The Chronicles of Annawadi

Katherine Boo’s first book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers”, has received wonderful reviews everywhere that one can see. Isaac Chotiner writes in the New Republic:

[The] story is cinematic in its scope, and in the manner by which it builds to several hinge moments while moving back and forward in time. But that is where any similarity between Beyond the Beautiful Forevers and Slumdog Millionaire, the most famous depiction of Indian slum existence, ends. Danny Boyle’s movie extravagantly presented the “slumdog” life of its central character as frequently horrific but ultimately (and literally) rewarding: his terrible experiences allowed him to prosper on a game show. It was a kind of television theodicy. Despite its subtitle, by contrast, Beyond the Beautiful Forevers is not a hopeful book, and its despair is anything but cathartic. “Among the poor, there was no doubt that instability fostered ingenuity,” Boo writes, “but over time the lack of a link between effort and result could become debilitating. ‘We try so many things,’ as one Annawadian girl put it, ‘but the world doesn’t move in our favor.’”

The fates of the Annawadians are shaped by their relationships and ambition and fortitude; but these people have no prospects, and only the most narrow and local and difficult horizons. They cannot, in the girl’s words, make the world move. The independence of their actions and the sharpness of their personalities do not amount to anything like historical agency. And their vitality never distracts the reader from the crushing sense that poverty has prevented them from becoming independent actors.
…
Boo’s crucial strength is an empathetic imagination. Her book has the closely observed and artfully constructed quality of high fiction and film. It is worth recalling that [Henry Mayhew, author of London Labour and the London Poor] wrote many scenes that mirrored Dickens’s stories, and showed an interest in character that would not have embarrassed Thackeray or George Eliot. In this way he was Boo’s precursor in the “problems” tradition: sometimes journalism succeeds by reading like a novel.

Jonathan Shinin raves in the Book Forum:

To say that modesty is among the greatest virtues of a given work of nonfiction may seem like the faintest of praise, particularly in an era when prizes and plaudits accrue mostly to massive tomes whose blurbs proclaim them “magisterial” or “compendious.” But the sentence quoted above, like the rest of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, is a testimony to the transcendent power of reportorial humility: The tragedy in these words—both individual and national, in this case—calls no attention to itself; it just sits there, without false melodrama or coerced tears, in a style well suited to the flint-hard manner of the book’s subjects, who scorn pity and charity alike. What is perhaps even more remarkable, and equally characteristic of Boo’s accomplishment here, is the effortlessly concise depiction of the broader issue at hand. At each juncture where the narrative requires context from beyond the boundaries of the slum at its center—and especially when the machinations of what Boo calls “the overcity” wreak havoc on its denizens—one finds no traces of those original sins of foreign correspondence, abstraction and generalization. This is not a book about “India”—in the sense that it makes no pretense to describe an entire nation of 1.2 billion people—but it tells us more about India than most books which pursue that ludicrous ambition.
…
The first dwellings in Annawadi were built in 1991 by Tamil migrant laborers who came to Mumbai to repair an airport runway and decided, as Boo writes, that “a sodden, snake-filled bit of brushland across the street from the international terminal seemed the least-bad place to live.” A few hundred yards from the airport access road—a stretch of pavement, Boo wryly notes, “where new India collided with old India and made new India late”—the slum squats on land owned by the airport authority. Contractors renovating the newly privatized airport use “a vast pool of sewage that marks the slum’s eastern border” as a garbage dump; their bulldozers loom like an existential threat, nibbling for now at the slum’s edges but almost guaranteed, at some unknown future date, to raze the makeshift tin-and-plywood shacks of its residents.
…
Across almost three hundred pages in which there is scarcely a single false note, Boo has managed a task I would have thought impossible for a foreign journalist in a Mumbai slum: to merge her eyes almost completely with those of her characters—an illusion, to be sure, but one whose precision, subtlety, and control present the impression that we are not merely viewing the lives of the Annawadians at close range but indeed seeing the entire world through their eyes.

Even Shashi Tharoor manages to work in a few words of praise for the book while plugging himself in a review in Washington Post:

But indeed, as Boo points out, the corruption that elite Indians see as an obstacle to India’s progress appears to the slum-dwellers as an aspect of “the distribution of opportunity in a fast-changing country that they loved.”

Otherwise, they are assailed by the arbitrariness of life: “In Annawadi, fortunes derived not just from what people did, or how well they did it, but from the accidents and catastrophes they avoided. A decent life was the train that hadn’t hit you, the slumlord you hadn’t offended, the malaria you hadn’t caught.” In this sordid drama, the poor are too busy fighting each other for the scraps: “The poor took down one another, and the world’s great, unequal cities soldiered on in relative peace.”

This is not a reassuring message for those of us in India striving to change the country. Boo’s last sentence asks a haunting question: “If the house is crooked and crumbling, and the land on which it sits uneven, is it possible to make anything lie straight?” It is a question that Indians try to answer every day as we build our country, and Boo has earned the right to ask it, too.

The NYT quotes very high praise:

Joseph Lelyveld, a former executive editor of The New York Times who has written extensively about India, wrote in an e-mail message that “Beautiful Forevers” is “the best piece of reporting to come out of India in a half century at least” and compared it to another groundbreaking book about poverty, George Orwell’s “Road to Wigan Pier.”

The New Yorker has a small bio of Katherine Boo:

Katherine Boo has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2003 and a contributor since 2001. Her writing focusses on issues of poverty, opportunity, social and economic policy, and education. Her article “The Marriage Cure,” on marriage seminars for the poor in Oklahoma City, received a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing in 2004.

Before joining The New Yorker, Boo was a writer and editor for the Washington Post, where, for a decade, she was a member of the Outlook and Investigative staffs. She was also an editor and writer for the Washington City Paper and The Washington Monthly. In 2000, she received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, and, in 2002, she was awarded a MacArthur fellowship, in recognition of her body of work on the disadvantaged.

Exit Tweety, Sylvester next?

HT informs us of the exit of the unlamented Tweety:

The Shashi Tharoor controversy is a closed chapter, the Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said on Monday, a day after he resigned as minister of state for external affairs over the Indian Premier League (IPL) row.
…
Tharoor, 54, a former top UN official, submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a nearly half-hour meeting, the second one on Sunday.

The resignation came soon after top Congress leaders held a meeting with the prime minister and party president Sonia Gandhi and concluded that Tharoor had to go.
…
On Friday, Tharoor had put up a spirited defence of himself in the Lok Sabha, claiming he had done no wrong and not used his office to promote the interest of close friend Sunanda Pushkar. The Dubai-based businesswoman had got a sweat equity worth Rs.70 crore in Rendezvous Sports World, a member of the consortium that won the IPL Kochi franchise.

The first head to have gone for a six. Unfortunately, this ball bounces back. The cat who swallowed the canary is not looking too happy either, if NDTV is to be believed:

Sources have told NDTV that Lalit Modi will be sacked as Indian Premier League (IPL) chief and action against him is likely at the IPL governing council meet to be held soon.

The sources said BCCI president Shashank Manohar is likely to take over as IPL chairman.

Modi will face charges for arm-twisting franchises. Tharoor had alleged that Modi delayed signing the Kochi tender for a month.

There is also some bad news for all IPL owners. The government will probe the source of funds of all teams and possible foreign exchange violations.

Meanwhile the direct beneficary of Tharoor’s alleged impropriety is not getting off easy either, ET informs us:

Sunanda Pushkar, friend of junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor, may run into a legal wall over her offer to surrender sweat equity in Rendezvous Sports World, say lawyers. For one, there is no provision under the sweat equity rules for a company to take back the stake, says a lawyer who did not wish to be named.

The issuance of sweat equity is itself under a cloud, he adds, as the rules stipulate that Indian companies can issue it only a year after incorporation. Rendezvous Sports World has reportedly been incorporated in August 2009. “Prima facie, the very allotment of sweat equity is flawed. Where is the question of cancelling it? If the guidelines have not been followed then allotment is itself invalid,” says Abhishek Saxena, partner in Phoneix Legal, a corporate law firm.

Filthy lucre fascinates fans

As the Indian Premier League cricket matches enter their final dreary leg, the real story is elsewhere. HT reports:

With Parliament resuming its budget session on Thursday the IPL war of words escalated to a new high with the Kochi team franchise, its mentor minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor and his friend Sunanda Pushkar defending themselves and going on the offensive in the same breath.
…
Lalit Modi called some of the members of our consortium partners (in a face-to face meeting) and asked us to take $50 million, walk out and forget about the team. He said, ‘I’m interested in another team’. We refused.”

“This is what happened,” Satyajit Gaikwad, spokesman for Rendezvous Sports World Private Ltd, the Kochi consortium, told Hindustan Times on Wednesday. Gaekwad is a two- time Congress MP.
…
Modi called the $50m allegation “baseless” and “a figment of imagination”. “I met him (the reference in this case was to Shailendra Gaikwad) at the conference and thereafter at the Maurya Sheraton hotel where all owners were present,” he said.

“We also met during the signing ceremony and that is all. I want to know where I met him to make this offer.”

Earlier, Modi had reiterated at a press conference in Mumbai that there were “question marks” over who the owners of the Kochi franchise were.

“The people who presented the bid documents themselves did not know who they (the owners) were. That is why this issue has come up,” Modi said.
…
Gaikwad said this was “completely untrue”.

“There has been no free equity at all, only sweat equity of 25 per cent for management services that will be rendered over time. In Mrs. Pushkar’s case, she has been given five per cent sweat equity to look after everything from sponsorship to advertisement to branding and event and media management for the next 10 years. She has handled events for us in the past and is a professional in this field, so I don’t see why she is being subjected to this needless controversy.”

Pushkar issued a statement also angrily denying she was fronting for anyone.

“My own business interests and assets are substantial, and efforts to besmirch Tharoor by presenting me as a proxy for him are personally insulting for me as a woman and as a friend,” she said.
…
Gaikwad was insistent that Shashi Tharoor had “no benefit of any kind” from the consortium.

“His role as a mentor was basically because he is a leader from Kerala and a cricketer lover. It made sense.”

Tharoor told NDTV Wednesday evening that he was “very angry”.

“I’ve been vilified by Modi… there are other business interests at play here. In a democratic country like India, cricket or anything else shouldn’t be a closed shop, it should be transparent.”

Meanwhile, asked why the IT department was reportedly probing the consortium, Gaikwad said if it was, and he was unaware of that, it was “because of the confusion caused by Modi”.

“There is no question of there being any questions about where the funding came from. The money invested by the consortium is all tax-paid.”

So why did Rendezvous Sports, a management consultancy based out of Sholapur in Maharashtra, bid for Kochi? “How does it matter where a company is registered, the world is like a village now,” countered Gaikwad.

Telegraph reports:

The opponents of cricket czar Lalit Modi today raised questions about the stake of his relatives in at least two IPL teams and his connections with the BJP which made him a “super-chief minister” in Rajasthan when the party was in power.

Sanjay Dixit, an IAS officer who famously defeated Modi as president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA) last year, is now using the same tool — Twitter — to strike at his adversary that the IPL boss has used to devastating effect against junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor.

From Monday to Tuesday, Dixit, through a series of tweets addressed to Modi, hurled posers about the stake-holdings of his relatives in Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab.

“Lalit, please also disclose the details of the shareholdings of your relatives in Jaipur IPL and GCV Mauritius.”

“Please tell me how the franchise contract was signed by Jaipur IPL when the bid was by Emerging Media? Who is Mohit Burman and how is he an investor in Kings XI Punjab, sorry what I meant was Gaurav Burman, your step son-in-law?”

ET reports:

A meeting of the Indian Premier League’s governing council, possibly in ten days, is likely to clip IPL commissioner Lalit Modi’s wings, said two members of the T20 cricket tournament’s key decision-making body.
…
Besides Mr Modi and Mr Bindra, the 14-member governing council has former cricketers Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar, Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi as well as politicians and BCCI office bearers such as Arun Jaitley, Rajiv Shukla, Farooq Abdullah, Shashank Manohar, Niranjan Shah, MP Pandove, Chirayu Amin, Sanjay Jagdale and Niranjan Shah.

From the number of politicians named here, it seems that cricket lovers are more likely to be politicians than any other class of Indians. Now why would that be so?

Finally the ponderous Congress party has spotted healthy greens. Here’s what Business Week has to say:

Income tax investigators began probing the accounts of the Indian cricket board and the Indian Premier League on Thursday.

IPL commissioner Lalat Modi confirmed the investigators were at the cricket board and IPL offices at Wankhede Stadium.

“It is only an enquiry, not a raid,” Modi said. “We will extend all possible cooperation to them.”

Press Trust of India reported that Modi rushed to the cricket board headquarters after after income tax officials came to check the accounts.

Twitter: a new public sphere

TOI reports:

The controversy over NRI hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal being awarded Padma Bhushan has taken the form of an online protest campaign to “cleanse national awards”, spearheaded by two prominent media personalities Vir Sanghvi and Pritish Nandy.

The duo on Thursday kickstarted the website ‘honestawards’ a day after the home ministry issued a statement defending Chatwal’s nomination and refuting reports of pending CBI cases.

Sanghvi and Nandy on Wednesday had tweeted their decision to file an RTI application questioning Chatwal’s nomination. “Pritish and I have started a site honestawards. Send in your tweets if you want to participate in the cleansing of our various national awards,” Sanghvi tweeted.

Tharoor has been trying to use the Twitter politically for a while. Now with Sanghvi joining in, is this a newly established public sphere?

Even Juergen Habermas is now on Twitter, hopeful about such developments, but still a little skeptical.

Weirdest internet thing: 2009

Kitlers, ie, cats which look like Hitler; and Shashi Tharoor’s Twitter stream.

Kitler: a cat that looks like hitler

Episodic tweeter Tharoor

The last holy cow

The famous controversy from Shashi Tharoor’s Twitter stream:

11:47 AM Sep 14th from web in reply to KanchanGupta:

@KanchanGupta absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!

11:16 AM Sep 17th from web:

learned belatedly of fuss over my tweet replying to journo’s query whether i wld travel to Kerala in “cattle class”. His phrase which i rptd

11:17 AM Sep 17th from web:

it’s a silly expression but means no disrespect to economy travellers, only to airlines for herding us in like cattle. Many have misunderstd

The over-reaction from the Congress party was nicely parsed by the IE:

Tharoor was faulted for tweeting and not realising that his ‘cattle-class’ comment would be condemned at a time when the party is set on austerity mode, with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi leading the race. Sensitive about the Congress High Command, Congressmen naturally objected to his reference to ‘holy cows’. AICC media department chairman Janardhan Dwivedi was certainly not amused, who directed party spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan to not merely distance the party from the remark, but to positively disapprove it.

After the media went ballistic, the PM dowplayed it. The party hysteria continued until Sonia Gandhi made her mind known, as reported by ET:

Notwithstanding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh downplaying the Twitter remarks of Shashi Tharoor, Congress on Saturday appeared to be sticking to its tough line on the controversial remarks of the Union Minister over economy class travel.

“The party stands by whatever it has said and it has nothing to add or subtract,” party spokesman Shakeel Ahmad told reporters when asked about the party line in the wake of Singh dismissing the remark as a joke.

He was referring to the party’s strong disapproval of Tharoor’s “cattle class” comment and said appropriate and necessary action would be taken at an appropriate time.

Party spokesman Manish Tewari had said this in the backdrop of demand by Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot for Tharoor’s resignation.

But, after a meeting with Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Gehlot sought to close the issue after the Prime Minister’s comments.

That’s the end of the storm in the tea cup, one hopes. The media and the Congress party functionaries did not exactly cover themselves with glory this time round. But then who thinks that they could have behaved maturely?

And about Shashi Tharoor’s tweets, Soutik Biswas of BBC has this to say:

…when I scan Mr Tharoor’s tweets I find most of them to be harmless, constipated takes on cricket, traffic jams in Delhi, Patrick Swayze, Roger Federer and so on. They are unexceptional, unexciting and largely irrelevant – like most of stuff on social networking sites. He’s also a frenetic Twitter-er: on Friday, a working day, he sent out 10 tweets in less than three hours.