Through some random web surfing, I came across an interesting article by Jayant Bhandari comparing / contrasting his experiences doing business in the Desh shortly after 1991’s economic reforms vs. now. Although we frequently talk about how much the Indian economy has changed in the past 15 yrs, Jayant’s article had some solid anecdotes of just how grinding day to day life really was back in the day –

..I moved to Delhi [in 1993]. To my dismay, no one wanted to rent me a decent place to live in. The landlords mostly refused to talk to me, and had blatantly advertised their property as for foreigners only.

..having a phone was not enough. It usually did not work, and when it did, I usually could not use my fax machine because of the “noise” that infested the communications network. For the next three years, I spent, on average, one day a month to keep my phone in operation by making personal visits to the telecommunication department.

..One of the several laws I broke in those days was the law restricting the fax machine itself. I should have sought a license to use it; but getting it would have meant tens of visits to the telephone office, more hefty bribes, and the certainty that if I was refused a license, I would not have been able to communicate. This meant that the government employee responsible for keeping track of my telephone connection got a particularly heavy bribe…I spent the equivalent of one day a month depositing my telephone, electricity, and water payments.

..Getting money from the UK was another bureaucratic nightmare. The money came to the foreign currency department of a public sector bank. Once the bank got the money it would take about two months to give it to me — the check just traveled around and around inside their office.

It’s important to note that every single one of the issues he encounters were premised on good intentions at first. Why did landlords treat foreign vs. native rent money so differently? Because the latter couldn’t be evicted if they were late in their payments. Why the flimsy phone network? Because the telecoms saw their duty to provide jobs first, service a whole bunch of socio-political mandates second, and provide actual phone service perhaps 3rd. Currency controls? The goal was to prevent the twin scourges of capital flight and foreign takeovers. etc. etc. etc.

Of course, much turns around in a scant 5 years…

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Sadly, suicide bombings in Pakistan (and to a lesser extent, India) have become so commonplace that we don’t really report on ’em much anymore. Sure there was some interesting coverage of the bomb that altered the political landscape by nearly killing Benazir Bhutto (and the fact that it may have been strapped to a 1 year old baby makes the details even more chilling). But that was just one of perhaps a half dozen bomb blasts that have rocked the country in as many months.

Given that media glory is, in many respects, exactly what the bombers are looking for, there is at least one morose advantage to this state of reportage. Most Pakistanis live quiet, peaceful, productive lives and would certainly prefer other aspects of their society get highlighted in the global media.

However, a bombing in the past few days is significant because, as with Bhutto’s attempted assassination, it has tremendous implications for the geopolitical order far outside of Pakistan. In this case, the target was a suspected nuclear weapons facility –

As the Pakistani military continues the slow push to regain control of the settled district of Swat, suicide bombers struck in two locations, one at a sensitive weapons facility near Islamabad.

…the attack at a Pakistani Air Force base in Kamra, while only injuring seven, has far more serious implications. The Kamra complex is a likely location for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. The suicide bomber targeted a bus filled with 35 children of Pakistani Air Force officers. The driver, a conductor, and five children were wounded in the strike.

…While Taliban and al Qaeda suicide bombers have targeted secure military facilities over the past year, it is unclear if the suicide attack was a target of opportunity or a demonstration of the groups’ capacity to penetrate security at sensitive locations.

Back when nukes were a *really* tough thing to build, a society had to achieve a rather high degree of coordination and thus consensus to pull off construction of these beasts. As the march of globalization and technology steadily lower the cost of proliferation, expect more and more fractured societies to reach for them….

1 week & counting to the ever-popular, always-satisfying, 3rd I-sponsored, SF International South Asian Film Festival –

Like Amardeep, one of my most eagerly anticipated flicks is Loins of Punjab from freshman writer / director Manish Acharya –

2:00 pm, Saturday, November 17th, Castro Theater, San Francisco Admission: $10 Director: Manish Acharya Country: India (2007) Running Time: 88 mins, 35mm, Color Synopsis & Tickets

I’ve already purchased my tickets online. To keep the good times rolling after the flick, we’ll do a mini-meetup around the corner from the theater at Samovar Tea Lounge in the Castro.

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p align=left>I often see myself as sort of the David Brooks of Sepia Mutiny – a soft contrarian vs. the general political clime here. So, I was surprised to see Abhi’s take on Pakistan. There aren’t too many issues out there where Abhi & I tend to agree rather than disagree and it appears that Pakistan is one such situation. (On the other hand, I don’t think the ACLU does enough for the NRA )

In our politically-correct, post-modern world, criticism of government flows easily, criticism of the “governed”, not enough

My underlying reason for taking a “looks bad, but I’ll wait and see” attitude towards Mushie rather than condeming him outright was perhaps best spelled out in a seminal Foreign Affairs article by desi-pundit Fareed Zakaria. Well before he broke onto the public consciousness with a famous Newsweek cover piece, and before he was for the Iraq war, then against its execution, then for it again, Zakaria coined the phrase “Illiberal Democracy” to describe situations where serving the “will of the people” is’nt exactly a Good Thing –

THE AMERICAN diplomat Richard Holbrooke pondered a problem on the eve of the September 1996 elections in Bosnia, which were meant to restore civic life to that ravaged country. “Suppose the election was declared free and fair,” he said, and those elected are “racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to [peace and reintegration]. That is the dilemma.” Indeed it is, not just in the former Yugoslavia, but increasingly around the world. Democratically elected regimes, often ones that have been reelected or reaffirmed through referenda, are routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms. From Peru to the Palestinian Authority, from Sierra Leone to Slovakia, from Pakistan to the Philippines, we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon in international life — illiberal democracy.

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