The network

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Fountainhead of Jihad: The Haqqani Nexus by Wahid Brown and Don Rassler, Hachette, 320p; Rs650 (Hardback)

The Haqqani network’s area of operation, the fountainhead of Jihad-Durand Line accidentally adjoins the international border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This part of the world is largely unexplored for the intellectual communities, living on its periphery or located distant. So, Wahid Brown and Don Rassler open new chances to look on a terrain, known for all the bad reasons.

At the beginning, authors examine the origination of Haqqani network from Southeastern Afghanistan and the role played by the Haqqaniya seminary in northwestern Pakistan in its mushrooming. The Haqqanis are rooted in both these countries and ensured a never ending conflict between them. Pakistan has been maintaining a closer relationship with the Haqqanis, once the direct American support for the Haqqani network ended in the early 1990’s.

Though as the book confirms, Pakistan never felt shy in tying up with Haqqanis. Its military support for the Haqqanis began in the 1970’s when Pakistan looked to Afghan Islamists for countering Moscow-leaning Afghan government-this way Pakistan started the proxy war with Afghanistan, which continues to this date.

The book gives detail in great deal about the base of Haqqanis-Zhawara in the province of Khost-also establishes CIA/ISI’s direct support to this deadly terror network in their opportunistic quest. In anti-Soviet days, the nexus among them was running high-further the support from Arab for anti-Soviet Mujahidin: ‘Abdullah’ Azam and Osama bin Laden made the ‘global Jihadism’ imminent.

The Haqqanis continue to support a group of regional and transnational militants from their hub in North Waziristan. The Haqqani network has survived for more than four decades, and this through a carefully balancing act, which ensured its prominence in nexus of violence. Also, these militants have kept them away from the command of Talibanis.

The Haqqanis have lived the tussle of contradiction with Taliban and other local/global forces playing the dirtiest game in Af-Pak regions. Since the US entered in Afghanistan to revenge 9/11, Al-Qa’ida and a segment of the Pakistani Taliban (in particular the Tehrik-a-Taliban Pakistan) are at war with the Pakistani state-still, Pakistan has to support the US in its war against Taliban and the TTP, as it’s caught in alarming spiral.

On the height of wildness, the Haqqanis appearing as a platform for the delivery of violence that serves their various interests, and also strengthen the Haqqani network’s strategic position in North Waziristan and Loya Paktia. One of the major plank of the nasty game is to limit the influence of India in India-Pakistan is quite determined for it, and so paying big price with embracing the unregulated stock of terror.

The Haqqanis are the natural ally in this covert war against India-the US is enabling a meantime engagement, but the real goal of these terror networks is much dangerous, than it appears in casual looking on their mode of action. The book provides otherwise a sensible analysis of the ground realities from world’s most difficult terrain, except missing the end results of Cold War and the stake of India in the trouble surfaced post1990.

The book could have better enquired about the impact of Afghanistan’s vandalism by British/Soviets/Americans/Pakistanis/Talibanis and Haqqanis on Kashmir-the root cause of Kashmir conflict, has bigger and diverse dimensions. Ofcourse, the role of Cold War was most atrocious among them-although, the realisation is still dim on this particular aspect and probably that prolonging the unease in valley. The book is a good read, as it opens the world of terror, with no superficial hype!
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Rising Kashmir on April20,2013)

Phonic wildfires!

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Cell Phone Nation by Robin Jeffrey and Assa Doron, Hachette, 293 pp; Rs499 (Hardback)
Jeffrey is an eminent chronicler of social and business changes in India. For close to five decades, he has been keenly observing Indian affairs.

Decades back, based on his extensive research, he documented the rise of Dravidian politics in Tamil Nadu and the decline of Nair dominance in Kerala. His previous book, India’s Newspaper Revolution, meticulously chronicled the Indian language press and genuinely needs to be known as a seminal study on the social response towards diversified Indian media.

Cell Phone Nation again contextualizes India to understand the impact of the cheap mushrooming of communication devices. The claim that "the cheap mobile phone is the most disruptive device to hit humanity since shoes" hardly appears contentious, while reading the base point presented in this book.

In the history of mankind, never have any devices left so strong an impact upon socioeconomic spheres. In India, the phone is not only making and breaking customs, but effectively, it also maintains the new dynamics which have emerged as its own end result.

The most nuanced observation one can make by taking together the effects of cell phones in terms of empowerment - the way they're changing the pattern of relationships and trade - is anything but superficial. Its reach is greater than the internet, because of its affordability and easy handling, which compels users of every sort to come in terms with it. The book goes into detail how, over the years, India’s mammoth market has hosted the flood of easy communication.

By citing numerous cases of peoples from different geographies and profiles, the authors forward the easily agreeable argument that the progress the Indian economy has made since 1991 is giving the new ideas and tools, an unprecedented status.

In patches, the book deals directly with those changes; however, on many occasions, the faltering take on unrealistic businesses makes the mandate of the book a little blurred. Especially, such references could be made in mobile phone driven entrepreneurial ventures - they received more than the deserved share of kind gestures from Robin Jeffery and Assa Doron.

However, Cell Phone Nation is a realistic work and diminishes the chance of the simplification of truths. On policy issues, it takes proper notice why the telecom industry is still running far from the ideal mode of functioning.

The book furthers the debate on the cronyism that drives this industry in India. Looking on the fall of the state-run BSNL/MTNL and the exponential rise of only selected private players of this trade, the authors give ample feed on how shabbily India’s policy regime is responding within and outside its ambit.

The security concern which the large numbers of phones present has been given attention in the book. It checks the euphoria for a while; nevertheless, the spirit resumes its place once the authors see the interesting time ahead with more and more flawless communication.

Cell Phone Nation is partly an opinionated, and heavily a well-researched book, so the real picture of India’s growth in the sector comes without any fabrication. This book is worth reading by all those who have watched India’s stride in a non-simpler, globalized time.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in India America Today,March9,2013)

Jinnah vs. Gandhi and the divided dreams!

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Jinnah vs. Gandhi by Roderick Matthews, Hachette, 330pp; Rs499 (Hardback)

Soon to be published...

The flame of enterprise

Book Review: Non-fiction/Business/Memoir, Flame: The story of my mother Shahnaz Husain by Nelofar Currimbhoy, Hachette, 236 pp; Rs295 (Paperback)

Aristocratic background can’t make a flaming spirit saturated; Shahnaz Husain’s exceptional entrepreneurial journey makes the belief firmly established. She made her business plans modestly and started her further deliberations with the help of family and close friends, though rose to the rank in no time with her consistent innovation in the business of cosmetology. She and her company deserve credit for pioneering Ayurvedic beauty treatments; today it’s hardly surprising if the peoples from sixty countries are having reliance on her hundreds of beauty products. This could be inspiring for young entrepreneurs who have drive to strive best in the segment of small and medium businesses with frugally available resources and frequent odds on the way.

Nelofar, author and daughter of Shahnaz covers intricately about the mix shades of her mother’s long journey into a filed less travelled by the Indian entrepreneurs. The focussed narratives on the facts than impulses, the best quality her book has. She has learnt and lived up avidly her mother’s professionalism and spontaneity in judgement that this biography exudes well in beat and pieces. Life of an extraordinary businesswoman and a mother, both are precisely covered and in great deal it leaves momentum for readers to get in the success story with their own perspective too. Here, a less authoritative yet balanced command of biographer makes around the overtures very simple and meaningful, which enthusiasts of businesses may find apt and worth of sustained preservance.

The opening of Indian economy twenty-one years back has played formidable role in shaping of the consumer driven businesses, infact both the company-Infosys and Shahnaz could be counted among its outcome of high shot. Also they strengthen the notion that India’s business growth path is uneven and diverse through fluctuation in ‘economies of scale’, which India’s new entrepreneurial spirits correspond with the market sentiments and their end targets. Well before the present time, when business strategies are more in news for their consistent shambling drives, India also had a period of productive market experiments, when ideas indeed worked with the capitalist leverages. Without going in deep of its rational, it would be right if acknowledgement be made that entrepreneurship plays not less pivotal role than the market conditions.

Nilofar’s work will be read by the peoples from different set of profession and choices as the subject of her delineations can be correlated with all of them without stucking a tint of confronting spikes. When a noble business idea get execution well streamlined, world knows it for long as phenomenon, when not then certainly otherwise. There is nothing like sole powering of only big businesses in the domain of ideas, the good business idea and its executions is attainable to a large extent by the small/medium business too, which Shahnaz’s business confirms.

This is not the best time for growing companies, unlike few years back when ‘glitters too were resembling gold’. Situation is more compressed now with the prolonged indecisive policy approaches on the domestically generated ‘downward spiral’ in business. Whether things will be good or bad-time will tell but India’s chances are still alive in the world market, which atleast some of India’s original business practitioners is maintaining. A biography is always good if it tells the truth instead compulsively ordered letters, this book follows the previous case, so certainly it deserves to be taken in cognition by the readers. Book writing pattern is swiftly changing in India, ahead, which will be breaking the conventional settings where the conclusion could be drawn in different prisms and order!
Atul Kumar Thakur
July 26th, 2012, Thursday, New Delhi
Email: summertickets@gmail.com

Tale of neglected India!

Book Review: Fiction/ The inexplicable unhappiness of Ramu Hajjam by Taj Hasan, Hachette, 231 pp; Rs295 (Paperback)
Owing to chronic neglect, India has, in patches, its many circumscribed zones, often decoding them for knowing the real issues appeared too onerous. Also maintaining a’ sangfroid’ position is unthinkable —for both the extreme suppressers and dissents —hence, what is prevailing in the foreground is too far derailed to be called functionally rational. Raking off the resources is at alarmingly high in India’s ‘red corridors’ with the incessant proverbial follies of law executioners and adamant dissents, whose causes for fight are somehow genuine but not all antics where they are matching in the ‘play of open butchery’ with the forces of state.

Taj Hasan’s debut novel is pathbreaking as it has been written with a great degree of interface with the bottom level of socio-economic life in distant rural terrains that have been neglected and bereft of any engagement from the side of state. The author of this book is a distinguished name in the country’s police service and is equipped with a deep understanding of the nature and causes of such discontent. Thus, Hasan hardly takes the widely travelled route of formal circumspection in his narration; instead he constructs a fiction which tells everything the way any serious work of non-fiction, in its best form, would do.

It can be easily sensed from recent trends that Indian English fiction writing seems to have completely severed ties with purposive issues such as alienation, betrayal of system and the persisting tussle between growth and disavowing loud voices. The growing indifference with politics or socio-economic plots is building the charm for new fiction writing in India, which seems increasingly more unreal —if only for some exception that can sometimes be discerned. From the perspective of a thinking person, such developments are irritating, condemnable and avoidable.

The inexplicable unhappiness of Ramu Hajjam is set in the villages of Tesri and Bhagatpur on the same stretch of river Kareh. The tale moves simply through intertwining with centuries of social divisions that have made the societal structure totally amiss from any healthy prospects. The protagonist Ramu Hajjam is a part of the Indian tradition that gives a viable condition to subsist for existence and not to contradict an age old balance based on ‘social discrimination’. What he does throughout his life by facing the harsh treatments of feudal minded characters like Subedar Singh and others doesn’t restrain the successive generation in joining a course correction exercise, however, through the same language of violence.

His son joins the rank of Naxalites, kills the oppressor, though his chosen path shown to be not accepted by Ramu Hajjam, and is still bound to live a stoic life. That moral dilemma in actual terms is present in the picture of the existing conditions in many troubled villages across India which in no way have any connection with an alternative India; the one that is aspiring for a global jump by escaping its dark domestic truths. Covertly this book refers this objectionable devoid unsustainable in the medium to long run.

Written with a masterly command of literary elegance and factual correctness, this work of fiction exudes enough potential to be ranked as a reliable source for contextualising the situation from red corners. Although earlier, indeed few good books have been written on this theme within the non-fiction category by Indian polemicists or in journalistic writings, the domain of English fiction were never so resolutely involved with the radical upsurge in forgotten rural India. Hasan’s book primarily constructs a leading character, Ramu Hajjam, though simultaneously, it also captures amazingly well the whole collective world around the principal lead. This book is a big success in terms of creative engagement with the kind of ‘issues’ that should never be (considered) ‘non-issues’!
Atul Kumar Thakur
June16,2012, Saturday, New Delhi
Email: summertickets@gmail.com

Time to think!

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Time to start thinking: America and the spectre of decline by Edward Luce,Hachette/Little Brown , 292 pp; Rs699 (Hardback)
Edward Luce, formerly the Financial Times’ south Asia bureau chief based in New Delhi and now the paper's chief Washington correspondent, have done a remarkable job through this book by chronicalising the painful sides of the US with illuminating details. Luce’s meticulously researched work makes a strong case that those who doubt that the US is in decline are holding an unjustifiable position. If the decline of the US is a cause for concern, the failure of its policy establishments in responding to the change in their country’s fortunes is not less worrisome.
He vindicates a political system that is run and being motivated by money and its primary stakeholders are chasing the source of big money to stay on the ground of politics. And the mass US citizen appears like a perfect combination of apathy and fanaticism-however both the state of mind falls short of their potential and destined to rove in confusion.
The vicious combine of economic recession and political waywardness placing welfare schemes in backyard, and leaving social mobility on alarmingly low. Politicians are commonly believed as catalyst behind this whole mess, which shaped the US for a rare multitasking of trouble-making and trouble-shooting. The Republicans are single mindedly block legislation aimed to reform while promoting the interests of their wealthy cohorts.
Luce observes deadlock in Washington as the side effect of America's obstinate constitution. This constitution was framed for the system of government in pre-industrial times could not possibly be taken suitable at this age. That makes constitution ignored in practice, which further stop the reformist stances of government. Trillions of dollars have been spent in Afghanistan and Iraq, the principal result being to crush few enemies and more sovereignty of the nations. Luce here fails to see the foreign policy disasters that have caused for the US to fall from grace-this is a non-escapable weakness with this book.
The US leads the world in trade-still many agrees that companies such as Google and Facebook could emerge only in the US. However, danger is quite acute of losing its competitive edge, not least because many of the technical minds who come to the US to study are choosing to go out after they qualify rather than make a career there. This is partly because of the restrictive immigration policies but also because pay and prospects in emerging economies are starting to match or even pass those in the US.
Luce's book is a call to thinking, but the US is grappling through impractical ideas and myths. The country once has celebrated globalisation as a new process in which the US capitalism was replicated throughout the world. But as new synthesis of capitalism come on to the scene in the course of time, America's relative economic position is set to decline. Even if the US could somehow be reformed and its policy-making reset, this would not change much now.
The author’s take that challenges are not unique for the US seems right. Indeed its difficulties are not radically distinct from those all developed countries face in responding to the new global economic structuring. Only fundamental difference in the US has from the rest other that it can strive to defy the normal course of history that is unfortunate and out of reach from any course correction. Book is worth of serious read; those who still dreaming American dreams can find it little extra harsh!
Atul Kumar Thakur
June 16th, Saturday 2012, New Delhi
Email: summertickets@gmail.com