Author: Anshuman Rawat

Author. Entrepreneur. Filmmaker. Journalist.

Categories
Entrepreneurship

Boardroom Lessons from Brazil’s Disaster on Pitch

“This is not a defeat. This is a nation’s pride and soul being destroyed,” remarked a senior Washington based news correspondent on Brazil’s humiliating 1-7 loss to Germany in the first semi final of FIFA World Cup 2014.

At ground zero, Luiz Carlos, a 52-year-old cook, told Bloomberg in Rio: “Brazil will never be able to erase that shame”.

This after the country spent more than USD 10bn to host the tournament. But even before the semi final had reached the half-way mark, the joy of reaching that far in the home championship had given way to jeers at the home team and President Dilma Rousseff.

It would be safe to assume that lessons would have been learnt by the Brazilian football officials and the hosting committee.

I believe that there are some very pertinent lessons to be learnt by businesses too:

  1. Structural Efficiency is a Must – Inspirationalindividuals can’t hide structural deficiencies. The current Brazilian team depended heavily upon Thiago Silva at the back and Neymar at front. There were gaps all around them, in all games. It’s just it was the team’s (and the nation’s) destiny for those to be brutally exposed when the stakes were really at the peak. Solitary leadership inspires, but you need a team to execute a vision.
  2. Play to your strength – Brazil was never known for its defence, but what hurt them was the goal scorers became suddenly unknown too. In the past they could always score at least one more than what they conceded. Unfortunately, the current Brazilian coach went for caution – thereby allowing the opposition the luxury to play in Brazil’s weakest domain. On the other hand, plenty more flair and firepower would’ve always kept the opposition on their heels.
  3. Change management is largely risk driven and entirely time driven – Brazil had let in five goals by the 29th minute. But the coach didn’t introduce the first change till the 45th minute. Some may even argue what was the necessity to wait till the fifth goal – since it was clear by that time that many on the pitch had proved to be ineffectual beyond redemption in the first 15 minutes or so itself. A faulty strategy or a faulty product (out in the market) has to be rectified in time, and not when “it is high time”.
  4. Emotions don’t always bring business – Crying at the rendition of the national anthem and wearing support caps for your injured star player is all fine, but the passion in itself doesn’t play the game. Whether it is nationalism (Air India, Ambassador, Maruti etc) or celebrity appeal (Neymar’s emotional video before the match), every emotion is secondary to product performance.
  5. Honest intent helps longer patron support – No player covered himself in glory in the match. Superstar David Luiz, who captained the team in the match, was especially appalling – playing pivotal, direct role in letting at least two of the seven goals. However, the crowd stretched their lungs to boo Fred the most. It is not a question of pitting a normal person against a nation’s heartthrob, but an illustration of people overlooking mistakes for genuine passion. Fred barely seemed to clock any miles in any of the matches.
Categories
Journalism

Irrational Parallels

The current raging debate in Brazil on the subject of hosting the FIFA World Cup, the second biggest sporting event on the planet after the Olympics, amid widespread poverty and social problems reminds me of a very popular “intellectualism-inducing” lament in India: “Why do we need to work on the space program when people don’t even have drinking water?”

The complaints in both the BRICS nations are ill-directed; for, they take refuge in irrational parallels.

Scrapping of a sporting event or the space program is not going to see elimination of poverty. It would merely induce an element of deprivation into those sections that are and were going to benefit from those two enterprises.

Poverty is a question of governance. What protesters should be protesting against is abysmal governance (service) delivery.

And if they indeed, for instance, want to use the example of FIFA World Cup, the focus of the protest should be on profligacy in management and not the hosting itself.

On its part, the Brazil government should take one on the chin and accept that if the country can host a vibrant League every year, it can surely host the World Cup too in the existing stadiums. Also, if the rising Brazilian economy can host an ever-burgeoning group of business travellers with the help of the existing hospitality infrastructure, it can definitely host the lower-rung football supporters too in the existing small hotels and service apartments. Or it may make some non-capital-dependent temporary arrangements.

Point being, saving the money spent on massive aesthetic – and prestige – programs would not stop the influx of money, which the Brazilian government/economy is keenly desirous of. It would just go a long way in maximising the ROI on the event.

All the same, once the government walks half the distance, the protesters have to drop their irrational anger towards mega projects and direct it where it makes a difference (governance delivery) and where it hurts (government rejection in elections).

And this is just a small example of how people anger and government action can be channelised for the common good of both the stakeholders – without resorting to symbolism of the extreme.

Categories
India Journalism

Narendra Modi and Collective Leadership

‘Taking everyone together as a team’ is a heart-warming sentiment that almost always stands the risk of failing the test of circumstances. For, the unpalatable truth of life is that not everyone is born equal – or can even grow to be an equal.

There are some who take the reins of the moment in their hands and either convince others in the team to follow them or simply bulldoze their own flock decisively into following them. Very few such people have been there in the history; and with the advent of the ‘right to equality’ cacophony across physical and metaphysical spaces, there would be even fewer of ‘iron men’ in the future.

Luckily, India currently has one such person. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his previous responsibility, could ‘neutralize’ the pretenders in his party into following him in Gujarat. If India has to deliver its promise in the coming decades, he would have to succeed in achieving the same in New Delhi. And he only has one year to raise the bar – and the barrier – for the pretenders in the NDA government (the opposition barely exists elsewhere). Just one year. Beyond that lies the possible resurgence of the regurgitated.

Categories
Asia Times Online India Journalism

India Beware: Bangladesh is Staring at Anarchy

The article first appeared on Asia Times Online here.

With no end in sight to political turmoil rooted in historic conflicts and sectarianism, Bangladesh is edging closer each day to chaos.

The overwhelming victory of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League (AL) in January 5 parliamentary elections did little to ease the tense situation.

Terming the current government “illegal”, the Begum Khalida Zia led Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the country’s largest opposition party, has vowed to unseat the government “with a popular movement”.

Because of a mass boycott of the poll by all major opposition parties, 153 of the 232 seats won by the Awami League in the recent elections were uncontested. The opposition had demanded that the vote was held under a neutral caretaker government – a condition ended due to a constitutional amendment forced through in 2011 by Hasina’s administration.

Hundreds of people died across Bangladesh in political violence in the run-up to the latest polls, with normal life ended by blockades of roads, railways and waterways and the closure of shops, schools and offices by the opposition. A reported 20 people died on the day of the vote and more than 100 polling stations were torched by violent mobs.

The election-related mayhem came close on the heels of violence related to an ongoing tribunal International Crimes Tribunal which is investigating “war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide” committed by the Pakistan army and their local collaborators during the 1971 war of independence.

The ICT drew international headlines in February 2013 when the Shahbagh movement – named after a major intersection in Dhaka where thousands of people gathered in a protest – demanded the execution of all those convicted by the ICT and the creation of a secular Bangladesh.

Most collaborators implicated in the trial belong to the second largest opposition party, Jamaat-e-Islami. Because the ICT plans to prosecuting JeT leaders for war crimes in 1971, Islamists have also been on the rampage across the nation.

On May 5, thousands of madrassa teachers, students and sympathizers laid siege to Dhaka in support of the Hefazat-e-Islam (“Protectors of Islam”), a radical Islamic movement that demands, among other things, a ban on the public mixing of men and women and the criminalization of “kafirs” (non-believers). This led to violent clashes between protesters and security forces, resulting in many deaths.

Meanwhile, convictions against Jamaat leaders led the Bangladesh Supreme Court on August 1 2013 to declare the registration of the party illegal – effectively barring it from contesting elections.

The mayhem hit its nadir on December 12 when one of the Jamaat leaders, Abdul Qader Mollah, was hanged being sentenced to death by the ICT. Mollah, known as the “Butcher of Mirpur”, who supported his party’s stand against the creation of Bangladesh, was accused of colluding with the Pakistani military in a killing and raping spree of Bengalis over an eight-month period.

While the Shahbagh and Hefazat protests did not give birth to the current election violence, they add to the deadly mix of historical and sectarian fault lines that are currently simmering in Bangladesh. These have turned the country into a free-for-all battlefield of politico-ideologies.

The first, most direct consequence of the strife has been on the economy. Bangladesh’s GDP growth shrunk to 6% last year, down from 6.7% in 2011 – and is expected to contract further because of the prevailing state of affairs.

A good part of the slowdown was caused because of the impact the violence has had on Bangladesh’s garment industry. Making 80% of the country’s total exports, garment exports stood at US$21.5 billion in 2013, up steeply from $9.2 billion six years ago.

But orders are now declining quickly from world markets – diverted to mainly India and some portions to China and Pakistan – mostly because of non-timely delivery by Bangladesh factories whose trucks were stuck on highways for days because of the violence. Many fear that the displaced orders may now never return to Bangladesh.

Four million people are employed with Bangladesh Garment Manufactures and Exporters Association member companies, of which 80% are women, and a majority of whom belong to the “disadvantaged” sections of the society.

That is sure to slow down, if not halt, a commendable run of poverty reduction in the previous decade, which saw the percentage of poor people in this eighth most populous country in the world reduce to 32% in 2010 from an enormous 58% in 1990-91.

The turmoil is also going to worsen Bangladesh’s standing on critical matters such as Generalized System of Preferences (a US government program that provides preferential duty-free entry for up to 5,000 products) and continued (garment) orders from and lower import duties in Europe, which is especially stringent in matters concerning freedom of speech and politics, and human rights of workers.

With men in uniform being stretched to their limit internally, the country’s ability to send military forces for United Nations peacekeeping operations too are likely to be affected – putting at risk significant foreign currency revenue.

Unfortunately, nothing of that is stopping the key players from holding back.

Yet the government is not releasing its iron grip on its opponents. Apart from Khalida Zia’s virtual house arrest, Mohammad Hossain Ershad, a former army general who had come to power in 1982 after a bloodless coup and who now leads the third-biggest party, Jatiyo, too is under restraining orders in an army hospital since he announced of joining the latest poll boycott.

Also, the Sheikh Hasina government is also being accused of harassing media and civil society members. As per a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, “[T]he government shut down opposition media early in 2013 and continues to target human rights advocacy groups and arrest prominent activists.”

Or, in other words, from politics, economy and human rights to the human development index, every marker of the nation’s well-being is under severe stress. 

Categories
Featured Foreign Policy Association (US) Indian Subcontinent Journalism People

Repatriation Still a Far Cry in Bhutan: Exiled Journo

Evicted from Bhutan at the age of 11, Vidhyapati Mishra spent two decades in U.N.-funded Bhutanese refugee camp in eastern Nepal before resettling in the United States. Just a week before his departure from Nepal to Charlotte of North Carolina, self-learned journalist Mishra also featured in the New York Times with his powerful narrative story exposing the other side of the Bhutan’s gross national happiness.

In conversation with Anshuman Rawat, he talks about the plight of exiled Bhutanese and the prospects of their repatriation:
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Vidhyapati-Mishra-small-300x300-150x150Your story plays on a note that is very different from the happy piece of music that the world associates with Bhutan. Can you inform our readers of Bhutan’s lost narrative about the pain and displacement of nearly one-sixth of its people – including your own family?

Like the United States of America, Bhutan is a country of immigrants. Among other ethnic groups, the Nepali-speaking citizens, whom the regime called as Lhotshampas, are the only people that Bhutan accepted for permanent settlement through formal written agreement with Nepal. The first lot of Nepalese had arrived in Bhutan in 1624. The migration of these people into Bhutan started after the formal agreement between the then rulers of Bhutan and Gorkha (now Nepal). However, the Bhutanese rulers treated them as second-class citizens until they were accepted as citizens by granting citizenship certificates in 1958.

The citizenship act of 1958 became the basis for evicting over one-sixth of the country’s population as it willfully divided even members of the same family into various classes, thereby arbitrarily tagging some members as “non-Bhutanese.” The state imposed various policies and mechanisms including martial laws to terrorize and suppress citizens. The government shut down schools, later they were turned into military barracks, where innocent citizens were tortured, women gang-raped and even killed. Lhotshampas and their supporters like Scharlops from eastern Bhutan were unlawfully fired from their jobs, and were refrained from all kinds of public services. Restrictions on Hindu culture and celebration of festivals and were imposed along with a ban on properties sale. The state authority implemented the ‘One Nation, One People Policy’ sternly warning all citizens to follow just Buddhism. The when such activities became rampant, Lhotsampas and their supporters organized mass protests and demonstrations.

Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested and many killed arbitrarily. The government labeled participants of those mass demonstrations as “anti-national agents,” and were later evicted.  The Royal Bhutan Army (RBA) arrested citizens en mass. They were brought to school-turned-military barracks and tortured inhumanly, forcing them to sign Voluntary Migration Forms (VMFs) in order to leave the homeland by abandoning everything.

RBA arrested my father, and he was tortured in a military barrack for 91 days. When all options to save his life failed, he decided to sign the VMF that gave us an ultimatum of just one week to quit the nation. And, it was the Hobson’s choice for my family to leave the hometown, and accordingly we arrived at Bhutan-India border, from where Indian lorry trucks loaded us and dropped in eastern part of Nepal.

How much of Bhutan’s actions, in your opinion, can be compared with the Buddhist majority aggression against religious minorities in Myanmar and Sri Lanka? In other words, do you believe that a part reason of the plight of the Lhotshampas can be ascribed to a gradual rise of assertive political Buddhism in the region?

The Buddhist majority aggressions against religious minorities in Myanmar and Sri Lank do have some common parallels. However, Bhutan’s intention to create purely a Buddhist state by evicting majority of Hindu citizens has different version.  It simply wants a typical Buddhist society without the existence of other religions like Hinduism or Christianity.  As even claimed by regional analysts, the Bhutanese regime was not happy with growing number of Nepali-speaking citizens in public services and educational opportunities availed by Lhotshampas, who are hardworking and patriotic by nature. Further, democratic movements in Indian territories operated by Indian Nepalese added more fears to the regime, and eventually exercised the ethnic cleaning. But, Bhutan clearly knows that the suppressed groups like Lhotshampas and Scharlops are not fighting for a separate state or power capture, but what they want is justice, equality and same participation as enjoyed by the ruling elites in the national building process.

What is the current status of the issue in terms of internationally accepted statistics about the number of refugees, their locations and the means of sustenance?

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that has been overseeing the ongoing third country resettlement, the agency has received over 100,000 submissions for resettlement. Of them, over 80,000 refugees have already started leading new lives in various western countries. The United States of America has alone accepted over 65,000 persons, and even assured of accepting more. Canada and Australia have ranked second and third respectively in accepting refugees for resettlement. Similarly, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands and the United Kingdom have also resettled the Bhutanese refugees, but their number in each country is below 1,000. Each country has its own legal provisions for ensuring sustenance of humanitarian immigrants like refugees. They receive cash, housing and material supports for a certain period, which could be months or years depending on circumstances. The refugees become acquainted with the new environment and society, eventually start entry-level jobs, and plan their education, and career. It is a matter of pride that some of those who were resettled in early 2008 have already become citizens in America and Australia.

India can, arguably, do the most about the issue. But given its historical and special relations with Bhutan, do you ever see it taking a tough stand? What can force India to do that?

In various occasions, refugees trying to enter into Bhutan through India were blocked, detained and even killed. India has direct hand in dumping the refugees in Nepal by loading them in its lorry trucks while they were driven out of Bhutan in 1990s. Miraculously, India doesn’t allow refugees to use the same route for returning home now. India, one of the bystanders to the atrocities in Bhutan, in fact keeps on supporting regime, which is of crucial concern not only for the refugees, but also for the international community. The resettled refugees from various western countries should make their voices aloud and urge India to assist in repatriation of willing refugees from Nepal, and abroad. The Indian media, and civil society could be other powers for pressing the Indian government as regards to repatriation of Bhutanese refugees with dignity and honor.

Outside the region, how would you describe the efforts of the Lhotshampas to get their rights? Also, what has been the response of and actions, if any, by the international community?

The repeated failures of refugees to enter Bhutan have evoked frustrations among them, who were later compelled to abandon all campaigns by choosing to start new life in the West through their resettlement. This has empowered the regime, to a greater extent, for becoming more rigid towards the refugees’ calls for dignified return. The Bhutanese authorities always wanted to shadow the issue of repatriation, and resettlement package has helped them achieved this. This is why the so-called democratic government of Bhutan has turn deaf ears to genuine demands of the refugees. The government’s version on repatriation has still remained intact. Around 80,000 Nepali-speaking citizens are deprived of citizenship certificates, and voter’s identity cards inside the country that prepares to hold the second general elections later this year. For those citizens, their fellow friends in refugee camps are more privileged as they can opt to begin their new lives in developed western countries. On the other way, the resettlement has also helped Bhutanese refugees to expose all forms of atrocities the regime carried out in early and late 1990s while carrying out a well-perpetrated mass exodus, and educate the international community. The failure of the international community in convincing Bhutan to accept its citizens back home has given enough rooms for refugees to make a judgment that their dreams to return to their homeland are shattered due to the third country resettlement program.

Finally, what do you think are the prospects for repatriation?

Several rounds of high-level bilateral talks between governments of Bhutan and Nepal yielded no better results at end of the day. Bhutan continued applying numerous delaying tactics in the name of repatriation. Until recently, the Bhutanese government maintained that it was serious towards repatriating its citizens camped in Nepal, yet to no avail. Bhutan continues to play with lies. For the ruling elites in Bhutan, the resettlement has, more or less, resolved the longstanding refugee imbroglio on humanitarian basis. It can’t be denied that the existing model of democracy, defined by the Bhutanese ruling elites to simply suit them, still awaits major transformations to an inclusive citizens’ platform. This is possible only through major political changes, aimed at bringing ongoing state-sponsored suppressions on ethnic and religious groups to an end. Citing Bhutan’s continued lies; it’s indeed going to be a big miracle if by any chance repatriation takes place. I must not be wrong to mention here that the repatriation of exiled Bhutanese is still a far cry.

The article first appeared on the Foreign Policy Association blogs network site here

 

Categories
Foreign Policy Association (US) Journalism

India Just Scored a Self Goal

[The analysis was first published here on the Foreign Policy Association (FPA) blog network site]

Engineering of election results in Bhutan falls much short of a diplomatic victory of India

At the peak of campaigning by Bhutan’s two political parties for the recently concluded National Assembly (NA) elections, word spread that India was unhappy with the shrill nature of arguments – and their counters – related to India. Almost immediately, the said conversation was cooled down by both the parties and the campaigning from thereon stayed clear of it.

But the mood of the electorate was already set by opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which spearheaded a pitched call to bring Bhutan deeper into India’s political sphere of influence, for the sake of India’s strategic and financial support.

The ruling Druk Phuensum Tshogpa Party (DPT), on the other hand, struggled to dispel the PDP charge that the closeness of the previous prime minister Jigme Thinley with China was pushing India towards withdrawing economic oxygen to Thimpu.

India’s stalling of kerosene and cooking gas subsidy grants to Bhutan on July 1, just weeks before the election date, which pushed up prices by three times, was seen by most ordinary Bhutanese affected by the price rise as an argument in favour of the PDP charge.

It did not matter that India officially dubbed the subsidy reduction as a “procedural issue” and that some Bhutanese thinkers equated the Indian action with a business tit-for-tat against revised power export rate from Bhutan.”

PDP won 32 seats in the 47-member NA in the July 13 elections – up exponentially from a mere two seats in the previous assembly.

It was the result that India wanted, except that it may not have factored in the long-term cost of the “perceived means” to the end.

The subsidy issue right ahead of elections invited accusations from certain sections of India’s dishonesty, manipulation and gross interference in Bhutan’s election process.

Speaking, perhaps for a growing community in his nation, Wangcha Sangey, a legal consultant based in capital Thimpu, wrote in his blog: “National interests of Bhutan have to rise over and above the politics of always playing the Indian tune. […] Bhutan and Bhutanese are sovereignty unto our self. Therefore Bhutan’s paramount national interests and affairs just cannot be only pleasing India. We have to please ourselves too!”

Reflecting the extent of his anger at India’s perceived high-handedness, he then went on to write: “We are not paid sex workers that benefactors need to know when our eyelashes and asses move and in which direction.”

By “national interest” and “the direction” in which Bhutan needs to move, he was alluding to the furor caused by Thinley’s May 2012 meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Rio de Janeiro at the sidelines of Rio+20 summit in Brazil.

While on one hand abuse was heaped upon him by fellow Bhutanese for “endangering historical ties with India” by being cordial with the latter’s bitter rival, India saw Thinley government’s import order of 20 buses from China during the Rio meeting as strengthening of Thimpu’s commercial relationship with China at the cost of India.

More than that one meeting, India’s heightened sensitivity rested on Thinley government’s decision to go on a diplomatic overdrive and establish diplomatic relations with a whopping 32 countries during its five-year reign – up to 53 countries in 2013 from the 21 that existed in 2008.

Indians saw the frenzy as undue haste in acting upon a 2007 revision of the 1949 India-Bhutan Treaty of Friendship, which till then allowed India to “guide” Bhutan’s foreign policy, and had a provision wherein both nations needed to consult each other closely on foreign and defence affairs.

The new treaty replaced the provision requiring Bhutan to take India’s “guidance” on foreign policy with broader “sovereignty” and enabled Bhutan to not require India’s permission over arms imports.

Already uncomfortable with Bhutan’s urgency in spreading out, what got India’s goat eventually were reports that Bhutan was preparing to establish diplomatic relations with the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – including, and most worryingly, China.

Bhutan remains the only one of China’s 14 neighbors with which the dragon doesn’t have diplomatic relations. In the long-drawn battle for supremacy between China and India, New Delhi has always suspected Beijing of trying to win over Bhutan from India’s ambit.

But the big questions doing round in Bhutan and amidst many policy corners of India is whether that fear of India should be reason enough for India to go for the sledgehammer – especially against the backdrop of historical and geopolitical realities.

Bhutan shares a 605-kilometer (376-mile) border with India, which is its largest trading partner, accounting for 98 percent of its exports and 90 percent of its imports. Also, Bhutan’s only means of doing trade with the rest of the world so far is via 16 entry and exit points that India allows.

Against the seemingly claustrophobic arrangement, India has invested over $1 billion on the construction of three hydropower projects in Bhutan and has agreed to import at least 5,000 megawatts of electricity from Bhutan by 2020. Sale of electricity to India is one of the major exchange earners for Bhutan.

Bhutan also hosts an estimated 200,000 Indians – including Indian troops, which help Bhutan stay clear of and secure from terrorism and sectarian extremism.

It is because of this intertwined nature of relations that even at this discomforting hour writers like Kinley Dorji, the managing editor of Bhutan’s news daily Kuensel, argue: “Sovereignty – which India’s critics in the kingdom cite – works not in the abstract, but in daily lives as well. Bhutan and India, he notes, share a symbiotic relationship and it is in Bhutan’s interests to have closer relations with India than with China.”

Of course, and reflecting the general mood, he also carried on and advised in the same vein that it is in India’s interest to offer financial and technical help to Bhutan.

One of Sangey’s angry posts was titled: “India-Bhutan: Friend or Master.” Unless India begins to come across as the former – again – in the eyes of the hurting Bhutanese, it may not be able to hold on to its geopolitical need to be the latter.