Is there such a thing as agro-imperialism?

The Malthusian bug has bitten the Arabs. Countries in the Persian Gulf import about 60% of their food requirements and are worried about rapidly climbing food prices. Consequently, Middle Eastern nations, already high on their ecological footprint, are investing vast amounts of money in Africa, taking over thousands of acres of fertile land for massive, large-scale agriculture that will help secure food supply for their arid countries the future. African governments seem only too happy to give away land in return for the investment that is coming in notwithstanding the fact that some of these countries are themselves victims of famine and do not grow enough food for their people. Moreover, the ownership credentials of the land itself are dubious. In Ethiopia, for instance, land was taken over from farmers under Communist rule and never returned even after non-Communist governments came to power. The land thus, originally belonged to individuals who are now seeing it being given away by the state to agribusiness at dirt cheap rates. However, governments argue that agribusiness brings in capital and expertise apart from creating employment, and will make it possible for them to reduce their dependence on foreign aid.

The complex issue is highlighted with nuance in the following New York Times article, "Is there such a thing as agro-imperialism?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/magazine/22land-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&pagewanted=all

Filmi belle from the South - Vyjayanthimala

The Hindi film industry has an interesting nexus with South Indian belles. The earliest of the demure ladies to cross the Cauvery, metaphorically speaking, were Vyjayanthimala and Waheeda Rehman, followed in succeeding years by Padmini, Rekha, Hema Malini, Meenakshi Seshadri and Sridevi (not to forget more recent ones: among others, Bhanupriya, Madhoo, Divya Balan and Asin Thottumkal).

While Vyjayanthimala and Waheeda Rehman were undoubtedly the pioneers, the former maintained her links to South Indian filmdom actively and found time to shuttle between Bombay and Madras, showcasing her linguistic prowess in addition to her dancing and acting skills in the process. She acted with leading men both north and south. Her films with Dilip Kumar, in particular, met with considerable success, beginning with Devdas (1955) and continuing with Naya Daur (1957), Madhumati (1958), Paigham (1959), Ganga Jumna (1961) and Leader (1964). (Incidentally, Dilip Kumar's comeback film in the 1960s was with the other leading actor of South Indian origin, Waheeda Rehman. This was Ram Aur Shyam (1967), a remake of the 1965 Tamil movie Enga Veettu Pillai.) She is believed to have created history of sorts by refusing a Filmfare Award for Devdas. Awarded for Best Supporting Actress in her role as Chandramukhi, Vyjayanthimala considered her role to be a main rather than supporting role, on par with that of Paro (played by Suchitra Sen).

Here we have her in the first flush of love with tongawallah Dilip Kumar in Naya Daur:



In Tamil, she hit it off well with Gemini Ganesan as co-star and three of their movies are on any movie buff's must-watch list: Vanjikottai Valiban (1958), Parthiban Kanavu (1960) and Then Nilavu (1961). Her 1960 releases with the other two giants of Tamil cinema - Sivaji Ganesan (Irumbu Thirai) and MG Ramachandran (Baghdad Thirudan) were also immensely successful, elevating her to the apogee of her career. It is impossible not to make a mention of her superb dance duel with Padmini in Vanjikottai Valiban. Film critic Randor Guy describes it as "scintillating and enthralling" and "one of the best dance sequences in Indian cinema".

In this evergreen song from Then Nilavu we have Gemini Ganesan wooing a recalcitrant Vyjayanthimala in 'khambe-jaisi-khadi-hai' mode (even if on horseback):



Being serenaded by the leading actors of her day was by no means a bad deal. But while she happily sings along with beau Dilip Kumar in the first video, she pays no attention to the eminently more handsome Gemini in the next one. Why this discrimination, dear Mrs. Bali?

How to cheat on your partner and feel good about it!

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This has to be the greatest spoof on the Carbon Trading Mechanism! And a great way of exposing the scam that carbon trading is.

Illuminating lesser-known lives

In the winter of 1999, I journeyed by the Grand Trunk Express from New Delhi to Chennai Central, clutching a book that I had picked up out of pure fancy for its title, An Anthropologist among the Marxists and other Essays, at a bookshop in Connaught Place some weeks earlier. When I returned to the harsh embrace of the Delhi cold to begin the last term of my second undergraduate year I did so with the thrill of having read a refreshing collection of essays that had kindled some sort of an intellectual urge. The following year I was lucky enough to be nominated for an award that let me choose books worth a modest sum. Intrigued by the repertoire of an author who, at the time, wrote a fortnightly column on cricket history in The Hindu, while bookshops carried his works on (what I then saw merely as) environmental issues, I picked up another of his books, Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals & India. (In the meantime I had devoured Wickets in the East, a delightful collection of cricketing anecdotes in the possession of my cricketer room-mate.) I read through Savaging the Civilized even as my final year exams were just around the corner but found it simply unputdownable. The consequences, I might ruefully add, were far from pleasant. I flunked one of my papers, although in all fairness, the book was only one of other far more crucial factors responsible.

It is now ten years since I acquired the acquaintance of Ramachandra Guha through his books (and on more than one occasion, in person) and have never had reason to be unduly disappointed given his prolific output. I do not necessarily agree with him on all things; nor do I particularly appreciate his polemical, even if bold, manner of joining issue with fellow writers; nonetheless I enjoy reading him. While I have particularly enjoyed his writings on environmental history as well as cricket, it is his superb biographical portraits of relatively lesser-known Indians that I cherish the most. His essays on Dharma Kumar and CS Venkatachar are among my top favourites and those on M Krishnan, TG Vaidyanathan, CV Subbarao, PK Srinivasan and DR Nagaraj come a close second. To Guha's expanding repertory has been added, rather recently, one more portrait, that of the late K Balagopal, whose life holds especial value in these turbulent times as the Maoist insurgency threatens to consume almost a third of India. This is an essay which, like it or not, deserves to be read.

http://www.indiatogether.com/2009/nov/rgh-leftist.htm

Awaara hoon

What do you do when you meet an ex-flame after many years and realise with a pang that you've lived these years in the delusion that you had gotten over it but that, in fact, a bit of your heart still seems to be pledged to her?

You sing "Hum Tujhse Muhabbat Karke Sanam".



Hahahahahahahaha!!!

The bazaar of Palampur

Many years ago I read a story entitled 'The Day-Dreaming Darzee of Darzeeganj'. I have forgotten what it was about save that it was about, well, a darzee. But I remember being struck by its poignance although I remember none of its details. The only reason I invoke it now is because it seems to have been acting upon my sub-conscious in the title I'm using for this post. But there is also something RK Narayan-esque about it, isn't it? It seems to go with his book titles such as 'The Vendor of Sweets' or 'The Painter of Signs'. The difference, of course, is Palampur is a place, not a person. More along Sarojini Naidu's alley, perhaps? ('In the Bazaars of Hyderabad'?)

The Palampur bazaar is indeed a delight. Palampur is a fairly old town; the police station is still housed in a quaint colonial era building. The sights of the bazaar took me twenty years down memory lane: this is how markets used to be in the 1980s, I said to myself, though now I think it was just an overdose of nostalgia at work. I like small towns, and the visits to Palampur during my stay in Rakkad were like a dash of opium.

The Palampur I'm talking of lies in Himachal Pradesh, by the way, and is not to be confused with the Jain temple-town of Palanpur in Gujarat. It lies on the way to Baijnath, which is home to a beautiful temple, apparently dating back to the early 13th century and with plenty of mythology attached to it. Palampur is three kilometres away from the fabulous Kangra Valley Railway, on which, rather unfortunately, I could not hitch a ride. The narrow gauge railtrack has a width of roughly 2 feet 6 inches, and stretches for a length of 164 kilometres from Pathankot to Jogindernagar.


And lest I'm hauled up for not mentioning this, let me add that Palampur has plenty of tea-gardens, whose produce is the well-known Kangra tea. Kangra, because that's the valley stretching between the Dhauladhars and the Shivaliks, in which Palampur is nestled.

The pictures, I should say, were all taken by ringsinmypond. Her pictures are bright even if her poetry is melancholic.

Memories of Rakkad

I had almost forgotten about the existence of this blog when bethebird wrote in last week saying that it cannot be that I have nothing to write about. I was, to be honest, quite flattered although also a little wary for bethebird is an impish sort and at times I'm not sure how far to take her at face value. In any case, I have had but one ardent reader - Mampi - to whom I am deeply grateful for the attention that she has bestowed on my songs of sixpence.

A great deal has happened between my last post and now. I was living in a little village called Rakkad near Dharamsala. It was a lovely place to be in with lovely people around. For this post I will simply post some pictures taken by my friends RL and ringsinmypond.


The banana tree in the picture above is almost as tall as a mid-sized coconut palm making it impossible for the fruit to be plucked from the ground. The very fact that it is thriving far from its home in the tropical south makes clear the enormous implications of climatic change for the Himalaya.

Songs of Sixpence rises sphinx-like from the ashes!

Talk of tall claims! Nonetheless, seven and a half months of disappearance later, Songs of Sixpence is back. And appositely, on another day of election results, in another country, my own. Do I have a reasonably unique distinction of having gone through national elections in two different countries in less than eight months? Unlike 29 September 2008, 16 May 2009 seems relatively more heartening. The UPA is leading. Not that I root for them but only that they seem to be the lesser evil among the others.

Hopefully, I will be back again.

Till then, here's my tanner for Manmohan.

Elections in Austria

A day after I walked through the portals of the Habsburg Empire (see previous post), Austria went to the polls. All of Austria voted on a single day, which would be a novelty to any Indian, used as we are to multi-phase polling. (But of course, all of Austria’s electorate – numbering approximately 6.5 million – is probably smaller than that of many of our state capitals.) In the run-up to the elections there was little to indicate that the country was at the hustings. There were no cutouts, no graffiti, no mega-posters, no traffic jams. No public rallies, no loudspeakers, no locality-wise, let alone door-to-door, campaigning. The only indications of the election were the posters, blow-ups of the leaders of the various political parties, all put up in the place of regular advertisements, at tram or bus-stops, or along the sidewalks. The two main political parties, the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP), competed between themselves, luring voters with the promise of “Die neue Wahl”: The New Choice, and “Die bessere Wahl”: The Better Choice. (I may add that the translations are not authentic.) Also in the fray were the Greens, the Liberal Party and two right-wing parties, the Freedom Party and the Alliance for the Future of Austria. The right-wing parties, as one may imagine, have an open dislike for immigrants and Muslims, a proclivity for Nazi policies, and their agenda includes, in addition to a full-stop to further immigration, deportation of foreign migrants as well as an anti-EU stance that demands the return of certain powers to Austria currently vested in the EU.

The results, announced the same night, have come as a nasty shock. The right-wing parties together nearly doubled their presence in the new Austrian parliament, polling about 29% of the popular vote, only marginally lower than the front-running Social Democrats, who polled 29.7%, and more than the People’s Party, who came second with 25.6%. The numbers for the two main political parties are their lowest since the Second World War. They seem to have paid the price of their internal bickering as coalition partners in a grand coalition; the current elections - snap polls really since they were not due until two more years - were a result of the their failure to work together in the incumbent government. The fractured mandate of the current elections gives rise to the very real possibility of at least one of the two right-wing parties becoming a part of the new government, although protracted negotiations may precede the formation of a new coalition.

The implications of the elections cannot be more blunt. Clearly, Austria, as indeed various parts of Europe, is in the grips of a spreading xenophobia, notwithstanding suggestions from political commentators that the vote-swing in favour of the right-wing parties may be read more as a negative vote for the two main political parties, as a petulant response to their inability to collaborate in the incumbent coalition.

At the root of xenophobia lies insecurity. And human beings seem to be growing insecure across the world. Not least in our very own Mumbai.

The New Zealand Herald seems to have carried a more interesting analysis of the Austrian political developments than other news portals on the net. Take a look.

A Coimbatore TamBrahm in a Habsburg court

The sun is out in all its blazing glory! Exactly two weeks after it staged its disappearing act. I’m light at heart and high in spirits!

For the last three weeks, I’ve been letting the sights of the city sink into my eyes. This is a beautiful city, there can be no doubt about it. Even on the greyest of days, and in the face of the dullest weather, this is a fact one cannot gainsay.

However, I’ve really not done any sight-seeing. Struggling to come to grips with the sudden onset of cold, wet weather, I’ve allowed myself to be led by the nose by automatons. Of which, two have become surreally close buddies. Tram 52 and the U4. Every morning I mutely coast along a longish length of Linzerstrasse, followed by a turn into an almost equally longish stretch of Mariahilferstrasse. In the evenings, I mutely coast back. Except on some occasions, when I take the underground. But every journey is a journey undertaken in muteness. To be in a land where you cannot speak the language is some experience. But traveling by tram is relatively better. Because it travels over the ground it gives you a sense of life.

But yesterday, disgusted at myself for turning up for work for the third consecutive Saturday, I allowed a brief appearing act of the sun to give me an excuse that let me march out onto the streets of Vienna. I traveled to the St. Stephan’s Cathedral and walked down the old city. Briefly I peeped over the banners of an anti-Israel demonstration and lent my solidarity. I marvelled at the wares of itinerant artists and the music of indigent violinists. I took wistful rides on the horse-driven carriages. And walking down the streets of the old city I wondered what the Austro-Hungarian Emperors would have made of me, a puritanical TamBrahm, lounging in a Habsburg courtyard.

In circumstances such as these – alien language, alien culture, an excessive sense of order (as may appear to an Indian whose exit amidst much jostling and queue-breaking at the New Delhi airport is followed, upon touchdown, by a bewilderingly sanitized and agonizingly empty environs) and self-imposed poverty – it is perhaps inevitable for a sense of loneliness and longing for company to sprout. One of the first people I was introduced to was MT – and I took an instant liking to her. We talked academics, Austria and India; shared Indian food, cake and coffee, and in the process, found common interests. The conditions were ripe for one’s heart to mellow. One was taking it day-by-day, looking forward to some sunshine in the midst of the depressing weather, wondering all the time whether there was a possibility of anything more than what met one’s eye. And one fine day, not very long ago, words were dropped about a boyfriend, so that with a sharp stab of pain and a dizzy spin of the head, the roller coaster drew to a halt, bringing to an abrupt end one's little would-be romance!

But the bright spot so far has been the cooking! Unencumbered by a loving grandmother, who felt that the entry of a male – no matter that it was her grandson – into the kitchen implied a shirking of responsibility on her part, I have been engaging in some interesting culinary experiments. My pongal is a stepbrother of khichdi, and I eat it with rasam. Last week, my sambar turned out watery (my mother advised me to use rice flour, an ingredient missing from my limited pantry, to thicken it) and the cabbage curry burnt. But elation stemmed from small achievements: fine tomato rice, puliyodarai, rasam and chapattis!

For consolation, I brace myself with the hope that padhai na sahi, ladki na sahi, Hindustani dhaba hi sahi! In the worst event perhaps, I can open an Indian eating joint. ;)

Well, so long, till next time!

Lustlos!

I'm writing this in a long overdue bid to rescue a collection of cyber-writings slipping ever deeper into the dustbins of trivial history with every passing day. To the left of my keyboard lies a desultory pair of glasses over a sheaf of papers claiming to unravel the secret of institutional change. To my right, there's a mouse. (Well, what did you expect?) The weather outside has slipped into gloom once again. I am in an alien land, far from the delightful, sunny landscape on the outskirts of my hometown. And for no particular reason, with nothing even remotely resembling the emotions they describe, I'm humming these lines in the mind:

Perhaps I had a wicked childhood, perhaps I had a miserable youth

But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past, there must have been a moment of truth

For here you are standing there loving me, whether or not you should

So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good

Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could

So somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.

No, I’m not bored. Just listless!

Guess where I am?