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TheIndian EXPRESS
www.indianexpress.com

l TUESDAY l SEPTEMBER 18 l 2012

The Indian EXPRESS

BECAUSE THE TRUTH INVOLVES US ALL

United against reform

HE responses of the major political formations to economic reform seem to be situational. They champion investments and market-friendly measures when they are in office. When in the opposition, they take to the streets to oppose it. Shaken and stirred by the big bang of Manmohanomics 2.0, the Left and the Right plan to launch protests on the very same day. It may be recalled that the push for FDI, now a major component of the reforms agenda, was kicked off by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Though it is in denial mode now, the BJP had actively considered FDI in retail, and NDA minister Murasoli Maran had proposed 100 per cent FDI. The Left has consistently opposed FDI in retail but it had pulled out all the stops in moribund West Bengal to attract foreign investment. Before he became the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee was commissioned to reach out to investors overseas. And former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya travelled across Southeast Asia in search of investment. Now, the Left and the Right are loudly opposing reform in order to posture to their core constituencies the working class, the peas-

On FDI in retail, BJP and CPM positions range from inconsistent to obstructionist

antry and the trading community. But while they are at it, instead of being merely obstructionist, could they also propose alternatives? The process of reform is famously irreversible. It must move forward by some means. If the opposition parties have arguably arrived at a better idea than the prime minister on how the ship should be steered, they should put it on the table, and preferably in Parliament, which the BJP in particular paralysed not so long ago. The fact is that parties of all hues have been in office at the Centre and in the states, and yet farm to fork logistics in India remain primitive. Procurement and public distribution policies are still maladjusted, resulting in the criminal wastage of food stock. Reform is never painless but it delivers real benefits. Manmohanomics 1.0 accelerated development for two long decades. Its pace had begun to flag even before a spate of scams, real and alleged, put policy-making in cold storage. Now, the government has provided a stimulus by delivering on its promise of FDI in retail and moving towards a rational position on diesel pricing. The opposition to reform is political, and may vanish the moment anti-FDI parties win office.

If TMC pulls back, UPA must seize the opportunity to bring railways back on track
lies. Indeed, it can be argued that it has seemed so frightened of testing and confronting its allies that it has even stopped conversing with itself. It is this hollowing out of debate within the party that has shown up as the UPA 2s socalled policy paralysis. Therefore, even as the logic of the UPAs overdue moves on fuel pricing and investment in retail demands that Banerjees bluff be called, Manmohan Singhs government and the Congress party need to articulate more forcefully the case for these measures. The party needs an argument to manage allies, not just arithmetic. Nothing would signal a course correction as emphatically as the railways being freed from the TMCs grip. It could be the opportunity for the UPA to announce a new intolerance of the practice of Central ministers making themselves answerable to provincial chief ministers. It would indicate whether the UPA is in fact serious about getting back its administrative mojo. The PM cannot afford to waste this crisis.

Use the crisis

AMATA Banerjee has dealt so fast and loose in ultimatums and ploys for one-upmanship that no one is holding their breath as the clock draws down on her latest deadline for the Centre to roll back its belatedly announced reform measures. What is more pertinent is whether the Congress will see this crisis as the opportunity it is to recover the railways from the TMCs feudal grip. It is not so much a question of staring down a petulant ally. Banerjees tantrums are interrogating the Congress on its will to govern, on its stamina to hold together a coalition on the basis of a coherent agenda. It is far from certain that by holding its nerve, the Congress will lose the TMCs support. Even if it does, the exit will not necessarily rock the UPAs applecart the political grid in the Lok Sabha, for now, is predisposed to an aversion to snap polls. But the larger issue concerns the Congress itself. For far too long in the tenure of UPA 2, the party has interpreted the task of maintaining political stability as being an exercise in pacifying al-

OES any game worry more than cricket? asks cricket writer Gideon Haigh while introducing a collection of essays. If you have any doubt that the answer is anything but no, pay close attention to the background chatter these coming days and you shall be convinced that his question is obviously rhetorical. For nothing is guaranteed to fling crickets enthusiasts into paroxysms of despair as much as the start of yet another Twenty20 match. Beware, though, as the World T20 gets under way in Sri Lanka today that despair can be catching. There is a single question at the heart of this current spate of worrying that has been the background hum for the five years since India won the title at the inaugural tournament in 2007, and especially since the Indian Premier League (IPL) appeared to rewrite the club versus country (and by implication, a four-hour-long slam-bam versus a five-day contest of skill and strategy) priorities of many leading cricketers. It is this: is cricket, as we have known it, in danger of extinction? In the analytical grasp of the most conscientious worriers, the answer is taken for granted, and the question is better posed as this: how much damage will T20 wreak before folks see the light and abandon what are, in these purists view, its fleeting thrills? Ifonlytheydstopworryingand learn to laugh at themselves. If only theyd see cricket as it really has been.Becausecricket,evenbeforea marketing genius at the England and Wales Cricket Board unwittingly launched the T20 era in 2003, was always wired for worry. Step back,andyouhavetochuckleatthe audacity of crickets expectations. Just by way of an example: a game borninEnglandEngland,where wejustsawmarathonrunnersbrave the rain in pursuit of an Olympic medal demands dry conditions for play to proceed. When we are

Game changer
As T20 returns, in a game wired for worry, expect anxious looks back to a golden age
MINI KAPOOR
done worrying about the weather andwhatthateasterlybreezeorthat overnight dew may mean for the drift of play, we fret over the keenness of the contest. Let it not be too one-sided, please, or we will lose interest, and then what have you. I mean, look what has already been done to one-day internationals (ODIs). Hockey and football have made play incrementally more racy by simplifying the rules. One-day cricket? To keep the viewer at the edge of her seat, the rules are always being tinkered with to be made even more complicated. Fielding restrictions, powerYet, we need not fear that Manjrekars or Dravids wise suggestions will even be picked for serious consideration. I have been a cricket fan for more than a quarter of a century now and from that first moment of fandom, the game has kept me acutely aware of how glorious it had been back in the day. To be honest, this edgy narrative of a game in danger of reckless change adds to its allure, it makes cricket not just any other sport but a noble cause. Except now when we hark back to a more innocent time, it includes that time,

LETTER OF THE WEEK AWARD

To encourage quality reader intervention The Indian Express offers the Letter of the Week Award. The letter adjudged the best for the week is published every Saturday. Letters may be e-mailed to editpage @expressindia.com or sent to The Indian Express, 9&10, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi -110002. Letter writers should mention their postal address and phone number. The winner receives books worth Rs 1,000.

T20 has demonstrated its viability. In its IPL excesses it has drawn the worlds best, and even ensnared some of them from their national team calendars. This is what it comes down to. Its abbreviation and its club-andcountry sprawl pose obvious challenges of how to read the records of individual players.
plays, bowling protocols... any wonder that she is choosing the simpler world of T20s? In fact, no game is as fearful of its viewers losing interest as cricket. A half-empty Wankhede for an ODI in India, and a veteran like Sanjay Manjrekar will ask whether its a signal that the format should be abandoned altogether. Scanty attendance for a Test match at Eden Gardens, and as thoughtful a cricketer as Rahul Dravid will recommend a neat split in the context for different formats: bilateral country-to-country tours for Tests along with a championship title, ICC-managed multination one-day tournaments, and T20 domestic leagues. circa the 1980s, when we had actually been agonising about the direction cricket had begun to take. My limited point being, change steals over cricket it is not coherently incorporated. Why, right now, we would be happy to turn the clock back a mere five years, a mere five years since all these millions of gullible viewers mistook this gimmick called T20 for the real thing. Just erase these five years, and look at what you get: an approximation of the golden age of cricket, that age before the inaugural T20 world title was grabbed by India, setting the stage for the IPL. Clocks do not turn back, alas. And neither will the imposition of

club versus country comparisons shame players or viewers into abandoning the IPL. Nor will calling T20s entertainment and Test cricket sport amount to anything more than pointless sophistry, especially when crickets greats have shown they will give their best to this shorter format too. Cricket may be headed towards a disaster of five or ten-over cricket matches. Or it may not be. But it does itself no good by carrying on as if the distinction between a T20 record at the club level and one at the international level is as clear cut as one between a first-class record and a Test match/ODI record. It can certainly be debated whether the manner in which the BCCI has leveraged Indian television viewership is for crickets good or bad, as also whether its IPL procedures meet the test of transparency. But it would be missing the wood for the trees or the cricket for the T20 to use that debate to persist with the old ways of compartmentalising the game. T20 has demonstrated its viability. In its IPL excesses it has drawn the worlds best, and even ensnared some of them from their national team calendars. This is what it comes down to. Its abbreviation and its club-and-country sprawl pose obvious challenges of how to read the records of individual players. Crickets unique art has been to elegantly condense the essence of a career into batting, bowling and fielding statistics. Till now. The sooner it finds a way of intelligently incorporating T20 statistics into a players overall career summary, the less it will worry. Then again, by the time we sort out T20, cricket is sure to have found another issue to provoke anxiety. Some things will never change. Thankfully. Mini Kapoor is contributing editor, The Indian Express
express@expressindia.com

Letters to the

EDITOR

Shifting sands

the door, SP keeps all windows open (IE, Septembers 15). Mulayam Singh Yadav is undoubtedly shaping his political strategy with an eye on the general elections of 2014. But he may not be able to sustain his current position, where he has a foot in both camps, making overtures to the Trinamool Congress while not coming out in opposition to the Congress. TMC chief Mamata Banerjee is an unpredictable ally. Meanwhile, the Left is not likely to favour SP after it bailed out the Congress on the nuclear deal. Within Uttar Pradesh, SP faces a robust challenge from Mayawati, whose party may well lay claim to a large number of Lok Sabha seats. The SP chief must do a delicate balancing act from now on. Any false step could damage his political fortunes in 2014. Hema Langeri

THIS is apropos For foot in

Get real

VIRENDER KUMAR

Chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh

Six months on, too many in the SP wield power without accountability
control in Ghaziabad. He could do a few more things. For example, the CM could ask for a report on the districts where police chiefs have been changed twice or more and demand why. He could ask for another report on the incidents where SP men had gone berserk, bullied and beat up officials, and in some cases freed people whom the police had held for questioning or for involvement in criminal offences. He could ask for a third report on the events in Lucknow on August 17, which took place barely a few kilometres from the secretariat. The police had watched while a mob Topping the list is Akhileshs father and SP president Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has made it amply clear that he is the boss. He presided over a meeting of SP legislators who are supposed to be headed by the CM and expressed dissatisfaction over the performance of the government, saying that certain ministers needed to mend their ways and improve their performance. The venue in which he chose to give the government a dressing down was the CMs official residence. Next, there is the CMs uncle and party general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav, who is in charge of there are the regional satraps and others who believe they can do anything because it is hamari sarkar. They include subtle interlopers who call up officers, ordering them, cajoling them and even bullying the reluctant ones to do their bidding. There are others like Textile and Sericulture Minister Mehboob Ali, who dictated such unrealistic meat prices to the butchers of Amroha that they preferred to close business in protest. Then there is the bunch of SP men in Kanpur who beat up teachers when they objected to a small-time party leader walking into their college with armed guards. Already, Mayawati is warning of a throwback to the lawlessness of the previous SP regime, which Mulayam Singh Yadav headed and which she had replaced in 2007. But it is early days yet and Akhilesh Yadav has plenty of time. Luckily for him, he still enjoys considerable personal goodwill because of his accessibility, openness and modesty. There are occasions when he has tried to discipline the rogue elements. He also realises the importance of creating jobs and power generation capacities, building roads, attracting investment and reviving agriculture. But first he and his family will have to sort out the business of running the government. Virender Kumar is editor, Lucknow, The Indian Express
virender.kumar@expressindia.com

NNA Hazare, advised by 30-40 social activists, will continue his campaign against corruption, even as Arvind Kejriwal and his comrades concentrate on political action through their party platform. In other words, the different strands in last years agitation, that coiled and twined together confusingly, have now separated. Hazares initiative, run out of Ralegan Siddhi, will steer away from all parties, and focus on making sure good people enter Parliament. This is clearly distinct from the mission of Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and others who have chosen to press their agenda through a formal entry into politics. This parting of ways brings a welcome clarity and structure to their respective work. When the erstwhile Team Anna spoke in many voices, many wondered whether the agitation concealed other motives whether, for all their talk about an apolitical peoples movement and Hazares Gandhian halo, their choices revealed a preference

Anna Hazare and his former team-mates going their separate ways brings clarity
for certain outcomes over others, as when they explicitly campaigned against the Congress in Hisar. It was a mystifying mix of civil society activism and political ambition. Team Anna was a fuzzy formation created only to push their own version of the Lokpal legislation by mounting an assault on existing parliamentary structures. Now, one set of people has chosen to try its luck in the electoral contest, test the extent to which its beliefs resonate with voters. Thats just the right way to be the change they want to see, because it is only by submitting to representative democracy that they will learn the true weight of their ideas, and how best to propel them forward. Meanwhile, Hazare has also moved towards clarity, by splitting off his agenda from the party, forming a caucus of activists who will critique the system but make no attempt to parachute into politics. For former members of Team Anna and for those assessing them, this delineation of interests is a good thing.

A rift for the better

AST Saturday, on completing six months in office, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav patted himself on the back for taking several steps to honour the promises that the Samajwadi Party had made in its election manifesto. The payment of unemployment allowance has begun, distribution of free laptops and tablets to school students will start soon, so will the Kanya Vidya Dhan scheme, under which each girl passing class XII will be given Rs 30,000. Meanwhile, farmers will get water for irrigation free of cost and more goodies are in the pipeline. We take our manifesto seriously, unlike other parties, and we will fully implement it, the CM declared. However, doling out freebies is easy, more so if a government has no use for economics. The business of governance is demanding. In UP, it seems to have taken the backseat. While Akhilesh was congratulating himself in Lucknow, Ghaziabad in the NCR was reeling from a particularly vicious bout of rioting, sparked off by an alleged incident of sacrilege, which left six persons dead. Earlier, Bareilly had remained under curfew for a month. Rioting had taken place at Kosi Kalan in Mathura and Asthan in Pratapgarh district. Akhilesh admitted that there was something seriously wrong with the police and promised action against officers who had allowed the situation to spin out of

forms, which let in foreign direct investment in multibrand retail, is welcome (Multi-brand retail: Cabinet OKs 51% FDI, IE, September 14). But given the gloomy global economic climate, their chances of success are not guaranteed. When the first set of reforms were introduced in 1991,countries in the West were prospering. After the global recession, India cannot be assured of foreign investors, especially when the investment climate in the country is so bleak and our own investors are going abroad. Saroj Kumar Panigrahi Mumbai

THE second wave of re-

Small mercies

THE fear that FDI in retail

Mayawati ran the government by diktat. But everyone knew where the buck stopped. Now the situation is exactly the opposite.
protesting against alleged atrocities on Muslims in Assam and Myanmar smashed vehicles, stoned shops, beat up passers-by and journalists, vandalised two parks and damaged statues of Buddha and Mahavir. Under Mayawati, governance in UP went for a toss because she had no patience for consultation and discussion, no respect for feedback and public opinion. She ran the government by diktat, assisted by a small coterie. But everyone knew where the buck stopped. Now, the situation is exactly the opposite. Akhilesh is CM, but there are too many people exercising power as if they were accountable only to themselves. the organisation. Then there is uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav, the PWD minister, who famously told officials at a meeting that it was alright to steal a little, but dont commit dacoity. Each has his favourites and loyalists. In the last six months, the government has failed to constitute statutory bodies like the womens commission, the SC/ST commission, the backward classes commission, and the state minorities commission, reportedly because the top men cannot agree on common names. Officials talk of drift, lack of clarity, and a missing sense of direction in the government. As if that is not bad enough,

Beijings aggression in the East China Sea is driven by domestic factors

It may be true that Beijing, buoyed by its rising economic power, is eager both to confirm its new-found status and to right the wrongs of Chinas century of humiliation. And a hunger for the natural resources to be found in the seabed also no doubt has a role to play. But there are also powerful domestic forces at work. In the aftermath of the Bo Xilai scandal (in which a favoured political son was ousted and his wife convicted of murder), with the once-in-a-decade leadership handover looming, and allimportant economic growth markedly slowing, Beijings immediate priority is to reaffirm the legitimacy of Communist rule. What better way to do so than by appealing to popular nationalism? From a leader in The Independent, London

Troubled waters

will create large job losses is based on unsound economic reasoning. It is economically naive to view supermarkets as substitutes for kirana stores (Modi slams Centre over FDI in retail, IE, September 15). Such local stores have many advantages over supermarkets which can never be replicated by the latter. The most important advantage, perhaps, is that kirana stores are usually situated much closer to buyers. There are millions of kirana stores in India a couple in every locality while there a only a few thousand supermarkets, usually part of larger market complexes. While some job loss is inevitable, it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that it will run into millions. Abhishek Anand Belabagan

Self help

THIS refers to the article,

WORDLY WISE
Murray Walker

You might not think thats cricket, and its not, its motor racing.

HE intrusion of six Chinese ships into the Japanese-controlled waters surrounding the disputed Senkaku islands is just the latest escalation in the stand-off over an uninhabited archipelago in the East China Sea... Against a backdrop of generations of animosity (and several nasty wars), such developments are far from encouraging. More concerning still, the Senkaku are not Chinas only maritime flashpoint in the region. Disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines, and to a lesser extent Malaysia and Brunei, over rocky outcrops in the South China Sea have also flared back into life this year. The US has repeatedly stressed its neutrality. But China remains suspicious of Washingtons intentions, and the pivot of US military focus on to Asia/Pacific only emphasises the sensitivities of the region...

PRINTLINE

Poverty is a passive religion by Shombit Sengupta (IE, September 16). It portrays how one can improve the quality of ones life through sheer hard work. Sometimes, difficulties can spur one to greater endeavour. As the author shows, grit and determination have led to many a success story. We have to solve our own problems. H. Infant Vinoth Pune