of jewellery, also representing the country’s ethnic tradition very well.

Designer Amit GT feels black and white are “outdated” colours, but they were a hit with the Indian actors this year. “Kamasutra 3D” actress Sherlyn Chopra went for a daring transparent black ensemble, and Mallika Sherawat opted for a black gown on one day of the event.

Rijhsinghani gave a thumbs down to Sherlyn, and said: “There are a million and one looks to look sensuous! Kill the transparency for starters! Sherlyn just needs to hire a stylist with better sensibilities and may be get a new mirror too.”

Sensuous can mean more than just showing skin, says Lonen.

“Sensuous and sexy don’t mean going out and revealing your skin. With the kind of body she has, she can easily pull out a look like that, or even a classy Dior gown with good eye makeup would do justice,” he said.

Mallika also went all wrong with her blingy gold dress, says Amit GT, who felt the look was “most cringeworthy”.

For One Under Pressure, Manmohan Is Confidence Personified

By M.R. Narayan Swamy

Under unrelenting attack on more than one count, one would expect Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to be wilting. No way! On the night he released his government’s report card, nine years after he came to head the world’s largest democracy, Manmohan Singh was visibly cool.

Nothing in his body language betrayed the slightest indication that the 80-year-old economist-turned-politician may be feeling the heat of pressure cooker politics, with a bitter Lok Sabha battle barely a year away. Of course, Manmohan Singh is a poor communicator, and that came out in the way he read out his speech to mark nine years of UPA.

But once off the stage, he was full of life — smiling, shaking every hand extended to him, greeting people warmly, occasionally recognising a journalist, and answering queries like a seasoned – not a reluctant – leader as peacocks in his garden kept up a steady din.

In reality he should have been worried. The dais erected for the event revealed the poor state of affairs in what was once a formidable coalition called the United Progressive Alliance.

On Wednesday night, it was a poor shadow of its former self. Besides leading lights of his own Congress, including party president Sonia Gandhi, P. Chidambaram, A.K. Antony and Rahul Gandhi, the only notable others on the stage from among the allies were a still discredited Lalu Prasad and his chum Ram Vilas Paswan as well as Farooq Abdullah, Sharad Pawar and Assam’s Badruddin Ajmal. This poor line-up is unlikely to take the Congress to the winning post in 2014.

This is a far cry from the time when Sonia Gandhi had sewed up an impressive alliance to successfully take on the BJP and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The experiment was repeated five years later, with far greater success. Today, with the Congress widely seen as a sinking ship, notwithstanding the BJP’s own hiccups, smaller parties are unlikely to come flocking to the UPA. The Congress has already lost the JMM, TRS, DMK and Trinamool Congress. The BSP and Samajwadi Party are reluctant friends. The prime minister is not naive to not know this.

So what gives Manmohan Singh the confidence?

One logical reason could be the neat division of work between him and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who takes away the burden of managing the country’s oldest political party and its unceasing conflicts with partners small and big while letting him govern a complex India. In some ways, this arrangement based on mutual trust – notwithstanding the rumour mills – is rare in politics. It helps the prime minister to focus on governance.

But all is not well within the Congress. Not everyone in the grand old party is on the same wavelength as Sonia Gandhi vis-a-vis Manmohan Singh. Members of his own ministry – although a minority – are critical of him, telling friendly journalists that they tolerate him only because of Sonia Gandhi. They complain that he has failed to deliver corruption-free governance despite being freed of party work and coalition politics.

For the nth time Wednesday, Sonia Gandhi spoke effusively about Manmohan Singh. But while the prime minister admitted to problems, including perceptions related to corruption, Sonia Gandhi sounded aggressive while defending the UPA. She spoke bravely. But brave words alone cannot help a party or a coalition to win an election. And 2014 is not far away.

M.R. Narayan Swamy is a senior journalist

Sreesanth : A Sacrificial Goat ?

 By Binoy Thomas

I just got back from India, and am happy to report that things are hot like hell back in apna bharat. The sun has been blazing as never before in living memory, according to local residents, and add to it power cuts and water shortages. The one bright spot for me was that it was the IPL season, and all is normally forgotten when cricket’s best talents take to the incredibly well-maintained grounds (they are not astro turfs, and need watering). I watched with admiration and awe Chris Gayle’s incredible sequence of sixers during the Royal Challengers Bangalore vs. Pune Warriors tussle. And as I was warming up to the season, came the shattering news of Rajasthan Royal’s strike bowler Sreesanth’s arrest over spot fixing. The investigation is continuing and since then has netted even late wrestling legend Dara Singh’s son Vindu.

Now looking back, I can’t help wonder if Gayle’s sixes were really that good. The latest scandal, not by any means, the first or for that matter last (I will explain why), is casting all actions and actors on or off field as ‘suspect’.

As the media went to town on juicy details on the Sreesanth’s various little ‘outings’, there was an unreal quality to the League, almost as if it was a reality show. Like with all reality show, we don’t know much of it is spontaneous and true, and how much scripted behind the scenes, we are left to wonder who is and who is not clean in Indian Premier League?

The indications available at press time is far from encouraging. The latest name to be linked to the ongoing investigations by various police agencies is none other than the son-in-law of Board of Control for Cricket in India President N. Srinivasan, Gurunath Meiyappan. 
”We have served the summons to Meiyappan, one was stuck on the main door of his home on Cenotaph Road in Alwarpeth, Chennai, and another was accepted by a manager in the Chennai Super Kings office at Coromandel Towers today,” said Mumbai Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Himanshu Roy. Meiyappan, it was revealed, besides being CEO, is a part owner of Chennai Super Kings.
The notice was served following interrogation of arrested Bollywood actor Vindu Dara Singh and inspection of records of his phone calls with Meiyappan and some bookies.
”We are hopeful that Meiyappan will cooperate with police. In case he fails to show up within the allotted time, there are procedures in law to ensure his availability, but it would not augur well,” Roy added.
Now the stuff is really hitting the fan. First of all, how is that a powerful administrator’s son is also a part owner of a major team in the league, a fact few in the public knew, till now? Srinivasan who seemed genuinely pained following Sreesanth’s arrest, is now unavailable to the media. But he doesn’t need to defend himself, as even bigger names have rushed with favourable judgements. IPL chairman and an Indian cabinet minister, Rajeev Shukla, Thursday, asked, “What is the need for BCCI chief to step down? If some MPs take bribe, does it mean parliament should be closed.” God alone knows what he wanted to convey? Maybe, that was the idea, cloud the issue, and shield those really high up on the totem pole from being asked inconvenient questions. Apparently, the real rot in cricket can be traced to ‘players’ that are not on the field and they are as powerful as you can get in a corrupt country.

When the story broke, there were jokes galore in India of watching each cricketer’s gestures other than with the bat and ball, to see what kind of signal they were sending out to bookies sitting in India, Pakistan and Dubai. Did he just scratch his nose? Followed by a wide! Aha, gotcha! But fans will be fans, and they continue to enjoy the spectacle, largely in the comfort of their homes, while ground attendance at many venues are minimal, making this all the more a reality show on TV.

While Sreesanth provided the perfect target for media and public to start shooting, no one was asking the ultimate question, a question that desperately needs answer – is anyone in IPL or Indian government serious about cleaning up the act? This is not the first time match fixing allegations have plagued big time cricket. Each time, a few players provided the fodder for the press, and then show would go on without further investigation by the media or the police, till the next time, like this time.

The money involved, it seems, is enough to turn even the most ardent followers of Raja Harishchandra into jelly beans of corruption. Various unofficial estimates (what else it can be!), put the total sum involved at a conservative $8 billion or more. One media report attempts to be specific, saying “the business was worth 50,000 crore rupees ($10 billion) at the start of the season, but has come down to 15,000 crores as a result of the scandal”. This is too much money to be floating around unchannelled, unregulated and you can’t blame the opportunists from attempting to grab all of it. And yes, I forgot to tell you, there’s always a Dubai or Pakistan connection. From recent media reports, it would seem that nearly 1500 bookies in India take instructions from mysterious persons connected to a Professor Moriarty (from Sherlock Holmes of course) like figure, known as Mr. D  in Dubai or Pakistan, prompting one local wag to quip, ‘you may keep Pakistan out of IPL, but you can never keep Pakistan out of IPL’!

Given India’s national security interests, then shouldn’t local authorities take match fixing slightly more seriously? After all, creating a League that provides easy picking for your ‘sworn enemy’ is not exactly the best way to protect a country. That is, if this constant strain that runs in media and public is only a misdirection, and that the real mysterious players even behind the non-resident operators, are the supremely powerful sitting within India, and beyond the reach of the law.

Why else, after so much scandal and the great risk to national security, wouldn’t India start a conversation on legalizing sports betting as it happens elsewhere in the world. A regulated betting scenario can act as a counter to the menace of illegal betting and the all-pervasive corruption that flows out of it. There is a good chance that odd instances of ‘fixing’ will still remain, but the moment India takes a decision to go legit with its sports betting, they will not only reap a rich harvest (billions in extra accruals to the exchequer), but they will also have reduced the influence of those sitting elsewhere, inimical to the interest of the country and yes, good cricket everywhere.


photo caption

]]> http://www.weeklyvoice.com/headlines/whos-really-behind-match-fixing-in-india/feed/ 0 http://www.weeklyvoice.com/readers-letters/sharif-must-use-third-chance-to-break-cycle-of-revenge/ http://www.weeklyvoice.com/readers-letters/sharif-must-use-third-chance-to-break-cycle-of-revenge/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 19:17:56 +0000 The Weekly Voice http://www.weeklyvoice.com/?p=23659

Nawaz Sharif

By Ravi M. Khanna

The fledgling democratic process in Pakistan has churned out a leader, who now has the rare opportunity to chart a new positive and peaceful course, not only for his own country but for the whole South Asia region, and leave a legacy that, so far, no other Pakistani leader has.

Nawaz Sharif must use the proverbial “third chance” – he was prime minister twice before but never completed his full term – to break the vicious cycle of revenge in domestic politics and the unnecessary cycle of rivalry with India in its regional politics. It will not be easy and will be full of challenges, but eventually it will make him rise as a great Pakistani leader who genuinely wants to bring peace and prosperity to his country and the whole region, perhaps more than even Indian leaders.

He should shun the well travelled Pakistani road of taking revenge in politics, known as ‘siaasat’ (in Urdu) and take a high road as far as his ouster from power in 1999 by then military chief Pervez Musharraf is concerned. He might be tempted to settle that issue in Pakistan’s traditional way of taking revenge, but how Sharif deals with his old foe will be a measure of the change he claims to represent.

Sharif must realise that the country’s democratic institutions, such as judiciary and free press, have matured over the past five years and that is evident from the fact that Musharraf is in jail for his actions. There is hope because, until now, the idea of a mere judge ordering a former army chief into confinement was unthinkable. He must also realise that changing the civil-military balance in favour of the civilians would be ideal, but if it is done without cautious planning, it could jeopardise the democratic gains of the last several years.

Sharif should also try to bring, as he already said, every other party to the table and work together for improving the plight of the average Pakistani. It is up to him to bring the country out of the abysmal chasm of hopelessness and despair. His victory being based on his party’s popularity in the Punjab province, Sharif now will also have to reach out to the leaders of other provinces.

Sharif must now also deal very cautiously with President Asif Ali Zardari and Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, both of whom will be out of their offices by the end of this year, giving him a chance to appoint his supporters.

About improving relations with India, he has already indicated during his interviews that the two sides must restart back channel diplomacy to resolve problems while sticking to the stated positions in public. Sharif has publicly stated his intention to pick up the threads of the peace process he initiated with Indian leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999. That process was undermined by the Kargil war. According to one senior official of the PPP, Sharif will have a tough time changing Pakistan’s posture towards India and Afghanistan. It is something that the establishment did not allow even the PPP-led coalition to pursue.

But if there is any issue on which bitter political rivals agree, it is on improving trade relations with India in view of its fast growing economy and the burgeoning market. Sharif, in fact, has always been supportive of granting India most-favoured-nation (MFN) status. His comfortable position in parliament should allow his party to push forth with this agenda. But it will not be easy because of the forces within Pakistan that have always succeeded in ratcheting up the anti-India rhetoric when it suits them.

So the new leader should make the issue of improving trade relations with India a part of a bigger plan, a plan to develop a flourishing “transit economy” for the country.

He must revisit the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement 2010 to allow India to send goods to Afghanistan and beyond through Pakistan. He must convince his rivals that the country can really have a flourishing transit economy because it provides the shortest land routes from Western China to the Arabian Sea, through the Gwadar Port, while linking India with Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics and providing land route from Iran to India.

The transit economy idea can be crucial for Nawaz Sharif because he might have to find new ways to compensate for the US aid worth millions of dollars that might stop because of his objections to the country`s support to the US war on terror. However, the view in the power corridors of Washington is that since his priorities are really economic, he will not upset the apple cart and will have enough reasons and incentive to keep the one billion dollars a year aid from the US flowing into Pakistan.

Ravi M. Khanna is a longtime observer of the South Asia scene and has covered the region for Voice of America as the New Delhi Bureau Chief and also as the South Asia Desk Editor in Washington from 1980 to 2011

Muslims Must Stop Playing Loathsome Politics With Vande Mataram

By Firoz Bakht Ahmed

 As a law abiding Muslim of India, my head hung deep down in shame as I had read the news of Shafique-ur-Rehman Barq, BSP member parliament, leaving the hall while Vande Mataram, the national song, was being played. On his part, it was the stupidity of highest order.

I’m sad that while harping on this communal mindset, he must pay attention to his constituency, mostly comprising Muslims, as there are no proper roads, potable water, electricity, sewage system, good schools and most other basic amenities. However, for filthy vote bank publicity and politics, he would let Indian Muslims down by shunning Vande Mataram, the song that is seen as an ode to the motherland, was penned by Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in the late 19th century.

It’s not the first time as even earlier Muslim leaders have played loathsome politics on this issue and let their community down by reprimanding Muslim children who sing Vande Mataram, a gem of a song, in times when the global Muslim community is under scanner. Unless Muslims come out of the clutches of these ulema and lip-serving politicians, they will keep on suffering.

Muslims must follow the example of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who though born in a predominantly Hindu environment, was bold enough to propagate nationalism to Muslims at variance with the prevalent political consciousness based on communalised politics while supporting the same with Islamic sanction. Maulana Azad saw in Vande Mataram the fusion of the endogenic creativity, the Vedantic vision of many parts of truth with the Islamic doctrines of Wahdat-e-Deen (unity of religion) and Sulah-e-Kul (universal peace).

While listening to a rendition of Vande Mataram on January 1, 1952, by a renowned maestro, Krishna Kumar, in Delhi, Maulana Azad admired it saying that it was graceful and inspiring as great luminaries like Rabindranath Tagore, Surendranath Banerjee, Satyabhushan Gupta, R.N. Bose, H. Bose and others had sung it.

It’s high time that the so-called Muslim leaders stopped politicizing the issue of Vande Mataram to promote their mucky politics.

While at Modern School, in Delhi, where I teach, whenever Vande Mataram is sung, my body, mind and soul, all in unison vouched that this is the song of the soul of each Indian irrespective of the religion, caste, colour, status or creed. The melody, the thought content and the ambience of patriotism of Vande Mataram is unmatchable.

As an Indian, I simply fail to comprehend as to why by some of my co-religionists, a religious issue is made out of Vande Mataram that has a universal appeal for all Indians irrespective of caste, creed and faith. As a Muslim, I would like to convey a message to all my countrymen and especially my own community that some politically motivated people are trying to make an emotive issue of Vande Mataram that, in my view, should have been the national anthem in place of Jana, gana, mana…

What is very unfortunate is that anti-Vande Mataram clerics give Hindutva forces the handle to beat Muslims with. Why should we fault Ashok Singhal for giving anti-Muslim statements when our own clerics utter vitriolic things which give an impression that Muslims are less patriotic than the Hindus?

The media is also responsible for creating such an impression by repeatedly giving publicity to speeches by these clerics who are no more than bigots. It is because of the irresponsible statements made by these people that Muslims have to suffer. The voices of secular, patriotic and liberal Muslims never get a forum.
We live in a liberal society where we are encouraged to know about each other’s religion. Does a Hindu become ashudh by going to Jama Masjid or a church? Don’t the Muslim children going to Christian schools sing psalms from the Bible in the morning assembly? Do they come back home losing their faith? Then how can singing Vande Mataram be un-Islamic? Moreover, the words “Mother, I bow to thee! Rich with thy hurrying streams, Bright with thy orchard gleams…Mother, to thee I bow…” found to be objectionable to the clerics have nothing anti-Islam as we are not making sijda (bowing) before anyone except Allah. Where’s the controversy except in the minds of the misguiding fundamentalists?

What is of paramount importance today is that people must beware of the ugly face of fundamentalism commonly constituted by the so-called champions of Islam and advocates of Hindutva who, having lost their say in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid controversy, want to revive that cold and hot war.

So far as Muslims are concerned, true, as per the dictates of Islam, they can never worship or bow in front of anything other than Allah. But that doesn’t take from them the fact that they are loyal to the nation and that they do not need a certificate to prove this.

Muslims should not get carried away by a few lines of the song as nobody is asking them to bow down. They must learn a lesson from Maulana Azad. On the occasion of the inauguration of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), Maulana Sahib’s forehead was smeared with a tilak at which Dawn, a Pakistani daily, commented in a cartoon that he changed his religion to Hinduism. At that, Maulana said that in fact by such participations, his faith in his religion strengthens more. Muslims must learn from his example.

Let me humbly submit that the politically motivated individuals or the ones from clergy should not try to snowball the issue that it might acquire communalist overtones. It’s a charming song Muslims must not find any difference between Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamarey dil mein hai… or Sare jahan se achha Hindostan hamara…and this. The glorious Vande Mataram belongs to Muslims as much as it belongs to any Indian. We are one and just Indians! Don’t divide us into Hindus, Muslims and Christians.

Firoz Bakht Ahmed is a commentator on educational, social and religious issues

Jim Flaherty

by Gregory Thomas

Stephen Harper won his majority in 2011 – on his fourth attempt – because of certain promises he made. He promised to control spending. He promised to balance the federal budget in 2014-15. And he promised to deliver tax relief once the budget was balanced, by extending income splitting to working families and by doubling the amount we can all put in our Tax-Free Savings Accounts each year.

This year’s federal budget will show us if he’s serious about keeping the promises that got him his majority.

Despite the Prime Minister’s strong mandate for fiscal discipline and tax relief, a chorus of naysayers is singing the siren song of spending, more loudly than ever, ahead of this year’s budget.

“While it is essential to balance the budget over the business cycle, it is poor economic policy to enact fiscal austerity in a context of weak economic growth,” warned Toronto MP Peggy Nash, the NDP finance critic

Bay Street seems to agree with the NDP. In the Globe and Mail Doug Porter of BMO capital markets said he ”would be just as happy” if the budget wasn’t balanced until 2016-17.

Former senior officials in the federal finance department mock Harper’s ‘ideology.’ They urge the government to “put aside its sole policy commitment of eliminating the deficit by 2015-16, and introduce a medium-term strategy to support job creation and economic growth.”

“There is no fiscal crisis, they argue. ‘There is not even a serious fiscal problem.”

Since the financial meltdown in 2008, the Harper Conservatives have run five deficits in a row and added $150 billion to the federal debt. They plan to run seven deficits in total and borrow a further $30 billion or so by 2015. But according to these critics, all this borrowing and spending isn’t nearly enough.

Canadian taxpayers have good reason to fear these powerful voices. As recently as last November, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty appeared to cave in to the pressure. Saying “balanced budgets are not an end in themselves,” Flaherty forecast deficits until 2016, before the Prime Minister corrected him two days later.

Canadians know that debt is not the cure for a sluggish economy. If it was, the United States would be booming: since the financial meltdown, the U.S. government has borrowed and spent $7.2 trillion dollars to keep its economy moving – nearly 50 times as much as Canada has borrowed.

And Canadians can hardly support higher government spending when they see how Ottawa spends money. Consider runaway payroll costs: average yearly compensation cost for a federal employee was $114,1000 last year, up from $86,000 when the Harper Conservatives took office. The Parliamentary Budget Office expects that number to reach $129,800 by 2014.

In addition to three to five weeks of paid vacation, federal employees also take an average of 18.5 sick days – three and a half weeks of paid time  off. More Canadians book off sick on any given day from their federal government jobs than actually show up for work at General Motors and Chrysler combined.

And Ottawa’s School of the Public Service, the elite institution responsible for training federal mangers in ethical behaviour, recently suspended two senior managers after they rigged contracts so former colleagues on pension could collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without competing for the work.

In the 2011 election campaign, Stephen Harper promised to cut waste, balance the budget, and leave more money in the hands of working Canadians, to truly grow the economy and create jobs.Here’s hoping he delivers on his mandate on budget day.

Gregory Thomas, is Federal Director of Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Global Cartels Target Indian Pharma

By Francis Kokutse

As Indian pharmaceutical companies face charges of selling counterfeit drugs in Africa, India has dubbed the allegations as “calculated attempts” by Western cartels to destroy its march to provide affordable medicines.

According to Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, since Indian companies introduced generic medicines to fight drug resistant malaria on the market at cheaper costs, they have been inundated with several allegations of wrongdoing.

“Indian generics have changed the face of health” on the globe because of their affordability, Sharma said in New Delhi. “This is all due to the fact that these companies have broken the back of the cartel that control global medicines.”

Speaking at the 9th CII-Exim Bank Conclave on India-Africa Project Partnership here, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) director general Chandrajit Banerjee stated that India has always maintained a stakeholder interest in Africa’s sustained prosperity.

“This is reflected in some of India’s export goods that have provided a lifeline to African societies,” Banerjee said, adding “Indian pharmaceutical firms have supplied affordable Anti-Retroviral Vaccines (ARVs) to Africa to fight the AIDS menace”.

Despite these arguments for the Indian pharmaceuticals sector, some of its biggest attacks have come from the west African region, notably Nigeria and Ghana in particular, where regulators claim Indian firms have flooded their markets with “fake medicines”.

Banerjee told delegates there have been a 20-fold increase in bilateral trade between African countries and India. There has been steady growth in trade and India is projecting to increase its bilateral trade flows to $80 billion with Africa by 2015.

The growth has increased from $1 billion in 2001 to about $50 billion in 2012. This is not surprising, as Banerjee says, India “has emerged as Africa’s fourth largest trading partner, after the European Union, China and the US”.

Last week Chinese diplomats in Ghana met officials of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) to discuss allegations of fake drugs imports from China and India. The Ghanaian FDA later expressed discontent at the rate at which substandard and fake medicines from China, India and other countries are flooding the Ghanaian market.

On the other hand, going by the arguments of Sharma, it looks like these African regulators would have to be circumspect in how they dealt with these allegations, since they may be playing into the hands of interested parties keen to destroy the Indian success story.

The medicines’ export has been part of India’s effort to engage Africa in trade.

According to a CII report, the growth in trade though modest is a reflection of efforts to strengthen India’s engagement with the African continent. By last year, India was financing over 220 projects worth $29.5 billion and the CII says, “business were conducted in areas ranging from power, fertilisers and agriculture to education, small and medium industries and telecommunications.”

A CII report said “over the last decade and more, Indian and African economies have experienced relatively high GDP growth, with some of the countries in Africa being rated among the fastest growing economies in the world”.

To build on the past India-African relationship, Sharma announced about 50,000 Africans were being educated on scholarships in India and another 22,000 were expected to benefit from similar educational programmes in the next three years.

He said India has provided assistance to the establishment of the Kofi Annan India Information Technology Centre (KAIITC) in Ghana. There are plans to built an Institute of Foreign Trade in Uganda as well Institutes of Education and Mining across the continent, he added.

“India is a shining example of a melting pot to the whole world because (we) have always been home to people who have faced religious and political persecution.”

“Together, Africa and India’s partnership is redefining the rebalancing of the global economy,” he added.

Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned And Cleansed

By Ishtiaq Ahmed

The partition of the Punjab in mid-August 1947 took place as part of a negotiated settlement brokered by the British between the Indian National Congress, the All-India Muslim League and the Sikhs of Punjab to partition India and transfer power to India and Pakistan.

The total population of the undivided Punjab Province was 33 million. It included territories directly administered by the British (pop. 28 million) and several princely states. The Punjab was a Muslim majority province while Hindus and Sikhs together made up a very large minority of 44-47 percent. The principle on which India and the Punjab were divided was that Muslim-majority areas were separated from the rest of India and given to Pakistan.

The demand to partition India was made by the main communal party of the Muslims, the All-India Muslim League. It insisted that Indian Muslims were not a minority (one-fourth of the total population of India) but a separate nation by virtue of their Islamic faith and culture.

When the Muslim League demanded the partition of India the Sikhs of Punjab demanded the same principle be applied to the Punjab. The Indian National Congress wanted to keep India united but realizing that the Muslim League was insistent on the partition of India, on March 8, 1947, it threw its weight behind the Sikh demand for the partition of the Punjab.

Viceroy Mountbatten came to the conclusion that the partition of India had become inevitable. Therefore on June 3, 1947, the Partition Plan was announced which required the Punjab and Bengal assemblies to vote on whether they wanted to keep their provinces united or partitioned. Both the assemblies voted in favour of partitioning their provinces.

The actual transfer of power to India and Pakistan proved to be bloody and bitter. Some people have described it as one of the ten great tragedies of the 20th century. The estimated loss of life during the partition of India is one million. Besides, 14-18 million people were forced to cross the international border in search of safe havens.

For the Punjab alone, the loss of life is estimated somewhere between 500,000-800,000 and 10 million people were forced to flee for their lives. More importantly, after World War II the first case of ethnic cleansing took place in the Punjab. Therefore, it bore the brunt of the partition violence. Thus at the end of 1947 all traces of a Muslim presence in the Indian East Punjab were wiped out, except for some Muslims remaining in the tiny princely state of Malerkotla (total population 88,000). In the Pakistani West Punjab, Hindus and Sikhs became conspicuous by their absence.

Given the fact that the pre-partition Punjab had a robust legacy of a ‘live and let live’ tradition bequeathed by the efforts of Muslim Sufis, Hindu Sants and Sikh Gurus, such an outcome at the end of 1947 was too drastic and traumatic and remained an intriguing and perplexing puzzle. There were some peculiarities which rendered the Punjab vulnerable to violence in case the competing parties and their leaders could not agree to keep their province united. Among them the main factor was that nearly a million Punjabi Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs had recently been demobilized from the British Indian Army.

Additionally there were criminal gangs operating all over Punjab. These two elements and partisan government functionaries, politicians and ethnic activists formed nexuses that began to coordinate attacks on the ‘enemy community’. Once the British were gone and two partisan administrations came to power in the divided Punjab whole-sale attacks on the minorities started taking place. By the end of the year ethnic cleansing had been achieved.

The main argument set forth in this study (“The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Accounts”/OUP) is that the partition of India was necessary but not a sufficient basis for the partition of the Punjab. In other words, if India had not been partitioned the Punjab would not be partitioned. However, there was no logical necessity for the Punjab to be partitioned if India was partitioned.

Why could not Punjabi Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs agree to keep their province united? Why did the violence that took place in the Punjab dwarf the violence that took place in other parts of India? I explain these with the help of a theoretical framework developed in a chapter entitled ‘A theory of ethnic cleansing’.

Fear of an uncertain future, lack of communication between the leaders of the estranged communities, the waning authority of the British and the consequent unreliability of the state institutions and functionaries created the social and political milieu in which suspicion and fear proliferated, generating angst among the common people. In such situations reaction and overreaction led to intended and unintended consequences which aggravated and finally resulted in the biggest human tragedy in the history of the Indian subcontinent.

There is the first holistic and comprehensive study of the partition of the Punjab. It covers chronologically the events which unfolded during 1947 and covers the whole of Punjab – the 28 districts and the princely states. During January 1 – August 14, 1947, it was under British rule. According to Sir Evan Jenkins, the last British governor of Punjab, only some 5,000 fatalities had taken place till August 4, 1947. From August 15 to December 31, 1947, those figures shot up to anything between 500,000 to 800,000.

No official documents are available from either India or Pakistan on that period. I have, for the first time in 65 years, brought to light the events on both sides with more than 230 first-person accounts. I also spoke to people now settled in other parts of India and Pakistan and in London, Stockholm and several US cities. It took me 12 years to collect the evidence to tell the story of what happened after power was transferred to the East and West Punjab administrations.

The conclusion I reached from my research is that in March 1947 the Muslims started large-scale violence, mainly against Sikhs but also against Hindus, in the Muslim-majority districts of northern Punjab. Yet at the end of that year more Muslims had been killed in East Punjab than Hindus and Sikhs together in West Punjab. How and why that happened is for the first time presented in this book of mine.

Ishtiaq Ahmed, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University And Honorary Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore. His book “The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Accounts” has just been published by Oxford University Press.

Battle Of Begums Dominate Bangladesh Elections

By Ranjana Narayan

Amid the Shahbag protests and the clashes, political tensions have palpably increased in Bangladesh with elections due later this year. The two rival political factions of the feuding begums seem equally poised and it is difficult to hazard a guess as to who will win, since historically no ruling party has won a second successive term.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and opposition leader Khaleda Zia – known as the battling begums – have ruled Bangladesh alternately since 1991, and are bitter rivals.

Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which won the 2001 elections with a huge margin, fared very badly in the last 2008 polls, winning less than 10 percent of the vote.

Hasina, in numerous rallies held recently, has said that the upcoming elections would be held under her Awami League government, ignoring the opposition demand for reviving the caretaker system to oversee the parliamentary polls. Zia has insisted that her party will boycott the poll scheduled for late 2013 if the government does not reinstate an independent caretaker system.

Bangladesh’s parliamentary elections have been administered by a series of caretakers, each installed within 15 days of the dissolution of the previous parliament. It is tasked with assisting a commission to ensure that polling is held within 90 days. Hasina’s government abolished the caretaker system with an amendment to the constitution in June 2011.

Hasina is unwilling to have a caretaker regime to oversee the elections. The last time the caretaker government had tried to shake up the system and even jailed the two begums for corruption, but agreed to release them to contest the election.

“In Bangladesh, no ruling party has ever won a second time. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (of Zia) could win this time, though one can’t say for certain,” said Mujibur Hasan, a local resident.

“Hasina needs the BNP and the Jamaat (a key alliance partner) to participate in the polls. Without their participation how will the polls be called free and fair,” asked a Bangladeshi journalist who did not wish to be identified but whose political leanings appeared clear.

The Shahbag protests, calling for “justice” against those accused of war crimes in the 1971 Liberation War, in other words the Jamaat-e-Islami, are perceived to have the tacit support of the Hasina government. The Awami League had promised setting up the War Crimes Tribunal in its last election manifesto.

The protests have galvanized thousands, mostly the youth, to peacefully demand that the war crimes accused be sent to the gallows – leading to tensions with the Jamaat.

With the continuing violence, including Wednesday when some BNP men were injured during clashes with police, has led the Awami government to allege that the opposition was deliberately trying to create a civil-war like situation with elections round the corner.

Local Government Minister Syed Ashraful Islam said that there was a concerted effort to discredit the Awami League by instigating the party’s rank and file to hit the streets to fight it out. “They want to provoke us into a civil war and we must avoid that trap … but we are not weak.”

“No matter how much they provoke for a civil war, the Awami League will not let anyone break the democratic system and replace it with another 1/11-type set-up,” the minister said.

On Jan 11 2007, a military-backed caretaker administration had taken charge and stayed in office for nearly two years, way beyond its constitutional limits.

Friendly neighbour India, which has a strong stake in a peaceful and prosperous Bangladesh that is well disposed towards it, is watching the developments keenly and has assured Dhaka of its unstinted support.

Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, who made his first overseas visit as head of state to Bangladesh this week, said after being conferred the Liberation War Honour Award Monday: “As in 1971, so in 2013, the people of India stand beside the people of Bangladesh. We will walk with you as equal partners, shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm.”

Mukherjee, referred to many times as the “first Bangalee” president of India and a “true friend of Bangladesh”, had in his convocation speech at Dhaka University sent a strong message to the country’s political parties to stick to democratic values and rule of law.

Mukherjee is known to be close to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of the country’s founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Hasina, who came to power in 2009, has always been friendly to India, unlike Khaleda Zia.

Zia, in an apparent snub to Mukherjee, called off a meeting with him though it was fixed much in advance and she had agreed to it. She had called on Mukherjee during her India visit last October and India has been careful in extending to her all the courtesies. External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid called on Zia when he visited Dhaka last month.

The Jamaat and BNP had called hartals during the three days coinciding with the Indian president’s visit. The strikes saw most shops shut in Dhaka and elsewhere and violence on the streets in many places.

The Jamaat-e-Islami is protesting the death sentence to its chief Delwar Hossain Sayedee for the 1971 war crimes, including rape and genocide. Over 70 people have been killed in clashes since the war crimes tribunal Feb 28 pronounced the sentence on Sayedee.

Women Playing Bolder Roles In India

By Madhusree Chatterjee