Proud

They are proud in a place called Balla.

What about you?

No Museum Here

The May issue of Man's World (now called just MW) carries this essay of mine. Comments welcome.

***
No Museum Here

The intersection is reminiscent, first of all, of that intersection in Alfred Hitchcock's classic, North by Northwest. Cary Grant in the middle of flatland nowhere, looking puzzled yet dapper as only he can, and eventually he gets cropdusted -- that's right, go see the film again. Admittedly, this meeting of roads isn't quite as nowhere, isn't quite as flat, isn't surrounded by miles of crops and isn't frequented by malevolent cropdusters. At least, none that I can see. But it is the first thought that comes to mind.

Cary, while looking for Casey. I remind myself: I have come here on purpose. Meaning, for weeks and months, going back to the other side of the planet, this very intersection has been a destination.

So having arrived, I feel an urge to soak in everything, maybe because it is such a nondescript spot. On my left a yellow sign says "High Water Possible". On the right is CJ's Liquor, Wine and Beer, where they sell Keystone Light -- featuring the vaguely suggestive slogan "It's Good To Be On Top" -- by the six-pack at $2.99, by the case at $9.99. A few seconds go in trying to figure how "It's Good To Be On Top" might apply to beer. None of my answers are fit to print.

I like this place already. Cayce: tiny flyblown windswept nondescript pick-your-adjective town in the southwestern corner of the Kentucky.

Why did I come here? For that, oddly, it helps to know how you say the name. For months, I have known that Cayce is not, as I might have imagined, pronounced "Case". No, this is "Casey". As in Casey Jones, legendary locomotive engineer, subject of song after song. One, by the Grateful Dead, famously if unfairly asserts that he was "high on cocaine". Like all else we know about the man, it only adds to the legend.

And this right-angle town gave him that name.

Casey was really John Luther Jones, a successful engine driver in these parts in the late 1890s. The story goes that early in his career, some colleagues asked where he was from. When he said "Cayce", the name "Casey" stuck. Jones went on to make a name for himself as an engine driver, even evolving a distinctive way of sounding his whistle that many remembered.

That is, afterward.

One day in 1900, Jones was driving a New Orleans-bound passenger train, the "Cannonball". Whistling through Mississippi at 70 mph, he saw a freight train on the track ahead. With no time to brake to a stop, Jones ordered his fireman, Simeon Webb, to leap off and save himself. Jones stayed at his post, trying desperately to slow down. Futile, because he plowed into the freight train anyway.

The stuff of legend, Casey Jones. His name is one of those tidbits of Americana that I remember from I don't know how long ago. I suspect I didn't even realize this was a real man. Just another intriguing story from an intriguing land. Johnny Appleseed flinging seeds about, Yankee Doodle who called his feather "macaroni" -- Casey Jones, legend like that.

Eventually, I realized he had actually existed. At Cayce, there's proof: a plaque across the street, under a tree on a gentle grassy rise. I cross and read:

"In this community, the famous locomotive engineer John Luther Jones (alias Casey Jones) spent his boyhood days. Casey's many record feats as locomotive engineer engrossed him deeply in the hearts of his fellow workers. On the morning of April 30th 1900, while running the Illinois Central Fast Mail Number 1, "The Cannonball", and by no fault of his, his engine bolted through three freight cars at Vaughan, Miss.

Casey died with his hand clenched to the break helve and his was the only life lost.

Famous for bravery and courage, the name of Casey Jones lives deeply set into the hearts of American people in both tradition and song. It can be truthfully said of him, "Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friend."

Casey Jones Memorial, erected by admirers of Casey Jones, July 9th 1938."

Next morning, I was some 80 miles south -- Jackson, Tennessee, home to the Casey Jones Museum. It's smack in the middle of one of those dreary American landscapes, the recreated "Olde Towne". "Old Country Store" with attendants in "authentic period costumes". Store selling Elvis memorabilia. Others named "Southern Magnolia Dolls", "Gifts Etc", and more. All signs painted in the heavily-serif font that practically screams "Wild West".

The Museum is part of this faux kitsch, and I wondered: Why, oh why?

It's like this: In India, I often wonder why we remember so much of our history so mournfully. Yes, our freedom fighters sacrificed for the struggle, many their lives. Yes, their spirit inspired generations. So Independence Day festivities are, and patriotism itself is, often solemn.

Yet why not also celebrate the euphoria of '47? After all, those who remember that August 15 speak of the sense of joyous idealism and hope. Winning freedom was a thing of joy. We knew it then. Why not remember it that way now, sixty years later? Can we let our hair down a little about patriotism? Might it mean more if we did?

I mean, in the States I've watched exuberant a capella renditions of the "Star-Spangled Banner", for example before baseball games. I cannot imagine "Jana Gana Mana" being sung as informally as that in public. Perhaps it's the differing way in which each country considers itself. The 60-year-old, pomp and solemnity. The 230-year-old, able to take itself less seriously. Maybe a country needs that long.

But then this Museum, where maybe informal goes too far. OK, Casey Jones wasn't a freedom fighter. Still, there's a sense of the trivial in how this hero to millions is remembered. The "authentic period costumes", that tiresome font, kitsch everywhere -- they almost cheapen a deed of uncommon courage. A century later, we need not be mournful about Casey. But must we be cheesy instead?

So at the Museum, I nursed a small ache. Then I recognized it: an almost physical yearning for the windswept junction in Cayce, where I was yesterday.

Where the only sounds are the breeze and birds in the tree above a plaque.

For a while, anyway. A muscle car -- fat rear wheels and body sloped forward like a lion at a water hole -- peels off the road and thunders into CJ's parking lot. Black leather jacket and tight black jeans, she slams the door and saunters into the store. Out a few minutes later with a bag of cookies and a six-pack. Is it "Good To Be On Top" Keystone Light for her, $2.99 a pop? I can't tell. But she has a smile on her face, then she has peeled onto the road and gone. I get the feeling that in Cayce, this is the memorable event of the day, maybe the month.

CJ's belongs to Judy and Kenneth Blackburn: she hearty and whitehaired, he tall and terse. "The museum should have been up here, honey," she tells me while I'm buying orange juice, no Keystone for me ahead of the drive down to Jackson. "Seeing as how he grew up here, not in Jackson."

"Would you have liked it here?" I ask.

"Yeah hon," she says, "I think Casey would have liked that." She has misunderstood me. But it's such a charming answer that I don't feel like correcting her.

Now I don't know what Casey Jones might have liked. But this intersection in Cayce, this desolate spot with its breezy quirkiness, makes a fine memorial to the man.

Sorry, Judy, but I hope they never have a Museum here.

Petey

My friend Peter Griffin is the indefatigable and cheery soul who blogs at zigzackly, besides being a vital part of World Wide Help and much more.

Peter had a heart attack on Friday and is in hospital in Vashi. Some of us visited him last night; he's in good spirits if weary. If you want to send him your thoughts, please feel free to leave them here and I will tell him, next time I go there.

Been a year

It's been a year, yes. May 15 2007, the estimable Indian National Interest blog called for entries for an essay contest, subject "Jammu and Kashmir: Solve". There were prizes, but what attracted me more was this line in the announcement: "your essays will be considered for publication in a subsequent issue of Pragati - The Indian National Interest Review."

Now I'm a great admirer of Pragati, so I sent in an entry.

In August 2007, the INI's Nitin Pai wrote to me to say I had won first prize in the competition. Needless to say, I was delighted.

Only, a year later my essay has still not appeared in the estimable Pragati.

Compounding that disappointment, my essay has also been removed from the INI site itself, even though Nitin's announcement says: "You can read his essay Free to Choose India over at The Indian National Interest."

Nope, that link no longer works and you can no longer read my essay there. Not in the estimable Pragati either.

It is appended below, though.

Postscript: In a comment on this post, as well as by email to me, Nitin explains: "all posts on the INI website dating before mid-December 2007 were lost when we had a bad server crash. There was no specific intention to make your essay "disappear". None of the posts and guest posts survived."

He also explained by email that luckily, none of the posts for the various subdomains on nationalinterest.in were lost.

Finally, Nitin says that the non-appearance of this essay in Pragati "was an editorial decision that I made."

***
Free to Choose India

A solution for Kashmir, you say? Bold, compelling, imaginative thinking? Well, how about a lesson drawn from a decade-and-a-half ago, when just such bold thinking bubbled up in this country?

By the early '90s, it was clear. Call it socialism, call it over-planning, call it hypocrisy, call it what you will -- but nearly 45 years of it had left this country still mired in widespread poverty, its economy a mess, its foreign exchange hoard down to an amount that you might have found in the retirement account of any given ambitious Western CEO. In a word, India was floundering. This was a country desperate for change, desperate for good news, desperate to find a way to unlock its vast potential. Where was the fresh thinking it so badly needed?

So what happened? The fresh thinking came along. Such words as "liberalization", "reform", "free markets" and "privatization" entered our lexicon. Some of them actually translated into real life. Since then, India has gone through convulsive changes that now have a momentum of their own, that can never be turned back. And they have addressed some of the very problems that prompted their introduction to begin with.

Indeed: Foreign exchange reserves are now at record highs. The country's economy is, we hear nearly every day, "booming". More and more Indian companies, keen and competitive like never before, are taking on the world. Our communications revolution is nothing short of breathtaking. This is no longer the country it was during its first 40-odd years, oh no. Given how many Indians are filled with optimism and new confidence, this is the new frontier of opportunity.

All because we allowed ourselves to think beyond old certainties.

Here's my feeling: in exactly the same way, Kashmir needs fresh thinking. Thinking beyond the old givens.

Think of where we are, with Kashmir. For 60 years, we have fought bitterly with our western neighbour over that gorgeous state. From the late '80s on, some three hundred thousand of its residents were persecuted and driven from the state, solely because of their religion. Terrorists killed many of them. The rest have spent close to two decades in squalid camps in Jammu and Delhi, truly the forgotten people of this country. In the state, terrorism has killed many more even though Indian security forces are everywhere.

You might say, this is a state desperate for change, desperate for good news, desperate for peace, desperate to find a way to unlock its great potential. How will Kashmiris find their own optimism and new confidence?

Fresh thinking, new ideas, that's how. I believe that we have held on to old baggage in Kashmir for just too long. It has left us the bloody stalemate that state has suffered for years now.

Time for a change. Time, I believe, for a simple thought that the singer Sting once expressed like this: "If you love someone, set them free." With Kashmir, put it this way: "If you want to keep Kashmir, set it free."

Less eloquent than Sting, but it works. Meaning, the way to keep Kashmir is to give Kashmiris the choice to leave.

Seems counterintuitive? Gets you angry, even? Well, hold on for a moment: don't shrink away! Don't recoil in horror! After all, you live in a newly confident India, where the fruits of fresh thinking are all around you. Right? So here's the true test of that confidence: do you believe in India enough to let people decide for themselves their future in this country?

Me, I do. I believe in India enough to make my life here. (Actually, that was true even before the reforms). In fact, that was a choice I consciously made -- to live my life here rather than elsewhere. Since I made it, I believe others will too, and for similar reasons. So somewhere deep inside me, I believe that if this India that I live in and have faith in can sincerely, transparently and fairly offer Kashmiris their future, Kashmiris will willingly choose India. As I did.

And I mean offer their future to all Kashmiris. Even the ones we have forgotten as they languish in those squalid camps.

So here's what I propose that India does.

First, announce to the world today -- not tomorrow, today -- and announce it prominently, that in exactly two years, India will hold a referendum to let Kashmir's people decide their future. I mean, put a date down in stone. Why two years? I think six months is too ambitious, and five years is too remote. Two years sounds about right to me. Still, this is a detail that can be discussed and worked out; the important thing is to announce a realistic date and demonstrate our resolve to stick to it.

Second, announce that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir will vote in the referendum, meaning also what we Indians call Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. Announce too that it will be held among all the people who call that state home, including the three hundred thousand who were driven into camps in Jammu and Delhi.

Third, remind the world about the terms of the UN resolution that first urged such a referendum (47 of 1948). In particular, Clause 1, saying that Pakistani forces must withdraw from Kashmir as a first step towards holding the referendum. It could hardly be more explicit:

"The Government of Pakistan should undertake to use its best endeavors:

a) To secure the withdrawal from the State of Jammu and Kashmir of tribesmen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident therein who have entered the State for the purposes of fighting, and to prevent any intrusion into the State of such elements and any furnishing of material aid to those fighting in the State."

Fourth, start immediately on sincere, transparent and fair preparations for the referendum. Meaning, hold meetings and distribute literature about it in every relevant language. Offer Kashmiris the choice to vote wherever they like, in guaranteed freedom and safety. Withdraw Indian forces, also according to the terms of the resolution, leaving only the same kind of police force you would find in any other Indian state. Set up the administrative machinery for the referendum. Make arrangements for displaced Kashmiris to vote; but even more important, make arrangements for them, if they wish, to return home to vote and live in safety and dignity.

Fifth, make sure the world pays attention to this process. Bring in teams of prominent international observers, allow journalists free access to the state and its people, let this continue all through the two years. Let the world see that this new India has nothing to hide, that it delivers on its promises. Let the world see just how we deliver.

Sixth, hold the referendum itself under the same gaze from the outside world. Observers, press, world leaders, whoever: let them see it happen for themselves, in every detail.

Seventh, and this is vital, report the result of the referendum fairly and fully. Then respect that result fairly and fully. Whatever it is.

The weak links? As I see them, points third and fourth above. What is the guarantee that Pakistan will withdraw its forces? And even if that happens, will Pakistan allow the referendum to happen in PoK? And what about terrorism and security concerns if our forces withdraw? There are no guarantees, of course; and Pakistan will similarly question our resolve and sincerity.

But there never are guarantees. Yet I believe that if the whole process is fair and clean, and is seen to be so, public opinion around the world will itself force Pakistan to play its part. The world's gaze will be the guarantee of security we need as we withdraw our forces. Ronald Reagan it was who once said, "Trust, but verify." I don't remember Reagan for much, but I do remember those words. We have to find ways to trust our neighbour, a difficult task after six decades of mutual hostility; but while we work at that, we use the weight of widespread public opinion to verify that they hold up their end of the bargain. We use that opinion as we never have before: as a skillfully wielded weapon to win hearts in Kashmir and around the world.

Again, I believe that such a process, carried out sincerely and transparently, will keep Kashmir Indian. For then the choice is dramatically clear. On one side, a fractious, fragile country with a history of regular lapses into military dictatorship; a poster-boy for the dangers of -- let's say it, the great hoax of -- religious nationalism. On the other, an optimistic, confident country that understands the meaning and profound promise of democracy in full measure; that has demonstrated such understanding in the way it has conducted this referendum.

Which would you choose? Go ahead, say it loud and with feeling: which would you choose?

Well, that's why I believe Kashmir would choose India.

Finally, a word about the national interest. Think again of the reforms. Why did this country set itself on that path one-and-a-half decades ago? Fundamentally, it was prompted by the need to better Indian lives -- and if you think about it, what clearer way is there to define the national interest?

That's the way to consider Kashmir. What is the national interest there? Is it thumbing our collective noses at Pakistan? Is it showing the world that, in the end, Pakistan is wrong and we are right? Is it the threat of nuclear assault on that country? Is it constant bloodshed?

Or is it, put simply, the promise to better Indian lives in that state? And thereby, better Indian lives across the country?

Look at it that way, and once again the path ahead is dramatically clear. Our national interest lies in allowing Kashmir to choose. Because that's the way to a better Kashmir for Kashmiris, a better India for us all.

So let's do it.

It's the economics, stupid. Or is it?

Every now and then, after reading something I've written, someone will write me a supercilious note saying something to the effect of: "Bro, you don't have much of a clue about economics, do you?"

They're probably right, too. I don't have much of a clue.

But over the years, I've learned a neat trick. All I need do is use words like "supply" or "demand" or "marginal cost", maybe even "guns and butter", in what I write. Or throw some weighty figures about. Apparently, that's enough to turn superciliousness on its head. The last time I used the trick in an article, someone wrote me a note applauding my "sound economic training." Yes, that's verbatim.

Anyway, consider this passage that I wrote a few years ago in my book The Narmada Dammed. This refers to Kevadia, from where locals were evicted as long ago as 1962, to build a colony for the engineers working on the Sardar Sarovar dam. Specifically, it addresses the compensation paid to them then for being evicted.

[A particular Gujarat Government report] has an interesting discussion of the oustees from Kevadia Colony ... On pages 14 and 15, we find a defence of the Rs 100-250 per acre that was paid to them in 1962-63. (Was that a fair amount to pay, even in 1962-63?). It was "consistent with similar cases pertaining to this period", we're told. Then there’s this:

"The value of Rs 200 [in 1962] together with cumulative interest as applicable to Government Securities would be Rs 6,400 in 1992."

Now the [report] says Kevadia oustees were getting "Rs 7,000 per acre" in 1992 [when they were still getting displaced]. Given that figure, it is hard to escape thinking that after [questions were raised about these amounts], some Gujarat government official was given the task of finding an equation between the 1962 (Rs 200) payment and the one in 1992 (Rs 7,000). The point, of course, was to show that Rs 200 was a fair payment in 1962. And this claim is what that official produced.

Fair enough? Except that the official, and the authors of the [report], clearly did not expect anyone to actually check their figures.

For "the value of Rs 200" in 1962 to "be Rs 6,400" (thus multiplied by a factor of 32) thirty years later, the amount of Rs 200 would have had to be invested somewhere that offers an annual interest of 12.25 per cent. The only government security I know that has consistently offered rates that high is the Public Provident Fund. It offered 12 per cent, though that was reduced to 11 per cent in 2000 and to 9 per cent as I write this [and even less today]. The problem: it was instituted only in 1968.

This is not to say that there are no government securities that might have offered 12.25 per cent over thirty years; only, I don’t know of any. But my ignorance itself raises the question: which of those oustees from Kevadia could have been expected to know about these securities? If they did know, did they, or would they, have invested in them? Is this a reasonable way to explain away the uncomfortable fact that those Kevadia villagers were merely given some cash and told to leave?

More important, is this a fair equation anyway? To compare rupee amounts from two different years, economists and others typically apply not interest rates from unnamed securities, but inflation: the way prices have risen. So how did prices rise between 1962 and 1992? Not 32 times, try 11. My copy of Tata’s Statistical Outline of India tells me the wholesale price index multiplied just over 11 times between 1962 and 1992 (thus inflation in those years ran at about 8.32 per cent a year).

That is, Rs 200 in 1962 was worth about Rs 2,200 in 1992. And this is the money comparison the [report] should have made.

Of course, we can surmise why it was not made: the [report] claims Kevadia oustees are getting "Rs 7,000 per acre now in addition to the payments in 1962." Now Rs 2,200 compares somewhat unfavourably with Rs 7,000. So on seeing this Rs 7,000 in 1992, a Kevadia oustee ... might legitimately ask: if you are willing to pay Rs 7,000 today, why did you offer only Rs 200 in 1962?

To which the Government of Gujarat would reply, as it has: "The value of Rs 200 in 1962 together with cumulative interest as applicable to Government Securities would be Rs 6400 in 1992." And Rs 6,400, of course, is close enough to Rs 7,000.

You’ll recall I asked above, parenthetically: was that a fair amount to pay, even in 1962-63? My answer: no.

Question: even with all those numbers, even with judicious use of "inflation" and "wholesale price index", why has nobody written to me to commend my "sound economic training"?

I can think of two good reasons, one of which is that hardly anyone has read my book. What's the second?

Finnish challenges

Today's Mint (Sat May 17) carries this essay I wrote on Helsinki.

As usual, your thoughts welcome.

It's you

You want to become a doctor. You apply to and get admission in one of the best medical colleges in the country. There, you are an outstanding student, one your physiology professor himself describes as "exceptionally bright". You are awarded a gold medal in your post-graduate paediatrics programme.

Done with your medical education, at least in a formal sense, you begin a career in health care in rural India. You had seen and studied malnutrition and poor health care, but now you're face to face with those things every day. In a remote mining area of Madhya Pradesh, you start a hospital, actually involving the miners in every aspect of its work. Over seven years, it grows from ten beds to 90, and is the only reasonable health care facility available to the rural poor there for miles.

By now, you've realized that such things as malnutrition don't just happen in a vacuum. They are intimately tied to such other things as corruption, access to ration cards, justice and governance. Inevitably, your work in health care with the rural poor of what is now Chhattisgarh touches on these themes. You begin seeing the links between them and that word that so many quake at hearing: Naxalites. You don't excuse the violence of Naxalism, but you can see that the roots of this growing movement lie in the misery and injustice you can see everywhere.

Somewhere along the way, a man approaches you for medical help for his brother, who is in prison. The prisoner is a well-known Naxalite leader, Narayan Sanyal. Taking the government's permission every time you visit the prison, you treat Sanyal's condition.

In 2007, you are yourself arrested by the Chhattisgarh government, charged with sedition and links to Naxalites, and jailed.

Your work has been recognized and applauded, even internationally. In April 2008, you receive the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. Several Nobel Prize winners have just issued a joint appeal for your release.

None of this matters. May 2008 marks one year in jail.

Your name -- this means you, reading this -- is Binayak Sen.