The illusion of power

At a talk the other night in Delhi to hear about Pakistan's forthcoming elections from various Indian thinkers - and a Pakistani diplomat - the mood was pretty somber. For the Indians Pakistan is either a failing state on the verge of collapse or a state about to fall into the hands of radical extremists. Either way it looks bad.

The elections were considered rigged - no independent judges, no independent election commission and local administration in the hands of feudal landlords. The caretaker government, which oversees the polls, is run by General President Musharraf's (GPM's) hand-picked PM. All true am afraid.

Almost uncommented upon by the western press are the millions of missing voters in this election. The election roll has shrunk in Pakistan by 20m electors since 2002 when the last (rigged) polls were held.

The Pakistani diplomat defended his country saying it was a victim of three historical earthquakes: the Iranian revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and 9/11. These had seen the rise of extremism. This is a brave defence and one that is hard to swallow given that the Pakistani army bred its own extremists to gain depth in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

But the Pakistani diplomat, from the NWFP cadre, put his finger on exactly the problem. The politics of Pakistan is too important to be left to voters. The casting votes are in foreign hands. Truly popular policies - like ending US influence and subsidies to cope with rising food prices - won't be considered.

That underlines the grubby little secret of the west's engagement with Islamabad. For the US, the impression that a "free and fair" poll will be enough. For the Europeans, facing Afghan ire it will also be enough to rubber stamp these polls as acceptable. Saudi Arabia and China need no convincing on the need to avoid popular mandates.

Pakistan's voters will not decide the government this time. Despite plummeting popularity GPM will not face impeachment - you need 225 plus seats in a 342 seat house. Punjab has about 150 seats. Sindh another 60. No wonder Nawaz Sharif, son of Punjab's soil, and Asif Zardari, Benazir's Sindhi businessman husband, are talking.

It will remain just that. GPM has only to get his quislings, the MQM and religious parties together for long enough to frustrate the Nawaz-Zardari bandwagon. In a few months, I suspect, GPM thinks the alliance will crumble - and he will be able to divide and rule a sham chamber elected under shameful conditions.

Kerala, Naveen Andrews and me

I loved this interview in the Guardian with Naveen Andrews because it deals with a lot of issues that I think about.

Like Andrews my parents came from Kerala to Britain in the 1960s. I too was slapped. I too was never gifted a linguistic heritage (my Malayalam stinks and I have learnt Hindi the hard way) because my parents wanted me to fit in. I also prefer the in-your-face working class racism in Britain to that found in the mouths of the smug middle-class. Unlike Andrews I was not a teenage dropout or an alcoholic. Drugs never led me to a serious addiction. I also do not have kids.

But in the piece I sensed something of Andrews that a group of young British Black people who grew up in 1970s London shared. That of hubris and defiance. I can see his point when Andrews talks of never feeling "at home in London, because people were constantly telling me I didn't belong here, so after a while, you tend to believe that." He is spot on in saying "people who would blanch at the idea of being thought of as being racist when they know that it fucking well is obvious."

Britain's self-perpetuating elite and its frozen snobbery is only softened by London's recent blaze of ethnic diversity. But I think Andrews found himself, like a lot of us, defying the order of things. The result is that you become an outcast. When you run afoul of the people in charge, you soon learn that you have to be chastized regardless of the value of your services. Maybe that is why he left Britain - and found love and a life away from home.

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My enemy's enemy is my friend

This week's Economist has a story which asks: "How America's own intelligence services have brought international policy on Iran to the edge of collapse". It concludes

"Iran may not yet be home free, but the international campaign to stop it getting the bomb that many countries think it wants is on the point of failure."

The story's theme is that US spies fumbled badly in producing a report last month which said Iran stopped its secret nuclear-weapons programme in 2003. A disaster for the Israelis who fear annihilation, the French and Germans who were working at the UN to contain Iran and of course the UK-US nuke-busters who consider Iran the Great Satan. Only the Russians and the Chinese (who else?) will gain.

My conspiracy theory of the day is different. The US economy is sinking - laid low by the bursting of the credit bubble. Having oil prices touch $100 is a burden the US can do without. So the president was seen begging the Saudi oil minister to increase supplies - and hence reduce the price on world markets. The Saudis are unmoved.

What could pressure them? Of course, Riyadh's rivals to the supremacy in the Middle East are the Mullahs of Teheran. So the US eases up on the Iranians - and brows furrow in the Arabian landmass. The US also wants the Saudis to tow the line in Pakistan, where they have considerable sway in the upcoming elections. Again giving Iran some leeway to chase after the Persian bomb would have the Saudis reaching for the rosemary.

None of this behaviour would surprise anyone in the Middle East where everyone knows my enemy's enemy is my friend.

Profits of Greed

Am in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, when my eyes chanced upon Michael Lewis’ Bloomberg column in Mint about John Paulson, the Wall Street player who made $3bn betting that lending to US homeowners was a bubble that was going to go pop.

Lewis gave up a life on the trading floor for one behind the keyboard and knows a thing or two about the new rich. He’s pin point in identifying Paulson as the “truly satisfying villain” of the current bloodbath on Wall St. “All sorts of people are being sued, but most of them lost money, just like the victims. The first rule of financial villany is that the villain must have made off with a pile of loot”.

Paulson has made billions, garnering fame on the way. In the Wall Street Journal, Mr Paulson appears all too glad to say how easy it had all been as millions of Americans struggle to keep their homes. "I've never been involved in a trade with such unlimited upside," Paulson, 52, told the Journal. "Mortgage experts were too caught up" in their own happy talk, he added.

Although Paulson appears to be the epitome of the American Dream, having become a billionaire from humble roots in Queens, he has succeeded by undermining the foundation from where such aspirations stem, John Locke’s pusuit of “life, liberty and property”. In doing so he appears to have committed a cardinal sin: profiting by undermining everybody else in America.

This will have deep consequences. Balzac summed it up best: behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Paulson has not broken any laws. He was no rogue trader like the dodgy book-keeper in Paris’ Societe Generale. He bet on the greed of the US public overtaking its better judgement.

But Americans will undoubtedly soon start screaming at politicians, regulators and even the banks themselves for being not clever enough to not see that their world was falling apart and for not doing something to hold it all together. Paulson on the other hand will be simply counting his money. This may take some time.