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Getting to know the world itself and all kinds of other stuff
Well, it's that time again - as the year 2007 draws to a close, we look to the future. And one thing is for sure: the primary foci of this weblog, Pakistan and China, were hardly out of the news this year and won't be in 2008 either.
 For China especially, 2008 is the crunch year. The Olympics have acquired a kind of existential significance, and their success or failure have become intertwined with China's contemporary sense of its national identity.
Unfortunately, I can't see the games being the resounding success that the CCP hopes for. Chinese athletes will probably haul in the most medals, but with the enormous pressures upon them there will inevitably be doping scandals. Other athletes will scorn the terrible pollution; tourists will be messed about, pushed, shoved and spat around (most Beijingers will behave admirably, but it'll still be the negatives that get remembered); and journalists will lament the restrictions on free reporting. Few Chinese yet realise how things will be perceived, and it will come as a shock.
Most of all, this most political of sporting events will inevitably be deeply politicised. There will be incidents: medal-winners standing up for Tibet, Taiwanese declarations, perhaps even Uyghur violence. Expect 888 to be a very interesting moment in the definition of the new China.
Turning to Russia, there Putin will remain in control, despite the appointment of a new president in Medvedev - little more than a deputy, really, But I have confidence in Putin: he is not stupid, and will not wish relations with the EU and NATO to deteriorate further. Things were getting silly, what with all this missile defence rubbish, not to mention Litvinenko and Lugovoi, and in 2008 Russia will attempt to repair some of the damage - though not with Britain, who will be the main losers.
Meanwhile, it will be a period of reflection for the EU itself, as the member states attempt to digest the implications of the Lisbon Treaty. Expect at least one ratification to fail.
 There is at least reason to positive about the Middle East. Iraq has calmed in 2007, though of course it's not the end by any stretch of the imagination. We are also thankfully unlikely to see action against Iran either. Bush desperately needs a positive legacy to speak of, so with elections in full swing at home he and his cronies may attempt at least to broker a compromise solution. Does he have what it takes? We shall see.
But there are clearly going to be fireworks in Pakistan. Far too early to tell how things will pan out, but it probably won't be good. This writer is already predicting a Balkanisation of the country: that may be going too far, but with the conflicts in NWFP and Balochistan likely to gain pace as society fractures after the elections then the prospects for stability are low. Great map too - worth examining to see what it suggests about Iran and Iraq and all
It is almost certainly the end of the road for Musharraf, and with Bhutto gone there will be a power vacuum. Power vacuums mean conflict, as we have seen in Iraq. But the West and India have meddled enough in Pakistan - it is up to them.
Recognition of global turmoil as the basic challenge of our time requires confronting complexity. That is the weakness of the issue insofar as the American political scene is concerned. It does not lend itself to sloganeering or rouse the American people as viscerally as terrorism. It is more difficult to personalize without a demonic figure like Osama bin Laden. Nor is it congenial to self-gratifying proclamations of an epic confrontation between good and evil on the model of the titanic struggles with Nazism and Communism. Yet not to focus on global turmoil is to ignore a central reality of our times: the massive worldwide political awakening of mankind and its intensifying awareness of intolerable disparities in the human condition
Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership
Travel did many things to a person, but the one thing it did most successfully was break a person down. Admittedly, my travel experiences were not very representative. My experience with travel was Central Asia. Central Asia, then, broke a person down. It did so first by exhilaration. Was this place real? Was I really here? It did so next by exhaustion. Nothing was easy, and each hassle and bribe and malfunction and injustice took something of one's spirit, bent it, made it meaner. Then came the most brutal breakdown of all: the knowledge of how easily one could live within that meanness.
Tom Bissell
Chasing the Sea
Rising China, Shining India; the quagmire in the Persian Gulf and America’s Global War on Terror. These are some of the focal points of international politics in 2007, and none of them exist in isolation.
For the giant populations of Asia to continue their slow grind out of poverty requires economic growth; industrialisation and development must be fuelled. Both China and India are increasingly dependent on oil and gas imports, and in order to safeguard their futures energy security is vital. So each needs to command new sources and new ways of bringing in fossil fuels.
There are some vital strategic areas that can serve as transit routes in both China and India’s energy security policies. Thus geopolitics return to the historical heartland of Kipling’s Kim – the territory now known as Pakistan. It is as if the original Great Game has gone back to square one, only with some fresh rules and new players.
This thesis aims to examine the geopolitical implications of developing Pakistan as an ‘energy hub’, and to analyse the impediments to its fruition and the interested parties’ strategies for seeing it through. And, whereas other studies tend to focus on individual factors at work, it aims instead to critically observe them in the context of the situation as a whole.
Bound copies are available at lulu.com for around $10 plus P&P; downloadable PDF files are free of charge. Click here to access the virtual storefront.
This work is made available on the understanding that it will not be copied, plagiarised or otherwise reproduced without the explicit consent of the author.
India will soon be the world’s fifth largest consumer of energy. And there is probably one major reason for this: aircon.
Unless you have visited India in the summer months, you won’t appreciate the significance of aircon, but I certainly do. Despite its responsibility for the enormous energy deficit, aircon is perhaps now the ultimate giver of health and life to the rising middle classes.
The other night the electricity failed again, for around four hours, and the invertor didn’t hold enough charge to get through the night. It was miserable. Such is the power of aircon – once you have it, you can’t live without it. The contrast between my father’s non-aircon house and my cousin’s more expensive and modern dwelling couldn’t be greater.
Much as I hate MacDonalds, aside from the clean toilets and the absurdly smart security guards in their jat-moustaches and white spats, the saviour of Connaught Place is MacDonalds and its aircon. Ironic in a country where beef is not available.
So as the economy continues to boom, so the god of aircon will continue to ascend through the pantheon. Borne on his conveyance, the sacred refrigerated soft drink, his influence will only grow stronger as time passes.
I used to have an unshakeable faith in karma and the laws of the dao. For evey action, I once thought, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. As long as you do the right thing, you’ll be fine; but every moral outrage will come back to haunt you.
I’m not sure I believe in that anymore. Having circumnavigated the Dalai Lama’s residence not once but three times – an act that is supposed to gain one’s soul immeasurable merit – plus spun all the prayer wheels and donated to beggars all around, I still missed the bus tonight, leaving me stranded for another day.
It was an easy mistake to make. I arrived before time at the bus stand where I was dropped off on Sunday, only to discover too late that the bus picks up 200 metres down the road, out of the line of sight. I then compounded this error by trying to catch up with the bus in Dharmasala itself, but missed it again leaving me stuck at the town’s chaos station until nightfall.
Then again, there are worse places to be stuck. McCleod Ganj itself has nothing much to offer beyond the Tibetan temples and curio shops, but the true value of the trip has been to escape the oppressive heat and boredom of Delhi in a landscape far, far removed from the depressingly clinical flatness of Holland. The only thing to do here is to put on your shoes and walk, and that’s what I’ve done.
I’ve missed the hills, and I’m glad to be here.
“How can you govern a country that has 500 types of cheese?” Charles de Gaulle once lamented. But if France is hard to rule, then imagine a subcontinent that has 300 million gods. De Gaulle didn’t have an answer to that one.
I’ve never really believed in what must be an apocryphal figure, but out of that pantheon there must be a divinity for almost everything. For example, there has to be a god of diarrhoea. There must be. I’ve worshipped at his temple often enough on my visits here in the past, and have spoken to him on the porcelain telephone on many an occasion.
It’s a source of some disappointment, therefore, that so far on this trip I have hardly suffered at all. But for a couple of minor bouts of no more than a morning or so there’s been nothing. I’ve been avoiding meat, I must admit, and the shits do seem to be tied up with ‘non-veg’ food.
But in any case it’s so damn hot I’m hardly eating anything at all. I’ve currently resorted to fulfilling my nutritional needs via fizzy drinks, of which I’m now consuming an unpardonable litre to a litre-and-a-half per day. There must be a god of Coke, Thums Up and Limca too, I reckon – they’re certainly earning their keep.
'Travellers' never fail to amuse me. They loaf around in their dreadlocks, tattoos and baggy pants in a desperate effort to be different and just end up blending right into their own little crowd. Nowhere more so than here in India, the hippie capital of the known universe.
But when push comes to shove, say when a bus is a couple of hours late as tend to happen in Asia once in a while, this bunch will kick up a fuss like ther's no tomorrow. "Chill out, man," I feel like saying, "It's all good, don't mean nothin'." There's more of them than me though, so I keep my trap shut in case all that peace and love turns into an angry punch-up.
Anyway, made it in the end. The bus came, the flies went away, and despite more rupturous dissent when a group of Tibetans from a refugee colony outside Delhi boarded and took all the best seats we got here earlyish this morning. I promptly disappeared and found a decent hotel at half-rate, which makes up for having been done over for the price of my bus ticket on Janpath back in ND.
Home of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, McLeod Ganj sits among the hills near Dharamsala at 1,750m above sea-level. Here you'll find a Little-Tibet without-Tibet, somehow more engaging yet altogether false compared to the real thing. I'll stay here a couple of days, though - it'll do me good.
Right. I'm sick of sitting in my father's dusty flat on the outskirts of Delhi, where there aren't even any shops, let alone things to do. No TV, no radio, and I've nearly read my 700-page novel. Interviews went well, but more on that later once the telephone gets reconnected and I have Internet again. Apart from that I am climbing the walls in serious need of therapy.
Off to Dharamsala for a few days it is then. See you later...
Nothing works here - not water, not electricty, not transport, not nothing. My laptop and phone line are down, hence the lack of updates. Hopefully the situation may be rectified by next week.
On a lighter note, I'm off to Dharamasala on Saturday for a couple of days, so should have some pics and stories after that.
In Europe you are so used to the electricity coming on at the flick of a switch and water flowing at the turn of a tap you don’t even think about it. Even in Shanghai I had utilities 24/7. No worries. But here it’s different. Here you have to work.
The day begins at 6.30am, like or not, since the mains water only operates during limited periods of the day. Since it’s been 30 degrees all night and there’s no aircon as promised, (in fact not even an aircon brochure anywhere to be seen, despite my father’s assurances) you haven’t slept anyway, so it’s no big deal.
Turn on the motor via the switch in the bathroom, assuming electricity is functioning. Run downstairs to the bottom water tank, where there are three valves which must all be turned in the correct direction for the tank to fill with water. Once the mains shuts off, you can then pump water up to the top tank on the roof, which provides the majority of day-to-day water use.
This is assuming that you have even half a clue about how the system works. If you don’t, and it hasn’t been demonstrated to you, there is nothing for it but experimentation of the all the different combinations of the valves and motor, none of which work leaving you without water for washing up, showering or flushing the toilet for the rest of the day. Discover at a later date that one of the valves was bust anyway, making all of the above academic.
This is not impoverished rural Bihar; this is a middle-class suburb of New Delhi, the national capital.
At least there is a solution to the three-to-four times daily power cuts: each household possesses an invertor, basically a battery that charges up if the electricity is working and runs the lights and fans if it is not.
However, this invertor is not strong enough to keep the fridge going, so anything within is in a permanent flux of thaw and cool which in 40 degrees of heat can’t be good for sanitation.
I can’t live here. There’s a difference between being a whinging softie and just failing to accept that things need to be this way. I don’t accept that it needs to be this way, not here, not now in 2007. It was like this in the 80s and nothing has changed at all.
The images of India you see on TV are false. The only way to live comfortably here is to be incredibly filthy rich. The rest suffer in uneasy silence – and that’s not even including the billion poor for whom conditions are infinitely worse. If this is shining India, then there is no hope.
6.12 am. Ding Dong!
Me, Phil: (Opening door) Namaste…
Lakshmi, Housemaid: Namaste. (goes about business)
L: Something something something panee something something?
P: Er… panee? (go to turn on water)
L: Something something something kanna hayng?
P: Haa, kuch kanna….
L: Something something something…
P: (shrug pathetically)
L: Something something something something something
P: (shrug)
L: (getting frustrated) Something something something something something something something something something kanna hayng?
P: Haa, kuch kanna…
L: Something something something…
P: I’m terribly sorry, you see I don’t speak any Hindi. Mayng Hindi ne hee balta hoong.
L: Something something something something something something something something something (shrug, goes off to prepare breakfast)
Continue for two days.
 India. How can you romanticise a place do relentlessly romanticised by so many others before oneself? Yet the temptation remains, and even as I write the cries of the muezzin drift in their eerie song over the city as it prepares again for rest. But I am in no mood for romance tonight, because in the midst of a billion people and their loves and lives there is no room for anything but lonely contemplation of what India is and what it will never become.
I arrive minutes before the stroke of the midnight hour, dumped unceremoniously into the night by KLM’s sterile efficiency of in-flight movies and boxed-up dinners. Eight hours of Germany’s geometric order and Uzbekistan’s barren expansiveness before the darkness creeps up; and in between them more clouds than one can see beyond, as viewed from the sky behind the aircraft’s wing. My cousin and father are there to receive me, patiently waiting for the airport to disgorge its new arrivals from its bowels, and we ride in near silence through the still-bustling streets, each quiet for his own reasons of fatigue.
I try to sleep, but in the heat and unfamiliarity sleep does not come because she is not there and because I know now that she cannot be again.
In the morning, I awake to countless instructions. This is how the water works, an obscure contraption that needs careful control of the system of pumps; here is the refrigerator, the bathroom, the cupboards, locks and bolts. My father wears again the army shirt and slacks he wore last night in anticipation of his trip to Calcutta this afternoon; he thinks they are practical, but they don’t suit him.
It had rained the last day, and it offers some respite as the heat begins to build again. The expected rickshaw wallah is not there, and must we persuade another to take us to the office which he does in a half-resentful flood of sweat. At one point the ground is so bumpy I must get out and push. But eventually my father’s business in the office is done and we return for a moment, only for him to turn straight around and head for Calcutta.
So having come all this way to where I belong and am yet so alien, I am alone again. My cousin takes me for lunch, though work delays him by a couple of hours, and we eat quickly outside in a flurry of somnolent flies. A ride around the locality orients me to the neighbourhood’s landscape of idenikit tenement houses and shining new developments, all of which seem only half complete. And then again I am alone in the dusty apartment on the edge of the city, with the Yamuna river curling alongside redolent with the stink of a million other lunches and dinners and loves and lives. This is India; I am back.
 It's amazing how at home I feel in New York. It's not that things are exactly the same - they are not - but yet somehow the 'melting pot' seems to take in every aspect of the other cities I've lived in and blends them into one.
In New York you have it all: the bustle and imperial grandeur of London; the brownstone architecture and flashy skyscrapers of Shanghai's east and west riverbanks of the Bund and Pudong; even some of the old world charm of Amsterdam, at least in the Village.
The subway took all of an hour to get to grips with, and navigating the grid system was a piece of cake. The ethnic mix reminded me of London too, though elements of Chinatown were, of course, pure Puxi.
Perhaps most of all, New York had that easy familiarity of an old friend I had grown up with - over 30 years of TV. Every inch of the city has been immortalised on celluloid, and it was as if I had never been anywhere else. Such is the impact of popular culture.
Lastly, the media. This place is self-obsessed. On any one of four or five rolling news channels today, the airwaves were jammed with non-news of Cory Lidl's unfortunate light aircraft crash into an upper East Side tenement block. North Korea? Fuggedabahdit.
On the other hand, strolling past Ground Zero on Wednesday did give me an uneasy sense of unreality. How must it have looked to those who witnessed the attacks? I imagined myself watching in slow motion as the planes made impact and realised just how much that day affected the national psyche of this place.
There are few Republicans to be found in New York, but they are not the only Americans.
Dutch Multiculturalism in Question
A draft report of proceedings in New York, by Jessica Serraris and Philip Sen.
Those who managed to get in – people were literally lining up around Washington Square to attend the debate at NYU’s Tischman Auditorium – were warned that they’d hear some views that would be “a little more direct than Americans are used to”. They were not to be disappointed.
Integration and its Discontents
Students, professors, journalists and VIPs alike gathered to see arguably one of the most celebrated Dutch women in recent history. The notoriously outspoken Ayaan Hirsi Ali had been invited to discuss the dark side of Islam and Dutch multiculturalism, and along with former EU commissioner FFrits Bolkestein and writer Bas Heijne she certainly managed to captivate the audience.
But the debate was deeply one-sided. If Heijne was supposed to counter the rightist views of the other two, he did not live up to the task. Perhaps the debate would have benefited had a prominent and outspoken Muslim been invited to the stage too. Still, what ensued was otherwise a representative discussion on Holland’s controversial and divisive integration issues. After Professor Tony Judt's introduction, in which he set recent upheavals (including two political assassinations) into context, it was time to hear the speakers make their cases. It soon became clear that there would be more than one star of the show.
Read on below.
Continue reading "Religion and the Limits of Tolerance" »
Well here I am. Flags flying everywhere, and no white people on the metro. Those are the two things that have struck me most of all so far, but I haven't had time to fully get to grips with the place yet. A light plane hit a building on the upper east side today too, but I was nowhere near. More later.
Flying out this morning for the Faith and the State debate with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Frits Bolkestein, Bas Heijne and Tony Judt. Will report back as soon as possible...
 It's not in my usual remit, but the Economist article reprinted below strikes a timely chord.
I used to believe that the Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular, were havens of peace and harmony in a seething sea of troubles. Safe, if sordid, Holland was 'fluffy'. No longer. After Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, things won't be the same again.
The apartment complex I've just moved into - in fact the whole area I now live in - is populated predominantly by Turkish-origin and other Muslims. The guy who cut my hair was Moroccan. The woman in the launderette is Kashmiri. And there's a definite tension between the austerity of the hijabs I see among my neighbours and the swinging sexuality of the city centre's red-light district.
The contrast couldn't be greater: it's a tale not just of two cities but of two worlds.
The Economist draws our attention to two books upon this subject - one by Ian Buruma (co-author of Occidentalism) on the death of Theo van Gogh; the other by celebrity politico Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who effectively brought down the Dutch government this year.
Murder in Amsterdam, will deal with the murder; the other is a collection of essays primarily on the plight of Muslim women.
I'd better get hold of a copy; in October I'll have the chance to meet Ayaan Hirsi Ali at a debate at NYU's Remarque Institute having won an essay competition on 'Faith and the State'. That'll be going up soon on a dedicated documents page.
The Economist, however, summarises the basic idea pretty well. It's got to be give and take - it's got to be a bit of both:
Ms Hirsi Ali is a fierce opponent of multiculturalism. She believes it is wrong and even dangerous for the tolerant and liberal to accept the intolerant and illiberal. And she thinks the West should not be afraid to proclaim the superiority of its system.
Yet attempts to coerce Muslims into adopting Western values risk a backlash. Europe needs to come to terms with Islam as a European religion. It is also striking, as Mr Buruma notes, that the most radical Muslims are not immigrants, but the second generation: those born in Europe who grow up disaffected, rootless and (all too often) jobless. These are the people who must be persuaded that they have a stake in a modern, liberal democracy. For the Netherlands, as for all of Europe, that requires better education, better housing, lower crime—and more job opportunities.
Maybe so. There has to be a carrot - but there has to be a stick too.
Continue reading "Dutch Courage, Dutch Fears" »
Due to moving house in Amsterdam and the entailing period offline, there will probably be few posts between now and the beginning of September. Normal blogging should resume about then.
Philip
 It's 1 July - halfway through the year and time for a revamp.
As this blog has evolved, it's become increasingly clear that the sources I use - The Guardian, BBC News Online and The Economist - despite their excellent journalism traditions are very 'British'. And that's not what this website is about.
I've therefore decided to add a new source - Asia Times Online - which, while it doesn't have the pedigree of the others, is certainly a portal for some serious voices from and about Asia. Take, for example, this story on 'Petro Hysteria' (reproduced below).
Hopefully this new source will add balance to the site as it progresses.
I've also redesigned the banner to better reflect the themes of the blog - the War on Terror, the quest for oil and especially the role of China and India in all this.
Finally, I've adjusted the sidebars a little, but that's by the by.
Let me know what you think!
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Update: As of 18 July 2006, the interface was upgraded to Movable Type 3.31, complete with tagging. Check out the tag cloud to see more...
Continue reading "Site Revamp" »
 If you want evidence that not everything you read in the press is correct, look no further than this. The ignorance diplayed by CBS and AP here is quite phenomenal. Courtesy of Dave, who sent this screenshot in case the error is corrected...
To us it's just funny, but to a Chinese nationalist this would be enough to kick off a riot.
 It's really starting to feel like the summer of '69, not that I have any nostalgic feelings for Woodstock nor was even born then. I'm taking about the music with a political message. In stark contrast to the Right Brothers (assuming they weren't ironic) now comes this protest song from Nerina Pallot.
With lyrics like this:
If love is a drug, i guess we're all sober
If hope is a song, i guess it's all over
How to have faith when faith is a crime?
I don't want to die
If God's on our side, then God is a joker
Asleep on the job, his children fall over
Running out through the door and straight to the sky
I don't want to die...
...who needs Joni Mitchell? However - and I do know it's a protest song - I think the chances of Nerina Pallet getting shot in her safe cozy living room in Jersey is highly unlikely, no matter how much it might worry her. Unless she goes on tour in Baghdad, which I can't see either.
More lyrics below...
Continue reading "Battle of the Bands" »
After a whole lot of messing around, I'm now back online - watch this space from now on.
I won't be around for a couple of weeks now, so won't be able to write much about this year's Davos meetings. Suffice it to say - it'll be worth coming back to.
Bye for now, and see you in Amsterdam in early February.
Check out the photos - uploaded at http://www.philip-sen.com/india.html
Say so myself, but I'm gradually getting better and better...
This evening being my last in India, and with time running short, we took a trip to the Swaminarayam Akshardham Temple on the eastern outskirts of New Delhi. Having seem it many times from the toll road, I had little idea of what to expect inside.
If you've ever tried to imagine what Angkor Wat might have looked like when it was first put up, look no further than here. Inaugurated as recently as November 2005, every inch of this stunningly constructed complex is packed with carvings. No less than 15,000 artisans spent four years chipping away at sandstone blocks, and the result is absolutely exquisite, if a little over the top.
The main temple is surrounded by a frieze depicting the elephant in mythology and folklore; the interior is a virtuoso display of religious art; and there are fountains and gardens too. And this is just the free part - there's a raft of other exhibitions and filmshows to keep you occupied for an entire afternoon at least.
Yet the whole experience left me just a little confused. If the time, effort, money and sheer organisational skill that went into this were to go into the rest of New Delhi, it would become the world's number one city by next week.
It can be done. India has the people and it has the skill. It just can't be bothered. That's a shame.
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