Book Review: Who Speaks For Islam?

Since 9/11, there’s been a desire from all ends of the world to know what Muslims think and who speaks for Islam. And as it so happened, I came across a book, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, which claimed to report on a six-year study of what hundreds and thousands of Muslims said. I also found a research paper on what a few Canadian Muslims said and thought. Here are my thoughts about the book and paper and my thoughts about the question itself.

Let me get one thing out straight. This book by Esposito and Mogahed is one of the most useless pieces of analysis that I have ever read. To top it all, a whole host of other luminaries have praised the book and its findings. This worries me for reasons which I will explain. The two authors made such basic analytical mistakes that I am frankly bewildered. The book could very well have been written by some zonked out undergraduates and these two senior academicians must have been busy or something when the book went to print. Also, all these various senior people praising it, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Deepak Chopra, Karen Armstrong, Vali Nasr, Jessica Stern, Robert Pape, and Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian etc. seem to have had their press people give a statement on their behalf without reading through the book.

This book was so bad that I gave up after page 139 and the ironic part is the book starts with a premise that it is scientific and based on data. But still, there are some good and interesting points which in all fairness I should mention first:

• The authors do mention that most Muslims live in Asia and Africa and that Muslims are wonderfully diverse in terms of language, ethnicity, customs, dress, location, nationality, and what have you. So lumping all Muslims into one bloc is as appropriate as to lump all Christians into one or all the “west” into one chunk (mind you, while saying that, they go on to make the very same mistake, for example on page 97)
• Page 47 talks about how significant majorities in all Muslim countries have pushed for freedom of speech. This is a good thing indeed, although it sits uneasily with the demonstrations against theDanish cartoon seen across the world.
• A 2006 Gallup poll talked about how most Americans want the Bible as a source of legislation. This was not surprising to me, but if they add in the West and all countries which have a liberal democratic framework such as Japan, India and others, the results will be utterly different. The numbers from Iran are similar to that of the USA. Curious, no?
• Countries like Iran and Indonesia did not seem to like Sharia in their legal systems before, even if that changed with Khomeini in Iran – who made it part of the constitution and with the recent developments in Indnesia establishing the first Sharia court in Aceh. But countries such as Egypt and Jordan want it, when their legal system only uses parts of it in the family law section. Curious, no? Is this because the latter two countries are Arab?
• Page 66 talks about a reasonably good point, namely that the USA does not know what the enemy wanted or thought about. Presumably the reference is to Al Qaeda. Well, from the perspective of intelligence agents, yes, the Americans knew what Al Qaeda wanted. OBL’s sermons and speeches were very well-known to them. And as I have also found out, I am not sure if that knowledge would have helped anyway.
• Interference by America and other countries in the business of Muslim (and frankly many other) countries is not something that I condone. They poke their noses into far too many places and this is a classic example of imperial overstretch. So yes, good point that USA is interventionist and it should stop doing that.
• Chapter 4 on women, was good and provided a nice coverage of women’s issues, how they work and behave, what they wish for and what their current situation is. While the data and issues mentioned were useful, the chapter was a bit confused as it did not draw out the basic issues facing Muslim women. How do they reconcile their religion with modern life? Unfortunately, when one looks to religious books on women related issue resolution, one should remember that others will do the same. So while one might argue using Sharia that women should be liberated such as on page 118, one can also argue using the same Sharia that female genital mutilation is allowable (it is debatable, but there is a case for it, when quoting certain strict schools of jurisprudence, which is against what they say on page 117).

The serious mistakes that this book makes are legion. It is not scientific and it is not based on what one would understand as standard social science data. The analysis is frankly horrible and the report seems to have been written by a drunk undergraduate. It is clear that this book, the Gallup research and the analysis is not written for the American populace, but for the international non-American public in a polemical, biased and rather ignorant shallow manner. What is curious is why did all the other luminaries get all excited about it and admire something like this?

Now let me mention some issues I had with the book:

• How come India as a source of Muslim thought was ignored? That is indeed curious and a big lacunae in the study, as I would posit that those results would have made a substantial contribution to this study.
• Why was Francis Fukuyama called a former neoconservative theorist on page 29? There is no reference to political theories before or after that, and no reference to realism, conservatism or liberalism. But mention it they did, and this started to turn me off, because it was obviously meant as a personal slur.
• And from page 32 onwards, the book shows one of its biggest flaws. The severe and serious ignorance and confusion between Arabs and Muslims. After spending the first chapter talking about the fact that the overall Muslims includes only about 20% Arabs and the fact that Arabs are Christians, Druze and many other types of people as well and not just Muslims, the authors promptly forget it. Being an Arab is being part of a linguistic group, not a religious group. And because of this basic mistake, every conclusion and recommendation they draw is miserably wrong.
• The authors also confuse the terms west, USA, the Iraqi coalition, the neoconservative movement and the like. This confusion means the authors often rely on references to “some”, “they”, as the strawman (for example on page 95 and 99). So the authors pick up one comment by a right-wing commentator, extrapolate it variously to the entire West, USA, United Kingdom, the Western Press, you name it, and then try to answer it based on some vague formula.
• On Page 36, the authors talk about there being no difference between Islamic Law and human rights. I found it curious that they did not mention the fact the Islamic world pushed for their own declaration of human rights saying that the universal declaration of human rights was not “appropriate” in all its points.
• The authors also seem to be confused about what Democracy means. Democracy not only means that governments are elected by the people and sovereignty rests with the people, but also the people draw up the laws and they can change it. When laws emerge from a religious book formulated by clerics, it is called as a theocracy, not a democracy. So when people say that they love democracy but want Sharia as a source of laws and legislation, there is a certain inconsistency which has not been explored fully.
• Their basic problem with Arabs and Muslims shows up again in the next section and then continuously onwards. Why is democracy absent in so much of the Muslim world? And despite pointing to South Asia, the authors forget that India, Pakistan, Bangladesh were all beset by imperialism equally. But India, Nepal and Sri Lanka have managed to hold on to democratic standards, while Pakistan and Bangladesh have not. So just pointing to Imperialism as the main reason for democracy not holding ground in Muslim countries is far too simplistic, which blows their arguments to bits.
• Page 41 shows another fascinating confusion in the minds of the authors. This time it’s the conflating of the “west” and “secularism”. Secularism as an idea has a long history and it is not just from the West. I am not sure the authors have understood what secularism means and the philosophy behind it. It is the only way to handle heterogeneous populations.
• While talking about imperialism, there are some big problems with their argument. The authors did not mention the Ottoman, Mughal or other Muslim imperialistic empires. They do not mention the fact that imperialism with respect to Muslim countries has been mainly European rather than American, but let us not confuse matters there. How about the fact that Japanese imperialism overran many Muslim countries as well in the east, but let us not go there either.
• While saying that Sharia should be a source of law and then saying that they do not want religious figures to influence laws or the constitution. Erm, who will be the people working on Sharia then? Non-religious people? And how will that work? And then on page 93, a theoretical construct is made up about how Sharia protects citizens from the depredations of rulers. Well, it has never worked before in a millennium, has it? So what makes one think that it will ever work? And why would the mullahs be advisors to the rulers? See the confusion?
• Around page 56-57, the authors again talk about Islam and democracy in a confused sense. And this is another example of their total ignorance of what Secularism means. They give the example of France and state funding of churches, but do not talk about the concept of “lacite’”. Plus this debate is strange. In Islam, sovereignty is with God, the Quran (plus Sunnah, Hadith, etc.) form the Sharia which is part of the legal system. How on earth are they even trying to draw any equivalence here?
• Huge clangers of mistakes are made in the analysis of political radicals starting from page 67. Very confusing. They refer to many experts without actually giving any concrete references. The authors assume things, such as terrorism is due to poverty and unemployment. This is a theory that I have rarely read from any expert. And after talking about a badly and wrongly drafted expert opinion, they slip into another badly drafted argument based on media reports. There is no consistency and very badly framed strawman arguments. And then on page 70, they compound the mistake by devoting a full section to this type of strawman argument which might be fine in polemics and email lists but not in what is purportedly a serious academic book. For example, while they spent much time talking about how the 9/11 attackers were not religious Muslims, they do not talk about the obvious next step. So what DID bring these attackers together? I am not going to talk about the obvious answer, but the fact the authors did not even understand the next step is symptomatic of the poor and rather shallow analysis in this book.
• In the next section, they gathered a few comments from some far right commentators and build up a huge counter argument based on those foamy arguments. This sounded childish to me and disjointedly argued.
• On page 77, the old chestnut of the Pape’s Suicide Terrorism is dug up. Well, I do not have to say this again, because I already wrote about this study here and here but trying to give me references to that silly study does not fill me with confidence that this particular book and what it purports to study is any good either. But they go on to make more mistakes like trying to say the Tamil Tigers appeal to Hindus and link to the Indian Tamils.
• Page 81 throws up more issues. While the authors talk about anti-Americanism and talk about radicals, they stop there. But hey, here’s the issue. You don’t hear about anti-Germanism or Anti-Spanishism, but they both have terrorism issues. So is that anti-westernism? The authors again refer to far right commentators, but do not mention that George Bush has clearly said the war on terror is not a war against Islam. But then, that does not fit in neatly with the author’s biases.
• Again on page 85, there is another confusion between Muslim states and Arab states. And yet again they ignore the glaring counter-example of Pakistan and Bangladesh compared to India as Muslim states. Frankly, again a poor argument.
• On page 87, “the war against Islam and Muslims” is nothing new. That slogan has been raised since time immemorial I am afraid. For example, one of the big things that Mughal Aurangzeb or any of the Ottoman pashas did when faced with challenges was to raise this same slogan or words to that effect. And guess what? The open-ended question of what do you resent most about the west, the answers were “sexual and cultural promiscuity”, “ethical and moral corruption” and “hatred of Muslims”. Pretty undefined, no? And no further analysis of it either.
• Outright inconsistencies emerge, for example on page 92. Yes, I agree with the fact that Western countries should stop interfering in Muslim countries. While saying that, I did not notice any mention of Lebanon, where other Muslim countries (Syria, Iran) interfere with both hands and legs. And this is where the issue comes up, because if you don’t have a clear idea that you will always find countries interfering with others, you are living in cloud cookoo land.
• Also, curiously, they continuously confuse Sharia with Fiqh. This is not the place to go deeply into it, and it is a commonly made mistake. But for them not to make that distinction (such as on pages 92-93) is worrying. Because of this, they tend to make some basic mistakes, such as for example, saying that what restricted Muslim rulers from acting like tyrants was Sharia. Erm, that is wrong on both formulation as well as knowledge of history. It’s fiqh rather and secondly, Sharia never stopped Muslim rulers from being tyrants. This also leads to a massive confusion around what the mullahs can do about government and legal society. Are they the rulers? Advisers? Lawyers? Senior House of parliament? What? And the authors do not address this point and just leave it dangling at “advisers”.

I am now tired of listing the flaws of this book even if I am not finished. It is useless and frankly a waste of time. No basic data is presented nor is the analysis rigorous. As I said, what was worrying me most was the legions of congratulatory messages on this book. I do not think any of the so-called great and good have read the book and if they have, they have not understood it. More curiously, why on earth are these two so-called respected academics writing such drivel? Shame on Gallup, a respected organization, for producing pap like this. So in the end, this book does not tell me what Muslims really think, nor does it tell me who speaks for Islam. And the fault lies solely with the authors, not with the people who they interviewed. (Here’s something which I wrote earlier on who actually speaks for Islam and who influences Muslims). The biggest problem with the book is the underlying theme that every American who reads the book is an idiot and has this patronising theme running through it. As a public policy book, this is pathetic and I am deeply disappointed with the authors. These authors have contributed more to the civilisational schism than they tried to help cover it.

This brings me to the other paper, which was published in a peer reviewed journal called as ‘Government Information Quarterly’ in 2008. The paper was written by Nadia Caidi and Susan MacDonald of the University of Toronto. The paper is entitled, ‘Information practises of Canadian Muslims post 9/11’. Now this is what a good research should look like. The paper presented a scientifically rigorous treatment of how Muslims think and what they do. While the area of investigation is different (however equally important and interesting), the methods that these researchers used, the analysis they came up with, all are fascinating and much more believable than the pap that Esposito and Mogahed have come up with.

It was a good sensitive study, asking intelligent literate Canadian Muslims, about their information practices, use of information sources, attitudes and opinions about information rights in a post 9/11 world. What the authors found is that Canadian Muslims hold a deep mistrust of the media, but they think that knowledge of media and information literacy is important. They also feel there is a need for far greater introspection within Muslim societies.

Fascinating public policy recommendations drop out, about how multiculturalism can help or hinder. Some issues with the study related to the fact that they did not consider another society like the United Kingdom for example, which has seen home-grown Muslim terrorism in 7/7. Also, they did not consider Canadian Sikh immigrant terrorism either. Both of which would have provided a much richer analysis of this factor of multiculturalism and nationalism, but that can well be done in another piece of research. What about the information media sources in themselves? Would it help to have public advisory councils which will help improve these fellow citizens’ trust in the media? What can be done?

Both pieces of work are interesting from many perspectives. The first one because it shows how not to do research and put across public policy recommendations on such politically and religiously sensitive issues. The second one shows how to utilise information and information practices for Muslims, who are definitely facing Islamophobia and feeling targeted. Very thought-provoking indeed and much needs to be done to address these issues (but please, not in the way Esposito and Mogahed do it). So while we still do not know what the billion Muslims think, we can do something about making sure that the information channels are better managed and transparently dealt with in order for us to draw the poison of Islamophobia and support for terrorism.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

The Kashmir conflict is one of the most stubborn geopolitical challenges in the world, akin to the Israeli–Palestinian crisis. The conflict has antecedents going back sixty years, with roots of the issue planted hundreds of years ago. While it would have been difficult to resolve in 1947, each subsequent political and military step by the various parties has pushed the issue into even more stubborn territory. Though the background to the conflict is public, it is useful to review some key points before we can explore some short and medium term initiatives which can possibly decrease the severity of the conflict if not offer a resolution.

Background to the conflict

It is difficult to generalise the background to the Kashmir conflict because of the bitterness of the fight and the deep divisions among the various parties involved. A cause which may be trivial to a particular party is of importance to another. But most parties agree on the following:

· Kashmir, a Muslim majority state ruled by Hindu kings, contains: Gilgit and Baltistan in the north; a block of land ceded to China in the north-east; Leh and Kargil in the east; Kashmir Valley and Jammu.

· The principle behind the post partition division of geographical units to India or Pakistan was based on the religious majority in geographical areas and will of the state ruler. That said there were princely states where this principle did not hold, such as Junagarh, Hyderabad and of course, Kashmir. A promised plebiscite on the future of the state never took place. India claims the Jammu Kashmir State Parliament voted on this issue, so a plebiscite was needless, while Pakistan does not believe the state parliament vote adheres to the spirit/letter of the original plebiscite. Some Kashmiris say the original plebiscite is wrong, as it only offers accession to India and Pakistan without mention of independence.

· Major ethnic units in Kashmir are Shia and Sunni Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and tiny minorities of other ethnicities (Christians and Sikhs).

· India and Pakistan have fought three wars (1948, 1965, and 1999) over this territory.

· Kashmir was an indirect reason for the 1971 war.

· A militant campaign has been raging in the state since 1989.

· Since 2002, a ceasefire between India and Pakistan has held, although terrorism has not ended. Intermittent talks took place between the three main groups, India, Pakistan and Kashmiri groups with some Confidence Building Measures (CBM) performed.

What do the main stakeholders want?

Given the long history of the conflict, a polarisation and fragmentation of the various groups (with a direct or indirect stake) in the conflict happened. Before we talk about various solutions, it is important to know the direct groups involved:

· Pakistan: Created as a homeland for Muslims, distinct from that of Hindu Majority and Secular India. Kashmir is the last unfinished business of the Partition. Until Kashmir is part of Pakistan, Pakistan’s raison d’être is incomplete. The letter K in Pakistan stands for Kashmir, so attainment of Kashmir is core to the identity and ideology of Pakistan. The Kashmiri cause gives the army reason to grab disproportionate state resources. In addition, because of the religious based foundation of the state, non-state actors, namely the religious parties, are a major and vocal stakeholder in the Kashmir issue.

· India: A strongly democratic secular country, the presence of a Muslim majority state within the ambit of the Indian constitution gives strength to the secular state (both the central government and the local Jammu and Kashmir state government) ideology. The central and state government are not always 100% aligned in their objectives, but both work together. A big security force is present in the state, comprising of regular army troops, paramilitary forces, counter–terrorist forces, state police forces and a myriad of intelligence agencies. The security forces are accused of many human right abuses, but the situation is slowly improving.

· The Kashmiri’s. There are many groups involved and while it is impossible to mention all of them, broadly speaking, we can classify them as follows:

o The militants belong to three groups: the secular independence seeking terrorists (rapidly dwindling in number and influence); the native Kashmiri militants (slowly reducing under diminished Pakistani support and better Indian counter-terror measures) and the foreign militants (usually Pakistani but also from the international jehadi brigades). These militants are not aligned to the Kashmiri political parties and the Pakistani state shows strong yet sporadic control over them.

o The Kashmiri Hindu’s are the largest state minority, despite ethnic cleansing from Kashmir proper since the latest uprising. They are either in refugee camps in India, the Jammu region or have subsumed themselves in India proper. They have little political power and suffer from the flip side of secular India’s objectives (Secular India cannot be seen to provide any major relief to Hindus for fear of being seen as partial to the Hindu majority)

o The Muslims in Kashmir consist of Shia Muslims in Pakistan Kashmir, who resent the pogroms by the hardline Sunni militia and the Sunni Muslims in Indian Kashmir, who criticise Indian rule.

o The Buddhists, a small but significant minority, are mostly present in north-east Kashmir in Laddakh and Leh. Despite their usual non-involvement in the issue, tensions are rising between them and the Muslim population as their sympathies lie with Secular India.

o The Political parties (in Indian Kashmir only, as the political parties in Pakistani Kashmir are not real political parties as we know them, but rather nebulous Pakistani state sponsored groups) include the Indian aligned groups such as the Congress I, National Conference (and variants), People Democratic Party, the secular groupings such as the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front and the Pakistani aligned breakaway grouping of the Hurriyat Conference, such as headed by Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Though they have a following within the Valley itself, it is difficult to know their support base, as only the Indian aligned political parties have contested municipal, state and central elections.

o The general populace is, of course, tired of the decade’s long fight and yearns for normality and economic growth. The local state economy is growing (but not as much as it should) after huge central government funding, the India-Pakistan ceasefire and increasingly efficient counter-terror measures.

The external indirect stakeholders are a motley collection of organisations and countries noted for their ineffectual role in resolving this crisis. For example, while the United Nations was present in Kashmir since the first ceasefire in 1948, it is, for all practical purposes useless and ignored by all. Similarly, Pakistan uses the Organisation of Islamic Countries to raise the Kashmir issue regularly and is repeatedly ignored or diplomatically managed away by India. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation cannot resolve bilateral issues.

The United Kingdom retains a role by dint of its colonial history, the presence of large number of Kashmiri origin immigrants and groups in the UK itself and London being one of the world’s diplomatic capitals. America, on the other hand, has kept a low-profile in Kashmir, although it has much more influence and depth inside Pakistan (witness the role of President Clinton during the aftermath of the Kargil War). China is another strange participant. On one hand, it controls Kashmiri territory as well as supports Pakistan’s Army. It has provided funding and materials to build the Karakorum Highway connecting Pakistan with China. While difficult to draw independent conclusions about the influence coefficient of all these organisations and countries, clearly international organisations will simply never be able to play a big role in resolving the Kashmiri issue. The only two countries which have some influence on Pakistan are the USA and China. India, on the other hand, is prickly about its international standing and has not and never will accept any form of public intervention by any other country.

What is the solution?

The BBC (http://tinyurl.com/pys26) has put together a set of pages with various solutions such as Kashmir accedes to Pakistan; Kashmir accedes to India, Kashmir becomes independent and variants of the status quo by adjusting the Line of Control (the 1948 ceasefire line) up and down, etc. The site briefly explains each proposed solution and mentions the challenges and difficulties of each. An interested and independent observer would note that none of the solutions are palatable to all direct stakeholders and the important point is that none of the stakeholders will agree to compromise on the key issues.

In other words, it has become a question of “izzat” (honour) and of a perception of identity and survival to the various parties involved. If India accepts a plebiscite, then it is certain that it will lose and no Indian central government can accept that, in addition, it will violate the secular ideology of India. If Pakistan accepts the LoC as the international border that means denying the core ideology of Pakistan. For the Kashmiri jehadi’s to accept political control by India over Kashmir (in any form) is to violate their religious precepts. Given the identification of the other competing stakeholders as the enemy, any compromise is simply not possible. Once you factor in the degree of militancy and the possibility of murders of leaders who dare even suggest a compromise, talk of a solution is plainly impossible as compromise is labelled as selling out to the enemy and leading to the extinction of national/group identity.

A political solution involving territory between two parties is usually only reached after a war, where one party is defeated and thus has to accept the solution, or else, a third-party or parties force/mediate between the two to accept some territorial swaps. Kashmir, as we have seen, does not have a defeated party and no external party has enough leverage to force neither Pakistan nor India into a political solution. Once we include existential reasons such as national survival/identity, religious or secular ideologies, the chances of a lasting political solution are near zero if not negative. Negative in the sense there is a strong chance the current peace process (if the desultory talks and halting steps can be considered as such) can get derailed after some dramatic terrorist attack on a high-profile target or a serious and public human rights violation.

Pushing for a solution now will be useless due to deeply entrenched political positions based on maximalist objectives of all the parties involved. A solution has to be a win-win one, but because of this maximalist perspective, no party is willing to give up any positions/points for the greater good. In other words, everybody is out to get all they can get and damn the rest. None of the solutions will be acceptable because of the intransigence of all the parties involved in the current climate.

If no solutions are acceptable, then what?

One looks at the entrenched positions, the history of the conflict and simply fails to think of a good, reasonable solution acceptable to all concerned. For sake of brevity, one can lessen the challenge to trying to reconcile three mutually incompatible objectives, wish for independence by the Kashmiris, wish to keep Kashmir within India for secular reasons and wish to get Kashmir for Pakistan for religious reasons. Given a limited territorial space and incompatibility of the objectives, there can be no solution. But if no solutions are acceptable to all parties right now, that does not mean there can be no mutually acceptable solutions in the future. So the ground rules have to change.

How can we change ground rules?

When a state gets subsumed into a supranational state, then territorial conflicts change character and become more diffuse, examples such as Northern Ireland, Scotland and Cyprus within supranational European State spring to mind. These conflicts have lost much potency once the idea of states fighting over territory got included into the overarching European identity. They have not been resolved, but the maximalist positions became much less. Another example is to convert hard, fenced, land mined borders into soft ones. When men, material, money and machines can move freely over borders, then hard nationalistic or identity politics lose much of their edge. There is, of course, the violent alternative of having an all-out war, where one party defeats the other and essentially removes it from the equation, but no sane person would agree to the last alternative. Irrespective of which option is selected, the objective remains the same, namely to try moving people and parties away from their entrenched positions into fertile soil to allow a solution to emerge in time.

This means that instead of just aiming for a final solution, slow interim steps should be taken to change the ground rules. Of course, for communication and public appetite, a constant reassuring stream of high-quality messages must be transmitted by all senior leaders. Some of the Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) that can be launched:

1. Economic measures: A Free trade agreement between India and Pakistan would be valuable. Special attention can be given to Kashmir, so Kashmiri made products can be given tax exceptions, for purchase and sale in both India and Pakistan as well as for export. Tourism also provides great optimism, as Indians going to Kashmir for tourism can be allowed access to say the northern areas for extending their stay. Subsidies and tax exemptions can be given to foreign investors.

2. Social measures: Allowing greater movement of citizens across the border will be worthwhile. The bus, truck and train CBMs notwithstanding, greater openness is suggested. Security can be a concern, but the movement (not only for Kashmiris) has to be intensified. In addition, cross regional marriages should be encouraged, educational opportunities – such as reserved seats, scholarships, etc. opened to people from both sides of the border.

3. Cultural measures: Exchange of music, drama, film and other mediums should be strongly encouraged to highlight the overarching theme of a common identity and Kashmiriat..

4. Politics and Governance: Political parties should be governed under a code of conduct which stresses peaceful resolution of issues, renounces violence, etc. On both sides of the border, true local governance has to be set up. For example, on the Indian side, other than the border areas, all security forces should be brought under local political control. On the Pakistani side, a true local Kashmiri polity should be allowed to develop rather than being led from Islamabad.

5. Law & Order: The judiciary on both sides should be strengthened. An independent body will review reported human rights crimes by all parties (security forces and militants). An independent Kashmir wide Human Rights Council (with possible observer status to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International etc.) granted powers and wide participation from both sides of the border.

6. The media: The media must play a big role, and open transparency is essential. Allowing private channels in radio, TV and internet will help to provide a diversity of opinions. Internet and mobile communications to be increased in penetration and improved.

7. International Relations between India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan can take many steps on the diplomatic side to allow commonalities to rule rather than differences to divide. Such as a public announcement that both India and Pakistan’s WTO working groups will work together. Or announce that India and Pakistan will work on commonalities such as a joint UN peacekeeping force (perhaps not peace enforcement initially); technical aid to poor countries; law of the sea, environmental issues and the Kyoto treaty; water management; etc.

What are the risks and how to mitigate them?

As mentioned earlier, even these small interim ground rule changing steps can be threatened by many events. There are three major possible events (with a reasonably high probability of happening over the next 3-5 years) which can seriously put the peace process into reverse.

1. A big terrorist strike in Kashmir or India

As noted before, the militant groups in Pakistan are not under the full control of the Pakistani Army and intelligence services. In other words, for this peace process to work, the militants have to be reined in to allow social and economic life to begin. This is not easy as the jehadi toothpaste, once squeezed out, is difficult to return into the tube. While not impossible, the Pakistani Army will have to increase the pressure on these militant groups to reduce their activities. It is, of course, impossible to imagine the groups can be made to disband; dialing down their activities will allow the CBMs to launch and take root.

2. A big human rights issue emerges in India because of the security forces

While the Indian armed forces are improving their control over human right abuses, there is indeed a chance that a serious incident might happen which can seriously risk the CBMs. The militants could take up arms again, rebelling against the Pakistani Army authority, and ordinary folks turn off the entire peace process. The current human rights management process within the Indian security forces has to be strengthened and made transparent to the public.

3. Change of government in India

Although both the BJP and the Congress led coalitions are committed to the peace process and are determined to find a solution, it is not inconceivable that a hardline government takes power after the current one. This new government may roll back the peace process, halt it or even embark on a full war, especially if a big terrorist strike happens (or for example, a high-profile political leader is assassinated). While mitigating actions against such an eventuality are difficult to note, the best defence against it is to let a thousand CBMs flower. More CBMs will lessen the chance of all of them being rolled back. Also, the more of India is involved (by greater tourism, economic links, educational links, etc.), the more difficult it would be for the hardline government to roll back the process.

4. Change of government in Pakistan

While currently General Musharraf is in charge of the Pakistani Army, there is a possibility of an internal army revolt/coup where a hard-line officer takes over. Or there is a national movement by the Pakistani religious parties which forces the army to hand-over power to the civilians as has happened before. In either case, the peace process can be rolled back and the jehadi reins loosened. Given the democratic deficit and tradition of autocratic rule in Pakistan, even an increase in the number of CBMs is no defence against all of them being stopped. The only possible mitigation is American pressure and for this, USA can be asked to be a discreet and unofficial guarantor of these CBMs.

Conclusion

It will take political will, persistence and mainly dedication to seek a true peace and stability across all sections of the stakeholders. It will require patience and understanding to deal with mistakes and mistakes will be made. Given the current leadership of Pakistan and India, there is hope that by carrying out some or all of these CBMs, the first faltering steps towards resolving the horrendous Kashmir Conflict can be taken.

Anybody who has been on railway platforms in a reasonably big Indian city might have noticed a surprisingly large number of unaccompanied children. They are the children who have been abandoned, have run away from abusive homes, were orphaned or simply got lost. And as it is when children fall through the cracks, these kids have become drug addicts, are abused, sexually or otherwise. They have no future and simply have become the jetsam and flotsam of modern society, condemned to be on the garbage heap. Unknown, and uncared for, they sink to the bottom and simply fade away. But not for a tiny institution in Bhopal, which has given the most valuable of all things to them. It gave them hope.

I have noticed one thing common between refugees, orphans, drug addicts and prostitutes. Their eyes are dead. They do not sparkle anymore, are dead to the world, incurious, and they do not shine with life. They might be alive, but frankly, for all practical purposes, their souls are dead. And I think it’s primarily because of the fact that they have lost all hope. What is there to put sparkles in your eyes if there is no longer any hope?

One of the everlasting regrets of my life is that I was not able to adopt an orphan. A combination of government apathy and obstruction, plus other circumstances made it impossible for me to adopt and fulfil the pledge and promise I made to myself all those years ago when I visited the Missionaries of Charity home in Indore, India. The eyes of those orphans would light up when visitors came and I wanted to do something about it. But in the absence of that, I was trying to do my little bit for these unfortunate children just to give them a bit of hope and to put some sparkle back into their eyes.

While I was in Amsterdam, I spotted a news item in an Indian newspaper RSS feed about a small institution that has opened in Bhopal, India, which helps orphans, street children and children on the Bhopal Railway Station Platform. My sister and I decided to do a little bit to help them by giving each of them their individual lockers, a small place to call their own. My parents, being there in Bhopal, went over to the charity, asked about their space, got the lockers built and installed. This was over four months ago and it is only now that I finally managed to get to Bhopal to see for myself.

This story is a story of the worst and at the same time the best of human behaviour ladled on to the people who can least withstand it, as well as most need it. I saw three small girls , aged 1, 3 and 7 years of age. They do not seem to have any place to stay, their parents squabble, and it is unclear where they live. This one hall provides them with a temporary measure during the day when they can come in from the rain and get some education. The 7 year old girl is apparently extremely intelligent and she is testing at 3 levels above her age related education levels. There is another boy of 5 years of age, who got lost on a train. He is from south India and speaks Tamil, but he does not know where he is from, or anything else. Since they know nothing about him, he is a lost soul. A mother and father would be grieving somewhere for their lost son, but there you are.

 

I saw a recovering drug addict, a boy of only 10. These boys sell bits and bobs, such as tea or biscuits, on the trains which pass through the railway station. And with the little money they earn, they go purchase a bottle of whitener (the fluid used to correct typing mistakes) which is very cheap at Rupees 15. This is then poured into a cloth which they will sniff all day long. And for some reason, they would also cut themselves on the arms, thighs, chest, anywhere, deeply with a rusty razor blade to let the blood flow. Apparently, it makes them feel like flying. They are not violent, but just go into a deep somnolent daze. This particular boy had scars up and down his body. I saw another boy outside the school, about 13-14 years of age, who wanted to come in and have lunch. He was zonked out of his brains. He is my son’s age.

 

There are three boys that I was introduced to, who were beaten so badly by their parents and families that their bones were broken. So they ran away from home when they were 4-5 years of age. Because they do not know where they came from, (unlettered, illiterate children), now they cannot go back. My mother told me about how she saw this woman speaking to a child in the corner of a school. On inquiring, it turned out that this was his mother who had abandoned her child at the school because she could neither feed nor clothe him. But she comes back once every few months after earning some money, to bring some sweets. Mother and child get together for about 10-15 minutes.

Read about this young lady, Ms. Deepika Suri (read were? Link?), who kicked this entire thing off. She is a high ranking police officer and she noticed these children running riot. Now we all know the challenges anybody would face to get any government to do anything out of the ordinary. But she is perhaps one of the real heroines of India. A quiet, lovely young lady, who saw a need, and swung into action. She found an abandoned building and had it fixed up to become a school cum residential hall cum orphanage for thirty odd children. She linked it with a government school to provide education, got political cover and basically got it up and running.

She did not get anything out of it. She is, by all accounts, very retiring and quiet. I have not met her and have only heard about her from the children and the teachers who think of her as a veritable goddess. And so she is. She gave these children hope. She fought against the apathy that is so endemic in society. She did not give up and she made a dream happen for these children. After it was up and running, the building fixed up, food and clothing arranged, bedding fixed, teachers and helpers in place, to get political cover, she got the chief minister of the state to inaugurate the centre called as “Disha” (a Hindi word meaning direction). And when the Chief Minister asked, what they needed, they said, can we please have lockers for the children? My father said that eight people volunteered to provide them.

As it so happened, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip and many months later, nothing happened so we decided to get those lockers for them. Why lockers, you might ask? Why not clothes, or food, or money? Well, there was a lot of thinking behind it.

These children, in my opinion, do not have anything personal and individual, no assets, no home, not even a toothbrush, nothing. It is a totally transient existence. And it is horrible, not to have anything to call your own.

But the idea was, that if they have a locker, with their own locks and keys, it becomes their little piece of home. And that is what we saw, there were thirty lockers and each had been decorated individually by their owners. The key was hung around their necks with a piece of sturdy twine, but some had put up photographs, some had arranged their clothes in pleasing manners, one even had managed to put in a tiny curtain in that locker.

The children put on a show for us, and I was very impressed by their range of abilities. Whether it was singing, dancing, poetry recital, drumming, recitation of multiplication tables or the 3 R’s, they were pretty good. One tiny dervish of a small boy was so enthusiastic, he wanted to volunteer for everything and he danced for us. Apparently, before coming to the centre, he would earn money for food by dancing for train passengers. And now he danced just for the sheer joy of it, the blooming smile on his face, the shining teeth (yes, they now have tooth brushes and tooth paste nicely kept in their lockers), well kept clothes and groomed hair all pointed to a happy boy.

 

A boy of 15 odd years posed as a radio commentator and gave a full five minutes of a radio news announcement. It was very impressive. The kids knew Sanskrit shlokas and hymns; they would worship religiously every evening. The teachers would ask each boy to think about what they did well and what they did wrong, to learn from their mistakes. The teachers and the associated NGO try to place these orphans with families.

One boy was from West Bengal and he had tuberculosis. He liked to eat fish curry and rice, which were his traditional diet, but for some reason he landed in Bhopal, many many miles away. So the NGO spent quite a lot of money and then managed to place him with a family in West Bengal where he can now get a proper diet and medical care in a good middle class family. Guess what? The boy ran away from there and came back to the centre in Bhopal, apparently he missed them so much.

I can talk so much about this, but this is a series of disjointed thoughts about a frankly tear jerker of an experience. I was telling my old friend about it and he offered to do some construction work at the institution, by building up the boundary wall (to keep the drug addict, junkies and thieves away) and refurbishing the toilets.

Small things, but that is the power of feeling and caring. Think back about Ms. Suri who kicked off the start, and now 170 children have passed through these halls of this school. It gave them direction and it gave them hope. It was a humbling experience to see this.

I end with a plea; do something for the poor children or orphans of your city. Nothing much, you rally do not have to do much. And you do not have to go far from your city. Why don’t you just purchase some cheap and cheerful dictionaries or colouring books for them? What about getting them some board games? Give them something, anything, go sing a song to them or just talk to them. Just show them that somebody cares, and that they have not been abandoned. After having faced the world that we humans have brought down on their tiny innocent heads, show them that they can have a direction to a better life, they can hope, the dead eyes can sparkle again. It can and has been done.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

It was a very pleasant surprise when I was invited to speak at a conference in Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia. I have been to that neighbourhood so many times, but never to Malaysia. While I have blogged about the conference, this essay is about my impressions about the country. It is based on a very scientific and detailed analysis of reading the daily newspapers and observing the city and talking with some people. So yes, these are very facile observations on the national infrastructure, the people, history, cuisine, politics, economics and will end trying to predict the future of this extraordinary country.

Also, please remember that it was just a trip of 6 days in very urban setting speaking to the professional, technocratic and political class of Malaysians. To give you a comparison, it would be like trying to explain India or China based on a 5-day conference visit to Delhi or Beijing.

As you land in Kuala Lumpur airport, walk out to whiz down the highway to the city looking at the surroundings, check into your hotel and then stand on the 30^th floor looking out over the twin towers, you get a sense of surprise and are impressed. The entire corridor between the airport and the city is landscaped as far as the eye can see. The neat townships, the wide highway, the tall skyscrapers, the hotels, the cars, the shops, the advertisements, nothing that you would see out of place in a European setting. And from what I understand, this infrastructure development has taken place in all the Malaysian states, by and large. So just by looking at the infrastructure, you would say this is a developed country. Extremely impressive indeed and something that my father said when I was talking to him. He visited Malaysia 40 years ago and we were comparing notes.

But what they still do not have is the developed country people, and thank God for that. By and large, the developed countries tend to end up having people who do not smile as much (how is that for a sheer generalisation?). The sheer warmth of everybody I met was astounding and simply amazing. Smiles galore, great big blooming smiles all over the place. And this is whether you are talking about your shop assistant to the driver of the coach to the chap who was watering the plants to the lady who was crossing the street. Very warm, helpful and warm people and that is what I found on every level, from the Prime Minister down to the ordinary bloke on the street. I didn’t get a chance to speak to the Sultan at the dinner but I have no doubt he would be the same. I just hope they keep this national characteristic.

I noticed a general and curious lack of history. A broad based observation here, but I went trawling through two large bookstores in KL, saw the Sunday editions of the newspapers, asked the concierge of the hotel about historic sites, looked around in the admittedly limited trips, and poked my nose into the colonial buildings, but, I did not get a sense that history existed or even exists for ordinary Malaysians. This is going to be difficult to explain, but it is a strange mixture of old mouldy buildings and monuments, loads of historical books, names of houses/streets referring to ages old dead people, frequent referrals in speech to old history, and so on and so forth. Was the rush to technology and modernity accompanied by the loss of history? Picked up some books written by their first political leaders and they also refer mostly to their current and not the past. Rather surprising and curious, especially when you see countries like Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines etc. where I did not get this feeling.

But that did not stop them from having the most amazing cuisine. I was interviewing a lady and on the spur of the moment, offered to do this over lunch at the hotel itself. And the sheer range of food that was available, just blew me away. I regretted I was on appetite suppressant medication, but still managed to put away some serious amounts of food AND lost weight. The combination of Japanese, continental, Malay, Indian, Chinese, yummy, wonderful, absolutely delicious. How on earth do they manage to keep their weight under control despite this wonderful gastronomic spread? The food court in the twin towers shopping mall had 30 different shops selling different kinds of food. I went around thrice before settling on Nasi Goreng from the Malay shop. Just great.

The corruption was unfortunately fairly typical of a developing nation. Again, no direct evidence, but only from what I heard from people. For example, when the father of Modern Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahatir Mohammad, resigned from the ruling party while I was there, I was quite certain that a whole bunch of others will follow him. But no, almost nobody did. I was puzzled and after inquiring, the common response was, who on earth would be stupid enough to get out of the patronage party? Am I surprised? No, political parties are the same all over the world.

The economy is doing well, well diversified, not that much about of concentration in any one sector, not much government interference in the economy as shown by the low 12% of public consumption in the economy compared with about 20% for the USA and 22% for the UK. Nicely galloping along at 5-6% per year GDP growth, but subsidies are a worry. These range from industrial, agricultural, fuel, service and a whole load of them. If the government is not careful, the debt servicing could be an issue. But again, nothing that worried me terribly.

The last observation before my summing-up would be to point to a far more dangerous factor which is brewing in Malaysia. And that is the race factor. The sheer casualness with which race plays a part in politics, business and normal society is shocking for a person coming in from outside. To further complicate matters, this has a religious overtone and is getting worse day by day. I see the blog site of Dr. Mahatir Mohammad and am frankly horrified to read some of his pronouncements on race and religion. And that is wrong, public policy should never be established based on religion or race, because it will simply end up with angst. Especially when you have multiple religions and races in the country. Can you imagine a Prime Minister of any other country clearly stating racist views nowadays?

Take the emotion out of the arguments, help all Malaysians, such as all poor Malays. Do impose the national language for all Malaysians. Malays are ethnically and historically a combination of Indian and Chinese ancestry but now there is a strong but still controllable difference between the Indian Tamils, Indian Punjabi/Sikhs, the Chinese, the Malays, the mainlander and islander Malaysian etc. etc. In the list of the top richest Malaysians, only one was Malay. And this is after decades of affirmative action. On the other hand, the Indian Tamils are bottom of the pile and after they saw the success of the use of religion by Malays, they have also climbed on the Hindu religion bandwagon. This can still be controlled, stop that sucking up to the OIC, think of all Malaysians independently and uniquely. Malays look to Mecca, Chinese look to China and Indians look to India. Who or where is the lookout for Malaysia? But it is not that bad, I think the political class would understand this and can stuff the racist/religious monster inside the cage.

Bottom line and by and large, I think Malaysians can be proud of what they have achieved in their country. The emphasis on information technology, the way they have had a systematic plan to drag their country into the developed country status. I am also impressed by how well joined up the government, industry and bureaucracy is to push for Malaysian interests. This bill of guarantees  for foreign investors is absolutely amazing and provides evidence that Malaysia is serious. This is something that other countries can only dream about but the way this kind of national will and drive for months, years and decades is good and creditable. All political parties are on-board with respect to national development and this country will improve dramatically indeed provided it manages to take all its citizens along with this national drive. Salamat Datang (welcome guest) indeed.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Are rats cute? Just look at Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. They have an entire carnival of their own and a worldwide business around them! Theme parks galore! We have movies about a rat that turns into the amazing chef in the 2007 film Ratatouille. They are holy and auspicious as well. The Hindu God Ganesh’s favourite animal is a rat (or is it a mouse?). And this year is the Chinese Year of the Rat and in Chinese terms, a rat is supposed to represent protection and prosperity. But rats are actually not cuddly creatures and can legitimately be said to be a fully paid up member of the team of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (Plague, Death, War, Conquest)

In a recent news report, the leading exterminator company in the UK talked about how the population of rats is increasing rapidly and has nearly doubled over the past few years. Not only doubled, but even more. This is because more and more of the British lands are being concreted over, so the rats do not have space to dig and create their burrows. Also because of the recent floods, they had to evacuate their burrows and move to higher ground. Hundreds of tons of food grains have been eaten by these furry creatures, but then, thousands and thousands tons more of food grains are eaten by these disgusting creatures across the world.

I don’t like rats (mice, bandicoots, every disgusting type of vermin), miserable creatures. I hate their beady eyes and how they scuttle across the rooms, good chef or cute mouse notwithstanding. My association to them goes back to my school days when one of my teachers used to regularly abuse us by calling us as station rats. Now, I don’t know if you have seen Indian railway station rats, but they are huge, scurry around in the excreta and muck and look absolutely filthy. So I am afraid they are not my cup of tea at all.

They are nasty things. They carry germs, disease and infection and god knows what else? There is a very good reason that food inspectors hate seeing rats in a kitchen, and when I saw that rat in Ratatouille actually clutch a piece of cheese to its plague ridden fur, I couldn’t stop shuddering. That went into the food that they were feeding their customers? Foul. It is the rats who also carry the fleas which transmitted the plague virus. It was because of their germ carrying capacity that tens of millions of humans died in the ravages of the black plague which have regularly swept through the world down the ages. This huge decimation of the population caused major dislocations to kingdoms, lead to wars, changed the path of the Christian Church and caused huge and brutal persecutions of minorities such as Jews (who were said to have caused the plague).

Rats also have been the cause of terrorism (near war) breaking out. In the misty mountains of Northeast India is a forgotten state called Mizoram. Almost forty years ago, a special type of bamboo flowered hugely across certain areas across the Mizoram and Bangladesh border. Its flowers are delicious and full of goodness. Well, because they are so good and nutritious, the rats eat them and grow huge. Not only that, they nearly double their breeding rate (from four to eight times in one year). Considering that you can end with about ten baby-rats in a litter, and female rats become fertile in a matter of months, you can see how the rat population can explode, and so it did!

When it did, they ravaged through the bamboo forests eating everything in sight. When there was no bamboo left, they went for the crops and soon, there was widespread famine in these parts of the land. Typically, and contrary to what Amartya Sen says, famines do occur in democracies, especially weak and corrupt ones such as India. This famine and lack of government support can be directly attributable to the rise of Mizo nationalism, the bitter Mizo terrorist campaign, the one and only bombing by the Indian Air Force on Indian citizens and eventual peace after thousands of deaths and decades of fighting.

As an aside, this bamboo flowering happens once every fifty-odd years and it is happening again now. Rats have already devoured all the flowers and have already eaten a huge amount of crops in the Mizoram state and Bangladesh side. Almost forty thousand tons of food has been destroyed in the Indian side itself, while some Bangladeshi districts are reporting up to 100% food stock destruction. The Mizoram government has a bounty out on them and is paying about 2.5 pence or 2 Rupees for each rat tail delivered (see a fascinating picture here). And the last time a huge famine hit Bangladesh, war broke out.

Strangely enough, while rats were the cause of terrorism, other RATS are being formed to fight terrorism. A very interesting grouping, called as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which comprises of the central Asian republics, Russia, China and some others, signed the “Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism, and Extremism” in 2001. As part of this convention, a Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) was set up in Tashkent. While it is difficult to analyse its performance, it claims to have prevented more than 250 acts of terrorism so far. And heaven knows - that area is full of those terror rats. Ranging from the Uyghur’s in China to the Chechnyans in Russia, Kurds in Iran to Islamists everywhere else, all these terror rats need to be flushed out, and what better way than to set a RAT to catch a rat?

Not only that, the US military research arm, DARPA, is turning rats into remote controlled animals who can go up ladders, sneak into ruins, under the ground, etc. on commands which electronically manipulate their pleasure centres. So they can be used for land mine clearance, for reconnaissance, for earthquake rescue under collapsed buildings, and generally be good. Nothing wrong with it, the rats love being pleasured and if in return for pleasure, they do something nice for us, I am all for it.

As a matter of fact, there is a pretty nice cocktail called as a Sewer Rat, made of Vodka, Peach schnapps, Kahlua and Orange juice. It is an acquired taste, I am afraid. And so is eating them, rat meat is considered to be a delicacy across quite a large swathe of the world and here’s a good site with some recipes (if you can stomach that!). Do you remember the scene in the Demolition Man, where Sylvester Stallone wakes up in the future and gets all weird rabbit/processed food to eat. He is dying for some “proper” American food and then he spots this tiny dingy place selling burgers and he dives into the shop and starts to eat burgers with huge big bites. Idly asking about the burger, he learns that it is made of rat meat. But despite a moment of hesitation, he crams the burger down while saying, “This is a rat burger? Good burger!"

I suppose I can agree with that quote, “I eat meat not because I like meat but because I hate animals”, so perhaps I will try a rat burger one of these days. Meanwhile, the impact of rats on food grains is much more important, and the loss of food to rats, the scarcity of food grains, the rapidly rising food inflation can well lead to war and terrorism all again.

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

Personally, I was happy with the Israeli Palestinian crisis, as it has saved me few quid. You see, using software developed in Israel for counter terrorist purposes, the local council has saved hundreds of thousands of pounds by implementing a lie detection system over the phone. So when you call up our council to claim benefits, the operator says that you are being evaluated by this lie detection system, you would either not go ahead with the claim or would have the claim rejected because the system thinks you are telling ‘porkies’. The amount of porkies that are told in the aftermath of the Israeli Palestinian Crisis is monumental.

I have a morbid fascination with this crisis. It’s like a horrific car accident. You know you shouldn’t see the accident, but still you slow down as you pass the accident site, crane your neck and peer at the gruesome details. You know it’s a rather uncivilised behaviour and something that your mum would scold you for, but still you cannot avoid it. It’s the same with this crisis. You know that whenever you pick up this topic, you get hammered because you simply cannot be neutral and unemotional at all about it. Even if you are, then for some participant on one side, you will be biased. As simple as that, there is no independent observer on this issue. Ever!

Which is the reason why this book, ‘The Israel – Arab Reader, A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict’, edited by Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, should be an indispensible part of your reference library. These two well known authors have done a great job in collecting some vital historical documents, which can be used - at least - to establish some facts on the ground when debating or arguing this issue. The documents are a treasure trove in a very convenient volume broken up into five parts. The first part relates to the time from 1882 to the end of the British Mandate. This part explains the roots of the problem. After this, the remaining parts four are from 1947 – 1973, Camp David to the Madrid Conference, the peace process from 1992 onwards till the intifada started and the peace process dried up.

This book is now in the seventh edition, and once you see it, you can understand why this is so. It contains manifestos, speeches, documents, interviews, memorandums, laws, declarations, reports, statements, parliamentary documents and speeches, United Nations speeches and resolutions, White Papers and the like. The editors have collected documents from Arabs, Israelis, British, United Nations, United States, Germans, Russians, etc. Once I started, I made it a point to read one document or section per day, and I finally managed to complete it. By this time, my hair was hurting so badly, that it had curled up like a Velcro mat. You know why? Because when one reads this, one is torn between two feelings, one – this is a car accident, drive away and two – it’s a car accident, bloody hell, what happened.

This is not the place to review who is right or who is wrong. Who is right or wrong is no longer the argument; it has gone way beyond that. The thousands of millions of words and pages which have been written, the millions of people killed, tortured, wounded, exiled, the decades of anger, hatred and war, the deep religious entwining, the ancient history of this blood drenched land, all those frankly preclude any rational and objective discussion of this issue.

Mind you, there have been thousands of solutions, such as the Two State Solution, Jordanian Solution, the One State Solution, the Ugandan Solution, the Madagascar Solution, and so on and so forth. The current state is a variant of the Two State Solution, which was established in 1948. There would be a Palestinian state and an Israeli state. There is no point in going for what-if’s, we are where we are. The One State solution is now slowly gaining credence. A recent and reasonably well argued book from the Palestinian perspective is written by my colleague, Ghada Karmi, called as Married to Another Man, Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine. If you keep these two books in front of you, you will see what I mean by the great difficulty of trying to be independent and unemotional about this issue. The latter book is something that clearly Israel can never live with, as it is very emotive. But then, being the son of a refugee myself, I can empathise with Ghada about her feelings for her homeland which clearly show up in her work. Unfortunately, that emotional approach to this problem means that the book is more of an op-ed than a balanced and reasoned argument for a One State Solution.

The Two State Solution, unfortunately will be the only way forward for the foreseeable future, the only outstanding questions relate to the boundaries, the state of Jerusalem, refugees and security. But then, I definitely have no suggestions as to how this can be resolved, other than the fact that Israel should speak to Hamas and come to some sort of agreement. But I am also doubtful that this solution would be that easy. You see, this conflict has now reached civilisational levels, with the entire Muslim nation officially seeing the Palestinian cause as its own, while the majority of liberal democracies, broadly defined, are lined up with Israel. Conflicts at these levels are breathtakingly huge in concept, think about the crusades, the final solution, the English – Boer War and so on and so forth. The historical record is not good; solutions are generally imposed when one party is utterly exhausted or eradicated. But the core issue does not go away. Hundreds of years after the crusades were over, the issue still flares up in strange and weird places (witness the reaction of the Muslim nation when George Bush said that he was launching a crusade against terrorism.) But if it will be solved, it will be solved by the efforts of people like Laqueur and Rubin, who try to be independent and clearly want to resolve the issue without taking extreme positions such as what Karmi does.

But for what it’s worth, Israel and Palestine have been facing an existential problem for its sixty years and every year, like Sisyphus, they have been trying to resolve it. I can but look upon this train crash of a problem with deep despair and worry but still I think, at least my council tax bill will be reduced by two quid because of this problem. Now that’s not a silver lining on a planetary sized cloud. It is perhaps a silver molecule on a solar system sized typhoon, but hey, straws are straws. In the meantime, happy reading and lets hope Sisyphus keeps on banging away at this task.


All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Companies generate funds for investments from various sources. These investments are again allocated to various purposes, such as business expansion, for improving processes, for purchasing new businesses, or what have you. When you invest in a new business, you usually track the revenue generation or the new business that it has generated and if it has not brought in anything near what you originally thought it would, then you re-evaluate it and then leave it or digest it. Investments can be measured easily by revenues or costs, but when one is talking about operational changes, technology investments, purchase or implementation of patents and other intellectual property or say buildings, it suddenly becomes extremely tough to evaluate whether your investments are doing well. In this essay I try to shed some light on how one can help manage discretionary investments.

In my short experience, I was continuously surprised at how lazy people are in terms of managing their investments, in other words their capital. I asked the same question when I was at a conference some months ago, namely how many people actively check their internal firm investments in the same manner they do their pension fund investments? Hardly any hand went up in the hall, where numerous senior managers were sitting. And this is why so many firms have less than efficient internal investments.

Portfolio management has existed for many decades, since Harry Markowitz proposed his portfolio management theory way back in 1952 (here’s something for the conspiracy theorists, his major work was done in the RAND Corporation…). Since then, three generations of investment managers have grown up and applied the principles of portfolio management to their investments. Portfolio Management is applicable to any form of investments and the basic concepts are the same: diversify your investments, make sure you know what you are investing in, the effective and efficient capacity to disinvest is more important than to invest, the objectives for the overall portfolio might be different from the subcomponent objectives, do regular reviews of your investment and finally, be as transparent as possible, etc.

What do you do with your investments in your pension funds? You check them regularly, no? You invest in your pension with the expectation of future gain or benefits. Depending on your personal circumstances, you decide your investment profile and target areas and then monitor the risk-return profile regularly, you replace badly performing funds with better performing funds if required, etc. In other words, you do Portfolio Management. And frankly, that is what you do within firms as well. Or rather, this is what you should do (this relates mainly to financial institutions, although the concept will apply equally to any firm).

The support areas within the companies also invest, but not in bonds or shares. Instead, they invest a certain discretionary sum in technology, in improving and running those processes, in offshoring and outsourcing, in satisfying regulatory and compliance demands, in revenue generation activities, in setting up branch offices, etc. By their very name and nature of being support areas, they provide some business benefit, either by allowing us to operate as a firm, or reducing cost or satisfying regulatory requirements or increasing revenue or a combination of some or all of them.

In a firm, there are two types of spend: “Business as Usual” versus “Discretionary” spend. The former relates to the spend you have to do to support your existing business, while the latter relates to “new” spend, designed to support growth and explore new opportunities. This second type is that which we would call investment. Bearing this definition in mind, there are some key questions to consider. For instance: Do you analyse your discretionary spend for suitability? Do you know what you are spending the money on? Do you check whether it is providing value? Do you stop investments? Can you respond to ad hoc information requests from the business on the return on investment footprint for the investments? Often, the answer may be ‘no’. So, if you do that analysis with your own pension, why not do so with your technology or operations investment? And if you wanted to do so, what do you do?

The level to which you will go to analyse your investments obviously depends on the size of the firm, how you run your financial systems, what kind of financial governance do you impose internally etc. But for a large global financial institution, what you do is to get a small team of senior chaps together and get initial agreement on what you want to achieve, what will be the methodology, logistics and how will this portfolio management function be governed.

The data that you need is simple such as the name of the programme or project or investment, start and end date of the projects, which business unit is paying for it, which unit will be involved in the implementation, the status of the spend (committed, authorised, approved, spent…), the purpose of that investment (regulatory, revenue generation, enhancements…), when will the benefits arise and so on and so forth.. Don’t complicate matters, a simple excel spreadsheet is just fine. There is much benefit in keeping things simple but mind you, it would be worthwhile to invest in some good technical expertise in reports, graphs and business intelligence to present the data. But I am getting ahead of myself.

There are two problems which are crucial to manage. The first is the process to get the data and second is the data itself. Senior management engagement is vital for this, but then, anything of this nature will require senior management engagement anyway. If you don’t have senior management approval and push, then you might as well stop, because your life will be hell. Nobody likes their spending to be made transparent and if you do not have backing, you will get trashed, ignored or worse, actively banned. You see, transparency means performance matching. If your head of operations has got $10 million to invest, the business can legitimately ask him, where are you spending that money and how do you justify that investment? Also, show your productivity gains (as in return on investment…). But if transparency is not achieved, then the head of operations can merrily go about spending money without any care for performance or improvement. But even if they are all above board, how do you know where the money is going? Is it going into unproductive causes? How much is left in the kitty? How much of the money is tied up on multi-year spend? So to answer all those questions, senior management support is vital.

But senior management cannot, by themselves, sit in on every meeting with the spending divisions. This requires the second solution, and that is to have relationship managers. Whether you are doing this at the technology level, the operational level, the business unit level or whichever level you are aiming at, you need senior relationship managers who can talk to the business managers at their level of expertise and experience. If you do not have serious relationship managers who can understand the spend patterns, the business that is being supported etc., the process and data will not be good. In other words, you cannot have a fixed income trading background relationship manager talking about investments with the chief infrastructure officer, they simply cannot relate to each other.

The third solution is to invest an indecently huge amount of time and money in the pre-training, communications, workshops, conference calls, etc. BEFORE the process starts off. This portfolio management process has the capacity to seriously influence your entire organisation, from top to bottom, from trading to procurement, from regulatory reporting to market data. So before you actually kick this process off, make sure you have talked, discussed, debated, argued with as many stakeholders as possible and then document the agreements and then talk, discuss, debate and argue again. It is easy to go wrong once underway and difficult to change direction when started, so front load all the push, training, motivation, and discussions.

Then come the data challenges. Even though you have a good simple data model, you will be surprised how difficult it is to get the data. Simple concepts become horrendously complicated when seen across national boundaries, cultures, ages, sexes, languages, charts of accounts, etc.. For example, a simple question like, what is the difference between a programme and a project becomes exceedingly complicated (go for a more than 10 million budget as an example, and it’s a programme with sub projects, and anything below 100 K has to be a task which has to be rolled up into a project).

What do you mean by project / investment start? Does start mean that some steering committee somewhere has given the go-ahead or the capital allocation committee has said yes or the CFO has signed off or the money has actually been transferred to your cost code? Or does it just mean the project / programme initiation document has been signed? So a data dictionary should be written and training has to be given, regular training, communications, etc. should be the lot of the life of the relationship managers. One has to beware that this portfolio management process might conflict with local financial governance, so having a word with the local or functional CFO before rolling this out would be better. For example, the standardisation of the “start” of a project across the globe and all units could require all CFOs to adopt the same sort of financial governance in terms of signing off and transference of funds to cost codes. So keep it simple. Remember what Einstein said, “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler’.

Once the data starts rolling in, then get your business analysts and reporting gurus to work on it. A short sharp presentation with some smart graphics showing the spend, its type and shape etc. is great, but add commentary to this analysis. If you find out that 40% of your funds are spent on regulatory aspects which are multiyear in nature, consider asking the business COO and / or the CFO to ring-fence those sums into an SIV or in special codes which do not belong to the business or function. This has huge advantages. You do not have the temptation to dip into that pot. That pot of money is not something that you can influence, so you concentrate on value additive aspects of your investments, etc. It’s like the difference between spending your money on electricity versus spending your money on an iPod. Over the course of a year, both amounts would be the same, but you manage each investment differently and the same goes for mandatory spending.

Analyse when spend happens. The number of times I have seen people forget the yearly cycle is amazing. Spending behaviour changes over the year. The months just before accounting close change as vendors and clients change behaviour, so that costs/revenues hit their books differently. People forget there is something called as committed spend, especially in these days of outsourcing and offshoring. So if you want to cut costs, it is not that simple. If you were planning to put in gated funding, it does not work properly with outsourcing contracts. So commentary around that will help.

If you can get figures for return on investment, then there is nothing like it. That will make you the darling of the firm. You can turn around and ask (well, request…) the business owners: “You invested 100 million in that business, show that it returned the funds you said it would in the business case.” This commentary and visibility on the numbers is absolutely golden for senior management.

So what do you end up having? You have a process which is providing you with investment information which ends up giving management information on the investments. Now what? Well, now you use this information in various management areas. Budgeting should be one. Performance evaluation should be another. Cash flow planning is another area where this can be used. Human Resource Planning is an area which is begging for good portfolio resource planning. Across the firm, you will have very few good change managers and on the back of this process, you can hang a strategic resource plan. This structure also allows you to make investment changes with the greatest efficiency. This takes the emotion out of decision making. If you have to cut your costs, then you can home into the areas where they are exactly possible, rather than areas where people “think” and “emotionally” believe costs can be cut. That is not good for the firm.

This structure also allows you to rejig investments, if a strategic project is overrunning, then this structure and data allows you to make unemotional scientific decisions to take money from another project and give it to the project which is running under a shortfall. Another advantage of this process is that it forces the entire firm to start talking the same language. Never underestimate the benefit of the firm using the same functional language and this is very useful indeed. Think about it, your mergers and acquisitions will go much more smoothly if you have a clear-cut way to handle investments, both the old and new employees are clear about their business functions and their future. Again, the emotion is removed from the argument.

One way to get the language bit right is to use a methodology. No point in hiring expensive consultants to tell you how to run your business. Industry firms such as HP, IBM, Accenture and other firms release pretty good white papers on project portfolio management. If you want to go for a good book, then select this one by Shan Rajegopal, Philip McGuin and James Waller, titled Project Portfolio Management (ISBN:0-230-50716-6, Palgrave MacMillian). The book comes highly recommended, it is written by authors who have obviously implemented project portfolio management and they have written an excellent manual based on their experience with their clients. The only couple of criticisms one might have with the book is that they do not consider discretionary spend more widely, but rather take a perspective of technology spend only. However, that complaint is perhaps unique to Banking and Financial Services compared to other industries. Secondly, some more case studies might have been useful, but I suspect this kind of data would be very difficult to get. Still, you can do much worse than to keep this book on your reference shelf.

It is not an easy exercise. It needs much senior management attention and support, months and quarters of work and talk. You need to overcome a lot of cynicism and you have to work against the inertia of rest. But at end of the day, the data that you will get will be rich and will definitely be worth it. Don’t think that this is only for senior management; this can be done by any manager who is in charge of investments. But how do you know if you have done your job of portfolio management well? If your presentation to your management is received by raised eyebrows and the sentence, “this is interesting”, then you know that you have done a good job of it. But treat your investments as you would treat your pension, and your future life will be much safer, smoother and exciting.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Over the past 4 months, I have been involved with a small charity, Express Link Up which helps to bring technology to hospitalised children. And it has soon become my passion. I decided to write this blog on an infrequent basis to talk about the challenges, joys, love, pain, frustration one feels when one gets involved in this kind of stuff. So do bear with me if I get too emotional...

here's the blog.

We see corruption generally as a third world problem and a problem which is primarily at the governmental level. But far too frequently, we ignore the role played by the major corporations of the world in starting, propagating and yes sheltering the corrupt guilty. Over the past few months, I have continuously read a series of stories relating to white-collar crime and still do not think that we are taking this seriously enough. And we are not talking about small fly by night operators, we are talking about giants of the corporate world such as Samsung of South Korea, Boeing of USA, Siemens of Germany and British Aerospace of United Kingdom. These companies span all aspects of our lives and most importantly, via their products and services also look after our health, national security and economies. Who are we talking about, what has been done and what can be done more to combat this scourge?

The hills are alive with the sound of corruption. Closer to home, we had an entire construction industry in the UK which has now been hauled over the coals. 112 firms have been accused to colluding to fix prices and thereby forcing all of us to pay more for our hospitals, schools and homes. Take a look at the names of the companies here. It is unbelievable, the great and good to the small and tiny of the British construction industry stand indicted of fraud and corruption. You might remember me fulminating about British Aerospace before either on these pages or on my blogs.

But do not take my word for it, here are two reputed outlets which have reported on this indecent affair. The first is from the BBC and the second is from the Guardian (And to think the government is still in power, the management have not been arrested, nothing has been done at all. Remember what happened when the Indian government of Rajiv Gandhi was accused of taking kickbacks from Bofors? It was voted out of power and still criminal cases are rumbling on against several accused. But not in the United Kingdom, where corruption cases after corruption cases against BAE are raised and quietly shelved. The fact that this is playing havoc with British national security, and leading directly to the UK becoming a terrorist target is completely forgotten by the grand poo bah’s. The UK supports these corrupt Saudi princes and their Saudi rebels land here or other Jihadi’s use that as an excuse to blow up innocent Londoners.

Nip over the pond to the USA and you will find that their national security is also compromised terribly but they were better at stamping it out. Boeing, the aeroplane company, was found guilty of trying to influence a very large contract with the military and the senior management were fired. Now that’s white-collar crime at its worst, playing with the lives of its armed forces. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has currently 2,500 cases of public corruption (50% more than 5 years ago) and 80% uptick on the corporate corruption cases.

Nip back to this side of the pond and you will see Siemens, the German conglomerate, enmeshed in a whole host of corruption scandals. One estimate says that € 420 million in payments is suspicious. Can you imagine? That’s gobsmacking. And this firm supplied products and services to the Communications & Media, Construction, Energy, Healthcare, Public Services, Retail and Transport sectors. Where all have wrong decisions have been taken because of the bribery? How many people have needlessly died because the wrong or sub-standard equipment was chosen?

Samsung, another giant global conglomerate was in the news recently. The Group chairman Lee Kun-Hee resigned after a series of investigations into tax avoidance and other corrupt practices. South Korea has a long history of corrupt senior executives being found guilt and then being let off. What is the point? Are you seriously telling me that South Koreans are fine with corruption in their main corporates?

It can become very embarrassing. Japan plonked huge amounts of chemical weapons munitions in China which killed off many Chinese back then and ever since because those have leaked into the ground and water. Now Japan is already in the cross-hairs because it has never really apologised for its atrocious behaviour in WWII. But then, in 1997, it agreed to clean up its own mess and pay restitution and compensation. Guess what? The clean up process was hit by a huge corruption mess when Japanese consultants who were supposed to help the clean up process diverted the money to their own nefarious needs. The entire clean up process is now delayed and more people are dying. How wonderful is the image of Japan now?

But before you think that I am simply taking up single incidents and blaming entire countries, take a look at the corruption perception index at Transparency International. Why is the United Kingdom 12^th on the list? Germany is way back in 16^th place followed by Japan in 17^th place, France in 19^th place and USA in 20^th place. Who are the top 5? Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Singapore and Sweden. No wonder that their human development indices are also up high, their educations standards are high and their people are happy.

The OECD has done some sterling work in increasing the visibility of this pernicious problem. Take a look at these two OECD websites here and here. But this is the weakness in this entire chain. The idea was, the OECD will come up with a convention, then the convention will be signed by all the OECD members, the relevant laws enacted in their domestic law books, and then they would crack down on the miscreants. The United Kingdom status report shows that the UK has done few things but has a very long way to go yet. That and instances such as the BAE case are the reason why people think the United Kingdom has a very long way to go yet before it improves its corrupt image. The BAE affair, for example, has done nothing to help in that perception either. Read the OECD reports on various countries here to see the progress made or not made as the case might be.

Non-governmental bodies such as Transparency International do help out as much as they can, but at end of the day, it boils down to citizens like you and I to protest against these corporate bodies committing corruption. Write a note to their head offices and complain. Let them know. Write a blog about it. This is what people do not appreciate in the government and corporates. They do not know or understand the power of the net. When each and every one of us who is upset that our tax dollars and our children are faced with life and security threatening corrupt banks, multinational firms and companies writes their outrage on the internet, it stays online.

Then their share price will suffer, they will not have talent to join in and their management will suffer. For example, I will never ever recommend to my children that British Aerospace is a good company to work for. Do you wish your children to be known to be working for corrupt firms? Now that might be an old outdated concept, of honour and reputation, but no, I certainly would not suggest doing that. I will not purchase a mobile phone from Samsung and will look at Siemens with a jaundiced eye. I do not think I will have much choice about flying Boeing planes but I can express my disappointment. Do not wait for your member of parliament or your judge to deal with it, gentle readers, these gentlemanly maggots are threatening you, your children and our societies right now, do something about it now.

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!