Professor Andre Beteille has an interesting op-ed about the concept of tribe in today's Telegraph. He argues that the concept is no longer applicable to groups like the Gujjars who have agitated to be placed on the government's list of scheduled tribes despite opposition by the Meena tribe.
Professor Beteille bemoans the lack of any attempt to consult objective experts before the government acquiesced. I found his argument rather absurd in a post-Foucauldian era. Do we really want Anthropologists as an arm of the state? Isn't it more interesting to understand what the concept of tribe means today rather than trying to use a 19th century concept to determine who is qualified for affirmative action? Finally, and not surprisingly, there is no discussion of whether the Gujjar tribe actually bears a stigma that results in systematic discrimination.
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The key to challenging the hegemonic discourse amongst India's middle class is the concept of merit. There is an assumption that those who do not have access to affirmative action have earned their positions at universities and goverment bureaucracies.

The discourse requires an examination of the education system and testing regime. While I don't have time to do this in detail, it is apparent to me that the Indian education system shares much in common with countries like China. Students spend an inordinate amount of time not only in class but in evening extra tutorials. The entire process is not only time consuming, it is expensive.

An obvious conclusion that one could draw is that the testing used to establish qualification for admission to higher education measures skills at memorization and test-taking more than aptitude. To the extent that any test can be manipulated by coaching, the test is failing to measure aptitude. Massive factual and formulaic memorization is facilitated by income spent on coaching classes. In essence, I am arguing that under the guise of merit one sees a mechanism for class reproduction. Merit in this context is merely a euphemism for the ability to afford coaching classes which are largely closed to the lower classes.

My main observation is that the need for social justice is generally neglected in the Indian papers I have been reading, while a rather cheap conception of merit is being advanced to protect class, caste, and communal privileges.

What strikes me is the general lack of a vigorous response in the public sphere against the reactionaries.

Thus, is it any wonder that the use of affirmative action comes to be seen as underhanded?

For some reason they allow every type of hawker and beggar onto the train. So anyone trying to rest is subject to a constant banter of solicitations for watches, MP4 players, raincoats, emergency torches, chai-coffee. All of that is fine but I just don't get the guy who is selling hand pumps and bike pumps. Who needs a hand pump on a train?

I want to sit the guy down and suggest he sell ear plugs, real pillows, or anything which is relevant to someone on a train.

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It was probably inevitable, but it is still surprising to see how Indians are reacting to the Obama nomination.

In today's Sunday Times, Shashi Tharoor discusses Obama's nomination in the context of a political elite drawn from Harvard and Yale. Instead of complaining of elitism, he asks why India's politicians are not from similar elite institutions. The implication is that even a minority candidate in the US comes from the very best educational institutions compared to the earthier backgrounds of some of India's new generation of political elites.

Of course, Tharoor is not smart enough to realize that not everyone who goes to Harvard or Yale gets in purely on the basis of intellectual achievement. This should have been obvious to him when he discusses the current President's Harvard and Yale connections. Tharoor boasts a degree from India's prestigious St. Stephens, perhaps they should ask him to return his degree since anyone who cannot distinguish between a credential and intelligence is probably not too educated.

In another op-ed, M. Akbar uses Obama's race speech to chastise India's muslims for being "parasites". It is hard to imagine a more one sided, bizarre, and faulty reading of Obama's words.

Given that several of India's newspapers and t.v. shows are generally devoted to the daily caste, class, and communal war that characterizes elite Indian discourse, Obama will simply be used at every turn to forward the same reactionary agenda.

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I have just entered into West Bengal and the GSM is working again.

Of course, I've lost all the draft posts I had written in the interim. Oh well...
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The rain has come in Patna. I would not say that this is the full monsoon, which I believe is still a week or two away, but the traffic conditions are already miserable.

I should wear shorts and flip flops. Everyone here is folding there pants up to their knees anyway. It would be kind of fun, except that I am running around with a backpack and a smaller daypack.

In other news, I managed to get a train ticket to Siliguri tomorrow night (without having to pay any bribes or anything... just being patient) so I will arrive there on the morning of the sixteenth. The talks between the separatists and the West Bengal government are now scheduled for the eighteenth.

I am pretty curious to see the situation in Siliguri. The situation appears to be calming down from news reports. I think most of the 40,000 stranded tourists have managed to get out by now. Of course, the underlying situation is not resolved. I don't see how the Indian government would ever agree to create a Gorkhaland in such a militarily sensitive area with tons of Chinese troops just across the border. So there is a bit of a deadlock, some sorts of minor concessions will need to be made short of a redrawing of the border.

People here in Bihar are more cynical. They say the riots are all just about politicians trying to see which position will garner more votes in the next election.

Whatever the cause, it is clear that a new generation of leaders has firmly come to the forefront of those demanding a separate Gorkha homeland.

So my plans to see and study Darjeeling and Sikkim have been completely derailed by mob violence in Siliguri. Groups demanding an independent Gorkhaland have been sporadically clashing with police and Bengali groups. Apparently a handful of Indian tourists and a Police officer were also roughed up in the violence and some of the mobs were weilding swords and bats from the reports I have read. The Indian Army is on alert but has not yet been sent in, so perhaps the situation is calming.

The tourists who are stranded in Darjeeling and Sikkim are in for a ride. There are reports of panic buying because trucks are not being allowed into Siliguri and up to Darjeeling or Gangtok.

I guess it is good that I cancelled my visit to Darjeeling and Gangtok because it is hard enough to get around in India as it is. In an emergency situation, life would be quite hectic indeed. In any case, there is no chance that I would get permission in Darjeeling to go on to Gangtok under such violent conditions.

I am still planning on spending the night in Siliguri on the 16th before moving on to Guwahati in Assam. By then the strike should be over. Negotiations are supposed to start on the 17th. Fingers are crossed.

Currently, I am in Bodhgaya vising Buddhist monastaries and temples.

I had a very long conversation with a railway clerk as we sat waiting three hours for the "express" train to move the final 10 kilometers to the literal and figurative end of the line: Patna.

We came to two important conclusions in our rambling dialogue: 1) in India time has no value, particularly the time of the paying consumer; 2) you can't assess how corrupt a government is until it has been replaced by another corrupt government. Only a change of government reveals the extent of decay and rot in the body politic.

It was a good conversation and I felt I had made a friend at the end even though we were of very different backgrounds. The dialogue was a good prologue for entering Patna.

After the much delayed train journey, I rolled into the rough and tumble capital of what Arvind Das aptly called "The Republic of Bihar."

As, we drove the wrong way across a bridge to my hotel (with cars swerving in all directions), I learned that the hotel staff had lost my "confirmed" reservation (and Blackberry had wiped out my e-mail records), so I accepted to stay in a much more expensive hotel on the other side of town (a 15 Rs or $0.30 rickshaw ride - labor power is desperately cheap here). Tired and a bit frustrated, I was asked to pay the entire bill up front before I could take my room at the so called second best hotel in town. There just is not much trust in this town.

It has been a decade since I have seen this place which I associate with my earliest and some of my fondest memories. I am sad to say that Patna is much worse for the wear. The streets are still broken, while some law and order has been restored - it is still not very safe after dark, filth and extreme poverty are of course rampant. A coal fired power plant has emerged in the middle of the city. Shades of Bladerunner.

Today, I changed hotels to much divier but friendlier place. Since the pricier hotel had roaches, I am not really expecting too much from this one.

I am now trying to write this note from an internet cafe since the GSM on the Blackberry does not work in Bihar. Moreover as the power keeps blacking out, I may as well wrap it up...

Today while waiting at the train station in Benares I saw policeman beat a man suspected of some type of theft. The beating was mild compared to things I have seen in other countries, but it did draw a crowd.

Later, I watched as a government official demanded a comission from American tourists for reserving their pre-paid Indian railpass seats. The Americans protested that this was not right. The official said they should give him the name and address of the person who said commissions were not allowed, so he could arrest him. The Americans responded by whipping out their Lonely Planet guide... All to no avail. The tourists could barely understand the official and he would just raise his voice with each interaction. They were clearly both fed up and over a barrel.

On a positive note, when I could not find my train (as the noticed board was mainly an exercise in disinformation) a tourist police officer helped me. He even came to find me when the platform was changed a second time. I had figured every thing out by then, but it was a kind gesture. If he had spoken any English I might have sent him to help the American tourists getting scammed.
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So while I was trying to book hotels online and over the phone, I decided it would be easier and more interesting just to go to the call center and do the booking in person.

I took the metro to the end of the line with my cousin. Then we hopped in a cab and went to Gurgaon, Haryana, one of India's new tech centers. It took us a while to find the spot, but since it was a 24 hour call center, it was not a problem to arrive late.

The initial scene was a bit comical. I guess it is kind of odd to try to have a personal interaction with an impersonal corporation. The receptionist was a bit puzzled with us but we were accomodated.

Long story short, it has been two days and my itinerary is still being hammered out by them. For some odd reason it takes them 48 hours to finalize a request (of course my 4 week itinerary is pretty complex).

It is a far cry from the turn around time of Expedia or Orbitz, but the system works (I hope). My hunch is that the delay is caused by a lack of automated booking at non-chain hotels in India.
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I am now in a rural area of Uttar Pradesh and I have access to four cell phone carriers. Meanwhile the poor people here still don't have latrines.

Overall coverage on train has been spotty for cell towers which can handle lots of data, but just fine for voice (which is as expected given ubiquity of mobile technology).
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For the third time in six months, India paramilitary forces operating Afhanistan have been attacked by suicide bombers. The Border Roads Organzation is building a road connecting Afghanistan to an Iranian port.

What struck me in the coverage of the latest attack in the Economic Times (p. 2) is the complete absence of analysis. There is no attempt to understand why Indian troops would be targeted. It is rather obvious that the road is aimed at diminishing Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan.

The absence of analysis on this issue is eerily similar to the coverage of domestic terrorism... events are simply reported as facts creating an impression of highly illogical opponents.
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One of the projects that I am working on while I am in India is to discern Indian opinions about the new regime in Pakistan. I have been asked to present these thoughts at a roundtable in the fall which focuses on domestic and regional responses to changes in Pakistani politics.

While there is some interest and concern in India with developments in Pakistan, most of these concerns are crudely related to old border issues and terrorism.

What is more difficult to express is the level of concern or lack there of about these issues relative to other matters in the public sphere. India seems to me at least much more focused on domestic issues at the moment. Regional politics is often an after thought these days.

In recent weeks, my hunch would be that priority of concern in regional affairs would probably go to Nepal. At the global scale the US-India nuclear deal has also pre-occupied much of the chattering class for some time. (Of course, the US is also a regional power with its base in Diego Garcia and troops in Afghanistan).

The news coverage of global politics since I have been here has mainly been about Senator Obama and his potential running mate.

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I paid a quick visit to the Red Fort yesterday. The fort was built in 1648 by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. It is now a tourist attraction the site of the annual Independence day address to the nation.

What is sad is how poorly the Indian government maintains the artifacts in this national treasure. There are priceless texts and paintings slowly decaying the heat and humidity of the museum.

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So, somewhat as I had expected, Sikkim is back in the news. Indians had interpreted the issue of Sikkim's status as a part of India and its borders with China to be settled.

However, there is a minor dispute over about 2 sq. Km on the Sikkim, Bhutan, and China borders. Apparently, China has been "testing India's perimeter with cross border forays. China has also objected to India troop reinforcements in the Siliguri area according to today's Hindustan Times.

The problems are unlikely to cause a major conflict in the near future. However, they do remind us that the Sino-Indian border is still unsettled. Indian officials have been too eager to paint a picture of progress on these issues rather than letting the Chinese speak for themselves.

I don't really think this issue (which has been in negotiations for almost three decades) will be settled but what I find fascinating is the discourse on "cartographic aggression," in which maps serve as signs of diplomatic achievement or discord. The logic is a legacy of imperial cartography which helped to create this mess.



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It was a long and exhausting first day in new and old Delhi. Most of the day was spent talking with a relative about how much has changed in Delhi and of course global, regional, and national politics.

As in the Middle East, price rises are a major issue. There was a big strike in Kolkatta today protesting the drawing back of some of the petrol and propane subsidies.

I toured a few malls just to see how the better half is doing. The malls are getting quite nice. I am told that housing prices are spiralling and most of the salaried class still seem to be living on credit.

Security in the subways and everywhere else is a bit annoying.

Otherwise I am still working on tricky logistics and trying to get permissions in order for NE India.
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We spent part of the day on Rainbow Street, which seems to be an ex-pat enclave. The area gave us the familiar and slightly uncomfortable feeling that one gets in other areas of the region that have swarms of ex-pats, like in Maadi, Egypt.

I am not quite sure why ex-pats like to congregate in one area. It seems economically irrational since the presence of a large number of foreigners will only drive up prices. While it may be cultually comforting, Jordan really does not seem as challenging of a place to live as Cairo. So one wonders why there such a need to have an enclave.

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The other day as we were wandering about in a remote town we saw a car that looked like it had been in a bad accident. Upon a closer look it was clear that the car had been vandalized. The car's Israeli plates seemed to be the only explanation on offer for the odd scene in an otherwise tidy area. Even with a peace treaty, relations are clearly still simmering.

The next day, when we met with the study abroad offices we looked over the forms for homestay families. One of the check boxes was about whether the family would accept a Jewish student in their home. The form we saw had been checked "no". It was a bit troubling, even though we were told that some families had no objections.

I guess none of this surprising given political tensions in Gaza and the W. Bank, but it all seems to defeat a significant purpose behind cultural exchange.

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