Fuji Sensia 100

In India, we believe in reincarnation. So it seems that the nuclear deal has found new life again after being throttled to death. This deal was supposed to be a triumph of Indian diplomacy and of lobbying by the Non-Resident Indian community. It would mean the symbolic acceptance of India as a member of the Nuclear Powers club – a rather parochial institution.

The deal assures that the US provides India nuclear fuel and allow for similar supplies from other nuclear suppliers to further India’s civilian nuclear program as long as IAEA safeguards are respected by India. Ok, all this is known. We also know how this has been opposed by Leftists in India, who threatened to bring down the UPA government and almost scuttled the deal. Now, perhaps due to the public fury generated by the Nandigram incidents, the Left has given its green signal to the deal albeit with silly caveats.

India’s Department of Atomic Energy is now negotiating with the IAEA for India-specific safeguards. Now the Left wants that post the negotiations, a report on the the list of IAEA safeguards agreed upon by India be submitted to a parliamentary committee led by them after which they will give the green signal. Since when have members of our polity become experts on nuclear security? Exactly what is accomplished by this roadblock except face-saving for the Left.

I recently spoke to a key US negotiator for the 123 agreement and I found him a worried man. Will the deal go ahead, he asked me given the political pressures in India? After all, he had spent months cobbling the agreement together along with India’s top diplomats such as Indian ambassador to US, Ronen Sen and Indian ambassador to Singapore, S.Jaishankar apart from officials of the US’ AEC and India’s Department of Atomic Energy. I told the Negotiator that the deal will go ahead, all the while hoping the Indian political system proves me right.

Fuji Sensia 100

Fuji Sensia 100

The wind whispered my name today as I was walking with my lonely melancholy. The air was crisp, filled with the fragrance of some far away song. The trees were like old men stooped over their chairs to keep track of life walking on by. My eyes strayed up to the sky where clouds collapsed into words of polite wonder. The path led on without a bend or a rent. My senses were filled with the desire for life. I took off my spectacles to look at the world around me through a blurred inspiration.

Sometimes one sees the door but not the distance up to it. The silent signals of another world wheeling away on the outskirts of a solitary society.

There were many holes. Too many that needed to be plugged to staunch the flow. In some ways it was a lost cause as new leaks sprang up as soon as an old one was fixed. Where did those holes come from? Why did they cause so much torment?

I touched her cheek to seek reassurance from the warm blood flowing beneath. She was beside me, wrapped in dry dreams. The distance between our minds separated our hands. But the words that existed in our hearts somehow slipped out from between us into the cold around like marbles from a child’s hand and formed footsteps in the endless snow.

April 2007, Oia (Ilford Pan F Plus 50)

Fuji Neopan 400

Begin rant. I’m so irritated with the people I sent my 7D in for repair. They took about 5 weeks to send me a repair estimate. I consented to the repair costs (costing more than the camera!) and then sent back the repair estimate within a day or two. Now, roughly two weeks later, I got my camera back all dusty and unrepaired with them claiming that they never received my consent for the repair. Arrgh! So they basically took 7 weeks to do nothing but waste my time. And here I was all eager to use the camera again. Totally pathetic. I’ve half a mind to dump the camera in the dustbin! End of rant.

For the last 11 months the Nandigram saga has been unfolding. It is a fascinating insight into the use and deployment of power by a party that has lost its ‘radical’ moorings and now is THE establishment; The insidious ways in which power is deployed to maintain monopoly and crush dissent and the justification offered for the naked use of aggression.

A quick recap: the Communist Party of India (Marxist) led West Bengal government decided to acquire 25,000 acres of land in the Nandigram block a year ago to set up a chemical hub for the Salim group of Indonesia. A notification was issued to this effect without any formal communication, the worst possible way to go about it. Nandigram is prime agricultural land and around 8,000 families stood to lose their only source of livelihood. Naturally there was resentment, especially since there was no clarification from the government about compensation for land, alternative livelihoods etc. This resentment broke out into a full fledged ‘civil war’ when the local residents organised themselves into an organisation called the Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Samiti (BUPS) or Anti Land Acquisition Committee. The BUPS was a militant coalition of political and religious parties. Overnight, roads were dug up, blockades erected and CPI(M) supporters were driven out of their homes into refugee camps. Nandigram became a ‘no go’ area where the government’s writ ceased to function, a ‘liberated’ zone. This was an unprecedented challenge for the CPI(M). In the 30 years that it has ruled West Bengal, it has cultivated a strong network of cadres that have been deployed to ruthlessly crush all opposition within Bengal. The CPI(M) came to power riding on the back of classic Marxist rhetoric: power to the working classes and peasantry, treating the comprador industrial/capitalist class with suspicion and cultivated working class militancy. Never in its wildest dreams could it have imagined that the very political climate that it had cultivated could be used against it.

The matter got further politicised when the main opposition party, the Trinamul Congress, and a host of religious organisations led by the Jamiat-e-ulema hind sensed an opportunity to shore up their support base in what was considered a CPI(M) stronghold.

This volatile mix resulted in the inevitable political stalemate. Attempts to resolve the issue resulted in tragedy when police fired on a protesting crowd on March 14, 2007. Estimates of the number killed vary from 14 (official) to 19.

April 2007, Cologne (Fuji Neopan 400)

July 2007, Krefeld.