EXPRESS

HEN news came that John Kennedy had been shot, I was in my office in University of California at Berkeley. There was also the news that Lyndon Johnson had been shot as well. I tried to recall the order of succession. If the President and Vice President are dead, the next in line was the Speaker of the House John McCormack and then the President pro tem of the Senate Carl Hayden who was ninety. As it happened, the rumour turned out to be false and Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President. Having a written Constitution, the US has a precise order of succession to the Presidency in case of a vacancy between elections. India has a written Constitution but Westminstertype politics. The most important executive position of the Prime Minister has no written rules for succession but there is an assumption that British rules will be followed whereby whoever is elected as the Leader of the majority party is called by the Presi-

OPINION 11
dent to form the Government. A very uncertain picture emerges as to what the rules are in India. To be fair, so far the succession issue has only confronted the Congress, which has had to deal with four major transitions. In the first two, Nehru in May 1964 and Shastri in January 1966, the Westminster procedure was followed to the letter. The senior Cabinet minister, Gulzarilal Nanda, was made interim Prime Minister and then the parliamentary Congress Party proceeded to elect a successor. In 1964 it was Shastri, thanks to the Syndicate of Kamaraj, SK Patil and Atulya Ghosh who twisted arms and asked Morarji Desai to relent. In 1966, when Shastri suddenly died of a heart attack in Tashkent, the Syndicate again moved in and Indira Gandhi was elected after a short interval Nanda was again interim PM. It is this exemplary procedure

JULY 8, 2012

Succession Rites
out of my

MIND

Meghnad Desai
which seems to have got Pranab Mukherjee in trouble. After Indira Gandhis assassination, gossip goes that Rajiv Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee were flying back from Calcutta to Delhi. Apparently Rajiv asked Pranab what should happen now. Pranab seems to have given the correct reply that the senior Cabinet member should be made interim Prime Minister before the election of a new leader. This seems to have been misunderstood as Pranabs bid for power as he was the senior Cabinet minister then. If true, we must record this as the first instance of dynasty

politics in India. Rajiv Gandhi perhaps presumed succession, which his mother never did on either of the two occasions when she could have done. When Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991, Congress again did not follow the procedure of the first two successions. The leaders tried to implement dynasty rule but Sonia Gandhi refused the Crown. Then again the Party had to fall back on its own devices. The story goes that the Vice President Shankar Dayal Sharma was offered the Presidency of the Congress Party and hence the Prime Ministership. He declined pleading his age being against the hard work of a PM. It was then apparently that Narasimha Rao was chosen. Two anomalies have to be noted. By now the presidency of the Congress is synonymous with leadership of the parliamentary party which was

not the case when Nehru died. These positions were separate as is often the case in many parties. Secondly no formal election with rival candidates was held. The last innovation was made in 2004 by Sonia Gandhi in declining Prime Ministership while retaining the Party Leadership. Dr Manmohan Singh was chosen to be Prime Minister on her recommendation by the President. Thus in India, the rules of succession are still in flux. The danger of informal rules is that they can be challenged as it happens at the State level frequently. Congress has decided that there has to be unanimity rather than a contested election. This may prove unhealthy in the long run. Indeed, Morarji Desais resentment at being deprived of his chance to contest may have been at the root of the 1969 break up of the Congress. The defection of NCP is another example. It may be time to get back to formal rules as and when the situation next arises. Congress cannot afford another break up.

thinking ALOUD
Sudheendra Kulkarni

inside

TRACK

Coomi Kapoor

Wedding jamboree
BJP President Nitin Gadkari picked a bad month for his sons wedding. Because of Delhis sweltering heat, the reception had to be held indoors in the Ashoka Hotel convention hall which was quite a squeeze. If the weather had been cooler, a football field would have been more suitable for the venue because of the number of guests. The whos who of the BJP was present at the function. It was noticeable that Narendra Modi did not go up to the table where L K Advani and Sushma Swaraj were sitting. Sonia Gandhi stayed away, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came to greet the couple as did numerous non-BJP leaders. Industrialists who showed up included the Hinduja brothers, Ambanis, Ruias, Jindals and Mittals. There was also a large turnout of party workers.

that after Nehrus death, the two politicians in the reckoning for the PMs post were Lal Bahadur Shastri and Morarji Desai. Shastri believed he could defeat Desai but not Indira Gandhi if she were in the race. To avoid a contest, he asked Nayar, who had formerly been his information officer, to suggest to Desai that the ideal candidate to head the government would be Jayaprakash Narayan. Shastri asked Nayar to carry a message to Desai, proposing that both of them back out and let either Narayan or Gandhi be the prime ministerial nominee. Desai turned down the suggestion describing JP as a confused person and dismissing Gandhi as that chit of a girl.

In solidarity

FORMER Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister K Rosaiah has been governor of Tamil Nadu for the last eight months but he has spent less than half his time in the state. Instead, he is constantly touring Andhra. In fact, when the PM visited Chennai recently, Rosaiah was not there. Rosaiah is still dabbling in Andhra politics. According to official guidelines, a governor is supposed to leave his state only once in six months and if he wants to move out more frequently, he has to get special permission from the President. Former presidents R Venkataraman and KR Narayanan were sticklers about the rule but president Pratibha Patil does not interfere in Rosaiahs travels. US ambassador to India Nancy Jo Powell is no stranger to the sub-continent. She has been ambassador to Pakistan and Nepal. Her previous assignments in India were as consul general in Kolkata and political counsellor at the US embassy in New Delhi. Guests to her residence are charmed by her informal, approach and her fondness for Indian attire. At her dinners, Powell has been known to show up in a salwar-kameez and chappals and serve her guests chicken tikka curry. VETERAN journalist Kuldip Nayars autobiography, Beyond the Line, which is to be released next week, has many nuggets of historical information. For instance, Nayar recalls

Non-resident governor Still untouchable

AT Gadkaris sons wedding reception, attendance from his home state cut across party lines. Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan flew down for the wedding as did several of his Cabinet colleagues, including Chhagan Bhujbal. Former CMs Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sushilkumar Shinde and Ashok Chavan came for the reception and so did NCP chief Sharad Pawar. Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray had attended the Nagpur reception.

Going native

WHEN the MoS in the PMO V Narayanasamy was asked by the media how a secular party like the Congress could share the same platform as the communal Shiv Sena for the presidential election, he merely said, You better ask Pranab Mukherjee. Actually, it was Sharad Pawar and a Mumbai-based businessman who managed the Sena support. Although the Sena was the first NDA ally to back Mukherjees candidacy, the Congress continues to treat it as untouchable. In contrast, the Congress is keen to cultivate the JD(U) and wean it away from the NDA. The Sena was not asked to file nomination forms for Mukherjee. In contrast, two ministers went to Sharad Yadavs house to obtain his signature. Mukherjee also called on Yadav to thank him. IN his soon to-be-released posthumous memoirs, A Grain of Sand in the Hourglass of Time, Arjun Singh has confirmed he fled Bhopal hours after the gas from the Union Carbide factory left a trail of death. His detractors have always accused the then CM of Madhya Pradesh of disappearing from the city the next morning. Gas nikli adhi raat, Arjun bhaga ratoon raat was a slogan in the following election in the state. In his autobiography, Singh has claimed he flew to Allahabad the next morning to pray for moral courage at the chapel of his school, St Marys Convent. But surely providing relief and assistance was more important than prayer at that crucial juncture?

Prayer no answer

Between the lines

ON the day that the Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan met in Delhi last week, I had a personal cross-border encounter that left me worried about whether there can ever be peace with the Islamist republic next door. I use the word Islamist consciously because I believe we will not be able to talk to Pakistan purposefully until we first understand that the mindset of that country has gone from Islamic to Islamist. I say this with sadness because as a proud Punjabi, whose origins lie on that side of the border, I have always believed that the innate pragmatism and sense of humour of the average Punjabi would eventually vanquish the militant mullahs and military men who have poisoned the air of Pakistan. I believe this less today. My cross-border encounter happened on Nidhi Razdans show. I was in the NDTV studio in Delhi with two Indian panelists and from Pakistan she invited a former air vice marshal called Shahzad Choudhury and a former diplomat called Akram Zaki. When Nidhi asked my view on the talks between the foreign secretaries held that morning I told her truthfully that I believed 26/11 was an act of war, and should not be discussed as mere terrorism, since we have confirmation that Pakistani military men were involved in planning it. On the Indian side we agreed about the need for justice to be done to bring closure to 26/11. The Pakistani panelists disagreed belligerently. The former air vice marshal said how long will you continue milking 26/11 which was so offensive a remark that it left little room for sweet talk. I said I was disgusted but in a po-

Peace with Islamists

fifth

COLUMN
Tavleen Singh
lite tone but it was not polite enough for the Pakistani diplomat. He started yelling that they wanted only to talk about the future and not the past and had not come to talk to people stuck in 2008. One of them then accused the Indian Home Minister of deliberately sabotaging the talks by bringing up Abu Jundal. Is there any point in talking to Pakistan until the wise denizens of South Block first recognise that this country has changed? It has become a country in which most ordinary people believe that Islamism is the solution to their problems. Last week, a deranged man was burned alive by a mob in Bhawalpur because they suspected him of burning a Koran. When the police tried to shelter him in a police station the mob attacked the police station and dragged their victim out. The ideology of Islamism has certain fundamental rules and the first is that you must kill those you think have insulted the Prophet Mohammed or the Koran. The second is that you must hate Americans, Jews and Hindus and blame them for causing all the trouble in the Islamic world. You then have to accept that the only way for peaceful coexistence in the world is for Islam to prevail. In a Pakistani context what is frightening is that my old friend, Imran Khan, who hopes to become the next prime minister of his benighted country, shares this worldview and regularly blames everything that has gone wrong in his country

on America. What is even more disturbing is his choice of friends. He shares the stage with such vicious Islamists as Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Lieutenant General Hamid Gul. When General Gul was head of the ISI in the late eighties he started the process of exporting jihadi terrorism to India and when I met him some years ago proudly admitted creating the Taliban. So if polls in Pakistan indicate that Imran Khan has the support of more than seventy per cent of the population what does it tell us? It should tell us a great deal. But, the high officials who make foreign policy in South Block are impervious to changes on the ground, so our response to Pakistan is to carry on as usual. There will be another round of talks between our foreign secretaries soon and then at some point in the not too distant future our Prime Minister will go to Islamabad on a mission of peace and we will continue fooling ourselves into believing that what happened on 26/11 was just another terrorist incident. Only when we recognise that it was an act of war will we begin to start evolving a new strategy to do to deal with the Islamist republic next door. Of course, the process of dialogue must continue but we must talk from a position of strength and it must be dialogue on our terms because in this ugly, cowardly war India is the victim. Islamists do not fight wars on battlefields against armed soldiers they fight them in the streets of cities against unarmed women and children because they believe that Allah is on their side.
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh

from the discomfort

ZONE
MADE in India is still to acquire an inspirational platform globally. Post economic reforms 22 years ago, foreign companies came in with global expertise and knowhow. They suddenly roused the economy with inflow of investment. They outsourced ITES supplied by lowcost human trade and India gained the reputation of having a knowledge industry. Yet the country does not have a value-driven brand thats recognised globally. China, earlier known for cheap quality, today puts its Made in China manufacturing signature on the worlds most coveted, inspirational brand like Apple. This means Made in China has become global standard for even sophisticated products today. Korea too, insignificantly tucked away in northern Asia, has done a phenomenal job of mesmerising the world with its brands, making Samsung, LG, Hyundai among others,

Rote learning versus inventive application

pattern into expressive delivery excellence. The learning-by-rote culture has not de-scaled in India. As per a McKinsey study, a very high percentage of educated professionals are not qualified for high-end jobs. They comprise 75 per cent of engineering graduates, 85 per cent of finance and accounting professionals and 90 per cent of professionals with other degrees. This means that only a few educational institutes equip students for professional competence. Only 3 per cent Indian academics publish research papers in science as opposed to 60 per cent US academics. Before liberalisation, the Indian market was demand-less, that is, the saving mentality was on. Post 1991, sudden economic power created the shift to a demand-led market with tremendous choice offered by foreign players. So clearly, an opportunity was there for value addition but Indian Industry did not take it up. Again the root of this can be traced to rote learning as that pollutes the foundation of learning and does not allow people to be inventive in any situation. A value-led market can only be created by a learning system that calls for analysis and encourages following a process for problem solving by individual innovative expression. Most Indian enterprises are more focused on and feel comfortable spending money on tangible assets rather than taking risks in greenfield areas. But the market opportunity here has brought in global companies in droves. Theyve set benchmarks, even changed our purchase-and-usage pattern. Even the luxury retailing market, quite unknown earlier, is growing by 30 per cent today. The luxury sector was Rs 310 billion in 2010 and is pegged to be Rs 807 billion by 2015. Smaller cities are also becoming hubs for luxury brands which are adapting to Indian conditions. For festive gifting, luxury brands are combining local and cultural elements into their own creations. French luxury brand Hermes, best known for its Rs 19,182 plain white T-shirts and Rs 5,48,550 handbags, entered Indian with a line of fancy saris. Hermes expects to launch a perfume specific to India too. In practical business, people in India very clearly become highly inventive where rote learning does not work. Driving in crowded Indian streets and off-roads with one leg continuously on the brake and a hand on horn against all international conventions is an example. When I ask people why they drive in the middle of the road, the answer is that both sides have to be kept as walking paths. Theres the famous inventive use of the washing machine in busy roadside dhabas of Punjab. Instead of putting clothes in it, they efficiently churn buttermilk or yoghurt in bulk for making delicious, frothy lassi in a jiffy. So clearly theres no dearth of intelligence, but the education system where rote learning reigns supreme makes it very difficult for qualified executives to drive business through inventive application. When a country is highly driven by rote learning, breaking the education mold is the only avenue for inventive application. Already the education market is growing at 14 per cent and here too foreign institutions are tying up with Indian colleges to offer different education programmes. Focus on employability education is being attempted in a few schools, colleges and universities across India. Industry needs to strengthen executive education so that they can create a value-led market.

Shombit Sengupta
household names in every country. None of all these advancements has happened with any fundamental innovation. They are all examples of outstanding application work. They have been executed with hard work, elegance, high quality and innovative customer interface. Indias basic education and professional learning system is driven by memorisation or learning by rote which hampers the thirst for inventive application. Mechanical mugging is done through mug books or a series of questionand-answer publications that show the way to score high on written exams. Learning by heart has been a malaise in China too where 6 million students take exams every year. Yet they have been able to emerge from it to create value differentiation in the market. Discipline, process and creativity have played their roles proving that China has gone beyond the learning-by-rote

Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top management. Reach him at www.shiningconsulting.com

MY second visit to Afghanistan in 1989 gave me an opportunity to travel to the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, famous for the Blue Mosque or the Shrine of Imam Ali. I was flying Afghanistans national airline Ariana, a derivative of Aryan, which shows the countrys cherished link to its pre-Islamic past. As our plane flew over the Bamiyan region, my interpreter, an official in Afghanistans foreign ministry, said to me: Look out the window at the valley below. We have the worlds tallest statue of the Buddha there. I asked him if his countrymen were proud of Afghanistans pre-Islamic history. Why not? Its as much a part of our history and identity as Islam is. Twelve years later, after the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan, the awe-inspiring Buddha statues at Bamiyan, which had been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, were dynamited by Islamist extremists. Why? Because, they said, idols are forbidden in Islam. It was a war on heritage. A heritage that belonged not only to Afghanistan but to the entire humanity. All of UNESCOs World Heritage Sitesindeed, all pieces of artistic and cultural heritage anywhere on this planetare the common assets of the human race. Another war on heritage is now being waged in distant Timbuktu, a fabled city in Mali in West Africa. And the target of this war is not some non-Islamic statue or shrine. Rather, several mausoleums of venerable Muslim saints were destroyed last week by hordes of armed Islamist attackers crying Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest). Why? Because erecting tombs in memory of saints, they claimed, is idolatry. Never mind that generations of devoutly Muslim Malians have revered their saints, buried under these centuries-old tombs, which display the unique beauty of desert architecture. The order to blast Bamiyan Buddhas had come from the Taliban leader Mullah Omar, an ally of al-Qaeda. In Timbuktu, the attack was carried out by the Islamist fighters from Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), which too has links to al-Qaeda. UNESCO has condemned the destruction of these heritage sites as a war crime. Indeed, in view of the continuing violence, it has listed Timbuktu, famous as a City of 333 Saints, as an endangered site. But does al-Qaeda care? Islam is supreme, Ansar Dine spokesman Sanda Ould Boumama stated when asked about the outpouring of anger over the destruction of the mausoleums. All of this is haram (forbidden in Islam). We are all Muslims. UNESCO is what? He further said the group was acting in the name of God and would destroy every mausoleum in the city. All of them, without exception. On a positive note, the destruction of Timbuktus spiritual-cultural heritage has met with protest from many people in Mali itself. No to imported Islam; Yes to the Islam of our parents, read a banner at one of the protest events. That lineNo to imported Islam; Yes to the Islam of our parentscarries a strong resonance in the Indian subcontinent and also in South-East Asia. Observers of the religious landscape in this region know that a highly intolerant, exclusivist and extremist interpretation of Islam, backed by petro-dollars, is being exported by Saudi Arabia. This has wrought havoc not only in Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia, where native Islam differs significantly from Saudi Islam. True, the imperialist military interventions, first by the now-extinct USSR and later by the US, are primarily responsible for Afghanistans prolonged agony. However, the poisonous impact of Wahabbism and other extremist sects, which are torchbearers of religious imperialism, cannot be belittled. Their influence has also grown immensely in Pakistan, whose military rulers have often protected, patronised and used extremist and terrorist groups for their delusionary geo-political designs. How extremism has endangered Pakistans own social and cultural fabric is candidly described in the following excerpt from a July 2 editorial (Heritage under attack) in The News, a prominent Pakistani newspaper. For Pakistanis, weary of their own battles against extremism, there is more than a passing whiff of dj vu about such attacks (in Timbuktu). Over the years extremists, influenced by a highly puritanical strand of religion that sees shrines and mausoleums as idolatrous, have targeted dozens of religious structures across the country, including some of the most venerated. Among the shrines targeted are the Data Darbar in Lahore, Abdullah Shah Ghazis shrine in Karachi, Rehman Babas tomb near Peshawar, Sakhi Sarwar near Dera Ghazi Khan, the shrine of Bari Imam in Islamabad, and many, many more....Mali may seem like another world to us. (But) it is time to at least speak out against these wanton attacks. We in India shouldnt commit the folly of thinking that the trouble in Timbuktu, a synonym in popular consciousness for some far-away place, doesnt concern us. Indias history is replete with egregious instances of idol-breaking, inspired by the same extremist mindset that is now behind the religious-cultural cleansing in Kashmir, including the cleansing of its sacred Sufi ethos. That mindset also provides the motivation for the 26/11 type of terrorist attacks. My closing thought is this. Extremism of one type cannot be countered by extremism of another type. Hindu extremism isnt the answer to Talibanisation of Islam. It is the common duty of Hindus and Muslims to resolutely shun religious intolerance, hatred and violence. If we succeed in doing so, if we protect peace, harmony, and spiritual diversity and freedom, India will have made a sterling contribution to religious reform all over the world in the decades to come.
sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com

Bamiyan, Timbuktu...next?

ROUGHCUT

E. P. UNNY