Blood-dimmed lessons of Mumbai outrage
The seven coordinated bomb blasts that ripped through the suburban train service of Mumbai’s Western Railway network which transports 2.5 million passengers per day killing 198 and injuring over 700 commuters on July 7, has upturned the slimy underbelly of India’s commercial capital. It stands to reason that in a densely populated multicultural city of 14 million, and a much-envied financial powerhouse which suffered a massive extra-territorially inspired bomb outrage in 1992-93 (and several relatively minor bombings since), continuous intelligence gathering and preventive policing should be a government priority of utmost importance. Yet one of the first bits of information which emerged in the aftermath of the 7/11 bombings is that the Union government’s Intelligence Bureau (which has a huge secret budget and manpower to safeguard internal security) has been in deep repose in Mumbai, and indeed has not been on speaking terms with the Mumbai police — itself an inert organisation given to preying on citizens — for the past six months.
Consequently weeks after the blasts, the Maharashtra state government and Mumbai police are completely in the dark about the identities of the perpetrators, with the IB ascribing it to the usual suspects — the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Students Islamic Movement of India and Pakistan. Yet as an enterprising Times of India reporter has proved (TOI July 16), any disgruntled citizen can buy sticks of dynamite from desperately poor quarry workers in suburban Mumbai and construct lethal homemade bombs within a matter of hours. Such is the quality of the police and security apparatus of India’s wealthiest city.
Against the backdrop of continuous government failure to discharge basic civic governance norms, quite clearly the onus is upon citizen groups and private sector initiatives to take charge of the city. Almost a decade ago the Constitution of India was amended (74th Amendment) to devolve civic governance powers to municipalities and urban ward committees. Unfortunately ward committees have been sabotaged by politicians and bureaucrats intent upon controlling civic contracts. This non-starter proposal to empower local committees constituted of elected property owners in each ward — on the lines of London’s boroughs — to assume charge of maintaining civic services needs to be revived and urgently implemented. A major share of the property taxes contributed by each ward to the municipal corporation should be returned to ward committees to maintain civic services, including policing. This is a workable solution to urban India’s multiplying problems.
However it is hardly the only solution. The maintenance of law and order is a much larger issue of governance, beyond the capabilities of local governments. It requires state government investment and accountability. Quite clearly as the belated official response to every calamity — bomb blasts, rain damage and health epidemics — proves, government and civic officials have to be very carefully recruited. Educated citizens have to exert pressure for greater accountability from them. Or else the blood-dimmed tide of anarchy will overwhelm urban India.
Self-inflicted damage of Indian capitalism
The mind-boggling endowment of $37 billion (Rs.170,200 crore) committed by the world’s most successful long-term investor Warren Buffet to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which already has a massive corpus of $29 billion, has transformed the latter into the largest private charitable trust in global history. This do-good merger is a timely reminder to the world of the virtue of private philanthropy. In developing countries of the third world in particular, where communism (and its variants) — despite its pathetic failure in the erstwhile Soviet Union and its East European satrapies — has struck deep and durable roots, the monumental commitment — backed by hard cash — of the Gates Foundation to fight the global HIV/ AIDS epidemic, tuberculosis and kala azar among other diseases, is an apposite reminder of the potential of private initiatives in social welfare. Five decades of sustained and largely unchallenged propaganda of communist and Left ideologues has brainwashed the collective mindset of people in developing nations to believe that only government can deliver services such as education and healthcare. Despite the continuous failure of governments to do so, hope continues to spring eternal in millions of breasts that self-serving third world politicians and government servants will be persuaded by moral persuasion and lamentations to discharge their duty of care towards the neglected poor.
But if there is general reluctance to accept private participation in health and education and to privatise even chronically loss-making public sector enterprises, the self-inflicted image damage of post-independence India’s business community is a contributory cause. For a start, despite high annual growth rates in business and industry following economic liberalisation which has transformed a large number of hitherto shackled Indian entrepreneurs into high-spending dollar millionaires, there is a conspicuous reluctance to promote foundations in the munificent American tradition.
Quite clearly Indian capitalism needs an image makeover. Unlike the great philanthropists of the pre-independence era who under the influence of the Mahatma donated generously to public causes, India’s new dollar millionaires are less generous and too pre-occupied with effete epicureanism to promote great institutions in the tradition of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Birla Institute of Science, Pilani and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Moreover in the public perception, philanthropy Indian-style is not only practised grudgingly, but also gracelessly. India’s new generation of philanthropists needs to jettison its charity mindset and learn to grasp that intelligent philanthropy must result in the promotion and development of great institutions, generously endowed to disseminate information and knowledge which is the prerequisite of social development. Indeed Indian capitalism needs to be saved from the new genre of graceless capitalists who are giving it a bad reputation.