The Before and Beyond of “Kashmir Files”-Part 1

                                            

                                                    Part 1- The Melting Pot

Agnihotri needs accolades for staking his life and pointing to a time in history when everything around somebody from this very land stood still in the wake of unprecedented horror unleashed on them. He had his limitations while directing a movie. The blood-soaked rice scene, an example, of how moderately it can be shown. He could not have shown a 6-hour movie either. The ordeal for that woman lasted 10 days and not just restricted to cooking blood-soaked food. Now, I have my limitations too. I am leaving the graphics to the reader’s imagination. Wild as it can be, the less real it would be still.

 The preamble to the story goes thus. USA and USSR had been through the cold war era and waited with bated breath as to who would do the first sin. For all it’s ills US is a democracy and always had the backing of its people, even if divided in private they would be united in public. Contrast that with USSR-people were silenced with doles or jails. At best a quasi-democracy at that time. Even worse now. So, anything inimical would invoke public resistance and riots.

Lo and behold USSR made that first wrong move. An old birdie has that the intentions of this behemoth of a nation were not virtuous. The idea was to recast the map of Soviet Union to include Afghanistan, Pakistan and eventually, yes, India. In that order.

 As USSR made it’s foray into Afghanistan in 1979, they had bitten more than what they can chew. Perfect opportunity for the west to bring down it’s oldest rival. While the Afghans adopted shoot and scoot, the west designed the most diabolical weapon ever seen. A radical version of the “religion of peace” (ROP).

Overnight, books, pamphlets and insinuating speeches reached Afghanistan. Probably the single most lethal move which would come back to haunt its creator and the rest of the world.

Peacemakers from the religion of peace with Kalashnikovs trooped in from the rest of the brother countries which made the situation in Afghanistan a cocktail.

 After 10 years of burning their stocks, USSR did in Afghanistan what US just did. Evacuate and leave behind the big guns. Eerie coincidence?  Time log 1989-90. Rings a bell?

Now for 10 years the rabid Kalashnikov holders knew nothing other than pulling the trigger. They had to be a spent force or force that can be spent elsewhere. Not in their dreams were ISI going to miss this opportunity.

Move the theatre to India-Pakistan affairs now.

1971-Pakistan had received a bashing of their lifetime. 90000 troops led by Gen Niazi had surrendered to Lt. Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora. That they were released with increased girth in contrast to Capt. Saurabh Kalia is a matter for another day. In comes Gen. Zia-ul-Haq and frames the infamous “Bleed India with a thousand cuts” policy, knowing well he would be a sitting duck in a conventional war.

 The first cuts were tried in Punjab in the late 80s and to their curse they met a wall called Kanwar Pal Singh Gill I.P.S, yes, the “Supercop” KPS Gill. Rightfully or not Operation Blue Star marked the finale to Pakistan’s devilish attempt in Punjab, though at a dear cost of life of Gen. Arun Kumar Vaidya.

 Close to 2 decades of peace in Kashmir. Business did well. So did tourism. ISI shifts the “to be spent force” to Kashmir. Remember there were no electric wired fences back then at the border. Porous as paper. Hundreds of radio sets from Pakistan reach deep inside Indian borders to disseminate orders to the “innocent astray youngsters”. Now, no enemy thrives without the doors of the fort opening from inside. Indian polity did not disappoint them.

India Vs England, Ahmedabad, Third Test, 2021

 https://anchor.fm/quick-single/episodes/India-Vs-England---Third-Test-022021---Ahmedabad-er3psv

India Vs England, Chennai-Second Test, 2021

https://anchor.fm/quick-single/episodes/India-Vs-England---Second-Test-022021---Chennai-eqgesk

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India Vs England - First Test 02/2021 - Chennai by Quick Single • A podcast on Anchor

To tame or cane the dragon, is the question!!

Now that it is anything but secret that the destroyer in chief of the old normal sprang from the wet market of Wuhan or from a lab therein, the indignation of the world is all over China. Be that as it may, what do we Indians do? Join the party, spoil the party or for a change use the famed Indian brain?



Even while I write this a bunch of us would have uninstalled Chinese Apps and retweeted “Boycott China”. Believe me that would be water off the ducks back for China. First of all, India has a unique geo-political standing with China as against the world. While a distant country can cancel flights and do eyeball to eyeball confrontation with China and play the waiting game, India hath not an easy option for the maker did not give us a choice of neighborhood.



Let’s wink a while and bend a little to understand a little bit more about this chalk and cheese combination of Asia. To begin with India, China and history are incomplete without one another. We share not only a 1700 km long border with China but also a minimum of 2500 years of history.



Many official communications from China refer to Indian aspects as Yìn dù jiào. It’s no coincidence that the phonetic is loaded with the character of the land and if that hits the raw nerves of communists and secular worrywarts, I would tell them “verily ask thy master, why did you make us sing knowing it was farce”



In all those thousands of years not a sword crossed between the two countries while Europe kept burning year after year, remember Winter War, Ottaman wars, et el.

Indo-Chinese relations on the other hand had become so deific that we had started exchanging Gods and Godmen. Few of my Tamil chums would know that a certain Boyang from China is a household seer held in high esteem. Or was I expecting a little too much from my fellow domiciles?? Anyway, I am not giving away the suspense here. You know where to reach!!



Beginning 1959, tensions between the two countries kept escalating and culminated in the rather gruesome 1962 war over a disputed Himalayan border, inter alia. Shock and Awe? No. Certainly not in the fact that the Chinese are cold blooded, inscrutable and expansionist. The designs were in plain sight. Not for the then PM and Defense Minister, V.K Krishna Menon.



The incredible foreign policy in vogue said peaceful co-existence and non-intervention with affairs of other countries. Trusting that the neighbors would translate this into Urdu, Chinese, Burmese, Russian etc and proclaim the same. Travesty of politics also known as Panchsheel.



The calamity didn’t stop there either. A foreign policy as catastrophic as this led to a defense policy of disarmament and many ordnance factories converting into cottage industries.



The Shanti Parva in Mahabharata has that King Yudhistra proclaimed the same foreign policy but sent the strongest of his brothers Bhima and Arjuna to safeguard the borders as his defense policy after his coronation. Difference between a PM, Indian by birth and foreign by thought vs a king who was Indian in sum and substance



By the time the writing became clear on the wall, the then PM went on AIR bidding goodbye to his brethren in Assam and started writing letters to USA, USSR and “to whomsoever it may concern”

Now these are lessons on how not to deal with China. The Chinese are masters in treachery and our fait accompli next door. Their supremacy in this region is going to stand for time to come, unfettered, unaltered and without a rival.



Anybody with dreams of the USA pulling back from China can go back to sleep. While investing in China, the USA had grand plans of making an ingress into accessing the cheap labor there but did not plan an egress on need and squarely failed in it.



Much of the US economy runs on the semi processed goods that gets further processed and completed in China before being shipped back. If the “much” lacked the punch, here it is, $560 billion worth of goods as of 2018. That’s a whooping 21% of all imports. How on earth is the US going to replace this and with which country?

For all that I wish, the bravado of substituting with India is not realism given the inferior infrastructure and a bureaucracy as unpalatable as it can get.



Howsoever baffling the quagmire might look, it is not without a solution.



To begin with, India must match China missile for missile, arsenal for arsenal and submarine for submarine in her weaponry. National Security can reckon no compromise and only the mighty are called for the negotiation table, others become menu on the same table.



The foreign policy can be turned to assuage China that India would not side with an adversary of China and partake in an attack on her soil unless there arises a need to protect the sovereign interests of India. In other words, we care a damn what you do with Taiwan and you stay off our borders but yes in whereby thereby diplomatic language.



This will more or less keep China away from Pakistan and if required the Vietnam card can always be played against them saying, if you can groom a bunch of hooligans to hurt us imagine what damage can we cause turning the Vietnamese against you. Surreal it may sound, but possible all the same, if we straighten our backbones and get the ilk of Panchsheel out of our minds.



Transparency, firmness and a neutral posture during their adversity will tame this dragon!!

Mutual Funds-The more we know the less we want!!

A magician’s wand brings out a rabbit from a hat and makes it disappear. The spectator knows for sure something appeared in front of him but knows not where it came from and where it went to. This was a description of not a magic show, but the grand Mutual Fund show in India.

The hayloft of knowledge on mutual funds are that, “it is subject to market risk”. Everything else is known by the fund manager and believed by the investor.

Till 1963, when Mutual Funds were launched in India, investment in India was personal expertise since savings, the source of it, stemmed from therein. An attempt to try a concept launched in USA a good four decades back. A mimic as befitting as a tiger stripe on a cat.

Unit Trust of India floated as an Act of Parliament had a monopolistic rule for about two and half decades till players such as SBI joined the game in 1987. The rich amasses by then under the management was Rs. 6700 crores. I hear the grumble, not even 10% of what Mr. Brewery owes to the country.

Come 1993 and in marched the private players. By then RBI had begun distancing itself and sooner than later Murphy’s law had to be seen around the corner.

The argument for Mutual Funds were almost the same each time and was always “in the long run it is beneficial”.

Irresistible being John Keynes’ rant “in the long run we are all dead”. Now you know why Mr. Murphy had a role to play here.

Ever since the turn of the new millennia, the CEO in the Mutual Fund business, the fund manager, has been under some sort of a duress to venture into unchartered areas and hob knob with grey personalities. A stark example being an ever-increasing presence in Investment Banking.

Now, apart from subject to market risk slogan did we know that MFs are not investment options per se but investment vehicle only. One man’s ignorance is another man’s room for vice. The euphemistic vehicle has been exploited fully to square deals between companies and huge investors at the expense of the gullible middleclass investor.

Take this example- A, with surplus money and not so surplus of a knowhow, invests his money with a fund manager. This manager gets a quirky deal to float money at his disposal to smoothen a syndicate project and in return is able to return a good yield to A. All that A knows of is, he invested in something and it got him something good. What transpired in between did not strike his dreams even.

His compeer B gets inspired and treads the same path but to his misfortune the fund manager’s tryst with luck is well past behind. The result being B gets a sub-prime yield and he is told “in the long run….”. Keynes turns in his grave. A’s success story reaches the media and B either waits for turn of fortune or writes a blog!!! Sorry, this is no confession statement!!

Remember all this is under the garb of transparency, effective regulations and fair play.

MFs have been seen grappling with commodity market and forex market oblivious to the unwarranted risk coefficient and driven by the race to increase the yield, now and here.

Nothing covers up the crevices in the system like good times. Success has many commentaries and failures have no soothsayers. To believe global depression is the villain is plain imbecile.

Global depression did not demand MFs to fund the real estate mafia in India, whose character is unbeknownst to none. Regulators, with all due respect, are only half awake to the misappropriation of assets complimented by violation of related party guidelines.

Before we know, MFs are reducing themselves to a mere vehicle for corporate money laundering. Come a panic situation such as this, the same corporate money exits at the best possible NAV and the retail investor is left high and dry.

Think of this, what are banks doing in MF business? Were they not meant to accept deposits and give credit? In numerous such cases there will be a private label route taken

Franklin Templeton was probably the last in the tribe which has also closed quite a few schemes.

Following suit to this was RBI’s move of opening a liquidity tap of Rs.50000 crore for MFs to alleviate redemption pressure on fund houses.

That this happened within 2 months of the COVID crisis speaks volumes of how the MFs were being managed, if at all they were. Caveat emptor never sounded more relevant isn’t it?

It finally boils down to the point that beyond the tax arbitrage between MFs and Fixed Deposit interests what did the retail investor gain and at what risk? Remember a collapsing giant does not collapse alone and no prizes to guess where the next crash is going to be. Certainly, a price to pay if the guess was not correct.

At The Lord’s, the Lord’s will

The fastest investigation into a test match loss has concluded and the reason is that England missed a key member in their crew hard and sore. All those voices saying KP will get no points. An exorcist was required to travel along since the hotel rooms where the English stayed were haunted.

Now, if that statement looks bizarre, train your guns on Stuart Broad for cribbing like a kid and more importantly not showing grace in defeat. Trent bridge could not be conquered since “the pitches in India were faster” and at Lord’s since the result was notwithstanding a green pasture of a pitch, the reason had to be something paranormal!!!

 ECB should probably plan the next fixture at an indoor stadium with some Ojhas (desi exorcists) roped into the team.

Characteristically, English batsmen had a chair laid in front of the stumps from where they batted. Or so did it appear when no spirit of fight was shown at the crease. To even reach where they did they have to thank the stars and the tail. The English bowlers were appalling in making use of a grassland of a condition. Anderson and Broad were made to toil to their last ounce of energy and that probably explains why they looked far from incisive.

 Poor Cook is going through what Sourav da was going through when his bat stopped talking but not providential enough to have a parallel to the Great Wall of India at his command. Rewrite the Indian story with Mohammed Azharuddin at the helm and a certain SRT as his ever victorious General

The English think tank will categorically come out with a 100 page report citing reasons for failure, given their adeptness at that, but the truth is not so veiled. Trot’s calming presence in the middle, KP’s aggression and the craft of Swann are the stuff of prayers at the St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The Indians took the approach of better being safe than sorry which can be seen in the remarkably improved ability to leave balls outside the off stump. This was so imperative given the Lord’s slope which can make an out swinger behave like a leg spin

In India there is a tradition that when sacred texts are read, at home or at a gathering, it is concluded by a prayer to Lord Hanuman. So anyone who joins the party late will believe that the program was on Lord Hanuman.

Wasn’t it true with the Lord’s test too? We will know the test for Ishant’s career best figures and for being the first ever (“crack of doom” Amar Singh isn’t going to come back and depose) Indian to have bounced out an opposition. Ishant would have finished his bottle of champagne and called his mother to say that 4 of those 7 were due to her blessings and the English’s inebriated brain and would have prayed for both to continue. Such was the absurdity in those shot selections, especially from Prior when in the recent past his bat has been meeting even a fly from the edges.

What actually requires a standing ovation is the gem in the ornament century from Rahane showing the mettle he is made of and equally laudable are the long hours of vigil by Vijay in both the innings. In the mind of an avid spectator this innings from Rahane comes second only to Dravid’s 148 at Headingly, 2002. Well, having said that, it is going to take years of labor and a mountain of focus for Rahane to reach and stay there.

On such surfaces the time spent in the middle to blunt the swing and take the shine off the ball counts more than the flashy fours which was common during the Sehwag era. Thankfully that era of unpredictability is over.  

Pujara was another unsung champion, occupying the crease and taking the blows but performing that ever heroic act of holding one end up. His crouched stance is something that he may want to discuss with the new legendary batting consultant a.k.a Rahul Dravid. A slightly upright stance is certainly helpful in countering the movement and extra bounce. This, more so since he is not a very tall person. This might also explain the reason why Colonel Vengsarkar was so successful at Lord’s, to the extent that he was called Lord of Lord’s.

Vijay’s second innings of 95 was so much of a trance and meditation that the Lord (sic) decided it to be the margin of defeat for the English. It was this focus and commitment to the cause that was missing between the heads and caps for the English

All is not green for the Indians either, as victorious as they may be. The tail wagged way beyond the expectations. Failure of Kohli and Dhawan are actually under this carpet if anybody is searching for it

This positive aberration could well not happen for the next few tests and the onus of scoring will be back on the top order.

 Dhawan should be given a gentle reminder that there is a certain Abhinav Mukund watching the match, without the pads, for now. Kohli deserves a longer rope though.

The English should still stick to the same strategy of preparing a lively pitch but make their bowlers pitch it up this time. You just cannot allow so many balls to be left alone which is a big hole on the energy reservoir. Bowling should be done with a sense of purpose and should appear penetrating. Get in Glen McGrath as the bowling coach.

 If Swann cannot be replaced, so be it. It is of common knowledge that Ali is in for his batting prowess more than as a specialist spinner.

This to me is indecisiveness from the captain and the think tank. England should take excuse of Ali and plan for an all out pace attack. If this is done and the “Bell” starts ringing again, we have an engaging duel for the rest of the series