New Music

The thing about buying music on CDs these days is that you cannot hear what you might buy. I miss the old vinyl records days, where you could listen to them in separate enclosures within the shop called "listening booths" and decide whether to buy an album or not. There are a couple of friendly sales folks around who will rip off the plastic wrap and play it for you with no conditions attached. Obviously those are the places I frequent for my music shopping.

Then again, there are times when I take a risk, usually impulsive, and just buy the CD because whatever I can read on both sides of the jewel case seems interesting. Yesterday was one of those days. Music World on Park Street is almost next door to my favourite watering hole - Olys. Diwali had apparently kept the usual evening crowd seeking solace in a glass or more of liquid refreshment away from Olys. It was almost empty yesterday as Ranjit and I sat there and caught up with each other after quite a bit. Though we didn't say it till much later, we realised that the place was lacking in its waves of energy, loud chatter and laughter, smoke and the almost solidified atmosphere of liquor scents which assault you on entry. So we left after an hour or so, much less than the average length of time I would have otherwise spent there.
(I must make a film located in Olys...)

So we leisurely walked out into the bracing October evening of Calcutta, when all seems to be well with the world. Ranjit browsed magazines as I did the same with pretty faces passing by. Music World was not crowded either. I guess people hang out in jewellery stores during this festival of lights, to be dazzled by the glitter of precious metal and stones.

I saw a 3-VCD set of Scorcese's biopic of Dylan - No Direction Home - and grabbed it. Then I saw another album tucked quietly away in the lower corner of a rack - The Wood Brothers' Ways Not To Lose. Chris Wood on bass and Oliver Wood on guitar and vocals. In my vodka-fuddled memory I thought this Chris Wood was the same name who had played in Traffic's early records. I forgot that that Chris played flute and horns and stuff, not bass. Anyway, this was an impulsive buy, and listening to it now I realise I struck gold.
This is new blues. It's derived from black man blues and done by white men but it has a contemporariness which is refreshing. At the same time elements of the familiar are spread across each song letting you indulge in a bit of deja vu. The Wood Brothers album is first and foremost blues in its traditional 12-bar form, and then the tweaks and other style influences, not least being jazz. Oliver's voice has a gravelly tone tending to the nasal but he sings his soul. His guitar playing is prominent but not overwhelming. Chris' acoustic upright bass is contrapuntal in its soft statements which may lack the hard punch and growl of blues but never deviates from its earthy presence in all the songs. Lovely album! "At least when I die young, I'll have chocolate on my tongue". One line from one song, you must listen to the rest.

Elvis Costello, a British musician has been quite a phenomenon in the West since the 80s. Somehow he never was able to make his presence felt among the wide ranging listening that many of us do back here in India. Allen Toussaint was a name that briefly came up in Santana's Moonflower record as the last song 'Toussaint L'Overture'. I have not actually followed either of these musicians but I see that Toussaint is considered "one of America's greatest musical treasures" with almost guru-like attributes. Anyway, this collaboration between these two musicians has resulted in The River In Reverse. It has songs from Allen Toussaint's own catalogue, plus five new ones penned by them both, as well as the title track by Elvis. This is a gumbo of New Orleans and rock'n'roll and some other influences not immediately identifiable from the initial listening. Yet another gem I impulsively bought without any real knowledge!

Now you know how difficult it is for me to remain solvent when I walk into a music store!

Microcredit and the Nobel Prize

This is taken from an email forwarded to me. I have no idea who the author is or in which publication it first appeared. I do appreciate the rationality expressed, yet I cannot help feeling that an East-West divide is being highlighted, and that too quite slyly. Read on, and perhaps you will arrive at your own conclusions.

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MICROCREDIT, MACRO ISSUES

by Walden Bello

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus, regarded as the father of microcredit, comes at a time when microcredit has become something like a religion to many of the powerful, rich and famous. Hillary Clinton regularly speaks about going to Bangladesh, Yunus's homeland, and being "inspired by the power of these loans to enable even the poorest of women to start businesses,lifting their families--and their communities--out of poverty."

Like the liberal Clinton, the neocon Paul Wolfowitz,now president of the World Bank, has also gotten religion, after a recent trip to the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. With the fervor of the convert, he talks about the "transforming power" of microfinance: "I thought maybe this was just one successful project in one village, but then I went to the next village and it was the same story. That evening, I met with more than a hundred women leaders from self-help groups, and I realized this program was opening opportunities for poor women and their families in an entire state of 75 million people."

There is no doubt that Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist, came up with a winning idea that has transformed the lives of many millions of poor women, and perhaps for that alone, he deserves the Nobel Prize. But Yunus--at least the young Yunus, who did not have the support of global institutions when he started out--did not see his Grameen Bank as a panacea. Others, like the World Bank and the United Nations, elevated it to that status (and, some say, convinced Yunus it was a panacea), and microcredit is now presented as a relatively painless approach to development. Through its dynamics of collective responsibility for repayment by a group of women borrowers, microcredit has indeed allowed many poor women to roll back pervasive poverty. However, it is mainly the moderately poor rather than the very poor who benefit, and not very many can claim they have permanently left the instability of poverty.

Likewise, not many would claim that the degree of self-sufficiency and the ability to send children to school afforded by microcredit are indicators of their graduating to middle-class prosperity. As economic journalist Gina Neff notes, "after 8 years of borrowing, 55% of Grameen households still aren't able to meet their basic nutritional needs--so many women are using their loans to buy food rather than invest in business."

Indeed, one of those who have thoroughly studied the phenomenon, Thomas Dichter, says that the idea that microfinance allows its recipients to graduate from poverty to entrepreneurship is inflated. He sketches out the dynamics of microcredit: "It emerges that the clients with the most experience got started using their own resources, and though they have not progressed very far--they cannot because the market is just too limited--they have enough turnover to keep buying and selling, and probably would have with or without the microcredit. For them the loans are often diverted to consumption since they can use the relatively large lump sum of the loan, a luxury they do not come by in their daily turnover." He concludes: "Definitely, microcredit has not done what the majority of microcredit enthusiasts claim it can do--function as capital aimed at increasing the returns to a business activity." And so the great microcredit paradox that, as Dichter puts it, "the poorest people can do little productive with the credit, and the ones who can do the most with it are those who don't really need microcredit, but larger amounts with different (often longer) credit terms."

In other words, microcredit is a great tool as a survival strategy, but it is not the key to development, which involves not only massive capital-intensive, state-directed investments to build industries but also an assault on the structures of inequality such as concentrated land ownership that systematically deprive the poor of resources to escape poverty. Microcredit schemes end up coexisting with these entrenched structures, serving as a safety net for people excluded and marginalized by them, but not transforming them.

No, Paul Wolfowitz, microcredit is not the key to ending poverty among the 75 million people in Andhra Pradesh. Dream on.

Perhaps one of the reasons there is such enthusiasm for microcredit in establishment circles these days is that it is a market-based mechanism that has enjoyed some success where other market-based programs have crashed. Structural-adjustment programs promoting trade liberalization, deregulation and privatization have brought greater poverty and inequality to most parts of the developing world over the last quarter century, and have made economic stagnation a permanent condition. Many of the same institutions that pushed and are continuing to push these failed macro programs (sometimes under new labels like "Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers"), like the World Bank, are often the same institutions pushing microcredit programs.

Viewed broadly, microcredit can be seen as the safety net for millions of people destabilized by the large-scale macro-failures engendered by structural adjustment. There have been gains in poverty reduction in a few places--like China, where, contrary to the myth, state-directed macro policies,not microcredit, have been central to lifting an estimated 120 million Chinese from poverty.

So probably the best way we can honor Muhammad Yunus is to say, Yes, he deserves the Nobel Prize for helping so many women cope with poverty. His boosters discredit this great honor and engage in hyperbole when they claim he has invented a new compassionate form of capitalism--social capitalism, or "social entrepreneurship"--that will be the magic bullet to end poverty and promote development.

----------------

The following is selected text from a telephonic interview that Adam Smith from the Nobel Foundation website had with Mohammad Yunus:

[AS] – Is there any particular message you would like to use the opportunity to get across?

[MY] – The one message that we are trying to promote all the time, that poverty in the world is an artificial creation. It doesn't belong to human civilization, and we can change that, we can make people come out of poverty and have the real state of affairs. So the only thing we have to do is to redesign our institutions and policies, and there will be no people who will be suffering from poverty. So I would hope that this award will make this message heard many times, and in a kind of forceful way, so that people start believing that we can create a poverty-free world. That's what I would like to do.

[AS] – Does your work with the Grameen Bank over the last three decades make you more hopeful that this is possible?

[MY] – Oh yes, very much, we see the demonstration of it every day. People come out of poverty every day. So it's right in front of us what happens and it can be done globally, it can be done more forcefully, we can organize more things to go with it, so this is something not theoretical issue, it's a very real issue. People can change their own lives, provided they have the right kind of institutional support. They're not asking for charity, charity is no solution to poverty. Poverty is the creation of opportunities like everybody else has, not the poor people, so bring them to the poor people, so that they can change their lives. That's all we are doing. We didn't do anything special; lend money to the people so – but they never lent it to the poor people – all we did was we lent it to the poor people, and that makes the trick. That makes the change.

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But of course! We live right next door to B'desh, and as far as Calcutta goes, we live in each other's pockets! Microfinance has been a buzzword in development circles for quite a few years over here. Md Yunus has pioneered and shown the practical realities of a concept, that's all. How any other state implements it is up to them, dependant on the local circumstances. In fact that is probably what eventually allows microcredit/finance to succeed. Its sustainability by suitably adapting to local conditions.

But then again, our Marxist comrades here in Big Dada Bengal have their own version of the same story. The Indian Express Calcutta edition city supplement Kolkata Newsline reports:

"Kolkata, October 19: FIVE days after Bangladesh’s Mohammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank shared the Nobel peace prize for 2006, West Bengal’s Minister for Self-Help Groups (SHGs) bragged about the Left Front Government’s far-sighted policy of encouraging these basic units of micro-credit.... In fact, funding for each SHG of around 12 members is recommended by the panchayat bodies, the CPI(M) branch and local committees that guide these bodies. With the CPI(M) dominating the panchayat system, hardly a few rupees can go to any SHG without the party’s knowledge." Read more...

All I can say is if the system is a workable one and is providing relief at some level, then it is doing a worthwhile job. We need any and all solutions for poverty issues. There can never be one grand plan.
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Grameen Bank

Just Another Day

Paul McCartney and The Wings sang a song of that name. Way back when? Late 60s, early 70s? Certainly after The Beatles broke up. It was a nice song. Don't like Paul any more though... bad music! Sir Paul indeed. What was it John said? "All those up in the balcony can rattle your jewellery."

***
Open Window Again
Gloomy day today. Gloomy mood too. Clouded skies that trickled rain late in the afternoon, never the downpour it threatened to be. To top it all, woke up far too early for my liking and couldn't sleep any more. Tossed and turned to finally get up and make tea. Running out of it... got to get some more. Darjeeling is a definite reviver. Felt good for awhile. Had a second cup.

Took some pix with the borrowed camera. But it is just a slightly improved toy over my cellphone. Pics were dark in their content. The light was kind of nice though. I'm a little emphatic about people carrying loads, using their bodies and their strength to earn a living, a pittance really, while I fool around with a digicam that costs the equivalent of a few months income for them.

The woman was mad of course. She ranted and raved at an imaginary someone walking beside her. She's been passing by my window quite frequently over the last few months. There was another one, dressed in someone's horrid, bright red printed, long, discarded nightie. A young guy too with dreads (jata), clad in what is fashionably known as a sarong, with a discoloured chunni slung sideways across a shoulder, muttered loudly, shaking his head. An old man, bearded, rolling his eyes, drifted past ever so slowly. What is it today? The weather? Does such weather cause the mentally disabled to appear? And why under my window? If I believed in such things, I might say it could be a portent, a message from beyond.

Then a little later, a taxi crashed in to the side of another. Outside my window, but over on the other side thankfully. At a junction where traffic is assorted and plentiful. The usual happened. One driver cursed the other, threatening to beat him. Suddenly a crowd surrounded them. Helpful types, take-sides types, arbitrator types, passive onlookers, all got into the act till the cops came about 10 minutes later. By the way, the local cop station is immediately behind my house. Why does it take them so long to respond? Must be the weather. The mini traffic jam had to be sorted out first before the aggrieved parties were attended to. No one was injured, other than a couple of Hind Motors Ambassadors.

***

"War and Peace"
Anand Patwardhan's documentary of that name was on Doordarshan at 10.30 in the morning today. Looks like Doordarshan, having lost the legal battle is now in a hurry to get over showing AP's films. Films like this and the one shown last Sunday - Father, Son and Holy War - need to be repeatedly shown on all channels, not just DD.

This film is about non-violence essentially. A protest against nuclear proliferation. A protest against politicians who skirt the real issues of eradicating poverty and its associated pains. It's a protest against hawkish scientists like our Prez APJ Abdul Kalam, PK Iyengar, Raja Ramanna, all of whom push for increased spending on the development of arms and military security, and then only make appropriate sterile noises about the real issues. It's a protest against you and me, the educated elite of our country, who refuse to consider, who choose to ignore and subsequently justify our non-involvement in the issues in question, and selfishly look at the economic opportunities coming our way because of such "development". Patriotism is questioned. This is a hard-hitting film as well. A good film for a gloomy day. It makes me realise that the sun doesn't shine out of my backside, don't I know?

***

The end of a day like this, just another day, deserved some upliftment. The dealer told me the stuff was good. I asked him if he smoked and he said no. So I asked him then how he was recommending the weed. He just smiled and took my money. He was doing his job is all.

Of A Banned Film, and a TV Show That Won't Be

The poster for the film Father, Son and Holy War.

The film maker, Anand Patwardhan

"Father, Son and Holy War"
Gautam's SMS came on the 6th asking me to spread the word that Anand Patwardhan's documentary film, "Father, Son and Holy War" was to be finally aired on Doordarshan on Sunday the 8th at 10am. I'd already seen a special screening of the film a year or so ago at Nandan, probably during the Calcutta Film Fest. AP won the right to have his film aired on Doordarshan after a protracted legal battle that lasted 11 years. Watching it again yesterday, (and in the process watching Sunday morning TV after many years!), I can appreciate the paranoia that seized the bureaucratic machinery, causing a foolish and avoidable malfunction of the wheels within wheels. I can appreciate and understand it, but certainly don't endorse it.

Films like this are rare. There are few such films made not just in India, but anywhere. It is forthright, what is popularly termed 'in your face'. I prefer to look at it as a mirror. It is honest and takes a hard look at the politics of religion. AP documents the symbiotic but conflicting relationships between the two dominant religious communities: the Hindus and the Muslims post December 1993 and the Babri Masjid spark that spread the fires.

The film even horrifies with its blatant recording of raw, uncontrolled human emotion and naivete. Some of us pride ourselves on our high levels of tolerance, of secularity, but we cannot remain unaffected after watching, leaving us to wonder whether sides should be taken after all. Gautam tells me that when AP held a special screening of the film at NID in Ahmedabad some years ago, quite a few of the Hindu students became very agitated and objected to AP's portrayal of the Hindu sentiments. I can vouch that AP has not been any softer in his portrayal of Muslim sentiments.

By the way, there's a very unkind comparison with AP and Michael Moore in the UC Berkeley link I've provided up top. MM does not compare with Anand other than both are filmmakers. And even if AP acknowledges MM's work as having provided the impetus to raise interest levels in documentary films in India, so what? MM's films are too US-centric, issue-specific, whereas AP's films cut across cultures and communities by acting as a mirror to our human values.

I can only suggest you watch the film and see for yourself. AP has VCD copies available at People Tree in Connaught Place, New Delhi or you could write to him: anandpat@vsnl.com (.net?) and request him to send you one.

******

"Sunshine On My Balcony": The TV Show That Won't Be Banned

"Baranday Roddur" - the literal English translation given above - is Bhoomi's most memorable and endearing song for fans of popular, modern Bangla music in India. (It's a different story in B'desh..) From their first and only real hit album Jatra Shuru, the song now names a Sunday noon show featuring the band on the ETV Bangla channel.

Having switched into TV viewing mode with AP's F,T,&HW yesterday, I thought I might as well check out Bhoomi's program which has now been on-air for about 6 months more or less. After all, my connection with the band and their first two albums has been more than mere listener.

I wonder if people really want the TV programs they watch or do they get what they deserve? The show has no merits at all. It is inane, lacking in decent production values, and has a well-fattened Bhoomi performing listlessly, cynically aware of a future paying audience of under-teens who are just thrilled at being inside a TV studio. To give some credit to whoever thought it up, the concept for the program is a workable one. It might have been successful at all levels: the studio audience, the viewers and the sponsors. Simple format - display fresh young talent, provide forum for upcoming band, promote Bhoomi and it is a win-win situation for all concerned.

I have no official statistics or information to base my opinions on, but I shall express them nevertheless. It turned out to be a show that smacked of condescension and a showcasing of mediocrity and an immense lack of creativity. You can also add humiliating there somewhere.

The class 9 student and Kathak dancer was given a couple of minutes to perform, quickly handed a gift and a book of Bhoomi's lyrics and sent off. O, I forgot... they started off a with a skit with some twit actor apparently from rural parts trying to be a "Calcatian" (for fuck's sake!!!!) and making like a city slicker coming on strong to a twerpy actress playing a hep, modern urban beauty. Her problem was that she aspired to be it all: urban, modern, pretty but sadly lacked the wherewithal to be anything other than a complete fool. Because the guy was so hung up on her, he was instantly forgettable. This was a sort of intro leading into Bhoomi's opening song which was the basis of the inane skit. O god! The convoluted minds of the Bengali culture vulture!

Then with the usual breaks and the rest of the crap a presenter spewed, the upcoming band, whose name I have also instantly forgotten, went into a straight melody rip-off of Joan Baez's song Billy Rose. The trio backed by three of Bhoomi had such sanctimonious looks on their faces as they passed off a blatant copyright violation as an original, that I was compelled to use the loo. It then ended with Shomu, the band's drummer/vocalist/singer/ co-founder playing, or making a futile attempt at playing the dhak.I personally know Shomu is an excellent percussionist and has really learned a lot about dhak-playing, but this was so bad that I can't write anymore about it.

And that is why I think a TV program like this should be banned to prevent the further decay in Bengaliana. But it won't be. It will go on, impressed by its own TRPs, inflated by its own self-assessed worth, unheeding of the sensitivity of the viewers (we can always switch off if we don't like it, can't we?), and then finally fade away.

That can never be too soon.

EPILOGUE: A Mizoram Diary

This diary is not really a personal record of travels in Mizoram. Had I been able to, I would have travelled quite a bit, but the monsoon was not in favour of my gallivanting. Nevertheless, just wandering about Aizawl town, and places nearby, meeting people, gives me the self-appointed right to call this a "Mizoram Diary"! Most of what's been written are personal observations and opinions, so...

I started writing it at daybreak on the 29th of September when I was woken very pleasantly by the rising sun. That was my first day there, and standing out on the balcony I saw clouds blanketing almost everything. I imagine that it was an appropriate way to begin, auspicious even. I completed it on the 4th of October on a rainy afternoon back in Calcutta.

You can see some photos I took with my cellphone camera here. Not too good, but some of them surprised me.

A MIZORAM DIARY: That's it for now... (Part V)

If you look at a map of India, or better still, one of the Indian sub-continental region, you will see Mizoram in the far eastern corner of India. It appears to be a land mass carved into the space between Bangladesh and Myanmar, like a plunging neckline. In the north, Tripura, Assam and Manipur border it, turning it into a landlocked island, making it dependant on the larger states for its surface transport routes. It's convenient for the rest of India to forget Mizoram. Before I left, many well-meaning folks warned me to be “careful”. No one could give me a valid reason for their warning other than to vaguely remark on it being a “disturbed” area, “terrorist problems” and so on. I think I can call any part of India by these terms today.

The Mizos are a friendly and peaceful lot. An example of this is an old tradition of theirs called “nualrim” (I think that's the word, but I could be wrong!), where a suitor may call on a girl of his choice and whether she likes him or not, she and her family must be polite and friendly and cannot turn him away. This is not the formal bride-seeing type of thing that happens in mainland India. In Mizo tradition, the suitor can casually drop in anytime, and can be a bit of a kabab mein haddi even when the girl has got herself a boyfriend, but must stop once she is married. Now that's civilised. Unfortunately I got to know of this custom on the day I was leaving, otherwise I may have taken my chances! Mizo women are beautiful, and in my opinion they lead over the other communities of the north eastern hill states with the possible exception of Sikkim. But it's a moot point.

I came away with a few other impressions. Young people here are at a loose end. Other than sports and games, and Church related activities, opportunities for recreation are non-existent. There are no movie halls, so cable/dish TV is creating one more generation of couch potatos. There are no discos or dance halls, and these guys don't just love music, they make good music too! This authoritarian regime of the Church and the YMA must necessarily lead to other avenues for release. So drugs easily infiltrate the porous border with Myanmar and Bangladesh. When I say drugs, I mean heroin and its ilk; and of course booze, both “lokkul” and the brands. The Army, which rations supply for their troops, is indirectly the biggest provider of black market liquor in Aizawl. I think somewhere there's a very deep, intentional, and insidious power-play at work which is being encouraged by the powers that be.

The tourism infrastructure exists in the guise of some ill-maintained establishments, rare events, inadequate promotion and publicity, and a whole lot of good intentions. On the other hand I'm not too sure its such a bad thing. I'd hate to see plane loads of ill-mannered, noisy, unreasonably demanding, uncompromising, insensitive, money-powered, cheap Bengali, flatulent Gujarati, and $1-a-day, Lonely Planet/Rough Guide American tourists littering the streets of Aizawl, creating chaos and confusion among these gentle people. Yet at the same time, economical, eco-friendly, sustainable, alternative tourism options which do not overload and unduly tax the environment and infrastructure exist. I strongly believe such options should be implemented as a collaborative effort of the government with NGOs and right-minded individuals already working in this area. Some things like Prohibition and the moralistic stranglehold of the Church will have to be removed to ensure success. The presence of the military too must be reduced from Level Paranoia to Level Just Another Cantonment.

It was a good trip for me. And it holds the promise of another one, perhaps more. There's much that is left to see and imbibe. This furthest corner of India is not merely a land of abundant biodiversity as the official calendar puts it. It is not just the land which the Tropic of Cancer cuts in half; nor is it only the bureaucratically named “land of myriad hues”. It is a land where hope lies in its natural defense against 'globalisation', where the earth still rules the lives of its people, where the technique is what to do, rather than how to do it, where the attitude of the people is the prime reason for its sustainability.

A MIZORAM DIARY: the River, some distillations and fermentations, a former CM... (Part IV)

It's my last full day in Aizawl. Tipi arrives as promised with her 8-year old son, Mamma, in tow. I learn her full name is Lalthanpuii. It's Bijoya Dashami / Dussehra / Gandhi's Birth Anniversary and the market is closed, so we decide we'd rather go down to the river and wash our souls! Leaving Aizawl for the drive down to Sairang, we are held up in a traffic jam. Trucks entering the city, trucks triple parked on the narrow hill road, trucks doing what they do everywhere in India leaves us unmoving for an hour. This is the National Highway and leads to Silchar and Guwahati in Assam and according to our taxi driver, Arama, is the day for commercial goods road transport to arrive in Aizawl. While we wait, Mamma figures out how to play the games on my cellphone, something I haven't even bothered with. How do these 8-year olds instinctively know?

En route, Tipi stops at a village and we go down to a ramshackle little cottage. Prohibition in Mizoram has led to many families brewing illegal liquor for a livelihood, especially along the National Highway. Tipi knows someone who brews good quality “lokkul” as its called. This is distilled from regular rice and while the alcohol percentage is not as high as whisky or vodka, it is nevertheless potent. Some unscrupulous types mix chemicals in the distillate to increase the potency and it has led to deaths. The Excise officials are further down the village hassling other distillers so we buy a plastic packet and make a quick getaway.

Sairang is a village way down the Aizawl slopes, through which the river Tlawng flows. We snack on some local fried stuff at Tipi's cousin's shop and then make our way down to the river to discover that the immersion ceremonies for Durga have begun. We watch for a while and I explain to Tipi whatever little I know about what's happening. We go away from this spot to some rocks where a mountain stream joins the Tlawng.

The water is muddy, but beautifully cold. We soak our feet in the current and drink “lokkul” as Mamma joins the local kids splashing about in the shallows. One part has depth and the local kids jump off the high rocks and cliffs into the waters, thoroughly enjoying themselves. The light is changing to dusk and we decide to head back to Aizawl, a pleasant buzz in our heads.

**********

The evening brings an invitation for drinks to Mr Lalthanhawla, the former Chief Minister's residence in Zarkawt in the heart of the city. Ravi was a dear friend of his son who died of an overdose a few years ago. Ravi has immense respect for the man, considering him a father figure, and it is obvious Mr Lalthanhawla too is fond of my friend. My past jobs have brought me into contact with a number of politicians, but they have been of a purely official nature. This is the first time a former Chief Minister has served me a drink with his own hands and I feel privileged. Like all Mizos, he is a warm and welcoming host. He is erudite, learned, and extremely well informed. It's been about 2 years since he lost his “gaddi” as he puts it charmingly, and while regretting the quality of Scotch he was serving he laughingly told us that he himself is a victim of the prohibition policy that was enacted by him while in power. I ask why he brought in this policy, and his answer is straightforward, “The Church... and the people.”

He served me a sweet local brew, of rare vintage, fermented from the traditional sticky rice of these parts of the North East. It was certainly very different from what I had drunk in the afternoon. He conceded it to be a good afternoon drink, to be had before a hearty lunch, which I conceded to as a gentle hint to get on with my Scotch!

I finally had the right man to ask, what I now myself was getting irritated with as an obsessive question, about Mizoram's economy. He has been the most popular CM and I think the longest serving one, having given up his gaddi willingly to bring peace to this insurgency-torn, beautiful land. The peace accord with the then underground Mizo National Force and Mr Laldenga, their leader in exile, required one to voluntarily step down from his elected position as CEO of the State, and the other to lay down arms. Of course, Mr Lalthanhawla was soon back where he belonged, and it is evident that he speeded up progress and instituted projects which continue to benefit the populace. The MNF returned to power recently, and I had already heard from local folks that the current CM, Zoramthanga, is hardly as efficient. Perhaps it won't be long before the person who was my host this evening will regain his lost position.

Mr Lalthanhawla told me that 20 years of insurgency had brought poverty to his land, once self-sufficient in food grains, untrammelled by urbanisation, and beautiful. The MNF and allied forces had raped their own land and its people in the quest of some elusive Utopia. To counter the insurgents, the bigger powers in Delhi decided to do some raping of their own. The Army was installed in all its might in Mizoram, and as if that was not enough, on the 5^th or 6th March 1966, the Indian Air Force strafed and bombed Aizawl, leaving thousands of innocent people dead, destroying a beautiful hill-station and engendering the hate and anger that Mizos and other North Easterners have for the military in particular, and “Indians” in general. All this led to a massive exodus of people from the interior rural areas into Aizawl seeking food, shelter and income. So Aizawl is now this overgrown, unplanned city groaning under the weight of its population, sorely lacking in infrastructure and opportunity.

The Centre realised too late its typical stupidity, and tried to make amends by giving people jobs in the Central ministry departments, apart from all the frantic subsidising and grants they dished out as charity to a state which never would have required such sops. This then is the background to the sarcastic remark I heard a few days ago telling me that the India Government is what the economy of Mizoram is based on. But Mr Lalthanhawla is specific. He says Mizoram's economy is based on agriculture and must continue that way for a return to self-sufficiency and prosperity. I am not that naïve a person to believe every word a politician says, but the ring of conviction in Mr Lalthanhawla's voice and my own observations tells me he is right. That is heartening news for our country now gradually running amuck with uncontrolled urbanisation. We need to return to earth from the rarified atmosphere of globalisation and all the ills that it brings. The earth is where we are, and we need to touch it and love it once again.

I know for sure that if I once again exercise my franchise, something I no longer do, it will be to vote in Mr Lalthanhawla as the Prime Minister of India, rather than Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharya of Bengal, who journalists and people in Calcutta and elsewhere are rooting for. I have no particular political stance or dogma but my reason for this decision is solid. Mr Lalthanhawla is of the land and wants to return there for a sustainable future. BB is also from the earth, but he's now sailing far out in the unrealism of globalisation, at the expense of farmers.

Mrs Lalthanhawla had been away at a wedding shower and joined us for a few minutes before we left, gracious in her unnecessary apologies. She must have been quite a stunning beauty when younger. As I took their leave, I knew I had enjoyed the company of a man, who given the opportunity, has an alternative and viable vision for the future of not just Mizoram, but India in its entirety and diversity.

(There's a reasonably well-researched articles from 2003 available from The Hindu online on and another from Frontline magazine on Mr Lalthanhawla and Mizo politics, if you're really keen that is...)

A MIZORAM DIARY: Clouds, Christians, the Economy question... (Part III)

It gets dark here by a quarter past five. Lights begin to come on in the houses. The old cliché of such a scene resembling a multitude of stationary, but blinking fireflies on the hillside is an apt one to use here. The friendly clouds have departed from my level, but the senior lot high above has let loose its watery load. The sound of rain falling in the hills and on the plains, in the city, has major auditory differences.

And then it stops to rain. Just like that. The straggler clouds, much smaller in size, are still drifting in to my room and passing through the open door into the corridor outside. A sodium vapour street lamp casts an eerie glow on the cemetery. The straggler clouds wreathe about the headstones of the graves. Another cliché from a Ramsay Brothers film of the 70s! My daughter comes to mind, and I smile to myself thinking of how she loved to hear ghost stories as a child. I call her, but the connection is bad, must be the weather. We speak anyway, and I describe the scene before me. She laughs and says something I can't make out with the signal drops, but it sounded like a word or two of caution! When my child makes me smile I get the most wonderful feeling.

**********

These mountains are not old, geologically speaking. At least not as old as the Himalayan range, which itself is comparatively new and apparently still growing. You cannot see snow-capped peaks or towering heights that amplify your own diminutiveness as you would were you in, say, Himachal Pradesh. But there's a rugged beauty here; a constant reminder of the wonder of nature. I have come during the monsoon which has added to the lush green cover. A million shades of green spangle the hillsides. One area seemed to have a strange carpet-like look to it. On approaching closer I saw they were the leaves of the squash plant vines. The squash, iskut as it's locally called, is a popular vegetable and extensively farmed. What I didn't know was that it grows under the cover of the vines, something like grapes.

My friend Ravi, who's been here for 8 or 9 years, wanted to take us to Champhai, east of Aizawl and not too far from the Myanmar border. I'm told that is wild and beautiful country but we couldn't go as there had been a landslide on the road and no telling when that would be cleared. The monsoon rains cause massive landslides and it was a risk we decided not to take. Instead we went to see some of the highest points around Aizawl. First we went to Berawtlang where there's another tourist lodge. The Mizoram Science Centre is immediately behind. Strategically built, the open terrace overlooks a valley and across it a panoramic view of Aizawl spread over 4 or 5 hills. It seems not an inch of space has been left untouched by housing in that city. The tin and aluminium roofs glitter diamond-like in the sunshine breaking through the clouds.

Two young Mizo couples are being video-taped by another. We think its just some normal handycam stuff happening until we see an older lady giving directions. We then realise they're shooting some sort of movie, probably a local music video. It's fun, watching them doing retakes at being lovey-dovey. We sit there for a few hours, vodka benumbed, till we see clouds creeping over Aizawl from behind, gently blanketing the city. We move then, back towards the city through Zembawk, passing the main bus stand and what is the red-light area.

On Sundays, Aizawl shuts down completely. The Church allows citizens to do nothing and expects them to attend 4 or 5 services throughout the day. We pass a Durga Puja happening in the Border Roads Task Force camp and I reject Ravi's suggestion to visit. We go to the helipad controlled by the Assam Rifles to get a closer 180° view of Aizawl on the mountains opposite. From there we drive on to Lungdai, the highest point of Aizawl. If the Church's establishments are omnipresent, the military is no less. Assam Rifles control the entire North East, and the BRO, Border Roads Organisation and their BRTF controls the roads. Yes the roads are good, but they are not so for the citizens as much as they are for the convenience of the military. BRTF have given themselves a nickname, Pushpak, and all over you can see signs which read, “Mizoram and Pushpak – Made For Each Other”. The blatancy of the military has never been poetic, and I realise they are vainly attempting to compete with the Church's multiple signages all over. Not that they need to. They have the power to overwhelm anyone at a moment's notice. I feel disgusted somehow.

Lungdai may be the highest point but there is nothing there for me to get the complete view I had imagined. We stand by the side of the road and look at the play of light from the setting sun on the mountain sides. On our way back, passing through the village of Sihpir, Ravi spots an old friend. Tipi is a bubbly, friendly sort who runs a small primary school in the village and tells us Calcutta is the best place in India. For a moment I wonder if she's being sarcastic, but I realise she's dead serious! We finish the remaining vodka in the remains of the day, sitting in her house and watching the lovely mountains from her window. She promises to come to my hotel tomorrow and take me around Aizawl. I would like that; to get an insider's view of this charming place.

We finally end up at the last high (in more ways than one!) point where the Theological College stands. Once again, Aizawl twinkles like fairy lights in the dark, and it is breath-taking. Ravi bumps into other friends as we stand there. Jane and Zothana Ralte are doctors but non-practising. They are both in government health service and occupy senior bureaucratic positions. Their house, built a couple of years ago, is just beneath where we had been standing watching the view, and it's really a beautiful place. Mizos are friendly and welcoming hosts; Jane and Zo will not take no for an answer as they invite us down. Not that I had any intention of refusing! We meet their sons, the older one practising on his electric guitar, as the younger one plays games on the PC.

I again ask Zo and Jane my favourite question about Mizoram's economy. While Zo says its agriculture and not the impression I have, he does not sound very convincing. It's obvious livelihoods revolve about the government. They tell me that while AIDS is a menace it has reached a state of stagnation. AIDS in Mizoram is mainly due to drug addicts re-using needles rather than unprotected sex as is the case in other parts of India. I hear that after many years the community has accepted the reality of HIV/AIDS and is now working together to help each other out. Earlier, AIDS awareness campaigns had scared people till the Church got into the act and began to preach about it from their many pulpits. This, and the strong, organised reach of the YMA – Young Mizo Association, the Elders Councils and the Women's Group have managed to bring about a sea-change in people's attitude to AIDS. We are offered a local red wine illegally distilled in the grape growing area of Nala, near Champhai. It's not too sweet but I opt for a Teacher's and we have a convivial evening.

It's 9 pm when we return to the hotel and the effects of all the heights we have experienced today have taken a toll on me. I gratefully pass out to wake this morning with the rising sun.

A MIZORAM DIARY: Clouds, Christians, the Economy question... (Part II)

I'm still wondering about Mizoram. It's a tiny state in this part of the country and no longer as prone to “insurgency” as its neighbouring states. People I spoke with here don't seem to know how the economy of this place works, nor do they seem very comfortable with my enquiry. When I asked how people earned their income I was laughingly, but in all seriousness told, “Government of India!” I had thought that agriculture would be the obvious way, but it seems it's in trading and service. Which brings me to another observation: the north Indian trading communities who are all over the North East and have their fingers in all the business pies available are conspicuous by their near-absence in Aizawl and elsewhere.

The local people in Aizawl are apparently quite wealthy or well-off. The white taxis with yellow stripes, either small Maruti cars or the Indica, number over a 1000 and though their arbitrary fares are expensive they are commonly used. People are not just well dressed, they are expensively clothed in the leading brands; they have all the necessary gadgets and lead lifestyles that would not be out of place in major urban centres. Of course they must also be a fair minority among the population. Yet the EDP operator of the Indian Airlines office has a 30Gb iPod and the latest N series Nokia cellphone; his friend sports designer eyewear which is probably as expensive as his friend's two gadgets put together.

I wondered why the powers that be are doing nothing about the income earning possibilities for the folk of Mizoram. The answer came to me in a slightly roundabout way. While on my rave about the Church, I realised that they pin the loyalty of their congregation on charity. The Church's most obvious way of being uppermost in the minds of the people is to be concerned about their welfare. You will not find beggars from the local ethnic groups on the streets. Everyone, under the auspices of the Church, is bound by Christian duty to look after everyone else. Repentance and an unswerving belief in the gospel are the other buzz words. But of course all such terms and conditions lead to hypocrisy.

In other states of India, the Church has innumerable social welfare projects which provide training in skills for self-employment and honest, income generating opportunities. In Aizawl and the 36 kilometres I travelled from the airport, I saw no indication of such work. I wanted to see small- and cottage-scale enterprises like handlooms and handicrafts, apiary products and fruit growing and processing but no, nothing! The Mizo chili, a tiny round wonder of amazing pungency could well be a leading export for the state, but its availability is limited to the local bazars. The same is for bamboo, which covers huge land areas in wild abandon. Or passion fruit, squash, limes, bananas... Hence, I arrive at the conclusion that the Church does not encourage this because it would lead to a loss of control over their flock. Let them live on Christian charity and you ensure abundant loyalty.

And so, I'm led to further conclude that the same goes for the government. Provide jobs in the various departments and organisations and you have the largest, most loyal vote bank. Every family in the state has at least one member employed in the state and central governments. Even if I have no statistics to support this, I say it with confidence after talking with many of the locals.

**********

Clouds did enter my room finally. I watch the early evening settling down as the clouds advance towards me on the balcony. Their movement seems agonisingly slow, yet when I blink or look back from elsewhere, they are so much closer. I see the houses before me beginning to don their smoky shrouds. Small wisps break away from the main body and swiftly charge about here and there. Lightning flashes in a rhythm of its own within that mass of water vapour. It now looks ominous with its differing shades of grey and though its not raining, my face and shirt become damp all of a sudden. The clouds have touched me.

A MIZORAM DIARY: Clouds, Christians, the Economy question... (Part I)

Aizawl – 29 September 2006 – 5.30 am onwards

Clouds are what you see looking up. Clouds have names and classifications an incompetent geography teacher in early school could never make me understand. Clouds are beautiful, majestic, frail, wispy, billowing, foreboding, smoky, whatever it is they appear to you when you get to their level. Flying within clouds in an aircraft is fascinating. Yesterday's flight from Calcutta to Aizawl's Lengpui airport via Imphal, gave me what can only be termed an eye-level view of clouds which I cannot recall having seen before.

Above the dense, dark mass of monsoon clouds there was sunshine first of all. (In our rain drenched world below, we often forget the sun shines anyway.) Then there were the other clouds: thick, mountainous creatures towering in shapes that bloomed with gentle curves and rounded edges. Dark grey, horizontal strands which stretched the length of the plane and well beyond, mysterious in their relative anonymity. Other random, winsome flecks and puff balls scattered across my vision.

This morning I watch the clouds plow through the valley cleft between the hill my hotel is on, and the hill opposite. Turning my head to the right a bit, sort of east-south-east, I see the blue tinted mountains rising out of a veritable ocean of white, amorphous, masses drifting at the speed of tortoise. The mountains seem etched on to the azure sky, as if in bas-relief, and the surface of the clouds are almost incandescent from the rays of the rising sun.

The valley separates inhabited parts of Aizawl. The advancing clouds weave through the open windows and doors of houses awaking to a day of holiday for Saptami and Dussehra, going by Mizoram Tourism's official calendar on my wall. I leave my windows and doors open too, but the clouds do not deign to rise up to me. I see wispy mist ascend the slope of the hill opposite and rise further into the sky, perhaps to eventually form the mountains up there.

I can appreciate how one might become susceptible to religion and the existence of God at times like this.

**********

There is a small cemetery below the balcony of my hotel room; not exactly below, in front of my sight, occupying a tiny corner of the hill we are on. Residential buildings surround the graveyard, the living living comfortably with the dead. Mizoram's ethnic population is claimed as being 100% Christian, yet I know they are all converts from as recently as 130 years when the foreign missionaries came to the North East. The Church has immense influence and domination in this state and have surely provided the reason for it being a “dry” state. The imposed morals of Bible-thumpers has always offended me. No matter what, if people wish to get drunk they will. I'm told local brews are awful but popular among those who can't afford, or have no access to, high-priced, branded bottles smuggled in every day from Assam and Calcutta.

I am always in conflict when confronted with situations and scenarios that have Christian over- and under-tones. It has of course to do with my own Christian upbringing and my Christian family. I'm no longer prone to believing the fairy tale that is now considered Christianity. Yet a faith in a supreme power that needs no designation is not something I wish to ignore. So I remain in mild confusion, not letting it affect me so much, yet remaining sensitive enough to it when I sit and wonder about clouds, mountains, trees, birds, animals, people...