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TheIndian EXPRESS
www.indianexpress.com

NEW DELHI l FRIDAY l JULY 6 l 2012

The Indian EXPRESS

BECAUSE THE TRUTH INVOLVES US ALL

T WAS always clear that the presidential contest is going to be more revealing for its process than its outcome. Now, the BJPs prolonged carping on the matter of Pranab Mukherjees signature is threatening to turn it into a marker of graceless politics. Admittedly, Purno Sangma is faced with an unenviable task. To make a dent, or even to attract notice to his candidature, Sangma must make a noise, kick up some dust. Yet to insist, in the face of Mukherjees denials, that the signature on his letter of resignation from the Kolkata-based Indian Statistical Institute is forged, is to scrape the bottom of the barrel of oppositional tactics and stratagems. But the BJP is not alone in its small-mindedness. Including the names of former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former defence minister George Fernandes in the now withdrawn list of witnesses to be summoned by the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the spectrum allocation scam, has cast unflattering light on the Congress as well. The threat to put in the dock two senior leaders, confined to their homes because of illness and age, is spectacularly insensitive. In a vivacious and argumentative democracy in which political competition is becoming more intense, there are bound to be the

BJP quibbles over Pranabs signature, Congress wanted JPC to call Fernandes and Vajpayee
occasional indiscretions. In the states, the line that divides the oppositional from the uncivil is crossed far more frequently, and mostly it seems to bring no political penalties. Those involved in the blood feuds between Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, or between the DMK and AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, or between the Badal family and Amarinder Singh in Punjab, have routinely cast aside a sense of proportion and decorum. But even by those low standards set in a culture of impunity, for the main opposition party at the Centre to reduce the presidential fight to an artificially induced quibble over a signature, and for the ruling party to show glaring disrespect to the incapacity of two senior leaders, is for politics to plumb new lows. The Congress must ask itself if it is living up to the reputation it has so assiduously courted for NACstyle political correctness. And the BJP must wonder whether it is paying too high a price for what seems to be an outsourcing of its presidential campaign strategy to Subramanian Swamy who has patented the personalised political ambush. In a mature polity, the rules of engagement dont need to be spelt out or written down. They must be observed because it would be indecent not to.

Terms of incivility

PRESS conference addressed jointly by the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan, Ranjan Mathai and Jalil Abbas Jilani, descended into an arena of accusation and hostility. The media took it upon itself to attack, ignoring the stated boundaries of the talks and the painfully constructed equilibrium of the last few years. Both Mathai and Jilani were entirely reasonable, and it was clear that the longstanding disputes between the two nations were off the agenda, apart from a discussion of confidencebuilding measures. This has been a deliberate decision. After ties between India and Pakistan sank to a new low following 26/11, it was agreed that bilateral talks would resume without mention of the event and its investigation, which would carry on separately. This was a magnanimous gesture by the Manmohan Singh government, building on Atal Bihari Vajpayees example, to work with Pakistans civilian government, despite provocation from the terror apparatus it has little con-

As India and Pakistan bridge the trust deficit, why does the media remain so off-message?
trol over. However, the media was having none of this diplomatic slo-mo affair. It wanted the Abu Jundal question answered to its satisfaction, and kept returning to it despite Jilanis statement that terrorism was a common threat to both India and Pakistan... If we blame each other like this, it will have no benefit. Worse, the questions at the press conference assumed a hostile us-and-them tone we Indians wronged by you Pakistanis. This media belligerence is markedly at odds with the larger bilateral endeavour, and changed circumstances. India and Pakistan do not harp on the core issue, be it defined as Kashmir or terrorism. Both have inched towards greater economic engagement. Pakistans civilian administration deserves credit for investing in these moves, and managing the army to make this cooperation possible. What then does the media think it is achieving by savaging a couple of hapless diplomats?

Paper swords

AST week, the RBI released the latest balance of payments data for India. This data highlights the grim economic situation faced by the country. Unless corrective steps are immediately taken, the problem could quickly turn into a bigger disaster. It could mean further rupee depreciation, stress on balance sheets of companies who have borrowed in dollars, a higher import bill, difficulties for banks whose clients have borrowed in dollars, higher inflation as the price of tradables rises, and capital flight from India. The data shows that for the year 2011-12 India ran a current account deficit of 4.2 per cent of the GDP. This is the first time India has run such a large current account deficit. It means that India overspent to the extent of $78 billion during the year. In the last quarter of the year, from January to March 2012, the current account deficit had risen to 4.5 per cent of the GDP. In these three months alone, India overspent to the tune of nearly $22 billion. The main sources that financed this overspending were portfolio flows of $14 billion and dissaving through depletion of reserves by $5.7 billion. In the coming quarters we cannot expect these two to be the stable sources to fund our overspending. Many observers argue that FDI is a stable source of funding. But during the period in which there has been a crisis in international banking and poor investment sentiment, and lack of FDIrelated reforms in India, many foreign firms have pulled money back. In recent years, foreign firms repatriated money from India. This reached a high of $10.7 billion in 2011. The above data is till March 2012. The period April to June 2012 has been equally difficult. Although the balance of data for this period is not available yet, the volatility in the exchange rate mar-

Losing the balance

Fixing exchange rates only tackles the symptoms of the brewing BoP crisis
ILA PATNAIK
ket reveals the supply demand mismatches in the foreign exchange market. What happens to the rupee may be good for some and bad for others, but that is only part of the story. A sharp depreciation gives us information on how the economy is behaving. It tells us what investors feel about the country. It informs us about how households and firms value Indian assets. One view of the large current account deficit is that it is driven by gold imports, and is thus not truly a current account deficit as gold is an asset. So the money spent on gold imports should be treated as a capital account outflow rather than an outflow on the current acsmaller. In principle, there can be little disagreement with such an accounting change. However, the discussion above misses out on one important story. It ignores the question of why there has been a sudden fall in bank deposits and an increase in gold purchase by Indian households in the last one year. It ignores the message this gives us on what households feel about the value of the rupee. If we ignore this story, we do not take into account the problem of inflation and the household response to it, and the implications for the balance of payments. Recently, the finance ministry announced a number of measures

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The fundamental problems causing Indias balance of payments crisis are well known. On the current account, the country faces a twin deficit situation a large fiscal deficit spilling over into a large current account deficit. On the capital account, the inflow of foreign capital has become highly unstable.
count. Buying gold is like buying an international asset. If central banks buy US treasury bills (Tbills) with the dollars they buy when they intervene in foreign exchange markets because they feel that US T-bills are liquid, risk free and a good inflation hedge households feel that gold has similar properties and is suitable for them as an asset. When a central bank buys US T-bills, they are an asset for the country. Similarly, when households buy gold, if we treat it as an asset and move the entry to the capital account, the assets and liability sides match and the current account deficit looks that would increase the flow of capital into the economy. Most of those measures made it easier for India to borrow for her overspending. There were no corrective steps on how India will reduce the overspending. In addition, the RBI has asked oil companies to buy dollars directly from banks. This means it doesnt want the rupee-dollar exchange rate to be determined in the foreign exchange market. Even if the rupee becomes more stable after these steps, does it mean that we would have addressed the basic problem? We would only have tried to hide the bad news and made it easier to go into denial mode. Hiding the bad

news will allow us to continue longer with unsustainable policies. This way the problem with only grow bigger. The fundamental problems that are causing Indias balance of payments crisis are well known by now. On the one hand, on the current account, the country faces a twin deficit situation a large fiscal deficit spilling over into a large current account deficit. At the same time, spending on the most import-intensive consumption item, oil, does not fall even when the rupee price of oil changes as firms and households do not face higher prices, thanks to a product subsidy. Inflation has undermined the value of the rupee, and households have moved towards gold where again additional demand is met through imports. On the other hand, on the capital account, the inflow of foreign capital has become highly unstable. The global economic situation was bad enough with European banks deleveraging and foreign portfolio investors flipping between risk-on and riskoff mode after the crisis in the US and Europe. We added to our woes by announcing the GAAR, violating rule of law through the Vodafone tax issue, stalling large projects, proposing investor unfriendly policies and killing the India growth story. Given the past experience Manmohan Singh and his advisor, C. Rangarajan, have with a balance of payments crisis, it can be hoped that there is a change in the manner in which the BoP problem is handled in the coming months. Instead of killing the messenger, in this case, the exchange rate of the rupee, and hiding the problem, the government will need to address the disease and not its symptoms. The writer is a professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Delhi
express@expressindia.com

EDITOR
MANPREET BADALS Parties to democracy (IE, July 5) correctly points out that regional parties are gaining prominence at the national level largely because the leadership of the national parties is impervious to the aspirations of their own regional leaders. This development could certainly lead to a more inclusive democracy. But some regional parties have undermined this trend by promoting their narrow agendas at the cost of national interests. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, for instance, has blocked legislation at the Centre on a number of occasions. Regional parties have to broaden their horizons if they want to be taken seriously at the national level. Satwant Kaur Mahilpur

Letters to the

Regions rising

Neighbourly ties

TRISHA GUPTA
ALEGAON is 296 kilometres from Mumbai, a dusty, nondescript place with a largely poor Muslim majority population and a power-loom weaving industry in crisis. But these are not the things most newspaper readers would know. Malegaon made headlines because of postBabri riots in 1993 and has been much discussed for a series of bomb blasts in 2006. Faiza Ahmad Khans marvellous film Supermen of Malegaon, released in five Indian cities last week, highlights a less known side of Malegaon: its obsession with cinema. Several reviewers have called Supermen a tribute to Malegaons movie-madness, and it is true that the place seems to live, breathe, dream cinema. The opening sequence splices together two images of Malegaons men: at work, operating the towns power looms, and at leisure knuckles and faces pressed up against the grills of a movie hall, waiting for the doors to open. The clicketyclack of the looms is also the ticking clock by which Malegaons labouring poor measure the time left for Friday, Jumme ke roz, when the looms shut down and the cinemas open. As one weaver says to Khan, Apni zindagi mein agar yeh nahi mila, toh tasavvuron mein dekhein (If we havent got this in life, we can see it in our imaginations). Movies are the stuff of Malegaons fantasies; they enliven the everyday. For Rs 4 you can get a Titanic kite, or a Shah Rukh Khan

Low on budget, high on joy, this little movie industry is special

one; for two rupees more you can have a Don kite, where Amitabh Bachchans new KBC avatar dwarfs his 1978 self. For Rs150, you can have your hair cut like Sanjay Dutt, back in the day when he still had hair. Even the boy performing sleight-of-hand tricks in the street has named his three pebbles Sridevi, Aishwarya Rai and Rani Mukherjee. But such film-love, fanatic as it is, would find an echo in many towns in India Anurag Kashyap pays homage to something very like it in Gangs of Wasseypur, a world where some men model themselves on Amitabh and others sing like Rekha. What makes Malegaon speHe shoots on a handicam and tells Khan he learnt angles, lighting, everything from watching English films. He got the idea of using Chroma (a digital compositing technique) from the making of section of a movie DVD. When someone in Mumbai quotes him a sum of Rs 2 lakh for the Chroma technology, he laughs a wry laugh: I can make four films in that. In 2008, when Faiza Khan filmed him, he was making Malegaon ka Superman on a budget of Rs 50,000. His costumes and green screen are made a by a local tailor, and the locals he casts acquire celebrity status. When Nasir gets an ad, the sponsors have been known to demand go ahead. In another ridiculousbut-brilliant scene, the villain announces that every Indian, buddha, bachcha aur jawaan, should be seen spitting in the streets, in restaurants, in toilets, everywhere. Because I love gandagi, he proclaims, in a deepvoiced parody of countless 80s Hindi film villains. Nasir and his colleagues know theyre amateurs, that their films will never take them beyond the video halls of Malegaon. But this knowledge coexists with a passionate commitment to making people laugh a task they take very seriously indeed. Calling these films rip-offs, it seems to me, is plain wrong. They may draw on famous characters or plots, but they bring to them a spirit and sensibility thats utterly their own. Malegaons spindly Superman, with his drawstring hanging out, serves a cinematic purpose that couldnt be more different from the Hollywood superhero movie: he emerges from his audience. As they race their bicycles to get trolley shots, Malegaons filmmakers seem to me to display more integrity and innovation than much of Bollywood. As one Mollywood fan says, We dont have the facilities but were making films, We dont have voices, but were singing. We have no weapons, but were fighting the war. And were even winning. Gupta is a Delhi-based writer and anthropologist
express@expressindia.com

Marvels of Malegaon

Folio (IE, July 4), the US and Pakistan prefer a love-hate relationship to completely severing ties. On any disagreement or clash of interests, they first take extreme positions. Eventually, when such positions become untenable, both sides soften and they come to a compromise. This game of one-upmanship could damage the interests of other stakeholders in the region. India, for one, should not be swayed by the USs mercurial behaviour when it comes to the subcontinent. We should follow a consistent policy, regardless of praise or blame. Tarsem Singh New Delhi

APROPOS The Great Game

State of affairs

PRATAP BHANU MEHTAS

And Oscar goes to...

Malegaons Superman serves a cinematic purpose that couldnt be more different from the Hollywood superhero movie: he emerges from his audience.
cial is that some of these film fans have refused to remain in the thrall of the glittering spectacles that float down from Mumbai and Hollywood. In the early 2000s, an ex-video parlour owner and occasional wedding videographer called Shaikh Nasir decided to remake Sholay with a Malegaon touch. The unexpected success of Malegaon ke Sholay, where Gabbar became Rubber and Basanti became Basmati, led to the emergence of an industry that the towns residents affectionately call Mollywood, and whose hits include Malegaon ki Shaan, Malegaon ka Rangeela and Malegaon ke Karan Arjun. Nasir has no formal training. a role for their sons. But what makes the films of Malegaon remarkable is the sensibility with which they are made. Spoken in the local zabaan, they have a sense of humour thats unabashedly silly and sometimes oddly profound. If Malegaon ki Lagaan recast the Aamir Khan colonial-era drama as a historical comedy about local power supply, the scrawny Shaikh Shafique, playing Malegaons Superman, has asthma caused by urban pollution. Gags about small-town life abound. In one scene, Superman gets a call on his Tata mobile, but as usual there are network problems. So Superman says, Wait. He flies up, and then says, Now

Pistorius, a double amputee who will run at the Olympics, epitomises its spirit at its best

HERE are few stories more compelling than that of Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter who lost both his legs before his first birthday. Pistorius, who is fitted with carbon-fibre prosthetics that look like blades earning him the moniker of Blade Runner has been selected by the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee for London 2012 for the individual 400m and 4x400m relay events. Pistorius already holds the double-amputee world records for all the sprint distances and has won three gold medals at the Beijing Paralympics in 2008. Whether Pistorius should be allowed to compete in all events, and not just those for the differently abled, has been a point of contention. Critics allege that he receives an unfair advantage from his blades, partly because they are lighter than natural legs. This argument was accepted by the International Association of

Athletics Federation in 2007, which banned Pistorius from competing against able-bodied athletes and also laid down a new rule that banned any technical device that incorporates springs... or any other element that provides a user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device. The ban was overturned in 2008 by the Court for Arbitration for Sport, which observed that the rule was a masterpiece of ambiguity. What constitutes a technical device? And how is an advantage defined? Consider, for instance, the resources and training equipment available to athletes like Michael Phelps. Are they really on a level playing field with competitors from, say, Eritrea or Uganda? The resistance to his attempts to compete as an equal throws up the question of whether it is others prejudice, more than his own disability, that stands between Pistorius and the finishing line.

article Dire states (IE, July 4) is a realistic assessment of the economic and political condition of the states. Electricity distribution and power tariffs in the states are severely flawed. The handling of law and order in several states also leaves much to be desired. Reforms are badly needed in this area. In many states, governance remains feudal and authoritarian rather than democratic. The politics of intimidation is rampant. In education, the states have failed to build centres of excellence, particularly for higher studies. Candidates with high marks in their board exams are left with nowhere to go. In fact, the root cause of all the problems may be the lack of quality education in states. Ved Guliani Hisar

US must crack down on sexual misconduct in its military on a war footing

Behind the battle lines

WORDLY WISE
Jean-Luc Godard

Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.

N INVESTIGATION by the air force into sexual misconduct at ing military prosecutors to make the final decision on cases or providits basic-training operations has identified 31 women who have ing a process for victims to appeal decisions not to prosecute. One been victimised.... area that clearly demands immediate attention is how the military Some are pressing for an overhaul of the militarys judicial punishes those who are accused or convicted of sex crimes. system that would take decisions out of the chain of command Analysis by the Service Womens Action Network of 2011 and establish civilian supervision. Its a move strenuously opDefence Department statistics showed that 10 percent of acposed by the military, which views the chain of command as cused sex offenders were never held accountable because the foundation for the order and discipline so vital to its mis- PRINTLINE they were allowed to resign. Even more startling is its findsion. The new policy involving more senior and experienced ing that one in every three convicted sex offenders was alofficers, which went into effect only last week, must be given a chance, lowed to remain in the service. So much for zero tolerance. but if it fails to produce real results, the Pentagon must not hesitate to make additional changes. Among ideas with merit are empowerFrom The Washington Post

APROPOS the editorial Not state by state (IE, June 5), while the water and power crises may need a consolidated national response, the states should be consulted on the planning and execution of all proposed schemes.Otherwise, the states might be sceptical of steps taken by the Centre to solve the problems. Another possible way to reduce the demand for resources in urban centres could be to ease the population pressure on them. This can only be done by creating job opportunities in rural areas. Educational hubs should also be created outside the metros. M.K.Mahapatra Pune

The bigger picture