The World – NOT as we tell it

Does anyone remember Climate Change?

The soon to disappear Polar Ice Cap?

How about the War on Terrorism?

Or the Rise of Asia and a rebalancing of World Powers?

All so last year (or month, or week). One of our fallacies is believing that we have a complete picture of the world, that is within our control, and that we need to set right. It is not from the nature of capitalism, or in the scheming nature of the establishment or the dominant powers that crises are created, fretted over for a while, apparently dealt with, only exacerbating other smaller conditions, often taken advantage of to perpetrate agendas that otherwise might not have been possible to be accepted, and then swiftly forgotten at the appearance of a new crisis. It is ingrained in a world view shared by most of us.

What seems to be changing however, is our fascination with, and almost breathless hunting down of what may be called a crisis. Something that challenges the core of our very existence and threatens ‘life as we would like it to be’ (And strangely seems to give us some sense of purpose). Life is never going to be what we want it to be. There is a world unfathomable, and much larger than our comprehension out there that is too complex to be fully held within political agendas, economic charts, or forms of organisation created by the human mind. Our failure is in believing we have mastered it all, and that we can now train the world along in the direction WE choose. Often the first faltering is at just the word WE.

The real crises will creep on us when we are not looking. The attack on America was a real crisis that no one saw coming, or going. But the created crisis of the War on Terrorism and the Clash of Civilizations took up more legroom. The current economic crisis is not the end of the economy, or capitalism, or the World Order as we know it. It is surely going to be around for a while, but my guess is it will soon move into that part of our consciousness where the Polar Bears on their melting ice cap now reside.

These all ARE real issues, and need real solutions and effort. But we need to be more sparing with our definition of crises. A real crisis would be not knowing where ones next meal is to come from, and how your children may be fed or sheltered. And as the gaily smiling faces around our most deprived regions tell us, they are handling that crisis quite well. Surely we could atleast try as much.

The death of America

Beneath the many garbled ways in which everyone and their daughter is trying to explain the financial crisis, and with panic spreading at a speed many times that of the spread of euphoria not more than a year ago, there are some fundamental questions that need fundamental answers.

What REALLY runs an economy ? What is the future focus for a REAL economy ?

For countries like India, the answer is simple. It needs to ramp up its standard of living, base upwards, and concentrate on policies that enable mass growth of fundamental sectors – food (agriculture, processing and distribution), infrastructure (irrigation, roads, railway), education (basic through to advanced), and housing.

For developed Europe, it is about pushing the edge on technology and research, to elevate production to the next level of greener, more advanced alternatives. A niche market, versus the mass market of economies like India.

It is when we come to America and China that things get complicated. America runs its economy on a system of consumption without value. The mass-produced Ford over Europe’s custom-made Ferrari. And the provider of that consumption can no longer in today’s globalized world be America herself. America’s deadly sin is helping nimble hands in China shove its consumption – systemically built into the American psyche – down its throat, and its capital out of it wallet.

America has no Plan B. Yet. It may not take too many bubbles before it completely implodes.

Slim, dark, handsome brotherhood

What is it about these slim, dark men of African ancestry that seem to tower over us nowadays. Suave, and lovable with unruffled calm and steely nerve. Barack Obama, Lewis Hamilton and Tiger Woods have been sent down upon us to prove a point. I dont know what that may be. But these brothers have something going. The plot thickens.

The pig and the bullfrog

Chhagan Bhujbal. What a name that is. When we were in school, chhagan was an equivalent of chakka (eunuch). Going through life with the face of a pig and the name of a eunuch. And bhujbal being just an accurate verbal rendition of his jelly-like ugly self. With such resources to draw from, Chhagan is my candidate of choice for Social Mover 2008.

The interesting part of the Chhagan story is just unfolding. After the stamp scam, he was hidden from the public eye. So that he could be forgotten, and dissociated from the ugliness of the scandal. Rumour has it that it was Sharad Pawar who was a huge beneficiary of the stamp paper scam. The Big Boss behind it all. Pawar being Sharad, was untouched. He did the smart thing as he is wont to do, and buried little Chhagan deep into the soil of public anonymity. And probably extracted a promise to keep his little snout firmly to himself.

Today, on his birthday, he has been well rewarded. His smug-mug is everywhere. And though he feigns sadness at being sidelined by his party, he is merely throwing the hounds off their scent. Pawar is well and truly behind his man again. It has been a while. Public memory is predictable. Life goes on.

Between the lines

First, the record shall be set straight. Dharavi is NOT the biggest slum in Asia. Not even in Mumbai. The biggest slum in Mumbai does not have a name. It is a place “between” others.

When I was there, and I asked a man where the nearest railway station was, he said ‘yahaan se koi station nazdeek nahin’ (no station is close to this place). For a city like Mumbai, that is unbelievable. But it is true – for this place. Bordering it to the West is the Airport, the MIDC Industrial Estate, and SEEPZ. To the north are Powai lake and the ravaged hills – erstwhile quarries, now the Powai high-end residential complexes of Hiranandani and their ilk. To the East are the large industrial estates of Godrej and others, and the residential areas of Ghatkopar, Vikhroli and Kurla.

The slum squeezes towards the South into a triangle formed by the Mithi river and the Central Railway line, barely trickles through the better developed areas of Kurla West, hugs the Mithi, and lo! you are in Dharavi ! Fascinating connection really, and it seems interesting to study this formation from a mathematical / anthropological / any other academic standpoint. The problem is that it is real.

A classic condition for the unclean truth of the city to take formation. Large private and public industrial estates, a terrain made inaccessible and difficult for building by hills and streams, then quarries and valleys. Unhealthy, dry, dusty. Far away from the eyes of the clean and well defined city. It has been there for years, festering in the backyard. Like a swarm of flies around a garbage heap that keeps growing.

And this rejected place is a home for its rejected. A large proportion of people who live here are Muslim. And also from the poorest regions of South India. Poverty has no religion or culture or regional affinity really, and the real demographic composition of this region is unknown to most at the moment.

Some people have noticed this dusty heap, and seen gold under its covers. Chief of which is the city’s supposed planning body. The MMRDA. Most of the work at MMRDA has been about property development rather than about any kind of planning. And maybe changing the paving of a few roads like Marine Drive once a while, for good measure. They are making their way through this heap with bulldozer and Anil Ambani in tow, with their Andheri-Ghatkopar “Metro” Link. Trust the city “fathers” to give their own daughter a hands-on sodomy lesson. Their act of the Metro link might seem kind hearted and well intentioned enough, but from their past history, one is quite certain that an East West city linkage is not the foremost thing on their mind.

The MMRDA thinks, and acts like a private developer. It is the Chief Minister’s and the ruling party’s construction company. So with the Metro link, watch out for a “Clean Sweep” proposal slipping under the door. Another bout of parcelling land, disposing off, packing people in, and absolutely no consideration for the quality of infrastructure, or amenities, or services, to accommodate this change. The place is bursting out already. All it needs is more fevered eyes scanning its sorry mass; threats, political wrangling, money making and boisterous protests.

The architect Charles Correa had once said that it was possible to make money, as well as do good for the city at the same time. There have been models that show it is possible. Whatever has happened to the numerous “Site-and Services” schemes. Also the community housing model by Mrinal Gore – one that actually had begun putting to good use the land acquired by the government under ULCRA and other acts so that middle and lower middle class families could lead a life of dignity and not debase themselves in the inhuman condition of the slum. The Saki Naka – Vikhroli – Ghatkopar – Kurla slum is another opportunity that must not be missed. At 2.5 square kilometres (25 lakh square metres) of area, it deserves an earnest effort.

This land is crazy. But it does have God. May be too many, but atleast we have not lost that. I just hope that one day we dont see God in the smoke and dust of our battlecries, but in the clear light of our paradise. Mumbai can be loved again.

Herd that before

The bubbles are bursting around us. The ‘ones in the know’ say that they always knew there were bubbles but the logic of mass subscription to a myth making the myth real was what made them stay in the game. Not so convinced maybe, but in it for the spoils anyway. Not so convinced to even once voice strongly what is now being mouthed across the board with rock-solid, know-it-all confidence.

So what stopped ‘them’ from telling us then if they knew it all along? Strangely, with such high stakes and millions of fortunes swinging around these events, the strangest and smallest of things did. Character. Or lack of it. The accepted logic is that ‘these things are wrong, and won’t last, but since everyone is doing it, it is the way of the world, and therefore must be done too’. A faith in a notion of the masses knowing best does not display any bit of individual character. It is the mass character of a herd, of blind faith, of a people easily led. But no one was leading with any character – a headless herd. Following the noses of those that shouted loudest.

The stock market is NOT a gambling den. In its true essence it allows an ordinary you and me to own part of a company we believe in, that we have faith in, and that we believe is doing the right thing for itself, for making money, to our mutual benefit. Shrill sentiment that drives stocks either ways need not affect us as much as a reasoned understanding of what things really are like, and how they really might be. But then we all read the same newspapers, at the same time, watch the same news editions of the same news channels, and bounce around our bubble with people doing exactly the same thing.

So for any real perspective of the current situation, move out from where you are. Alone. Do everything you have never done before. Read the book you never had the courage to. Build character.

Life is more than the swings of a marketplace and the sentiments of its vendors. Lead yourself – or prepare to be led. Again.