India Insight

Diwali, the festival of lights, is here but do we see a pall of gloom with the BSE Sensex crashing more than 50 percent since January 2008?

Things have come to such a pass that some people have simply stopped looking at their portfolios. They think it’s too late now to cut losses.

“I have now lost faith in long-term investment, I wish I had booked profits in January when my portfolio had doubled,” says my friend Vikrant, who works for a leading business newspaper in New Delhi.

The tumble over the past 8-9 months had forced Vikrant to postpone plans to buy a new car, and when he finally bought one, he preferred a loan from his father rather than a bank loan at 14 per cent.

When I joined college, many had warned me to stay away from the stock market calling it a dangerous place, thanks to the scams by Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parekh.

On June 29 of this year, hundreds of gays, lesbians and transsexuals danced and sang on the streets of three Indian cities, hoisting the rainbow flag on the country’s first nationally coordinated gay pride day.

Though they waved slogans such as “gay and loving it”, many still wore masks – afraid to openly campaign against the dreaded Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which has banned “unnatural” sex since colonial times.

So where do the protesters find themselves nearly four months later, as gay activists battle a (divided) government to scrap the law, taking the case to the Delhi High Court?

Riding home in the air-conditioned comfort of a gleaming red bus, I find it hard to believe I am travelling in New Delhi.

Squeaky-clean seats, no crowds jostling for room, automatic doors and huge windows offering panoramic views of the bustling streets — it’s a far cry from the torture I have endured in the past.

Buses in India’s capital are not known for being commuter-friendly. The state-owned ones are mostly rickety slowcoaches while the privately operated Blue Line buses zigzag their way through traffic, dangerously negotiating bends and racing each other in a bid to pick up passengers.

Security was tight at the entrance to Gate No. 7 of the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi, a 17th century mosque built by Mughal kings, and the venue on Tuesday for a gathering of Muslim leaders from across the country to debate the persecution of Muslims.

Police shooed away fruit vendors and cycle rickshaws spilling over from the crowded market nearby, while others stood around the metal detectors at the entrance while their colleagues cased out the giant white shamiana inside with sniffer dogs under the slowly revolving ceiling fans.

 A full half hour after the scheduled time, when only the first few rows of seats were occupied, Maulana Naksh Bandi of the Jama Masjid began the proceedings, inviting various leaders to the dais, and declaring in Urdu: “there is no law, there is no justice for us. It is the rule of the jungle.”

I will have to respect the Indian Standard Time for once.

I was to meet a friend at five in the evening on the day of the serial bombings in New Delhi. But the meeting got delayed — she could not leave office on time and my office elevator kept me waiting for twenty minutes.

We were chatting about good times together in college, how classmates have done well by themselves and making plans to catch up with other friends at the café inside a popular bookshop when the bomb at Barakhamba Road went off.

I had only read reports of how bombs exploded near cafes as people sat there sipping coffee discussing mundane things in life or shopped for household goods or just walked by. Never had I imagined that one day I would find myself in such a situation.

Three days after the weekend serial bombings that killed 22 people in New Delhi, I find the general atmosphere of the national capital almost abnormal in its normalcy.

One of the blast happened right across the street on which the Reuters office is located.

Colleagues who were working on September 13 told me the impact of the blast at Barakhamba Road shook the building and unsettled flocks of pigeons nesting on rooftops of adjoining high rises.

Sometime ago a passenger in the United States was off-loaded when she jokingly asked the cabin crew if the pilots were sober.

But as a frequent flier I wonder if it’s an impertinent question to ask Indian pilots.

Why? Sample this: Around 50 pilots each year in India are grounded because they had consumed alcohol before flying, the country’s civil aviation authorities say.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the civilian nuclear deal with the United States is all about whether India holds early elections or not.

Every newspaper is speculating if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has staked his personal reputation on the deal, will resign to disassociate himself from an administration that failed to save a pact keenly watched by the world.

But are these the arguments India should be debating in the short-term or should we be discussing the real benefits and drawbacks of the deal?

For those Western critics that say Islam does not enough to to condemn terrorism, perhaps they should look at India, home to one of the world’s biggest Muslim populations — around 13 percent of mainly Hindu India’s 1.1 billion people.

 On Wednesday, it was the turn of Khalid Rasheed, head of the oldest madrasa in the northern city of Lucknow — a traditional centre for Muslims and religious scholarship. He rejected terrorism as anti-Islamic after he and his colleagues had been accused of apostasy over their pacifist stance by at group that calls itself the Indian Mujahideen.

Indian Mujahideen made threats against the madrasa in which they also claimed responsibility for last week’s bomb blasts in Jaipur, western India, which killed 63 people.

First impressions count. That’s true no less with airports, the gateway to a globalised world for any country.

Which is why the United States and India may have more in common than they like to think.

I have been one of those thousands that have spent three hours in Delhi International Airport making it from check-in though to the boarding gate. Which is why I read with interest the recent spat between deputy planning chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and civil aviation minister Praful Patel over who is responsible for the chaos.