Poll Scenario: Is JP learning tricks of the trade?

By Ayaan Khan & Swati Reddy

Lok Satta’s claim of offering ‘new politics for a new generation’ is possibly just another election rhetoric, if recent incidents are any indicators.

The social group-turned-political party making its debut this election, banking heavily on its ‘clean’ image has already shown signs of double-speak and even rot in its ranks, say observers.

Take for instance, Lok Satta founder Jayaprakash Narayan’s visit to Nellore last week. It was touted as Narayan’s ‘Gandhi-like’ endeavour, as he boarded a secondclass compartment in the train with a media contingent to capture him walking his talk.

But as it turned out, Narayan’s simplistic journey lasted as long as the cameras were trained on him as he promptly took a flight back to Hyderabad from Tirupati, where he went from Nellore.

The scribes, many of them women accompanying ‘the new leader of the masses’ were shockingly left to fend for themselves in the middle of the night and later packed off to Hyderabad for a 12 hour journey in a bus. This was within hours of their completing a gruelling 12 hours journey that began at 5-40 in the morning.

But what irked many was the rot in JP’s ranks with some like C Purnachandra Rao, who handles Narayan’s public relations, misbehaving with women. Women journalists who accompanied Narayan to Nellore, say they were both witness and victims of Rao’s obscene advances and had even raised objections to the same.

Curiously, it was only a few days ago when Narayan had lashed out at the media saying that he wasn’t being given enough coverage.

Critics question whether Narayan’s train yatra wasn’t, after all, a media gimmick to get some easy publicity. And there are more concerns. Political analysts are questioning how will people have faith in the party if it is seeking a donation even to pay the deposit of candidates.

“If you understand voters’ psyche, a party unable to cough up Rs 5,000 as the deposit money for its candidates may not be able to hold voters’ confidence,’’ according to an analyst.

Becoming Rebellions: For crying out loud!

By Sunita Mallesh

Politics, goes the adage, is the last refuge of scoundrels. But tears seems to be the last resort of the those denied tickets by various political parties in the ensuing elections in the state. What’s more, they are weeping and wailing in public. And all that burst of damp emotion is not melting the hearts of their leaders who are turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to them.

On Wednesday, Sunitha Mahendar Reddy, a Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) ticket aspirant wept inconsolably at the TRS office in the city on being denied a ticket. “My hopes have been dashed,” Sunitha said in a choked voice feeling bitter and wiping the tears from her swollen eyes.

Even chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s brother-in-law (wife’s brother) P Ravindranath Reddy stunned everyone two weeks ago by weeping at a press conference in Kadapa. When it became clear that his dream of making it to the assembly would not be fulfilled, Ravindranath Reddy tried to use the power of tears to have his way.

Presently, the mayor of Kadapa, he was seeking a Congress ticket to contest the polls from Kadapa. Even as he wept, Ravindranath Reddy threatened to contest the polls as an independent candidate.

Mohd Ahamedullah has been announced as the official Congress candidate from there. Last heard, Ravindranath Reddy met Rajasekhara Reddy and what assurance he got from him is not known.

As parties have begun announcing their lists, the weeping in public spectacle by those denied tickets, is becoming common. On March 22, Prameela from Guntur who was desperately seeking a Congress ticket took her saree ‘pallu’ to hide her tears outside the chief minister’s camp office at Begumpet. There was hardly anyone there who could lend a shoulder for the grieving Prameela as all were sailing in the same rocky boat.

Prajarajyam Party’s (PRP) Allu Aravind also faced a piquant situation when an elderly man came right in front of his car at the party office recently and refused to allow it to move.

With outstretched arms and wailing inconsolably, the aspirant stopped Aravind’s car literally weeping and pleading that he be given the party ticket.

Another Congress ticket aspirant in Adilabad wept loudly at a party gathering recently saying that she deserved a party ticket. The tears that are being shed, however, are not moving the mandarins of the various political parties.

When deputy speaker G Kuthuhalamma was shocked to see her name missing from the list, she was completely overtaken by grief. She was vying for the Gangadhara Nellore assembly seat in Chittoor. The grief-stricken Kuthuhalamma suspected some party leaders as having played foul with her prospects and dashed off to Delhi to plead her case. And she did what comes usually after crying: Curse. “I am cursing those who have made me cry and filled me with grief,” Kuthuhalamma said.

Grand alliance in maha trouble in Andhra Pradesh

By M H Ahssan

In a day of high drama including revolts and protests on Wednesday, the grand alliance (Mahakutami) appeared to all but fall apart what with serious differences between the TDP, TRS and the Left parties on seat sharing arrangements. This led to TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu serving an ultimatum on the TRS to withdraw certain candidates failing which he said the TDP will go its own way.

After announcing a second list of 64 names for constituencies on which there is no dispute late on Wednesday night, Naidu said at a press conference that talks were still on between the alliance partners with regard to Wanaparthi, Achampet, Husnabad, Warangal east and Mahabubnagar but that the TRS went ahead and announced candidates from there.

“The TRS was supposed to resume talks today on these seats but they did not and unilaterally announced the names. If it does not come for talks on Thursday, then the TDP will prepare its own list. And with regard to Hyderabad and the outskirts, the TDP will surely contest at least five Lok Sabha seats,” Naidu said amid indications that the TRS was also eyeing some of these LS seats. Thus till late night, the grand alliance appeared to be tottering with the CPM and CPI too rejecting the offer of 16 seats each by Naidu.

By Wednesday night, the much talked about grand alliance was on the verge of collapsing. “The TRS has gone back on its word by fielding candidates from some constituencies after promising to leave it to TDP,” charged a TDP leader.

The day began with hectic activity at NTR Bhavan and Naidu’s residence for the TDP and Telangana Bhavan for the TRS. At 9.15 am, the TRS released a list of 15 names to which the TDP replied at 3 pm by naming candidates for 27 constituencies of which 14 were from Telangana and the rest from north coastal Andhra. The TRS then responded by naming 11 candidates at 3.30 pm. While there was no clash of constituencies in the lists released by the two parties, the announcement of the names sparked statewide protests for the TDP with its aspirants staging protests against Naidu leaving the seat for the TRS while many disappointed TRS aspirants also flocked to Telangana Bhavan to stage protests.

In Adilabad district, TDP district president and ticket aspirant Gone Hanumantha Rao and his followers ransacked the party office in Mancherial after the seat was allotted to the TRS and said he would contest as a rebel.

DOUBLE TROUBLE
WHAT’S THE ALLIANCE ABOUT: The intention was that TDP and TRS would form an alliance and contest the 119 assembly seats and 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana region Similarly, the CPM and CPI to share some seats with the TDP and TRS in the Telangana and with TDP in coastal and Rayalaseema areas.

WHY IT IS COLLAPSING: After insisting on 50 assembly and 10 LS seats, TRS settled for 49 assembly and 9 LS seats.

In the 36 assembly seats announced by TRS so far, many including Maheshwaram, Uppal, Gosha Mahal and Amberpet are being claimed by TDP.

CPM and CPI have rejected Naidu’s offer of 16 seats each and insisting on 20 apiece.

TRS has named candidates to Warangal East seat sought by CPM and Husnabad seat by CPI.

Naidu says TRS has unilaterally announced candidates for five seats which it should cancel and come for talks. No response yet from the TRS.

‘Listless’ leaders jump ship
Telugu Desam Party ticket-seekers former legislator Rajyalakshmi and former minister Boda Janardhan have reportedly decided to quit the party and join the Prajarajyam after their names did not figure in the list announced by Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday.

In Karimnagar district, six followers of a TDP aspirant attempted suicide after their leader was denied the ticket. In Wanaparthi in Mahbubnagar, angry TDP workers ransacked the party office after the seat was given to the TRS. By the evening, many protesters assembled outside the TDP chief ’s residence at Jubilee Hills to stage protests.

The two Left parties too claimed that their demands are not being met by Naidu. Their leaders claimed that they had demanded 20 seats each but that Naidu was offering them only 16 per party. Matters worsened after the TRS in its second list announced candidates for the Warangal East seat that was claimed by the CPM and the Husnabad seat claimed by the CPI.

Battling the revolt within the party and finalising names for more constituencies, Naidu announced that a second list of TDP names would be made at a press conference at 8 pm which was later postponed to 9.30 pm. In the meantime, just before 8 pm, the TRS announced a third list of 10 names that made the TDP livid. “The TRS announced the names without consulting the TDP because the Maheshwaram, Uppal, Gosha Mahal and Amberpet assembly seats that it announced were to have been left for the TDP.

An angry Naidu then issued the ultimatum to TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao to cancel the third list and come for talks failing which the TDP threatened to field candidates in all the Telangana seats.

Around 9.30 pm, Naidu announced a second list of 64 names taking the total to 91 nominees. Till late in the night, the crisis between the TDP and TRS on the one hand and between the TRS and the Left parties on the other remained unsolved.

Kashmir's Lake Dal gently weeps

By M H Ahssan

For more than a century, stunning Dal Lake has been the resplendent jewel of Kashmir's tourism trade. Enshrined beneath glacially serrated Himalayan peaks and encircled by blossoming orchards and tulip gardens, its idyllic beauty is legendary.

The late George Harrison, guitarist for the Beatles, and Bengali sitar maestro Ravi Shankar once strummed their strings on its shores. British comedian Michael Palin, of Monty Python fame, Academy Award winning actress Joan Fontaine and former United States vice president Nelson A Rockefeller all vacationed by the peaceful waters.

Dal Lake, located in Srinagar, the summer capital of the northernmost India-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, has also been a favorite of India's own rich and famous, including musician Zubin Mehta and three generations of India's powerful Gandhi family, to name just a few. (Last year, Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi presided over the harvest of Dal Lake's tulip plantation - the largest of its kind in Asia.)

A scenic, tree-shrouded boulevard winds its way along the shore, lined with parks, monuments and Moghul gardens planted in the 16th and 17th centuries. Overlooking the lake are the historic Shankaracharya and Hari Parbat temples.

Dal Lake is also famous for its Victorian-era houseboats originally built as vacation homes for British administrators during the Raj. Aboard these buoyed getaways or the gondola-like shakiras, which serve as the lake's water taxis, visitors can glide through innumerable floating gardens - yet another reason why Dal Lake is the most-photographed lake in India.

But there is another picture that isn't so pretty. Environmentalists say Dal Lake is dying a slow death, with rampant pollution, urbanization on its banks, and the blockage of fresh water channels and natural springs spoiling its once-pristine waters.

Dal Lake - once described as "the most beautiful lake in India" - now figures among the 100 most polluted lakes in the world. In the past 20 years, the lake has shrunk from 25 square kilometers to 11 sq km, and its depth has decreased by four meters.

More recently, Dal Lake has become a battleground between environmental groups concerned with the lakes' conservation and locals who depend solely on the tourist trade. Floating precariously at the very center of this roiling dispute are Dal Lake's famous houseboats.

Environmental broadsides
Hand-carved cedar houseboats were first introduced in Dal Lake by the British as early as 1888. At the time, British troops stationed in present-day Pakistan escaped the scorching lowland summers in cooler Kashmir. The beloved houseboats - many with incongruous monikers such as The Buckingham Palace, Mona Lisa and Helen of Troy - soon become symbolic of "the Kashmir holiday", and staying in one was considered a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

In recent times, however, the houseboats have been singled out for the worsening condition of Dal Lake. About 1,200 houseboats are moored year-round at Dal Lake and their raw sewage goes directly into the water. Local officials claim that roughly 100,000 liters of untreated human waste enter the lake from the houseboats each day.

Although the construction of new houseboats stopped in 1991, the existent boats continue to operate without any change of design. Now, in what they claim is a bid to save famous Dal Lake from extinction, authorities in India-administered Kashmir have ordered a ban on the houseboats moored in its waters.

The state high court, which has been hearing the case, has given the option of installing a US$4,000 sewage treatment device, but houseboat owners say they don't have the financial means as two decades of violent insurgency in Kashmir have dried up the tourist dollars.

Meanwhile, houseboat owners deny the officials' claim that they are the primary cause of pollution.

"Houseboats contribute to just 3% of Dal pollution and there are other reasons for the present condition, which the authorities are overlooking," Azim Tuman, president Houseboat Owners Association, told Asia Times Online. "A large amount of city sewage still goes into the lake untreated and the water circulation system though different canals in the city has been blocked resulting in stale condition of Dal waters."

Some experts agree that the main problem is the unhindered flow of sewage into Dal Lake's waters from nearby Srinagar - a city of some 1.3 million residents. The government has established three Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) to stop unchecked flow of sewage in the Dal waters. Environmentalists, however, say a system of about a dozen big and small STPs is needed to completely check the seepage.

Rocking the boats
Sewage discharged into the lake results in a process called "eutrophication" which causes aquatic weed growth, damages local flora and fauna and results in the clogging of fresh water arteries.

Four fresh water channels feeding Dal Lake have been blocked due to unplanned urbanization of Srinagar city. Despite a ban on littering in the lake, most of its 700 natural springs have been choked by polythene and other industrial wastes.

Government corruption and inefficiency have also been blamed for the lake's present condition. According to reports, millions of dollars are being spent on Dal Lake's conservation, but locals allege that only a fraction of the amount is actually put to its intended use.

Despite receiving monetary compensation, some 60,000 people residing inside Dal Lake on reclaimed land are yet to be relocated.

The lake is a major source of drinking water for Srinagar, supplying about 40% of city's population. Lately, there has been an alarming increase in the detection of deadly elements such as arsenic, cadmium, manganese, copper, lead, nickel in the lake basin - posing a grave threat to any living thing that consumes the water. There are often reports of people in Srinagar becoming ill after consuming water supplied from water filtration plants from the lake.

The lake's aquatic life has already been hit. Fishing, the area's second-biggest industry after tourism, has seen a rash of unemployment due to the decreased in fish population in the lake.

Even today, as the government attempts to stop the discharge of 100,000 liters of sewage per day from houseboats into the lake per day, millions of liters of sewage from other sources go unhindered. Environmentalists say that if real action is not taken, Kashmir's glistening Dal Lake lake will be gone in 50 years.

Angered cricket fans add poll twist

By Raja Murthy

Elections in the world's largest democracy and "television's ultimate reality show" have collided in a clash of big stakes and high drama peculiar to the sub-continent. India's US$1.75 billion Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 has suddenly been shifted to take place in South Africa, over security concerns about overlapping schedules of next month's polls and the cricket league.

Hurried efforts at rescheduling the IPL tournament to be played on alternative dates in India failed, as Delhi considered the general elections, from April 16 to May 13, and the IPL, from April 10 to May 24, as too big a double task for the security forces to handle. The government already has had to commit forces to protect 800,000 polling booths across India. South Africa, incidentally, is heading for general elections during the IPL tournament.

Security has become a major issue following the terror attacks in Mumbai last November, in which nearly 200 people were killed, and the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the Pakistani city of Lahore this month. None of the players were killed in this incident, although several were injured.

The second round of the one-year-old IPL, Asia's richest and the world's fastest-growing city franchisee-owned sports league, is now being outsourced from the country that put outsourcing on the map.

The IPL embraces a shortened version of cricket. The traditional version is the Test, which is played over five days and during which each team can bowl as many overs of six balls each to the opposition team. In another version, played over one day, each team bowls 50 overs. In IPL, the teams bowl only 20 overs each, making for a fast and furious spectacle that lasts only a few hours and which has captured the imagination of fans around the would, although purists still have their doubts.

The inaugural 2008 IPL tournament started on April 18, 2008 and lasted for 44 days, with 56 matches played by eight teams which were created by franchises being auctioned. A novel feature of the teams was that Indian players and others from around the world were bid for - the best being secured for millions of dollars for the duration of the "season".

The second season of the tournament is now expected to start on April 18, with the venues in South Africa still to be announced. England was also considered as an alternative venue, but was apparently ruled out because of its inclement spring weather.

"I apologize to the people of India. But we're going ahead so they can at least watch the event on TV," said Sashank Manohar, the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

The switch is a massive bonus for South Africa, which will also host the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament and which is also due in September to stage the Champions Trophy, that had been scheduled for Sri Lanka. Pakistan was originally due to host the one-day cricket international competition last year, but it was postponed over security concerns. It was then rescheduled for Sri Lanka, but moved again over wet weather concerns.

Much as Indians will be dismayed at losing the IPL, which had instantly become a hit tournament, South Africa has an estimated 1.2 million Asians - about 2% of the total population - as well as long-standing cultural ties with India. Mahatma Gandhi, the "Father" of modern India, for instance spent 21 years in South Africa, from where his life changed from being a lawyer to that of a national leader.

Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, is reported as saying that the South African economy will benefit enormously from staging the tournament. Speaking at a press conference in Johannesburg, Modi said the influx of players, coaches, support staff, media and spectators would inject many millions of dollars into the country's economy over the five weeks of the league.

"At any given point of time, we have 10,000 people working on this tournament. South Africa will benefit a lot. We will be using 30,000 rooms in hotels and 10,000 airline tickets will be needed for the purpose of this tournament," Modi said.

Possible South African cities being the unexpected hosts to matches between IPL teams such as the Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings, Delhi Daredevils and Kolkata Knight Riders could be Durban, which has the country's biggest ethnic Indian population, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Benoni, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and Potchesfstroom.

While Cape Town, host to the IPL's opening ceremony, could be resounding to vuvuzele, a one-tone musical horn, and a colorful sea of makarapas, construction safety helmets turned into tribal party hats, the Congress, the lead party in India's ruling coalition, is starting to pay politically for the loss of the tournament. Media surveys showed 40% to 70% of respondents blamed the government for the IPL leaving.

The government is now in damage-control mode right in the middle of the general election campaign and opposition political parties, smelling blood as election salvos heat up the Indian summer, have called the development a "national shame".

A defensive Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram called the decision "hasty" and claimed the BCCI made the move without consulting the government.

"It will be difficult to provide adequate paramilitary forces for election purposes and for the IPL," said Chidambaram, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former finance minister who took over the Home Ministry after the November 26 terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promptly blasted the government for "surrendering to terrorists". The BJP, the main opposition party, is under siege after one of its young leaders, Varun Gandhi, grandson of former prime minister Indira Gandhi and nephew of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, was censured by the Election Commission for making a crude hate speech against Muslims. This took place in an election rally in his constituency Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh, a key electoral state.

The IPL controversy has given the BJP, which is trailing in opinion polls, some timely ammunition to gain ground. "It has sent a message that India is not a safe country," said Arun Jaitley, BJP general secretary and president of the Delhi Cricket Association. He has called the IPL relocation a "governmental failure to provide security".

The political explosion has left the Congress, which heads the ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition, as the worst-affected. It was in a no-win situation: now it is blamed for the hugely popular IPL leaving India, but it would have been equally ripped apart if any violent incident had happened during the tournament.

The IPL has become India's most popular international brand in just a year. "TV's ultimate reality show," is how Sneha Rajani, executive vice president of TV rights holders SET Max, described the tournament.

The IPL will be beamed out of South Africa at 4.00 pm and 8.00 pm Indian standard time. Just under 100 million people out of India's total trackable 131 million TV audience saw the inaugural IPL edition last April, according to an estimate in a leading news weekly India Today, including a record audience among women and children.

Besides TV audiences in the Asia-Pacific, North America and Europe, such was the pan-global popularity of the IPL in its first edition that Arab Digital Distribution, a Middle Eastern pay-TV management company, has bought the 10-year TV rights for Middle East and African countries. This included the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Sudan. It was unthinkable two years ago that an Indian cricket tournament would have a following in Libya.

"The IPL is unquestionably the world's richest cricket league, and unquestionably the biggest sports concept launched anywhere in the world in recent years," Modi told Asia Times Online last year - three months before it started. "We expect IPL to have a greater following outside Asia than any other sports league that takes place in the continent."

Modi and his close associate Inderjit Singh Bindra, an IPL council member and the principal advisor to the Dubai-based International Cricket Council, the game's governing body, were accurate in their gung-ho optimism. In April 2005, Bindra told Asia Times Online that the BCCI would be worth $2 billion in four years ( See Cricket's home moves closer to the money Asia Times Online, April 23, 2005.) Both Modi and Bindra have their chance now to further expand the IPL's popularity outside Asia.

Besides the IPL TV audience of nearly 100 million, hundreds of thousands of fans ecstatically packed stadiums in 2008.

This correspondent experienced the IPL wonder in Mumbai's Wankhede stadium, for three matches, as house-full crowds were treated to high-quality cricket, rousing music, drum-beating bands in traditional costumes, ushers showing fans to seats, imported cheerleading teams and fireworks lighting up the night sky - all in an enthralling three-hour package involving top international stars playing together as team mates for the first time.

"IPL breaks heart of fans across the country," mourned the headline in the Times of India, the largest-circulated English daily in the sub-continent. The shift out of India was the front-page lead story in dailies and dominated TV news channels, in the middle of the general election campaign.

The move to South Africa leaves millions of disappointed Indian fans - translate them now as voters - and nervous franchisee team owners trying to recover multi-million dollar investments.

The eight IPL teams each cost between the $65 million that Emerging Media - a consortium that includes media baron Rupert Murdoch's son Lachlan and Hollywood star Russell Crowe - paid for the Rajasthan Royals team, to $111.9 million that billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani paid for the Mumbai Indians as the most expensive IPL team.

Other IPL team owners are a mix of top industrialists and India's leading movie stars, such as Shahrukh Khan and Juhi Chawla who co-own the Kolkata Night Riders, and Preity Zinta, co-owner of the Kings XI Punjab team.

But such was the astounding success of the first IPL edition that the Rajasthan Royals, winner of the inaugural tournament, had its valuation more than double in a year to $140 million in 2009.

"The IPL is recession-free," the private-jet owning Modi said in February, after the second edition of player auctions saw two England players - Andrew Flintoff and South African-born Kevin Pietersen - earn contracts worth $1.6 million and $1.2 million respectively for a possible six weeks of work and play.

While the IPL move could be a blessing in disguise to boost its global growth, the ruling Congress party-led coalition could pay dearly at the polls for this perceived "national shame" and its "surrender to terrorists".

Caste politics come full circle in India

By Sudha Ramachandran

Upper-caste Brahmins, whose relevance in the electoral arena dwindled over the past few decades thanks to their relatively small numbers, are wielding significant influence in the general elections scheduled for next month. In fact, the master strategists and spin doctors of the main political parties in the poll fray are Brahmin.

"Most of the country's political strategists and backroom boys - those running the country's political war rooms, advising party leaders, drawing up electoral battle plans, negotiating tricky alliances, crunching numbers or just working on slogans and spin - are from among the 'twice-born' [Brahmins]," said Smita Gupta in an article in the newsmagazine Outlook.

Jairam Ramesh, the election coordinator of Congress - the lead party in the ruling coalition - and author of several of its policy documents, is Brahmin. As is the chief election strategist of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Arun Jaitley. Orissa chief minister and president of the Bharatiya Janata Dal Navin Patnaik's chief advisor is Pyarimohan Mohapatra, a Brahmin. So is the spokesperson of the Janata Dal-Secular, Y S V Dutta. Even the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a party of low-caste Dalits (the former "untouchables"), has a Brahmin, Satish Chandra Mishra, as its chief strategist.

What is more, the Brahmin vote is being assiduously courted by the BSP in the electorally crucial state of Uttar Pradesh. The party has given a fifth of the seats it is contesting in Uttar Pradesh to Brahmin candidates. Of the 80 seats up for grabs in Uttar Pradesh, 20 have been given to Brahmins as against 17 for Dalits. In the 2004 general election, the BSP fielded just eight Brahmin candidates.

Traditionally employed as priests, scholars and teachers, Brahmins are at the top of India's caste hierarchy. But constituting roughly 5% of the population - in several states especially in southern India they account for a mere 1-3% of the population - their electoral clout has been limited. This has been further circumscribed by the assertion of the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in the country's politics.

Many will argue that Brahmin influence in the power structure never diminished. Indeed, despite reservations for Dalits and OBCs, India's bureaucracy is significantly Brahmin. Many Brahmins figure among advisors to ministers and top officials in various departments. According to the Backward Classes Commission, Brahmins account for 37% of the bureaucracy.

While their presence in the bureaucracy is significant, Brahmins had become near non-entities in the electoral arena. Although several prime ministers were of Brahmin origin, the number of Brahmins in parliament declined steadily over the decades. The present Lok Sabha (Lower House of parliament), for instance, has only 50 Brahmin MPs - 9.17% of the total strength of the house, down from 19.91% in 1984.

While a head count of Brahmin voters, candidates or MPs would not amount to much, their numbers among the party strategists and spin doctors is significant. And several parties are eyeing the Brahmin vote in what is likely to be a close election and are fashioning their strategies with that in mind.

Take the BSP for instance. Its leader, Mayawati, who is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, was once notorious for spewing venom on Brahmins and other upper castes. Her rallying cry was "Tilak, Tarazu aur Talwar, inko maaro joote chaar" (Thrash the Brahmin, the Bania and the Rajput with shoes). But in recent years she has been aggressively wooing Brahmins. And Mishra, her Brahmin advisor-cum-strategist is at the forefront of this courting of the community.

In the 2007 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the BSP joined hands with the Brahmins. The Dalit-Brahmin alliance propelled the BSP to power.

While this was not the first time that the BSP formed a government or the first time a Dalit woman had become chief minister, the BSP's 2007 victory was historic as it was able to form a government on its own. And that had become possible because of the crucial support it received from Brahmins in the elections.

What prompted Mayawati to reach out to Brahmins? Caste arithmetic. The BSP has the support of the Dalits in Uttar Pradesh - it is sure of 21% of the vote in the state. But this meant only 100 seats or a fourth of the 403-seat assembly. It needed to draw in support from other castes and communities to come to power. With the OBCs unlikely to vote for Dalits - it is the OBCs that are the main oppressors of Dalits today and are in daily contact and conflict with them - Mayawati looked to the Brahmins.

As for the Brahmins, lacking a party to support - the BJP, which has traditionally attracted their votes, is in disarray in Uttar Pradesh - they accepted the BSP's hand.

With the Dalit-Brahmin alliance proving to be rewarding in the 2007 Uttar Pradesh assembly election, Mayawati is now replicating that strategy for the general elections. And it is not just in Uttar Pradesh that she is reaching out to Brahmins. Brahmins figure among her party's candidates in other states such as Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra as well.

The party that is the most agitated by the BSP's wooing of Brahmins is the BJP, which has traditionally drawn the Brahmin vote. But BJP sources say that outside Uttar Pradesh, Brahmins will continue to vote for its candidates. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Hindu organization that provides the BJP with its ideological moorings, is overwhelmingly Brahmin and its cadres are fanning out across the country to win support for the BJP.

While the Brahmin vote is being assiduously courted in Uttar Pradesh, this is not the case in south India where the Brahmins are numerically insignificant and politically marginal. But even here, a Brahmin woman, Jayalalithaa, has dominated one of the leading parties in Tamil Nadu and even became its chief minister.

For centuries, kings derived their legitimacy from the ritual investiture of their Brahmin priests. Brahmins played the role of advisors to kings. While the kings were hardly puppets in the hands of the Brahmins, the latter did wield immense influence and power.

Things changed in Independent India after 1947. The numerically insignificant Brahmin became politically irrelevant. But their influence in the electoral arena is growing again. Their vote in the larger states matters. Today political parties are looking to Brahmins to plot and strategize their victory in the polls.

The Brahmins, it seems, are back in the political game.

False dawn in Asia?

By M H Ahssan

Asian equity markets had their best week in months, yet at least one technical analyst has called it a "dead cat bounce". Bloomberg News reported the skepticism of Martin Marnick of Helmsman Global Trading, who used technical indicators to reach this judgment. The MSCI Asia APEX 50 Index, which had risen 8% in the five days before Friday's trading session (and 12.9% in the previous eight days), has a medium term resistance in a band from 500 to 520.

But Marnick wisely hedges his bets by saying that even if the index exceeds that level, it will still fall again later. The last rally that it sustained above that level was last October, when it hit 588 before declining to its medium-term low of 389. In late mid-morning local time, it is at 467. The question, then, is whether the rebound from 403 on from last November is a short-term corrective rally in a bear market set to resume its fundamental character, or the beginning of a longer multiphase rally still within a broader and longer bear market.

Therefore we really need to look at the individual indices to assess broader trends. When that is done, the picture appears more complicated.

The biggest advance this week was the one by the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite (SSEC), up 6.7% to 2,272 by early mid-afternoon local time Friday, down from an intraday and weekly high of 2,294. The SSEC's progress is remarkable since late October, when it bottomed closed to 1,700. From that bottom, it has followed a classic five-wave advance pattern that could easily bring it up to its medium-term resistance of 2,400, to which level I have pointed a number of times over the past weeks. A good argument can be made that that level, or up to 2,500, represents the top stretch of the current advance; if the current run surmounts it, then the next resistance is around 2,900, but there are no indications why it should advance so high as that.

The Australia All Ordinaries Index's advance this week of 3.6% still suggests its relative weakness. The All Ordinaries hit a low earlier this month just above 3,100 that exceeded on the downside its November 19 low of 3,483 and also the next day's intraday low just above 3,200. This index's chart from 2000-2001 suggests a strong resistance against upside breakout in the high 3,300s.

However, it is not entirely out of the question that the low this month represents the starting point for a multi-month bear market rally, should the international situation be fortuitous. In that case, higher resistances are at 3,728, and 4,287. Still, its current doldrums juxtaposed to the recent run in the SSEC would suggest that the latter is driven only by the government's domestic stimulus, or rather perhaps by expectations of its effects since it has not really had a chance yet to show its effects in the real domestic economy.

When we turn to the two relatively autonomous bellwethers, Tokyo and Seoul, we find that pattern of the former's Nikkei 225 more closely resembles the Australian index while that of the latter's KOSPI more closely resembles the SSEC, which has, however, significantly outperformed it since the end of January. It behooves the observer therefore to look more closely at the Greater China exchanges other than Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index has tracked the Australian index much more closely over the last three months than it has the Shanghai index, while the latter's Taiwan Stock Exchange Composite (TSEC) followed the Australian index up until the end of January, when it diverged upwards with a much better performance, more closely approaching the behavior of the Shanghai index although not doing as well as Shanghai in relative terms.

Among the other three markets usually covered here (India, Singapore, and New Zealand), only Singapore really can shed a little more light on the situation, although the Indian equity markets are never without interest. This is because Singapore sometimes follows the Australasian indices and sometimes the Chinese indices, while Mumbai has a logic of its own. The former's Straits Times Index has been very laggard, even underperforming the Australian All Ordinaries Index over the short-to-medium term, ie, not even showing the latter's relatively recent relative strength. The BSE Sensex 30, for its part, clearly traces the Australian rather than the Shanghai index, even underperforming the latter and indeed tracking the Straits Times index phenomenally closely over the last six weeks.

The main overall problem is that unknowns in the financial system do not promote confidence. While levels of technical indicators on Wall Street suggest that a multi-month bear market rally is under way in New York, those indications could easily be reversed by near-term moves. It would be an exaggeration to say that that trend is well established. Canadian markets have had strong gains on oil and gold, and other commodities including base metals have rallied, perhaps suggesting an intermediate-term low is in place.

As I have pointed out over the last few weeks, however, the possibility remains of one more leg down before a "real" bear market rally takes hold. If that takes place, technical indicators do not yet suggest how much further down the indices may fall: and in a bear market, such predictions are hazardous enterprises in any case.

US allays India's defense fears

By Siddharth Srivastava

Though it's uncertain how US President Barack Obama will impact the Indian outsourcing business, there is one legacy of the erstwhile George W Bush administration that looks set to continue - defense.

Last week, the Obama administration approved a US$2.1 billion sale to India of eight Boeing Co P-8I maritime patrol aircraft, the biggest US sale to the country to date.

The long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft for the Indian navy will replace eight aging and fuel-guzzling Russian-origin Tupolev-142Ms. (The P-8I was derived from the commercial Boeing 737 airframe.)

The US State Department said in a statement that it cleared the direct commercial sale having factored in "political, military, economic, human-rights and arms control considerations".

It said direct arms-trade "offsets" were expected to include engineering services, manufacturing and integrated logistics-support projects of over $641 million.

Doubts in certain quarters that the Obama administration may review the strategic depth of India-US relations, an important component of which is defense, have been put to rest.

In 2005 India and the US signed the Defense Framework Agreement under the aegis of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Bush that blueprinted progress to be made in the next 10 years.

Ever since it is increasingly becoming clear that the American impact on Indian defense will only grow, posing a tough challenge to traditional partners such as France, Britain, Sweden and - in particular - Israel and Russia.

India's defense modernization plans are estimated to cost over $50 billion in the next few years and will include a mega-fighter jet deal valued at over $11 billion, for which US firms Boeing and Lockheed are bidding alongside several others.

For the P-8I, Boeing beat several rivals, including EADS Airbus, in the race to win the contract.

In January 2008, Washington and New Delhi inked what was at the time India's largest US arms purchase: six Lockheed Martin Corp C-130J Super Hercules military transport planes at a price of $1 billion.

The US's only substantial (and comparatively less in value) arms deal with India in recent years has been the $190 million contract of 2002 to supply 12 AN/TPQ-37 fire finder weapon-locating radars.

Last year, India purchased an amphibious transport vessel, the USS Trenton (re-christened Jalashwa), for nearly $50 million with six-UH-3H helicopters to operate alongside it, costing another $49 million.

The Jalashwa is the first-ever warship acquired by the Indian navy from the US and the second-biggest that India now possesses after the aircraft carrier INS Viraat.

India has also been looking at joint efforts with the US to build a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system, especially in the wake of the November terror attacks in Mumbai and the threat of non-state players and other loose cannons increasingly gaining ground in Pakistan.

Officials say that Indian intelligence agencies perceive a potent terror threat from the skies. A missile shield would also provide cover against inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

The BMD system features radar and anti-missile missiles, or interceptors, which are able to destroy incoming and possibly nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, both of which Pakistan and China possess.

This month, India successfully conducted a third missile intercept test in Orissa, as part of plans to build the BMD system by 2010. The first exo-atmospheric BMD test was conducted in November 2006, followed by an endo-atmospheric test in December 2007.

Three countries with operational BMD systems, the US (Patriot Advanced Capability-3), Russia (S-300V) and Israel (Arrow-2) have been looking to hawk their know-how to India, which is now looking at a more advanced version of its Star Wars ambitions that seeks to shoot down ICBMs in the 5,000 kilometer range.

Apart from defense, another Bush legacy that should endure is the recognition of India as a nuclear exception despite not being a signatory of international agreements such as the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

It has been a slow and arduous path to the removal of the three-and-a-half decade international nuclear trade embargo on India, since the process began in July 2005 when India and the US signed a landmark agreement.

India is now looking to import at least eight new nuclear reactors by 2012. At least five to seven possible sites for big nuclear power plants are being blueprinted to execute nuclear capacity additions by 2020. Meanwhile, American businesses will put an estimated foreign direct investment of over US$100 billion into India's nuclear power sector over the next decade.

All of this underlines the fact that Washington will continue to make decisions that obviously benefit American firms, which means that the outsourcing of US work to low-cost countries such as India is likely to suffer.

Obama's stimulus plans for the US economy make it increasingly difficult for American companies to hire foreigners on temporary skilled worker permits and visas. Washington's protectionist intentions are also making it harder for US companies that send jobs overseas to avail tax benefits, though observers say that cost savings due to outsourcing will keep its appeal alive.