It’s been a rotten end of the year for us South Asians. Modi is back – and unsurprisingly – from all accounts of friends working on the ground in Gujarat. Most activists said that the Tehelka expose of the 2002 genocide – horrific, remarkable and courageous as it was – was bad timing; it polarised the polity further and strengthened rather than weakened Modi’s hand. However, Tehelka also explores what Modi’s victory might mean: for his party, his state and the rest of India. My 2008 hope: that Moditva cannot work anywhere else in the country. My 2008 worry that belies the hope: Can Karnataka be next on the hate list? There are many reasons to fear that it might well be, and I will explore that in another post (and one of my 2008 resolutions: when I tell myself I will do a blog post, I must *write* it, within… er… seven days??).
And then, in Pakistan, Benazir’s assassination. As Tariq Ali put it:
Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto’s behaviour and policies – both while she was in office and more recently – are stunned and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the country once again.
However, there is some cheer left in the year yet. As we look back, Medea Benjamin provides a list of ten ‘good’ things about 2007, which include the elections in Australia, where Labour Party’s Kevin Rudd beat the Conservative Prime Minister John Howard, and the one defiant stand of the Iraqi government and people against the US, which was to vote against its nationalised oil system becoming open to foreign corporate control.
She also celebrates – but not enough, methinks – my favourite politician of the year: the Papua New Guinea representative at the UN climate conference in Bali, Kevin Conrad. In the Telegraph’s account of it, the Indian ambassador (yes!) had begun by saying that the draft ‘road map’ did not clearly indicate the responsibility of industrialised nations to supply developing countries with clean technologies, finance and support to deal with the problem of climate change “in a measurable manner”. Paula Dobriansky, the chief negotiator for the US, replied that India’s proposed change was something “we are not prepared to accept”. With frustration mounting, the killer blow came from Kevin Conrad.
He used James Connaughton’s (Bush’s primary climate change advisor) diplomatic gaffe of earlier in the week to humiliate the Americans. Mr Connaughton had said: “We will lead. We will continue to lead but leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow.”
So therefore, at this impasse, when Papua New Guinea was called upon to speak, Kevin Conrad said this to the American delegates: “We seek your leadership. But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.” The audio of this remarkable statement is here.
Perhaps that is the wish we need for all politicians across the world in 2008: if you are not willing to lead with integrity, justice and courage, listening to the voices of your people, then please… Get out of the way.
Ashwin and I observed Earth Hour last night. We shut off our lights for an hour, from 8pm to 9pm. Begun in Sydney in 2007, as a programme of the World Wildlife Fund, this year the event spread to other parts of the world, including San Francisco, where lights were turned off on the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges. Unfortunately, we didn’t see much of an impact in Berkeley (which is otherwise a city highly conscious of climate change as it is of everything else). On 31st March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour, and according to the information on the website, if the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney CBD during Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.