Welcome to India

The Mumbai air at night, they say, is suffocating. An odd suffocation perhaps; there are no hands forcibly obstructing the windpipes, but more fingers prodding at the neck with such consistency that you start respiring at a much faster pace.

It is my second day in Bangalore, India’s ‘Silicon Valley’ and Asia’s fastest growing city. Upon arrival after a short domestic flight, I was greeted by the sweet post-rain fragrance and a sheer magnitude of moving bodies unparalleled anywhere in the world. Indeed, once the city centre has been penetrated, it’s hard not to marvel at the beautiful combination of 19^th century Victorian architecture, exotic Indian trees and glorious aromas that weave in and out of the nostrils as freely as the traffic on the roads.

Likewise, it’s hard not to be knocked for six by other sites, albeit in the phrase’s negative rendition; swarms of motorists buzz within feet of you, honking to consume any air available that can be used to breathe and think. Faith has sunken its grubby nails in deep – at the time of writing Gujarat’s Chief Minister, a Mr Narendra Modi, looks certain to be India’s next Prime Minister once the seventh and final stage of the staggered voting process has concluded. This is a man who many consider either to have been chiefly responsible for, or at least indifferent during, the 2002 riots in his city that left an estimated 2,000 Muslim men, women and children massacred. His BJP party is the political wing of the RSS – a Hindu Nationalist organisation entrenched in fear of other religions. Nehru would be turning in his grave.

Nothing offends me directly. English is one of the mother tongues for most of the nation, a remnant from India’s colonised past. There is no evident animosity towards the White Man who so callously and capriciously ruled and took advantage of their nation. I’m even free to drink to my heart’s content too, if I so wish. No, my windpipes aren’t being forcefully suppressed, yet I still feel suffocated by a thousand finger prods.

Please do not misconstrue this sensation for a dislike of the country in which I shall reside for the next three months. I will have done India a great disservice if that’s the impression this article gives. But equally don’t brush it off as mere culture shock. From the moment I arrived, I’ve been welcomed more generously than I deserve. India is also extraordinarily beautiful and has come along in leaps and bounds since Independence, especially after Manmohan Singh dissembled the Licence Raj in 1991 in order to attract foreign investment and increase poor economic growth rates (India averaged 8% growth for almost two decades and still commands a high growth rate in comparison to the US and Europe).

However, its potential continues to be stifled by corruption (a plague that seems to finally be a consideration for Indians at the ballot box if Congress’s poor polling and the emergence of the AAP is anything to go by) which eats away at public resources. The attitude towards women is among the greatest of contradictions my life has thus far encountered; India has far more female politicians in top positions than my home country, yet men quite regularly harass and reveal themselves to women once the sun has submerged into the horizon. Women should not feel themselves in danger at the whim of a man.

Indians don’t need me or any other foreigner to tell them this – I’m sure that I am, in large part, simply preaching to the preached. Sooner or later though it will be realised that ordinary Indians have the power to confront and eradicate these issues – and when they do, the rewards to the largest democracy on earth will be as sweet as the gold and nectarsome mangoes grown here. Ah, then I’ll be able to breathe easier.

Budget 2014: Let’s play politics

“Balls!” cried Tory backbenchers during George Osborne’s budget speech. “Balls! Balls!”

Of course, the humorous chorus was actually referencing Osborne’s opposition, Ed Balls, in response to better than expected growth figures and a warning by the former against “those who wanted us to borrow more”. In reality, however, the jibe would have been an equally good summary of what was taking place in the Commons on Wednesday afternoon; politics, not economics.

Indeed, even in the latest episode of ‘MPs gone wild’ which immediately preceded Osborne’s budget in the Commons, the Tories repeated their well choreographed performance – including many mentions of the now familiar “long-term economic plan”. There may be a ‘long-term economic plan’ in place, but do Conservative constituencies really benefit from their representatives standing up in Parliament to congratulate the central government? Or is everything hunky-dory in Chris Pincher’s Tamworth?

Next came the hour-long budget, delivered confidently by the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer. But here again there was more politicking going on than backing Britain. One of the key problems affecting the UK economy, for example, is the lack of young people in work. The latest figures reveal that there are still 912,000 16 to 24-year-olds that can’t find jobs, yet their position as a group with one of the lowest voter turnouts puts their needs at the back of Osborne’s desk drawer. Yes, the Tories will tell us that plans to boost job growth, such as businesses not having to pay any upfront tax when they invest, will indirectly help youths back into work, but in a time when business confidence is still low, which firm is going to take a punt on the less experienced? Even the £2,000 National Insurance saving for taking on a new employee won’t be enough to persuade businesses to take the gamble.

There were some brighter lights in the budget though; cutting borrowing rates for exporting firms to invest by a third should help an area in which the British economy has been flagging for years, although, as Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander duly noted on BBC Two’s Newsnight, Grant Shapps’s patronising Tory poster regarding the reduction in bingo and beer duty had “demeaned some quite sensible things.”

And this is where current politics goes from bad to ugly; Labour aren’t beating the Conservatives, their problems are in shooting themselves in the feet. Ed Miliband, for all his quips about “the same old Tories” and “the Bullingdon Club”, failed to direct any of his attacks on the budget itself. Nothing about the cap on welfare, nothing about the further cuts and nothing about the fairly radical pension reforms. He was playing the man, not the ball and it looked disastrous.

This isn’t the first time that ‘Red Ed’ has played politics and lost. Just recently he backed business concerns over Cameron’s referendum proposal for 2017, ruling out a referendum if his Labour Party were elected in the 2015 general elections. This move failed to take account of the depth of feeling in Britain against the power Brussels yields, however, and, with poll after poll showing that a majority of the public would like to see a change in our current relationship with the European Union (EU), Miliband came across as the ‘pro-Europe no matter what’ candidate, with Cameron as ‘Pro-Europe for Britain’.

That’s not to say that serious discussions, with the interests of the British public leading the way, are impossible for the major political parties; on the subject of Russia’s annexation of the Crimea region, both Cameron and Miliband took up the same stance in denouncing Sunday’s referendum as “Illegal and illegitimate.” If anything, their cooperation and sincerity on this issue begs the question: why can’t they discuss matters closer to home in the same manner?

It is this at-first-interesting, but-after-years-of-the-crap-boring, outmanoeuvring rather than doing the job we pay them for, that has led to the existence of a disengaged younger generation. And why shouldn’t they opt for the Russell Brand way of abstention from voting, when they see budgets like this that don’t stick up for their needs, and a leader of the opposition who fails to hammer that point home. If politics is going to appeal to the younger generation, then it needs to get its act together, big time.

So, at a time when the economy is just barely dragging its disfigured carcass out of the depths of a terrible recession, it is greatly frustrating to see the men and women we select to represent us playing games rather than doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. If this politically motivated budget has told us anything, it is that the short-term is taking precedence over the long-term. Frankly, I say “balls” to that.

Costly, partisan and an affront to our most fundamental beliefs. It’s time to abolish the monarchy.

The sun towers over the River Thames on a frosty February afternoon. Rays of light bounce off the rippling waves and the loud chatter of foreign tongues can be heard in the queue to ride the London Eye. A couple sitting on a bench gaze out over the river, hand in hand. This is Britain at its best, taken in from aboard a speedboat tour.

Britain at its worst isn’t far away either; a man in a yolk coloured top, wiping his nose leisurely with his hand, sits next to me, listening half-heartedly to the guide.

“The steps you see to our right” points the guide “are cleaned every morning, in case the Queen ever decides that she wants to venture down them”. The steps in question, which lead down to the river itself, are slightly green with moss but on the whole fairly well kept.

“She ain’t been down once and it costs the taxpayer £15,000 a year”. Eesh.

Royal expenditure being footed by the public coffers is nothing new though; according to the royal public finances annual report, the Queen alone cost the taxpayer £33.3 million in expenditure for the 2012-13 fiscal year, a £900,000 increase on the year before. The royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton cost a hefty £20 million – all at a time of cuts which have left the nation’s poorest needing food banks. Cameron repeats the familiar line that difficult decisions are necessary in a time of crisis but, in reality, one is quite simple: Get rid of the waste.

The blatant hypocrisy and double standards in our treatment of the royals is also worrying. Firms such as Amazon and Google are rightly bashed for their greed and immorality in finding tax loopholes, yet Prince Charles makes off with £19 million from his £763 million Duchy of Cornwall hereditary estate, without paying any corporation or capital gains tax. Top Russell Group universities are justly derided for their disproportionately high independent school admissions; all the while Prince William has an agricultural management course tailor-made for him at the University of Cambridge for reduced fees.

Indeed, the last point has caused outrage among many students of the university, with Cambridge Student newspaper The Tab criticising the university’s decision to admit someone who has not met the academic requirements.  A former royal courtier argues that “the course will stand him in good stead” for when he inherits the Duchy of Cornwall, but a ‘second honeymoon’ in the Maldives at the luxury five star Cheval Blanc Randheli Hotel on Noonu Atoll, where a four night stay can set a holiday-goer back in excess of £6,000, screams  lack of focus and care. And this in the same week that the government hardened its stance on holidays during term times. No doubt William will be gifted a brilliant qualification at the end of it all though.

But while a waste of public money and excruciating hypocrisy are lamentable, are they enough to remove an institution that dates back to the fifth century? Probably not is the answer. After all, we’ve had hypocritical and wasteful politicians in their legions. No, to actually abolish the monarchy, there needs to be a game changer; something so wrong that it not only offends our most fundamental beliefs, it downright spits in our faces.

Bingo. The letters Prince Charles sent to MPs in the former Labour government happen to be just that kind of game changer. “A powerful, unelected royal in private correspondence about government policy with senior members of parliament?” you ask, wiping the bubbles of saliva from your brow. Yes indeed, and things get a whole lot fishier when the attorney general, Dominic Grieves, blocks these letters from publication because their revelation may cast doubt over the political neutrality of the King to be. No, Mr Grieves, explanations like that cast doubt over the political neutrality of the King to be.

The Leveson Report was critical of the back door dealings between Murdoch’s gang and top politicians because of the lack of transparency, so where’s the difference here? The Guardian has been fighting for nine years under freedom of information legislation to get the letters published.

Yet still, despite Wednesday’s ruling, led by Lord Dyson, the head of the civil judiciary in England and Wales, that Mr Grieves was wrong in vetoing the decision of an independent tribunal to reveal the letters, the fight is to be taken to the Supreme Court. That is, Prince Charles’s corner is staunchly (and exasperatingly) defending the offence right to the death. At least we received some apologies for wrongdoing from politicians when they abused their positions during the expenses scandal. Here nothing, nada.

It’s truly an affront to democracy; both the obvious attempt to influence the previous government and the attempts to keep it hidden in the shadows.

So, what would replace the monarchy? A republic – as many, if not most, countries around the world have. We could keep Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Hampton Court as tourist destinations with a royal culture, but we needn’t keep their occupants as unelected heads of our state. In other words, we’d retain the best of Britain, and cut off the worst.

ATATURK IS WATCHING YOU!

I felt something wasn’t quite right upon touching down in Istanbul. The flight had been seamless, the curry alla British Airways quite filling and the securing of a visa, snappy. Still, the feeling that no one has ever managed to put their finger on or expressed from the teasing tip of the tongue plagued my first day in Turkey’s most popular tourist destination.

This sums Turkey up to its capital ‘t’ for me. It has the sunshine and it has the exotic mosques that allow clichés like ‘taking your breath away’ to make sense. But most vividly for me was that uneasy feeling that Turkey had me – quite literally. From Ataturk International Airport to Ataturk eyebrows following you around the hotel lobby – Big Brother is always watching you.

Indeed, when I first travelled to Turkey, staying with a friend in Izmir back in 2007, I was shocked to find a complete ban on the use of YouTube. The reason? Yes, you nailed it – a video mocking the great Ataturk. Fast forward seven years and the same talk of ‘offensive content’ is being used to justify more censorship and surveillance of internet use.

Yet, Ataturk is not the problem; it is the nasty abuse of his personality cult that stinks of Orwell. Big Brother was only ever the relatable moustachioed face while the higher echelons of the Party ran the show. Much the same can be seen in North Korea – does anyone really believe that the 31 year old inheritor of the Kim dynasty is the real driving force behind policy? Of course he isn’t, and of course it’s not for Ataturk’s sake that Turkey’s telecommunications authority (TIB) will be able to block content deemed ‘offensive’.

Needless to say, such web policy is an affront to that most fundamental of democratic rights – the freedom of expression. If the TIB is controlled by the Turkish Ministry of Transport and Communications, then the ruling Justice and Development Party would be free to define ‘offensive content’ as they please. Under such circumstances, criticism of a certain political party or politician may well be ‘offensive’ and blockable – sound familiar, Winston?

Fine, you might think, that’s why there are courts; in order to control the Legislature. Wrong. The Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his TIB chums stick their nasty middle fingers up to any system of checks and balances by not being obliged to first obtain a court ruling. Ah.

However, the situation is not entirely a bad as it first appears. On my penultimate night in Istanbul, I was invited over for dinner by the brother of a family friend. Eager to extract his thoughts regarding places to visit on my last day, I asked him about Taksim Square. ‘You must go, but not tomorrow,’ came the ominous response.  ‘Tomorrow there will be a fight.’ It was only on my flight home that I realised the meaning of his words as Taksim Square became a battleground between protesters and the police in the former’s attempt to put a halt to the proposed law.

And this isn’t the first incident of its kind either. Only last year Taksim Square played host to another significant protest, with the decision to build a shopping centre in Ghezi park providing the trigger for a much broader dissatisfaction with the government. Then too the government retaliated with excessive police force – tear gas, pepper spray and water cannons were all employed to disperse the demonstrators.

This is a significant asset to Turkey; a population willing to stand up and fight for its democratic rights. Even more so because many of those in the crowds of protesters had young faces. A new generation invested with values such as freedom that the internet represents. Indeed, what separates Turkey’s situation from that of North Korea is the absence or relative minuteness of this in the latter, hence the regime’s success. Consequently too, the situation in Turkey is far more salvageable.

And what’s more, democracy has another trump card; Turkey has been trying to accede to the European Union (EU) for some time now and isn’t likely to make any progress on Mr Erdogan’s current behaviour. Forgetting the eurozone, there are many strong economic benefits associated with joining the EU, especially when it comes to trade and negotiating with other countries as a single entity. Can Turkey really afford to miss out on membership? Statements from Turkey’s EU Minister and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis about the EU needing Turkey rather than the other way round suggest he thinks so, but time will tell whether he is telling the truth or simply playing hardball in a losing battle.

Indeed, while Mr Erdogan and his AK party rode into power in 2002 atop of a landslide of support, winning nearly two-thirds of the vote, the recent corruption allegations born out of alleged recordings between the Prime Minister and his son regarding a sum of money he wanted to ‘vanish’ have ripped open the wound of earlier unpopular policies and prompted calls for his resignation. All the while, despite the bullishness of Mr Erdogan’s defence, those five words of warning gifted to me before I left Istanbul continue to ring through my ears, gradually getting louder and louder. ‘There will be a fight.’

So while the Turkish government tries to push towards an autocracy with the latest of its draconian measures, Mr Erdogan would do well to realise that it is he that faces the uphill struggle to turn Turkey into what he wants it to be, not pro-democracy campaigners; and it is he that will be feeling that uneasiness that I became so accustomed to during my brief trip. Using the face of Turkey’s most beloved figure may have fooled some, but in Turkey’s youth especially the premier has found a powerful adversary.

In the meantime however, Mr Erdogan, the whole world will be watching you.