Blowin' In The Wind

Singapore education under Tharman

Who will be Singapore's next education minister now that Tharman Shanmugaratnam (picture from Singapore Ministry of Finance) becomes finance minister from tomorrow? The question assumes importance because though he has been a good education minister bold and innovative at the school level, Singapore has come down in the world of university rankings. The National University of Singapore dropped from 19th to 33rd and Nanyang Technological University from 61st to 69th in the 2007 Times Higher Education Supplement-Quacquarelli Symonds World University rankings published earlier this month.

Hong Kong universities have done significantly better with the University of Hong Kong moving up to 18th from 33rd, the Chinese University of Hong Kong up from 50th to 38th, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology -- a new entry -- ranked 53rd in the same survey.

I wouldn't lose any sleep over the rankings for a simple reason. The University of Hong Kong is ranked 18th, Stanford 19th and Cornell 20th. But where would most students go if they had a choice? However, university rankings are taken seriously in Singapore. Education is a big business in Singapore, which attracts a lot of foreign students.

Singapore's efforts to woo foreign universities have suffered setbacks in recent years. Britain's Warwick University decided not to set up a  campus in Singapore, alleging a lack of political freedom in the city state, and Australia's University of New South Wales pulled out after failing to attract sufficient students.

But Singapore has enjoyed some notable success too with New York University's Tisch School of the Arts opening a campus in the city state.

On the whole, Singapore has done well with Tharman Shanmugaratnam as education minister.

Tharman, who takes over the finance portfolio from prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, is eminently qualified for the job, having been managing director of the central bank, Monetary Authority of Singapore. He has risen through sheer ability despite one run-in with the law. As Reuters points out:

He was fined 1,500 Singapore dollars as director of the central bank's economics department after being found guilty on one charge of endangering the secrecy of unpublished growth data in 1992. (The classified figures were published in Singapore's Business Times newspaper.)

He became a politician in 2001, and was appointed education minister in August 2004, before also becoming second minister for finance in May 2006.

India's communist problem

Newsweek's international edition's cover this week articulates my own feelings. "Why India is blowing its chance", says the headline above a picture of a dejected Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. And the subhead adds,"The architect of the boom has a plan to vault India into the great-power club, only the communists stand in the way".

What it doesn't say is, the communists also maintain relations with the communist party of China, which has a border dispute with India and helps Pakistan in various ways.

Anyone who follows the news knows how China feels about India's growing closeness to the US. But the Chinese needn't worry; they can count on their Indian communist friends to stall the Indo-US nuclear energy agreement.

Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), is fiercely opposed to the deal, calling it a bid to "encircle" China. He cuts an almost Stalinist figure in the Newsweek article, which begins:

From his fortress-like red sandstone headquarters near New Delhi's Connaught Place — a bustling commercial hub lined with McDonald's, foreign banks and boutiques — Prakash Karat, India's reigning communist ideologue, is fighting to kill his country's economic- and political-reform process...

That Karat — the feisty, British-educated 59-year-old general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI-M — has come to dominate New Delhi's agenda is remarkable, given that he has little national following, has never held elected public office and holds ideas that were already out of date 15 years ago, when most communist systems came crashing down... That's because the Congress Party-led coalition has just a razor-thin majority in Parliament, which has forced it to lean on Karat for support, turning him into a kingmaker...

Karat even threatened to bring down the government over the nuclear issue. But he was advised to cool it by party leaders from the communist-ruled state of West Bengal who have their own problems. After three decades in power, they are meeting armed resistance from peasants in Nandigram where they want to acquire land and build chemical plants. They don't want the Congress party to step into the conflict. So Karat has not been able to carry out his threat, but he could still wreck any nuclear deal, says Newsweek.

Newsweek simplifies the issue by casting the communists as the only opponents to the deal. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and Indian scientists have also raised objections. But they have cited national interests, not a plot to "encircle" China.

A Newsweek online article which calls it a "sweetheart deal" glosses over the constraints it places on India, which became a nuclear power on its own. But could India get a better deal?

The Economist says:

To most neutrals, this looks like a steal for India. It has an urgent need of imported uranium to cope with a worsening energy shortfall. The special treatment that the deal would afford India would confirm its rising status, and cement a growing friendship with America. Yet that is what the communists object to.

That doesn't make the communists sound very friendly or patriotic, does it?

Changi and Heathrow

Heathrow needs a third runway for Britain's continued prosperity as a world financial centre, the Guardian reported yesterday quoting Gordon Brown. Heathrow needs more than a new runway from my experience last month when I flew to London with my wife and my son. He is spending this semester at a university in Britain and will return to his college in America early next year.

We flew with Air India from Calcutta (Kolkata) to London. Heathrow is overpowering in its vastness and impersonality. The underground corridors we had to walk through seemed interminable, ditto the queues at immigration. The officer at the counter, however, once we reached him, was friendly. A bearded Sikh gentleman from India who has lived in Britain for more than two decades, he waved us through in no time.

Friendly too was the driver of the private taxi waiting for us. He took us in a lift down to the carpark, helped us with our luggage and pointed out the sights as he drove us to our friend's house.

I didn't realise how inconvenient Heathrow can be until I was back at the airport again with my wife for our return flight to Calcutta. A friend dropped us off. But we couldn't just drive up to the terminal and alight at the kerb the way we do at Changi airport here in Singapore and Dum Dum airport in Calcutta. We had to walk quite a long way from the dropoff point. The busy traffic made things worse. Our friend couldn't wait with cars piling up behind him. We had to get out of the car and grab a trolley and push off fast. Luckily, there were two of us. My wife could keep an eye on the luggage while I got the trolley.

As we walked to the airport terminal, the traffic and the crowd reminded me of the Howrah and Sealdah railway stations in Calcutta. But not even the bustle outside prepared me for the scene inside -- it was so crowded. I thanked my lucky stars we were flying to Calcutta and not to Bombay. The queue for the Air India Bombay flight snaked so long the head was hardly visible from the tail.

But I was impressed by the politeness of the airport staff and the security people and the order they maintained. The security checks proceeded smoothly, which seemed amazing considering the sheer number of people involved. The only place where I have seen so many airline passengers is O'Hare in Chicago, and there too the checks were smooth and efficient, but it's amazing all the same.

After the checks, of course, we had to cool our heels for the boarding gates to open. It was good we could rest our feet, for when the gates did open, we had to take another long walk. We had to walk for almost 20 minutes according to the TV monitor in the waiting lounge showing the distance to the gates.

The little airport in Calcutta seemed so pleasant after the vastness of Heathrow. As usual, we had to wait a long time to get our luggage; Calcutta isn't the most efficient of airports, but it's not big and impersonal.

And now I am back in Singapore. My wife is in Calcutta, my son in Britain. Much as I miss them, I must admit there's a lot to appreciate about Singapore -- not least of all, its airport. I didn't have to walk a long way to the immigration counter. My suitcases arrived smoothly, shortly after I reached the baggage carousel. I could push the trolley all the way to the taxi stand just outside the arrival lounge. Changi airport is designed for happy landings. 

Ethnic Indians protest in Malaysia

How well have the Indians fared who went to work as labourers in various parts of the British empire? Ethnic Indians were forced to leave Uganda during the rule of Idi Amin, have faced problems in Fiji and clashed with the police yesterday in Malaysia.

Malaysia's ethnic Indian community (BBC picture) staged its biggest anti-government street protest on Sunday when more than 10,000 protesters defied tear gas and water cannon to complain of racial discrimination, reported Reuters.

The protesters gathered outside the British embassy in Kuala Lumpur, calling for the British government to pay $4 trillion in compensation to the two million ethnic Indians in Malaysia whose ancestors arrived as indentured labourers in the 19th century, reported the BBC.

But it added the real goal of the demonstrators was to highlight what they see as the unfair treatment of minority Indians in Malaysia.

The Malaysian government had banned the rally, saying it could provoke racial violence, and arrested three of the leaders of the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) on Friday and charged them with making seditious speeches outside the capital.

It's the government's duty to maintain law and order, but it's impossible to muzzle grievances, particularly in this internet era. Though the authorities managed to clear up the streets -- littered with teargas canisters -- after more than five hours, according to  Reuters, the protesters had already made news around the world.

"Indians are treated like third-class citizens. The community has been suffering in silence for decades," said opposition politician M Kulasegaran, reported the BBC. "They are frustrated and have no job opportunities in the government or the private sector. They are not given business licences or places in university," said P Uthaya Kumar of the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf), adding that Indians were also incensed by some recent demolitions of Hindu temples, reported Reuters.

Ethnic Indians, mainly Tamils, account for eight percent of Malaysia's population and a large proportion lack skills, money and education, reported Singapore's Channel NewsAsia.

Forming 60 percent of the nation's 27 million people, ethnic Malay Muslims make up the majority while 26 percent are Chinese, it added.

There are Indians who have done well in Malaysia, and not only Muslims like former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, whose father hailed from Kerala though his mother was a Malay. There are successful Hindus, Christians and Sikhs as well.

But there are Indians who face hardship, even according to a government minister. Public Works Minister S Samy Vellu, leader of the Malaysian Indian Congress, said, "There is still a lot to be done for the  Indians and we will continue with our struggle," reported Reuters.

The indigenous Malays remain the poorest group by some average measures such as household income, it added. The ruling United Malays National Organisation (Umno) therefore follows an affirmative action policy to help them. But opposition groups say the worst off are Indians, according to Reuters.

The Indians worked in rubber estates which were later broken up, forcing many unskilled Indian workers to live in poverty in the cities, Reuters added.

The Malaysian government has been accused of racial discrimination not only by the minority Indians and Chinese.

The Economist magazine has also criticised the Malaysian government. In an article marking Malaysia's 50th independence anniversary in August ("Tall buildings, narrow minds"), the Economist  wrote, "After 50 years, Malaysia should stop treating a third of its people as not-quite-citizens", referring to the Indians and the Chinese.

"Racial quotas and protectionism are scaring away some foreign investors," it said. "The economic consequences alone justify ending Malaysia's official racism. Even without them, it would still be just plain wrong."

The Economist likes Buddha

West Bengal's Marxist Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (picture from cpim.org) has received a glowing encomium from the Economist magazine. Check the Business section of the latest issue. He may not like the headline, "The capitalist communist",  but he will certainly love the subhead, "How a poetic Marxist has transformed business prospects in West Bengal". And it's absolutely right.  I enjoyed the article so much I must quote it:

Until a few years ago foreign capitalists were unlikely to look for investment opportunities in the Indian state of West Bengal, seat of the world's longest-serving democratically elected communist government. They were about as likely to ask for the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Bengali, the local language. That both are now readily available is largely down to one man. He is Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the state's chief minister, a poet and playwright, the translator of the great Colombian-born novelist—and a life-long communist.

Since taking charge of West Bengal in 2000, Mr Bhattacharjee has embraced business with apostate zeal. The results have been little short of revolutionary. Under a coalition of leftists led by his own Communist Party of India (Marxist), which has won seven consecutive elections, West Bengal was previously best known for industrial action, capital flight and the immiseration of its capital, Calcutta, recently renamed Kolkata. Things improved slightly in the mid-1990s, after investors were officially invited to the state. But only in recent years, after Mr Bhattacharjee began travelling the world and wooing foreign companies, have many actually come. They have joined an influx of Indian firms in computer services, manufacturing and steelmaking. Tata Motors says that next year it will start producing a new low-cost car—expected to sell for less than $3,000—at a factory it is building at Singur, near Kolkata.

Mr Bhattacharjee, who has a reputation for probity unusual in an Indian politician, has been credited with this success. In person, he is modest and engaging. With shining eyes and a breathy chain-smoker's voice, he enthuses on topics from agri-business to consumerism and Indian poetry, which he often quotes. In private life his tastes are Gandhian in their austerity: he has lived with his librarian wife and environmentalist daughter in the same two-bedroom flat for two decades. Azim Premji, the chairman of Wipro, a big computer-services company, has called Mr Bhattacharjee India's best chief minister. The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, agrees.

Some Indian commentators have likened Mr Bhattacharjee to China's great moderniser, Deng Xiaoping. He laughs off this suggestion, and notes that communist ideology is practically extinct in China. Yet his own “Marxist principles”, which he says he has discussed at length with Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, do not sound terribly radical. They are, he says, to “protect the poorest of the poor, protect un-organised workers, protect womenfolk who have no income.”

The Economist does not give him a perfect score, however.

Peasants are being uprooted by his land acquisition policy to help develop industries and the fallout has been "disastrous", it says, referring to the violence in Nandigram: People have been killed in clashes between the ruling Marxists and their opponents protesting against the land being given to the Salim Group of Indonesia to set up petrochemical plants.

The Economist adds:

The dispossessed are not alone in their protests. India's urban classes retain a sentimental fondness for village life, poor and squalid as it may be. This is especially true in West Bengal, where peasants are officially considered the vanguard of a proletarian revolution.

The chief minister is certainly to blame, in part, for the crisis. And with a general election expected next year, in which the Communists are expected to do badly, there is talk that party bosses, wedded to the outworn ideology that he has so sensibly forsaken, might force Mr Bhattacharjee to quit. That would be a pity. India needs more leaders like Mr Bhattacharjee, who is a talented administrator, even if his political views remain enigmatic.

It's remarkable for the Economist to show such a soft soft for a Marxist. But that may be because in its view he isn't a typical Marxist but a "capitalist communist". Unconsciously, the cultured, literary chief minister, who graduated from prestigious Presidency College in Calcutta (Kolkata), betrays a certain elitism. It's there in the last sentence of the Economist article:

Quoting Vladimir Mayakovsky—a Russian poet whose verse he has also translated into Bengali—he says: “Proletarians arrive at communism from below, but I from poetry's sky plunge into communism, because without it, I feel no love.”

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee may love communism, but this incorruptible, cultured, literary, middle-class Bengali gentleman is no prole.

Give Taslima Indian citizenship

Let the Bangladeshi writer, Taslima Nasrin (picture from taslimanasrin.com), become an Indian citizen if that's what she wants. Muslim fundamentalists in the country are demanding her expulsion, claiming she has "insulted" Islam. She faces death threats in Bangladesh for the same reason.

But India is a secular state where Hindus and Christians can mock their own religions without fear for their lives. The Marxists in power in the Indian state of West Bengal are officially atheists. So why shouldn't Taslima be allowed to become an Indian simply because Muslim fundamentalists want her to leave the country?

Official decisions should not be guided by religious considerations in a secular state. Yet that's what's happening.

Taslima had to leave West Bengal after a Muslim fundamentalist agitation against her turned violent in the state capital, Calcutta (Kolkata), on Wednesay. Biman Bose, secretary of the ruling Marxist party in the state, suggested she should leave.

The Indian government headed by the Congress party in Delhi has shown more guts than the Marxists. It extended her visa recently. Taslima can stay in India till March next year. But she was turned down when she applied for Indian citizenship, reported Rediff News. Why?

Taslima should be granted Indian citizenship, says the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. I agree though I don't support the Hindu nationalists on every issue.

There's no reason to give in to Muslim fundamentalist demands anyway after yesterday's bomb blasts.  Bombs exploded almost simultaneously near or outside law courts in Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad, three cities in northern Uttar Pradesh state, killing at least 13 people, reported the BBC quoting the state government. The near-simultaneous blasts suggest careful planning and coordination, which can only be the work of a terrorist group.

The All-India Minority Forum, which agitated against Taslima in Calcutta on Wednesday, may have no links with the terrorists behind yesterday's bomb blasts. But it was challenging the secular foundations of the Indian state by demanding Taslima's expulsion on religious grounds just as the terrorists attacked the state by setting off bombs outside law courts. India should not tolerate that.

It was a "total capitulation" to communal forces that Taslima was forced to leave West Bengal, said the Hindu nationalists. For once, they were right.

The Marxists in West Bengal may have been trying to restore peace and order by suggesting Taslima leave the state after the riot in Calcutta. But that can only encourage the fundamentalists. Now they know they only have to start a riot to get what they want.

The plight of Taslima Nasrin

The Marxists in power in the Indian state of West Bengal may rant and rave against Hindu nationalists, but they are powerless against Muslim militants. The militants just had to take to the streets of the state capital, Calcutta (Kolkata), and agitate for a day. And, lo and behold, they got what they wanted. The Bangladeshi writer, Taslima Nasrina, who faced death threats back home for allegedly blaspheming Islam, has left Calcutta.

Actually, the All-India Minority Forum, whose agitation sparked a riot in Calcutta on Wednesday, wanted more. It called for her expulsion from India.

But as the Marxists correctly pointed out, that's beyond their power. I am not joking.

The Marxist leader, Biman Bose, said it was for the Indian government, in Delhi, to decide whether to cancel her visa. But he made his wishes pretty clear. He suggested she leave West Bengal, reported the Bengali newspaper, Ananda Bazar Patrika, published from Calcutta.

So, Taslima Nasrin flew off to Jaipur in Rajasthan yesterday, reported the Telegraph, the Ananda Bazar Patrika's English counterpart. (Both are published by the same group.)

Rajasthan is ruled by the Hindu nationalists -- the Bharatiya Janata Party.

It's sad that the Bangladeshi writer hounded by Muslim militants had to seek refuge with Hindu nationalists.

But Taslima hardly had any choice.

Biman Bose is the voice of West Bengal's ruling party. He is the secretary of the West Bengal unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). When he suggested she leave, she couldn't turn a deaf ear. After all, he has more authority and influence than most ministers as the ruling party's top official.

Indeed, the police offered to move her out of West Bengal. The police would have hardly done so on their own. They have to take orders from the ruling party.

Anyone who wants to know just how Taslima Nasrin fell foul of the Islamists could check Wikipedia or visit her own website.

Whatever she did, it's sad when a writer faces death threats and is hounded from pillar to post. And that 's exactly what the Marxists in West Bengal did, chasing her out of Calcutta after Muslim militants wanted her out. The Marxists may say they did it to restore peace after the militant violence. But I suspect that was not the only reason. They also do not want to lose the Muslim vote in the next elections.

The Hindu nationalists are not concerned about the Muslim vote. So Taslima could go to them. It's so sad, the politics and callousness all around. 

Why in the name of Islam?

Picture from Ananda Bazar Patrika

A family I know had their car wrecked by a mob in Calcutta (Kolkata) yesterday. Fortunately, no one was in the car at the time. It just happened to be parked at a spot where vandals went on the rampage in the name of Islam.

I got the first inkling of trouble while listening to the BBC World Service in Singapore last night. The news reader said the army had been called out after rioting by mobs protesting against attacks on Muslims and demanding the expulsion of a Bangladeshi  writer for “insulting” Islam.

Immediately, I called my wife in Calcutta, who told me about the car. Several cars had been damaged and many policemen injured but the army had brought the situation under control, I learnt.

But what happened was unthinkable. We are talking of Calcutta, which has been remarkably free of communal violence.

The attacks on Muslims the mobs were so worked up about occurred in the village of Nandigram and its surrounding areas, but both Hindus and Muslims have suffered, the Muslims were not the only victims. Indeed, some of the thugs arrested in connection with the violence there happen to be Muslims.

It’s a political crisis: the Marxists ruling the state of West Bengal – of which Calcutta is the capital – wanted to move the villagers out of Nandigram and hand it to the Salim business group from Indonesia for industrialisation. The villagers protested. Opposition parties rallied round them, including the Maoists. But the Marxists stuck to their guns, and all hell broke loose. Several people have been killed in Nandigram.

It’s a shameful story and the Marxists have been castigated by everyone including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who is a grandson of Gandhi, and artists and intellectuals in Calcutta.

But it’s wrong to turn Nandigram into a communal issue.  The predominantly Muslim All-India Minority Forum had no business calling protests in Calcutta yesterday about “attacks on Muslims” in Nandigram.

It was equally egregious to demand the expulsion of the Bangladeshi writer, Taslima Nasrin. She faced death threats in Bangladesh after being accused of blasphemy, went into exile and spent several years in Europe. She has spent the last three years in India and though she has failed to get  Indian citizenship, she had her visa renewed recently and has been staying in Calcutta. But the All-India Minority Forum wants her expelled from the country for “insulting” Islam. There’s more on her and Nandigram in Wikipedia.

I sympathise with the people of Nandigram. But their cause suffers when it is taken up by Muslim zealots who also want Taslima Nasrin expelled from India for “insulting” Islam. India is a secular state. It did not expel the artist MF Husain for “insulting” Hinduism, as alleged by Hindu militants. He moved abroad on his own.

But the Muslim zealots pose such a threat that the West Bengal police offered to move Taslima Nasrin out of the state for her own safety. She is believed to have turned down the offer, reported the Hindu newspaper.

Further proof of the communal threat is the restraint shown by the police and the military. According to news reports, police used only teargas and did not fire on the mobs to avoid further violence. In other words, the violence reached a level where the police could have opened fire.  But that would have been playing into the communalists’ hands.

I wonder how sincere the All-India Minority Forum is about protecting the Muslims. The rioters did not discriminate between Hindus and Muslims when they attacked the police. Among the policemen injured was a top official, Deputy Commissioner (South), Javed Shamim.

The All-India Minority Forum says it had nothing to do with the violence and even has the cheek to claim the rioters were goons hired by the Marxists to discredit it. A Muslim organisation, the Jamiat ul Ulema e Hind, has even called for the Marxist West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s resignation.

That Calcutta is peaceful today in the face of all this provocation is really admirable –- but hardly surprising. We have Muslim friends. My wife has visited Muslim shrines. We know a Bengali Muslim gentleman who knows more about Hinduism than I do. We are proud that Calcutta is not another Gujarat or Ayoddha torn apart by religion.

But something must be done about these rabid communalists who stir up trouble in the name of religion. Unfortunately, the opposite is more likely. All the political parties are likely to bend over backwards to win the Muslim vote in the next elections. They should realise there’s no such thing as a Hindu or a Muslim vote; both Hindus and Muslims may vote for the Marxists or their opponents. Indeed, that’s how it should be.