On nuclear deal, India’s communists move from “No” to “Maybe”

India’s communists, who had threatened to scuttle its coalition government with the Congress party over the nuclear deal with the US, is now softening its stance. The Left, which had earlier said that the government should not operationalize the deal, including negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is now saying that the government can go ahead and negotiate with the IAEA, provided it does not finalize an agreement.

Communist Party of India (CPI) General Secretary A B Bardhan told Indian TV channel NDTV that the government could go to the IAEA, the UN's atomic body as long as they don't finalize any agreement, according to this report.

Now why should the Indian government and the IAEA go ahead and negotiate, when according to the Left there can be no deal ?

Clearly what the Left seems to be saying at this point is that in the interest of holding together the coalition government it may eventually go along the whole hog with the Congress on the nuclear deal with the US.

The reasons for the Left’s stance are quite obvious. One, it does not want to bring down the government. Traditionally its fear of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and other rightist parties have made it gloss over the flaws of the Congress party. Secondly, the Left’s opposition to the nuclear deal, and the underlying anti-American sentiment, has also not gone down well in the West. The Left, particularly in West Bengal, has been assiduously cultivating an image of being pro-business and investor friendly. So after the initial knee-jerk anti-American reflex, pragmatism has evidently got the better of the Left.

Even as the Left now finds it politically expedient to go along with the Congress on the nuclear deal, some of the substantial issues it raised against the 123 Agreement remain. These pertain to long-term national interests, and the Left cannot abandon them for its short-term political gains and for US investment in West Bengal.

As pointed out in an earlier blog, the Indo-US nuclear deal was flawed from the start.

I refer to “United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act” of 2006, which in fact forms the legal framework for the proposed 123 agreement, and was was devised to exempt a nuclear cooperation agreement with India from certain requirements of the Atomic Energy of 1954.

The Act does not however entirely protect India’s right to take decisions on its own on its non-civil nuclear program. It states for example that “a determination and any waiver under section 104 shall cease to be effective if the (US) President determines that India has detonated a nuclear explosive device after the date of the enactment of this title”. So if India detonates a device, the 123 Agreement goes up in smoke, and India will have to return nuclear fuel and other technology it obtained under the agreement.

So the 123 Agreement, in effect places limits on India’s ability to pursue a military nuclear program. When deciding to support the Agreement, the government and the communists should hence weigh the benefits for India’s civilian nuclear program against the risks for its military program. There may be no point in arguing that US supplies to India's civil program will free nuclear resources for use in the defense program, if the defense program is itself circumscribed by US rules.

That we take the right call on this becomes all the more important in the wake of instability and unpredictability in Pakistan, which has nuclear bombs, and also China’s own nuclear arsenal.

Related article:

The Indo-US nuclear deal was flawed from the start

American self-esteem in a flat world

I recall sitting with an American friend at a top-notch restaurant in Bombay (now called Mumbai) in the early 1990s. At a table close to us were some Indian female models. My American male friend boasted that he could pick up one of them anytime. “ They will certainly join me if they know I am an American,” he added very casually.

In Taipei, a couple of years later, a Taiwanese girl was chatting animatedly with an Indian. We were all part of a large multinational group. An American, whose amorous interest in the Taiwanese girl was well known, was overheard from the other end of the table, “What does she see in that guy ? He is only a bloody Indian”.

First world self-perceptions of invincibility are taking hard knocks in Asia and around the world. All the top US companies, including IBM and Intel, had Americans or Europeans in top positions in Asia, and many of them enjoyed a position and lifestyle akin to colonial viceroys of yore.

Today not only are most of the top positions occupied by Asians, but Asians are occupying top positions in the US as well. Now Cisco plans to have 20 percent of its top management in India, most of whom will be hired locally.

Why was the American knocked off from the pedestal. I think it was the boom in the Asian economies, and dollops of national pride in these countries. The resurgence in national pride started in the early 1990s in countries like Malaysia, which admired the American model, but did not see the need to be pliant to Americans.

As local markets grew, it became quite clear to multinational companies that they had to adapt and get more inclusive, appoint local bosses. After a number of abortive joint ventures with American and European companies, Asian companies also saw the virtues of going it alone. In a radical shift in attitudes, that reflected the economic success of Asia, companies in China, India, and rest of Asia started to be wooed by Americans and Europeans for business.

Offshore outsourcing also tore into the American veil of invincibility. The American’s job could be done as well, if not better and more cheaply in Asia. There were brainy guys there too, as was evident from the large number of Indian and Chinese engineers who made it big globally.

Attitudes towards the American and America has also changed to a large measure in Asia. The greenback lost its sheen to local currencies, some of which were only getting stronger. If earlier, educated people from Asia made a beeline to the US for jobs, now there is a queue back as the local economy is generating jobs that are lucrative in the local context. To be sure there are those for whom living in America is still the ultimate dream, but these are getting fewer by the day.

YouTube sued in India for copyright infringement

Google Inc. and many Internet companies hold that they cannot be held liable for whatever happens on their video sharing and social networking sites. Telephone companies aren't held liable if people plan a murder over the telephone, so why should Internet companies, according to Google.

An Indian company, the makers of the T-Series music and videos, thinks otherwise. It has sued Google and YouTube for allegedly infringing its copyrights, as a lot of its copyrighted content is claimed to be available without permission on YouTube. A court in Delhi has passed an interim restraining order on Google and YouTube which would require YouTube to pull down all content on their site that could be in infringement of T-Series' copyrights, according to this report in InfoWorld.

Google has been pushing for an amendment to section 79 of the Indian Information Technology Act 2000 that will remove the liability of network service providers for content posted by users. The current version of section 79 requires that the network service provider prove that the offense or contravention was committed without their knowledge or that they had exercised all due diligence to prevent the commission of such offense or contravention.

Interestingly, T-Series seems to have filed the case under the Indian Copyright Act, and not under the Information Technology Act, according to this blog. The lawyer for T-Series is quoted by Infoworld as saying that YouTube is not a neutral intermediary but a web site that makes money from clicks on advertising on its site.

The dispute between Internet sharing sites and media companies is unlikely to get resolved anytime soon. There have however been moves by companies like NBC Universal and Walt Disney and other media companies who announced last month a set of guidelines for user-generated content (UGC) services, without infringing copyrights. Among the measures proposed is the implementation of filtering technology with the goal to eliminate infringing content on UGC services, including blocking infringing uploads before they are made available to the public. Google was not among these companies, though MySpace was part of the annoucement.

Google seems to be worried that too much control may make sharing and social networking sites less popular. The issue is about how much of control. The media companies are willing to allow fair use of copyrighted content, which is what is required for the flowering of creativity around orginal content. Lowering controls beyond that would be a license for illicit use of copyrighted content.

Just as media companies want to push for copyright enforcement on networking and sharing sites, there is a section of government and society in India that is pushing for greater control over what gets posted on these sites. The offer by Google and other Internet companies to pull down objectionable material post-facto is not seen as good enough. If there can be filters to prevent uploading of copyrighted material, why can't tech savvy companies come up with filters for pornography for example. Google should listen rather than play the same old tune of intermediary neutrality.

Related article:

Google says don’t shoot the messenger

Pakistan developments a threat to India

India has responded with diplomatic propriety to the imposition of emergency on Saturday in Pakistan. Terming as "unfortunate" the developments in Pakistan where emergency has been declared, Defense Minister, A K Antony, on Sunday said a stable government in Islamabad was good for that country as well as for India, according to this report in The Hindu newspaper.

Indian officials are however in private worried about the impact of the emergency on the Talibanization of Pakistan, and the overall growth of fundamentalism in that country.

The imposition of emergency rule, and the marginalization of both political parties and institutions like the judiciary, leaves Pakistan in a political vacuum that the fundamentalists will try to fill.

The fundamentalist elements, besides targeting Afghanistan, will also target India, stepping up its demand for an independent Kashmir. Kashmir is now partially under Pakistani control with the rest of the territory under Indian control.

The Indian government has maintained in the past that terrorist attacks in India were often perpetrated by Pakistanis with support from intelligence agencies and the military in Pakistan. The intelligence agencies were also accused of running training camps for separatists.

The fundamentalists in Pakistan are likely to attempt to move beyond the Kashmiri separatist agenda to a broader fundamentalist agenda in India. India has a large Muslim population who the fundamentalists in Pakistan would want to bring to their fold.

The other danger is that fundamentalists have already infiltrated the army and the intelligence agencies in Pakistan. While Musharraf’s government continues to receive US aid, positioning itself as an ally in the “war against terror”, the army and the intelligence agencies may subvert his agenda, and give the terrorists a wink and a nod both for their activities in North West Frontier province, and in Kashmir and the rest of India.

In an interview to ABC News, former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto said: “There's a very slim line between what are called Musharraf's people and the terrorists who tried to kill me in Karachi”. Here is a link to the interview.

India’s options are few. As in the past its view will not count in international diplomacy as long as the US is intent on backing Musharraf. Pakistan was viewed by the US as an ally against terror, even though India had frequently expressed concerns about Pakistan stoking cross-border terrorism.

What Pakistan does in Kashmir does not concern the US a lot, as it is not seen as an important theatre in its war against terror. The US is concerned about the presence of Al Qaeda in the North West Frontier province, and there Musharraf holds the cards.

Related articles:
US support to Pakistan unaffected after martial law
US impotent before “buddy” Musharraf

Why Turkey should not cross the border into Iraq

Turkey’s proposed invasion of Iraq to flush out terrorists could provide a dangerous precedent for other countries handling separatist terrorist movements.

Just as the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan to flush out the Taliban, who were protecting Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, it would at first blush appear reasonable that the Turkish army crosses the border into Iraq and flushes out terrorists from the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK) who are using Iraq as a base for terrorist attacks into Turkey.

The Turkish government is under pressure from its citizens to cross the border. The country has a significant Kurdish population, which by some estimates is as high as 20 percent. The PKK aims to establish a separate Kurdish state in a territory (traditionally referred to as Kurdistan) consisting of parts of southeastern Turkey, northeastern Iraq, northeastern Syria and northwestern Iran.

The Turkish people find that the PKK is operating from within the Iraqi border, with neither the self-governing Iraqi Kurds or the government in Baghdad able to, or trying seriously enough, to stop them.

However, once this policy of invasion to settle scores with terrorists is established as acceptable, it could lead to a number of wars around the world, as countries invade other countries to chase terrorists hiding there.

India could, for example, build a case to attack and flush out Kashmir separatist terrorists who take refuge in Pakistan. In fact, India claims that its has evidence that the Pakistani intelligence agencies are involved in training Kashmiri terrorists, and other Islamic fundamentalists, who then cross the border into India to kill and maim.

Kurdish terrorists from Iran have also used Iraq as a base to attack Iranian positions. So Iran may also feel justified to attack Iraq from another frontier.

An attack by Turkey into Iraq, and the consequent political disruption, could also lead to the PKK, and its separatist agenda, winning popular support among Kurds living in various countries. It could disrupt US efforts to bring the Iraqi Kurds into the country’s political mainstream, as a lot of Kurds may now see a separate nationhood as an alternative. The Kurds are already close to it in Iraq, where they already enjoy considerable autonomy.

In India, lots of spending on poor quality

Over the weekend in Bangalore, I had promised my daughter I would take her to an up market store that sold a variety of breads with exotic names and ingredients ranging from olives to sunflower seeds.

On Saturday morning, we braved the maniacal traffic and went to this place, only to find that the breads were two or three days old. The cheese-and-garlic loaf, a favorite in our household, was three days old, according to the label. An employee graciously recommended the wheat bread that was only a day old.

Close by is a Chinese restaurant that serves Indo-Chinese food, a mix of Chinese flavors and a pungent Indian idiom. The “ drums of heaven” there are usually soggy, while their noodles can be very sticky.

But the bakery and the Chinese restaurant continue to attract customers by the droves. They stand in queues outside, something unthinkable say a decade ago when most of Bangalore eat home-cooked food. A number of restaurants, with claims to offer Thai, Spanish, Italian, Provencal, Egyptian and other varieties of cuisine have also sprouted across the city. The fare is in most cases indifferent, but that does not deter customers from queuing up and paying exorbitant prices.

That had me surprised until I recalled an old, but no less relevant it seems, concept in sociology. An eminent Indian sociologist, M.N. Srinivas, observed in his field studies among one some of the communities in India, that the castes positioned lower in the hierarchy tend to imitate and modify their culture to resemble that of the dominant caste in the locality. Srinivas called the phenomenon Sanskritization, as the values and culture that tend to get imitated by the new social upstarts were the Sanskrit, Brahmanical ones.

What does this have to do with the large number of crowded restaurants and malls in Bangalore ? A lot, I think. Unlike previous upstarts, who believed that assimilating Brahmin and Sanskrit culture, rituals, and customs was key to their social climbing, the new upstarts have in a strange twist decided on American culture as the dominant culture to be imitated and assimilated.

These days Indians have wine tasting parties, to refine their taste for something they never consumed earlier. You have chefs of five-start hotels and other, usually self styled gourmands, writing in the society pages of newspapers on the finer points of rare delicacies like caviar and truffles.

A lot of affluent Indians are turning their back to their own rich and ancient traditions in food, dressing, and other aspects of culture, to a new world of mainly American kitsch. They are getting there rudderless and without discernment, creating an opportunity for a new set of consultants and purveyors of culture, most of them parvenu. Add to them snooty restaurateurs and five-star chefs. If you find the pasta sticky, don’t complain to the chef. He is more likely to turn around and tell you, without batting an eyelid, that is how pasta is eaten by the Italians. Probably he is learning too.

Maybe this is a transitional phase, but these days in Bangalore, and most of urban India, good food is a rarity, particularly if the idiom is not Indian.

Indian outsourcers have to head home

Indian outsourcing companies are facing shortages of good quality staff, particularly in the call centers and business process outsourcing businesses. The attrition rate in these two businesses can be as high as 50 percent, according to some reports.

Most staff are leaving to join other companies for better terms. But some staff are leaving because of burn-out, including the long commute time to and from work. Some others are women who leave their jobs to start a family. India’s traditional joint families, in which entire generations lived in one household, are falling apart in the cities, reducing the traditional support systems offered to new mothers.

Indian outsourcers could have access to more workers if they would allow more staff to work from home. Apart from young mothers, a lot of other categories of people, including freelancers and pensioners may be willing to join the workforce, if given the option to work from home.

In this way, the outsourcers would go a long way towards empowering a whole section of Indian society. They would also save on transporting staff to and from work, providing them meals in the campus cafeteria, and other perks employees have come to expect.

To be sure, customers will not take kindly to calls being taken from homes with the dog barking, the door bell ringing, or a child crying in the background. But once home workers see the opportunity they will make the adjustments necessary to ensure that the customer gets top quality service, undisturbed by any extraneous noises.

None of the suggestions outlined here are startlingly new. They have been tried extensively in the US and the UK. They are new in the Indian context, where surprisingly Indian and multinational services companies have been hesitant to move away from proven techniques and processes to exploring new sources of staff.

But there are still a lot of challenges going forward. Mothers and pensioners in India are less likely to own personal computers. Outsourcing companies use their computers over three staff shifts. Giving a computer to a single home worker would therefore lead to an underutilized asset. Probably companies can enter into an agreement with home workers whereby they take a computer on a bank loan, on assurance of business from the outsourcer. High quality telephone and VOIP (voice-over-Internet-protocol) links are available, and outsourcers can probably buy the capacity in bulk and distribute that out to the home workers.

The biggest sticking point is however likely to be data security, the fear that outside company monitored facilities, home workers could misuse confidential information such as credit card and social security numbers.

Companies are already masking at their facilities the data that could be used to compromise the customer. In many cases because of data security laws in their home countries, customers themselves are already filtering what information is available to a call center agent.

So outsourcing companies will probably have to rely less on physical monitoring using closed circuit TVs (CCTVs) and other technologies, and focus more on masking the data that is accessible to the home worker. There are also a lot of processes in business process outsourcing that do not require handling information that is confidential and liable to misuse.

The Indo-US nuclear deal was flawed from the start

India’s communists are these days being blamed for the failure of the implementation or “operationalizing” of the 123 Agreement that would give India access to nuclear fuel and reactor technology for civilian applications.

First, the positive side of the agreement. Although India is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), under the 123 Agreement it would get access to nuclear fuel for civilian reactors, even as it maintain a nuclear arsenal. There is a section of opinion that believes that the NPT itself is iniquitous as it perpetuates the dominance in the nuclear weapons area of countries that tested nuclear weapons before 1967.

India’s communists typically see only through ideological blinkers. They never look for the broad picture.. They stood by former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, as she trampled political rights and imposed an emergency in the country in 1975, raising the bogey of communal forces. The communists now have a knee-jerk reflex to anything proposed by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), which draws a considerable part of its support from Hindu fundamentalists.

This time over, the Congress, triggered a knee-jerk reflex, by trying to do a nuclear deal with the Americans. Through the communist blinkers, the Americans can only appear as “imperialists”.

However if we keep ideological issues out of the debate, there are still reasons for concern about the impact on India’s sovereignty from signing the 123 Agreement. Yes I am referring to the “United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act” of 2006, which in fact forms the legal framework for the proposed 123 agreement. The Act by the US was devised to exempt a nuclear cooperation agreement with India from certain requirements of the Atomic Energy of 1954.

The Act does not however entirely protect India’s right to take decisions on its own on its non-civil nuclear program. It states for example that “a determination and any waiver under section 104 shall cease to be effective if the (US) President determines that India has detonated a nuclear explosive device after the date of the enactment of this title”. Click here for the text of the Act.

What this provision in the Act means is that all the waivers extended to India could disappear at one go if India tests a nuclear device. It does not require the US to prove that fuel or technology meant for India’s civilian program was diverted to the country’s military program.

If there are doubts as to how the situation will unfold if India detonates a nuclear device, then one has to look to the 123 Agreement for the details. Click here for the text of the proposed 123 Agreement

At Article 14 of the proposed 123 Agreement, it says that “Either Party shall have the right to terminate this Agreement prior to its expiration on one year's written notice to the other Party.” So if India detonates a nuclear device, under the “United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act” of 2006, the US can, among other actions, immediately withdraw its waiver to India, and call for a termination of the 123 Agreement

“Following the cessation of cooperation under this Agreement, either Party shall have the right to require the return by the other Party of any nuclear material, equipment, non-nuclear material or components transferred under this Agreement and any special fissionable material produced through their use”, according to the 123 Agreement.

That would leave India’s civilian nuclear program starved for fuel. There have been hints that the US would in such a situation come to India’s rescue, by arranging for alternate supply from third countries.

But a country’s civilian nuclear program cannot be built on vague promises of good-will. If 123 Agreement is to go forward, the US will have to incorporate into the proposed agreement a clause stating that notwithstanding anything in earlier agreements and Acts of the US government, the supply of fuel from the US to India will not be affected by any developments in India’s military nuclear program.

By insisting that all is alright with the deal, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may be doing a dis-service to India.

Google says don’t shoot the messenger

Google Inc. is agitated that the Indian government may retain a provision in its Information Technology Act., that makes intermediaries such as ISPs (Internet Service Providers), website hosting companies, search engines, email services, social networks liable for illegal user content. See here the comments from a policy analyst at Google India.

Google has reasons to be worried about “intermediary liability”. Recently a cantankerous political party in Mumbai, called the Shiv Sena, demanded that Google’s social networking site, Orkut, should be banned in India, and prosecuted, after some users posted content considered defamatory of the party’s leader.

There is a precedent of sorts for that. In 2004, Avnish Bajaj, the then CEO of eBay’s Indian subsidiary was arrested in connection with the sale of a pornographic video clip on the online auction portal. Bajaj was arrested under the provisions of the Information Technology Act relating to intermediary liability.

I agree that intermediaries should not be held responsible for illegal content. Google’s policy analyst, Rishi Jaitly, says a telephone company is not held responsible if two people use a telephone call to plan a crime.

The argument about the telephone is specious and does not recognize that the times have changed. The content of a phone call between two housewives slandering somebody remains between the two, or if it spreads it will be a few persons at a time.

In contrast, because of the viral nature of content on the Internet, if somebody takes a young girl’s naked picture, using a spy camera, or he takes her face shot and adds someone else’s naked body to it, that picture will be all over the world in seconds.

By the time the aggrieved person discovers that it has happened, and reports it to Google, and then Google goes through its internal procedures to decide whether the content should be brought down or not, that picture will be all over the Internet, and the young lady’s honor and privacy in shambles.

Folks like Google and other Internet service providers have been pushing social networking and online communities without coming up with appropriate ways to counter misuse of these large-scale communication platforms. “It would be technologically infeasible for ISPs and web companies to pre-screen each and every bit of content being uploaded onto our platforms, especially as the amount of information coming online increases exponentially in India and around the world,” says the Google policy analyst.

Fair enough, but what this means is that technology innovation and new applications like social networking, touted as part of the brave new Web 2.0, have thrown up new problems. Like Google and a lot of other people, Indian Parliament's Standing Committee on Information Technology is also fumbling in search of a solution. Don’t blame them. Work with them, because as government they are more concerned about the individual. Perhaps the government worries that if intermediaries are not at all held liable for content, they may be more inclined to turn a blind eye to such content.

Instead Google decides to harangue the government with its self-serving view on Internet freedom and economic development. “More importantly, imposing such a burdensome standard (of intermediary liability) would crush innovation, throttle Indian competitiveness, and prevent entrepreneurs from deploying new services in the first place, a truly unfortunate outcome for the growth of the Internet in India,” says the Google policy analyst.

Internet growth is not the topmost priority for all people. More important to most of them is protecting their modesty and privacy, and that of their children.

Related article:

Internet reflects, nay amplifies social problems

Throwing computers at the digital divide won’t help

Every other multinational technology company these days has a strategy for bridging the digital divide, which in many emerging economies usually adds up to bridging the rural divide. While students and the rest of the people in the cities have access to the Internet, and consequently to information, rural economies do not, goes the story line.

The spiel continues: If only rural economies have access to the Internet, and consequently to information, that would eliminate middle men when farmers sell their produce, help farmers get the best price for their produce, ease out the village money-lender, and generally usher pastoral bliss.

Thus you have low-cost technologies like the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project's XO laptop, and Intel’s Classmate PC, and Internet Kiosks aiming at the new big market – bridging the digital divide in rural markets.

The management guru they often quote is C.K. Prahalad, author of the famous book “ The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid”, which argues that there is money to be made at the bottom of the economic pyramid as well, if only goods are packaged in the right way, and at the right price points.

There are however a number of faulty assumptions in the strategy for bridging the digital divide adopted by multinational companies for emerging economies like Brazil and India. The divide in these countries is not only digital, but fundamentally one of inequality. It covers lack of access to sanitation, housing, electricity, education, and a whole lot of other things that the elites in these countries enjoy.

Thus technology, and the information it brings, is likely to be the least among the priorities among the poor and the governments in these countries. Perhaps that is the reason why the Indian government declined to join the OLPC project. It would rather spend money on setting up more schools, and outfitting them with blackboards, benches, and inexpensive writing equipment, than invest in a laptop for each child.

Prahalad has often been misunderstood by technology pundits. The management guru was largely talking about companies re-packaging and pricing necessities and small-value luxuries for rural masses. Thus Lever introduced its shampoos in small, single-use and low-cost sachets rather than in the costlier, gigantic packs they sell to well-heeled consumers. You just can’t re-package technology in small dollops and try to pass it off as a necessity to poor users who still can’t take advantage of it because they are illiterate, and whose primary concern is still their next meal.

A more appropriate metaphor is the public call offices (PCOs) set up in both urban and rural India by the government under license to small-time entrepreneurs. These phone booths were a success for one, because it met a felt need for communications among India’s urban and rural masses. India’s rural masses often migrate to the city for work, and need to stay in touch with their family back home. They can’t write letters, because they are illiterate. So they rely on messages sent through acquaintances, and the telephone, which does not require people to be literate to use them.

Illiteracy and poverty, and not lack of access to the Internet, is one of the more pressing and urgent problems in many developing economies.

The plans by tech companies to bridge the digital divide may in fact accentuate inequalities in rural economies. The computers and the Internet, and the information that it provides, may well go to the rural elites, rather than the rural poor, who are by the way mainly illiterate.

To the middlemen already holding sway in the rural economies, the tech companies may well help add another set of middlemen – those with access to information. Throwing computers at the digital divide, besides being fruitless, could even be dangerous.

In India, killing the corner shop

When in India, if you have forgotten to pack toothpaste, or you have run out of cigarettes, you can just step out, and buy it from a small shop, around the corner. The store is usually open past 10:30 pm in the night, and if the person running the store does not have what you want, he will offer to deliver it to you.

The landscape of India’s cities and small towns are dotted by these small shops, most of them pop-and-mom outfits. They are very personalized operations that know you and your family, and may even let you pay the next day if you are short of cash, or in a hurry. They are also places for the people of the neighborhood to congregate for an evening chat.

Now these retailers feel threatened that they could be driven out of business by Western style super markets like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco who have an eye on the Indian market.

So far the Indian government has kept the foreign retail chains out of the market, by blocking foreign retail giants out of India, but local retailers already face competition from recent forays into large-scale retail business by big Indian groups like Reliance of Mumbai, which is setting up a chain of Reliance Retail stores, across the country, ahead of foreign competition.

More than 20,000 traders, farmers and shopkeepers protested on Wednesday against the entry of private retail giants like Wal-Mart into India which they say would destroy millions of livelihoods, according to a report from Reuters.

Retailers are large vote banks. Reliance too would perhaps want to delay the entry of foreign retailers until after they have their act together, and the business house has strong connections with the Indian government.

In the long-term though, the Indian market will not be able to resist the entry of multinational retail chains. What will that do to the traditional retailer ?

It seems that the corner shops will still have their traditional customer base. Folks will not drive some miles to a supermarket, and stand in serpentine queues to buy a tube of toothpaste or a pack of biscuits. Besides corner shops offer relationships that the large supermarkets do not. It is true that large supermarkets will offer loyalty cards and coupons and a variety of schemes, but that in itself will not remove the sheer convenience of the corner store.

The large multinational retail chains may however squeeze out the small retailer by a stronger control over the supply chain. Because of the volumes they will purchase, they will be able to offer the best produce from the farmers, cut off intermediaries, and generally make sure the best merchandise at the best price comes to their chain of stores. That would mean that people are more likely to do their volume purchasing at the supermarkets, to take advantage of the discounts.

Will there be enough of daily business still left over for small retailers ?

It is too early to sing an ode to the corner retail store. But the day these shops roll down shutters will be a very sad day indeed not only for the retailer but for his customers. It will be the end of a timeless tradition in the country, that served well both the retailer and the consumer.

Thoughts on Che Guevara and the cruelty of capitalism

The pain and cruelty generated by the free market and capitalism is no single person’s fault. As most people will tell you, it is the “invisible hand” more efficiently balancing supply and demand, including the demand and supply of factors of production, even if one of those factors - human beings - can often feel pain, joblessness, insecurity, and powerlessness.

The capitalist world at large absolves itself from the pain and cruelty by blaming it on “the system”. It is the way things are, and sorry you just lucked out. Sorry you lucked out and lost your job when some US companies decided to send your job to India or China, because they were only following capitalist principles of finding the lowest cost factor of production.

You could take some cold comfort in the theory that this is just a structural adjustment, and that progressively the American economy will move to higher value-added jobs, for which incidentally you were never skilled. Tell that to your hungry kids when they are whining for the food you can no longer put on the table.

The Indians and the Chinese are now on a spending spree, yes on acquired tastes like Cabernet and caviar, and all things branded. The American worker should not crib, apologists say, because they are these days buying all things American, and helping boost the US economy. Unfortunately all things American are not longer manufactured in the US, but in China.

Take ten years from now, Indian workers, including software engineers may also find their jobs on the block, as companies move to lower cost locations, or expand to other markets. Once again the theorists of capitalism will tell them that their pain, their powerlessness are only temporary effects of a structural change.

Have you ever wondered why the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara inspires many people in a vague sort of a way, even 40 years after his death ? It is not that these people support Marxism, or for that matter some of Che Guevara’s controversial actions, including his summary executions of supporters of General Fulgencio Batista in Cuba after the Marxists seized power in 1959.

Che Guevara and revolutionaries like him strike a mild sympathetic chord in many of us, because despite the odds, they did what we may never do.

Instead of being powerless victims of a cruel system, they chose to question and to overthrow the feudalism coupled with neo-capitalism in parts of South America. And they were not alone. In other countries around the world too there have been people who have stood out to fight systems that are unjust and oppressive.

Today it may be the turn of people in capitalist societies, aiming to restore their power and autonomy. As citizens, people have the right to influence the political process so that the wealth that is generated is distributed more equitably, and people are empowered.

This is not about overthrowing the capitalist system. It is not about “economic populism” which Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, says has caused many an economic disaster in Latin America. This is about moderating the system – getting governments to spend more on the welfare of their people, getting capitalism to get less rapaciously greedy, and protecting vulnerable sections of society who have neither the skills nor the capital to compete.

Take the plight of workers in capitalist economies. Currently in most of these economies, if the CEO of a company cuts staff, the company’s shares spike on the stock market, and later the CEO’s salary also jumps. The CEO can now keep fewer staff and make them work longer, many of them driven by the fear that their jobs could be lost. The CEO and his top management have benefited, and so have the shareholder, and you as the consumer. But you as a worker are out of a job, no longer able to participate in the orgy of consumption.

Do companies have to maximize profit at the expense of workers, or are they doing so mainly because a lot of industries are not unionized ? The pet argument is that if CEOs are not given the freedom to do as they please, they will lose out to competing companies. Lost in this dogma is the possibility that you can still pay and treat your people better, without making your products costlier, and still winning in the market. You can do that by shooting for reasonable profits, rather than exorbitant profits !

If the stock market would put less pressure on CEOs to generate profits, CEOs could continue to please the consumer, and yes, even the worker. CEOs may even allow trade unions and higher worker empowerment.

The cult of equity, and the celebrity status accorded to CEOs who help drive that stock up, has also translated into wide disparities between the salaries and perks of the CEO and his top management and the rest of the organization. Can’t that gap be perhaps reduced, so that the rest of the organization also benefits from capitalism ?

Apologists for capitalism will say that the key strength of capitalism is that you too can strive to be CEO. That line is cold comfort to the unemployed guy on the dole. Others will say that the outrageous salaries earned by CEOs and top management are an incentive to perform. Pray do only CEOs need an incentive to work ? What about the stiff who catches a bus or train to work each day, with nothing to look forward to except his daily routine ?

Nothing about what has been outlined so far is fool-proof. It may not work, or there may be people who don’t want it to work. But it is only by thinking of empowerment, thinking of humanizing the system, and organizing around these principles, that the process of change can begin.

Che Guevara is more than a handsome face on a T-shirt. His example dares us to dream of empowerment, of taking control of our lives.

Marxism may be dead as an ideology, but revolutionaries like Che Guevara can inspire us to think about ways of countering our powerlessness in a capitalist system.

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Free markets do not necessarily mean democracy or quality of life

Globalization is nice, but……

Most people endorse free trade, multinational corporations and free markets, but they are also concerned about inequality, threats to their culture, threats to the environment, and threats posed by immigration, depending on which country you come from.

These latest findings of the latest Pew Global Project Attitudes survey of more than 45,000 people in 47 countries are not startling, but in fact a sober confirmation of what many political analysts and economists have been saying all along. Globalization is accepted as inevitable today, and how you respond to it depends on how you are impacted by it.

Thus India and China whose economies are benefiting from large scale outsourcing of software and contract manufacturing from the US, Europe, and other countries, are positive about economic globalization. “There is near universal approval of global trade among the publics of rising Asian economic powers China and India”, reports the Pew Research Center.

In contrast, “there are signs that enthusiasm for economic globalization is waning in the West -- Americans and Western Europeans are less supportive of international trade and multinational companies than they were five years ago”, according to the survey results released October 4.

As Americans and Europeans find their jobs moving to India, as multinational companies look for lower cost locations, they are bearing the brunt of economic globalization, and they are not unexpectedly resenting it.

Even as the response to economic globalization is along expected lines, there are some worrisome pointers too. In nearly every country surveyed, people worry about losing their traditional culture and national identities, and they feel their way of life needs protection against foreign influences, according to the survey. They are also worried about immigration, and a lot of that worry comes from concerns about losing their culture and traditions, it added.

A number of authors including Benjamin R. Barber in “Jihad vs. McWorld” have said that confronting “McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce” is Jihad defined by the resurgence of “parochial identities”.

Until recently, it was thought that the re-assertion of parochial cultures and identities was primarily happening in the Middle East, Asia, and part of the Balkans, buffeted by globalization and multinational companies aiming at global homogenization and neutralizing local culture, in favor of mass-produced culture, usually of American origin.

The assertion of local identities has now spread to the West too where sections of traditional populations feel alienated and threatened by the culture of migrants. Even in the US there have been reports of small towns trying to control the expanding influence of Hispanic culture. In Germany, a proposal for a new mosque sparked of a debate on the rights of Muslim women, and the need to meld Islamic and local, predominantly Christian, culture.

Fully eight-in-ten in Italy and 72 percent in Spain agree that their way of life needs protection from foreign influence, according to Pew Research. Narrow majorities in Great Britain (54 percent) and Germany (53 percent) agree that their way of life needs protection. Opinions are almost evenly divided in France, a country famous for vigilantly protecting its language and culture, according to the survey. In the US and Canada 62 percent believe that their way of life must be protected.

Even as the world wants to be economically close knit, it still wants to be culturally separate and maintain its identity. That could potentially be a source of tension and conflict moving forward.

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Free markets do not necessarily mean democracy or quality of life

“The kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other.”
---- Milton Friedman in “Capitalism and Freedom”

Friedman’s attempts to link political freedom and free markets were belied even in his time in some economies outside the US. India, for example, had a vibrant democracy from the 1950s, even though the country had adopted a socialistic, public-ownership route to economic ownership and development.

Friedman, writes Robert B. Reich in his new book “Supercapitalism”, traveled to Chile during the rule of military dictator, Augusto Pinochet, to urge Pinochet’s junta to adopt free-market capitalism. In lectures in Chile, Friedman spoke on his pet theme – that free markets were a pre-condition to political freedom and sustainable democracy.

Pinochet took Friedman’s free-market advice, but his brutal dictatorship lasted another 15 years, according to Reich.

India has since the 1990s liberalized its economy for economic reasons, starting with a balance of
payments crisis. But the economic prosperity of the country has not reached its vast number of poor, and arguably also weakened the political process.

One of the offshoots of liberalization and the economic boom in India is that a sizeable section of the middle class, a bulwark of the country’s democracy, have got transformed into producers or consumers from their original role also as active participants in the political process.

A successful software engineer in India, for example, has neither the inclination nor the time to discuss political issues. In part the middle class may have also got alienated from the political process often by their own will, because of disgust with the rampant corruption in the political class, and a sense of “powerlessness”.

India’s neighbor China has adopted free-market principles, and is enjoying an economic boom. But this prosperity has not been coupled with political freedom and democracy. Nor has economic prosperity made democracy a more distinct possibility.

A common theme running through most free-market ideology is that markets left to themselves can solve about anything, by their ability to efficiently organize , resources, production, and consumption.

But free markets as we have found out cannot guarantee equity, or environment protection, or better quality of life. That is the work of public policy and in a democracy, policy is more likely to be influenced by citizens.

In “ Supercapitalism”, Reich, former Secretary for Labor under US President Bill Clinton, says that the US economy has been on a roll since the 1970s. Consumers have been treated to a vast array of goods like iPods, while cost of standard goods and services have declined.

However CEOs of companies cannot be counted on to be munificent, and statesmen-like as in the past. Deregulation, technology, and foreign competition have transformed the limited competition in traditional capitalism to hyper-competitiveness in a “supercapitalism”. CEOs and senior corporate executives have been instead forced by investor and consumer demands to become ruthless, profit-obsessed managers.

While consumers and investors in the US have scored big wins, this was achieved by a break down of the democratic process.

Some of the first signs of the breakdown of democracy was the weakening of the trade-unions, which was to the advantage of the individual as consumer or investor. As access to government and the ability to influence public policy becomes a competitive advantage for companies, individuals are finding themselves powerless, Reich says.

Big business is running the US as in many other countries. Contrary to Friedman’s thesis, economic and political power do not offset each other any longer, but economic power influences political power.

The answer, I think, is not in more government, but in greater, and transformed public participation in government. It is not enough to shout and be heard. You have to be able to influence. A lot of Americans, for example, oppose the Iraq war and are demanding the scaling down of US troops in Iraq, but they have not been able to influence US government policy. This is because the US, and for that matter most democracies around the world, have become once in four years, or once in five year events, when you vote or reject a government.

The need is for continuous democracy. The institutions for that will have to be created. We as citizens will have to evolve new processes for coming together as active citizens, and arriving at a consensus on issues. We will have to devise new tactics, including boycotts, protests, and demonstrations. To start with, we have to stop thinking as consumers, and start thinking about our freedom, quality of life, and issues of environment degradation and inequity.

Since only people can be citizens, only people should be allowed to participate in democratic decision making, Reich points out.

In India, like New York, a proposal for a traffic congestion tax

The Indian city of Mumbai, formerly called Bombay, may implement a kind of congestion tax. Drivers will have to pay to drive on some of the city’s key roads during peak traffic hours, the city’s traffic management consultants, Mastek say, according to a report by an Indian TV channel IBNLive.

The plan of action involves setting up cameras and scanners on major congested roads to detect the car's registration number, the TV channel reported. Special software will be used to determine the car owner, the owner will then be sent a bill based on his road usage, and electronic payment systems will be set up to make bill payment easier, it added.

Key Indian cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore are facing traffic jams and long delays because of an increase in population, and the number of vehicles on the road.

In April, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, unveiled plans for a congestion charge on cars entering the busiest parts of Manhattan. That move has been stalled by New York state legislators who hold that a congestion charge on driving in Manhattan will lead to congestion in areas around Manhattan, where people going to Manhattan will park their cars, to avoid the charge.

In Mumbai, the reduction of congestion of its main roads may also shift the burden to other parts of the city which already face heavy flow of traffic. Unlike Bangalore, Mumbai has a well-connected suburban railway system, which gives most of its residents the option of using the train rather than drive to work.

London moved to congestion charging in February 2003. The zone was extended into west London and doubled in size in April, according to a recent report in The Guardian. Other cities like Singapore and Oslo have entry tolls and other forms of congestions pricing.

Bollywood and the “stupid Indian”

A picture is worth a thousands words, goes the old saw. By that reasoning, the corrosive images coming out from Bollywood, India’s prolific cinema production industry, and its TV soaps must have by now done great damage to the image abroad of Indians.

In a movie from Bollywood, the hero’s falling in love is usually incomplete without a song and a dance. The couple never ever jump into bed, because the official censors in India don’t allow screening that.

But there is enough in the dance sequences to titillate a repressed audience. A favorite of directors is a scene of a fully dressed woman standing under a waterfall or a shower, revealing a lot through the wetness of her clothes. The director also throws in well-choreographed dance sequences, with a large number of over-fed and skimpily clad starlets, known locally as “item girls”, dancing in tandem with the hero and heroine.

The story line is also quite simple and repetitive, exploiting ad nauseam the “ love conquers everything” theme. The hero or the heroine usually come from a poor family, and there is opposition to the marriage, and other obstacles thrown up by villains who suddenly surface in the plot, either in search of profit, or hired by a competing girl friend or boy friend. Pain is exaggerated and so is cruelty and sadness. A gunned down actor could take half an hour to die, while a nail-biting audience watches every gory detail.

It is only recently that producers have started experimenting with new themes, but most are quite improbable in the Indian context. One movie "Nishabd" (Silent) released this year had a top actor Amitabh Bachchan, who is in his 60s in real life and in the movie, falling in love with an 18 year-old girl. The film was not a hit at the box offices.

Realism is also given the go by in popular TV soaps. The heroes and heroines grow older, and have children and grand-children, as the soaps proceeds from one episode to another. But they still strut around with jet-black hair and youthful faces and figures. And they are still caught up in romantic entanglements of their glorious past. In one serial, the widowed matriarch is a great-great grandmother !

Most of the popular soaps center around wealthy business households with spacious homes, and expensive cars. Some aim at being westernized or modernized, by introducing, and subtly glorifying, to traditional Indians and the country’s rural masses, themes of infidelity, extra-marital affairs, and crimes of passion.

Other soaps like "Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi" (Because a Mother-in-law was once a Daughter-in-law too) attempt, in a contrived way, to convey that despite their wealth, the family is still traditional, adhering to the local “sanskar” or culture.

As for the poor, they don’t exist in the world-view of the soaps. The Indian soap is a celebration of the new upper-class hedonism that has emerged as a result of India’s economic boom.

All this adds up to a potential image problem for Indians. If earlier the country was known as a land of elephants and snake charmers, it will now get portrayed as land of social upstarts living in a world of their own imagination.

If Bollywood portrayed Indian men and women dancing around trees or breaking into song, with little by way of intellect or existential concerns, the soaps have gone a step further. They have brought into focus the new Indian upstart. Unlike the love-smitten, song and dance loving hero and heroine of Bollywood, the heroes and heroines of the soaps do unfortunately exist.

But they do not represent all Indians. They do not represent the large number of Indian engineers and researchers who have made a mark, occupying top positions both in India and abroad. They do not represent India’s scholars and Nobel prize winners.

They do no represent India’s large number of poor.

As Indian producers try to take their fare abroad, they will not be exporting real Indian culture, but a new ersatz culture and a new stereotype – the stereotype of the stupid Indian.

India shouldn’t hide behind diplomatic niceties on Myanmar

India had this to say, even as the army in Myanmar has started a clampdown in the country:

“India is concerned at and is closely monitoring the Myanmar situation. It is our hope that all sides will resolve their issues peacefully through dialogue. India has always believed that Myanmar’s process of political reform and national reconciliation should be more inclusive and broad-based,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Navtej Sarna said, according to a report in The Hindu, a newspaper in India.

This diplomatic gloss over the repression in Myanmar is an insult to pro-democracy protesters in the Myanmar.

Worried about business interests in Myanmar, India is passing up the opportunity to play a leadership role in the region.

It is too much to expect from India to launch an attack on Myanmar, in the name of supporting the democracy movement in Myanmar. That sets a bad precedent, and unlike in the US invasion of Iraq, India doesn’t have the “weapons of mass destruction” fig leaf to try to justify its actions.

But India could at least come out openly against the brutal regime in Myanmar. This is a time for statesmanship, not political wheeler-dealing with neighbors.

India’s neighbors are looking to it and to China for leadership ! They are looking more to India, because India is a democracy !

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Indian outsourcers not floundering, not migrating

Let me start by saying that Indian outsourcers are not floundering because of the appreciation of the Indian Rupee against the dollar. Yes, their rupee realizations will go down because of the appreciation of the rupee against the dollar. After all close to 60 percent of their business comes from the US.

But even as their realizations are going down, their costs of keeping staff on-site at client sites in the US is also coming down. Other dollar denominated costs are also coming down. This is not to say that these companies won’t be affected at all, but expect a few percentage points drop in margins.

As usual the top players like Infosys Technologies Ltd., Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS), and Wipro Ltd. will report next month robust quarterly revenue and profits growth, that are the envy of their peers in the US and Europe.

Another myth that is doing the rounds is that companies like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro are setting up operations outside India to get around the appreciation of the Rupee. Earlier, it was said that these companies were doing it because of staff shortages in India.

Staff shortage is a real problem, but not as yet so acute as to expect Indian companies to migrate operations abroad. If folks like Infosys and Wipro are setting up operations in Mexico and Europe, it is because they need to offer near-shore facilities to customers to increase their comfort level. Being on similar time-zones with customers also helps. That is also the reason Wipro is setting up an operation in Atlanta.

To bag contracts in Europe, it also helps if these companies are willing to absorb local staff. That strategy has paid off for TCS for example with the contract it bagged from the Pearl Group Ltd.. It also paid off for Infosys when it bagged a business process outsourcing contract from Royal Philips Electronics N.V. this year in return for taking over Philips’ centers in Poland, Thailand, and India. Many years ago HCL Technologies Ltd. got call center business from British Telecom in return for acquiring the Apollo call center in Belfast.

But this does not represent a migration from India by Indian outsourcers. Companies like Wipro, TCS, Infosys have an average of about 60,000 staff each on their roles, and the overseas ventures will likely account for between 10-15 percent of staff.

That percentage of staff abroad is not a good enough hedge against a rising Rupee, and certainly hasn’t eased staff shortages in India. It has however given these companies the right mix of a global presence and distribution of locations for disaster recovery, without sacrificing on the still large cost benefits of delivering from India.

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A celebration of British colonialism in India !

I have no objection to descendants of Genghis Khan deciding to hold a quiet, prayerful ceremony to commemorate their ancestor.

I have no objection to some British going quietly to Lucknow and other parts of India and paying homage at graves of some of their colonialist ancestors, as a private visit from close relations.

But I object to them making an excursion of it, coming in large numbers to make a spectacle, to commemorate 150 years of a colonial war against the Indians.

Because then they will be walking rough-shod over the sentiments of the people of India, whose ancestors were the victims of these British soldiers.

The decision of some British soldiers and civilians to go to Lucknow to honor soldiers that were involved in suppressing the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, which Indians regard as the first war of independence, has created a furor in India.

The visitors from the UK even “ hoped to install a plaque in a church in Meerut commemorating the bravery of British soldiers at the site of another key flashpoint during the 1857 rebellion”, according to a report by Reuters.

If the British visitors were moved by respect for their ancestors, over 150 years later at that, they could have gone to Lucknow in smaller numbers and paid their discreet homage. They could have done it every year, and nobody would have objected.

Instead they are planning a well-choreographed event. Would the Indians be entirely wrong if they apprehend that this visit is less about homage and more about revisionism in British thinking about its colonial role ?

The history of the West as colonizers is a part of their history that they should do their best to help others to forget. It was a period of untold brutality, and exploitation which people in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are still trying to come to terms with. It is a period that the British, the French, the Portuguese and other colonialists should also come to terms with in humility and contrition.

Today the West is horrified by the cruelty and massacre of people in the Africa and Asia. They hold their kerchiefs to their noses, figuratively, when referring to people like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. They forget that less than a 100 years ago, the Western colonialists were the butchers of Asia and Africa.

A public commemoration in Lucknow, India would be a celebration of that butchery !

Gandhi dynastic rule inevitable in India

Rahul Gandhi, son of Sonia Gandhi, President of the ruling Congress party in India, has been appointed General Secretary of the party.

The two top party posts are now in the hands of the Gandhi family, confirming that Sonia Gandhi, widow of assassinated Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, is grooming Rahul for the position of Prime Minister of the country.

The current Prime Minister of the country, Manmohan Singh, is largely seen as a place-holder for the Gandhi family. Singh was elected to the post after Sonia Gandhi backed out, following objections to a “foreigner” holding the Prime Minister’s post. Sonia Gandhi, who took Indian citizenship, was born an Italian.

After the independence of the country in 1947, Rahul Gandhi’s great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru became the Prime Minister. Except for three Congress Prime Ministers who were not from the family – Lal Bhadur Shastri, P.V. Narasimha Rao, and now Manmohan Singh, and stints by opposition leaders such as V.P. Singh, and Atal Behari Vajpayee, the top post was held by members of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

After Nehru, Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister after Shastri’s death. After Indira Gandhi’s assassination, her son Rajiv Gandhi assumed power. After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, it seemed for a while that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty was ebbing, with Narasimha Rao becoming Prime Minister and new power centers emerging.

The dynastic control within the Congress party has been achieved because the Congress has not thrown up leaders of a national stature. Some believe that the Nehru-Gandhi lobby never allowed new leaders to emerge.

India has a strong democracy, and voters have often ousted leaders, like Indira Gandhi, when they over-stepped their limits or failed to deliver. But the country's political parties lack democracy within the parties which has perpetuated family rule in the Congress, and a geriatric leadership in the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Congress currently runs a coalition government in India with the communists and regional parties. The Gandhis have proven to be crowd-pullers for the Congress, particularly with India’s rural masses. The main opposition, the BJP, is currently in disarray, and does not have a charismatic leader to lead the party in the next election. Rahul Gandhi, who was put in charge of local assembly elections in a key state of Uttar Pradesh earlier this year, was however a disappointment, as the Congress was routed by a local party.