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Seven days in south Asia
By Lionel Barber
View of Mumbai, with (left) billionaire Mukesh Ambanis 27-storey home, complete with helipads and swimming pool
Sunday: Calcutta
I am sipping Assam tea in the palatial official residence of M. K. Narayanan, the dapper, silver-haired governor of West Bengal and formerly Indias chief spook. To my left: gardens of a size and style which speak to the self-confidence of the Raj at its peak. To my right: Asias oldest elevator, a squeaky oblong contraption which, as the governor tells it with a smile, was too narrow for one tubby predecessor.
We talk about terror, and Pakistan and China an obsession among Indias elite. M.K. speaks calmly and precisely. China is becoming much more assertive. Chinese influence in the neighbourhood is spreading, in Burma, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The Indo-Chinese border dispute, rooted in Beijings claims over all of historical Tibet, remains unresolved. But, he says, a war would be disastrous for China.
And surely India, too, I say to myself. The governor speaks warmly of the US and, a minor surprise, of George W. Bush. An underrated president, he says, who faced down critics to push through a landmark nuclear co-operation deal with India, thereby forging a strategic counterweight to China. He cites Bush on India: a billion people, a million problems, and still a democracy. Curzon, an earlier resident here, could not have put it better.
From the Raj to a grubby side-street which houses Mamata Banerjee, the populist agitator and railways minister who is likely to take over as West Bengals chief minister after next years elections. A few blocks away lies the temple of Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, and the red light district where young girls, lured from the countryside to the city, line the road.
Mamata is a pocket Spitfire, a fiery poet in a cheap white and blue cotton sari with a penchant for hunger strikes. She claims the communists have killed or tortured a mere 40,000 of her supporters in countryside purges, but fear not she can call on her own goons for protection. Her other claim to fame is that she drove Tata Motors out of the province. Tata wanted to build the super-cheap Nano but allegedly failed to compensate farmers for acquiring the land it needed a charge Tata categorically denies.
Mamata does not usually see foreign journalists, but shes apparently concerned about her pro-business credentials and about pulling out of a speaking engagement at Cambridge University to discuss land reform. She bats away most of my questions, texting feverishly on her mobile phone while launching yet another high-pitched diatribe against the communists.
As I leave, I am surrounded by 10 TV cameras and a dozen microphones.
Who am I? What was discussed? Has Mamata cancelled her trip to England? Is the UK government insulted? For a (very brief) moment I am lost for words. We have had constructive discussions. I have no further comment. (Maybe I should have gone into politics after all.)
Monday: Calcutta to Mumbai
An absurdly early start, justified only by the 5.30am chaos at Calcutta airport. Queues are a matter of taste. Half the airline staff is polite, half incompetent. Indias infrastructure plainly cannot cope.
Mumbai is smoother and brasher than Calcutta, a natural habitat for freewheeling billionaires. One of them, Mukesh Ambani, has just completed a new $1bn, 27-storey residence equipped with three helipads, a ballroom, 50-seater cinema, swimming pool and drop-dead decor in each room.
Mukesh is said to be worth about $27bn, marginally more than his flashy younger brother Anil who has built up a lucrative telecoms and entertainment business. I am due to meet both brothers, an easier task now they have settled their long-running feud. Ambani and Ambani did not last as long as Jarndyce and Jarndyce, if only because in this generational tussle there was no will at all.
Our first stop is at Vedanta, the mining group headed by Anil Agarwal, a rough diamond in a sharp suit whose alleged land-grabbing activities have aroused the wrath of Bianca Jagger and Rahul Gandhi, scion of the dynasty, son of Sonia, and widely tipped as a future PM.
Agarwal has agreed to take a controlling stake valued at up to $9bn in the Indian operations of Cairn Energy, the oil exploration company set up by Sir Bill Gammell, a former Scottish rugby union international. Back in the 1990s, Sir Bill made an unfashionable bet on Rajastan, buying Shells drilling licences for a song. (Shell thought the wells were dry.) Now he wants to cash out.
Sir Bill is a lanky, likeable man but this morning he looks like hes suffering from Delhi belly. A whispering campaign against Cairn is under way, inspired by bureaucrats and jealous rivals who resent the upstart Agarwal marching into their oil patch. Maybe the self-avowedly liberal, open Indian government does not want foreigners exiting deals so lucratively? The rugby winger treads carefully. This is a litmus test for foreign investors in India. The high profile transaction must proceed smoothly. Agarwal, a man of few words, nods approvingly.
The other billionaire in town today is a smoother proposition. Anand Mahindra, the Harvard-educated boss of the eponymous cars-to-hotels-to-telecoms conglomerate, is at ease talking about business, economics or politics. His family made its fortune after the second world war when it won the licence to manufacture the Jeep. Now hes one of several moguls (the Ambanis, Ratan Tata, Sunnil Bharti Mittal) with global ambitions. Mahindra is bullish on India but cautions about top-down reforms pushed too far ahead of the people, as happened under the Shah of Iran. Indians have a very short tolerance of dictatorship, he says.
Tuesday: Mumbai to Delhi
At the Bombay Stock Exchange I am following Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, and George Osborne, chancellor of the Exchequer, as a guest breakfast speaker. My topic: whats next for the world economy? The good news, I say, is that my voice is not nearly as loud as Ballmers; the bad news is that economic uncertainty is as great as ever. My audience is more optimistic, but soon the question comes around again: Mr Barber, Sir, are you more bullish on China than India?
By now, I have my stock response. It all depends on how India uses its demographic dividend. By 2020, the average age in India will be only 28 years, compared with 37 in China and 38 in the US. By 2025, the proportion of children younger than 15 will fall to 24 per cent (compared with 31 per cent today). Meanwhile, the share of people older than 65 will remain below 10 per cent. Chinas demographics are not as rosy as Indias, because Beijings policies to limit population growth will have created an abnormally large cohort of people over age 60 almost a third of the population by 2040.
But India must educate all these young people entering the workforce or else miss the historic opening. And that, coupled with the enormous challenge of modernising food production and distribution in the countryside and raising overall living standards, is the next big hurdle to Indias rise to great power status.
Ratan Tata understands this better than most. He is one of Indias most renowned industrialists and philanthropists. His familys ownership of the company goes back to 1868. Mr Tata everyone calls him Mr receives me in his office near the Stock Exchange. He is impeccably groomed and less forbidding than when I first met him in 2008 at the Geneva Motor Show. Tata, the largest private company in India, had just bought the loss-making Jaguar and Land Rover brands. Many wondered if the patriarch had lost his touch.
Jaguar and Land Rover have since revived, though Mr Tata is still upset that the Labour government and Lord Mandelson would not extend emergency loans to the company during the credit crunch. We are a British employer with British jobs. Gordon Brown was on our side. Left unsaid is that Tata is now Britains largest manufacturing employer, with 47,000 workers. Mr Tata, unlike some of his prickly compatriots, knows the art of Anglo-Indian understatement.
As for India, he is bullish; mainly because the country has moved from a shortage economy people used to wait seven years for a phone to a consumer economy, with 650 million mobile phones. Thats more phones than toilets. After a luncheon speech and several press and television interviews, I return to the Oberoi hotel, where an urgent overnight message lies unattended. P.R.S. Biki Oberoi, the 82-year-old CEO of the eponymous luxury hotel group, wishes to receive me. I take the elevator to his penthouse suite and there sits the diminutive patriarch, immaculately attired in blue blazer, pocket handkerchief and tie, puffing a 6in cigar.
He recounts how he left the hotel shortly before the Mumbai terrorists made their deadly foray into the Oberoi and the Taj across town. Calmly and dispassionately, he recites the individual acts of heroism, the fatalities among his own staff, the post-stress trauma and the restoration of the Oberoi to its former grandeur inside two years. It is impossible to interrupt, though we are running dangerously late for the airport.
Our last appointment is at Essar, the energy conglomerate. More Assam tea, more biscuits, and now a company video. After half an hour I make my excuses. A chauffeur weaves his way through rush-hour traffic at breakneck speed to the airport. The plane to Delhi has long gone. Another flight, another late night. In bed, I brandish my copy of Midnights Children, half in jest at another 4.30am start.
Wednesday: Delhi to Gwalior
Just after dawn, we clamber aboard an express train for a three-and-a-half hour ride to Gwalior, home of one of the countrys oldest forts. Known as the Gibraltar of India, the fort appears carved into a cliff overlooking the city. It also occupies another unique place in human civilisation, claiming the first recorded use of zero, in the 9th century.
Map of India and Pakistan showing Lionel Barber's itineraryMy industrious colleague James Lamont, the Delhi bureau chief, has arranged for me to speak to sixth-form students at Scindia high school, a posh private establishment located on the rock. The topic: how the western media views India. After more tea with the headmaster, a scholarly gent with a cut-glass accent, I am ushered in to meet Scindias Class of 2011.
My speech is largely received in silence, punctuated by the odd polite chuckle. Three hours sleep is tough, so I invite questions. The first boy to raise his hand is from England, imported no doubt to improve his cover drive as well as his knowledge of India. He inquires about Irelands fate in the eurozone, an impressive foray which may or may not testify to homesickness. Several Indian students ask me why the British press has been relentlessly negative about the Commonwealth Games. Theres plenty to be negative about. I respond, For starters, how about the official spokesmans comment that India has different hygiene standards to the west?
A tall young man strides towards the microphone. How did the western media cover Indias independence in 1947? In mock seriousness, I tell the boy he is impertinent to suggest I am old enough to remember. Then I talk about a sense of historic inevitability, tinged by regret and perhaps relief. What I should have said, of course, was that most of the leading Indian newspapers were English-owned at the time. The very idea of *western press did not as such exist. Memo to the editor: get some sleep.
Thursday/Friday: Gwalior to Delhi
The Maharajas palace next to our hotel is still used as a residence. It contains furniture from Versailles, acquired when Louis XVIs estate was sold after the French Revolution, and reputedly the largest handmade carpet in Asia (40m long), which took 12 years to weave. In the banquet hall on the ground floor is my favourite collectors item: a silver toy train made in England which ferries port and cigars to guests along a track installed on the huge dining table.
We meet the Maharaja the next day at his more modest home in Delhi. Born in Mumbai, he is a graduate of Harvard and Stanford Business School. After working as an investment banker for Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, he returned to India to stand for parliament after his fathers death in a plane crash. He now serves as a junior commerce minister, and is manifestly a 39-year-old in a hurry.
That is understandable. His father was a leading reformist minister of the railways and civil aviation under Rajiv Gandhi. The present Maharajas pet topic is food production, inspired by a trip to Brazil where he saw how sophisticated agricultural processing has transformed the countryside and the retail market. He talks in punchy MBA-speak, very much de haut en bas, but I guess that goes with the (considerable) territory.
The rest of the day involves government appointments, including 30 or so minutes with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his official residence on Race Course Road. After several layers of security, we divest ourselves of phones, BlackBerrys and any other metal devices-cum-weapons. The chief press officer is polite but firm: The prime minister would like an exchange of views, not an interview.
This is code for off-the-record, but the PM is as courteous and thoughtful as I remember from our first interview in Delhi four years ago. He speaks softly, always with a benign smile, moving from the world economy, relations with China and the US, to tensions in the Middle East. It is an impressive tour dhorizon from the renowned reformist former finance minister and central bank governor, but also a reminder that India is a lot closer to Iran than, say, the UK.
Later, in a conversation with a senior foreign ministry official, I raise a more parochial question about David Camerons new special relationship between the UK and India. The elegant ladys response is to berate the British for not spending as much time understanding India as China. She even seems to know how many diplomats the UK has in Beijing versus Delhi. And then comes the knock-out punch: Britain needs to introspect [sic] on its position on partition and on Kashmir.
This post-colonial swipe about partition 63 years after Lord Mountbattens fateful decision to divide the British Indian Empire on religious demographical lines reveals much about the new balance of power in the world and the scale of Camerons challenge as he seeks to establish a hotline to Delhi.
Saturday: Delhi-Amritsar-Lahore
Welcome to Pakistan, Mr Barber, says the chief protocol officer of the governor of Punjab as he snaps to attention. A private security guard looks on. He will be a permanent presence during our 48-hour whistle-stop tour of the country.
We have just entered no mans land at the Wagah border, a short drive from Amritsar, site of the glorious Golden Temple and the British massacre of Sikhs in 1919. Wagah feels like Checkpoint Charlie during the cold war. Every evening heavily armed guards lower their national flags and strut their stuff at sunset. But the parade-ground setting, replete with slogans paying tribute to Gallant Border Man, captures the Indo-Pak stand-off, which ties up several hundred thousand soldiers along the border in Kashmir and Jammu.
Soon, we are racing in a convoy toward the provincial capital of Lahore, one of the power centres of the Raj and a centuries-old place of learning. Earlier this year, a suicide car-bomber killed 11 people and injured scores of others. Farhan Bokhari, the FTs long-time correspondent, reassures the party: Its a lot quieter now.
Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, receives us in his official residence, another relic of the Raj featuring stunning gardens (mini golf courses?) and spacious rooms with high ceilings. The governor is a slightly louche individual with slick black hair and an imperious tone. His opening statement lasts 10 minutes and can be reduced to one sentence: Pakistan is not Afghanistan.
Pakistan is a vibrant democracy. It has an educated middle class, a civilian government and a free press, says the governor, a former political prisoner and long-time ally of Benazir Bhutto and her widowed husband, President Asif Ali Zardari.
He does not mention the preponderance of the military. His pride is palpable but so is his defensiveness. The conversation turns to the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan, which earlier this year threatened to overrun the Swat valley and seize control of the Punjab, gateway to the nations capital, Islamabad.
Swat was a watershed, says the governor, echoing Hillary Clintons comment that the insurgency is an existential threat to the Pakistani state. The governor labels the insurgents a mixture of foreign fighters, smugglers and bandits with no links to Islam: in his words, brainwashed, illiterate tribes.
Later conversations with informed Pakistani officials suggest something more sinister: networks of trenches and tunnels which revealed a relatively sophisticated military operation. As one observer puts it: The government and the military got the fright of their life.
We turn to the floods, the worst for almost a century and a hammer blow on top of the insurgency. The governor rejects charges that the authorities were slow to respond. He himself was a regular visitor to the frontline in the poorest areas of the Punjab. When aid workers handed out 1,000 rupee notes (£14), the victims were baffled. Theyd never seen a thousand rupees, the governor explains. They had nothing to lose.
And so to the festering sore of Afghanistan. Taseer vents his frustration at the US. The drone attacks against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan are radicalising young Punjabis. Sooner or later the US will leave Afghanistan and Pakistan will have to pick up the pieces. So Pakistan is hedging its bets on the Taliban, relying in his words on assets on the other side of the Afghan border in future power-sharing schemes still to be determined.
I am left with the sense of overwhelming odds, only partially dispelled by a late afternoon tour of the Lahore mosque and the fort, a magnificent trapezoidal structure. As dusk descends, the mosque is bathed in a stunning pink hue. Our security guards, mindful that darkness is closing in, agitate to return to the cars. Our hired guide notes matter-of-factly that the fort has held many political prisoners, including Nehru under the British, and, yes, the present governor of Punjab himself.
Sunday: Islamabad
We are holed up in Islamabad at the Serena Hotel, a walled fortress with a gym, defended on all sides by armed guards with rifles and sub-machine guns, checkpoints, cinder blocks and barbed wire. Matt Green, the FTs Afpak correspondent and a veteran of African wars, says things are a lot calmer compared with a year ago. Thats a relief because we are about to embark on a helicopter tour of the flood zone, courtesy of the Pakistani air force.
We arrive at Chaklala air-force base at another ungodly hour. The reception room feels like a hotel in Dubai, but our moustached air-force flak is courteous beyond reproach. We climb into the Russian Mi-171 for a two-hour tour of flood zones heading north toward Peshawar and the Afghan border. By now, the rivers have receded, but as we fly over one water-laden cemetery, an officer shouts over the din: Even the dead were not forgiven.
Our final stop is a private dinner with President Zardari himself in his own concrete fortress compound. A treat, beyond my afternoon cricket conversation and batting confrontation with Imran Khan. Our convoy arrives in early evening, edging through security barriers and guard posts before proceeding through an underground entrance to the presidential elevator. At least 10 heavily armed bodyguards stand by as we ascend to the private quarters.
The presidential rooms feel more like a hotel suite than home. Apart from the deep sofas, the most noteworthy fixtures are the electric sliding doors, a James Bond-style contraption commissioned by President Pervez Musharraf, the army chief who ruled Pakistan from 2001 to 2008. As we talk, the doors open and shut for no apparent reason. Are we safe here, I wonder, irrationally.
Zardari, his successor, notices my unease and makes a joke about the doors origins. He is courteous but wary. Known as Mr Ten Per Cent for his business proclivities, he constantly invokes his beloved Benazir. Questions are politely deflected or ignored, until I press him on the widely held official view that Pakistan needs assets in Afghanistan to influence a final power settlement. The president starts momentarily before breaking into a forced smile: When you wear gold earrings and they are too heavy, you take them off.
Whatever his failings, Zardari is a man trapped in a bottle of scorpions: the Americans, the Pakistani armed forces and the Taliban to the north. Judging by my (brief) conversations, he and other senior figures in the establishment have finally recognised the mortal threat that radical Islam poses to the state.
At the end of a stupendous seven days in South Asia, I am left with an unnerving thought. It just may be too late for Pakistan and that is why the fate of this poor, Islamist, nuclear-armed country carries such importance for India, the region and the rest of the world.
FT.com / FT Magazine - Seven days in south Asia
By Lionel Barber
View of Mumbai, with (left) billionaire Mukesh Ambanis 27-storey home, complete with helipads and swimming pool
Sunday: Calcutta
I am sipping Assam tea in the palatial official residence of M. K. Narayanan, the dapper, silver-haired governor of West Bengal and formerly Indias chief spook. To my left: gardens of a size and style which speak to the self-confidence of the Raj at its peak. To my right: Asias oldest elevator, a squeaky oblong contraption which, as the governor tells it with a smile, was too narrow for one tubby predecessor.
We talk about terror, and Pakistan and China an obsession among Indias elite. M.K. speaks calmly and precisely. China is becoming much more assertive. Chinese influence in the neighbourhood is spreading, in Burma, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The Indo-Chinese border dispute, rooted in Beijings claims over all of historical Tibet, remains unresolved. But, he says, a war would be disastrous for China.
And surely India, too, I say to myself. The governor speaks warmly of the US and, a minor surprise, of George W. Bush. An underrated president, he says, who faced down critics to push through a landmark nuclear co-operation deal with India, thereby forging a strategic counterweight to China. He cites Bush on India: a billion people, a million problems, and still a democracy. Curzon, an earlier resident here, could not have put it better.
From the Raj to a grubby side-street which houses Mamata Banerjee, the populist agitator and railways minister who is likely to take over as West Bengals chief minister after next years elections. A few blocks away lies the temple of Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, and the red light district where young girls, lured from the countryside to the city, line the road.
Mamata is a pocket Spitfire, a fiery poet in a cheap white and blue cotton sari with a penchant for hunger strikes. She claims the communists have killed or tortured a mere 40,000 of her supporters in countryside purges, but fear not she can call on her own goons for protection. Her other claim to fame is that she drove Tata Motors out of the province. Tata wanted to build the super-cheap Nano but allegedly failed to compensate farmers for acquiring the land it needed a charge Tata categorically denies.
Mamata does not usually see foreign journalists, but shes apparently concerned about her pro-business credentials and about pulling out of a speaking engagement at Cambridge University to discuss land reform. She bats away most of my questions, texting feverishly on her mobile phone while launching yet another high-pitched diatribe against the communists.
As I leave, I am surrounded by 10 TV cameras and a dozen microphones.
Who am I? What was discussed? Has Mamata cancelled her trip to England? Is the UK government insulted? For a (very brief) moment I am lost for words. We have had constructive discussions. I have no further comment. (Maybe I should have gone into politics after all.)
Monday: Calcutta to Mumbai
An absurdly early start, justified only by the 5.30am chaos at Calcutta airport. Queues are a matter of taste. Half the airline staff is polite, half incompetent. Indias infrastructure plainly cannot cope.
Mumbai is smoother and brasher than Calcutta, a natural habitat for freewheeling billionaires. One of them, Mukesh Ambani, has just completed a new $1bn, 27-storey residence equipped with three helipads, a ballroom, 50-seater cinema, swimming pool and drop-dead decor in each room.
Mukesh is said to be worth about $27bn, marginally more than his flashy younger brother Anil who has built up a lucrative telecoms and entertainment business. I am due to meet both brothers, an easier task now they have settled their long-running feud. Ambani and Ambani did not last as long as Jarndyce and Jarndyce, if only because in this generational tussle there was no will at all.
Our first stop is at Vedanta, the mining group headed by Anil Agarwal, a rough diamond in a sharp suit whose alleged land-grabbing activities have aroused the wrath of Bianca Jagger and Rahul Gandhi, scion of the dynasty, son of Sonia, and widely tipped as a future PM.
Agarwal has agreed to take a controlling stake valued at up to $9bn in the Indian operations of Cairn Energy, the oil exploration company set up by Sir Bill Gammell, a former Scottish rugby union international. Back in the 1990s, Sir Bill made an unfashionable bet on Rajastan, buying Shells drilling licences for a song. (Shell thought the wells were dry.) Now he wants to cash out.
Sir Bill is a lanky, likeable man but this morning he looks like hes suffering from Delhi belly. A whispering campaign against Cairn is under way, inspired by bureaucrats and jealous rivals who resent the upstart Agarwal marching into their oil patch. Maybe the self-avowedly liberal, open Indian government does not want foreigners exiting deals so lucratively? The rugby winger treads carefully. This is a litmus test for foreign investors in India. The high profile transaction must proceed smoothly. Agarwal, a man of few words, nods approvingly.
The other billionaire in town today is a smoother proposition. Anand Mahindra, the Harvard-educated boss of the eponymous cars-to-hotels-to-telecoms conglomerate, is at ease talking about business, economics or politics. His family made its fortune after the second world war when it won the licence to manufacture the Jeep. Now hes one of several moguls (the Ambanis, Ratan Tata, Sunnil Bharti Mittal) with global ambitions. Mahindra is bullish on India but cautions about top-down reforms pushed too far ahead of the people, as happened under the Shah of Iran. Indians have a very short tolerance of dictatorship, he says.
Tuesday: Mumbai to Delhi
At the Bombay Stock Exchange I am following Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, and George Osborne, chancellor of the Exchequer, as a guest breakfast speaker. My topic: whats next for the world economy? The good news, I say, is that my voice is not nearly as loud as Ballmers; the bad news is that economic uncertainty is as great as ever. My audience is more optimistic, but soon the question comes around again: Mr Barber, Sir, are you more bullish on China than India?
By now, I have my stock response. It all depends on how India uses its demographic dividend. By 2020, the average age in India will be only 28 years, compared with 37 in China and 38 in the US. By 2025, the proportion of children younger than 15 will fall to 24 per cent (compared with 31 per cent today). Meanwhile, the share of people older than 65 will remain below 10 per cent. Chinas demographics are not as rosy as Indias, because Beijings policies to limit population growth will have created an abnormally large cohort of people over age 60 almost a third of the population by 2040.
But India must educate all these young people entering the workforce or else miss the historic opening. And that, coupled with the enormous challenge of modernising food production and distribution in the countryside and raising overall living standards, is the next big hurdle to Indias rise to great power status.
Ratan Tata understands this better than most. He is one of Indias most renowned industrialists and philanthropists. His familys ownership of the company goes back to 1868. Mr Tata everyone calls him Mr receives me in his office near the Stock Exchange. He is impeccably groomed and less forbidding than when I first met him in 2008 at the Geneva Motor Show. Tata, the largest private company in India, had just bought the loss-making Jaguar and Land Rover brands. Many wondered if the patriarch had lost his touch.
Jaguar and Land Rover have since revived, though Mr Tata is still upset that the Labour government and Lord Mandelson would not extend emergency loans to the company during the credit crunch. We are a British employer with British jobs. Gordon Brown was on our side. Left unsaid is that Tata is now Britains largest manufacturing employer, with 47,000 workers. Mr Tata, unlike some of his prickly compatriots, knows the art of Anglo-Indian understatement.
As for India, he is bullish; mainly because the country has moved from a shortage economy people used to wait seven years for a phone to a consumer economy, with 650 million mobile phones. Thats more phones than toilets. After a luncheon speech and several press and television interviews, I return to the Oberoi hotel, where an urgent overnight message lies unattended. P.R.S. Biki Oberoi, the 82-year-old CEO of the eponymous luxury hotel group, wishes to receive me. I take the elevator to his penthouse suite and there sits the diminutive patriarch, immaculately attired in blue blazer, pocket handkerchief and tie, puffing a 6in cigar.
He recounts how he left the hotel shortly before the Mumbai terrorists made their deadly foray into the Oberoi and the Taj across town. Calmly and dispassionately, he recites the individual acts of heroism, the fatalities among his own staff, the post-stress trauma and the restoration of the Oberoi to its former grandeur inside two years. It is impossible to interrupt, though we are running dangerously late for the airport.
Our last appointment is at Essar, the energy conglomerate. More Assam tea, more biscuits, and now a company video. After half an hour I make my excuses. A chauffeur weaves his way through rush-hour traffic at breakneck speed to the airport. The plane to Delhi has long gone. Another flight, another late night. In bed, I brandish my copy of Midnights Children, half in jest at another 4.30am start.
Wednesday: Delhi to Gwalior
Just after dawn, we clamber aboard an express train for a three-and-a-half hour ride to Gwalior, home of one of the countrys oldest forts. Known as the Gibraltar of India, the fort appears carved into a cliff overlooking the city. It also occupies another unique place in human civilisation, claiming the first recorded use of zero, in the 9th century.
Map of India and Pakistan showing Lionel Barber's itineraryMy industrious colleague James Lamont, the Delhi bureau chief, has arranged for me to speak to sixth-form students at Scindia high school, a posh private establishment located on the rock. The topic: how the western media views India. After more tea with the headmaster, a scholarly gent with a cut-glass accent, I am ushered in to meet Scindias Class of 2011.
My speech is largely received in silence, punctuated by the odd polite chuckle. Three hours sleep is tough, so I invite questions. The first boy to raise his hand is from England, imported no doubt to improve his cover drive as well as his knowledge of India. He inquires about Irelands fate in the eurozone, an impressive foray which may or may not testify to homesickness. Several Indian students ask me why the British press has been relentlessly negative about the Commonwealth Games. Theres plenty to be negative about. I respond, For starters, how about the official spokesmans comment that India has different hygiene standards to the west?
A tall young man strides towards the microphone. How did the western media cover Indias independence in 1947? In mock seriousness, I tell the boy he is impertinent to suggest I am old enough to remember. Then I talk about a sense of historic inevitability, tinged by regret and perhaps relief. What I should have said, of course, was that most of the leading Indian newspapers were English-owned at the time. The very idea of *western press did not as such exist. Memo to the editor: get some sleep.
Thursday/Friday: Gwalior to Delhi
The Maharajas palace next to our hotel is still used as a residence. It contains furniture from Versailles, acquired when Louis XVIs estate was sold after the French Revolution, and reputedly the largest handmade carpet in Asia (40m long), which took 12 years to weave. In the banquet hall on the ground floor is my favourite collectors item: a silver toy train made in England which ferries port and cigars to guests along a track installed on the huge dining table.
We meet the Maharaja the next day at his more modest home in Delhi. Born in Mumbai, he is a graduate of Harvard and Stanford Business School. After working as an investment banker for Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, he returned to India to stand for parliament after his fathers death in a plane crash. He now serves as a junior commerce minister, and is manifestly a 39-year-old in a hurry.
That is understandable. His father was a leading reformist minister of the railways and civil aviation under Rajiv Gandhi. The present Maharajas pet topic is food production, inspired by a trip to Brazil where he saw how sophisticated agricultural processing has transformed the countryside and the retail market. He talks in punchy MBA-speak, very much de haut en bas, but I guess that goes with the (considerable) territory.
The rest of the day involves government appointments, including 30 or so minutes with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his official residence on Race Course Road. After several layers of security, we divest ourselves of phones, BlackBerrys and any other metal devices-cum-weapons. The chief press officer is polite but firm: The prime minister would like an exchange of views, not an interview.
This is code for off-the-record, but the PM is as courteous and thoughtful as I remember from our first interview in Delhi four years ago. He speaks softly, always with a benign smile, moving from the world economy, relations with China and the US, to tensions in the Middle East. It is an impressive tour dhorizon from the renowned reformist former finance minister and central bank governor, but also a reminder that India is a lot closer to Iran than, say, the UK.
Later, in a conversation with a senior foreign ministry official, I raise a more parochial question about David Camerons new special relationship between the UK and India. The elegant ladys response is to berate the British for not spending as much time understanding India as China. She even seems to know how many diplomats the UK has in Beijing versus Delhi. And then comes the knock-out punch: Britain needs to introspect [sic] on its position on partition and on Kashmir.
This post-colonial swipe about partition 63 years after Lord Mountbattens fateful decision to divide the British Indian Empire on religious demographical lines reveals much about the new balance of power in the world and the scale of Camerons challenge as he seeks to establish a hotline to Delhi.
Saturday: Delhi-Amritsar-Lahore
Welcome to Pakistan, Mr Barber, says the chief protocol officer of the governor of Punjab as he snaps to attention. A private security guard looks on. He will be a permanent presence during our 48-hour whistle-stop tour of the country.
We have just entered no mans land at the Wagah border, a short drive from Amritsar, site of the glorious Golden Temple and the British massacre of Sikhs in 1919. Wagah feels like Checkpoint Charlie during the cold war. Every evening heavily armed guards lower their national flags and strut their stuff at sunset. But the parade-ground setting, replete with slogans paying tribute to Gallant Border Man, captures the Indo-Pak stand-off, which ties up several hundred thousand soldiers along the border in Kashmir and Jammu.
Soon, we are racing in a convoy toward the provincial capital of Lahore, one of the power centres of the Raj and a centuries-old place of learning. Earlier this year, a suicide car-bomber killed 11 people and injured scores of others. Farhan Bokhari, the FTs long-time correspondent, reassures the party: Its a lot quieter now.
Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, receives us in his official residence, another relic of the Raj featuring stunning gardens (mini golf courses?) and spacious rooms with high ceilings. The governor is a slightly louche individual with slick black hair and an imperious tone. His opening statement lasts 10 minutes and can be reduced to one sentence: Pakistan is not Afghanistan.
Pakistan is a vibrant democracy. It has an educated middle class, a civilian government and a free press, says the governor, a former political prisoner and long-time ally of Benazir Bhutto and her widowed husband, President Asif Ali Zardari.
He does not mention the preponderance of the military. His pride is palpable but so is his defensiveness. The conversation turns to the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan, which earlier this year threatened to overrun the Swat valley and seize control of the Punjab, gateway to the nations capital, Islamabad.
Swat was a watershed, says the governor, echoing Hillary Clintons comment that the insurgency is an existential threat to the Pakistani state. The governor labels the insurgents a mixture of foreign fighters, smugglers and bandits with no links to Islam: in his words, brainwashed, illiterate tribes.
Later conversations with informed Pakistani officials suggest something more sinister: networks of trenches and tunnels which revealed a relatively sophisticated military operation. As one observer puts it: The government and the military got the fright of their life.
We turn to the floods, the worst for almost a century and a hammer blow on top of the insurgency. The governor rejects charges that the authorities were slow to respond. He himself was a regular visitor to the frontline in the poorest areas of the Punjab. When aid workers handed out 1,000 rupee notes (£14), the victims were baffled. Theyd never seen a thousand rupees, the governor explains. They had nothing to lose.
And so to the festering sore of Afghanistan. Taseer vents his frustration at the US. The drone attacks against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan are radicalising young Punjabis. Sooner or later the US will leave Afghanistan and Pakistan will have to pick up the pieces. So Pakistan is hedging its bets on the Taliban, relying in his words on assets on the other side of the Afghan border in future power-sharing schemes still to be determined.
I am left with the sense of overwhelming odds, only partially dispelled by a late afternoon tour of the Lahore mosque and the fort, a magnificent trapezoidal structure. As dusk descends, the mosque is bathed in a stunning pink hue. Our security guards, mindful that darkness is closing in, agitate to return to the cars. Our hired guide notes matter-of-factly that the fort has held many political prisoners, including Nehru under the British, and, yes, the present governor of Punjab himself.
Sunday: Islamabad
We are holed up in Islamabad at the Serena Hotel, a walled fortress with a gym, defended on all sides by armed guards with rifles and sub-machine guns, checkpoints, cinder blocks and barbed wire. Matt Green, the FTs Afpak correspondent and a veteran of African wars, says things are a lot calmer compared with a year ago. Thats a relief because we are about to embark on a helicopter tour of the flood zone, courtesy of the Pakistani air force.
We arrive at Chaklala air-force base at another ungodly hour. The reception room feels like a hotel in Dubai, but our moustached air-force flak is courteous beyond reproach. We climb into the Russian Mi-171 for a two-hour tour of flood zones heading north toward Peshawar and the Afghan border. By now, the rivers have receded, but as we fly over one water-laden cemetery, an officer shouts over the din: Even the dead were not forgiven.
Our final stop is a private dinner with President Zardari himself in his own concrete fortress compound. A treat, beyond my afternoon cricket conversation and batting confrontation with Imran Khan. Our convoy arrives in early evening, edging through security barriers and guard posts before proceeding through an underground entrance to the presidential elevator. At least 10 heavily armed bodyguards stand by as we ascend to the private quarters.
The presidential rooms feel more like a hotel suite than home. Apart from the deep sofas, the most noteworthy fixtures are the electric sliding doors, a James Bond-style contraption commissioned by President Pervez Musharraf, the army chief who ruled Pakistan from 2001 to 2008. As we talk, the doors open and shut for no apparent reason. Are we safe here, I wonder, irrationally.
Zardari, his successor, notices my unease and makes a joke about the doors origins. He is courteous but wary. Known as Mr Ten Per Cent for his business proclivities, he constantly invokes his beloved Benazir. Questions are politely deflected or ignored, until I press him on the widely held official view that Pakistan needs assets in Afghanistan to influence a final power settlement. The president starts momentarily before breaking into a forced smile: When you wear gold earrings and they are too heavy, you take them off.
Whatever his failings, Zardari is a man trapped in a bottle of scorpions: the Americans, the Pakistani armed forces and the Taliban to the north. Judging by my (brief) conversations, he and other senior figures in the establishment have finally recognised the mortal threat that radical Islam poses to the state.
At the end of a stupendous seven days in South Asia, I am left with an unnerving thought. It just may be too late for Pakistan and that is why the fate of this poor, Islamist, nuclear-armed country carries such importance for India, the region and the rest of the world.
FT.com / FT Magazine - Seven days in south Asia
Bharatis are truly brainwashed by their and western media. Can't blame them as they're fed what they like to be fed.
