The How Allah Conspiracy

By M J Akbar

Nothing has changed at Heathrow airport except the scowl of a security guard with a beard from Hollywood's central casting, eyes borrowed from a B-grade movie, and an attitude that is from honest, genuine, home-grown, indigenous stupidity. So far all the checkpoints of one of the world's busiest airports, manned by governemnt, have been cool, professional and cheered up by a little smile at the end. After the breee the barrier. This man is not government; he is airline security, out sourced, standing at the boarding gate of the Virgin flight from London to Boston (Boston!). He looks at my Muslim name on the passport and shuffles his shoulders in what Bertie Wooster would have called a marked manner. He clearly believes that his moment in history has arrived. Open your bag, he orders.

Decision time. Glare back? I put my bag in front of him and turn my back to chat pleasantly with the slightly-embarrassed Virgin (or not) ground stewardess who has welcomed me pleasantly enough. Keeping my role model in such circumstances. Bertie Wooster, firmly in focus, I babble about why I was the last person to board; didn't ummm hear the announcement, was trying internet in the lounge which did not work, confused Gate 34 with Gate 4 before being rescued, all of it partially true. Defeated by my chatty indifference, the Guardian of the West returned my passport with limp hand and limp eyes, unable to understand why a Muslim travelling to Boston should not want to blow himself up. In all fairness I should add that I had taken the precaution of disguise. I was wearing an elegant silk tie. When has anyone wearing an elegant silk tie, with a Windsor knot, ever hijacked anything? I challenge you to find a single instance.

My preassigned seat on flight VS011 is occupied. Two Asians presumably wanting to travel together, and perhaps attracted by the extra legspace in the front row, have trespassed on one of the seats. The upper class is full and they try to postpone the inevitable with bluster. There is nothing like having the law on your side to get your way. In a few minutes a friendly voice informs us through the intercom tha anyone in the economy section of the aircraft who wants to stretch out and sleep by lifting the arrests dividing seats is welcome to do so. There are enough empty seats. This is the second law of travel in the post September 11 era. The ladies and gentlemen on company expense with laptops are edgy in the crowded front, as they have to go where they have to go. Those who travel for pleasure are taking their pleasures at home.

From the sky America looks serene, beautiful, rich, imperturbable. New England is as rich and serene as America gets. Boats skim past rocky outcrops that guard the north Atlantic coast of God's preferred continent, confirming the Brahmin status of Boston. The serently is infectious. A mild flutter interrupts the mood as we land from over the sea. Please keep your passport in your hands for inspection at the exit. This is obviously a new security procedure. No problem. A large policeman with an Irish twinkle glances at my three-tier passport and asks what I do. Sir,

Journalist. He beams. This is unusual, Journalists are not always considered good news. About ten feet away, a large lady at immigration is not so sanguine about either journalists or Muslims. She takes only a few seconds to make up her mind after taping my name on her computer. ''We may have to ask you a few more questions. Sir.'' They never forget the Sir. Decision time again. The options juggle through my mind. How should one respond? Grovel? Rage? Try the sniffy is this the America-I once knew tactic ?

I finally do what comes automatically. I shrug and say sure. A fleeting vision of interrogation cells appears in the imagination but reality is better. We stop at a vacant stand-up counter. Nothing so dramatic as a padded cell. When you are reconciled calm prevails. I take a seat on the bench and open a copy of Spectator. Soon, a thin-faced policeman fills the space at the counter and examines my passport which has been put into a plastic bag with gingerly fingers. I stick to the Spectator. From behind me my friendly Irishman suddenly reappars to tell thinface with a big grin : ''He's all right. He's reading the Spectator''.

Thinface replies with a smile of his own, and all is right with the world again. I ask my personal Irish saviour how he reads the Spectator in Boston. On the internet, he explains grandly.

So now you know what to do on your next flight to Boston. Wear a silk tie with a Windsor knot at Heathrow and read the Spectator in Boston. If the first doesn't save you, the second will.

Winter, said the television weatherwoman on Thursday morning, was due in three hours. They can get very specific on American television in their constant search for the truth. Such experts are encouraged of course by the fact that in three hours everyone will either forget, forgive or simply not care. If this was the end, summer was saying goodbye like a diva at the top of her form, dressed in the plumes of Paradise. The sun was softened and melted over the streets, complementing the cool breezes of impending change. The local citizens were out enjoying the sun in the afternoon unhurried and gossipy. Boston has the intimacy of a small town and the confidence of a large city. The placid Charles river bisects the city, nursing the world's most famous educational institutions on one side and commerce on the other when I leave Boston to travel north towards Dartmouth- and New Hampshire, the world along the way has become a dance. How many colours are there in brown? In red? In russet? In yellow? In green? In orange and lilac and peach? The trees along the road and across the hillside are an endless feast as they burst into colour before the montone of winter, a riot, a whirl, an impossible orchestra conducted by nature in some frenzy of joy. If one has to die then this is the way to go. This is the last burst of colour even as the leaves begin to fall and branches turn bare to take the weight of snow on their thin limbs; soon, all will be white on the frozen ground and dark grey against the freezing sky.

But summer has not lost out yet, no matter what the television says. In the forests that stretch beyond the magnificient campus of Dartmouth College, you may not be able to hear a leaf fall in the silence, but you can hear the leaves, shiver as they comfort one another on the glade that is their graveyard.

I am a guest of Dartmouth College and put up at the campus hotel. Hanover Inn. A Halloween pumpkin sits on the reception; America brings in winter with a great, eerie, fun, foreboding festival. There is a fire in the lounge, and impressive books wait for readers with time. Charm and hospitality are all around you. My mobile has stopped roaming, unable to pick up a local host, which adds significantly to the peace. At the lecture I deliver in the afternoon, the students are less generous than the sprinkling of faculty and guests interested in a particular understanding of the history of Islam and South Asia. This is as it should be. The report in The Dartmouth (America's Oldest College Newspaper. Founded 1799) about this talk is remarkable for its accuracy and concise perception. Sadly none of these brilliant young men and women will become journalists. They want to conquer Wall Street Instead.

The train taking me south starts form a track-level platform at White River Junction. In Verment, across the water that forms the border with New Hampshire. It stops at similar sidewalks to pick up Real America from its small towns, and take it to New York, a city that belongs as much to the rest of the world as it does to America. They say that New York has become a kinder, gentler lace since 11 September, when the contestants of its permanent rat place sat back to consider what exactly they were racing for. Three thousand divorce applications were withdrawn within twenty-four hours of 11 September. New York has taken another look at the mirror and found, at least for a while, the family.

The first important bulletin I got from the local war zone- and in this city, it means the economic battlefield is that the United States has begun pursuit and assault against the economic routes of terrorism. Trace the money and get your man. Sounds sensible. The talk shows are full of this second conflict now that the bombing of Afghanistan has slipped into a repetitive mode with not much forward action. How many times can you say that America launched its heaviest raids on Kandahar today? Television also needs visuals. Between the Pentagon and the Taliban, there isn't much footage available.

A government type in suit and the appears on the screen to discuss the money supply lines of the enemy. He seems particularly interested in a transaction called ''How Allah''. I wonder what God has to do with money laundering. The expert notes that ''How Allah'' is an established Indian practice; this is the way Indians transfer their money illegally and, amazingly, they put nothing down on paper. He looked both bemused and perplexed.

It was then that the rupee dropped.

''HowAllah'' was not a nefarious Islamic fund-transfer ritual practised between conspiring mullahs. He was talking about ''havala'', that old and familiar method by which loaded Indians fund their needs and pleasures abroad despite the fact that you cannot officially convert the rupee into dollars for such purposes. Now, this is a great story. The United States is going to solve a problem that the government of India has tried to solve for decades and quietly given up on. The FBI is going to pulverise those networks. I can hear the sound of chattering teeth from Kolkata to Mumbai via Delhi. We could see the emergence of a new Indian economy, thanks to the FBI, which already has offices in India, Incidentally.

I always knew it would take nothing less than a world war to tackle the moneybags of India.
Twenty First Century Media.

WTO and its impact on Indian agriculture

By Som Dutt

India is a signatory to the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and one of the original members of the WTO (World Trade Organization). The agreement provides a framework for the long-term reforms in agricultural trade and domestic policies to move towards market- oriented agricultural trade. The obligations and disciplines incorporated in the agreement on agricultural trade include market access, domestic support, export competition/subsidy, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, and trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPs).

In the area of export competition, the WTO agreement calls for reducing direct export subsidies to a level-of 36 per cent, below the 1986-88 level in developed countries over a period of 6 years and the quantity of subsidized exports by 21 per cent, covering the same period. The Indian exports of agricultural commodities do not get direct export subsidy. Most of the developed countries operate export-subsidy programmes to enhance their exports. They would be required to gradually reduce their export-assistance programmes. And this would open up new market for countries like India. If we are efficient producers of agricultural products, we would benefit not only from improved market access opportunities in the developed and developing countries but also from the reduction of subsidized exports and trade -distorting production incentives in developed countries.

The recent spurt in agricultural exports and their diversification from tea and coffee to items like fish products, cashew kernel, oilcakes, rice, fruits and processed foods confirm that Indian agriculture sector enjoys comparative advantage, says Dr R S Paroda, former Director-General, ICAR. However, countries like India should tread carefully and, while responding to WTO opportunities in agricultural trade, the policy of self-sufficiency in foodgrains production should not kept aside.

The agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary measures lacks specific guidelines. Thay may be because of differences in geographical and sanitary conditions prevailing in different countries. However, the agreement calls for harmonization equivalence and transparency to sanitary and phytosanitary regulations under the overall umbrella of the FAO’s Codex Alimentatious.

The Intellectual Property Rights (IPRS) regime requires extending patent protection the processes as well as product innovation in all fields including agriculture. India has opted for sui generis system for protection of plant varieties confirming the criteria of novelty, distinctiveness, unformity and stability. There is explicit provision for protection of farmers knowledge and rights to save and exchange their farm- saved seed, and option to also grant a compulsory license. The bill on plant variety protection has been introduced in the Parliament. It is presently under the scrutiny of a select committee and is awaiting clearance.

Intellectual Property Rights were used to reduce India’s huge consumerist class and commercial collaborators. In short, the TRIPs became the new open sesame password, using which the Constitutional provision of our Secular Socialist Democratic Republic would be facto be nulified and privatization, with a giant stride for transnational big business, would become the unwritten economic constitution.

The economic interest of the States have been in peril, agricultural and industrial development has been in jeopardy and even judicial supremacy under challenge from January 1, 1995 where the WTO took authority under its grand global jurisdiction, with its pro-North tilt.

Will our rulers trade our freedom in the guise of free trade? The time to protest is late. There is a wide enough space to preserve intact our existing patent law, having due regard to the national urgencies and social realities and Constitutional mandates of the people. These are paramount considerations for the Government and Parliament so that India may not buckle under foreign corporate pressure and, at the same time, with a vision, expand the articles in the treaty for not forsaking the people of India.

It must be realized that domestic reforms are the pre- requisites for India to consolidate the gains from the WTO framework regarding agriculture. In several export-oriented commodities, India enjoys comparative advantage. However, this inherent advantage is slipping on account of fatigue of green revolution in certain areas and difficulties in raising productivity in the vast rainfed areas. Therefore, productivity- lead growth holds the key to cost competitiveness. This places an increased emphasis on the development of technologies with suitable changes in research agenda of the National Agricultural Research System (NARS). Concerning market access, the objective of food security must govern and dictate actions as India will continue to address the interest of small and marginal farmers in the future, according to a report in the ICAR Reporter.

A number of other Ministers have spent varying periods in Jail for their misconduct. This is the state of affair in the second most populous State in the country, where millions, do not have food, water, shelter, medicine and education. A political office, has become a kind of insurance, against the State, moving against such people, for any crime,they may have committed.It also ensures, a lavish life style, at the cost of State Exchequer. Most States in the country are facing financial crisis. The latest earthquake has added a burden of Ra. 25,000 crore to the Nation. The most important thing to be ensured in such matters is that the money is spent to ameliorate the lot of people and not siphoned away.

Simple living and high-thinking have been sacrificed at the cost of appeasement and sticking on to the office at any cost. In fact, most Chief Ministers have come to the conclusion that it is futile even to talk about austerity. While the States pay through its nose for the luxuries enjoyed by the Bureaucrats, Ministers and Legislators, it is the man in the street, who has to bear, the entire burden ultimately.

Surely, this cannot mean by any stretch of imagination, that the Governments, run by such people, are of the people,or for the people. it is overdue now, to have a system, which can bring the wrongdoers to book, without being influenced by any string pulling. The present system gives the impression of almost asking the chief to guard the house. It needs to be replaced, by those, who care for the house. Only constant Vigilance on the part of all the inmates of the house, that is India, can ensure that nobody louts it with impunity.
PTI Feature