Investigation: Marks On The Water

By M H Ahssan & Deepti Waghmare

The Pak connection is almost confirmed. Is it another LeT-D Company cocktail?

As commandos of the Indian navy flushed the Taj Mahal hotel of terrorists, they came upon a bag containing ammunition, magazines, wallets with photo-IDs, fake credit cards and a huge stock of almonds. Twenty-four hours had passed and the terrorists were still active, so investigators were barely up to sifting through evidence. But pressed for an early assessment, they dismissed the e-mail sent by a certain ‘Deccan Mujahideen’ claiming responsibility as a red herring. The name doing the rounds is the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), purportedly working in close coordination with a section of the Mumbai underworld and rogue elements of Pakistan’s isi. But neither Maharashtra dgp A.N. Roy nor Mumbai police commissioner Hasan Gaffoor would confirm the involvement of this deadly troika.

In fact, early intelligence assessments suggest that some of the terrorists who came in were young British Muslims of Pakistani origin. Sources say they had been in training for well over a year but the final decision to carry out the assault was given at the annual conference of the LeT held in Muridke, PoK, last week. The Mumbai operation, apparently, was funded by Saudi Arabia-based Abdul Bari. He’s part of a larger international terror network and has financed strikes in India earlier too.

In a major breakthrough, investigators had traced the ship in which the terrorists made their way from Pakistan to the Mumbai coast by Thursday evening. The fishing vessel, Kuber, was found off the coast of Mumbai and some satellite phones recovered from it. The boat is owned by a Porbander-based businessman, Vinoo Masani, who has been detained for questioning. Kuber left Gujarat 14 days ago with six crew members who are believed to have been killed by the terrorists who hijacked the boat. Investigators are looking into how this will bring out the Pakistan connection.

If the Kuber was indeed hijacked, then the modus operandi becomes clear. Proceed to Indian waters in a Gujarat-registered vessel (Regn No. 2302) so as not to attract attention and then move into the mainland on dinghies.

Meanwhile, analysis of the accents of the two (purported) terrorists in conversations they had with a private TV channel suggested they are either expat Pakistanis or from Punjab there. The use of "muthbhed" (encounter) instead of the term "muqabla" is a dead giveaway, says analysts. Like Pakistani Punjabis, they also signed off saying "Allah hafiz", instead of "khuda hafiz." Maj Gen R.K. Hooda, goc (Maharashtra and Goa area), says the intercepts during the operations revealed that they spoke to each other in Punjabi. Prior technical intercepts as well as other sources had suggested a major attack was to go down in Mumbai via the sea and that the Taj Mahal Hotel would be targeted. These inputs had been looked at but with few concrete leads, no preventive action was taken.

Intelligence sources told Outlook that Dawood’s men in Mumbai may have provided the logistics support. An official told us, "Dawood has this diesel smuggling network in Mumbai—diesel is downloaded from tankers in the high seas off the coast of Mumbai and then brought in using high-speed boats. Our inputs suggest that these guys provided safe passage to the terrorists. They provided the boats, the cars and reports on the patrolling schedules of the coastguard. The idea was to hit the international community as well as shake up the top businesses in the country."

Maharashtra CM Vilasrao Deshmukh said that 20-25 terrorists were involved in the attack this time but "it was too early to say anything concrete. We have leads, but we won’t talk until there is confirmation". Two of the terrorists, chased after they hijacked a police jeep, were gunned down near Chowpatty.

Reports say five others were gunned down inside the hotels. A lucky break for the cops was the arrest of Abu from Faridkot in Pakistan. He was held after the Skoda shootout incident where one terrorist was killed. Abu’s interrogation had not begun till late Thursday night. As we go to press, agencies reported that another three arrests were made at the Taj hotel. One of the arrested was Ajmal Amir Kamal, also from Faridkot.

Analysts who have gone through the ‘Deccan Mujahideen’ e-mail say many of the issues raised in it were copied from the last missive by the ‘Indian Mujahideen’ after the Gujarat blasts.

The latter had raised issues like Muslims being "targeted and harassed" in Mumbai and had warned that they would hurt the city and the state ats.

The scale of the operation itself points towards organised logistic help. "From the weapons, the fake visa credit cards, the amount of ammunition each terrorist was carrying, it is quite clear they have been trained and equipped by a foreign state. It’s also clear that the training came from naval experts, familiar with special operations," say sources.

Indian intelligence is closely examining the involvement of Tauqeer Subhan, an ex-simi member and suspected component of the Indian Mujahideen. He hails from Mumbai and would have been able to provide key details such as the presence of the Chabad Lubavitch, an ultra-orthodox Israeli Jewish organisation that provides support and services to Israelis visiting India.

Incidentally, Indian intelligence has reports that Subhan was in regular touch with the LeT and information gleaned from various interrogation reports of his colleagues suggest he had also helped route finance from the LeT to the Indian Mujahideen. The IB is also looking at the involvement of Riyaz Bhatkal, suspected to be a key force behind earlier bombing attacks carried out in various states this year.

The marine commandos, who were the first to be inducted into the counter-terror operations, had reported this to their superiors: the terrorists were professional, highly motivated and had come with enough ammunition, explosives and food to last several days. Said Vice-Admiral J.S. Bedi, flag officer commanding-in-chief of the Western Naval Command: "Our commandos recovered plastic explosives, several AK-56 magazines, hand grenades and dry fruits. My men also said the terrorists had done their homework well...knew exactly how to cause maximum damage."

What Are India's Options? "Bomb Islamabad!" That's what a representative of the Samajwadi Party suggested at one of the UPA meetings. But are there serious options that one could look at as a credible response to these terror attacks? Writing in a post for his blog on The New Yorker, Steve Coll, an old and much respected hand on security affairs in South Asia had something interesting to say about the terrorist attack in Mumbai and the likely reaction from Pakistan. His argument is that the options for India are limited. Simply because the Pakistanis know that they are blessed when it comes to its relevance in geo-politics:

"The Pakistan Army understands this international equation thoroughly and exploits the gaps—it is careful not to expose its direct fingerprints, and yet it is brazenly persistent in pursuit of its objective of military pressure against India in Kashmir and political-military pressure on India more broadly."

So what are the options that India can exercise in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack?

If the politicians are to be believed, there was a lot of sabre rattling at two meetings held by the government on Sunday, November 30 night. While the all-party meet called by the government was a more sedate affair, an earlier meeting organised exclusively for the UPA and its allies, held in Parliament was more telling. A representative of the Samajwadi Party is said to have suggested that this was a good time to "bomb Islamabad!"

Fine. Let's bomb Islamabad, assuming we have the capability to do so and that the frontline aircraft of the Indian Air force are all serviceable, the MiG-21s ready to escort the bombers, and we can launch a full-scale military attack by penetrating the secure skies over Islamabad and then bomb it back to the stone age.

But are we really ready for a war?

Are we ready for the fallout when two nuclear nations go to war? Are we ready for destroying everything that we have built in the last decade and a half? Are we prepared for rolling back our consistent 9 percent growth story and undertake hardships that several generations of Indians have never seen?

All this must be weighed before we take on the job of rattling our sabres. We did that once, post December 13, 2001 attack on Parliament. What did we really achieve from that 11-month old stand off with the Pakistanis? We stood on the border and they stood on the border, eyeball to eyeball, and we finally sent the forces back to the bunkers after that. But not before we had spent something to the tune of Rs 6000 crores (the official figures put it at a much lower figure pegging it a few hundred crores) and lost many precious lives of our soldiers, who stepped on mines not mapped, or tried to clear mines with bare hands while our bureaucrats held back critical mine clearing equipment.

Our air force, sanctioned 39.5 combat squadrons, is down to 30 off squadrons, our armoured corps doesn't have the tanks to roll in, our infantry is horribly tied up in counter-insurgency operations, our soldiers and officers are poorly paid and cheated in pay commission after pay commission, while we talk about "bombing Islamabad."

But there are options that one could look at as a credible response to these terror attacks.

More than us, more than the Americans or the British, it is the average Pakistani who knows that they are living in a failed state. They know that their economy is in shambles, their young men are becoming ready fodder for the terror factory and governance is being remote controlled by a military-industrial complex that is also making billions as we speak.

The international outrage that has emerged after the terrorist attack is an opportunity that rarely presents itself in a nation's history. This is the time to forge partnerships with all those willing to work with us.

Intelligence cooperation has already been ramped up (the first warning for the current attack came from the Americans) and there are other diplomatic measures that are already underway. But, this is also the time to build partnerships with those elements in Pakistan who recognise the fact that the idea of Pakistan is in greater danger than from these terrorists than its declared enemies.

This is the time to look for partnerships in intelligence gathering -- not just the non-functional anti terror mechanism that was set up earlier, but a mechanism that produces hard, actionable intelligence that can be put to good use. This is the time to look at joint covert operations against terrorists and their infrastructure simply because this is a job that the Pakistanis cannot do on their own. The Americans, the British and the NATO forces are already in the region and this is as good a time as any to build partnerships with them.

Perhaps a partnerships sounds too utopian and unrealistic, a diplomatic impossibility in times of rhetoric. But look at the facts. There is no terror attack that can bend a nation as resilient as India. It has an innate strength that will ensure that the good news story, that India was, will continue to hold true.

A lot will have to be done to weed out the systemic failures in our security apparatus. It is not about "intelligence failure" and as this case has shown, our intelligence actually produced good stuff. By calling it "intelligence failure" we are trivialising the discussion to a level that is insulting to our counter-terror mechanism as well as security apparatus. Instead, we have to realise that systemic faults have to be addressed systematically. The overhaul, if the political leadership is willing, will have to happen over months, and perhaps years. But if politics goes back to the usual set of empty promises, the usual rhetoric and the usual coteries, that will be an attack on the very idea of India itself. And the time to act, is now.

An Action Plan: Post the terror attacks in Mumbai, leaving aside what to do vis-à-vis Pakistan, there is a whole lot more that needs to be addressed in the way we approach our security and intelligence set-up.

1: Set up a National Commission of professionals with no political agenda, in consultation with the Leader of the Opposition, to enquire into all the major terrorist strikes that have taken place in the Indian territory outside Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) since November,2007, and task it to submit its report within four months, with no extensions given. Its charter will be not the investigation of the criminal cases arising from these terrorist strikes, but the investigation of the deficiencies and sins of commission and omission in our counter-terrorism agencies at the Centre and in the States, which made these strikes possible.

2: Induct proved experts in terrorism and counter-terrorism from the Intelligence Bureau (IB), the State Police and the Army into the R&AW at senior levels. Presently, the R&AW does not have any such expertise at senior levels. Of the four officers at the top of the pyramid, two are generalists, one is an expert in Pakistan (Political) and the other in China (Political).

3: A similar induction from the State Police and the Army would be necessary in the case of the IB too. Since I have no personal knowledge of the officers at the top of its pyramid, I am not in a position to be specific.

4: Make the IB the nodal point for all liaison with foreign intelligence and security agencies in respect of terrorism, instead of the R&AW.Give the IB direct access to all foreign internal intelligence and security agencies, instead of having to go through the R&AW.

5: Have a common data base on terrorism shared by the IB and the R&AW directly accessible by authorized officers of the two organizations through a secure password.

6: Make the Multi-Disciplinary Centre of the IB function as it was meant to function when it was created-- as a centre for the continuous identification of gaps and deficiencies in the available intelligence and for removing them and for effective follow-up action.

7: Revive the covert action capability of the R&AW and strengthen it. Its charter should make it clear that it will operate only in foreign territory and not in Indian territory. Give it specific, time-bound tasks. All covert actions should be cleared and co-ordinated by the R&AW. Other agencies should not be allowed to indulge in covert actions.

8: The National Security Guards (NSG) was created as a special intervention force to deal with terrorist situations such as hijacking and hostage-taking. Stop using it for VIP security purposes. Station one battalion each of the NSG in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. Ensure that its regional deployment does not affect its in-service training. Review the rapid response capability of the NSG in the light of the Mumbai experience and remove loopholes. In handling the Kandahar hijacking of 1999 and the Mumbai terrorist strikes, the delay in the response of the NSG would appear to have been due to a delay in getting an aircraft for moving the NSG personnel to Mumbai from Delhi.

9: Give the police in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore a special intervention capability to supplement that of the NSG.

10: After the series of hijackings by the Khalistani terrorists in the early 1980s, Indira Gandhi had approved a proposal for the training of Indian experts in dealing with hostage situations and hostage negotiation techniques by foreign intelligence agencies, which have acknowledged expertise in these fields.

The training slots offered by the foreign agencies have been largely monopolized by the IB and the R&AW. The utilization of these training slots and the selection of officers for the training should be decided by the NSA-- with one-third of the slots going to Central agencies, one-third to the NSG and one-third to the State Police. It is important to build up a core of terrorism and counter-terrorism expertise in all metro towns.

11: The IB’s Multi-Disciplinary Centre should have a constantly updated database of all serving and retired officers at the Centre and in the States, who had undergone overseas training, and also of all serving and retired officers and non-governmental figures who have expertise in terrorism and counter-terrorism so that their expertise could be tapped, when needed.

12: Strengthen the role of the police stations in counter-terrorism in all major cities. Make it clear to all Station House Officers that their record in preventing acts of terrorism, in contributing to the investigation and prosecution of terrorism-related cases and in consequence management after a terrorist strike will be an important factor in assessing their suitability for further promotion. Revive and strengthen the beat system, revive and intensify the local enquiries for suspicious activities in all railway stations, bus termini, airports, hotels, inns and other places and improve police-community relations. An important observation of the UK’s Security and Intelligence Committee of the Prime Minister, which enquired into the London blasts of July,2005, was that no counter-terrorism strategy will succeed unless it is based on the co-operation of the community from which the terrorists have arisen. The UK now has what they call a community-based counter-terrorism strategy. The willingness of different communities to co-operate will largely depend on the relations of the police officers at different levels with the leaders and prominent members of the communities.

13: Adopt the British practice of having Counter-terrorism Security Advisers in Police Stations. Post them in all urban police stations. Their job will be to constantly train the PS staff in the performance of their counter-terrorism duties, to improve relations with the communities and to closely interact with owners of public places such as hotels, restaurants, shopping malls etc and voluntarily advise them on the security precautions to be taken to prevent terrorist strikes on soft targets and to mitigate the consequences if strikes do take place despite the best efforts of the police to prevent them.

14: Stop using the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) as a dumping ground for retired officers, who are favoured by the Government. The NSCS cannot be effective in its role of national security management if it is not looked upon with respect by the serving officers. The serving officers look upon the retired officers of the NSCS as living in the past and in a make-believe world of their own totally cut off from the ground realities of today in national security management. The NSCS should be manned only by serving officers of acknowledged capability for thinking and action.

15: Strengthen the role of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) as a Government-sponsored think tank of non-governmental experts in security matters to assist the NSCA and the NSA. Give it specific terms of reference instead of letting it free lance as it often does. It should be discouraged from undertaking esoteric studies.

16: Set up a separate Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) to deal with internal security. Assessment of intelligence having a bearing on internal security requires different expertise and different analytical tools than assessment of intelligence having a bearing on external security.

In 1983, Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister, bifurcated the JIC and created a separate JIC for internal security. Rajiv Gandhi reversed her decision. Her decision was wise and needs to be revived.

17: Set up a National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) under the National Security Adviser (NSA) to ensure joint operational action in all terrorism-related matters. It can be patterned after a similar institution set up in the US under Director, National Intelligence after 9/11. The National Commission set up by the US Congress to enquire into the 9/11 terrorist strikes had expressed the view that better co-ordination among the various agencies will not be enough and that what was required was a joint action command similar to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Armed Forces. Its tasks should be to monitor intelligence collection by various agencies, avoid duplication of efforts and resources, integrate the intelligence flowing from different agencies and foreign agencies, analyse and assess the integrated intelligence and monitor follow-up action by the Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other concerned agencies. Every agency is equally and jointly involved and responsible for the entire counter-terrorism process starting from collection to action on the intelligence collected. If such a system had existed, post-Mumbai complaints such as those of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) that the advisories issued by them on the possibility of a sea-borne attack by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) on Mumbai were not acted upon by the Mumbai Police would not have arisen because the IB and the R&AW would have been as responsible for follow-up action as the Mumbai Police.

18: The practice of the privileged direct access to the Prime Minister by the chiefs of the IB and the R&AW, which came into force under Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, should be vigorously enforced. This privileged direct access is utilised by the intelligence chiefs to bring their concerns over national security and over inaction by the agencies responsible for follow-up on their reports to the personal notice of the Prime Minister and seek his intervention. If the intelligence chiefs had brought to the notice of the Prime Minister the alleged inaction of the Mumbai Police on their reports, he might have intervened and issued the required political directive to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

19: Either create a separate Ministry of Internal Security or strengthen the role of the existing Department of Internal Security in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs and make it responsible for dealing with internal security operationally under the over-all supervision of the Minister for Home Affairs.

20: Either create a separate federal terrorism investigation agency or empower the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate all cases involving terrorism of a pan-Indian dimension. It need not take up cases where terrorism is confined to a single state or a small region such as terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir or the Al Umma in Tamil Nadu. It should be able to take up the cases for investigation without the need for prior permission from the Governments of the States affected. It should not have any responsibility for investigating crimes other than terrorism. If its charter is expanded to cover other crimes too, there will be political opposition. There is a lot of confusion about this concept of a federal terrorism investigation agency. Many critics ask when the IB is there, what is the need for another central agency. The IB is an intelligence collection agency and not an investigation agency. The IB has no locus standi in the Indian criminal laws.

It collects intelligence and not evidence usable in a court of law. It cannot arrest and interrogate a suspect or search premises or perform other tasks of a similar nature, which can be performed only by police officers of the rank of Station House Officers. The IB officers are not recognized as equivalent to SHOs.

21: Set up a task force consisting of three senior and distinguished Directors-General of Police (DGPs) and ask it to come up with a list of recommendations for strengthening the powers of the police in respect of prevention, investigation and prosecution of terrorism-related offences and the capabilities of the Police in counter-terrorism and implement its recommendations. This is the only way of getting round the present political deadlock over the revival of the Prevention of Terrorism ACT (POTA).

22: Expedite the erection of the border fence on the border with Bangladesh without worrying about opposition from Bangladesh.

23: Start a crash programme for the identification of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and for deporting them. Ban the employment of immigrants from Bangladesh anywhere in Indian territory.

24: Strict immigration control is an important part of counter-terrorism The post-9/11 safety of the US is partly due to the tightening up of immigration procedures and their strict enforcement. Among the best practices adopted by the US and emulated by others are: Photographing and finger-printing of all foreigners on arrival, closer questioning of Pakistanis and persons of Pakistani origin etc. We have not yet adopted any of these practices. Hotels and other places of residence should be banned from giving rooms to persons without a departure card and without a valid immigration stamp in their passports. They should be required to take Xerox copies of the first page and the page containing the immigration stamp of the passports of all foreigners and also the departure card stapled to the passport and send them to their local Police Station every morning. All immigration relaxations introduced in the case of Pakistani and Bangladesdhi nationals and persons of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin should be cancelled with immediate effect. The requirement of police reporting by them should be rigorously enforced. It should be made obligatory for all persons hosting Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to report to the local police about their guests. A vigorous drive should be undertaken for tracing all Pakistanis and Bangladeshis overstaying in India after the expiry of their visas and for expelling them.

25: The MEA’s capability for terrorism-related diplomacy should be strengthened by creating a separate Division for this purpose. It should continuously brief all foreign governments about the role of Pakistan and Bangladesh in supporting terrorism in Indian territory and press for action against them.

26: The Mumbai strikes have revealed serious gaps in our maritime security on our Western coast. This is partly the result of our over-focus on the Look East policy and the neglect of the Look West dimension. This was corrected earlier this year. Despite this, there are apparently major gaps and an alleged failure by the Naval and Coast Guard authorities to act on the reports of the IB and the R&AW about likely sea-borne threats from the LET. The identification and removal of the gaps need immediate attention. The Mumbai off-shore oil installations and the nuclear and space establishments on the Western coast are also vulnerable to sea-borne terrorist strikes.

Tourism Must Counter Mumbai Aftermath

By Nitish Sengupta

At a time when Indian tourism, recognised as a major economic activity of our country, was already suffering from the Wall Street meltdown and the general recessionary trend all over the world, it has received yet another serious blow from the Mumbai attacks. I happened to be on a short holiday at a backwater resort in Kerala on November 26 when the news of the terror attacks broke and, almost simultaneously, the resort started receiving an avalanche of cancellation from overseas tourist groups. On enquiries from other resorts in God’s own country, I got similar reports. It was as if the entire West was backing out from visits to India. I was also told that insurance companies in the West had stopped providing insurance cover to visitors to India and that this has crippled the entire inbound tourist traffic.

It is difficult to see how our tourist industry can cope with this challenge. And yet, they must. There must be vigorous tourism promotion in the West. People must be told that India is a vast country — as big as the European continent, and that one localised terror attack in Mumbai, or even Delhi, should not have any impact on visitors coming to other parts of the country, such as the south, the east or the Himalayas. It is as ludicrous as people not visiting Stockholm on grounds of violence in Rome. Also, in a way, the Mumbai attacks must be viewed as a blessing in disguise. The Indian government has become alert as never before and a lot of strong police and administrative measures are in progress to make the future more secure. There is a fresh move to strengthen coastal vigil and hopefully, things will improve in the long run.

Authorities in India should send tourism promotion delegations to all countries where tourism traffic to India originates in significant volumes and reassure the tour operators and tourism agencies that things are improving in India and that they should not fear any further threat to the lives of their citizens visiting India. We should also take advantage of the fact that the world today stands united against terrorism as never before and that Pakistan has generally been identified by the entire world as the hub of international terrorism. The UN Security Council has also taken note of this and passed a resolution urging the Government of Pakistan to take deterrent action against the terror camps and terrorist organisations in their country.

But, tourism industry must also do a great deal of introspection. The time has come to ask questions as to why hotel rates are so high here, much higher than the average hotel rates in tourism-oriented countries. Air tickets too are much costlier here. With the money that is needed to buy an airline ticket from Delhi to Cochin, one can fly to Dubai, Singapore or Bangkok, spend two or three days there and come back. Just as the hotels should seriously consider lowering their rates to match those in tourist centres such as Singapore, Bangkok or Bali, the Indian government and airline companies should also put their heads together to ensure that airfares are brought down to the rates prevailing elsewhere. This necessarily means that the Central and state governments need to reduce the incidences of taxes levied on air travel which are prohibitively high and much more than what any other tourism-oriented country levies.

On the overall cost and benefit analysis, the government should not mind reducing taxes in the interest of getting a higher volume of travel and, to that extent, of forex earnings. Similarly, the hotel industry and the banks and financial institutions which have provided them loans, should sit together and consider reducing the volume of interest burden on the hospitality industry. If the repayment burden is spread over a longer period, as a special case, it shouldn’t be difficult to reduce the interest rates substantially. The same applies to tour operators and transporters. Bearing in mind that they are all faced with almost a war-like situation, it is time to make whatever adjustment is required to meet this adversity.

Finally, there is the issue of domestic tourism in relation to overall tourism in the country. Indians are not only great international travellers but also regular domestic travellers. But traditionally, domestic travel has been associated mostly with religious tourism and somewhat with cultural tourism. There has not been domestic holiday or leisure tourism on a large scale. Can we not persuade a large group of Indians to fill the vacuum created by the sudden disappearance of foreign visitors from, let us say, the Goa beaches, the backwaters resorts of Kerala or the Himalayan trekking camps?

This should be possible with a proper degree of promotion and the right amount of adjustment by hoteliers and travel agents. Once this happens, the Indian tourism industry will not miss overseas tourists. Domestic tourism can fill up the absence of the overseas tourists in all possible ways except that they cannot bring in forex. But in the general situation where India’s forex earning is going up on account of general economic activity, it will not matter much if this declines. In a situation where tourism has to compete with terrorism, there is no way out but to begin by facing these hard realities.

RECAP 2008: Education Sector Boom

By M H Ahssan

THE YEAR 2008 SAW A SEA OF CHANGE IN THE EDUCATION SECTOR. A NUMBER OF TRENDS WITNESSED A BOOM, WHEREAS OTHERS FAILED TO TAKE OFF. IN THIS YEAR-END ISSUE, HNN ANALYSES THE MOST PROMINENT TRENDS IN THE EDUCATION SEGMENT IN 2008.

As news of the economic slowdown hit Indian shores, the education sector, along with many other industries, underwent several changes. Whether it was students temporarily abandoning their study abroad plans, professionals choosing to go back to school, in order to spruce up their qualifications, institutes reporting a negligible slowdown in their placement rates, or the undecided fate of industry-academia tie-ups, there were both triumphs and tribulations in 2008.

STUDY ABROAD SENTIMENTS
While recession is poi sed to affect India in the long run, it might be a little early to determine how it is likely to affect Indian students' study abroad decisions. Hazel Shiromoni, Vice-President, CECN Global Schools, corroborates this view, saying, "Only after a span of a few months, can a pattern be identified. However, it is crucial to note that student enquiries for some courses, such as aviation, hospitality, travel and tourism are already going down." She goes on to add that the mindset of people, in terms of pursuing an education abroad will not change, and people from affluent sections of society will continue to send their children abroad. However, for the middle-class, particularly for those, who have invested in stocks, sending their children abroad may no longer be an affordable proposition.

Ajit Motwani, Director (India), Institute of International Education (IIE), reveals, "Most students applied for the fall session (September) before recession hit India, and were unlikely to be affected by it. Further, the spring semester has a small intake, so any real change in applications will only be visible in the fall session next year, when the affects of recession sink in."

Purti Simon, an alumni of St Xavier's College Kolkata, says, "I was forced to put my plans to study abroad on hold. It calls for a large expenditure and one would obviously look at recouping the investment. In the present scenario, international students are the first on the chopping block. I chose to postpone my plans till the economic situations are less volatile." However, while some students put their study abroad plans on hold, there were others who decided to go ahead with them anyway. Rini Mukherjee, who is pursuing Ancient Greek at the University of Cyprus, avers, "I continued with what I needed to do. If the recessional situation can subside in a year or two, it can also be reaffirmed. This is a good time to complete the academic experience, and hopefully, by the time my course ends, the economic situation will be better. If it isn't, there will tough competition, a phenomenon not exactly unknown to Indians."

However, it is noteworthy that the applications for a number of foreign universities in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, have only increased in the current year. Surya Ganesh Valmiki, Valmiki Group, discloses, "There has been a 60 per cent rise in the number of applications to universities in the UK. Also, Australia has become the preferred education destination because of its simpler visa process, as well as bright prospects of permanent residency. 48,500 visas were granted to Indian students, who had applied to universities in Australia." Moreover, Marina Gandhi, Head of East India, Education UK, British Council, also confirms an increase in the number of students, who had applied for further studies in the UK over that last year.

On the other hand, while the US is still one of the most favoured destinations, it is crucial to note that the US government rejected 70 per cent of visa applications this year. A major factor that adds to students woes is that a US visa is not easily acquired.

The choice of courses also did not witness any major changes. As Shekhar Niyogi, Education Consultant, Education Unlimited Inc, says, "The preferred programmes continue to be engineering, biological sciences and MBA."

BACK TO SCHOOL
B-Schools reported an increase in the number of applications for their full-time and executive MBA programmes. Dr Kondap, Vice- Chancellor, NMIMS University, reports that the institute expects a whopping increase of 10,000 more applications to their full-time MBA programme for the next year. However, Kondap is quick to add that the recession and the number of applications this year are mutually exclusive factors, although he agrees that recession may be the reason for the rise in the number of applications to the Executive MBA programmes.

Singapore-based Nanyang Technological University's Nanyang Business School too has already received 'more than double' the applications it received in December last year.

The number of freshmen at IIM-Lucknow in 2008 comprised only six per cent of graduates, without any professional experience. The rest have a minimum of two years of experience, and for various reasons, have decided to go back to school. THE Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), Delhi University, has received a record number of applications. This year, FMS received 70,000 applications for around 200 seats, up from 60,000 applications last year. However, J K Mitra, Dean, FMS, believes that the recession may not necessarily be behind the rise in the number of applications. He clarifies, "One can't be certain about the degree of influence that recession has exerted on students, who want to be admitted to the regular course. However, there will certainly be an impact on the number of applications for the part-time MBA programme at the institute."

Also, according to Anil Tandon, Principal, ICFAI, students prefer to go back to school now because they are aware that they would need to build their qualifications in order to have that extra edge if they want to excel.

While discussing the trend of going abroad, Dipanwita Ghosh, a Master's in Journalism student from American University, Washington, DC, says, "In order to tide over this phase, students are opting for courses, which require longer gestation periods, like a PhD or an MPhil. This is an attempt to simply pass the time in the most fruitful manner possible."

Pondering over the issue, Prafulla Agnihotri, Faculty, Marketing, IIM Calcutta, says, "The recession has not really affected the decisions of students, who want to pursue an MBA. Though there is no clear picture at hand now, the perceivable change will be palpable from the next financial year."

DIP IN PLACEMENTS?
The final placement season is currently underway in some B-Schools and management departments, and analysts are currently speculating about the possible effect of recession on placements. So far, students at these B-Schools are by and large, content with the placement opportunities.

The management departments that have started placements for their final batch include the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) at Chennai and Kanpur and Goa Institute of Management (GIM). According to the placement committee members from these institutes, apart from a 'dip' in financial sector companies, the profile and salary packages offered to students have 'stayed the same' and, in some sectors, they have become even better. Discussing the number of companies visiting the campus, Saakshi Kanwar, Member, Placement Cell, GIM, says, "Our institute had long-standing ties with the companies that have visited the campus this year. Though the number of recruiters in the financial sector has reduced, companies from this segment haven't stopped recruiting completely."

IIT-Chennai's Department Of Management Studies (DoMS) also reports a lesser number of companies from the financial sector, but there was an increase in the number of recruiters from other sectors.

In fact, the only difference witnessed by IITKanpur's management department is the duration of the placement process. As a member of the placement committee reveals, "Earlier, students used to be placed on the very first day, but now the process is spread over a few days. Apart from this, there has been no visible difference in terms of salary packages, profiles, etc."

V C Ravichandran, Director, Centre for University - Industry Collaboration (CUIC), Anna University, claims, "More than 90 companies have visited the university so far, though investment banks have postponed their dates. CUIC bridges the gap between industry and academia, and we have several placement and pre-placement discussions by companies from across the country. This not only helps students prepare for group discussions and interviews, but also helps them understand the needs and demands of various companies in these turbulent, economic circumstances."

Predicting the immediate future, Dr K S Pratap Kumar, Director, National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Hyderabad, mentions, "We will be starting our placement soon, but in the wake of recession, I can predict that it is going to be a challenge. With the global meltdown, the export industry is badly hit, and it is going to make things difficult. However, we are trying our level best to help our students."

Kondap adds, "Though placements will be affected due to the recession, this will only be a corrective measure in terms of the salaries that fresh management graduates have been drawing." Prof Veer Singh, Vice Chancellor, NALSAR University of Law, explains, "In the current situation, there will be more litigation cases, hence, there will be an increased need of trained, legal professionals. Legal Business Processing is witnessing an upward trend in India. Therefore, our placements will be as good as they were the last year. In fact, they might just get better this year. The final verdict can be given only after the batch passes out."

Prof Dr Uday Salunkhe, Group Director, Welingkar Institute of Management, admits, "Placing students has been more challenging this year than the past few years. A lot more strategising and effort is required in identifying and expanding the pool of companies for placements. Also, student mindsets have to be conditioned, so as to ensure that students are able to grasp the situation and plan their career moves accordingly."

INDUSTRY-ACADEMIA TIE-UPS
Realising the need for industry inputs in the curriculum of professional courses, a number of institutes had previously entered into tie-ups with professional companies. Dr Kondap says, "The tieups that we have entered into are definitely underway. For instance, we have a tie-up with Dr Reddy's, wherein we have members of the company enrolling for the executive MBA programme. Programmes like these are highly customised, and companies are keen to train potential employees to their needs and tastes. Thus, in spite of recession, there is immense scope for such tie-ups."

Other tie-ups are only in their initial stages. Professor Y V Rao, Director of NIT, Warangal, says, "Though the concept is in its infancy in India, we have signed an MoU with CPRI, Bangalore for exchange of staff in training and research. Similarly, MoUs with IBM, Accenture and TCS encourage these companies to train our students and conduct combined research on projects. Though we are steadily progressing, our main concern is to keep pace with changing technology, failing which we will turn obsolete."

Will Modi End Up Becoming Next Advani In BJP?

By M H Ahssan / Hyderabad

For those supporting or opposing the rise of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP’s Goa conclave was the event to watch for. While the most ardent of his backers hoped for his anointment as the party’s PM candidate, others, with perhaps equal  anticipation, looked forward to tear into Modi’s elevation in the party.

However, the BJP leadership did the smart thing by keeping its cadre and those opposed to the Gujarat Chief Minister pleased. With party patriarch LK Advani still not ready to bite the Modi-bait and the disenchantment of allies like JD(U) with the Gujarat CM, the party has taken a smart step to test waters.

Focus: Mango, The 'King Of Fruit' Is Now In Indian Markets

By Dabu Sadaf | INNLIVE

SPECIAL REPORT Summer in India for foodies is synonymous with the mango season. In our country, each state boasts of different varieties of mangoes, all hailed as delicacies. Some are meant to be eaten ripe, while others are best eaten when they're green and raw.

While this season starts as early as the last weeks of March, it is only around the last week of April that the many varieties make their entry in the fruit bazaars across the country. This season lasts up to the end of June. In certain areas, it lasts up to the first week of August.

Travel: Seychelles Treasured Islands With Comfort, Ease

Close your eyes. And just imagine. You're lazing on a talcum-powder beach lapped by topaz waters and backed by lush hills and big glacis boulders.

Yes, it just routine in the Seychelles lifestyle embedded in nature's beauty. With such a dreamlike setting, the Seychelles is unsurprisingly a choice place for newlyweds. 

But for those looking for more than a suntan or romance, this archipelago offers a number of high-energy distractions. There are jungle and coastal walks, boat excursions, and diving and snorkelling to keep you buzzing.

Celebrating '100 Years Of Indian Cinema'

Saluting the legends of '100 years of Indian Cinema' for their outstanding contributions. 

When Dadasaheb Phalke, the father of Indian Cinema, released his epochal feature film Raja Harishchandra on 3rd May 1913, it is unlikely that either the exhibitors or the pioneer film maker realized they were unleashing a mass entertainment medium that would hold millions in sway for the next hundred years. The French might have introduced the concept of moving images, but little did anyone know that India would one day become the largest film industry in the world. It's a miracle that Indian cinema has withstood the test of time despite the vast cultural differences in the past 100 years.

Indian cinema has an identity that is very unique and unmatched. We have moved from the black and white silent films to 3D, but our cinema continues to retain its basic essence - to thrill. Even as internet downloads and television continue to cannibalize the theatrical revenues of Indian films, the lure of the 35 mm is something else altogether. It was Phalke who introduced India to world cinema at a time when working in films was taboo. After the success of his film 'Raja Harishchandra', several filmmakers in Bombay and Madras began making silent films. By the mid 1920s, Madras had become the epicentre for all film related activities. Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu, SS Vasan, AV Meiyappan set up production houses in Madras to shoot Telugu and Tamil films.

The silent era came to an end when Ardeshir Irani produced his first talkie, 'Alam Ara' in 1931. If Phalke was the father of Indian cinema, Irani was the father of the talkie. The talkies changed the face of Indian cinema. Apart from looks, the actors not only needed a commanding voice but also singing skills, as music became a defining element in Indian cinema. The year also marked the beginning of the Talkie era in South Indian films. The first talkie films in Bengali (Jumai Shasthi), Telugu (Bhakta Prahlad) and Tamil (Kalidass) were released in the same year.

The forties was a tumultuous decade; the first half was ravaged by war and the second saw drastic political changes all over the world. In the middle of the Second World War in 1945 came 'Kismet' starring Ashok Kumar which became one of the biggest hits in the history of Indian cinema. It had some bold themes - the first anti-hero and an unmarried pregnancy. It clearly showed that the filmmakers of the era were bolder than the times in which they were living in. A close relationship between epic consciousness and the art of cinema was established. It was against this backdrop that filmmakers like V.Shantaram, Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor and Mehboob Khan made their films. In the meantime, the film industry had made rapid strides in the South, where Tamil, Telugu and Kannada films were taking South India by storm. By the late 1940s, films were being made in various Indian languages with religion being the dominant theme. 1940s to late 1950s was also the golden era of music. Shankar Jaikishan, O.P. Nayyar, Madan Mohan, C. Ramchandra, Salil Chaudhury, Naushad, S.D. Burman - all had their distinctive style. Each vied with the other to produce some of the most unforgettable melodies India has ever known.

50s and 60s were considered as the Golden Age of Indian cinema. Filmmakers like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy, Mehboob Khan, K Asif, Raj Kapoor, KV Reddy, L V Prasad and Ramu Kariat made waves in their respective film industries and they went on to make classics like Pather Panchali, Madhumati, Do Bheega Zameen, Shree 420, Awaara, Pyasa, Mother India, Mughal E Azam, Mayabazar and Chemmeen among many other films. In the south, N.T. Rama Rao, M. G. Ramachandran, Sivaji Ganesan, Rajkumar, Prem Nazir dominated the film industry for more than three decades before making way for the next generation of actors like Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Mammootty, Mohanlal, Chiranjeevi and Balakrishna.

The 70s completely changed the way films were made, especially in Hindi film industry. Changing social norms and changing economies influenced movies and the companies that made them. The narrative style changed. The story structure changed. Characters changed. Content changed. Masala films were the demand of the time. The genre promised instant attraction and had great entertainment value. It was the age of the angry young man and Amitabh Bachchan rose to prominence thanks to the success of Sholay, Zanjeer and Deewar. While Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna, Jitendra and Dharmendra continued to bask in the glory of back to back hits, the actresses were not far behind. Right from the time of Savitri, Vyjayanthi Mala, Nargis, Waheeda Rahman and Sharmila Tagore to Sridevi, Rekha, Smita Patil, Hema Malini, several actresses became heartthrobs of the nation.

While Indian commercial cinema enjoyed popularity among movie-goers, Indian art cinema did not go unnoticed. Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ritwik Ghatak, Aravindan, Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Shaji Karun and several other art film directors were making movies that gave India international fame and glory.

The eighties saw the advent of women film makers such as Vijaya Mehta ('Rao Saheb'), Aparna Sen ('36- Chouwringhee Lane', 'Parama'), Sai Pranjpye ('Chashme Baddoor', 'Katha', 'Sparsh'), Kalpana Lajimi ('Ek Pal'), Prema Karanth ('Phaniamma') and Meera Nair ('Salaam Bombay'). It was also the decade when sultry siren Rekha wooed audiences with her stunning performance in 'Umrao Jaan' in 1981.

And then in 90's, it was a mixed genre of romantic, thrillers, action and comedy films. A stark upgrade can be seen on the canvas as technology gifted the industry Dolby digital sound effects, advanced special effects, choreography and international appeal. The development brought about investments from the corporate sector along with finer scripts and performances. It was time to shift focus to aesthetic appeal. And stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Rajnikanth, Madhuri Dixit, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Chiranjeevi, Juhi Chawla and Hrithik Roshan began to explore ways to use new techniques to enrich Indian cinema with their performances.

In recent years, Hindi cinema has undergone a massive change due to the emergence of new age filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap, Rajkumar Hirani, Dibakar Banerjee and Vishal Bhardwaj. Of late, Tamil and Marathi cinema has witnessed similar changes with several new filmmakers coming forth to cater to a niche audience.

As the world has become a global village, the Indian film industry has reached out further to international audiences. Apart from regular screenings at major international film festivals, the overseas market contributes a sizeable chunk to Bollywood's box office collections. Regular foreign Investments made by major global studios such as 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros put a stamp of confirmation that Bollywood has etched itself on the global podium.

To celebrate 100 years of cinema in India, the Government of India, in cooperation with the film industry, has proposed to line up a host of activities between May 3, 2012 and May 3, 2013. It has also proposed to present a tableau of 100 years of Indian Cinema at the Republic Day parade next year. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has also instituted a centenary award which will be given to a path- breaking film every year at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa. The first centenary award would be given at the IFFI 2012 which will be held in Goa in November this year.

Indian cinema, despite all its peculiarities, has been a reflection of the socio-economic, political and cultural changes that took place in the country. Here's hoping that Indian movies continue to entertain us the way they've been doing since 10 decades.

Opinion: Lynching The Diversity Out Of India

The new jungle justice system has obviously been given political imprimatur.

Junaid Khan, 15 years young, had gone for Eid shopping with his brothers to Delhi. He was never to return. On his way home to Ballabgarh, a hate-fuelled group of men pounced on him. He was stabbed during the attack and literally bled to death in excruciating pain. His brothers were assaulted too, but escaped with their lives. Beef eaters, yelled the rancorous chorus. No one in the train compartment helped. Junaid is the latest victim of the rising violent culture of cow-related mob lynching in India. It is a Frankenstein's monster on the loose taking giant strides. The ominous predator is out there as you read this.

Bizarre, Fascinating And Horrifying Obsession With 'Urine'

Urine is once again on people’s minds, after India’s road transport minister Nitin Gadkari made public his penchant for recycling his urine to fertilise plants at his Delhi bungalow.

It seems Gadkari collects his urine in containers that are tipped into 50-litre cans. This in turn is used to irrigate plants and spur the growth of larger vegetables.

As people mocked Gadkari, Arghyam, an NGO run by Rohini Nilekani in Bangalore, came out in his support with a paper from the University of Agricultural Sciences on the benefits of urine.

Sanjay Dutt - The Tragic Arc Of A Falling Star

Is it enough to have a heart of gold if your feet are made of clay? INN on a falling star who never quite gave up even as he gave in.

In a different Bombay, in September 1959, a man was pardoned for murder. The man, Lt Commander KM Nanavati, admitted to shooting his wife Sylvia’s lover, a “rich, swinging Sindhi bachelor”, three times through the chest with a revolver he had procured hours before the crime. There could be many reasons why the governor of Maharashtra pardoned Nanavati — that he was a well-connected, highly decorated officer; that he had acted in the heat of the moment; that he had committed a crime men could understand and women could forgive. There was no question that Nanavati broke the law, but an urban elite abetted by a compliant, scandal-hungry media insisted that he deserved mercy.

Unlike Nanavati, Sanjay Dutt, 53, is no upstanding naval officer. Nor can it be argued that his crime — the illegal possession of arms in a TADA-notified area — was provoked in one blind, hot moment of rage. But, like Nanavati, Sanjay Dutt seems a character out of Shakespeare or the Greek epics. He was born a blessed child, one to whom the gods had seemingly given everything. Tragic heroes though are afflicted by a fatal flaw, a faultline that brings an entire edifice down. In the end, it was himself that Sanjay Dutt could not escape.

Was this why the chairman of the Press Council, Retd Justice Markandey Katju, felt moved to invoke Nanavati as an argument for why Dutt should be pardoned? In a recent newspaper editorial, senior advocate Shanti Bhushan agreed that given the facts — that Dutt’s father was helping Muslims in a riot-affected area, that Dutt himself had received threatening phone calls — it was evident that there was “clear danger of a mob attack on Sanjay Dutt and his family”; and since “an attack by such a mob could not have been deterred except by the threat of an automatic weapon”, Dutt should be pardoned for procuring and keeping just such an automatic weapon, unlicensed or not, by his bed.

The crowd of supporters outside Sanjay Dutt’s residence at Pali Hill is growing. The A-listers hiding behind dark glasses, emerging from cars with tinted windows, agree with Katju. MPs Jaya Prada and Jaya Bachchan are calling for clemency. Mamata Banerjee believes that Dutt, who has already served 18 months of his five-year-sentence, has “suffered enough”. Somewhat inexplicably, Digvijaya Singh has described Dutt as “a great man”.

According to his apa Zaheeda, star of the ’70s, “Sanju is no Khalnayak, he is the kind-hearted, bumbling fool from Munna Bhai. He is innocent and has a heart of gold.” This is a familiar version of Dutt, the infantilised ‘Sanju baba’ forever evoking maternal responses from the women in his life. Even as one section of Bombay, still singed from the riots, sees no reason why Dutt’s fate should be any different from others convicted for their roles in the blasts, to another, he is a pitiable figure. Like Walter Benjamin’s angel of history, Dutt has lived life with his face turned towards the past. What we perceive to be a chain of events, he sees as “one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet”.

But there is no denying his agency in causing that catastrophe.

Dutt first met underworld don Dawood Ibrahim in 1991, when shooting for Yalgaar in Dubai. Anees Ibrahim, Dawood’s brother, a former ticket scalper, soon became a frequent visitor to Dutt’s sets. Dutt, then 31, was tall, lanky, droopy-eyed and fast turning into Bombay’s new golden boy. His debut film, Rocky, about a Rambo-like youth who sets about avenging his father’s death, had done particularly well. For Dawood, Dutt held more star appeal than his co-stars Feroze Khan and Kabir Bedi. At a time before Bollywood finance had been san itised by banks, before the government had decreed it an industry, the underworld was a source of ready capital for filmmakers. The dons, living in their gilded cages in Dubai and Malaysia, enjoyed fraternising with the stars, and flying them out for Bollywood roadshows. Most of all, they liked turning their own black money white.

On 16 January 1993, Ibrahim drove a car filled with explosives and assault rifles from Gujarat to Bombay. This car made its way to Dutt’s tin-roofed garage, where accompanied by Dutt’s friends Samir Hingora and Hanif Kandawala, a man named Abu Salem handed the actor three AK-56s, ammunition and 20 grenades, altering the trajectory of his life for ever.

This life, by the accounts of many of those closest to Dutt, was already a troubled one. His parents, actors of almost celestial fame, had met while shooting for the iconic Mother India. Nargis had fallen in love with Sunil when he rescued her from a fire that had broken out on set. In Darlingji: The True Love Story of Nargis and Sunil Dutt, a collection of letters exchanged between the two, accompanied by entries from Nargis’ diary, she confesses that her disappointing romance with Raj Kapoor had left her contemplating suicide until she met Sunil. Finally, she had found someone who made her “feel normal”. Nargis, famous for her ethereal beauty as much as her temper and razor-edged tongue, said she confessed everything about her past “shamelessly” to him because she was certain that he would never abandon her.

She was right — Sunil never abandoned her, even as she drew her last breath at the Sloan-Kettering Hospital’s cancer ward in New York several years later. He did, however, like Kapoor, demand that she not work with other male actors. If Nargis resented this, she buried those feelings once Sanjay, the eldest of their three children, was born, spending all her time pampering her son. Indeed, so much did Nargis spoil him that by the time he turned 10, Zaheeda, Nargis’ niece, says Sunil began to worry “that his son was turning into a sissy”. “We would see him in the garden, having placed Sanju on a tall branch, telling him to leap off it — ‘Mamu kya kar rahe ho? Bachcha gir jayega,’ we would scream to no avail.”

Meanwhile, Sanju baba, who had taken to smoking the ends of cigarettes his father’s friends threw around, had also begun to show signs of the generosity everyone attributes to him even now. Being driven past a group of poor boys, Dutt would start wailing, until the driver stopped and bought the boys the same beverage he was drinking. In an interview before his death, Sunil recalled how Sanjay once threw a tantrum at a wedding, insisting that his mother give away his jacket to a young beggar shivering outside the shamiana. Finally, the senior Dutt decided, as irate parents often do, that his soft-hearted son should be sent away to a boarding school where he could be toughened into a man.

One of the reasons his supporters cite while asking for pardon for Sanjay Dutt is that while the law should not privilege a celebrity, neither should it punish a person for being one. In April 1993, a report found that several MLAs and politicians were also guilty of possessing arms supplied by Dawood Ibrahim. One of these was the Shiv Sena MLA Madhukar Sarpotdar. Sharad Pawar, chief minister then as he is now, revealed that suspects interrogated for the Bombay blasts had coughed up several names but that “charges hadn’t been pressed against everyone involved”. 

The book When Bombay Burned reveals that two months before the blasts shook the city, as riots broke out in Nirmal Nagar on the night of 11 January, Sarpotdar was detained by the Army and found to have two revolvers and several other weapons in his car. Although Sarpotdar’s gun was licensed, his son’s was not; besides, they were both breaking the law by carrying weapons in a ‘notified area’ during a riot. A man named Anil Parab also accompanied Sarpotdar that night. Parab turned out to be Dawood’s main hitman. Yet, Sarpotdar, who had committed the same crime as Dutt, was never tried in a court of law.

In an email to this reporter, Suketu Mehta, the author of Maximum City and the last journalist to have written about Dutt’s childhood, excused himself from providing details about his interview with Dutt. Mehta, who currently resides in New York, suggested that a mutual friend had been angered by his depiction of Dutt in the book and it would be uncharitable to exacerbate the situation further, especially at a sensitive moment. This polite stonewalling echoes the reactions of Dutt’s immediate circle. Unsurprisingly, his sisters, his closest colleagues and friends have refused to speak to the press, some on the advice of Dutt’s lawyer Satish Manshinde, and others at their own discretion. An investigative report published in INN in March 2007 (How the Star Managed to Escape TADA), had captured Manshinde on a hidden camera, admitting that he didn’t “have an answer” should the Supreme Court ask him why his client did not deserve to be convicted under TADA.

Guarded conversations with Dutt’s dormitory mates and friends from Sanawar reveal that in boarding school at least his celebrity background was a liability. “It was like 10 of us would do something and he would be the one who got punished until he’d dislocated a shoulder,” a friend said on the condition of anonymity. “School teachers everywhere can be sadistic, but they really had it in for Sanju, as if they had to make a point of proving that they did not care who his parents were.” In Mehta’s book, a particularly grisly passage describes how Dutt was made to crawl up a gravel slope until his hands and knees bled. The next day, his bandages were torn off and he was made to repeat the exercise.

While Dutt is hardly unique in suffering corporal punishment, a form of torture school children across the country still undergo daily, one can imagine how far removed this world must have felt from the one inhabited by parents, cousins, aunts and helpers, in which he was universally adored and indulged. When he finished school, he described feeling a resentment he had not previously known. In 2007, speaking to family friend Simi Garewal on her talk show, he said, “When parents send a kid away to boarding school, he has to learn to be independent. When I came home to find that they wanted to tell me what to do, it irritated me.” Back at home; Dutt was soon hanging out with friends who took recreational drugs. What began as “a little bit of weed”, he told Mehta, turned into nine years of hell. Dutt tried “every drug in the book” but soon developed an addiction to cocaine and heroin.

Nargis chose Zaheeda — a natural confidante for Dutt because she was younger than his mother, but old enough to play a maternal role — to confront her son about his drug habit. He was still naïve enough to believe his family was unaware of his addiction because his parents had never seen drugs. But Nargis and Zaheeda had witnessed a distant uncle lose his son to addiction. “Apa would frequently say to our uncle,” Zaheeda says, “‘had this been my son, I’d have scratched his eyes out.’ When she started seeing the same signs in Sanju — he would sleep erratically, stay locked in his bathroom all the time — she felt as though she had failed.”

Zaheeda offered to take Sanjay for a drive and a treat. Sitting in an ice-cream parlour, she asked him if he was on drugs. Dutt denied it, but Zaheeda warned him, “Your mother knows. You think she cannot see it, but she knows what’s eating you up inside.” One day, Dutt woke up from a heroin binge and began looking for something to eat. Seeing him, a servant began to cry — “Baba, you have slept for two days straight. Everyone in the house has gone mad with worry.” Dutt took one look at his distorted face in the mirror and went into his father’s study. “Dad, I’m dying. You have to save me,” he said.

Sanjay was taken to Breach Candy Hospital’s detox centre in Mumbai and then sent to a rehabilitation centre in Texas. Not wishing to cheat the producers who had already invested money in his son’s debut, Sunil Dutt informed them that his son was an addict and that he would soon clean up his act to return to work. Once out of rehab, Dutt discovered that he didn’t want to return. He had struck a friendship with a cattle-rancher named Bill and invested in a longhorn cattle ranch of his own. Out in nature, living by himself, Dutt said he found a peace he had never known in Bombay. He began to construct a new life for himself: a down payment on a small flat in New York and a dream to run a steak house to rival the best in the city. Two months later, it was Sunil Dutt who went to his son with a plea.

“I didn’t want to return home, I didn’t want to do films,” Sanjay confided in an interview soon after his return, “but my father said, ‘Do it for me, do it for my name,’ and I couldn’t refuse. I promised myself I’d make some money and return to my dream.” Sanjay finished work on his debut film. Three days after Rocky was released to the world in 1981 and a new star was born, Nargis died of pancreatic cancer. In 1993, Dutt was 33. He was too old, too buffeted by grief and experience to still be called ‘baba’.

The demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, followed by the riots of 1993 had forced India to confront the question of its religious identity once again, and in horrifyingly brutal fashion. Did being Hindu mean causing harm to Muslims? Or did it mean extending support to those who needed help? Dutt’s father, as popular a social worker and MP as he was an actor, had decided in favour of the latter. Hindu-Muslim marriages were not too unusual, particularly within the Hindi film industry. At the time of the riots, Sunil Dutt, by then a widower for a dozen years, could be found helping violence affected families in the Muslim neighbourhood of Behrampur. He had the constant support of his youngest daughter, Priya. All three children were aware that their father was growing older, frailer. Priya spent more and more time taking care of him while he took care of others.

It wasn’t just Sunil Dutt’s health that was waning. He seemed to have lost the respect of his fellow politicians. In a particularly humiliating instance, Sharad Pawar made Dutt wait for him in a lobby for over three hours. Thugs, displeased with his pro-Muslim work, had begun to threaten the Dutt family. Following an attack on his person that January, Sunil Dutt asked for extra security detail to be posted outside his house. But Sanjay thought his father might not be able to do enough to protect the family. Threatening phone calls had been made; his sisters, he was warned, were targets for kidnap and rape. It was enough to make him want to buy another gun — a fourth, unlicensed automatic weapon to add to his three licensed firearms — one that, as Shanti Bhushan believes, would be “better suited to dealing with a mob”.

Despite the immense difference in the magnitude of their crimes, an uncannily similar instinct had spurred the two men at either end of this supply chain of weapons into action. Dawood Ibrahim too was goaded by the ostensible desire to protect his sisters. Hussain Zaidi, the crime reporter and author of Black Friday, described a package Dawood had received full of red and green bangles. The tinkling glass came with a note —“jo bhai apne behno ki hifaazat na kar sake, use yeh tofha mubarak”.

On 16 January 1993, Hanif Kandawala and Sameer Hingora, proprietors of Magnum Video and Dutt’s friends, arrived at his house with a man named Abu Salem and told Dutt they would bring him new weapons. The next day, the three men returned with another companion. From their car, which they had parked in Dutt’s tin shed, they produced three AK-56 rifles, magazines and about 250 rounds, with some hand grenades. Accounts of this meeting differ among the men who were present. Hingora alleges that when they reached Dutt’s house, the actor was on the phone with Dawood’s brother, Anees. He further claims that Dutt enquired about the arms concealed in the car, showing knowledge of the plot to smuggle weapons into Bombay. Dutt’s lawyers have denied both these counts. However, INN earlier investigation unearthed that Dutt had in fact admitted to calling Anees, a confession that the CBI inexplicably decreed irrelevant, erasing the MTNL call records from Dutt’s landline to a number in Dubai.

From the safe harbour of the present, however, it’s easy to forget just how plagued Bombay was in the 1990s by gang violence, kidnapping and extortion. Film journalist Rauf Ahmed describes the atmosphere that had gripped the city as a “fear psychosis”. “You’d wake up and hear that Gulshan Kumar, whom one met at all the parties, had suddenly been shot dead outside his office. Manisha Koirala’s brother was killed. Hrithik Roshan’s father was shot at. It was all to show the royalty of Bombay who really was the boss.” That said, it couldn’t be denied that the film industry and the underworld were dancing a particularly intricate pas de deux.

Film makers mined the lives of gangsters for material. For them, Sanjay’s stories from jail — he served 18 months — of how the underworld recruits shooters from the children’s barracks were gold. As late as 2000, seven years after Dutt had first been implicated in the Mumbai bombings, shortly after he had served time and had been let out on bail, he was back in touch with gangsters. The transcripts for a drunken exchange involving, among others, Dutt, Mahesh Manjrekar and Chhota Shakeel are available online. Dutt has little to say to the gangster beyond such banalities as Govinda being a “chutiya”. Shakeel probes listlessly, “Aur kya chal raha hai?” Sanjay responds, “Bas chal raha hai bhai.” Neither wants to hang up, both star struck in their own ways.

In a section in Maximum City, Mehta describes how Sanjay, close to Abu Salem, had managed to get a friend, director Vidhu Vinod Chopra, off the extortion hook with a single phone call. In his call to Salem, Dutt had allegedly said of Chopra, “This is the one man who stood by me when I was in jail. You can’t touch him.” In a text message to INN, Chopra, who is currently in London, said he was “not qualified” to comment on the man who saved him from Abu Salem. Mehta’s description of Dutt as “brontosaurus-sized” and overly fond of “guns and muscles” and the masculine image of the Marlboro Man appears to fit in snugly with the impression from that drunken phone call: of a troubled, immature movie star playing with dangerous toys for kicks.

Amateur psychoanalysts would keep turning to Nargis’ death, in the days after what should’ve been the high point of her son’s triumphant return home, drug-free and on the verge of bona fide movie stardom. When Dutt has been down, life has rarely refrained from kicking. In 1987, nearly six years after his mother’s death, he married Richa Sharma. “It was nice to come home to someone,” he told Garewal. Two months after the birth of their daughter Trishala, Sharma was diagnosed with a brain tumour. She died in 1996 and their daughter moved to the US to live with her grandparents. Dutt had already been found guilty by then of illegal possession of arms.

Three years previously, he had been shooting in Mauritius when he heard he was going to be indicted under TADA and the Arms Act. He had asked a friend, Yusuf Nulwalla, to remove his AK-56 from his house, and Yusuf together with another friend, the steel manufacturer Kersi Adajania, saw to it that the gun was melted and thrown into the sea at Nariman Point. The police recovered the spring and some cartridges from the rocks. In the end, it was Sunil Dutt who had the moral courage to turn his son over to the police. He tipped them off about Dutt’s return from Mauritius and on 19 April, he was met at the airport by 200 commandoes.

When he saw his father again, Sanjay was in police custody. Sunil Dutt must have felt his back pressed to a wall when he gave Sanjay up to the police, but he still hoped his son was innocent. Had he done what the police accused him of, he asked. His son’s answer must have bewildered his already aching heart. “I have Muslim blood in my veins,” Sanjay said, “I couldn’t bear what was happening in the city.” It was a dramatic and, frankly, strange declaration. Dutt belonged to a thoroughly mixed family and his religious identity was equally mixed.

After his conviction, he was seen with his forehead daubed with a giant red tilak, his Muslim identity now in abatement. Was this tactical, an attempt to distance him self in the public eye from a dark event? Or was it a tribute to the support of the Thackerays and the Shiv Sena? (Support that has now been reversed.) It might just have been neither. Having grown up around Zaheeda’s love for Sai Baba, Dutt spent four hours each day of the 18 months he spent in jail praying to God. Which god he prayed to and what kind of deliverance he asked for is unclear. Later, he spoke of time spent befriending the sparrows, ants and rats that would appear in his 8×8 cell. He was also angry, self-recriminating. In a fit of rage, he banged his head against the bars of his cell until he had to be removed from solitary confinement for fear that he would kill himself. He could not have slept easy knowing the fates of the other accused — Zaibunissa, Manzoor, Yusuf — all tried under TADA, unlike Dutt.

Dutt has described his lowest moment as the day he was in jail and his father informed him that there was nothing more he could do to help him. Unknown to Sanjay, Sunil had prostrated himself before Balasaheb Thackeray, a man whose divisive politics he had always despised, to ask for his help in getting Sanjay out of prison. Each time Sanjay has crawled out of a hell of his own making — drugs, or prison; he has worked harder than before as if to prove each time to his father that he could take pride in his son. 

“He came back from his junkie phase with Saajan and Sadak,” says Rauf Ahmed, “he came back after the initial trial with Khalnayak, then there was Daud, Dushman, Mission Kashmir. Except for Sanju, only Amitabh Bachchan has faded so far from the limelight and been able to come back with a bang again and again.” After Mission Kashmir was screened at Rashtrapati Bhavan, Mehta quoted Dutt, shortly after the President shook his hand. “I will sleep tonight like I have never slept before, India loves me,” he had nearly wept.

In the 20 years since Dutt first left prison on bail till today when he is about to return, he has been to jail thrice, been married twice, had two children, shown up for innumerable court proceedings and lost his father. In 2008, he married his present wife Manyata Dutt (then, Dilnawaz Sheikh) at a private ceremony in Goa. So private that he failed to inform his sisters that he was getting married. Rauf Ahmed, who was working on Dutt’s biography with Random House, a highly sought-after project, gave up on the book when Dutt informed him that Manyata would now be handling all his creative dealings. 

Off the record, his friends speculate about her chequered past, gossip about her political ambitions, how she convinced him to join the Samajwadi Party instead of the Congress, how she was allegedly a bar dancer. Perhaps, as Nargis felt with Sunil Dutt, Manyata feels she too has found the man who makes her feel normal, to whom she can speak “shamelessly” about her past. Dutt appeared to have found a new lease on life. He was once again a box office success and happy to let his new wife control the finances as the CEO of Sanjay Dutt Productions. At 50, he became a father again, of twins.

Now Dutt stays up nights to complete unfinished projects before he goes to prison. Trade estimates say he has about Rs 250 crore worth of projects riding on his shoulders. He is driven by the thought of a lasting legacy, a film he will be remembered for, one that might dwarf his enormous mistake. His most spectacular success, earned in recent years, came with the Munna Bhai films. In Hirani’s candy-glazed world, Dutt was Munna, the lovable ‘bhai’, unacquainted with the cruel ways of the world, solving problems with a generous dose of love, laughter and jhappis. The irony is incandescent.

Amid the emotional clamour for Dutt (or is it Munna?) to be pardoned, his old friends, the Bhatts, stay loyal but also clear-eyed. Pooja, who acted opposite Dutt and whose brother found himself bizarrely linked to David Headley, is phlegmatic. “We were shooting for Tadipaar in Mysore one day when dad came up to us and said, ‘Baby, Sanju is in big trouble.’ We laughed. It was funny because Sanju had always looked out for me and the idea of him being in ‘big trouble’ was ridiculous. But it’s been 20 years, and we’re still talking about his troubles.” Mahesh, who is inordinately fond of Dutt, has struggled to find ways to help his friend cushion the blow of the Supreme Court’s verdict. Should I fuel him with hope of pardons, he wondered, or should I help him reach deep into himself with great calm and seek atonement. Face the flaw and redeem the man. See this as time to recover his best self.

Maybe Dutt can be sustained by that knowledge too, the understanding that if this time he does not chase the easy road —the urgent interventions; the uneasy pacts — at the end of these three years he will, for the first time in a very long time, enjoy an uninterrupted view of his future.