This is appeasement not peace. Yet, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to US President Barrack Obama for reasons which are baffling. Recipients of the same prize, namely the Dalai Lama and Barrack Hussein Obama, ironically cannot meet as it might discombobulate a delicate international order. Perhaps the Norwegian Nobel Prize committee was rewarding Obama for not launching a war under false pretexts the way his predecessor George W. Bush did just nine months into office. Otherwise, Obama has achieved nothing except for an exaggerated engagement with the Islamic world.

According to the Daily Telegraph, an “Obamameter” run by the political accountability organization PolitiFact lists “seven broken promises, a dozen stalled initiatives and 117 pet projects still ‘in the works.’”

The Nobel award is symptomatic of all that is wrong with our system.

Our standards are literally being shortened. There is a duality of metrics that separates the rulers from the ruled. When the ruler fails to deliver, a prestigious award provides the fix.

One class sports a long list of titles, awards, “achievements” and those meaningless two-, three-lettered acronyms on ponderous coattails while the other class desperately cling on to the hems for their daily crumbs.

We live in an SMS world defined by abbreviated value-added jargons (VAJ) like ROIs, ERPs, KPIs and thousands of other acronyms that favour paper credentials over knowledge, Ponzi schemes over gold and venality over industry.

One class throws out such jargons, titles and acronyms as yardsticks that others should live by. When ruination knocks at the door, it is the agenda setters and the main culprits who walk away with the fat bonus.

It is not easy to shake off the power of acronyms. If they were alive today, Sigmund Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays may have used them in case studies of population control.

There is power in stilted vocabularies. In a corporate meeting, jargons are routinely resorted by one clueless group to beat the senses of another. Statistics and glossy power points are shoved down your throat. Few seek clarity. No one wants to be seen as a hick. Resolutions are finally passed. Over time, it leads to pseudo-sciences within the once respectable socio-economic fields of study.

Abbreviated terms of reference (TOR) are great trinkets for a self-delusional professional rabble. They revel in the mass-manufactured credentials available at schools, universities and e-bay.

In the end, we have an acute global talent shortage in a world brimming with paper qualifications.

Ever heard of the search consultant who slogged more than a year to find a suitable vice president for an international bank? Standards were high; the two-, three-lettered credentials required would fill up a page, including the never advertised GF – Good Family. (If you applied these standards to the military, a field medic is not allowed to man the 20-mm gun at a crucial point in battle).

Six months later, the bank collapsed! Few four-flushers at this bank knew what was going on. Their tasks were neatly delineated. Yet, armed with their vaunted acronyms, they are free to peddle their rattlesnake oil elsewhere. They are in demand as, like Obama, they can promise the world and con the common man into parting with their future.

Welcome to the real world. Like the financial world, “notional” and “fiat” flips into “real.”

War becomes peace! Fiction becomes fact. The worrying signs are there. A startling number of Britons actually consider Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi to be fictional characters while they vouch for the authenticity of Baker Street’s Sherlock Homes!

The Daily Mail hypothesizes that such ignorance “could well have something to do with the TV insurance adverts inviting viewers to ‘challenge Churchill’ and featuring a lugubrious talking dog.”

That’s the power to sell. The power of fictional imagery! According to a Wall Street Journal report, an astonishing 61% of sub-prime loans were palmed off to those who actually qualified for a conventional loan. The problem lies not with greed per se, but with Key Performance Indexes (KPIs) governing the Job Descriptions (JDs) of bank executives. To meet such metrics, they have to inveigle large quantities of loans in the shortest possible time to achieve maximum profit.

A computerized database of such performances sifts out the “high achievers” from the “underperformers,” the conmen from the common men and, in some instances, the barely literate from the educated. Your worth is spelt out in stats and acronyms. Every trick is employed under the veneer of letters to cheat the uninitiated.

These charlatans set the universal discourse for civilized behaviour, educational standards and career achievements.

The most pressing task for the CEO of America Inc is a financial one. How will he deal with a one quadrillion dollar plus (more than 1,000 trillion) derivatives market that is waiting to explode? It is largely an American creation. The Chinese are threatening to default on a fraction of them and a few trillion in defaults is enough to sink the Western Economy.

Nobel Economics laureates will tell you it is all business as usual, and the bulls are being warmed up for the mother of all matador markets (MOAMM). It is only matter of time…

Time, however, is revealing a disturbing reality.

The Obama Record

Has Obama brought peace to Afghanistan or is he building up troops there? Read the news. The Taliban writ runs throughout half of Afghanistan and slowly, across the western half of Pakistan. Has Muqtada Al-Sadr kissed the cheeks of his Sunni and Kurdish brethren in Iraq with a salam? Isn’t Pakistan’s Jihad Inc. run with US-supplied weaponry?

Why are the entities known as Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda still free to thread the terror mill? Why hasn’t the United States sued for peace and diplomatic ties with neighbouring, little Cuba when it can tolerate every gross human rights violation in China?

If Obama is afraid of Turkish sensitivities over a century-old Armenian genocide, can he be expected to stand up for international justice today?

Has Obama brought universal healthcare to millions of Americans who can’t afford it? How are the deteriorating manufacturing and employment sectors measuring up to reality? Do the marginalized need another sound bite or another lying statistic to reassure them that things are shaping up?

Will the deteriorating value of the US dollar prompt Washington to embark on another Persian Gulf adventure? Every major war in history was fuelled by the re-liquidation needs of an empty treasury. Like the psychology of acronyms, the casus belli is buried under jargons, lies and patriotic grunts.

ROI, ERP, KPI, T-Bill …CIC, Rah, Rah Rah!¹ Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!

The historical progression is time-tested. When financial systems collapse under the weight of fraudulent practice, it is time for a Fuhrer to step in with catchphrases. They will be earthy and populist and will be addressed to a horde of the disenchanted.

And the clueless!

Let’s face it. This is the first modern generation not to have produced a Nikola Tesla, an Albert Einstein, or a financial whiz who can match the genius of Nikolai Kondratieff. Or how about a Mahatma Gandhi who was rejected five times for the Nobel Peace Prize? Maybe things were not rigid then. Einstein could not fix his hair right, Gandhi wore a loincloth. People could think!

Obama sets Gandhi as his standard. It is a clichéd fashion statement. The contrast cannot be depicted with sufficient brevity. One was born to privilege but “came down” to his true roots. The other was fast-tracked out of a ghetto possibility to the presidency of the United States. It was something unreal and remains so, much like Obama’s tinsel-tinged predecessors.

Mahatma Gandhi eschewed violence. He brought down the greatest empire ever through non-cooperation, by boycotting the financial foundations of Imperial rule. His actions triggered self-rule and independence for many nations. He fought for the poor and wanted them to live in dignity.

Obama the Nobel Peace laureate may turn out to be the anti-Gandhi. Out of the crumbling foundations of our financial system, he and his cohorts must do something. The metrics of today leave him little choice. There is no thinking outside the box.

Instead of fortifying the nation-state, Obama may dissolve them for a borderless commune. Force will be met by force, violence will increase and the foundations of a New World Order will be built on the ashes of the faceless poor.

The Norwegians must have given that award to prevent this spectre.

1. It was this American cheerleading phrase which Adolph Hitler adopted into his Sieg Heil (Hail Victory) Nazi rallies.

There cannot be Christmas without children. On Dec 25, you will truly appreciate this paraphrase: “The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to children.”

On this day, children all over the world turn color blind to appreciate the pastel-perfect joys of Santa Claus and his reindeers, Yule logs burning by the fireplace, sylvan snow-topped cabins with their smoky chimneys, and ornamented Christmas trees with presents piled up. There may be Christmas carol sorties into your home, bringing much mirth and the familiar Ho! Ho! Ho!

Never had such a transplanted festival create a sense of oneness among children. Take away Christmas and you take away a seasonal joy entitled to them. It is so innately appealing to children that they universally provide the finest celebratory squeals in honor of the most famous birth ever recorded — and contested — in history.

Wherever there is a Santa, a Christmas tree or carols sung, few adult killjoys dare reprimand children that none of the scenes and lilts of nativity are well, native.

Christmas traditions had drifted to much of the world on crests of colonial waves. The sinews of raw power may be flexed to determine new rulers, codicils, industries and taxations but in its veins flow a more permanent infusion of culture, languages and traditions. Take away some newer traditions and you will be up against an army of children. Or, adults for that matter.

If you are one to ponder over alien semiotics and cultural subversion as some philosophers do, listen to the lyrics of the Spanish-English carol Donde Esta Santa Claus. When the tempo nears its apogee, hark ye the Ole! Ole! Ole! There is nothing Christian in this. In fact, even today, few Spaniards — frenzied football and matador fans alike — realize that the trademark Iberian rally cry literally invoke (the intervention of) Allah! Allah! Allah! It is tradition that goes back a millennium to the Moorish Caliphates of Spain.

Traditions are our heritage.

Christmas may come in nuanced forms, but the one which universally prevailed is the Germanic variant. If you have a plastic Christmas tree bedecked with lights and decorations, play a soft “O’ Tannenbaum” (O’ Fir Tree) to enliven the atmosphere. The song is better known as “O’ Christmas Tree” in another Germanic tongue — English. Even the Vienna Choir Boys, purveyors of the finest caroling traditions, switch between both languages to stamp the Teutonic nature of a universal Christmas.

And touching on Vienna, the city lies on a cultural fault line that has a bearing on Christmas. It was here that the great Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich made a startling observation: Asia begins at the Landstrasse (a street in Vienna).

He was right.

Move eastwards and Dec 25 is postponed by the stubborn chronometry of the Julian calendar to Jan 6 or 7. This is the day when much of Orthodox Christianity celebrates Christmas, from Belgrade to Athens to Moscow to Istanbul. Only in a non-Christian Jerusalem can there be three Christmases celebrated by legacy custodians — on Dec 25, Jan 6 and Jan 7.

The failure to celebrate Christmas together is no mere calendrical curio; it is a truncated event that that symbolizes a splintered Christendom. Croatians and Serbs may share a common tongue and may have intermarried beyond overt differentiation, but they remain age-old nemeses.

It gets deeper. Despite their common European heritage, Americans and Russians display a mutual suspicion that is so primeval, and so ingrained that it could not have sprung from 80 years of Bolshevism. (They are both market capitalists today).

It is primeval allright, dating back to 1054AD when the Eastern Church balked at the ecclesiastical demands of Roman Catholicism. The split was venomous and even today, long after the subsequent protestant and charismatic revolutions within the Church, ingrained prejudices remain colored by the Roman lens.

This event led to centuries of biased theological scholarship and a subsequent obscuring of Dec 25.

The intellectuals, the rationalists and the logicians would scoff at them all. It is all there recorded in the pages of history: Dec 25 was a Roman tribute to Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (The Birthday of the Unconquered Sun)!

Case closed. Christmas is pagan. Sorry kids!

Actually, not so fast…Ho! Ho! Ho!

Roots of the Historical Christmas

The birth and life of Jesus is now dubbed the “Greatest Story Ever Told.” It sounds like a fantastical bedtime story, ideal for kids but little more.

Adults though have a problem unlike children. In their quest for meaning, they still want to believe in something. This story is an archetype that echoes through their consciousness, in movies, in books, and in deeds. Anyone who has ever stopped to help a stricken neighbor, or who had embraced those deemed unworthy, hopeless or condemned relives that story.

It goes back to Eden.

According to ancient accounts, a Divine plan was activated to salvage man from his own folly, rebellion, and inability to take dominion of the earth in a state of harmony.

Thus, a part of the Divine Himself would be born in human form, to sow the seeds of truth and salvation. This was leadership by living example and ultimately, through sacrificial death. Christians believe Jesus was the One.

To man then, as it is today, life meant warfare. He had to either cut down or undercut his neighbor to maintain an existential equilibrium. Call it the Global Trinity where there must be a victor, a subject, and a collateral damage. It was, and remains, a dog eat dog world, even when the crumbs get fewer.

Old plots are rehashed perennially in new guises.

If the year 2009 promises uncertainty, be advised: The same failed success stories — no oxymoron here — are still around, regrouping in another guise to build another towering eyrie out of the rubble of their latest failed enterprise.

There is nothing new under the sun, as the wise King Solomon would say.

The starkest ancient account of this enterprise was the Tower of Babel project, where, the most intelligent of men saw the need for order, with One Religion, One Language, One Financial Standard, and One Code of Laws to govern, and exert dominion over mankind.

Sounds familiar?

If you like surrendering your life — even your thought life — to an elite few, this idea might appeal to you. Think of it! No more ethno-religious wars, no more terrorism, no more “Us vs Them” as everything is adjudicated by the ones “Above.”

And there will be free-for-all welfare! Those who resist this, or who believe in some Bethlehem fairy tale should be struck by Jardis of Narnia.

Communism failed folks, and some of its high priests have turned into hedge fund managers, sub prime stars, and AAA+ consecrated Ivy Leaguers that an irreligious Dow Jones just fails to apotheosize, just as the plebeians failed to appreciate Marxism earlier. There has to be greater order, greater enforcement, and greater scrutiny. Nothing less than a New World Order.

The Bible says God saw through such thoughts; that man will never stop unleashing violence before introducing order to beleaguered souls.

Thus, he sent not a conquering King to wipe out a corrupt order and establish “peace” but someone from a long line of shepherds. His ways are not our ways.

The biblical Joseph, who eventually saved Egypt, was a shepherd. David, the greatest king ever, was another shepherd of Jesus’ bloodline. The patriarch Abraham, who started it all, was a shepherd.

In Paulo Coelho’s magnum opus The Alchemist, the mysterious Melchizedek and Arab sages appear to remind the protagonist, a shepherd boy, that his treasure hunt was a quest worthy of shepherds. The Divine favors shepherds and one from among them even became the King of Kings, so he was told.

The Way of the Shepherd

Shepherds lead their flock to green pastures and still waters, though a narrow and winding path, whenever necessary. The path less-trodden is a metaphor for a way of life.

Think of the denouement in the Sound of Music, of children clambering up an Alpine redoubt, and it is comforting to hope that in fiery trials, there may appear a shepherd to lead the stricken to safety.

Furthermore, the permanence of the pastoral setting is the antithesis of the human Ziggurat. The latter crumbles eventually, needing bailouts in their trillions for a “reconstruction project.” It is all glitzy and expensive, needing blood for cement, bones for bricks, sweat for mortars, and tears for failing.

I would rather think of a manger, of a real menagerie with horses, mules, donkeys and — a long time back — the baby Jesus himself. At least for now. His first honored visitors were coincidentally…shepherds.

And what about Dec 25?

The year of Jesus birth has been rightly contested and there is no way he could have been born on Dec 25. The activity of the shepherds, who were informed of his birth, suggest an earlier month, preferably September. Nine months prior would have been December when the word became flesh (conceived), as the Bible puts it.

This then is the shocker: Dec 25 may have been the date of Jesus’ conception. There is a growing body of research which indicate this, after traditions are detached from their dubious dogma. For a quick synoptic account, follow the shepherd’s trail at Michaemas and see where that leads…¹

Merry Christmas everyone!

1. Cf. with Gary Leupp, “Celebrating the True Meaning of December 25: Happy Birthday Mithras!” Dissident Voice, 25 December 2005.

This campaign has been disrobed to the level of slipshod slip-ups.

The initial kerfuffle generated by the $150,000 spent on the Palin wardrobe has now degenerated into a scandalous $22,800 paid to the vice presidential candidate’s make-up artiste, Amy Strozzi.

Don’t blame Strozzi. She is a professional who commands a high fee and comes with an enviable reputation. Few can transform a pitbull into a vice presidential candidate overnight with the right lipstick and hairdo. Good talent is hard to come by these days, and Strozzi has a better grasp of fashion than Sarah Palin has on her politics.

By the time this campaign is over, Palin’s cosmetic expenditure should cross above $200,000. That is more spent here on skirts, shoes and hairpins than on John McCain’s foreign policy bluster.

To be fair, Randy Scheunemann — McCain’s foreign policy kook — deserved no more than the perfunctory $12,500 that he didn’t need anyway.

Besides, when viewed clinically, this breakdown of expenses does justice to reflect Palin’s grasp of international affairs vis-a-vis her impressively blossoming sartorial expertise.

However, where is the hockey mom in this Barbied-up doll? Common folks are supposed to identify with this person but the only thing they got was the double entendre of “Drill Baby, Drill!”

They loved it. Palin looked like someone they could never be, and by voting her in, they can vicariously join the makeover enterprise.

Take a look at the women chosen to gush over Palin during the Republican National Convention, and you will understand the swooning power of comparative, visual propaganda.

“Drill baby, drill!”

Oil may have fallen to the $60s range, but that slogan remains valid. Wall St, Main St, the US public and the rest of the world will be screwed unremittingly till there are no holes left in any one of us.

The evangelical conservatives may have (mis)calculated the cosmetic appeal vis-à-vis the growing bread and butter realities, which, now affects almost 90 per cent of the population. Forget Neiman Marcus and Saks where Palin shopped in a huffy; even Walmart is a definite luxury these days.

There is little loose change in a world where both Republican and Democratic candidates rant about a “change” that the hoi polloi can “believe” in. The prevalent fear now is another Great Depression. Plummeting industrial, commodities and stocks markets are dragging us away to the precipice of no return.

Workers are being laid off in droves, and many will be laid bare – on the streets. But as Marie Antoinette famously said: “Let them eat cake.”

The McCain-Palin circus is one without the bread. We get to see a nice dressing, topped by a deliciously crusty and scintillating icing that has no leftover value for the masses. Pro-life candidates who take much pride in their anti-abortion stance have not done anything to alleviate the plight of pregnant mothers – ever.

Furthermore, don’t they know that pregnant women are medically prone to lose their babies in a world of financial duress?

Anyway, what is the plan to protect unborn babies? I have not seen the details, especially when it comes to either state support or funding.

Palin’s track record is just that: An appropriately named son and a dodgy record that is being assiduously traced to the delight of tabloids. That spoor trail leads back to Troopergate, Third Reich-style vetting of library books and the question of why a pregnant Palin took more than 22 hours – including a flight from Texas, and a drive from anchorage — to see a doctor after developing contractions with amniotic fluid leakage at a Dallas energy conference.

How many pro-life mothers would wait that long, especially when carrying a vulnerable baby diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome?

It gets better.

In Palin’s and evangelist James Dobson’s universe, unwed teenage pregnancy has morphed into a “celebration of life” religion that needs universal embrace in keeping with the times.

And have you heard the lament that parents just can’t control their children these days? It is the fault of the goddamn liberal media which, continually poisons the minds of young ones. Only Fox News broadcasts the pristine truth.

After all, Fox’s parent company, News Corp, also owns the bible-publishing house of Zondervan, and… the lucrative DirectTV porn channels.

When parents, politicians and the church make such sleazy compacts, children are literally left holding their babies, and evangelists are routinely caught with their pants down.

Another naked truth

I wonder what the McCain-Palin team plans to do with the porn industry? Like News Corp that bundles its weak fleshes, seductive spirits, and dreadful news into a super prime financial empire, porn and conservatism often go hand in hand. Rick Warren counts himself as the personal pastor of News Corp moghul Rupert Murdoch.

If porn is banned, many evangelical finances will run dry. It is not going to happen. The sheep must be trodden by the goats in the natural selection of species till restitution cometh on Judgment Day.

You think the McCain-Palin team will have to gall to overturn the Miller vs California (1973) ruling that opened the floodgates to laissez-faire porn?

It is easy to take on Roe vs Wade (significantly, also 1973) in public, though 20 years of Republican rule since Ronald Reagan had done squat to ban abortion. It is an emotive electoral slogan that pulls enough wool over the sheeple’s eyes, and this time around they are glazed by the impossibility of a quadrillion dollar derivatives market propped by a global GDP worth a piddling $54 trillion, and falling by the day.

Is this a change we can believe in? It is not a matter of belief; it is history transpiring right now. Even Fox News cannot hide the graphic downward slides of Dow Jones. But who knows? When hunger strikes, we may be enjoined to the chorus of “Drill baby, drill!”

Roe vs Wade will not be that important in the coming weeks and months. When a house is built on sand, it will crash with the next big tide.

Anyway, even if abortion is banned, it is poor who will still hold the baby. Palin blazed the way by slashing financial support for unwed teen mothers early this year. Months later, her teen daughter is pregnant. Is this divine retribution for parasitizing compassionate conservatism?

How many teen mothers can afford the lifestyle and limelight enjoyed by Bristol Palin and her impregnator, Levi Johnston? It is easy to drill the poor and screw them up with conservative value sloganeering while not walking the talk.

The final step would be to drill the White middle class out of existence, as a significant number among them represent compassionate conservatism in its realistic, non-hypocritical form. The present financial crisis will do just that – to remove this moral restraint from the American public sphere forever.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at the demographic composition of the top US and British universities at the post-grad level. There are more foreigners in there getting the best of Western education, and they do not have to tramp through five colleges in six years. Sarah Palin has not learnt from her own experience, and like many of her background, morality and patriotism are pegged to the value of the dollar.

These are the naked contradictions of conservatism, or should we call them the bare, thinly-draped facts? To walk the extra mile to a new audience, they need a wardrobe of suitably moral sequins to play up the right occasion. This is a closet change we can surely believe in, for the worse.

The breadlines may be getting longer, but tell that to Cindy McCain. Her $300,000 outfit at the Republican National Convention clearly reeked of an appalling perception management blunder on the part of the organizers.

Either that, or it was electoral hubris at its best Sure, she is a rich heiress but the whole catwalk exuded a lack of sensitivity towards people who were struggling with loan defaults and unemployment.

As for Palin, she claims that the Republican party had bought — and owns — her wardrobe. Implicit in her now trademark double-speak is that this is a lend-lease arrangement that will expire post-election. The goods, if I infer correctly, must be returned to Republican Party Hq, where, they may be placed on Exhibit A, sharing the spotlight with a Diebold machine.

However, what happens to the $12,000-$15,000 spent on her lingerie? Will they be auctioned off, post-January? The perfect attire comes with a perfect blend, and the costs are symmetrically perfect as well.

Those who may be tempted to view me as a voyeuristic jerk do receive an open apology in advance. I was once a national math Olympian for my school and haven’t yet shaken off a lingering conditioned impulse towards statistical breakdowns. I like the barest figures.

Even a peep-hole will not reveal any fresh initiatives from either camp. The only thing that catches my eye in this circus of “change” is the fashion statement, be they a maverick hoax, a pair of hyper-waxed legs or a colored guy with a colorless campaign.

If I were an American, I’d vote for the moose. Both parties had better candidates, but the puppeteers were the same.

Why am I concerned? If the United States crumbles, it is bad for democracies everywhere. With candidates like these, prepare for a more militaristic world.

The attire then will come in uniforms. That is the real change we can ominously believe in!

With such a guarantee — printed on a Malaysia Airlines e-ticket no less — a man can thread where few natives dare venture in Mumbai. I was going to Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum.

Think of a shantytown that may host up to 1 million inhabitants in one tiny square mile, and you will understand the anywhere-but-Dharavi hesitations I had encountered during my previous two trips to Mumbai.

“This is not the real India,” I was frequently told…

I desperately needed an Indiana Jones, an adventurer, or anyone who can be piqued by the prospect of re-discovering Dharavi first-hand.

That timely quality was found in 25-year-old budding film director Geoffrey Mathews, who stayed just across the street. He had only peripheral encounters with Dharavi until that morning, despite it being a 50-minute bus or train ride away from our abodes in Belapur, Navi Mumbai.

The gateway to Dharavi begins at a suburb called Sion, and that was where we alighted for our first-hand encounter.

I remarked to Geoffrey that it meant “Zion” in French, and he corrected me that it was a corruption of Sheev in the native Marathi. Did the famed Baghdadi Sassoons or some colonial-era bureaucrat decide on the ingenious English diptych? I would never know.

In any case, it was a fitting tribute to India’s unparalleled hospitality, spanning 2,500 years for exiled Jews, and 2,000 years for Christians.

However, we were not walking up the mystical Mt Zion that day, not to the City of God where no pain hunger, tears and death existed.

We were going to a place so mortal that unrelenting misery and squalor was the residential promise. I was reminded of the reams written on Kolkata’s Anand Nagar, which, translates to the “City of Joy” in English and as a tutorial on the word “oxymoron.”

From Sion, an ancient taxi dropped us off at the requested location that was not unusual in its scale of decrepitude. Run-down neighborhoods in India take a turn for the worse before they are reincarnated as an avatar of redevelopment.

“So, where are the slums? Where is Dharavi?”

We were, in fact, already in the midst of it when that the question was posed. Periodic signboard checks served as a confirmation.

However, this was not the slum we expected. Instead of rows upon rows of makeshift plastic hovels straddling construction sites in India, this place was a labyrinth of grocery shops, tailors, pharmacies, private medical practices, metal works, leather tanneries and so on.

Men were scurrying about from tiny alleys to conduct business for the day. Ungulates, dazed by the daily grind and scorching heat, were leaving an unsolicited pungent trail wherever they trod. Not to be outdone, the women and children reversed this bovine intrusion with a fresh breeze of banter, and humanity.

There was, roughly, a sanitation facility for every 1,000 residents here. The acidic air constantly wafts over to nearby Bandra, where, they tend to twitch uppity noses and blur cognitive functions. When this happens, geriatric men dart off to foreign jaunts, becoming “college students” who prance around things more green, refreshing and nubile, year after year!

This is the world of Bollywood! A tinsel reality diametrically opposed to the rag realism of Dharavi.

Living in impossible conditions, and making life possible is an art perfected in Dharavi. They could have chosen the life of sleaze and ease, but preferred the narrow, winding and putrid alleys instead.

While we walked, no one accosted us for money, drugs or women. Not even for the export-quality leather products manufactured here. They all knew I was a foreigner — such is the uncanny Indian discernment — and had no objections to my camera snooping into their one-room shacks and shops.

They had nothing to hide except their industry. This was not Mexico, I reminded myself; this is was the India of initiatives.

Geoffrey was sure that the despite the squalor, the governments of India and the state of Maharasthra, had done “something” for this place. A public toilet built courtesy of a local Rotary Club bears testament to some external intervention.

Children did not look malnourished and seemed a world away from their earlier counterparts under British rule. According to author Kalpana Sharma, a railway line existed here once that ferried British troops from one cantonment to another. The children of Dharavi looked forward to such transits and more so the food tossed out by the praetorian guards of alien rule.

Dharavi, however, possessed a steely, vintage resolve to ride out the wave of the future rather than to wait on the stasis of handouts.

Due to time-space constraints, there was little room for false pride. When not tending to their small-scale industries, Dharavi’s offspring pursue surprising professional and educational dreams. Superhuman odds get bigger when doors open for a respectable exit to the outside world. Here pragmatism called for the use of a proxy address in case the addressee was a Bandra native returning for arthritic treatment or cosmetic overdose.

My camera revealed a few other things. If this place were crime-ridden, the local mob would not have tolerated snapshots. In such cramped conditions, crime can cascade into a communal disaster, bringing life and industry to a halt.

For this sandwich of humanity came from a Babel of Tamil, Gujarati, Utter Pradeshi, Muslim and Hindu.

I deduced that the crime rate in Dharavi could not be much higher than the rest of Mumbai. The faces here revealed no anger, fatalism, or despair. Kismet was not eternal toil, but every opportunity that rose from the sales of incense sticks, poppadams and toys.

I could not help remarking to Geoffrey that the children of Dharavi needed only specialized English tuitions to go places. Surely, some NGO had already thought that up? In such a uniquely-Indian cauldron, Dharavi sons and daughters would have a faster learning curve, ahead of counterparts in a more sanitized city. Personally, this seemed slam-dunk.

The people of India, after all, are the most culturally adaptable in the world. When in Rome, they not only do as the Romans do, they can compete on half-chances. There is no need of an affirmative action or “cultural diversity” policy to state their case, top their class, or build their careers. Think of an impossibly young Piyush “Bobby” Jindal as an equally impossible vice president of the United States?

When discriminated, as they are in much of Asia, there are no nationally debilitating backlashes, no suicide bombings, and no insurgencies to alleviate grievances. If “culture” is defined by particular reactions to “struggle,” then its cornerstone must be industry.

If such “culture” can be maintained, the arterial lifelines of any hellhole can produce exports worth more than US$1 billion per annum, as they do in Dharavi.

Actually, they do more. This dumping ground of humanity even ploughs back its cesspool of wastes. Many thriving industries exist here to recycle discarded plastics, car batteries and electronic components back to the commercial process. They are hazardous undertakings but they do more for resource management — and the environment — than what 10,000 talking heads can achieve at the Bali Conference for Climate Change.

This is what defines “culture.” Up north, in another slum in Delhi, an army of rag pickers routinely strip, mold and stitch up scavenged material into colorful bags that fetch up to 70 euros at fancy European boutiques.

This initiative of Shalabh and Anita Ahuja is matched only by the industrial efficiency of Mumbai’s dabbawallas, whose daily transportation of lunch boxes could not accommodate a curious peek from Prince Charles during a visit in 2003 (it was the other way around).

Some skills will remain evergreen in a world of financial meltdowns and resources crunches.

If affluent markets shut down, Indians will buy slum-manufactured products for much less than 70 euros. (Most already do, unknowingly). Skilled hands may work in deplorable conditions, but they are needed for all worlds, for all times. For an extreme analogy, think of Nazi or Communist death camps. The ones spared were usually smiths, tailors and shoemakers!

This history lesson is often lost. During the Great Depression, a burgeoning consumer culture regressed into a “mender culture.” Fewer things were sold for profit as industry tilted to fixing and patching items already possessed.

If such trying times repeated itself today, would our metropolises cope with the new demand-dictated realities?

Mumbai, or in any other Indian city, can achieve that. In Navi Mumbai, it cost me just $1 to re-patch my cargo shorts and replace the zipper for a Calvin Klein bag. In Kuala Lumpur, I would get the odd stare for a similar enquiry, while I would probably get brand new replicas stitched up for $2 in Dharavi, if the materials are supplied.

Anywhere else, you just dumped items that could otherwise be prolonged — through good stitching — by a few years.

In the “new fuel order,” cities that had supplanted their patch-and-mend industries with spanking new malls will be bereft of an umbilical, economic lifeline. Or else, they can re-pack these emptying malls with the menders of consumer items, which, is not as easy as it sounds.

High rentals and manpower shortage preclude such a possibility. This is where underground sweatshops might proliferate to meet the value-for-money demand and supply, in turn, organized crime.

The contention that skyrocketing fuel costs might realign the global trading structure in favor of regional and local economies discount one rudimentary factor: some basic skills are on the endangered list in affluent societies.

I know one tailor in the United Kingdom whose order books have been increasing of late. Specializing in curtains and cushions, her embroidery work is now on the native endangered list, and she can proudly boast of a rare — and certified — qualification.

Just what do they teach in schools these days? Have our Ivory Tower dreams displace skills deemed plebeian? Just how does an “advanced society” plug such gaping holes in its skills bank? The choice one day might boil down to either skilled immigration or organized crime.

That is why Dharavi did not look so hopeless that day. Whatever the future holds, the people here will continue to manufacture kitchen utensils and furniture, stitch garments, repair shoes, mould pottery, and meet basic household needs. They might even assemble computers from recycled components in an inflationary world.

They are poised to undercut the profits of larger industries that manufacture these products, and this inevitably raises the specter of existential threats to the likes of Dharavi.

Thankfully, the state and central government here have approved an ambitious US$2.3 billion Dharavi Redevelopment Project to transform the area into a self-sustaining township. Close to 4,500 small-scale industries are slated to be rehabilitated under the plan, and most importantly, they will fix and patch any hole in a resource-challenged society.

Just how many metropolises have that capability, I wonder?

For an outsider facing another one of life’s crossroads that day, the experience was a sobering reminder that the first might be last, and the last — first.

There was something mystical after all when we alighted from Sion station that day.

We are witnessing nothing less than history’s first confluence of unsustainable “peaks.”

Perhaps, we are incapable of piecing them all, for when crude oil reached an all-time intra-day high of $84.10 per barrel on Sept 20, its entitlement to a front pager screamer was conceded to the tale of a few thousand empty — or emptying — American homes.

It was like the Butterfly Effect, with a twist. The flapping rooftops of confiscated homes were now whipping up an economic tsunami worldwide.

Here is how it works.

US mortgage lenders, voracious as ever for “more,” had extended loans to the default-income group, who, were in turn hit by bad economic management. Credit card issuers followed suit to bloat consumer fantasies, and banks tightened the noose with additional loans for cars, tuition and businesses.

In the world of finance, debt is ironically regarded as an “asset.” Think of the rock-solid house that can be repossessed in the event of a default.

Debts, with the outward promise of a steady cash flow, are regularly pooled, “securitized” and converted into a bewildering array of financial products along an upward chain, where, they are hawked off by fund managers to the global market

This money buys up commodities, stocks, and yes, more “securities and derivatives,” along with junk bonds and blue chips.

It was easy come, easy go, wherever the money takes you…a 24/7 electronic casino…a Las Vegas without borders.

London bankers were toasting to the dawn of “the haves and the have yachts” at cocktail parties where sauvé qui peut was the vintage.

One of the greatest scams in recent memory was unfolding, exposing a pyramid scheme of epic proportions.

When this reached the point of metastasis, stock markets began to collapse.

The bottom feeders could not pay up anymore. Even the middle class were finding it difficult to pass the buck upwards.

This is called a liquidity crisis, and it happens when the laws of gravity finally exert a pull on the cash flow.

Still the champagne flowed. Lip-smacking advertorials continued to gush over “securities,” “derivatives,” and “comprehensive financial suites,” set in a Jacuzzi lilting to Ponzi’s version of “money for nothing and chicks for free.”

The pyramids may come crashing down, but the missing capstones are free to roam, investing in gold here, financial products there and junk bonds everywhere.

To avert a panic run though, central banks worldwide pumped $400 billion to maintain liquidity’s equilibrium.

Stock markets were no longer in the bearish or bullish mode; rather they were cancroidal, allowing fund managers to sidewheel from one market to another in search of profits, suckers, and a subtle pullout before the big bang.

It was the dawn of the crab, of cancer in stock market terminology, if one was needed. Suspicions were mounting. European banks were facing insolvency.

For three days beginning Sept. 14, savers across the United Kingdom removed £2 billion ($4 billion) from Northern Rock, Britain’s fifth largest lender. The Bank of England had to step in to guarantee all deposits in all banks — a move with little or no precedence.

However, the banks were not convinced either. Inter-bank lending, which profitably cycled cash from one bank to another as demand dictated, was now deemed an inter-bank debt trap. Available cash was hoarded up.

The Bank of England’s cash auction of £10bn — at a rate of 6.75% over three-months — has been shunned for the third consecutive week.

Either the “have yachts” have sailed away, or banks may actually find it difficult to repay the Bank of England.

Worldwide, the full weight of the “asset-backed” collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and structured investment vehicles (SIVs) may run into more than the $400 billion which central banks coughed up to keep the system afloat.

CDOs and SIVs are the sleek-sounding trillion-dollar apexes built on loans taken from simple homeowners.

Banks are still tallying what is real and redeemable, and what was created and whirling in thin air. Their best bet now is for a deux ex machina.

Bull in the China Shop

The biggest economic success story of our times was the product of Western consumerism. It created a real supply and demand situation, which forced the relocation of factories to the Third World of cheap labor.

China was the champion recipient. Demand for toys, screws, machinery, computers and cellphones could never ebb, whether it came leaded or unleaded. Beijing’s policymakers decided that the perennial flow of greenbacks demanded a domestic infrastructural revolution dictated by the export market — a first in history if there was one.

Factories, coal-fired plants, superhighways, skyscrapers were springing up at breakneck speed to fulfill the export craze. Excessive pollution and the plight of “unregistered” migrant workers from rural China mattered little.

What mattered were prestige, kickbacks and $1.2tr in hard currency-based reserves. It did not matter that China’s domestic consumption vis a vis its GDP was actually decreasing; it was more a matter of consumer opiates, of who was boss in the center of the universe.

It did not matter that Chinese cities were shrouded in toxic gray, where “only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.”¹

The Chinese may cough but the ‘days when the world caught a cold whenever Uncle Sam sneezed was over.” Or so it seemed.

Uncle Sam sneezed.

Global finance began hemorrhaging, and it had to be resuscitated through an intravenous flow of taxpayer money.

Western consumers finally realized that girths had to be tightened, and what to better way than to curb spending, and let a market correction take place in the import sector.

An entire supply chain leading to China’s factories are in danger of folding up. Mineral resources from Africa, semiconductor plants in Malaysia, raw textile products elsewhere, now face acute market uncertainty.

China is in a bad fix. However, this is not deterring factories from coming online next year to meet the projected “global demand.” If Western consumers are scaling down their purchases, Africans are not in a position to be the replacement buyers, and without a market, they will not be able to sell their raw products either.

In such circumstances, moods can shift. When “Beijing rolled out the red carpet for more than 40 African heads of state last November, billboards depicting Africans clad in leopard skin underwear, and an indigenous man from Papua New Guinea, plastered the city.”² It is no wonder that China’s list of “allies” is getting shorter by the day.

Events in Myanmar are not proving helpful. China enjoys a near monopoly over Myanmar’s estimated 2.46 trillion cubic meters of gas and 3.2 billion barrels of crude oil. Beijing had plans to develop two parallel oil and gas pipelines stretching 2,380-km to link the deepwater port of Sittwe to Kunming, in the Chinese province of Yunnan. Upon completion, a good portion of Middle Eastern oil and gas is expected to bypass the Straits of Malacca.

The quid pro quo was arms supply and support at the UN for Myanmar’s military junta. Any new government now might negate all existing deals, and pull Yangon into the US orbit. This is a timely revolution from Washington’s perspective.

North Korea too is seeking rapprochement. There is enough operational space now to tackle Tehran, Damascus and the Hezbollah.

China can of course play the spoiler by providing arms to these regimes via a proxy. It is still a bad idea as the Israelis are just itching for war.

The IAF recently destroyed a Syrian installation that was purportedly an embryonic nuclear facility, but may well turn out to be a Kolchuga-type passive radar system, ideal for downing B2 stealth bombers. Coincidentally, the Russians have pledged to upgrade Syrian radar defenses after the attack.

If a wider conflagration breaks out in the Middle East, there will be no oil flowing from the Straits of Hormuz to China, either through Sitte, or through the Straits of Malacca.

The best option for Beijing will be to lock its oil and gas grid to the Russian Far East at a breakneck speed, and clean up some level of air pollution in time for the 2008 Olympics.

If an all-out war in the Middle East is our worst nightmare, think of the following unfolding crises…

The Peak Crises and its plural

Peak Oil: Fossil fuels, compressed and formed over aeons in subterranean geological layers are now releasing the telltale sibilant whispers of a punctured gas tank — low as it was on petrol in the first place. With crude oil hovering above $80 per barrel, the various subsidies built into national economies are bound to burst at the seams, and precipitate price increases for basic necessities.

There is however a unique solution — falling consumer demand worldwide. That would crimp industrial demand for fossil fuel. It is no wonder oil majors were reluctant to build new refineries when profits seemed guaranteed in the era of “peak oil.” This day would surely come!

Peak oil is also tied to the current dollar crises. With the US dollar dipping against other major currencies, crude oil should come cheaper for Washington.

Oil and other commodities are traded in dollars, and dollar-denominated assets outnumber assets weighed in other currencies. Beijing can dump its hundreds of billions in dollar reserves for euros, only to trade them back into dollars to buy crude oil, gold and other assets.

The dollar blackmail will not work, especially with the US Army entrenched in the oil-rich Middle East.

Doomsday theorists are however predicting another Great Depression ahead, where the value of the dollar may mean little in the event of a global financial meltdown.

If this occurs, a global depression will have to deal with the following phenomena that was absent in the 30s.

Peak Urbanization: More than half of the world’s population will live in urban areas in just… a few months, according to a United Nations Population Fund report. That translates to 3.3 billion people in an urban concentration camp of shantytowns and high-rise pigeonholes.

Children are growing up in a peculiarly boxed-in environment, removed from the soil that births their identity. They do not wake up to the sound of a crowing rooster, which is nature’s way of sowing repentance and a turning of mindsets outside the conventional thinking box.

They wake up to beastly clangor instead. It is either the alarm clock or the barking dog, installed as “pets” to yelp any perceived intruder during the morning rush hour. The urban jungle is an industrialized Ziggurat, which pecks out a hierarchy from childhood. The ones right at the bottom will be the ones shouldering more concrete, or the biggest debt burden.

Close human proximity also leads to petty competitiveness and conflict. That is why “civilization” is held at gunpoint; by the police, by the army and by “treaties.”

The urban life is delicate and vulnerable to all sorts of hazards, from plagues to a breakdown in the utilities, communications and transportation services. And political upheavals. A disaster will grind down traffic to a gridlock, far from the escapist countryside.

What if an energy warfare broke out? What if a global depression hits us? Can three billion people grow a patch of greens on their balconies?

When it comes to greens, the outlook is not at all verdant…

Peak Grain: Global grain stockpiles are down to their tightest levels in three decades after two years of unusual weather patterns. Heatwaves have wilted crops in the granaries of the world while floods and other environmental scourges have devastated some of the poorer “self-sustaining” regions.

Global wheat stockpiles will fall to a 34-year low by June 2008, according to the International Grains Council. U.S. stockpiles will fall to lowest level since 1951-52. Wheat futures in Chicago reached $9.3925 a bushel late September when major supplier Ukraine slashed exports.

The price of a bushel has more than doubled in the past year.

The bushel of woes includes rice, barley, soybeans, sorghum, oats and lentils as well, and they are all sagging under record prices. The grapes of wrath have gone on to stalk eggs, cheese, milk, meat and the a la carte menu.

There may come a point when the industrial food chain has little choice but to pass the rising costs to consumers in a dramatic fashion.

Creeping upticks in the price of milk and bread are turning Europeans livid. Milk is now dubbed as the “new white gold.”

It is not just bad weather to blame. Rising demand from China is pushing up prices, despite the fact that only half of its urban population has basic health insurance. Tragically, processed food re-exported through Beijing’s food chain is causing a global health nightmare.

But why pick on China? The current biodiesel craze is inducing farms to purpose-plant their crops for the profitable bioenergy industry, according to the Hamburg-based Oil World.

“It is high time to realise that the world community is approaching a food crisis in 2008 unless usage of agricultural products for biofuels is curbed or ideal weather conditions and sharply higher crop yields are achieved in 2008,” it added

Bad news gets worse.

Peak Water: There is not enough freshwater around to sustain the planet’s inland ecosystem and its human population. Rivers that help supply drinking water are laden with toxic industrial wastes. Population growth is already straining the capacities of water treatment plants worldwide while desalination plants remain the prerogative of wealthy nations. According to the Pacific Institute: “Over 1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water; more than 2 billion lack access to adequate sanitation; and millions die every year due to preventable water-related diseases. Water resources around the globe are threatened by climate change, misuse, and pollution.” It estimates that “over 34 million people might perish in the next 20 years from water-related disease — even if the United Nations ‘Millennium Development Goals,’ which aim to cut the proportion of those without safe access by half, are met.”³

Lots of water will be diverted to industries and agriculture, or the highest bidder as privatization of water supply gains currency. In some regions, the situation is so acute that water diversion in one country may precipitate conflict with a neighbor. As early as 1974, Iraq reportedly mobilized its army to target Syria’s al-Thawra dam on the Euphrates. Israel has cast its own eyes on Lebanon’s Litani River.

According to Former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali: “The next war in the Near (Middle) East will not be about politics, but over water.”

If this watery grave is not enough, think of the next one…

Peak Fish: There is some fishy business going on in our oceans. Like oil and water, we are trawling deeper and deeper for our fish supplies. Such piscatorial adventures have led to a global decline in fish stocks. “Ecologists worry that entire fisheries will collapse as… ‘junk fish’ are used up.” Aquaculture, which substitutes marine catches to an extent, comes with its own environmental problems.⁴

The Times of London paints a similar gloomy scenario. According to some experts, 90% of fish around British waters “will disappear within 20 years” in the absence of an immediate intervention.

With 75% of fish stocks fully exploited, declining numbers across species worldwide hint at a collapse point by 2048, beyond which replenishment is not possible.

Peak Fish “comes at a time when their nutritional value is recognized more than ever.”

“World Health Organisation officials recommend a weekly intake of 200 to 300 grams of fish each week but today’s catches can only just meet this target. Since the 1950s an estimated 60 per cent of stocks in British waters have collapsed…”

The Times invokes the paradox that “measures proposed to limit fishing to a sustainable level will only place a cap on the nutritional flow for the coming decades.”⁵

The full circle

What began as sub-prime woes in the US housing sector may ripple into something we cannot yet imagine. Will there be a severe global recession, or worse? If wars are yet contained, bidding wars will yet emerge over wheat, water, fish, medicines and oil. What will the future hold in this ecology of crises?

Here is a refrain from the book of Hosea (4:3):

Because of this the land mourns,
and all who live in it waste away;
the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the fish of the sea are dying.

1. As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes, NYT, Aug 26, 2007.
2. Beijing police round up and beat African expats Guardian, September 26, 2007.
3. Global Water Crisis Pacific Institute.
4. Water shortages will leave world in dire straits USA Today, 26th Jan 2003.
5. Fish will vanish from British waters in 20 years, says author Times Online, Sept 15, 2007.