India's accidental Dairy King

He was a man who saw the world as a conflict between the clever and the foolish, and took the side of both to push his plans through. In his final years, he became a lumbering patriarch with an illuminated face and dark twinkling eyes, who was very aware of his greatness but chose his words with care in a nation where humility is the only permissible form of pride. 

When he was young, a friend took him to an astrologer who discerned people’s fate by measuring their shadows at noon. The shadow astrologer, obviously, worked far from the Equator. Mr. Kurien recounts the experience in his  memoirs, “I Too Had a Dream,” which he wrote with the journalist Gouri Salvi. The astrologer foretold an extraordinary career.

It was an accidental career. He arrived in Anand reluctantly in the summer of 1949 as a government clerk. Circumstances soon made him the general manager of a farmers’ cooperative, the Kaira District Milk Producers Union Ltd.

He swiftly increased the cooperative’s milk production, but to expand it further he needed a scientific breakthrough. He had to find a way to convert buffalo milk into milk powder, which the leading dairy experts of the time said was impossible. But, with the help of a friend who was a chemist, he achieved the seeming miracle. Mr. Kurien implied in his memoirs that the supposed impossibility of converting buffalo milk into powder was a myth created by the Western world, which had abundant cow’s milk and wanted other nations, like India, to continue to import its milk powder.

Over time, Mr. Kurien’s stature rose. Some of the most important politicians in the country, including prime ministers, stayed in his house when they visited Anand. The first time Jawaharlal Nehru stayed with them, Mr. Kurien and his wife, Molly, refrigerated a rose so that the prime minister could put the fresh flower in his buttonhole, as was his style. But soon the couple got tired of all the fuss around dignitaries. Once, a very tall governor was to visit, and his security detail complained that the bed in Mr. Kurien’s guest room was too short. In response, Mr. Kurien asked his excellency to sleep diagonally.

In the late 1950s, Mr. Kurien decided to market the produce of the cooperative through a brand name, and that led to the creation of one of the most enduring Indian brands, Amul Butter. Amul’s billboard advertisements, which play on current affairs, are a parallel historical record of modern India. So endearing is the brand that even The Times of India, which does not grant any corporation free mileage on its editorial pages and even blurs images of company logos in its editorial photographs, carries images of Amul’s billboards when the brand is in the news. Mr. Kurien’s obituary was, inescapably, accompanied by the images of Amul’s billboards in several newspapers.

Rahul Da Cunha, whose advertising agency designs the Amul advertisements, was 6 when he first met Mr. Kurien. At that meeting, he told me: “Dr. Kurien gave me a big box as a gift. I opened it and found just papers. At the bottom was a small cube of Amul cheese.”

Mr. Kurien, who was probably the most famous dairy administrator in the world, didn’t like drinking milk.

Manu Joseph in The New York Times. Here

I.I.T.s, the Mother of all exams and Manu Joseph

In the 1980s and ’90s, the migration of Indian scientific talent to the United States, deplored here as a “brain drain,” became a subject of intense debates in schools and colleges. Once, during the convocation ceremony at I.I.T.-Madras, the chief speaker received a standing ovation when he declared, “Brain drain is better than brain in the drain.” His words traveled with the speed of a rumor across Madras, also known as Chennai, through homes and schools, evoking laughter and applause, and delivering a bleak reminder to young boys that their lives depended on passing the J.E.E.

The glamour of the I.I.T.’s has always inspired parents to force their children to take the J.E.E. Increasingly, those parents are from modest educational and financial backgrounds. A few years ago, in Mumbai, I walked into a J.E.E. coaching class that conducted its own entrance exam to filter out 9 out of 10 applicants. An orientation program for parents was under way. A man who could not read English was sitting with brochures and study materials. He was disturbed that I was carrying a red book while he had not been given any such book. I told him that the book I was holding was a novel called “Love in the Time of Cholera.”

For a long time, the IITians were from urban, literate middle-class families, and it was inevitable that their success would inspire small-town Indians to prepare for the mother of all entrance exams.

I.I.T. professors and alumni have been mourning the falling quality of the students. Last October, Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of Infosys and an I.I.T. alumnus, told an audience in New York that the new IITians were substandard. “They somehow get through the Joint Entrance Examination. But their performance in I.I.T.’s, at jobs or when they come for higher education in institutes in the U.S. is not as good as it used to be.” It is improbable that the I.I.T.’s will ever regain their old glory. The circumstances of the nation have changed, and the smartest Indians do not need an engineering degree to find a place in the world or to make a decent living. Also, the government has not invested enough in the I.I.T.’s, and the most talented scientific minds have the option to enroll in genuinely outstanding centers of learning in the West instead of being stuck in a place that has derived its prestige largely from the fact that only one in 50 cracks its entrance exam
Manu Joseph in The New York Times. More Here.

Note: Manu Joseph failed to note the caste dimension. Earlier all the IITians used to be Brahmins. Now aspiring students from other lower castes and dalits have succeeded in cracking the test. The number of Brahmins have started dwindling. Suddenly IITs have lost their glory. (Note by T. Azeez Luthfullah)

Reporter's story, Editor's story and Anna Hazare

The Indian news media generate public interest through two distinct kinds of stories — the reporter’s story and the editor’s story. In 2005, when Parliament passed the Right to Information Act, which gave any Indian citizen access to most government documents, it was the result of a long and difficult process of influencing public opinion by reformers and persistent reporters. It was never a sexy story. Beat reporters kept pushing the many aspects of the idea of right to information, and the story slowly made its way from the inside pages to the front pages, from the periphery of television reportage to prime-time discussions. It was the reporter’s story, and at the end of it, all the public was reasonably well informed about the act, why it was important and how they could use it.

The anti-corruption movement, on the other hand, was an editor’s story from the very beginning, from the moment Mr. Hazare arrived in New Delhi in April, sat on a wayside with his supporters and threatened to starve to death if the government did not create the Lokpal.

Television news quickly converted Mr. Hazare into a saint who had arrived from his village to fight the corrupt authorities in New Delhi. On the first day of his fast, there were no more than 300 people around him, but the cameras framed the fast in such a way that it gave the impression that something big was going on.

Among his core supporters there were several impoverished poets whose laments were chiefly against “people who go in cars” and “people for whom there are big shiny roads while the poor have nothing to eat.” In short, their laments were not only against politicians, but also against the newly prosperous middle class.

At the time, the television news media, which are largely headquartered in New Delhi, had very little understanding of Mr. Hazare, who is from the western state of Maharashtra. Until last April, his influence was confined to rural parts of Maharashtra. By the time the anchors asked the important question — “Who exactly is Anna Hazare?” — it was too late. They had already proclaimed him a modern saint, and he had amassed millions of supporters in a matter of days. As it turned out, Mr. Hazare is not a man the urban middle class would normally call a saint.

Manu Joseph in The New York Times. Here

We are ready to give bribe. But we want the corrupt to be punished.

The best thing about Indian politicians is that they make you feel you are a better person. Not surprisingly, Indians often derive their moral confidence not through the discomfort of examining their own actions, but from regarding themselves as decent folks looted by corrupt, villainous politicians.

This is at the heart of a self-righteous middle-class uprising against political corruption, a television news drama that reached its inevitable climax in Delhi on Tuesday when the rural social reformer Anna Hazare was about to set out for his death fast — the second one he has attempted this year to press his demand for a powerful anti-corruption agency.

He was arrested by the police, ostensibly in the interest of law and order.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his Independence Day address to the nation on Monday, took digs at Mr. Hazare and his tactic of using hunger strikes to twist the arm of an elected government. Mr. Singh said that he did not have “a magic wand” to end corruption in India.

The anti-corruption movement has the simplicity of a third-rate fable.

There are the good guys (the reformers and the average Indian citizen) and the bad guys (the politicians). But the real story is not a fable but art cinema.

Indians have a deep and complicated relationship with corruption. As in any long marriage, it is not clear whether they are happily or unhappily married. The country’s economic system is fused with many strands of corruption and organized systems of tax evasion. The middle class is very much a part of this.

Most Indians have paid a bribe. Most Indian businesses cannot survive or remain competitive without stashing away undeclared earnings.

Almost everybody who has sold a house has taken one part of the payment in cash and evaded tax on it.

Yet, the branding of corruption is so powerful that Indians moan the moment they hear the word. The comic hypocrisy of it all was best evident in the past few months as the anti-corruption movement gathered unprecedented middle-class support.
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Behind the power of India’s anti-corruption movement is the rise of a new emotion: Young urban Indians are more interested in their nation than ever before. As a consequence they are more politically aware.

Seven years ago, I went around Mumbai asking fashionably dressed college students questions like, “Who is the deputy prime minister of India?” Often, I was faced with long, embarrassed silences, or “Oh my God, quiz question.”

When I asked a young Muslim woman the question “Who is Narendra Modi?” she said she had not heard the name before. Mr. Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, was then and still is accused of assisting riots that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Muslims.

Today, there is a perceptible increase in the number of young people who are acutely aware and interested in the fate of the nation. That is because they are different from the generations before them whose only objective in life was to escape India. Now that the world is what it is, there is no place to escape to. So they want their home to be a better place — where bribe-takers are punished and bribe-payers live happily ever after.

Manu Joseph in The New York Times. Here

Anna Hazare show: Is it revolution?

If you happen to watch television news or read the newspapers, you may feel that the nation is on the brink of a revolution unleashed by an austere man in a white cap not many wear anymore. Anna Hazare, a former driver with the Indian Army who has the useful Indian talent for sitting cross-legged for long periods, is right now on a thin white mattress by a wayside in Delhi, having vowed to fast until death or until the Government agrees to set up a potent anti-corruption body made up of good people who would have power over all important arms of the Government.

His protest comes in the wake of a series of scams that are extraordinary even by Indian standards. Intoxicated by images on television of this man, who is not a politician, people in several towns have begun their own fasts. And the middleclass is wondering if this, finally, is their deserved revolution.

But there is much that is not evident on television. As this column goes to press on the second day of the fast, the number of people at his protest in Delhi is just around 300, including journalists. They are on a 50 metre stretch of a roadside that is between a public urinal and a wall.

Hazare, who is on a raised platform, has acquired many of the mannerisms of Mohandas Gandhi, including a thoughtful tilt of his head. Behind him are images of Gandhi and a very shapely Mother India.

People take turns to say things into a mike. One man says that the fact that Indian news channels were not allowed to carry footage of the cricket World Cup is further proof that foreign corporations are trying to control India. Poets have descended to read their poems, many of them impoverished. One of them sings, “You have planes and ships/We have no roads to walk on.” An announcer says, “In our fight against corruption, we specially thank the media for their support.” Everybody claps. Later, he requests the cameramen present not to fight among themselves.

One man comes up and screams, “We are not begging, we are asking for our right. Now raise your hands if you are not beggars.” Very few do. He looks unhappily at the crowd and says, “Lots of beggars here.”

There are a lot of messages on placards pinned on activists and on walls. A poster that is titled Latest Denomination says, ‘200 Crores = 1 Koda; 25 Kodas = 1 Kalmadi; 4 Kalmadis = 1 Raja’. And, enigmatically, ‘100 Rajas = 1 Rani’.

Suddenly, a man appears undressed as Gandhi, holding a stick. Journalists flock to him, he denounces corruption and asks one newspaper reporter when his article will appear. Apparent activist, Swami Agnivesh, in saffron robes and turban, goes on stage. With Agnivesh dressed like Swami Vivekananda and Hazare pantomiming Gandhi, the scene resembles a college skit.

Is this revolution?

We must not underestimate what television can do to an absolute farce. A good example is the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square. The footage of the toppling of that statue by US Marines and Iraqi people became an iconic television moment in the American invasion of Iraq. Anchors used the images to announce America’s triumph and the jubilation of the Iraqi people at the victory. The truth was very different.

The toppling of the statue was an accidental and insignificant moment in the war. Peter Maass wrote in The New Yorker, ‘Primed for triumph, they [editors] were ready to latch onto a symbol of what they believed would be a joyous finale to the war.’

The timing of Hazare’s protest, Indian editors know, is dramatic. It is a season of extraordinary revelations. Even the Supreme Court was disgusted enough to ask, employing language that is rare in judicial prose, “What the hell is going on in this country?”.

Hazare, as a relic of Gandhi’s way of life, is in a unique position to capture the mood of the nation.
But what kind of man is he, really? Haima Deshpande, a senior political writer with Open, has met him several times. About 10 years ago, when he went on a fast to protest against corruption in the Maharashtra government, Deshpande covered the event. She was a bit surprised when he said that he wanted to end his fast because journalists from the English media were finding it hard to reach his village. He wanted to end it on a Sunday.

“Two reporters told him that since the Pune Cantonment elections were to be held on that Sunday there would be no space in the newspapers. So it was mutually agreed between the journalists and Anna that he would give up his fast on Monday at 1 pm.”

And that was what he did. Now, the media wants a revolution and there is a good chance that Hazare will not disappoint.

Manu Joseph in Open. More Here

Arundhati Roy is the creation of the system

It is futile to denude metaphors to their bare meanings, but in this case it might be useful to try. We know very little about conscience but what we do know is that there is an unattainable moral superiority about it, and that it usually transmits unsolicited advice, which is the opposite of what the mind really wants to do. But at the same time, it is fundamentally a creation of the mind, a creation that is meant to come in conflict with its maker. That is Roy. She is the creation of the very system that she aspires to bring down.

A weak economy and an immature democracy would systematically empower a particular class of people, first by giving them a social headstart through the early landed wealth of their ancestors, then by letting them cash their social gains for even greater affluence and influence. Some of them would then begin to challenge the injustices of the very system that made their righteous ire possible. A reason why Open receives so many story pitches from foreign-returned journalism students who want to do only bleeding-heart stories—the trauma of child labour, the plight of village women and the agony of stray dogs. And Kashmir. It seems every loaded intern wants to do an anti-Indian Government Kashmir story (and on the way, liberate Tibetans).

Roy is more talented, genuine and courageous than most people who would get along with her. But the fact remains that she is, more than anything, an anomaly that completes the system, a system that not only made her but also needs her for its own balance and survival. If this part is somewhat familiar, it is because it is derived from The Matrix trilogy.

There is a scene in The Matrix Reloaded where I usually imagine Arundhati Roy as Neo, the hero of the tale. It is the scene where Neo meets The Architect, the creator of the Matrix, the computer programme that has replaced the real world and its real life. In this scene, Neo wants to know, “Why am I here?” The Architect, who looks like Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, gives a tangential answer, “You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control, which has led you, inexorably, here.”

That Roy is here as the inevitable consequence of the very system she wants to dismantle, that she is an expected anomaly, becomes more evident in her other battle—against globalisation and a potent version of capitalism. The huge advance for her debut novel that brought the first tremors of critical and commercial interest in her work, the rise of the reading middle class, the liberal movement, the many forms of media that conveyed her thoughts to millions, the international interest in Indian writers, and her own favourite Mac on which she writes her essays against capitalism, are all consequences of capitalism’s ways. But then capitalism also needs the imagination of soul, self-loathing, the delusion of introspection, so that people are not completely repulsed by their own greed. As The Architect would have said, “Ergo, Arundhati Roy.”

From Manu Joseph's view in Tehelka. More Here.