NY Times

A Pakistani man who confessed in court to being one of the gunmen in the terrorist attacks on Mumbai last year recanted on Friday, saying the Indian police had framed him. A gunman, who was later identified as Mohammed Ajmal Kasab at the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai in November 2008.

It was the latest flip-flop from the suspect, Ajmal Kasab, who made a dramatic and detailed confession in July, explaining his role as one of 10 Pakistanis who attacked two luxury hotels, a busy train station and a Jewish center, killing more than 160 people over three days in November 2008. Photographs and security tape show him and a partner firing at commuters at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, and dozens of witnesses have identified him. Nine of the attackers were killed in battles with the police.

Mr. Kasab, 21, confessed when he was arrested at the time of the attacks, but pleaded not guilty at the start of his trial and said the police had tortured him. His trial, on charges that include murder and waging war on India, began in April.

In his confession in July, however, he appeared to confirm his guilt and said he wanted to be hanged. He described how he and an accomplice, Abu Ismail, had prowled the train station with automatic weapons and hand grenades. They killed more than 50 people, he said.

In court two days later, Mr. Kasab insisted that his admission was not an attempt to avoid the death penalty. “If anybody is worried that I am trying to escape death by hanging, I’m not,” he declared in court. “If that’s the punishment I am given, so be it.”

At the time, the judge accepted his confession into the record but said the trial would go on.

On Friday, he told the court he had arrived in Mumbai 20 days before the attacks started. He said the police picked him up a few days before Nov. 26, the first night of the assault. He said the police later shot him to make it look as if he had been involved in the attack.

Mr. Kasab said it was only after his arrest that he encountered David C. Headley, the American who was charged with helping identify targets in Mumbai for the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Mr. Kasab said several F.B.I. agents were with Mr. Headley when the two men were brought together. Mr. Headley has pleaded not guilty.

Mr. Kasab’s previous lawyer, who was recently dismissed by the judge overseeing the case, has expressed concerns about Mr. Kasab’s mental stability. Mr. Kasab is in solitary confinement in a fortified cell built for him in one of the city’s oldest jails.

It appeared unlikely that Mr. Kasab’s latest statements would have a big impact on the trial. The prosecution finished presenting its case earlier this week.

Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kon

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Ahmed Quraishi

After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the American-British [Am-Brit] media highlighted how Indian police had arrested two Indian Muslims who had links to the Kashmiri group Lashkar Tayyiba. But the Am-Brit media goes silent when the truth comes out and it turns out that Indian military intelligence is involved in creating fake terrorists and blaming them on Pakistan.

NEW DELHI, India—The Indian police authorities and the officials of India’s notorious intelligence agency RAW are known for creating fake terrorists with fake links to Pakistan. Ajmal Kasab & company were not the first in this exercise. RAW and Indian police are practicing this art for years now. In a recent development, a daring Indian lawyer exposed one such drama and proved how the Indian police and RAW officials frame innocent people to prove them to be terrorists from Pakistan.

According to details, criminal lawyer M. S. Khan succeeded in proving the innocence of two Indian men who were alleged to be associates of a Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba divisional commander.

Here is the Indian version of the story, with the usual spicy plot details that the Indians prefer in their film plots:

In September 2006, the Delhi Police received information that Pakistan-based divisional commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba Mohammad Akmal alias Abu Tahir is planning to send his associates to Delhi and other parts of the country.

A team was constituted under late Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma to nab the terrorists, if they managed to enter the national capital. Following a tip-off, the Delhi police mounted a ‘technical surveillance’ and deployed ‘sources’ to track the terrorists. Surveillance reportedly revealed Mohammad Akmal sent one Mustafa along with another person to Delhi to carry out the mission. It further exposed that Mustafa and his associates were operating from their hideout at Mahipalpur.

On December 11, 2006, the police got a tip-off that the two men would come from Dhaula Kuan to Mahipalpur crossing. A Delhi police team was deployed at the spot. At 9.15 pm, the police informer spotted the two accused alighting from a blueline bus (number DL 1PB 0249) plying on route number 729 (Kapashera to Mori Gate).

Fifteen sticks of some yellow explosives, few detonators and Rs 6 lakh in Indian currency were reportedly seized from them. The terrorists were later identified as Gulzar Ahmed Ganai alias Mustafa and Mohammad Ameen Hazzam and were taken to Mumbai from where they allegedly received the explosives. “The charges against them, included planning and attempt to wage war against the country, collection of arms to wage war, possession of explosives, being members of a banned organisation,” MS Khan told an Indian journalist.

This is how he the Indian lawyer tore apart the police and Indian intelligence case in the court:

Prosecution: Secret information established the two accused were Lashkar militants.

Khan: Neither could they establish the nature of the information nor produce any supporting evidence.

Prosecution: The alleged terrorists were arrested on the basis of technical surveillance.

Khan: The cops were never able to establish the nature and scope of their surveillance.

Prosecution: The cops mentioned the ultras had a hideout in Mahipalpur area.

Khan: When asked the location of the hideout, the cops themselves were clueless.

Prosecution: The cops claimed to have arrested the terrorists from a bus around 9.15 pm and produced tickets as evidence.

Khan: When asked the bus conductor told the court that the bus was not even plying at that time and the tickets produced were from the lot used around 11.50 am.

Prosecution: The cops said the militants were there at Dhaula Kuan.

Khan: The police were clueless from where they came to Dhaula Kuan.

Prosecution: It was alleged that the ultras had come to collect hawala money amounting to Rs 6 lakh in cash.

Khan: No evidence was produced to establish who gave them the money and when.

Prosecution: The police said the accused had come to Delhi from outside.

Khan: They could not establish from where they came. Also, no evidence was produced to establish they went to Mumbai to acquire explosives.

Prosecution: The police produced photographs of the crime scene.

Khan: As stated earlier, the photographs were not of Mahipalpur and no cop could be seen in them.

Prosecution: ACP Sanjeev Yadav told the court that one Ganai told the police about the hideout in Mahipalpur on December 14.

Khan: Ganai was taken to Mumbai on December 13 by a Delhi police team. How could he have revealed anything?

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After my four hour long informal interaction with US military chief Admiral Mike Mullen and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke at the residence of US Ambassador on the rainy evening of April 6, 2009, I had in my comments mentioned that now the ISI was the immediate target of the US Establishment. This was no “breaking news” as everyone who keeps an eye on the ongoing war on terror knew well that US was hell-bent on:

1.Getting the Pakistan Army sucked into domestic turmoil in Swat, FATA and beyond Waziristan, and

2.Reining in what the US calls “rogue elements” in the ISI

There are confirmed reports that to achieve its objectives the CIA hired the services of at least a dozen Afghan warlords inside Afghanistan and provided through them arms and finances to militants in FATA and Swat to carry out extensive death and destruction by devastating attacks in the country. It was like a double-edged sword not only to get the Army to launch attacks against Taliban on Pakistani side of the border but also to give a message to the ISI that the CIA can use the Pakistanis – Taliban of the TTP- against their own security forces.

It was in this background that after putting up with so much for so long, the prime intelligence agency of the country ultimately confronted the CIA Director Leon E. Panetta with some highly classified and irrefutable evidence. Panetta was startled when Director-General ISI, General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, a no-nonsense General, placed the facts before him in Islamabad on November 20, 2009.

The “deliberate leaks” after the meeting of the spy chiefs of the two countries spoke of the mind of the ISI and the armed forces of Pakistan. General Pasha had earlier conveyed the facts about the interference of CIA in acts of terrorism in Pakistan to the Government but realizing that either the message was not strongly conveyed to the Americans or it had no desired impact on them, finally put its foot down and expressed serious concerns over the CIA’s crude interference in the country’s internal matters.

The proof about instances of covert US support to some hardened militant outfits and terrorist activities they carried out over the past few weeks and months were presented to Panetta. It was indeed a startling revelation for the top US spy and a bold maneuver of Pakistan Army. General Pasha’s move surprised Panetta as the evidence presented was categorical in proving that the CIA officials provide assistance to perpetrators of some of the most serious and deadly attacks on offices and key persons in Pakistan’s security services. He was told that in view of the negative impact on Pakistan’s efforts in its ‘war on terror’ the CIA must stop such activities. The clarity with which the information was meant to be a loud message to Washington and CIA headquarters at Langley that if they wanted Pakistan’s cooperation in the war on terror; it must give up playing a double game. Pakistan has publicly expressed concerns over the freedom enjoyed by the Indian intelligence agency RAW is operating from Afghanistan. RAW is not only involved in acts of terrorism in the NWFP but also in Balochistan. India cannot undertake such wide-scale activities in this region without the approval and backing of the CIA. The question is: how did India develop such a huge presence in Kabul?

What has raised alarm bells in Islamabad is that Maulvi Fazlullah who escaped from Swat is living openly in Afghanistan under the protection of Afghan intelligence. The TTP leaders including Hakeemullah Mehsud have also being protected and allowed to operate from Afghanistan. All this could not happen without the knowledge of Americans.

There are reports that TTP leaders are provided satellite phones operated by a Gulf based Western company and they have been talking freely to BBC and other media organizations without any fear of being detected and targeted by drones or missiles. Then there are also credible reports that a helicopter that flew from Afghanistan before Oct. 17, when operation Rah-e-Nejat in South Waziristan was launched, evacuated the top leadership of the TTP from Waziristan to Afghanistan. The Americans also vacated some of the crucial posts along the border with South Waziristan in an apparent bid to provide safe passage to the fleeing Pakistani Taliban. The terrorists arrested in Pakistan during the operation told their interrogators about their links with the US and Indian agencies. There is credible information that full logistic and auxiliary support is still being provided to anti-Pakistan Taliban from Nuristan Province and several top officials from Afghan and Indian intelligence networks were seen active in the area.

So, it is CIA’s agenda to get the Pak Army and now the Air Force also spend itself in internal security operations and erode the morale and capabilities of ISI so that Pakistan’s nuclear assets could be targeted in one way or the other. The CIA’s new agenda started to be implemented as soon as the present Government took over. On many occasions since, Washington has been publicly blaming ISI for its links with some of the Taliban leaders including the Haqqani group. During the meeting with Prime Minister Gilani in Washington in August 2008, Director CIA presented him with a charge sheet against Pakistani intelligence agencies for their alleged involvement in Jihadi activities. In order to justify its intended interference in Balochistan, the CIA also raised the bogey of the presence of Taliban Shura in or around Quetta.

PPP’s History of Undermining ISI

The whole scenario became very grim as the Government appeared to have succumbed to American pressure to cut the ISI to size and make it a carpet lion. It was in this backdrop that a notification was issued in mysterious circumstances placing the ISI under the Interior Ministry; the notification was withdrawn the same day when the move backfired. It is no coincidence that during the two stints of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister, a perception developed that the PPP undermined the effectiveness of the ISI. That perception was also based on facts. On the instructions of the BB Government, Lt. Gen. Javed Ashraf Qazi, the then DG ISI, purged 125 officers of the Agency [from the ranks of Major General to Colonel] who were identified to be “rogue elements” by the CIA. Now there is a strong perception that the present leadership is not presenting the interests and concerns of the state of Pakistan to its ‘Americans friends’ and is just raising issues in a casual manner. Perhaps that was the reason that the Army leadership had to make unusual public remarks in a press release, issued by the ISPR after the Corps Commanders meeting in October 2009, expressing serious concern over the Kerry-Lugar Bill saying that certain of its clauses were intrusive and against the national interests and were thus unacceptable. The Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar snubbed the Pakistan Army accusing it of ‘crossing the line’ bringing the differences into the open setting a new precedent and further undermining the state of Pakistan.

The crude interference by the CIA in Pakistan’s internal affairs has not gone well with the Establishment and infuriated the Pakistan Army. If the Americans did not stop its activities to help the Pakistani Taliban against the Army, cooperation with the US in the war in Afghanistan would come to an abrupt end. I am quite sure that if the Army says NO the whole nation will back it. It was owing to this reason that COAS General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, while talking to newsmen on the occasion of rolling out of first JF-17 Thunder Aircraft at Kamra on November 24, declared that the US would have to take Pakistan into confidence and taking into consideration the armed forces know-how to defend the country.

This report was first published by Pakistan Observer on Dec. 7, 2009.

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Mr Zaid Hamid exposes the lies and propaganda of India against Pakistan and Pakistan Army regarding the 1971 war and exposes RAW’s role in the 1971 conspiracy to break Pakistan.

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HYDERABAD: The health of fasting TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao is deteriorating and he urgently needs oral feed, a medical bulletin said on Wednesday, PTI reported.

55-year-old Rao, whose indefinite fast for creation of a separate Telengana state entered the 11th day, is “refusing intravenous antibiotics, saline, glucose and any other supporting therapy,” doctors at the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) here said.

“He is not cooperating and has refused to undergo a blood test. He is weak but conscious and is talking. He should resume oral feed as his health condition is deteriorating,” they said in the bulletin.

Senior TRS MLA and Rao’s nephew T Harish Rao besides party leaders and family members had urged Rao to break the fast but he has consistently refused. He has also refused to take medicines and that was complicating the situation as he has not taken solids for over a week, TRS senior leader Nayini Narasimha Reddy said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Telangana issue is threatening to throw Hyderabad into complete chaos on Wednesday ahead of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti’s (TRS) march to the Andhra assembly on Thursday. Along with the TRS, the Joint Action Committee of Students Union’s have threatened to storm the assembly on December 10, reported Times Now.

Over 15,000 angry students from the Osmania and Kakatia universities and various other colleges and schools continued to intensify their agitation today for a separate Telangana campaign. However, the state government is not taking any chances. Despite several students being taken into preventive custody, protests only escalated.

Over 12,500 armed policemen and paramilitary forces have been deployed in the city. In view of the ‘Chalo Assembly’ call given by TRS and the students union, elaborate security arrangements have been made.

Prohibitory orders banning the assembly of five or more people were imposed in Hyderabad and nine other districts of Telangana under Section 144.

“A holiday has been declared in all the colleges in the region till Dec 18 and there is no reason why any student should stay on campus,” Inspector General of Police A R Anuradha said.

The Andhra Pradesh Assembly was adjourned over the TRS demand for passing a resolution favouring formation of a separate Telangana state.

For the second consecutive day, TRS members, holding placards, raised slogans and demanded that the House pass the resolution in favour of Telangana.

The Centre should be given time to take a decision on the Telangana issue, chief minister K Rosaiah said and appealed to the TRS members to let the House take up business as per the agenda.

“This (Telangana) is a sensitive issue. It is not easy to pass a resolution. Don’t you want the resolution to win (if introduced)? The issue is under consideration of the government. You have made your point. Let the House discuss other public issues of importance,” Rosaiah said.

Rosaiah stressed the need to observe restraint as emotions and tempers are running high over the issue. “It will be very difficult, if the situation goes out of control,” he said.

Senior TRS legislator T Harish Rao, however, alleged that Rosaiah is behaving like the Roman king who played fiddle when Rome was burning.

“We expected Rosaiah to find a solution. When our leader Chandrasekhar Rao has been on fast for the last ten days, you are not bothered. The Telangana people are agitated,” he said.

As Speaker N Kirankumar Reddy tried to go on with the agenda, the TRS members entered the well of the House and raised slogans following which Reddy adjourned the House.

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NY Times

India’s governing Congress Party faced an angry backlash on Friday against the possibility of dividing one of the country’s largest states, Andhra Pradesh, with opponents staging protests in southern India even as advocates for creating other new states began agitating elsewhere in the country.

The police tried to break up a tussle between lawyers in support of a Telangana state, left, and those against it Friday outside the court in Hyderabad, India.The political crisis has dominated the news in India this week, as Congress Party leaders in New Delhi agreed late Wednesday night to start the process of creating a new state out of the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh. National leaders made the decision in response to a 10-day “fast unto death” by an advocate for Telangana statehood that had evolved into a national melodrama.

But even as Telangana supporters were rejoicing, the crisis quickly shifted in the opposite direction, as opponents of the proposed partition protested in other regions of Andhra Pradesh. Meanwhile, 130 members of the 294-member State Assembly tendered their resignations. In much of the southern and coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh, daily life came to a standstill on Friday as general strikes were called to protest dividing the state.

“All the leaders and others are sitting in the town’s main square to oppose the division of the state,” said a journalist in the Anantapur district of the southern part of the state. The situation presented the Congress Party with a dilemma of its own making. The party’s high command in New Delhi had agreed to start the process of creating the new state as a concession to end the hunger strike by K.Chandrasekhar Rao, a regional political figure. Mr. Rao’s fast had led to student demonstrations in Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, and a two-day general strike that almost completely shut the city down.

But the late-night concession by leaders in New Delhi apparently caught Congress Party lawmakers in Andhra Pradesh unawares. The state is divided into three distinct regions, and many lawmakers from the two regions outside Telangana found themselves pinned between a decision made in New Delhi and angry constituents at home.
“I am sandwiched between my supporters and my high command,” said J. C. Diwakar Reddy, a six-term Congress Party assemblyman from the Anantapur district. “In that situation, I just submitted my resignation. My main grievance is that we were not consulted before they made this decision.”

Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy, speaker of the State Assembly, confirmed that 130 members had resigned, including 76 from the Congress Party, though none of the resignations had been accepted. “I am consulting constitutional experts on the issue,” the speaker said. “I will also call them one by one. There is no time limit for me to accept these resignations.”

In New Delhi, Congress leaders seemed to backpedal slightly. The Indian news media quoted unidentified officials as saying that a “broad consensus” would be necessary for the statehood movement to proceed. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a delegation of Congress Party lawmakers from Andhra Pradesh on Friday that “nothing would be done in haste,” according to one person who attended the meeting. In Andhra Pradesh, Konijeti Rosaiah, the state’s chief minister and a member of the Congress Party, tried to play down the situation by telling local journalists that no oral or written commitment had been made. He also beseeched all political parties to demand that their supporters abjure from any violence on the streets.
“We have to be peaceful,” Mr. Rosaiah said during an appearance before the State Assembly. “Political parties should take responsibility that protests are peaceful.” The architecture of India’s political system has been evolving since the country became independent in 1947. Initially, leaders used linguistic divisions to carve out large states, but as the country has continued to grow, new states have been gradually added in response to different claims. Three new states were added in 2000, bringing the total to 28 states and 7 territories controlled by the national government. Even now, some Indian states — notably Uttar Pradesh, with more than 160 million people — are larger than most countries.

Andhra Pradesh itself has more than 77 million people and stretches over a huge swath of land along the country’s southeastern coast. It was born from a political shotgun marriage in 1956, as leaders in New Delhi merged the coastal regions with the interior region of Telangana, which also included the city of Hyderabad. The arrangement was conditional to ease the fears of discrimination or exploitation by people from the Telangana region, who were outnumbered in the new state.

But in the decades that followed, Telangana advocates say the promises of equitable treatment were never fulfilled. Riots broke out over the issue in 1969, and a statehood movement simmered for decades until it finally exploded this week during Mr. Rao’s hunger strike. Indian news media reported that advocates for statehood in other regions also had started agitating. The reports included accounts of some people beginning new hunger strikes.
Creating a state can be a lengthy undertaking here. In Andhra Pradesh the process is supposed to start with a vote on a resolution for statehood by the State Assembly, though the resignations make this uncertain.

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Sean Paul Kelley

If you are Indian, or of Indian descent, I must preface this post with a clear warning: you are not going to like what I have to say. My criticisms may be very hard to stomach. But consider them as the hard words and loving advice of a good friend. Someone who’s being honest with you and wants nothing from you. These criticisms apply to all of India except Kerala and the places I didn’t visit, except that I have a feeling it applies to all of India, except as I mentioned before, Kerala. Lastly, before anyone accuses me of Western Cultural Imperialism, let me say this: if this is what India and Indians want, then hey, who am I to tell them differently. Take what you like and leave the rest. In the end it doesn’t really matter, as I get the sense that Indians, at least many upper class Indians, don’t seem to care and the lower classes just don’t know any better, what with Indian culture being so intense and pervasive on the sub-continent. But here goes, nonetheless.

India is a mess. It’s that simple, but it’s also quite complicated. I’ll start with what I think are India’s four major problems–the four most preventing India from becoming a developing nation–and then move to some of the ancillary ones.

First, pollution. In my opinion the filth, squalor and all around pollution indicates a marked lack of respect for India by Indians. I don’t know how cultural the filth is, but it’s really beyond anything I have ever encountered. At times the smells, trash, refuse and excrement are like a garbage dump. Right next door to the Taj Mahal was a pile of trash that smelled so bad, was so foul as to almost ruin the entire Taj experience. Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai to a lesser degree were so very polluted as to make me physically ill. Sinus infections, ear infection, bowels churning was an all to common experience in India. Dung, be it goat, cow or human fecal matter was common on the streets. In major tourist areas filth was everywhere, littering the sidewalks, the roadways, you name it. Toilets in the middle of the road, men urinating and defecating anywhere, in broad daylight. Whole villages are plastic bag wastelands. Roadsides are choked by it. Air quality that can hardly be called quality. Far too much coal and far to few unleaded vehicles on the road. The measure should be how dangerous the air is for one’s health, not how good it is. People casually throw trash in the streets, on the roads. The only two cities that could be considered sanitary in my journey were Trivandrum–the capital of Kerala–and Calicut. I don’t know why this is. But I can assure you that at some point this pollution will cut into India’s productivity, if it already hasn’t. The pollution will hobble India’s growth path, if that indeed is what the country wants. (Which I personally doubt, as India is far too conservative a country, in the small ‘c’ sense.)

The second issue, infrastructure, can be divided into four subcategories: roads, rails and ports and the electrical grid. The electrical grid is a joke. Load shedding is all too common, everywhere in India. Wide swaths of the country spend much of the day without the electricity they actually pay for. With out regular electricity, productivity, again, falls. The ports are a joke. Antiquated, out of date, hardly even appropriate for the mechanized world of container ports, more in line with the days of longshoremen and the like. Roads are an equal disaster. I only saw one elevated highway that would be considered decent in Thailand, much less Western Europe or America. And I covered fully two thirds of the country during my visit. There are so few dual carriage way roads as to be laughable. There are no traffic laws to speak of, and if there are, they are rarely obeyed, much less enforced. A drive that should take an hour takes three. A drive that should take three takes nine. The buses are at least thirty years old, if not older. Everyone in India, or who travels in India raves about the railway system. Rubbish. It’s awful. Now, when I was there in 2003 and then late 2004 it was decent. But in the last five years the traffic on the rails has grown so quickly that once again, it is threatening productivity. Waiting in line just to ask a question now takes thirty minutes. Routes are routinely sold out three and four days in advance now, leaving travelers stranded with little option except to take the decrepit and dangerous buses. At least fifty million people use the trains a day in India. 50 million people! Not surprising that waitlists of 500 or more people are common now. The rails are affordable and comprehensive but they are overcrowded and what with budget airlines popping up in India like Sadhus in an ashram the middle and lowers classes are left to deal with the overutilized rails and quality suffers. No one seems to give a shit. Seriously, I just never have the impression that the Indian government really cares. Too interested in buying weapons from Russia, Israel and the US I guess.

The last major problem in India is an old problem and can be divided into two parts that’ve been two sides of the same coin since government was invented: bureaucracy and corruption. It take triplicates to register into a hotel. To get a SIM card for one’s phone is like wading into a jungle of red-tape and photocopies one is not likely to emerge from in a good mood, much less satisfied with customer service. Getting train tickets is a terrible ordeal, first you have to find the train number, which takes 30 minutes, then you have to fill in the form, which is far from easy, then you have to wait in line to try and make a reservation, which takes 30 minutes at least and if you made a single mistake on the form back you go to the end of the queue, or what passes for a queue in India. The government is notoriously uninterested in the problems of the commoners, too busy fleecing the rich, or trying to get rich themselves in some way shape or form. Take the trash for example, civil rubbish collection authorities are too busy taking kickbacks from the wealthy to keep their areas clean that they don’t have the time, manpower, money or interest in doing their job. Rural hospitals are perennially understaffed as doctors pocket the fees the government pays them, never show up at the rural hospitals and practice in the cities instead.

I could go on for quite some time about my perception of India and its problems, but in all seriousness, I don’t think anyone in India really cares. And that, to me, is the biggest problem. India is too conservative a society to want to change in any way. Mumbai, India’s financial capital is about as filthy, polluted and poor as the worst city imaginable in Vietnam, or Indonesia–and being more polluted than Medan, in Sumatra is no easy task. The biggest rats I have ever seen were in Medan!

One would expect a certain amount of, yes, I am going to use this word, backwardness, in a country that hasn’t produced so many Nobel Laureates, nuclear physicists, imminent economists and entrepreneurs. But India has all these things and what have they brought back to India with them? Nothing. The rich still have their servants, the lower castes are still there to do the dirty work and so the country remains in stasis. It’s a shame. Indians and India have many wonderful things to offer the world, but I’m far from sanguine that India will amount to much in my lifetime.

Now, have at it, call me a cultural imperialist, a spoiled child of the West and all that. But remember, I’ve been there. I’ve done it. And I’ve seen 50 other countries on this planet and none, not even Ethiopia, have as long and gargantuan a laundry list of problems as India does. And the bottom line is, I don’t think India really cares. Too complacent and too conservative.

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