BOOK REVIEW: THE UNENDING GAME BY VIKRAM SOOD OF R&AW

BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: THE UNENDING GAME-A Former R&AW Chief’s Insights Into Espionage

AUTHOR: VIKRAM SOOD

PUBLISHER: PENGUIN VIKING, 2018

PRICE: Rs. 599/-

Spying For Your Country

Intelligence gathering these days is not all careful-not-to-squeak “gum shoe”. The old style “private detective”, overcoat and hat pulled down low over the brow, has acquired a lot of supplementaries.

The two world wars ushered in the breaking of secret-code Ciphers, and monitoring of Ham Radio frequencies. Spying became as much a HQ Expert feature as the Agent in the Field.

 Speed is of the essence now to thwart threats, increasingly from Islamic Terrorism with a nuclear overhang.

The tools at hand have multiplied. There is HUMINT- Human Intelligence; received from both trans-border and undercover resources, and still, in 2018, probably the best way for qualified professionals good at finding nuggets amongst “unprocessed intelligence”.

There is also OSINT- that which comes through third countries who have access to target countries. TECHINT, meaning technical intelligence gathered from snooping devices, voice transcripts, recordings, and increasingly the social media.

 There is satellite and photo surveillance/reconnaissance – IMINT.  COMINT- from monitoring communications and conversations. ELINT-  radar and electronic intelligence-intercepts, decrypted cipher messages, topographical information.

Is there just too much information being generated to afford timely analysis? The author of this book, Vikram Sood, former R&AW Chief who retired in 2003 after 31 years in intelligence, thinks it is best suited to developing and executing medium to long term strategies. This book, written in a rich anecdotal style, certainly affords an insight, particularly on the operability of the process in a democracy.

Intelligence plays a more inward-looking and repressive role in totalitarian regimes and dictatorships. The history of organizations such as the KGB in the erstwhile USSR, the STASI in the former East Germany, SAVAK in pre-revolutionary Iran, Egypt’s Mukhabarat, all point to “the midnight knock”  purpose of intelligence gathering. “Enemies of the State”, a code phrase for dissidence, had such unfortunates jailed, tortured and eliminated.

In terms of international espionage, the most extensive and well-funded is certainly the CIA. Other admired and dreaded Intelligence organizations such as Israel’s Mossad and Pakistan’s ISI are partially CIA trained. Of course, the fanatical dedication to ideology and country, observed in the Mossad and ISI, make them very much harder to infiltrate.

In India, the true mother of external intelligence was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her legendary R&AW Chief RN Kao. Subsequent administrations took a less supportive view, making for neglect, stagnation and stunting. Prime Minister Morarji Desai actively cut R&AW down-to-size. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi revived its fortunes somewhat; even as Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao more or less ignored it.

Prime Minister Modi has a healthy respect for intelligence and has demonstrated it with the prominence given to the National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, a former spy himself. Prime Minister Modi has gone out of his way to arrange for international intelligence sharing particularly to prevent Islamic terrorism and economic offences and absconders. Intelligence, it appears, is almost invariably run from the top echelons of the political pile.

Vikram Sood’s book takes the reader on a tour of the world’s intelligence services and their modus operandi, using an elegant prose to do it.

For example, Sood describes the American collaboration with the Pakistanis in his chapter on the ‘Asian Playing Fields’: “Apart from the money generated by the Americans and the Saudis, opium cultivation in Afghanistan and the processing of opium into heroin in Pakistan was encouraged to finance the war…. By 1990 the region accounted for 70 per cent of the total global production….The CIA would deliver weapons at Karachi and the ISI would carry them inland in their transport company, the National Logistics Cell. The vehicles on their return to Karachi from the NWFP would carry processed heroin for global shipment.” Other stringent American laws crack down on drugs, but so what?

The Soviets were no slouches in the espionage game either. In the days of the Cold War, they put money and effort into India to try and expose “the CIA hand”.

The much talked about second volume of The Mitrokhin Papers has nearly 17,000 stories planted in the Indian media between 1972 and 1975.

Citizen and Minister Morarji Desai, was said to be a very productive and paid CIA informer, says Seymour Hersh in one of his books!

But of course, as India has changed and grown into an emerging economic power, and the USSR has collapsed into history, the chess pieces have had to be rearranged.

The Chinese too have become increasingly important players in the world intelligence community. According to Sood: “They freely use diplomatic cover in missions abroad, deploy their defence attaches and use journalists.” They also infiltrate academia, defence manufacturers and even the CIA itself, using their ethnic Chinese employees whose sympathies can be aroused. Chinese Intelligence sponsors a number of Think Tanks in China via its Ministry of State Security (MSS), most useful in reciprocal interchanges with other Think Tanks and in the ever popular “Track II Diplomacy”. Since everything is state owned however,all roads in China do lead to Beijing.

And today, the Chinese classic Art of War by Sun Tzu which advocates defeating the enemy without firing a shot, is an international and universal aspiration, in a world bristling with nuclear weapons that guarantee Armageddon if used.

But, with international cooperation, specifically with ideas transmitted by a French Intelligence Chief to Ronald Reagan, then in his first term as US President, the Soviet Union was eventually brought down.

Comte Alexandre de Marenches suggested that Reagan should frequently refer to the USSR as  an ‘Evil Empire’ in order to encourage its fissiparous tendencies. He  further suggested that the US frame the Soviet Union, by purchasing Soviet  armaments in the black market and shipping them to battles against Soviet allies so that they became confused. Lastly Marenches suggested that the US should encourage the Islamists and promote the Koran to make the Turkmen, the Uzbeks, the Tajiks, the Kazakhs and the Kyrghyz- all restive.

Vikram Sood narrates tale after tale of string-pulling and shadow-boxing  around the rich and inflential secret societies of the world, with profound effects on the future course of events.

A background in espionage has produced many heads of government including current Russian President Putin. However, it takes great nerve and patience, and is certainly not a career choice for the faint-hearted.

(1,038 words)

For: THE SUNDAY PIONEER AGENDA BOOKS

August 14, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee

Assertions Towards A New India From The Ramparts Of Red Fort

Assertions Towards A New India From The Ramparts Of Red Fort

 There is something about Independence Day that brings the focus back squarely on the Armed Forces. Not just at Red Fort in Delhi, but in State after State of our Union, the visuals on TV show the flag, the politician, framed and bracketed always by senior members of the three wings of the Army, Navy and Air Force.

It is they, above all, who have kept this country united and independent these 72 years, often despite the short-sighted antics of politicians.

The Prime Minister’s own speech this year started with a salute to our martyrs, followed by fulsome praise and gratitude to the Armed Forces for keeping our country secure.

While, in the course of his speech, which laid out many of his Government’s achievements over the last 50 months, he took credit for implementing the long pending OROP, let us hope he has taken note of the unprecedented Court Case filed by 350 soldiers.

They have moved the Supreme Court against having cases filed by civilians against Armed Forces personnel doing their duty in good faith and coming under the auspices of the CBI.

The Armed Forces have always been allowed, till very lately, to do their own disciplining and policing, conduct   their own enquiries, hand out judgements and punishments; all outside the purview of Civilian Courts.

This in all save exceptional cases, where the Armed Forces themselves have deemed it necessary to hand over a case to the civilian Judiciary.

 This move therefore to involve the CBI across the board is seen by the Armed Forces and many other observers as a betrayal.

On the other hand, given the demand to bring the Armed Forces to heel under the politicians, not just by criticizing AFSPA where it is applied, it may be a good thing for the Supreme Court to examine the case on merits.

The Supreme Court will hopefully come down on the side of the autonomy of the Armed Forces. For then, the likes of former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti of J&K, and others looking out for the rights of Maoists for example, cannot file cases against the Armed Forces in civilian courts.

Mufti may be motivated to pander to her perceived political constituency of separatists and separatist sympathizers, rather than the principles of equity and impartial justice.

But the darker implication being aired is that the Armed Forces would tend to shield their own, despite blatant wrong-doing or overstepping of orders.

The government on its part, may be seeking constitutional support from the Judiciary to let the Armed Forces do its duty unhindered. This, despite the political clamour from Leftist elements in the Opposition.

In any case, given that the political classes have instituted near universal immunity from prosecution for themselves, particularly as parliamentarians, they should certainly absorb the sentiment.

To add civilian law to the supremacy of the civilian government with regard to the Armed Forces, is a way to both adversely affect morale, and attack the effectiveness of the Armed Forces.

On India’s 72^nd Independence Day, Prime Minister Modi made his overall pitch for another term in office with a confidence that seemed to indicate that there was little chance that he would not be making his 6^th address from Red Fort on 15^th August 2019.

Not only did he make extensive comparisons from the state of play in 2013 under the UPA, but seemed to blithely gloss over the unkept promises of his administration, from a platform that positioned him above the Party he represented.

He seemed to say, and it is difficult to refute this, that what I have accomplished in just four years is in any case unprecedented. And I have a lofty vision for India that I will see through in the years to come.

A very similar stature accrued to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during her long innings, typified perhaps by the infamous and toadying Emergency era slogan “Indira is India, and India is Indira”.

However, Modi’s perceived claim to tower above the BJP/NDA government, has indeed manifested after just some 50 odd months in office.

One reason is certainly because he has repositioned the sociological “Idea of India”, code for the Nehruvian world-view of Secularism that favored the minorities at the expense of the majority; into a “New India” in his own write.

In this view, the key notion is “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas”, code for doing away with the raw deal for the Hindu majority.

This has certainly struck a cord with the broad population of the country, and accounts, along with Modi’s transparent honesty, for his unwavering popularity and ratings in the high seventies.

This is why Modi will win another term in office in 2019, aided of course by huge resources, the Party apparatus under confidant Amit Shah, and the RSS machinery under Mohan Bhagwat. It is also because the public wants Modi to make this profound course correction stick nationally.

This is irrespective of the fates in the coming Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. These Assemblies may well go to a floundering Congress, partly because the public has grown weary of the Chief Ministers, and the relentless wages of anti-incumbency.

But these losses, if they come, will not put a dent in the way the voters in these States, and elsewhere, vote in the general election to favour of Narendra Modi.

If he enjoys a stature larger than his Party, it is because he has demonstrated a vision and persona that has cast him as a man of destiny come to take India to its rightful place in the comity of nations.

Modi harped on the dramatically changed international perception of India during his tenure, the promise of tremendous and transformational economic upliftment, and even planting the Indian flag  in manned space flight by 2022.

The big picture, like  the eternally charismatic JFK, seems to belong to this gifted politician, underpinned with a very strong nationalist streak. The thrilling possibility of climbing higher from 6^th largest economy to the third in the coming decade or so is decidedly uplifting for all.

Mock as the Opposition might, Modi asserted that farm incomes are indeed being doubled universally via MSP mechanisms. He is working on a massive  health insurance programme ,dubbed Modicare by the media. Universal electricity, gas, rural infrastructure, Swacch Bharat toilets by the millions, universal housing, universal connectivity via the Internet are proceeding apace.

There is a squeeze, of course to finance some of this. Direct tax payers have doubled, indirect tax evasion has been struck over the head via GST, black money is under pressure with the Benami Act with teeth.

Economic offenders are cornered with the Bankcruptcy and Insolvency Acts. Economic absconders are being collared.

 Modi’s greatest advantage is the singular lack of similar or even an alternate vision on the part of the Opposition, reduced to a default position of criticism of the Prime Minister and his “lies”, rather than anything constructive of their own.

They are therefore in no position to give content to the renewed Independence Day patriotic pledge and cry of Jai Hind!

( 1,179 words)

For: My Nation

August 15^th, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee

Is Big Brother Just Watching Or Is That A Thief?

Is Big Brother Just Watching Or Is That a Thief?

Is it Voyeurism that is at the back of invasion of privacy, or is someone out to get the dirt on you? Or both?

Did young Hardik Patel, , have a “so what” assignation in a hotel room with a young woman that was recorded on camera and sent out in the public domain?

Was that him again boozing it up with a motley crew of “friends” in yet another hotel  room, or was it the same one? And now, he’s been convicted for inciting a mob to riot in 2015, and sent down for two years-  though he is out on bail.

Does the Big Brother, aka the Government, really have to steal data to get after someone, or is it out there for anyone to use, from a plethora of sources easily searched on the ubiquitous Internet?

The data protection law in the making, based on the Sri Krishna Report, is dizzying in scope and complexity, and affords many exceptions. Will it be passed at all and by whom, because it involves amending several other existing laws and demands linkages with the RTI Act too? While it essentially wants is to emulate a similar European law on Privacy. However, our legal system is all but broken and squashed under its existing load. Don’t we need to fix the judiciary first?

Besides, do we have anywhere to hide anymore if we use cellphones, the Internet, Social Media, cars and gadgets that are linked to the Internet?

If we have bank accounts, buy mutual funds or direct shares through a depository, conduct purchases online, pay Income Tax online, (as is more or less mandatory), use credit/debit cards, and even purchase/register property, we are being photographed, finger-printed, our eyes are being scanned for biometrics, copious numbers of signatures are being taken.

Ditto for application of even tourist visas to Europe, the UK and most of the developed world, inclusive of proof of financial ability to support oneself when abroad.

Credit ratings, however healthy, mean that our financial behavior is being tracked in detail. Asking for a car or home loan, as well as a business loan, means that stacks of documents and irrefutable identity and address proofs are needed.

Our medical information is also there on the cloud, and is sometimes shared for operations conducted elsewhere. At a minimum, even a blood test is out there on the net!

In fact, what is not publicly known about us, probably has no connection whatsoever with the digital world.

So why blame Aadhar, which has saved the Government crores in fraudulent claims of subsidy and the like, when we have had to provide data by the shovelful for at least twenty years of interlinkage? And this is an ever-growing digital era.

Aadhar is only the latter day device, the most successful so far, towards a unique identity system that most developed countries have long had.

The new data protection and privacy law on the anvil, rightly concentrates  on penal provisions against surreptitious and willful misuse of personal data. It concentrates on the potential to do harm. And it is a good thing that the corporate fines being listed run into crores. Alongside, there are, reassuringly, mandatory jail sentences for individuals involved too.

The Indian Supreme Court, recently agreed that Privacy is indeed a Fundamental Right, as guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. However, this is waiting to be fleshed out.

The global furore over Cambridge Analytica using voter data obtained from  Facebook and elsewhere, in the UK, America, and India, to profile  people is criminal –mainly because it was obtained without consent, in a variation of the old date rape drug usage.

However, most of the data that is out there was asked for and provided by the user of various services. So even if it is excessive or intrusive, the giver entered into the transaction more or less voluntarily.

Some of it, for example that given to Swiss Banks, was heretofore secret, but is no longer so, as part of a modernization and politically correct globalization exercise. The elaborate camouflage of using tax havens around the world too is being breached of late, as the Panama Papers and other leaks are testament to.

In quite another way, legendary pop singer Sir Cliff Richard recently won his privacy suit against the BBC and was awarded 221,000 Pounds Sterling in damages, representing the largest Privacy Law settlement so far in British history.

He was investigated by the British Police after a complaint of molestation from a man who was a young boy some two decades earlier.BBC jumped the gun by televising the raid on one of Sir Cliff’s residences in the London area, even before the singer was called in for questioning.

Part of the outrage against the Wikileaks revelations in government circles around the world, is because Julian Assange and his cohorts had crossed a number of  National Security redlines in the course of their revelations. It is unclear how long Ecuador can continue to house and shield him at their Embassy in London. There are reports that Assange, variously reported to be ill, may be turfed out soon.

If so, he is guaranteed a long spell in jail if any of the affected governments get a hold of him. Of course, the general public is delighted with the revelations, even if they do tend to confirm the public’s worst fears about the skullduggery and blatant illegality of much that is practiced in governance.

So where does all this leave the Snow White theoretical concept of Privacy and Data Protection? After all, people have been blackmailed from time immemorial with information on them they don’t want coming out?

It may be amusing to read about Trump paying off a series of leggy blondes on his path to the Presidency of the United States, but the phenomenon, as such, is not going to go away any time soon.

And ill-intent, whether it is to defraud someone by cloning his identity, or malign him with false accusations, or even bully him for political reasons, the hacker cum instigator has a lot of data in the public domain to play with.

One certainly needs legal cover to fight the menace if the need arises. But there is little sense in protesting the collection of data itself.

Safeguards, and sophistications like the OTP go a long way to prevent misuse, but not so much for a  skilled/determined stalker/hacker/locksmith.

On the plus side, the cellphone data of calls made and movement of people with the electronic collar of a cellphone, certainly aids police work. So does GPS tracking and CCTV coverage.

Much medical data shared between doctors can make the difference between life and death.

But sometimes one wonders if the Raj British and the Congress knew about  Jinnah’s terminal tuberculosis that killed him within a year of the formation of Pakistan, would the history of the subcontinent gone a different way?

Or is that asking for too much?

For: My Nation

(1,160 words)

July 30, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee

Modi Will Win A Second Term In 2019

Modi Will Win A Second Term in 2019

It is the vainglory of ambition that provokes an ailing Sonia Gandhi to stubbornly project her electorally incompetent son as the next Prime Minister. He will, she asserts, and her servile Party echoes it, head an elusive and as yet non-existent Mahagatbandhan.

As if this is a contagion contained in a northern silo, Mamata Banerjee, a provincial satrap in the East, is attempting to make Kolkata the epicenter of Opposition unity.

There are more aspirants in the East besides Banerjee, in Odisha, and Bihar, for example, though they haven’t declared their intentions so far.

In addition, there are kings and queens without crowns, making up at least two contenders in Uttar Pradesh. One or is it two more come from Maharashtra in the West, and a couple from the South too.  

There are also, at last count, two elders eyeing the main chance if the numbers throw up the opportunity after the votes are counted.

The would-be Gatbandhan or Mahagatbandhan – will there be one, two, or none, may not have much of a policy position, besides getting rid of Modi, but is certainly bristling with prime ministerial contenders. 

There may well be two formations, if eventually there are any, because some like Chandrashekhar’s TRS want to  maintain an “equidistance” from both Congress and the BJP.

And in order to assert their claim to the top job, each aspirant is determined to contest as many seats as possible, outside of their native power bases. This naturally sets up inherent stress and strain over the seat-sharing, and makes it very difficult for the loose partnerships in the making, to produce results in the electioneering. The much cited bye-election successes of unity, may not work across the board.

The BJP is watching all this carefully but is also getting on with their business at hand. This includes as much governance as possible in the remaining time, and also the sensitive matter of seeking and probing the political space for new allies. It is however being careful to not ruffle any fresh feathers. Modi is clearly not interested in triggering any sympathy wave for those in the Opposition today.

Will the forthcoming assembly elections in three important States queer the pitch, and breathe fresh life into Opposition efforts at unity? This particularly if the BJP loses any, though it may well churn its state leadership to stave off anti-incumbency blues.

Can we give credence to the reports that suggest that the general elections may be brought forward to the winter of 2018, thereby possibly clubbing, some, if not all the similarly scheduled assembly elections alongside? The EC has indicated, several times, that it may be in favour of holding simultaneous elections.

This would tend to merge the regional and national narrative, and forge a more unified perspective, while losing nothing of the local focus in the bargain. However, some would argue that it will be difficult for regional parties to survive under this dispensation.

Having  said this, today there is only one truly national political party extant,  because the Congress neither rules significantly in the States, nor has a large presence at the Centre.

Others are indeed one state regional parties, virtually ignored outside their home states. Though it is often argued that a vibrant Opposition is essential, judging from the present composition of parliament, this does not have to necessarily go hand-in-hand with significant national presence. For decades, Congress ran a virtual one-party rule, because the Opposition, was both weak, and fragmented.

When INC stopped obtaining majorities, it leaned on the Left to both promote a mutually accepted brand of socialism, and to give itself much needed stability in government.  And then came the coalition era, arrested by the Modi win after 30 years.

Today’s NDA policies have retained the emphasis on uplifting the poor, as in the socialist past, and indeed millions have been lifted out of abject poverty. In fact, with healthy GDP rates obtaining from the mid-eighties onwards, the process has been accelerated, to the extent that despite a population of over 1.3 billion, India no longer houses the maximum number of the very poor.

In a policy departure from the Congress ruled past however, the nature of help given to the poor has changed, from massive, if leaky subsidies and handouts, to a more sustainable form of development. This includes facilities and infrastructure in areas that have been neglected for long years, and yes, better targeted subsidies.

The BJP is working hard, with some good results so far, on an updated version of self reliance which is encapsulated in its Make in India initiatives.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi never tires of listing the government’s many achievements in almost every speech he makes, the important takeaway is that the NDA has a policy line, and is doggedly implementing it.

The Opposition has little beyond a desire to remove Modi in particular, and the BJP/NDA/RSS combine in general. This is a tremendous weakness. It makes it very difficult for the voter to entrust the government to it. Why the Opposition does not realize it needs a policy vision is a mystery. It considers its job is done by issuing a dozen or more manifesto documents before the elections, and a common-minimum programme after, in the event it  is in a position to form the government.

The logic that is being applied is that of the compelling arithmetic of their strength in combination. But, surely it realizes that election voter behavior is an emotional response from the people to the options before them.

Modi is much better placed than the disparate or combined Opposition to sway the voter in his favour. This despite the fact that the Opposition has a large number of  well-known leaders. They are almost all seen to be power-hungry and corrupt.  

Modi is much ahead because of his personal popularity and integrity, despite his government’s failure so far to deliver on many of his promises. The pulse of the people seems to suggest that they are willing to give Modi more time so that he can implement more of his vision for the country.

Today, in a neat reversal of fortune, it is the so-called secular Opposition which is seen to be divisive and violent, anti-national and seditious, deeply frustrated to be out of power.

It is trying very hard to create trouble , exaggerate and highlight negatives, and portray the government as inimical to the “Idea of India”. But at the centre of its psyche, it is terrified of being relegated into insignificance, or land up in jail, should Modi win again.

Though what we have is a thriving democracy despite its pitfalls - in an era of relentless 24x7 media coverage, combined with a very savvy social media, no artificial construct can withstand immediate scrutiny.

More than a billion cellphones, many of them smartphones, keep people informed on the move, and the Indian voter, traditionally well-informed even in the old radio only days, is able to make up his own mind.

He is also less amenable to being herded and intimidated, though perhaps easier to bribe. Elections today are enormously expensive affairs for more reasons than one.  

Apart from domestic policy, in which “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas” has been the Modi leitmotif, despite propaganda to the contrary, Modi’s foreign policy success is something the nation is justifiably proud of.

After the somnambulism of the past UPA decade, India is very much on the map once again at the forefront of nations.

The UPA left the economy in a looted shambles in 2014, at its lowest growth point in a decade, and the NDA has nursed it back to a measure of health now.

However, the massive NPA’s in PSU banks are an advertisement for what could  happen once again, if a rapacious Mahagatbandhan get their hands on the loaves and fishes of office!

Let us assume there are two kinds of politicians- those who seek power in order to make money, and those who genuinely want to serve the people. While the BJP/NDA cannot be viewed in terms of absolute probity, it is clear where the bulk of the crooked reside.

The Opposition may be good at fooling itself about its prospects, but cannot do very much to fool the public. Modi will win again in 2019.

For: The Sunday Guardian

(1,387 words)

July 24^th, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee

BOOK REVIEW: APEX HIDES THE HURT BY COLSON WHITEHEAD

BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: APEX HIDES THE HURT

AUTHOR: COLSON WHITEHEAD

PUBLISHER: FLEET/HATCHETTE INDIA, PAPERBACK, 2018

PRICE: Rs. 599/-

What’s In A Name?

The prestigious New York Review of Books calls this book by Colson Whitehead written in 2006, published in hardback first in 2007 by Anchor Books, “A brilliant , witty and subtle novel”. And in this instance, it fits the bill exactly.

It is a story of a young man who creates brand names for products and even places looking for a makeover. The protagonist’ s fancy  work name is, a little improbably: A Nomenclature Consultant.

However, the name of anything or anyone, the reader will realize, goes a tremendous length of the way to the future success or failure of that which it adorns. It is not an easy thing to come up with. It is a gift if one can do so with some flair, and encapsulates insight, catchiness, recall, aspiration, promise, reassurance, freshness and many other intangible things.

Colson Whitehead, the author, who lives in New York City, has written seven previous books, the last of which, called The Underground Railroad, won the Pulitzer Prize and the American National Book Award in 2016.

The striking and highly visual turn-of-phrase Whitehead employs with such apparent ease is a constant delight in this slim volume.

For example, he describes an “establishment” by writing: “that dressed itself in rustic sincerity,” but, “where expense crouched behind the subterfuge of calligraphic price tags”.  

And again, elsewhere: “the tallest building on the square, the looming accusation”. There isn’t a page in this 212 page paperback that does not reward the reader with this kind of style and mastery of the use of language.

You don’t read a book like this for plot, though there is a slim plot in it. There is an unsentimental poignancy:“The  things you name go on without you” says the protagonist, who does not care to reveal his own name but goes on at length about the necrosis he developed in a toe. It had to be amputated but it all began with a neglected stubbed toe. The protagonist limps, and his toe hurts all the time. This limp and missing toe is a metaphor for his personal struggle as a solitary, if brilliant misfit, that has difficulty walking.

The social commentary in the novel is sometimes banal, but also subtly fascinating and humorous. It constantly paints a picture. There you see the quirks of small town Middle America, its somewhat stifling rigidities, its inelastic Community, the individuals bracketed by that context.

This is central to the novel because that’s where Whitehead sets it, in the town of Winthrop. A town that is looking for renewal, a new image, a surge of visitors and business, only, maybe. Not everyone in the Community is not on board for the new name.

There is a frowning Black barman who makes a powerful if indeterminate Winthrop Cocktail, at the oldest building in the town, its hotel. 

The protagonist calls him Muttonchops. He says: “I’ve worked here ever since I was a boy. Used to have a shoeshine over in the men’s and that’s where I got my start. Liker my father and his father. And then they moved out here, behind the bar. They were bartenders behind this very bar and now I’m here too. My family goes back to the first settlers. This was a colored town once. Founded by free black men and women, did you know that?”

The title of the book then- Apex.  The protagonist describes it: “the summit, human achievement, the best of civilisation, and of course, something you could tumble off of, fall fast”. But “Apex was a name you could rely on”. And like Band-Aid, it hides the hurt- that is the hurt of its history, or is it histories? And it is how he covers his hurt toe also.

The protagonist had a stipulation before he took on the job of finding a new name for Winthrop that skirted around New Prospera, Freedom, and even Struggle, especially Struggle, that seemed to encapsulate the work and lives of its original free black settlers.

Then, much later, came the White Winthrops, with its various sections of the family enterprises and their opinionated executives and advisors.

The protagonist’s original stipulation, before he goes down on the bus from New York City, said that the town had to keep the name he came up with unilaterally, after all his research and investigations were done with - for a year. This, even if some in the decision-making positions did not like it.

The protagonist didn’t expect to get the job after this demand, but the clients agreed to it quite readily.

The protagonist describes the name America, after Amerigo Vespucci, to give the reader an insight into how he thinks and comes to a decision: “ He couldn’t argue with America. It was one of those balloon names. It kept stretching as it filled up, getting bigger and bigger and thinner and thinner.What kind of gas it was, stretching the thing to its limits, who could say. Whatever we dreamed. And of course one day it would pop. But for now, it served its purpose. For now it was holding together”.

Eventually, he leaves an envelope “at the front desk” addressed to the City Council. Whitehead does not make clear what is in it. Did he call the town Apex or did he call it Struggle- “the anti-apex”, which he allowed “got to the point with more finesse and wit”.

“They will say,” said the protagonist to himself: “I was born in Struggle. I live in Struggle and come from Struggle. I work in Struggle. We crossed the border into Struggle. Before I came to Struggle. We found ourselves in Struggle. I will never leave Struggle. I will die in Struggle.”

He leaves after depositing the envelope, heading for the bus stand with his luggage , showing the middle finger to Muttonchops in his bar as he passes.

Apex- probably not. Struggle it is.  Memorable, isn’t it?

For: The Sunday Pioneer, AGENDA, BOOKS

(987 words)

July 21^st, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee

Politics As Make-Believe

Politics As Make-Believe

Is Politics about reality or perception?  If both, then is it led by perception as reality catches up after a lag, or is perception the entire game afoot?

Is yesterday’s news as stale as yesterday’s reality – in our short-span-of-attention times? This is a TV generation via satellite, brought up on drama, the telling visual, and rank opinionating just as much as reportage. Print and the digital word tries to make deeper sense of things, but how many bother to read reasoned arguments?

And if it is perception that is paramount, is its sole purpose to retain and enhance power? Or even create an opportunity where none existed? Contradictions, misinformation, unkept promises, U-turns, unconstitutional behavior, soft sedition, anti-nationalism under the guise of freedom of expression, everything, and anything, goes.

US President Trump has been taking his executive use of power to unprecedented levels as the international media watches in consternation. He has taken studied and demanding postures at NATO asking its constituents to pay their fair shares of the associated expenses. A demand that has never really been made, ever since Captain America helped a shattered Europe and Japan back on to its feet after the end of the WWII.

In Britain, its so-called ‘oldest ally’, Trump has shown his disdain for its messy and inept handling of its Brexit ambition. He returned its bad manners on petulant display during his recent visit, by hardly bothering with the protocol associated with its 92 year old queen.

The UN too was earlier put on notice about ponying up the money for its various expenses, in a manner quite similar to the broadside at NATO.

The aggressive stance has marched on with continued and enhanced trade sanctions on China, to right by this method a huge and stubborn trade deficit. Nothing done by previous administrations has persuaded or fazed the one-sided trade practices of the Chinese. Trump has also shown the flag to North Korea with some preliminary results towards its defanging. And ditto in the South China Sea, that is, after all, an international waterway, and not China’s exclusive stretch of sea seen as private pond.

Similar tariffs have been threatened and even started in for Europe, now contemplating big taxes on US imports of BMW and Mercedes cars.

Canada, that got by on neighborliness thus far, has also been asked to mend its advantage-taking and  freeloading ways.

Mexico of the “wall” is on notice and under pressure from the latter days of the Trump campaign itself. The Wall is still in Trump’s mind as opposed to under construction, but he’s not joking on illegal immigration and trade practices inimical to US interests.

Trump has also refused to worry about the dictacts of the WTO. He has walked the US out of the Paris climate talks too, even as the twitterspace is ablaze with suggestions that he may be insane and /or senile. However, Trump’s personal confidence is immense, and he gives as good as he gets in terms of the abuse.

Is all this disruption then designed to change everything at once?  Or it it merely aimed at getting Trump reelected to a second term? If his voters stay strong, does he have to care about any other force? Sanctions against China, for example, were said to have hurt American farmers who export their produce through value-adding intermediaries to China. But, they seem content to stick with Trump despite Chinese predictions to the contrary.

The red-necked Middle American Caucasian, the typical Trump voter, likes his style, and credits him with fulfilling his election promises. They think he is a welcome departure from the professional politicians, with or without billions of dollars like Trump, that have been POTUS before him - from either Party.

The Opposition Democrats, much of the left-leaning media, are mostly aghast and wondering how to deal  with this very different style of politicking. And indeed, the two houses of Congress have been rendered into helpless spectatating.

Trump makes his unexpected and unpredictable moves at considerable speed, in his highly personalised manner, and they don’t know what to do, particularly because his voters seem to be sticking with him.

Here at home, Narendra Modi plays it a little differently. He has fulfilled only a fraction of his copious election promises. And has no apparent difficulty in making bushels of new ones too. He seems to not care whether Parliament functions as long as the Opposition gets the blame. He has done little for his erstwhile core constituencies and gone after the vastness of the poor as a substitute. But, his popularity ratings are still in the Seventies. The biggest business houses are in his corner with open wallets.

The Opposition, on the contrary, is disunited, despite its pretensions, and unable to make a dent. There is property damage, bloodshed, death and propaganda, but no gains politically for the Opposition worthy enough to put them back in the saddle.

Modi is clearly seen by the masses as its best bet in 2019.  He is perceived to be an honest man in a highly corrupt political space, and the public is determined to trust him. He rides much above his often hapless Party and its fringe groupings, along with his trusted Party President Amit Shah in tandem.Both enjoy the solid backing of the parent RSS and its formidable organisation.

Dissidence within the BJP from the side-lined LK Advani camp cannot touch his popularity. The criticism of the Opposition led by a shrill Rahul Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee, and their out-sourced trouble-makers, is seen to be coming from corrupt and self serving politicians. Besides they are mostly dynasts from “family owned” political parties.

There are more Generals than foot-soldiers amongst them, each with a separate, difficult-to-reconcile agenda. There is no-one credible to take on Narendra Modi. Old war-horses with ill concealed ambitions may say never die themselves, but don’t really stand a chance.

Traditional efforts to divide the polity along religious lines, once attributed to the Advani-Vajpayee led BJP and the RSS by the so-called secular ruling parties, is fraying at the edges. Now even the Communists are climbing onto the Hindutva bandwagon!

Even Muslim unity in terms of vote banks is under potential threat as the BJP works to give power over their own fate to Muslim women. Congress and others are seen to be favoring revanchist Muslim/Christian attitudes, upheld solely by their men and their priests/maulvis.

Real work, apart from infrastructure development that does not talk back, in terms of bringing economic offenders to book for example, is being given a soft touch by the Modi government.

This, perhaps because it is wary of creating any kind of sympathy wave when it is clearly enjoying “advantage Modi” with a fast growing economy to boot. The same may be said about a long list of unrequited hopes- education, health, jobs, security, all mostly given the go by.

 This, as the Opposition, whose track record is no better, tries to coalesce around a cause, any cause, with sufficient traction.

Winning and winnability is everything in electoral politics. And the perception is that Modi will win again in 2019 against an Opposition that is far from united.

(1, 194 words)

For: My Nation

July 19^th, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee

BOOK REVIEW: THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING (A NOVEL) BY BILL CLINTON & JAMES PATTERSON

BOOK REVIEW

TITLE:  THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING - A NOVEL

AUTHORS: BILL CLINTON & JAMES PATTERSON

PUBLISHER: CENTURY-PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE UK, 2018

PRICE:  13.99 POUNDS STERLING IN FLEXIBACK

A THRILLING AND PACY SAGA OF CYBER WARFARE

This is a first novel from the former two-term President of the United States Bill Clinton, in collaboration with James Patterson, who holds the Guinness Book record for the most no.1 New York Times bestsellers. Patterson has sold over 375 million books worldwide.

Why has the former POTUS co-authored this novel? One, because of his obvious drawing power, and second, because he knows first-hand the intricacies of how the US government and White House works. It lends the novel considerable plausibility of course, even if it has been imbued with a preachy- let’s build a better world quality- that more morally ambivalent thrillers might have excluded.

But it is highly relevant to our times, because its subject matter is echoed by an increasing number of alleged cyber-warfare news reports from all over the world.  In reality, bank accounts have been emptied. Aeroplanes have mysteriously crashed. Identities have been altered. Vital defence software has been compromised or stolen. National elections, most recently, the election of President Donald Trump has been allegedly influenced by Russia.

Russia and China are indeed rumored to be the aces at this form of 21^st century warfare via the internet of things(IoT), and the “dark web” even as America   and others scramble to catch up. Without an effective counter to this breach of systems, the helpless vulnerability of the electronic universe is starkly exposed. Of course, each level of threat is superceded by fresh challenges further down the pike, but as a problem it is here to stay, and this novel highlights this fact.

This even as the over simplification of the cyberthreat in this case is often reminiscent of a popular quiz programme, with its young techies and search for a clue dynamics.

Patterson keeps the narrative gripping with consummate skill throughout, and the book is certainly a page-turner.

The main proposition is that a deadly virus, developed by Islamic terrorists, The Sons of Jihad, could bring every internet-based system in the US and everything elsewhere linked with it, to a standstill. That means all financial records and backups, the electrical grid and transmission disabled, ditto the water purification systems, dead cellphones, defence and nuclear weaponised equipment  beyond the reach of its prompts and commands and so on. 

All the software could be deleted, rendering all computer systems, cloud storage and back-up systems lobotomized and turned into vapour and plastic shells.

The thriller in the book is in how can it, code-named “Dark Ages” by the protagonist and his core investigative team, be stopped, or fooled? The principal protagonist is the fictional President Duncan, who sets about personally thwarting the plot, playing hero to the Jihadi villains led by a shadowy Suliman Cindoruk, his name anglicized to a T.

And of course, there is a high profile mole or two in the US government. When they are outed, can they be punished, or will the political fallout be far too great? Are there echoes of this democratic dilemma here in our own country when it comes to bringing high-profile political figures down to custody on criminal charges? There is however, no point ruining the reader’s delight with any more detailed revelations on the plot.

There is cyberterrorism centre-stage, but also old fashioned assassins to shut the mouths of those in the know of the string-pullers behind the scenes. As well as Secret Service operatives and Commando to stymie and remedy their doings. All this, accompanied by the plethora of resources such as surveillance cameras, helicopters, drones and Hellfire missiles, that any militarily mighty US administration can bring into play. There are the German and Israeli heads of government appearances in conference,  top-level stoic Russian denials of skullduggery.

The Russians are not only the usual suspects with their Iron Curtain era dreams of bringing down the United States, but in the end, the novel stars the amazing Poirot-like detective skills of the storybook President himself. Also, the amount of intelligence the fictional President can ingest on the move is formidable. Not only is he in Bruce Willis style Die Hard action continuously, but his brain is ticking over making sense of the puzzle and providing accurate and effective leadership. 

This with an armed forces background and heroic combat action in early life. But now, a debilitating disease, kept under wraps from the public, has ruined the President’s platelet count. It renders him fuzzy and dizzy even as he solves problems through his mental fog like an Einstein. He is however running on fistfuls of steroids, and that may be the secret of his being able to stay on the job.

However, all the detective work President Duncan of the book puts in, is not all that convincing. Presidents of the United States have to be finely-tuned political animals to reach up to the pinnacle, yes. There is little room for much else, even from their previous lives before politics took a hold. For them to be Hercule Poirot  and Miss Marple simultaneously is decidedly far-fetched.  Still, winning the cyberwar, not single-handedly, but certainly as the captain in the captain’s chair, shoots the fictional President’s popularity ratings from 30% up into the eighties.  

Is this then, a true top-drawer thriller?  Who financed the Jihadis? Was it a disgruntled faction of the tentacular Saudi royal family? What did it hope to achieve- again a rather naïve notion that “destroying” America was destroying Israel in the West Asian theatre too, as if it was a two-for-one McDonald’s combo. And who hired the assassins? Would it be the diabolical Russians after all?

There is a widowed father as President and an only daughter for the emotional quotient, some bad judgements and betrayal of trust added v in to keep things real and prevent the fictional President from tipping into paragon of virtue territory.

Last word- the cyberterrorism theme is timely in this readable book, so why quibble about the implausibilities of the plot?

For The Sunday Pioneer  AGENDA BOOKS

(983 words)

July 8, 2018

Gautam Mukherjee