Pankaj Mishra writes in The Guardian, about Fareed Zakaria, the latest intellectual empty suit of the talking heads circuit, his latest book, and the vision of India as a neo-liberal capitalist success:

In the past five years bomb attacks claimed by Islamist groups have killed hundreds across the Indian cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Varanasi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. An Indian Muslim was even involved in the failed assault on Glasgow airport in July last year. Yet George Bush reportedly introduced Manmohan Singh to his wife, Laura, as “the prime minister of India, a democracy which does not have a single al-Qaida member in a population of 150 million Muslims”.

To be fair to Bush, he was only repeating a cliche deployed by Indian politicians and American pundits such as Thomas Friedman to promote India as a squeaky-clean ally of the United States. However, Fareed Zakaria, the Indian-born Muslim editor of Newsweek International, ought to know better. In his new book, The Post-American World, he describes India as a “powerful package” and claims it has been “peaceful, stable, and prosperous” since 1997 – a decade in which India and Pakistan came close to nuclear war, tens of thousands of Indian farmers took their own lives, Maoist insurgencies erupted across large parts of the country, and Hindu nationalists in Gujarat murdered more than 2,000 Muslims.

Apparently, no inconvenient truths are allowed to mar what Foreign Affairs, the foreign policy journal of America’s elite, has declared a “roaring capitalist success story”. Add Bollywood’s singing and dancing stars, beauty queens and Booker prize-winning writers to the Tatas, the Mittals and the IT tycoons, and the picture of Indian confidence, vigour and felicity is complete.

The passive consumer of this image, already puzzled by recurring reports of explosions in Indian cities, may be startled to learn from the National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC) in Washington that the death toll from terrorist attacks in India between January 2004 and March 2007 was 3,674, second only to that in Iraq. (In the same period, 1,000 died as a result of such attacks in Pakistan, the “most dangerous place on earth” according to the Economist, Newsweek and other vendors of geopolitical insight.)

To put it in plain language – which the NCTC is unlikely to use – India is host to some of the fiercest conflicts in the world. Since 1989 more than 80,000 have died in insurgencies in Kashmir and the northeastern states.

<…>

The Indian elite’s obsession with the “foreign hand” obscures the fact that the roots of some of the violence lie in the previous two decades of traumatic political and economic change, particularly the rise of Hindu nationalism, and the related growth of ruthlessness towards those left behind by India’s expanding economy.

In 2006 a commission appointed by the government revealed that Muslims in India are worse educated and less likely to find employment than low-caste Hindus. Muslim isolation and despair is compounded by what B Raman, a hawkish security analyst, was moved after the most recent attacks to describe as the “inherent unfairness of the Indian criminal justice system”.

To take one example, the names of the politicians, businessmen, officials and policemen who colluded in the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002 are widely known. Some of them were caught on video, in a sting carried out last year by the weekly magazine Tehelka, proudly recalling how they murdered and raped Muslims. But, as Amnesty International pointed out in a recent report, justice continues to evade most victims and survivors of the violence. Tens of thousands still languish in refugee camps, too afraid to return to their homes.

<…>

Without any hint of irony or humour, The Guardian worries that Western influence within the United Nations is waning — worrisome because it wrecks “efforts to entrench human rights, liberties and multilateralism”.

Drop in influence at UN wrecks western attempts to push human rights agenda

The west’s efforts to use the United Nations to promote its values and shape the global agenda are failing, according to a detailed study published yesterday.

A sea change in the balance of power in favour of China, India, Russia and other emerging states is wrecking European and US efforts to entrench human rights, liberties and multilateralism.

This perhaps belongs in the same category of new-found Republican concerns regarding sexism and the Bush administration’s alarm at Russian unilateralism (vis-à-vis Georgia). Dare we remind them that the United Nations came about as a response to the two disastrous wars that these nations inflicted upon the rest of the unenlightened world? Or would that explicit notice have as little effect as the implicit caution offered by a history of colonialism, political mischief and unilateral intrusion (Iran, Iraq, Latin America, Afghanistan, Africa, India, Pakistan,…)?

A recent article in the New York Times presents an altogether different picture than the one The Guardian offers, when it comes to US interest or respect for other values and thought. The article ends with a quote from Northwestern law professor Steven Calabresi:

In “ ‘A Shining City on a Hill’: American Exceptionalism and the Supreme Court’s Practice of Relying on Foreign Law,” a 2006 article in the Boston University Law Review, Professor Calabresi concluded that the Supreme Court should be wary of citing foreign law in most constitutional cases precisely because the United States is exceptional.

“Like it or not,” he wrote, “Americans really are a special people with a special ideology that sets us apart from all the other peoples.”

Discussing the use of international opinion in judicial analysis, the NYT articles draws a telling contrast:

Judges around the world have long looked to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court for guidance, citing and often following them in hundreds of their own rulings since the Second World War.

[...] American constitutional law has been cited and discussed in countless decisions of courts in Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa and elsewhere.

But many judges and legal scholars in this country say that consideration of foreign legal precedents in American judicial decisions is illegitimate, and that there can be no transnational dialogue about the meaning of the United States Constitution.

[...]

The Constitution should be interpreted according to its original meaning, said John O. McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern, and recent rulings, whether foreign or domestic, cannot aid in that enterprise. Moreover, Professor McGinnis said, decisions applying foreign law to foreign circumstances are not instructive here.

“It may be good in their nation,” he said. “There is no reason to believe necessarily that it’s good in our nation.”

[...]

In any event, said Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago, many Americans are deeply suspicious of foreign law.

“We are used to encouraging other countries to adopt American constitutional norms,” he wrote in an essay last month, “but we have never accepted the idea that we should adopt theirs.”

“It’s American exceptionalism,” Professor Posner added in an interview. “The view going back 200 years is that we’ve figured it out and people should follow our lead.”

[emphasis mine]

In contrast, the New York Times describes the attitude elsewhere (including in India, a country that The Guardian laments is gaining influence in the UN, and whose UN soldiers are prominently pictured at the top of The Guardian’s piece):

The openness of some legal systems to foreign law is reflected in their constitutions. The South African Constitution, for instance, says that courts interpreting its bill of rights “must consider international law” and “may consider foreign law.” The constitutions of India and Spain have similar provisions.

and explains why a shift away from US standards and opinion is occurring:

Frederick Schauer, a law professor at the University of Virginia, wrote in a 2000 essay that the Canadian Supreme Court had been particularly influential because “Canada, unlike the United States, is seen as reflecting an emerging international consensus rather than existing as an outlier.”

Hmm! I wonder why…

BBC NEWS | Obama win preferred in world poll

The margin of those in favour of Mr Obama winning November’s US election ranged from 9% in India to 82% in Kenya, which is the birthplace of the Illinois senator’s father.

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BBC NEWS | Malnutrition getting worse in India

Every lunchtime the children of Chitori Khurda gather at the Anganwadi centre in the village. It is where nutrition and health services are provided at village level.

On the day we visited, each child was given two puris (small bread puffs fried in oil) along with some sweet porridge. The allocation is 80g of food a day per child.

The children ate it, then sat hoping for more, but there was none.

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In “Propaganda and the Public Mind” (David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky), Noam Chomsky is asked “Can you think of any positive examples of humanitarian intervention?” and offers this answer:

When you look at the historical record honestly, it’s extremely hard to find any examples of use of military force undertaken for genuine humanitarian aims. [...]

In the post-Second World War period, there were a few cases, two that I know of, that are genuine: the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, which got rid of Pol Pot, and the Indian invasion of hat is now Bangladesh, which stopped a huge atrocity.

(Note: Chomsky does point out that “they were not undertaken with humanitarian intent”).

Today, India is an enabler of the repressive junta in power in Burma and is guilty of doing the least in the relief effort. Another example of India Shining.

Before India, there was Ireland. But as VH-1 might ask, where are they now?

Economic Slump in the Emerald Isle: Ireland’s Luck is Running Out — Spiegel

[...]

At the same time, the cost of living and doing business is soaring. The headline inflation rate is hovering near 5 percent, vs. 3.3 percent for the euro zone as a whole. And the euro’s rise against the dollar and the pound sterling has made Ireland much less competitive in its two main export markets. That, in turn, has led many manufacturers, both Irish and foreign, to eliminate local positions. Over the last year, big multinationals such as Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Motorola, Vodafone, and Allergan have cut scores of Irish jobs. Irish unemployment topped 5.2 percent in February, up from 4.5 percent a year ago.

The upshot, says Jim Power, chief economist at the Dublin-based financial-services group Friends First, is that Ireland’s global competitiveness has markedly deteriorated. That’s a view also shared by the European Central Bank, which recently issued a report showing that for the second year in a row, Ireland suffered the biggest decline in competitiveness of the 15 countries in the euro zone.

Multinationals Pull Back

Now Power and others fear that Ireland’s decline, coupled with increased competition from lower-cost, emerging markets, is threatening the very foreign direct investment that made its economy so successful in the past two decades. The country hosts nearly 1,000 foreign multinational companies that employ more than 150,000 workers. Led by technology giants such as Intel and Microsoft and pharmaceutical firms such as Wyeth and Amgen, these companies were attracted by Ireland’s low, 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, skilled workforce, and business-friendly environment.

There are already signs that the pace of foreign investment is slowing. A recent report from consultancy OCO Global showed that the amount of direct foreign investment into Ireland fell by 5 percent last year, to $2 billion. At the same time, the number of Irish jobs created as a result of foreign direct investment fell by 40 percent. Case in point: Last October, Amgen, the world’s biggest biotech company, announced it was shelving plans to build a billion-dollar manufacturing plant in County Cork.

[...]

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The April 2007 issue of Business Week laments about the cautious Chinese consumer: In China private consumption is less than 40% of the GDP which BW compares to India at about 60% of the GDP. Leaving the worrying about China to BW, I wish to wonder instead what this says about Indian personal spending trends. Especially in light of private consumption in developed nations: India beats out both Japan and Germany and gets scarily close to the consumption king, the USA at about 70%.

If I am reading this right, and its probable I am not (a query to the masters on PEN-L should ascertain that; expect an update shortly), Indians are on a merry spending binge, cheered on by the “flattening” world which they consider themselves an inhabitant of, impervious to the existence of a security net for the residents of the welfare states whose league they are playing in. Let us hope they do not fall off the edge!

PBS’s [wide angle] covered the Indian farmer suicide issue in their episode today. The good news is that all that sad news and sorrow is alleviated towards the end by the wisdom of Jagdish Bhagwati, globalisation’s brown knight, who offered such gems as:

India specialises in poverty

The link to the interview transcript (PDF) is currently broken, but let that not prevent you from enjoying Bhagwati elsewhere.

I have whined elsewhere extensively about the whole India Shining thing, primarily motivated by my own personal education, through my father, of the Indian freedom struggle and the values it drew on and hoped to build the new nation upon. The New York Times today has an excellent op-ed piece by Pankaj Mishra which voices my fears in an elegant way:

Gaining Power, Losing Values – New York Times

[...]

Upholding business interests above all in its foreign policy, as in its domestic policy, China at least appears to be internally consistent. The gap between image and reality is greater in the case of India, which claims to be the world’s largest democracy, with an educated middle class and a free news media.

And yet fundamental rights to clean water, food and work remain empty abstractions to hundreds of millions of Indians, whose plight rarely impinges on the news media’s obsession with celebrity and consumption. The country’s culture of greed partly explains why a woman is killed by her husband or in-laws every 77 minutes for failing to bring sufficient dowry.

Pundits in India deplore, often gleefully, American excesses in Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and the inadequacies of the American news media in the run-up to the war in Iraq. But the Indian news media has yet to carry a single detailed report on the torture and extrajudicial killing of hundreds of civilians in Kashmir over the last decade.

Chinese nationalism is a tamed beast, occasionally unleashed by the Communist leadership to stir up mass protests against Japan and America. But in India, religious nationalists have run wild in the last 10 years, conducting nuclear tests, menacing minorities and threatening Pakistan with all-out war. In 2002, members of a Hindu nationalist government in the state of Gujarat, in western India, instigated and often organized the killing of as many as 1,600 Muslims.

Free markets and regular elections alone do not make a civil society. There remains the task of creating and strengthening institutions — universities, news media, human rights groups — that can focus public attention on the fate of the powerless and oppressed and spread ideas of human dignity, compassion and generosity.

[...]

For Western nations to criticize Chinese investments in Africa or Indian overtures to Myanmar may seem hypocritical in light of the West’s history of ruthlessly exploiting Africa while appeasing its brutal dictators. But, as La Rochefoucauld pointed out, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.

However tainted in practice, the idea of virtue cannot be discarded in policymaking. By treating it with contempt, the ruling elites of India and China may soon make the world nostalgic for the days when America claimed, deeply hypocritically, its moral leadership.

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Forget non-alignment and socialism! It’s East India Co Shining baby!

Guardian | America’s dirty secret: India becomes the gasoline gusher

Sitting on the edge of the water in the Gulf of Kutch on India’s western shore is one of America’s dirty secrets. A mass of steel pipes and concrete boxes stretches across 13 square miles (33sq km) – a third of the area of Manhattan – which will eventually become the world’s largest petrochemical refinery.

The products from the Jamnagar complex are for foreign consumption. When complete, the facility will be able to refine 1.24m barrels of crude a day. Two-fifths of this gasoline will be sent 9,000 miles (15,000km) by sea to America.

[...]

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