Harper’s magazine, July 2005, reports a horrific statistic: 44% of fatal or wounding terrorist attacks last year took place in India, only 32% in Iraq. Israel isn’t even close, nor Sri Lanka. But with the prevalence of large car bombs in Iraq, that country may have a higher body count. Macabre, I know, but sometime it’s to our benefit that India’s still a handicraft country.

Keeping that in mind, six terrorists were killed in Ayodhya today after storming the infamous temple complex with assault rifles and grenades:

A shootout between police and unidentified gunmen at a Hindu temple at a disputed religious site in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya ended with six attackers dead and one in custody, a source said. Machine guns and grenades were found with the bodies of the gunmen, said district magistrate Markhande Singh. Yashpal Singh, director general of police, described the incident as a suicide attack. [Link]

Today, the temple’s attackers apparently hired a car in Ayodhya, less than 400 miles southeast of Delhi, and drove it around the fence surrounding the temple compound. In defiance of rigid security protocols that prevent people from approaching the temple compound, the attackers used a second vehicle, a white Jeep packed with explosives, to tear open a hole through the yellow metal perimeter fence…

The driver of the hired Ambassador car, who had been held for questioning, said in a nationally televised police interrogation that his passengers had requested to see the holy sites of Ayodhya. The driver said the men had offered a prayer at another local temple before attacking the temple. [Link]

The gunmen were surrounded by armed police as they tried to enter the inner area of the complex, and a gun battle lasting nearly two hours followed. [Link]

… the security personnel surrounded the terrorists near a room of the Sita Rasoi area of the disputed site. The terrorists reportedly entered the Ayodhya complex from the Ved temple area. [Link]

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That’s the estimate for how much Indians paid en toto to various bureaucrats up and down this most murderous of food chains.

Amit Varma quotes a piece from the Hindustan Times –

For those who believe that corruption in India is almost an industry, hereÂ’s proof. A survey conducted by Transparency International India (TII) says Indians paid bribes amounting to Rs 21,068 crore [US$ 4843 million appr] in the past year. And no one would have guessed it, but the biggest chunk of this money goes to schools till the Class XII level. …This is not to say that schools are the most corrupt. That honour goes to the police who have been ranked the most corrupt according to a ‘corruption indexÂ’ prepared by the CMS. The reason schools receive the biggest chunk of bribe money is that “(the) proportion of citizens interacting with schools is much more than the police or municipalities,” said Sarangpani.

Varma’s analysis for “why” –

…the biggest reason is discretion. Too many public servants have too much discretion over our activities, which is, in many areas, an unwarranted intrusion into our personal freedom. The more power the state has over its citizens, the more inevitable corruption is. Other factors do matter, but this is the grandma of them all.

I heartily agree with Varma – an interventionalist government, its intentions cloaked by social cause de jure creates its own license for corruption. For all its objections, freedom & growth maximization have the advantage of being relatively objective vs. the far more abstract goals of “equity”, “preventing labor displacement” or “preserving identity”.

But even while being pared down via privitization and deregulation, Indian governance will still suffer from a famously lacking public service ethic. Some things will always require a government license (like setting up a corporation) or some level of government operation (infrastructure, transportation, etc.). In the US and many western countries, we take it for granted that folks joining the public sphere are never going to get rich. Unfortunately, in India and many other dysfunctional countries, a public appointment is, more often than not, the path to getting rich.

As India globalizes, there are signs of progress but, it ain’t fast enough for many. Continue reading →

Everybody knows that being Secretary of State means you never have to say you’re sorry. Therefore, I was very surprised to hear an “apology” from Henry Kissinger:

Mr Kissinger, 82, has now told a the private Indian television channel NDTV that his comments did not reflect American policy during the 1970s.

“I regret that these words were used. I have extremely high regard for Mrs Gandhi as a statesman,” he said. “The fact that we were at cross purposes at that time was inherent in the situation but she was a great leader who did great things for her country.” [BBC]

I find this “apology” completely unsatisfying. I really don’t care what language Nixon and Kissinger used to discuss Indira Gandhi in private. The fact that they used similar language about virtually everybody else — American or Foreign, Democratic or Republican, member of the administration or outsider — makes me care even less.

I care far more about the 500,000 to 3 million who died, and the 6 million to 12 million who were made refugees. [National Geographic uses the 3 million dead and the 10 million refugees figures]. These were not accidental deaths. This was an intentional mass slaughter of civilians by the Pakistani government, coupled with a campaign of ethnic cleansing. In Bangladesh, they call this genocide:

On February 22, 1971 the generals in West Pakistan took a decision to crush the Awami League and its supporters. It was recognized from the first that a campaign of genocide would be necessary to eradicate the threat: “Kill three million of them,” said President Yahya Khan at the February conference, “and the rest will eat out of our hands.” (Robert Payne, Massacre [1972], p. 50.)

On March 25 the genocide was launched. The university in Dacca was attacked and students exterminated in their hundreds. Death squads roamed the streets of Dacca, killing some 7,000 people in a single night. It was only the beginning. “Within a week, half the population of Dacca had fled, and at least 30,000 people had been killed. Chittagong, too, had lost half its population. All over East Pakistan people were taking flight, and it was estimated that in April some thirty million people [!] were wandering helplessly across East Pakistan to escape the grasp of the military.” (Payne, Massacre, p. 48.) Ten million refugees fled to India, overwhelming that country’s resources and spurring the eventual Indian military intervention. (The population of Bangladesh/East Pakistan at the outbreak of the genocide was about 75 million.) [cite]

Half of Bangladesh’s population were refugees, either within the country or outside it!

As we blogged earlier, State Department cables reveal the US government knew full well what was going on. What was the American response? They asked the French to sell more arms to the Pakistanis and they asked the Chinese (one of the largest mass murderers in history) to threaten India:

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