Blowin' In The Wind

The sea and the tragedy of Sunderbans

Imagine going to bed at night not knowing whether you will be washed away by the sea. The roaring waves keeping you awake as they hurl themselves on the shore. And the sea just a bit closer when you step out in the morning.

Every day the villagers of Ghoramara island in the Sunderbans shore up their mud-built dykes with their bare hands only to see seawater pouring in the next morning. One man has built and rebuilt and lost three homes in three years.

They are the victims of global warming which is wreaking havoc on the India-Bangladesh border.

Everyone should read the story which appeared in the Observer yesterday. This is what global warming can do.

Concise, simply written, with telling details and quotes, this is a story that haunts you.

Maybe I can't forget the villagers in the story because they live in the Sunderbans, which is not far from my hometown, Calcutta (Kolkata). But I can't recall reading anything so moving in the Calcutta newspapers.

This is how the story begins:

Dependra Das stretches out his arms to show his flaky skin, covered in raw saltwater sores. His fingers submerged in soft black clay for up to six hours a day, he spends his time frantically shoring up a crude sea dyke surrounding his remote island home in the Sundarbans, the world's largest delta.

Alongside him, across the beach in long lines, the villagers of Ghoramara island, the women dressed in purple, orange and green saris, do the same, trying to hold back the tide.

For the islanders, each day begins and ends the same way. As dusk descends, the people file back to their thatched huts. By morning the dyke will be breached and work will begin again. Here in the vast, low-lying Sundarbans, the largest mangrove wilderness on the planet, Das, 70, is preparing to lose his third home to the sea in as many years; here global warming is a reality, not a prediction.

Read the rest and save it.

Top talent for Abu Dhabi newspaper

Whoever thought the Gulf would turn into a media hub? But that's the way it is -- and not just because of the Iraq war. With new publications coming on stream funded by oil money, there is already talk of a newspaper war.

Martin Newland, former editor of the UK's Daily Telegraph, is launching Abu Dhabi's first English newspaper next month with some 200 journalists, many of them from Britain, South Africa, Australia, Canada and the US.

The newspaper, funded by the state-owned Abu Dhabi Media Company, will be the United Arab Emirates' biggest newsgathering operation trying to emulate quality British and American newspapers.

It is already getting international publicity with a top editor like Newland hiring staff from publications such as the Daily Telegraph, Guardian and the New Yorker.

It will be available in limited numbers in cities such as London and Washington to "explain to the world what the emerging UAE is", Newland told ArabianBusiness.com.

He added:

I can’t lie and say I am spending lots and lots of money in order to fight a press freedom battle. That is not the job. The job is first and foremost to launch a quality newspaper.

But he isn't looking to launch a newspaper war in the Gulf with Dubai-based titles such as Gulf News, Khaleej Times and Emirates Business 24/7, he said:

I don’t want to start a newspaper war. I think there is room for all of us in this market, it's growing at such as rate. I would be surprised if we take revenue and readers away from the competition.

The newspaper, whose name is yet to be announced, will be a broadsheet with over 80 pages of news, business, arts and culture, and sport -- and a 70/30 split between editorial and advertising.

Newland said the newspaper would be about the same size as Canada's National Post which he helped to launch as deputy editor.

Asked how the newspaper would cover stories sensitive to the government, such as labour strikes, Newland said he would not know until the paper launched, but added:

Stories that are in the public domain like things such as labour strikes have to be reported. Otherwise your credibility suffers. 

The sexy Mughals

City of Djinns: A Year In Delhi by William Dalrymple

The foppish, snobbish Indian Muslim nobility were no different from the French and English aristocrats. They were as cultured, sophisticated and sensual. Eighteenth century Indian Muslim aristocrats visiting each other exchanged poems like the Restoration wits -- with one difference: the poems were not self-composed but written by popular contemporary poets and copied beautifully in the finest calligraphy.

Sex was the ruling passion. Elephants would be seen standing outside courtesans' houses in old Delhi in the evenings while the noblemen were entertained inside. A famous courtesan used to appear in society completely nude -- decorated only in body paint. The paint was ingeniously applied, however, to create the illusion she was fully dressed.

These and other vignettes enliven City of Djinns, William Dalrymple's wonderful book on Delhi. He has a hundred tales to tell, about present-day Delhi and the past. But most fascinating are the ones about Mughal India.

Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor who built the famous Taj Mahal in memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, was highly sexed. He had innumerable affairs; there was even gossip about his relationship with his favourite daughter, Jahanara. Manucci, the Italian traveller, alluded to him "harvesting his own fruit" without sounding the least bit shocked. The noblemen and generals, however, did not like their wives' affairs with the emperor -- and he had to pay for it in the end. His son, Aurangzeb, seized the throne, throwing him into prison and killing his other sons.

Aurangzeb was the most religious of the Mughal emperors -- and the most bloodthirsty. He persecuted Hindus and Sikhs and destroyed temples, sparking rebellions across the country. Had it not been for him, her family would still be ruling India, said a woman who claimed to be descended from the Mughals when Dalrymple met her in Delhi.

Only web-savvy journos for Guardian

Writing, reporting and editing skills are no longer enough for journalists working for the Guardian and Observer newspapers in Britain.

Guardian News and Media denies it is ditching experienced print journalists in favour of web-savvy younger staff, reports Press Gazette.

But it hopes to enroll all 800 of its staff journalists on a voluntary "digital awareness programme" ahead of its move to a a new high-tech 24/7 integrated newsroom in London's King's Cross at the end of this year, reports Brand Republic.

The one-day course teaches basic video and audio and web publishing skills.

It's the smart thing to do -- especially for a newspaper like the Guardian.

Drop in readership

The Guardian has suffered the biggest year-on-year drop in readership numbers among the British national dailies.

It was read by an average of 1,121,000 people between January and December 2007, down 10 per cent from the previous year, reports Brand Republic.

In fact, the staff have been told to expect job cuts as the company reshapes its operations over the next 18 months to focus on digital media and move to new offices this year.

Indian Singaporeans and Indian expats

There is little intermixing between Indian Singaporeans and Indian expatriates in Singapore. They will draw closer together if the expatriates settle down in Singapore, says Shashi Tharoor.

But will the descendants of the expatriates be as successful as them?

Tharoor, the former United Nations undersecretary general, himself notes the difference. He  compares the Indian Singaporeans with the Indian immigrants in the US and writes:

Unlike in Singapore, the majority of Indians in the U.S. (though by no means all) are educated, well-off and professionally successful. Today, the ethnic group in the U.S. with the highest median income is not white Americans, but Indian Americans. In Singapore the story is a little different, since there is a large Indian population that has been settled there for several decades, a majority of whom came from more humble backgrounds, mainly from the Tamil working class. Of course there are many first-rate professionals from that community as well, but they are by no means the majority. By contrast, the NRIs — many prefer to call themselves “global Indians” — who have moved to Singapore from India in more recent years are all educated professionals (they are the only ones who would get long-term visas).

But why is it that the Indians, who are the most successful ethnic group in America, have lagged behind in Singapore? Please don't say Singapore is more competitive than America.

And I don't think it's because of the "humble background" of the majority of Indian Singaporeans because that would mean there's no social mobility in Singapore. Which is nonsense. Singapore is, as the government says, a meritocracy.

So is it because America is a more open society than Singapore?

Look at Barrack Obama, a man from an ethnic minority close to winning the Democratic nomination to run for president. Is there a parallel anywhere in the world?

Singapore is a meritocracy, but its culture, geography and demographics are such that  some jobs can be done only by Chinese speakers.

Still, Singapore welcomes and nurtures talent.

Tharoor is full of praise for Foreign Minister George Yeo and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam. They must be two of the most knowledgeable ministers anywhere in the world. I wish Yeo wrote and spoke more often. And Tharman is brilliant.

Indians, however, should be especially grateful to Senior Minister Goh Chok Thong. It was he who as prime minister brought India and Singapore closer together. Even as I write this, he is in India. He met the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi today.

The New York Times language cops

A Singapore newspaper is looking for journalists who can make their stories sing. Sing only -- and not dance as well?

The New York Times makes no such demands. Its editors just want the stories to "flow" -- run smoothly from beginning to end so readers can get all the information easily, without getting confused.

That's the job of New York Times copy editors -- getting the stories to flow. Is the language unclear? Clear it up. Does the story leave any question unanswered? Talk to the reporter,do some quick research -- just get the answer. Is the story too wordy? Trim it. And, of course, get the facts and grammar right. 

It's interesting reading Merrill Perlman, who manages the copy desks in the New York Times newsroom -- only the newsroom, not the editorial section which handles Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman and the others -- about the work she and her copy editors do. She says:

We try hard to preserve a writer’s voice, but we also want to make sure that the writer’s voice isn’t louder than the information the writer is presenting...Many writers are surprised at how heavily they are edited here, but most recognize that the reader’s understanding of the material should come first, accompanied by literary flourishes, but not overshadowed by them.

They also blog, she says, and come up with clever headlines like this:

I’ll Have a Big Mac,
Serenity on the Side
(about a McDonald's redesigned using principles from feng shui)

But most interesting of all is what she has to say about words and usage -- how the language is changing at the New York Times. Now the Times style is:

1900s, 1960s, and not 1900's and 1960's

But it's sticking with the "Koran" and not changed to the "Quran", the spelling used by the Associated Press.

Perlman answers readers' questions on split infinitives and sentences ending with prepositions (she is okay with both), what they look for in copy editors (a love of words, of course), the total number of words in the New York Times on Sundays (250,000 to 280,000 excluding the Magazine and special supplements) among other things. New York Times fans will love it.

By the way, she mentions Strunk twice and Fowler thrice. American prefers Englishman!

Obama and the other media darling

Barrack Obama is eloquent. Hillary Clinton is scrappy. John McCain can be refreshingly candid and ironic, says a New York Times article. As for those who say he is awfully old, well, look at his record: no one can question his courage and patriotism.

If Obama wins the Democratic nomination, it will be a straight fight between two media darlings, says Neal Gabler in the New York Times article, which suggests McCain is the most impish of the three candidates. While Obama is idolised for his idealism. McCain charms reporters with his seeming candour, self-deprecating humour, irony and cynicism. Gabler recalls:

In 1999, William Greider wrote in Rolling Stone that, “While McCain continues examining his flaws, the reporters on the bus are getting a bit edgy. Will somebody tell this guy to shut up before he self-destructs?”

Imagine, reporters protecting a candidate from himself!

Who blinked first?

Obama supporters, of course, want Hillary to drop dead so he can carry the fight to the old man. Hillary's hopeless struggle for the nomination is distracting Obama from concentrating on the real enemy, they say.

But why shouldn't she carry on the battle when she has as many supporters as Obama? The Democrats are evenly split, according to Rasmussen Reports, with 22 percent wanting Hillary to drop out, and an equal number opposed to Obama.

Obama claims he is more electable than Hillary. But he didn't seem so sure when he didn't want to face the voters again in Florida and Michigan. It was he who blinked, not Hillary.

By ducking the repoll, of course, he stays ahead in the delegate count. But if he is not so sure of winning the Democratic primaries, how can he be so sure of beating the Republicans?

Bye-bye Ford, hello Tata

Isn't it funny that an Indian company is saving British jobs and pensions just when Britain is making it harder for Indians to enter Britain?

The Press Association reports:

Thousands of UK motoring jobs and pensions have been safeguarded after ownership of Jaguar and Land Rover passed from Ford of America to Tata Motors of India.

Jaguar Land Rover has about 13,500 employees.

So desperate was Ford to dump the business it even agreed to contribute $600 million to the workers' pension plans just to get the deal done even though it meant selling at a loss. The $1.7 billion it nets from the $2.3 billion deal is roughly a third of the price it paid for the two luxury brands -- $2.5 billion for Jaguar in 1989 and $2.7 billion for Land Rover in 2000 -- says the Associated Press.

The Indian business daily Business Standard sniffs Tata Motors is paying a hefty price for cars that don't make a lot of money:

The premier automotive group which includes Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo and the Aston Martin—posted pre-tax results of a negative $1.9 billion in 2007 on revenues of approximately $33 billion.

But not every unionist is welcoming the saviour with open arms. Harrumphs Tony Woodley, Unite's joint general secretary: "We would have much preferred Ford to keep the companies in the family, so to speak, especially with Land Rover being so profitable".

Isn't that pathetic, yearning for someone who longer wants you? Only lovers are allowed that -- and the very thick-skinned.

As BusinessWeek says:

For some Brits the deal marks a surprising twist in a long road for two storied corporate names. Could Winston Churchill, or even the current Queen of England, have imagined a half-century ago that a pair of Britain's proudest industrial icons would one day be owned by an Indian company?

They shouldn't be surprised if they took a close look at the British economy.

India is the second biggest investor in the UK after the US.

The fact is not advertised in Britain. Dear old Blighty still keeps a stiff upper lip.

How China is reshaping the world

Western leaders concerned about democracy and human rights in China are barking up the wrong tree. Not even the Chinese intelligentsia is keen on democracy, says a fascinating article in Prospects magazine. Apparently, there is a new right, which brought in economic liberalisation, and a new left, which is keen on social welfare, but democracy is not high on the agenda of either. Power has become the ideal instead. The culture vultures crave soft power, the jingoes hard power, and both are getting their wishes. Chinese influence is growing in Africa and the United Nations, says the article:

In 1995 the US won 50.6 per cent of the votes in the UN general assembly; by 2006, the figure had fallen to just 23.6 per cent. On human rights, the results are even more dramatic: China's win-rate has rocketed from 43 per cent to 82 per cent, while the US's has tumbled from 57 per cent to 22 per cent.

China is already reshaping the world, says the article:

Scores of countries are copying Beijing's state-driven development using public money and foreign investment to build capital-intensive industries. A rash of copycat special economic zones have been set up all over the world—the World Bank estimates that over 3,000 projects are taking place in 120 countries. Globalisation was supposed to mean the worldwide triumph of the market economy, but China is showing that state capitalism is one of its biggest beneficiaries.

Especially interesting are the author Mark Leonard's conversations with Chinese intellectuals.

One informal adviser to President Hu Jintao favours gradual democracy, limited initially to communist party members. Even that would be a big step forward. As Leonard points out:

If the Communist party were a country, its 70 million members would make it bigger than Britain.

Obama, Hillary, Johnson and King

Hillary Clinton offended Barack Obama and a great many others when she recalled President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. She said:

I would point to the fact that that Dr King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in people's lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished." (This is the full quote from The Horse's Mouth blog in Talking Points Memo.)

Obama said:

Senator Clinton made an unfortunate remark, an ill-advised remark, about King and Lyndon Johnson.

I wonder what he thinks of yesterday's New York Times article which says pretty much the same thing:

In the early 1960s, opinion polls found that a majority of Americans saw civil rights as the dominant issue facing the country. And President Lyndon B Johnson, in one of several memorable 1965 speeches on race, said, speaking before a joint session of Congress after the “Bloody Sunday” voting-rights march from Selma, Ala.: “Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

Yet it was President Johnson, too, who foresaw the end of what Glenda Gilmore, a Yale historian and author of “Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950,” described last week as a 20-year “national conversation on race” in the 1950s and 1960s. After signing the Civil Rights Act in July 1964, the president is said to have observed that he had just handed over the South to the Republicans for at least a generation. The Republicans seized the opportunity to peel off Democratic states.

Johnson was right about the South. He might not have been the greatest president: he did incalculable damage with the war on Vietnam, but he did dream of a Great Society and signed the civil rights legislation at considerable expense to his own party. Anyone who says acknowledging his role belittles King or offends blacks may be politically correct but is ignoring history.

King mentioned once in Obama's speech on race

Obama did not speak about Johnson and there was only one reference to Martin Luther King when he spoke about race in Philadelphia on March 18. He said nothing about the civil rights movement though he mentioned how people of that generation grew up amid segregation. He mentioned King only when he said he had "the great honour of speaking on Dr King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta".

Obama, I guess, has the temperament of a personal blogger who is most comfortable talking about himself.

But he was so eloquent. I was moved when I read the complete speech in the New York Times and saw the YouTube video again after reading Frank Rich's column on The Republican Resurrection. Rich and almost every other commentator has praised the speech to the skies, but no report, no comment, can compare with the experience of reading and watching Obama's speech personally. I especially loved this quote:

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

Truer words were never spoken.