Ranjani Iyer Mohanty's Open Salon Blog

The Power of the Word

Mon, 14 May 2012 11:05:30 -0400

After enduring years of house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi won a landmark victory in recent by-elections. But before she could take her seat in Parliament, she had to take an oath. The oath required her to ‘safeguard’ the constitution. Because she would like to someday change the constitution to make it more democratic, she preferred to promise truthfully to ‘respect’ the constitution. This disagreement over a single word became a sticking point.

This is not surprising given that there is also discrepancy over another single word – the name of the country: ‘Myanmar’ vs. ‘Burma’. According to CNN, the LA Times, Reuters, the NY Times, the Times of India, and China Daily, Hilary Clinton recently visited Myanmar. According to BBC, Time magazine, the Guardian, and the Washington Post, she recently visited Burma. It was the ruling military junta that changed the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar in 1989. Some feel that using the name Myanmar is supportive of the military regime and ignores human rights violations. They feel that using the name Burma instead is supportive of the country’s democratic movement and the fight for human rights. Interestingly, two weeks ago Ban Ki-moon, general-secretary of the UN, visited Myanmar.

Gautama Buddha said, “Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care, for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or evil”.

A single word has been the source of disagreement before in another fundamental oath, and later on changed. In 2006, in recognition of domestic violence, the Church of England recommended that marriage vows removed the word ‘obey’ and today in many Christian weddings the word ‘obey’ is absent.

Bill Clinton certainly knew the power of a single word when he famously said, “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”. Hilary Clinton also knows the value of the word: during her recent visit, she tried to avoid using either Burma or Myanmar, and referring to it more often as ‘this country’ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/burmamyanmar/8927750/Burma-or-Myanmar-Hillary-Clinton-opts-for-neither.html ). And during her visit to Beijing last week, she tried to avoid saying the name of Chinese dissident Guangcheng (IHT, May 10/2012, p.1).

Of course, one could dismiss the whole issue as a storm in a teacup, or to put it in one word, trivial. After all, American political analysts say Mitt Romney moved too far to the right to get the Republican nomination and now openly advise him to move further to the center to become a more attractive presidential candidate … as though this means not going back on what he said, but a mere shuffling of his feet.

Similarly, one could advise Suu Kyi to just say whatever has to be said to get into Parliament, and then change the system. After all, when the army decided to take over in 1962, it’s doubtful that there was a clause in their constitution then saying that military coups are allowed. And one could argue that the word ‘safeguard’ does not mean ‘preserve’ and need not preclude ‘improve’: Suu Kyi’s planned amendments to the constitution could surely be seen as improvements, thereby safeguarding the constitution to preserve the rights of the people and indeed make it even stronger.

While some may say that it’s silly to quibble over words, others know that through all these years words have been Suu Kyi’s strongest – and sometimes her only – weapon.

Shakespeare said, “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action”. Somewhere along the line, the two seem to have become disconnected. Maybe it’s time to re-establish that connection.

Calling something ‘just a question of semantics’ trivializes it. If words are not important, why is there an entire study of semantics? Is Israel vs. Palestine just a question of semantics? Is Burma vs. Myanmar? Or even Bombay vs. Mumbai? While a rose by any other name may smell as sweet, a rose and a chrysanthemum are not the same thing.

Words have been important throughout man’s history. In the first century BCE, Publilius Syrus, a Latin writer who valued words, said, “Speech is the mirror of the soul”. And more recently, American writer Ingrid Bengis said, “For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change”.

That’s not to say that Suu Kyi should not have ultimately given in on this one-word issue for the sake of sitting in Parliament and having the chance to shape a more democratic government. Perhaps it was the pragmatic thing to do, and certainly in line with American political strategy. And having stuck to her principles and been under arrest for it for numerous years – all with great sacrifices to her personal life – she has certainly won the right to compromise over one word if she so wants to. But in giving in, she is undoubtedly aware of what she is giving up.

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India's Many Godfathers

Wed, 9 May 2012 02:05:57 -0400

Last night I was watching a favorite movie of mine, The Godfather, with director Francis Ford Coppola’s commentary. One thing he said seemed not only incisive but relevant. Near the beginning of the story, when Bonasera comes to Vito Corleone to ask him for a favor, Coppola explains how when government and formal authorities let the people down, it is “necessary to go to a godfather, a neighbor, a friend … a powerful friend”.

Here in India, the government has let the people down. Power cuts are common, and many people have their own generators. Water supply is sporadic, and people often store water, dig underground tube wells, and call in tankers. Even domestic staff don’t want to send their children to the more affordable government schools because they are in such a poor state, often lacking both teachers and bathroom facilities. Stories surface every few months in the newspapers about patients of AIIMS, India’s premier government medical institution, sleeping in the nearby Metro station or public washroom while they wait for treatment. Delhi does not have enough shelters for its own permanent homeless. And this is the situation in the country’s capital. True story. The book about India released a couple of years ago called ‘In Spite of the Gods’ would better have been named ‘In Spite of the Government’.

Because government has failed to supply basic needs, NGOs and private enterprise have stepped in to try to fill the gap. India is estimated to have over 3 million NGOs. Many are doing very good work running small medical clinics and schools at low cost. Industrialists have established foundations to support the work, and companies are trying through their CSR arms. Many private hospitals have mushroomed, offering more, better, but expensive care. There are also many elite private schools. But now we’ve come to a stage where even private facilities are stretched. For example, this month parents of pre-school age children are frantically trying to get nursery admission. They must stand in queues for hours just to get an application form, and thousands of application forms are given out for tens of places.

In a resource constrained economy where one cannot rely on the government to provide services, as the Airtel advertisement rightly says, ‘Har ek friend zaroori hota hai’: ‘Each and every friend is necessary’. In India, our friends, relatives, neighbors, and contacts become invaluable. They become our godfathers – the ones we turn to in our time of need.

It helps that Indians are naturally familial and social people. People recently introduced will always try to find a link to each other. Ideally, everyone is a brother or a sister. After a Sikh friend of mine had introduced me to his sixth brother, I questioned him on the size of his family. “Oh, they’re not really my brothers”, he replied, “They’re like my brothers”. After all, a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man. But if not family, we can be friends. If my sister’s doctor’s daughter goes to school with your neighbor’s cousin’s son, then we are friends. If not friends, then neighbors. Once, on a plane, the woman next to me asked me where I lived. When I replied, “New Delhi”, she beamed: “Oh, we’re neighbors!” As I looked at her closely wondering why I didn’t recognize her, she explained: “I live in Chandigarh!” – a separate city, about 200 kms away. In India, six degrees of separation is viewed as six links to togetherness; it’s not an academic concept, but rather a very quotidian and practical one.

Here, being well-connected does not mean having 500 Facebook friends, high-speed internet, or a combination of smart phone, tablet, and laptop; it means knowing a lot of influential people. Being well-connected is more important than being rich or smart or healthy – although if you’re well-connected, you’re probably also all three anyways because you’ve had access to all the opportunities and facilities. If you’re ever faced with a crime situation, and are offered a gun or a contact to save yourself – leave the gun, take the contact.

In India, having many friends is not just nice, but crucial. One may be able to help with securing your toddler’s school admission, another with getting your husband that coveted job interview, yet another with finding you a good gynecologist who won’t unnecessarily advice a ceasarian birth just to earn more money, and a fourth with getting permission to dig that tubewell to ensure water supply for your home. And you don’t have to wait until their daughter’s wedding day to ask them the favor.

But my parents spoiled me; I talk when I should be listening. Now go ahead and ask me. Then some day – and that day may never come – I’ll call upon you to do a service for me.

(This article was originally printed in WSJ India Journal.)

For a Tumbler of Coffee

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 07:04:39 -0400

The making of coffee is the day’s opening ritual for many families in South India. In my grandmother’s home, Arabica and Peaberry beans were first roasted separately. Then they were mixed and a small daily portion freshly ground using a hand grinder. The grounds would be placed into the upper filter portion of a stainless steel container and this upper portion would be fitted into a lower catchment portion. Boiling water would be poured into the upper half and the whole container would be set aside to wait for the strong concentrate to slowly filter down. A cup of that morning’s freshly boiled milk would be heated in a small pot and about two spoons of the coffee concentrate would be added to the milk, along with a spoon of sugar. Then to aerate the mixture and enhance the flavor, it would all be poured vigorously back and forth between the pot and a stainless steel tumbler several times, before finally ending up in the tumbler and handed to the recipient.

In such an environment, the recently oft-repeated statement in the Western press that India is a nation of tea-drinkers and that Starbucks will bring a coffee-culture to India is simultaneously amusing and annoying. It blithely ignores the fact that coffee has been a staple drink in the southern half of the country for centuries. Starbucks, in a joint venture with the Tata Group, plans to open its first cafes in Delhi and Mumbai, and to have 50 outlets by year-end. Thanks Starbucks – but like bringing coals to Newcastle, wine to France, or apple pie to America, you may find that we have a bit of coffee here already.

The story of coffee’s origin in South India is that it was brought back by a trader from Arabia several hundred years ago. Coffee beans have since been grown in the hills of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka.

Coffee has been and is an integral part of the south Indian experience, whether travelling or at home. As trains draw into stations (big and small) in south India, young boys run up to the windows with a large kettle of coffee and a shoulder bag of glasses, rapidly shouting “Kapee, Kapee, Kapee”. In many restaurants, aerating the coffee is a performance art, with waiters doing gravity-defying throws of the liquid from one tumbler into another. And coffee is still the first thing offered to any visitor who comes home.

There is even a long-standing culture of coffee houses in India. The Indian Coffee House chain began in the early 1940’s and has spread throughout India. While the largest numbers are in Kerala, there are several prominent ones in Kolkata known to be the meeting places for intellectuals, writers, artists, and their animated exchange of ideas. In New Delhi, the Madras Coffee House, located centrally in Connaught Place, has been a landmark since the 1950’s.

Today there are several national coffee chains such as Café Coffee Day and Barista. Costa Coffee, the multinational coffee company based in the UK, also opened outlets in India several years ago. And this year we’ll have Starbucks. And even though they are said to be bringing coffee to India, they will be sourcing their beans from South India and having it roasted there as well.

But Starbucks is not just another coffee company. It is an icon, an institution, and a lesson in management. A plethora of books have been written about it by academics (e.g., History professor Bryant Simonis’ “Everything But the Coffee”), management gurus (e.g., consultant Joseph Michelli’s “The Starbucks Experience”), Starbucks executives (e.g., CEO Howard Shultz’s “Onward: How Starbucks fought for its life without losing its soul”), and ardent admirers (e.g., Michael Gates Gill’s “How Starbucks Saved My Life”). Its logo is apparently so well known, that the word ‘Starbucks’ is no longer needed on the cup – just the 2-tailed mermaid.

And the Starbucks product in India is not really coffee. What they will be selling is a slice of the cool, young, and urban American life. It will be a smart, slick, Wi-Fi connected, non-alcoholic hang-out space for well-heeled young adults (of whom there are a vast and growing number in India), with sounds of Putumayo world music playing in their ears and visions of Microsoft dancing in their heads. It will also draw an older crowd who have studied or worked in the US for a few years, swear that coffee for them now means only a Starbucks skinny Cinnamon Dolce Latte, and are truly grateful that it will finally be within reach. And it will attract an audience curious about all the hype. In an era of globalization, Indians too want a taste of the global lifestyle. They’ve already tried McDonalds, KFC, and Pizza Hut. Now for something a bit more upscale.

So Starbucks, welcome. With India’s vast and varied population, there is a market for every type of coffee experience. For the full Starbucks experience, some may cruise into a Starbucks and hand over Rs.250 for that famed mermaid paper cup of grande Caramel Macchiato and Rs.100 for an apricot blueberry muffin. They may also have the option to spend an extra Rs.1000 for a stainless steel tumbler with the Starbucks logo. For the Indian experience, some will drive their car to a Café Coffee Day and spend Rs.70 for a china cup of cappuccino and Rs.60 for a hot n’spicy chicken puff. For the authentic desi experience, some will take their scooter to an Indian Coffee House for a Rs.7 coffee and a Rs.8 banana fry. For the al fresco experience, some will cycle or walk to the nearest roadside vendor for a Rs.5 glass of coffee and a Rs.5 samosa. And some others, for the home experience, will just head to Grandma’s for a free tumbler of coffee and a free dosa, both served with love.

(A version of this article was originally published in WSJ.com)

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The Fanciful World of Foreign Aid

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 05:03:02 -0400

The recent revelation of India's finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s comments that India doesn’t need British aid has raised some shackles in Britain and led to some proud strutting in India. And that’s very understandable. Why should Britain continue giving aid to India? And why should India want it? Because the whole concept of aid is changing.

Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, recently said, “The flow of knowledge is no longer North to South, West to East, rich to poor”. The same is true of aid.

Foreign aid is no longer a transaction of rich countries giving to the poor. The categories of donor and recipient have blurred. A donor one moment may be a recipient the next. Like Brazil, Russia, and China, India both receives and gives aid. For example, India gives aid to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan. In fact, India is in the process of setting up its own aid agency (the Indian Agency for Partnership in Development) to oversee a spending of over $11 billion over the next 5-7 years.

Foreign aid is no longer (if it ever was) given solely for the objective of alleviating poverty. It’s more a case of people giving each other presents. The giver rarely gives a present because the receiver desperately needs it and cannot afford to buy it himself. He does it to establish a relationship, to stay in the other’s good books, to have an ally in time of need, and to have influence in time of crisis. So perhaps the term to use is not ‘aid’ anymore, but rather we need to coin a new term that combines the meaning and objectives of aid, investment, and gift.

These changes in fundamental constructs in the realm of foreign aid seem to be the result of a deeper underlying shift that was highlighted by Andy Sumner of the Institute of Development Studies. In his paper Global Poverty and the New Bottom Billion, he explains that, whereas in 1990 the vast majority of the poor people (93%) lived in poor countries, now most of the world’s poor people (75%) live in middle-income countries. He makes this insightful remark: “… poverty is increasingly turning from an international to a national distribution problem, and that governance and domestic taxation and redistribution policies become of more importance than ODA (official donor assistance).” This is a telling indictment on India.

In actuality, India no longer needs foreign aid. In 2009, India moved from what the World Bank classifies as a low-income country to a middle-income country. It has a thriving space program and healthy foreign exchange reserves. Its economy is growing at 7% and it has more billionaires than the UK.

On the other hand, even if we accept the Tendulkar Report’s low-ball figure of 37% of Indians living below the poverty line, that is still over 400 million poor people. The Prime Minister himself released a report last month saying that 42% of children under the age of five are undernourished. The vast number of India’s poor is not a result of India being a poor country – because it no longer is. It is the result of inequality. To alleviate poverty, India doesn’t need foreign aid. It just needs to redistribute its wealth internally. However, so far, for whatever reason – apathy, inefficiency, corruption – it has failed in this.

So while Pranab Mukherjee’s arrogantly phrased comments of not needing British aid – nor any other aid – may well be true, he may be better advised to aim his arrogance and energies at improving the workings of his government to alleviate the poverty within his own country. Until then, India may actually need foreign aid. Alan Duncan, UK’s Minister of State for International Development, said that cancelling their aid program to India “would mean that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people will die who otherwise could live”. Shamefully, that may be partly true as well.

From Britain’s point of view, aid (or at least not in such quantity) was never given just because India was poor. So why should it stop giving aid just because India is no longer ‘poor’? Of course, to maximize the impact for both sides, it may wish to give the aid in a more focused manner, demand more accountability, as well as put in a clause about specific jets. From India’s point of view, until we can help our vast and growing number of poor people, perhaps we need to practice some humility. In spite of what the underlying motives of foreign aid may be – trade, security, friendship – and until our own government gets its act together, at least that money can feed some hungry mouths.

(This article was original published in 'India Ink', at NYTimes.com)

Mr. Shyam, the Subzi-Wala

Wed, 1 Feb 2012 22:02:16 -0500

When I was about five years old, I visited my grandmother in the Southern Indian town of Vellore. Apart from the traditional-style house with a large open courtyard in the center and sneaking pickled lemons from the big earthen jar in the store room, my other abiding memory is that each morning a man brought around a mother cow and calf to the front door. He would call out to my grandmother with the common greeting, “Mother, I’m here. How much today?” She would amble to the door with a stainless steel container and let him know how many cups of milks she wanted, adding a bit extra because I was visiting. He would milk the mother cow on the spot, and, together with a bit of the day’s local news, give my grandmother her requested amount. Then he would slowly walk cow and calf down the street to his next customer’s house.

Today, in the huge metropolis of Delhi, my milk comes from the nation-wide Mother Dairy milk cooperative, from one of its many retail outlets throughout the city, in plastic bags of ½ litre each and in four varieties – full cream, toned, double-toned, and skim. Not as charming, but effective.

But I still get my vegetables from a small open-air street-side vendor, or what industry analysts call ‘the unorganized sector’. The stand consists of a large table covered with vegetables, a small table with a scale, and a canopy covering both. Shyam Vegetables – as the receipt says – is run by a man with the age and gravitas to be the owner or at least the manager of this enterprise. He nods to me in acknowledgement and hands me a small plastic basket to put in my choices. He has a couple of young helpers, including one man who is mute. Whenever I see him, he always inquires (by signing) after my leg, which I broke about four years ago and always seems happy to see that I’ve fully recovered. As I rummage through the vegetables on the table, he sometimes crawls below the table and pulls out fresh stock to offer me. When I take my basket to the scale, the owner asks me if I need anything else and reminds me that the broccoli and lettuce have just arrived. After he weighs my vegetables, writes each item on a bill, and puts them into my bag, he will throw in a small bunch of cilantro and a hand full of green chilies, gratis.

Mr. Shyam’s stall is located in an affluent area of Delhi. He carries mostly local vegetables but also some exotic ones. His clients include both Indians and foreigners. Sometimes I hear a customer, usually Indian and well-heeled, haggle over the price of a product; it’s not for nothing that famed economist Amartya Sen called his recent book ‘The Argumentative Indian’. But given that the client has just stepped out of the latest model SUV, I’m inclined to think she is doing it more out of habit, feels it’s expected of her, or wants to show she’s no pushover, rather than because she can’t afford that kilo of onions. Mr. Shyam though keeps his cool, shrugs his shoulders, and shares his own philosophy of life: “everything is becoming more expensive”. I somehow trust the man. Once when I didn’t have enough money on me, he handed me my vegetables, and told me, “Just pay me next time”.

There was recently a proposal before the Indian government to let in foreign supermarkets like Walmart and Tesco. Supporters (including the foreign supermarkets and foreign media) say this is the obvious thing to do: it will modernize and improve India’s entire retailing system, make the supply chain more efficient and reduce wastage, and even curb food prices. They refer to it in optimistic terms such as retail liberalization and retail reform – which are always good things, right? Critics (mostly Indian) say it will destroy small shopkeepers. In India, the retail sector is the second largest source of employment (after agriculture) and 97% of the business is done by unorganized retailers such as Mr. Shyam.

The issue became highly politicized, unions threatened strikes, several states refused to go along, and the government ultimately backed down. But this is not the last we will hear of it; India is too big a market for multinationals to take no for an answer, particularly as other markets are becoming saturated.

If not multinationals, there are already chains of large national groceries stores in India, such as Spencer’s (owned by the RPG Group) and Big Bazaar (owned by Future Group), and regional stores such as Delhi’s Le Marché. Perhaps because I expect them to be like a Safeway’s in the US, a Loblaw’s in Canada, or a Carrefour in Europe, I find shopping at the Indian retail food chains less than satisfactory. In one, the vegetables look old and check-out is very slow because cashiers seem untrained. Another has amazingly high security. I had to argue with them to let my father bring in his knapsack with his medications and nitroglycerin. They also went through a stage of sealing handbags in plastic. Once I discovered I had left my shopping list in my handbag but since it was now sealed, I could not access it and was left to wander around aimlessly, wondering what I came in for. A third is located on three floors, has one small elevator that is often out of order, and has exorbitantly priced vegetables.

My experience with supermarkets in North American and Europe is that you heap up stuff in a huge cart and, after paying for it, wheel it out to your car that’s parked just outside in the parking lot. Here, it’s likely that there won’t be parking near the store and you can’t roll the cart to your car because the way is too bumpy and there may also be stairs to navigate. With street-side vegetable stalls, you can either walk there because there’s sure to be one in your neighbourhood or you can just park at the curb. Some people even conduct their business sitting inside their car and pointing to the vegetables they want. There are also vendors who will take orders over their mobile phones and then have the vegetables delivered home. And apart from stationary street vendors, there are the mobile ones who roll their carts through the streets and stop at your doorstep.

I realize that the way of the future may well be big retail chains, multinational or otherwise. I do get it: progress, efficiency, onwards and upwards, time waits for no shopper, and all that stuff. But even if the entry of MNCs into food retail is inevitable, is it right? In management theory, there are two perspectives: the universal perspective says that there is one right answer, whatever the context; the contingency perspective says the right answer depends on the situation. While huge multinational retail food outlets may be right for the Western world, given India’s situation here and now, is it right for us? In India’s wild and woolly working environment, it may not be right for the foreign supermarkets either: their success is not guaranteed.

While the government has backed off on this topic for now, it’s sure to come up again and next time the forces to pass such a proposal may win. The results may not be as catastrophic as the critics envision. India has always been able to absorb the threats and influences of a myriad of cultures and they have gone on to survive side by side. Multinational fast food outlets like McDonald’s and KFC have not ousted the corner samosa-walas because each have their time and place and clientele. Similarly, there may be space for both the Carrefours and the vegetable carts.

But as and when these behemoths roll in, I do fear for my nice subzi-wala, and myself. If Mr. Shyam is put out of business, I shall miss that personal touch, that free helping of cilantro and green chilies, and that mute young man who always greets me with a smile and still remembers my broken leg.

(A shorter version of this article was originally published in the International Herald Tribune.)

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