Amma brings change; but has she changed?

The favourite colour of her sari has changed from green to pink, magenta and maroon, but has she really changed her colours? That was the question doing the rounds on Monday as J Jayalalithaa was sworn in the chief minister of Tamil Nadu for the fourth time. This is the third time since 1991 that her party AIADMK has won the elections, but technically she became the chief minister four times, as she had to relinquish the post for a few months between 2001 and 2002 owing to a corruption case.

 A change in Jaya  has different connotations to different people. For her political rivals, it means whether she would be as vindictive as she was during 2001- 2006. For the media, it means whether she would continue to be intolerant to criticism. For the public, it means whether she would be as ostentatious as she was in the 1990s. For the bureaucracy, it means whether she would be as meticulous in administrative matters as she has always been.

The midnight arrest of M Karunanidhi on June 30, 2001 still sends shivers down the spine of DMK leaders. They hope the AIADMK Amma has turned mellower. The 2001 comeback Jaya  was not kind to the media either. Soon after taking over as the chief minister, reporters had a virtual street fight with her police after her cavalcade threatened to run over reporters who tried to block it in front of the secretariat after she refused to accept a memorandum from them.

More than a hundred journalists who protested against this were rounded up and kept for a day in a police station on June 29, 2001. That might have been a strategy, as she might have thought that the famished journalists released that evening would go to bed tired and wake up late the next morning when her police could drag the DMK leaders from their bedrooms. That was not to be. At the first call from Karunanidhi's residence, the scribes were there, in the wee hours, to witness the police atrocity. Those reporters who refused to be cowed down and continued to write hard-hitting stories against the government's high-handedness on several fronts were served with legal notices and defamation cases by the dozen. Towards the fag end of that tenure, however, Jaya did mellow down. This phase also saw some welfare measures.

If there is something in Jaya that nobody wants to change, it is her efficiency in dealing with the bureaucracy. When she is the chief minister, civil servants and other officers know they cannot bluff. Jaya does her homework well and expects her officers to do the same. And when it comes to law and order, she is a no-nonsense administrator. During her previous tenures, goons had kept their date with the bullet. Self-proclaimed human rights groups had fumed; many others had sighed.

That active Jaya is what Tamil Nadu, on the cusp of a fast-paced development, needs. It would do well if the chief minister doesn't allow her cadre's inherent sycophancy to inflate her megalomania. To start with, she could withdraw the case against Penguin and lift the stay on her new biography authored by Vaasanthi, 'Jayalalithaa—A Portrait'.

Mamata: Why the ‘simple man’ is a trend-breaker

I am not an advocate of either the Left’s or Mamata’s brand of politics, and this is not a philosophical defence of her as a politician. But, as the media in the past few days wrote over and over again about woman power in Indian politics, clubbing her with many other names ruling several states, I thought there was one simple fact that set Mamata's case apart from all other powerful women: there is simply no man in the backdrop of her political strength. She has no surname to ride on. She is nobody’s protégé, wife, widow, sister, or daughter. She has not inherited a mantle from anyone. She is, simply, the only man in her political establishment.
Of course, that has been said for others before. Indira Gandhi was called the only man in her establishment, and today Mayawati is the sole terror in the BSP. But while Indira’s guts cannot be denied, she did not have to start at the base and make her way up; she was a prime minister’s daughter before she became prime minister. Sonia has made her mark in Indian politics today, but she would not have been Congress president if she had not been married to Rajiv Gandhi. In fact, across the subcontinent, which does not empower women very enthusiastically, we can justifiably be proud of the political positions held by an Indira or a Sonia in India, or by a Benazir in Pakistan, a Sirimavo Bandarnaike and Chandrika Kumaratunga in Sri Lanka, a Sheikh Hasina and a Khaleda Zia in Bangladesh. But, without taking any credit away from what they all have done, they began their political journeys as women related to men of some political consequence, if not men of supreme political consequence in their respective countries. Indira was the daughter of a prime minister; Benazir was the daughter of a deposed and executed prime minister; Bandarnaike was the widow of an assassinated prime minister while her daughter Chandrika was one of the few people in the world to have both parents serve as prime minister; Khaleda was the widow of an assassinated president; Sheikh Hasina was the daughter of an assassinated president.
Interestingly, President Asif Zardari represents a prominent subcontinental gender reversal of that pattern – of riding on the wave of an assassinated relation to the top of the political system – but that’s a story for another day.
The trend doesn’t stop at the Indian subcontinent alone. Corazon Aquino was the widow of an assassinated Senator who rode to presidency; even the much respected Nobel laureate, Aung San Su Kyi, is the daughter of an assassinated national icon whose name is embedded in her own, and whose legacy she has carried on at great personal cost.
Within the country, Jayalalithaa inherited the mantle from MGR: if I recall correctly, there were ugly scenes between her and MGR’s widow’s supporters after the superstar’s demise. The public chose her as the bearer of his legacy, and she, of course, carved out her own space subsequently. Kanshi Ram built the BSP from scratch and mentored Mayawati, till, of course, it came to a role reversal and in his last days he was virtually secluded from the world and in her care – or custody, as some say. A similar track could be dug out in many other cases, or at least in the majority of instances. Rabri Devi, of course, is a one of a kind example. I haven’t run through a database, but am arguing a common sense perception call. There probably will be strong women leaders at different levels, who have made it from the grassroots completely on their own strength, but as you go towards the apex, to the levels of the CMs and the PM, the pattern described above seems to be the predominant one.
I do not for a moment suggest that these women are not achievers in their own right, or that they have not fought their own battles. I only wish to point out that the voter in the subcontinent, in standing by women leaders, has not often stood by a woman who has no political family, track, history, who commands no sympathy – someone who is simply a political leader, with gender being of no consequence.
But Mamata has had nobody whose political legacy she has taken forward, no mentor who launched her, nobody in whose name she has ever asked for votes. As she assumes charge of one among the most volatile political states in the country, she does not even have a party high command she needs to keep happy – something even other women who could see themselves as largely self-made, such as a three-term Sheila Dixit or a fiery Uma Bharati, need to think about when they serve as chief ministers.
I do not know how Mamata will govern West Bengal; she may turn it completely around, or make a mess of it. But either ways, her political victory is one of the few instances of a subcontinental woman – a lone woman – making her way from zilch in the political system and earning the support of millions of voters, of fighting the establishment just by herself, with no launchpad. She neither owes any share of success to a family legacy, nor owes answers to a political supreme command. She is her own political brand, 100%. For that, alone, her electoral win is perhaps a milestone.
 So when she says, grammar be damned, ‘I am a simple man’ – yes, in fact, today, she’s simply the man in Bengal.

Didi and Goliath

What did David do after he beat Goliath and became king? Few seem to know, or care. That's the thing with giant-killers: their sole job is giant-killing; having killed their giant, pretty much everything else they do will seem like an anti-climax. Will this be the fate of Mamata Banerjee, who felled the seemingly invincible Goliath of the Left?

Trinamool spokesperson Derek O'Brien came up with a catchy quote soon after his party won: 'A traffic light which has been on red for 34 years has now changed to green.' Green is Trinamool's colour; it is also the colour of the 'Go' sign on traffic lights and the colour of progress.

Bengal badly needs progress. It reportedly has a crushing debt of some R 1.92 lakh crore. Leave alone undertake any badly-needed and employment-generating public works projects, the state is barely in a position to pay its employees' wages. How is Bengal to be revived? That's the sobering question facing Team Mamata and all those who voted for 'poribartan', for change. So great was the disillusionment with the Left, particularly after the tragic farce of Singur and Nandigram - where the one-time architects of Operation Barga, arguably independent India's most effective land reform movement, became dishonest brokers favouring land-hungry industry at the expense of farmers - that Bengal's vote was largely a negative vote: anti-communist, rather than pro-Mamata.

This is not to detract from Didi's enormous popular appeal, with her promise of poribartan and her slogan of 'Maa, maati, manush', Motherhood, land, humanity. Like the Trinamool's election symbol of budding plants, the slogan is a poetic evocation of hope, of new beginnings. It has a great deal of EQ, or emotional quotient, but little, if anything, of what might be called PQ, or practical quotient.

How is the social and economic fabric of Bengal, tattered almost beyond salvage by the Left's misadventurism, to be rewoven and made whole again? In an interview with the TOI, shortly after her victorious election, Mamata underscored Bengal's urgent need for large-scale industrial investment and denied a conflict between the interests of farmers and the priorities of industry. What needs to be done, she emphasised, as many others have, is to ensure that agriculturists who give over their land receive a fair deal, not just in terms of cash compensation but also, and equally importantly, are assured of alternative and acceptable forms of future livelihood.

Indeed, the proposed land acquisition law currently being worked out in New Delhi seeks to address similar issues. Practical issues, which need the patience and the perseverance to deal with practical details. Mamata's appeal, at least so far, has been based on the immediacy of the emotional. Like Barack Obama's 'Yes, we can!' her 'poribartan' has proved to be a rousing war cry leading to the defeat of an oppressive adversary. But as Obama and his followers have seen, the euphoria of victory on the emotional promise of change is short-lived. Till he got a bonus boost with the elimination of Osama bin Laden, Obama's ratings had dropped to a dismal low on popular disaffection fuelled by the persistent unemployment figures in the US and the continuing entanglement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

'Yes, we can!' and 'poribartan' evoke an irresistible emotional response. But the adrenalin high of that same emotional response is susceptible of turning into its opposite, which is bitter disappointment. The higher the hopes raised, the deeper can be the disappointment when these hopes are not swiftly realised.

The most formidable foe of giant-killers is not Goliath; it's the even bigger giant of belied hopes that they could face after they've beaten Goliath. Fingers crossed that that's a return bout Didi doesn't have to fight.

The $8 billion mystery

The Hasan Ali case gets curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say.

Every few days, the IT guys keep upping the tax dues of the Pune-based stud farm owner. Recently they added penalty and made it a nice round figure of Rs 100,000 crore. So you now have one lakh crore of tax dues and they still don’t know where the money in his Swiss bank accounts came from. Meanwhile, rumours fly fast and furious. Some say the billions belong to a powerful Maharashtra politician who is everyone’s pet target these days. Others say it belongs to a Tamil Nadu politician currently out of power. There are also dark whispers that it belongs to an Andhra politician who passed away sometime back. While Ram Jethmalanai alleges dramatically in court that it leads all the way to the very top. The general consensus is that it belongs to many politicians and businessmen, and Hasan Ali is just a banker for them. The list includes even Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, once touted as the richest man in the world. But whoever the money belongs to must be so powerful that Hasan Ali, even in custody, refuses to sing. No one has managed to get the slightest clue from him as to where the billions came from.

By all accounts, Hasan Ali has beaten the late Harshad Mehta to the highest tax defaulter stakes. One lakh crore is no laughing matter, particularly when it’s based on conjecture and vague insinuations. For, as on date, there’s nothing proved against Hasan Ali nor his charming second wife Rheema, against whom the investigating agencies are now plotting to move, in the hope they can use her to prise open the dark secrets behind their Swiss bank accounts. Even the Supreme Court last month queried the State as to why enough is not being done to find out more about his unexplained transactions. Custodial interrogation hasn’t helped either. The main question remains unanswered: Does the money belong to Hasan Ali? If so, where did he get it from and for what services rendered? It’s a tidy sum, $8 billion in cash in Swiss banks and no one quite knows where it came from, what it was paid for, who paid it and why.

The actual tax claim against Hasan Ali, excluding penalty and interest, is reportedly Rs 72,000 crore, enough to provide drinking water to India’s six lakh villages. Yet no action has been taken to clear the mystery behind the man and his funny money. It’s funny money because, till date, there’s simply no evidence, certainly not in the public domain, that suggests Hasan Ali actually owns that $8 billion. The money could belong to anyone—and probably does.

The IT guys claim that any further delay and the matter can get time barred. This means the case has been going on for much longer than we know. Tax cases don’t get time barred easily. They take years to reach that stage. So, probably, someone has dragged his feet in this case either to protect Hasan Ali or protect those whose money he may be shielding. The delay may also be politically inspired, if it’s true that the money belongs to politicians. In fact, if it wasn’t for the courts, Hasan Ali would have been by now (like Q) a free man with nothing to hold him back except a long buried controversy.

Clearly, there appears to be a cover up somewhere. Yet I also believe the man when he says he fears for his life. We saw how the key witness for the 2G case, Sadiq Batcha mysteriously died on the very day he was planning to turn approver and spill the beans. The doctor who gave his post mortem report, calling it a case of suicide, is now an election candidate. He resigned from his job the very next day. A coincidence? Possibly. Hasan Ali, whatever may be his crime, is clearly in a dangerous space ever since he sent out a small slip of paper to a news reporter saying he fears he may be killed before the actual facts of the case emerge. Does that mean he wants to sing but is not being allowed to?

Before we judge Hasan Ali, our first job is to protect him. Most such cases in India never get solved because someone or the other, the villain or the victim or the key witness, gets bumped off during investigations. There is convenience in sudden death. Those who know the facts are then too terrified to speak out and with no clearly identified villain to pursue, the media quietly sneaks away to hunt down new crimes. Let not Hasan Ali’s case go the same way. He may be a bad guy. But no bad guy, however smart, however well connected, gets $8 billion from nowhere in his Swiss bank accounts unless he is protecting someone who he believes is powerful enough to rescue him or dangerous enough to kill him if he speaks the truth.

2G scam: Jail for Kanimozhi as court rejects bail plea

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Friday ordered "forthwith" arrest of DMK MP Kanimozhi and Kalaignar TV MD Sharad Kumar after rejecting their bail pleas in the 2G spectrum case. "The bail applications are dismissed. Both the accused be taken into custody forthwith," Special CBI Judge OP Saini said. The court directed that 43-year-old Kanimozhi and Kumar should be produced before it at 10am on Saturday, when the case comes up for hearing.

The DMK MP, wearing an orange salwar suit, looked stunned after the CBI judge pronounced his order and was consoled by her family members, including her husband Aravindan.

DMK leaders, including its parliamentary party chief TR Baalu, was present in the court.

Minutes after the court pronounced its order, some of DMK supporters broke down while others were seen making frantic calls.

The court in its 144-page order said that most of the witnesses against the DMK MP are the employees of Kalaignar TV and hence the possibility of they being influenced cannot be ruled out.

"Considering the magnitude of the crime and the fact that many of the witnesses are employees of Kalaignar TV, there is every apprehension that the witnesses may be influenced, if the accused are released on bail," the CBI judge said.

The court also considered the "enormity" of the offence while rejecting the bail of Kanimozhi and Sharad Kumar.

"Considering the magnitude of the crime, nature and enormity of the allegations, character of evidence on record and the apprehension that the witnesses may be influenced in case the accused are released on bail, I have no hesitation in holding that both applicants/accused have failed to make out a prima facie case for bail. Bail applications are without merit and the same are dismissed," the judge said.

The court, however, clarified that its observations were "tentative" and they do not express any opinion on the merits of the case.

The CBI had chargesheeted Kanimozhi on April 25, for her alleged role in the 2G spectrum allocation scam. It had indicted her for taking a bribe to the tune of Rs 200 crore, which was routed to Kalaignar TV, in which she has 20 percent stake.

The money was routed to the TV channel by DB Realty of Shahid Usman Balwa, who was of one of the beneficiaries of the 2G spectrum allocation scam, with his another firm, Swan Telecom, securing the 2G spectrum licence during the tenure of former telecom minister A Raja of her party.

Besides Kanimozhi, former Tamil Nadu chief minister Karunanidhi's wife Dayalu Ammal holds 60 per cent share in the Kalaignar TV. She, however, was not chargesheeted in the case as the CBI said she did not take part in the day-to-day functioning of the channel.

Kanimozhi was chargesheeted along with TV channel MD Sharad Kumar, who too held 20 percent stake in it.

After the CBI filed chargesheeted against them in the Special CBI court, they were asked to appear before it on May 6, when Kanimozhi filed her bail plea.

The court earlier had reserved its verdict on her bail plea for May 14, but had advanced it to Friday.

Chocolate skin effect

1. Open your model stock. As you see, the background of this photo has
highlight and shadow so it will get better and natural at the end.

White Stroke Buttons

Bars:
Step 1:
Open up a fresh document, any size will work, but I've chosen 600x300px so it fits on this screen good. Fill the background a light grey. I used the color #e5e5e5.