Why even atheists should be praying for Pope Francis

Francis could replace Obama as the pin-up on every liberal and leftist wall. He is now the world's clearest voice for change

• 
• • Jonathan Freedland
  • The Guardian, Friday 15 November 2013 19.59 GMT

'On Thursday, Pope Francis visited the Italian president, arriving in a blue Ford Focus, with not a blaring siren to be heard.' Photograph: Gregorio Borgia/AP

That Obama poster on the wall, promising hope and change, is looking a little faded now. The disappointments, whether over drone warfare or a botched rollout of healthcare reform, have left the world's liberals and progressives searching for a new pin-up to take the US president's place. As it happens, there's an obvious candidate: the head of an organisation those same liberals and progressives have long regarded as sexist, homophobic and, thanks to a series of child abuse scandals, chillingly cruel. The obvious new hero of the left is the pope.

Only installed in March, Pope Francis has already become a phenomenon. His is the most talked-about name on the internet in 2013, ranking ahead of "Obamacare" and "NSA". In fourth place comes Francis's Twitter handle, @Pontifex. In Italy, Francesco has fast become the most popular name for new baby boys. Rome reports a surge in tourist numbers, while church attendance is said to be up – both trends attributed to "the Francis effect".

His popularity is not hard to fathom. The stories of his personal modesty have become the stuff of instant legend. He carries his own suitcase. He refused the grandeur of the papal palace, preferring to live in a simple hostel. When presented with the traditional red shoes of the pontiff, he declined; instead he telephoned his 81-year-old cobbler in Buenos Aires and asked him to repair his old ones. On Thursday, Francis visited the Italian president – arriving in a blue Ford Focus, with not a blaring siren to be heard.

Some will dismiss these acts as mere gestures, even publicity stunts. But they convey a powerful message, one of almost elemental egalitarianism. He is in the business of scraping away the trappings, the edifice of Vatican wealth accreted over centuries, and returning the church to its core purpose, one Jesus himself might have recognised. He says he wants to preside over "a poor church, for the poor". It's not the institution that counts, it's the mission.

All this would warm the heart of even the most fervent atheist, except Francis has gone much further. It seems he wants to do more than simply stroke the brow of the weak. He is taking on the system that has made them weak and keeps them that way.

"My thoughts turn to all who are unemployed, often as a result of a self-centred mindset bent on profit at any cost," he tweeted in May. A day earlier he denounced as "slave labour" the conditions endured by Bangladeshi workers killed in a building collapse. In September he said that God wanted men and women to be at the heart of the world and yet we live in a global economic order that worships "an idol called money".

There is no denying the radicalism of this message, a frontal and sustained attack on what he calls "unbridled capitalism", with its "throwaway" attitude to everything from unwanted food to unwanted old people. His enemies have certainly not missed it. If a man is to be judged by his opponents, note that this week Sarah Palin denounced him as "kind of liberal" while the free-market Institute of Economic Affairs has lamented that this pope lacks the "sophisticated" approach to such matters of his predecessors. Meanwhile, an Italian prosecutor has warned that Francis's campaign against corruption could put him in the crosshairs of that country's second most powerful institution: the mafia.

As if this weren't enough to have Francis's 76-year-old face on the walls of the world's student bedrooms, he also seems set to lead a church campaign on the environment. He was photographed this week with anti-fracking activists, while his biographer, Paul Vallely, has revealed that the pope has made contact with Leonardo Boff, an eco-theologian previously shunned by Rome and sentenced to "obsequious silence" by the office formerly known as the "Inquisition". An encyclical on care for the planet is said to be on the way.

Many on the left will say that's all very welcome, but meaningless until the pope puts his own house in order. But here, too, the signs are encouraging. Or, more accurately, stunning. Recently, Francis told an interviewer the church had become "obsessed" with abortion, gay marriage and contraception. He no longer wanted the Catholic hierarchy to be preoccupied with "small-minded rules". Talking to reporters on a flight – an occurrence remarkable in itself – he said: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" His latest move is to send the world's Catholics a questionnaire, seeking their attitude to those vexed questions of modern life. It's bound to reveal a flock whose practices are, shall we say, at variance with Catholic teaching. In politics, you'd say Francis was preparing the ground for reform.

Witness his reaction to a letter – sent to "His Holiness Francis, Vatican City" – from a single woman, pregnant by a married man who had since abandoned her. To her astonishment, the pope telephoned her directly and told her that if, as she feared, priests refused to baptise her baby, he would perform the ceremony himself. (Telephoning individuals who write to him is a Francis habit.) Now contrast that with the past Catholic approach to such "fallen women", dramatised so powerfully in the current film Philomena. He is replacing brutality with empathy.

Of course, he is not perfect. His record in Argentina during the era of dictatorship and "dirty war" is far from clean. "He started off as a strict authoritarian, reactionary figure," says Vallely. But, aged 50, Francis underwent a spiritual crisis from which, says his biographer, he emerged utterly transformed. He ditched the trappings of high church office, went into the slums and got his hands dirty.

Now inside the Vatican, he faces a different challenge – to face down the conservatives of the curia and lock in his reforms, so that they cannot be undone once he's gone. Given the guile of those courtiers, that's quite a task: he'll need all the support he can get.

Some will say the world's leftists and liberals shouldn't hanker for a pin-up, that the urge is infantile and bound to end in disappointment. But the need is human and hardly confined to the left: think of the Reagan and Thatcher posters that still adorn the metaphorical walls of conservatives, three decades on. The pope may have no army, no battalions or divisions, but he has a pulpit – and right now he is using it to be the world's loudest and clearest voice against the status quo. You don't have to be a believer to believe in that.

If Labour want to start apologising, it shouldn't be over economic migration

Jack Straw's admission of guilt over deciding to allow economic migration in 2004 is disingenuous, and sidesteps the real mistakes they made, and the problems we still have as a result

• 
• • Deborah Orr
  • The Guardian, Friday 15 November 2013 15.15 GMT

Jack Straw's mea culpa over Labour's 2004 immigration policy is disingenuous, writes Deborah Orr. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

Jack Straw has declared that Labour's decision to allow EU migrants from Poland and Hungary to work in Britain from 2004 was a "well-intentioned policy we messed up" and a "spectacular mistake". It's not quite an apology, but at least it's a declaration of fallibility. Straw says that inaccurate forecasts from the Home Office, suggesting far fewer people would come to the UK than id, were to blame. So it's not actually Labour's fallibility he's admitting to, really. One can understand why. If Labour started issuing mea culpas, it's hard to see where they would end.

In truth, the "spectacular mistake" of 2004 was not due to a set of duff Home Office figures, and Straw is being disingenuous in saying that it was. It wasn't about the UK's great enthusiasm for the EU either. Countries far more committed to Europe than Britain were more cautious about lifting transitional restrictions on new members. In truth, the decision fitted with Labour's general policy, which was to be enthusiastic about issuing work permits whenever possible. Labour wanted Britain to attract economic migrants. Partly, this was because the larger a working population is, the greater the economic activity, and the more revenue there is to look after those not working – of whom there was a burgeoning number in the UK at that time. But the policy was attractive to Labour for other reasons, too, some of which no Labour government could admit to.

Most glaring was Labour's fear of a resurgence of union power. They didn't want people banding together to insist on higher pay and better conditions. A steady supply of people for whom just working in Britain offered higher pay and better conditions than they would otherwise expect served to reduce cohesion in the workforce, making common purpose harder to achieve. It's easy to see why this was not a perceived benefit of immigration that Labour was keen to advertise, or even explicitly acknowledge within the party.

And anyway, there were further difficult-to-acknowledge complications. At that time, a lot of people in Britain were genuinely unemployable, the effects of the speedy economic restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s having been vastly underestimated by the previous government. Even when new jobs were created, it wasn't easy to pull families and communities that had been thrown on the economic scrapheap off it again.

Norman Tebbit famously exhorted people in areas of high unemployment to get on their bikes and look for work. Economic migrants are, by self-selection, people in a fit state to do so. A migrant workforce is keener, more flexible. But it's hard to inform your electorate of this without sounding as oblivious as Tebbit was to the hopelessness and paralysis that flourishes in ravaged communities. In short, Labour couldn't explain the problems caused by long-term unemployment without sounding as if they were indulging in victim-blame.

Also, Labour had bet the farm on being able to turn round public services systematically starved of investment for years (exacerbating the problems of long-term or inter-generational unemployment). So, in order quickly to recruit, for example, trained and experienced doctors and nurses, Labour went to developing countries to persuade qualified people that they should work in Britain. The awful effect on countries that had invested in training these people, only to have them go elsewhere to work, was a secondary concern. Once again, this is hardly a shining example of international socialism in action.

Nevertheless, economic migration was allowing Labour to do what Cameron, Osborne and their fellow neoliberals still say is impossible. Labour was growing the private sector (mainly in London) at the same time as it was growing the public sector (often outside London). This politically isolated the Conservatives very effectively for a long time, largely because the City, the Institute of Directors and the Confederation of British Industry, theoretically the people whose interests the Tories represented, were the great cheerleaders of Labour's policy on economic migration.

But yet again, Labour couldn't crow too much. "Better at being Tory than the Tories" was not a vote-winning slogan. Yet it was true. The City of London, its wants pandered to, was becoming the largest, most important financial centre in the world, even as the divide between rich and poor, north and south, haves and have-nots was widening. Britain had become so divided that consequences incredibly damaging to one group of people were fantastically advantageous to others. And anything that was advantageous to the wealthy was unchallengeable, as long as taxes were rolling in.

The most obvious of these polarising results is house prices. If you've got a house in London, you have somewhere to live that is also, by happy chance, making a good deal more money each year than the average salary, due only to its continued existence. Out-of-control inflation is generally not considered to be good economic news. Yet, the previous government, like this one, sees rising house prices as the goose that lays the golden eggs. How can they be so blind?

Rising house prices, and a lack of social housing, make London an impossible place even to park your bike, let alone wander off to get a job and a place to live. Only if a young British person's parents live in London, or have a place in London (and why wouldn't they, if they can afford it, London property being such an excellent investment?), does that person stand any chance of making a life in the capital. Of course, since many industries – thanks to lack of union power – now rely on internships for recruitment, getting a job sometimes entails a long period of working for free. So class and regional divisions are ramped up yet more. On it goes.

The most terrible consequence of Labour's political dishonesty is that it provides a foundation for yet more. By failing to admit the extent to which they did the bidding of the private sector – not just on regulation, but by allowing the City to dictate, say, immigration policy, then dressing it up as something more socially progressive – Labour, post-crash, had no defence against the Conservative argument that it was public spending that had caused the crash. Labour was proud of its record on public spending, far more proud than it was of sitting on its hands while house-price inflation ran riot, for example.

Public spending was something that Labour was prepared to admit to, so when the crash came, there Labour was, caught redhanded – except that the real blame lay with Labour's more stealthy policies, policies which, at that late stage, it was politically impossible either to start explaining or apologising for.

But this painful process of explaining and apologising should start in earnest. By bowing to the logic of the free market without explaining that economic migration is simply part of that, Labour has allowed rightwing political rhetoric to continue preaching the lie that global free markets and economic migration are separate issues. Due to Labour's own lies-by-omission, organisations such as the English Defence League and Ukip have been able to flourish. But more urgently, those lies-by-omission have allowed the Conservatives to maintain their own delusions about the efficiency and moral goodness of free markets.

If Jack Straw really thinks that allowing people from Poland and Hungary to work in Britain was a "spectacular mistake", I dread to imagine the level of hyperbole he would have to achieve in order to describe the magnitude of the many mistakes his government made, of which that one was just a tiny detail.

Pakistan - Drone attacks, a convenient explanation

D. SUBA CHANDRAN in the hindu

   

 

By blaming extremism on only 9/11 and U.S.-led drone attacks, the Pakistani state and society are seeking to externalise an internal issue

The killing of Hakimullah Mehsud, the head of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in a recent drone attack in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas has once again brought the debate back centre stage — within Pakistan at the national level, and between the United States and Pakistan at the bilateral level. While “sovereignty” and “spoiling the internal dialogue with the TTP” seem to be the primary slogans within Pakistan, “come what may, we will go after the militants” seems to sum up the American attitude. But are the drone attacks simply about these slogans and attitudes? Or, are there more serious and complicated issues than what is generally discussed at the populist level?

Sharif’s four assertions

During his visit to the U.S. in October, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif put forward four primary theses against the American-led drones programme, forcefully arguing that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) should cease using them. First, there was the general Pakistani perception that the drone attacks have increased extremism within Pakistan, resulting in further militant attacks within the country. Second, it impinged on Pakistan’s sovereignty, as the drones fired from across the Durand Line in Afghanistan fly over Pakistan territory and fire missiles, killing innocent civilians. Even if militants do get killed, the collateral damage is high. Third, as a result of these two, there is a growing anti-American sentiment within Pakistan, affecting Pakistan’s cooperation with the U.S., thereby further impinging on the American war against terrorism. Finally, continuing attacks undermine Pakistan’s efforts towards initiating a dialogue with the Taliban. How true are these perceptions that are widespread within Pakistan?

Undoubtedly, there is an element of truth in these four assertions. And, ironically, within them lies Pakistani duplicity. First, are the drones the primary reason for growing extremism within Pakistan? Or for that matter, 9/11 and the follow-up American invasion into Afghanistan? There is a blinkered perception in Pakistan about the extent of extremism pre- and post-9/11 and the drone attacks. Viewed in historical and sociological perspectives, the growth of extremism within Pakistan, with its roots in the 1980s, grew exponentially during the 1990s. Afghanistan and Kashmir became the much-needed ideological excuses for the military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to pursue their “strategic depth” and “thousand cuts” vis-à-vis Afghanistan and India respectively.

Radicalism before 9/11

While the political and sociological environment vitiated by the late Pakistan President Zia-ul-Haq and the failure of governance have already given birth to extremist groups (of the sectarian and jihadi kind) — of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) varieties — the abuse of these actors by the military and the ISI created an ugly internal situation for Pakistan from the 1990s. Extremism and radicalism were well entrenched at the national and provincial levels well before drone attacks and even 9/11.

Any historical analysis of sectarian violence in Punjab, Malakand and the tribal regions will reveal the scope of radical tumult by the late 1990s. Had it not been for this churning within Pakistan, neither would the Taliban have been born, nor the al-Qaeda found the region an ideal refuge and base to prepare for 9/11. Linking extremism within Pakistan only to drones and 9/11 reflects an ostrich-like attitude. It perhaps provides a convenient explanation, worse, an excuse for both the State and society to externalise an internal issue. The radical onslaught today in Pakistan is a direct result of what happened in the 1980-90s, both internally and externally; irrespective of 9/11, the American invasion and the drones, Pakistan would have gone through what it is going through now.

Link with sovereignty

The second major instance of Pakistani duplicity is over linking drones with sovereignty. There has been a tacit understanding between the political and military leadership vis-à-vis the U.S. on the use of drones. Starting from Gen. Musharraf to Gen. Kayani, were they not kept in the picture on the drone programme? Perhaps the CIA may not have shared the operational details, but it certainly should have explained to them the target and focus.

Drones, by nature, are not supersonic and stealth creatures; they fly at low altitude and are visible. If Pakistan had not agreed to their use, what stopped Gen. Musharraf and Gen. Kayani from issuing orders to fire at them? How many times has Pakistan fired at these drones, or its air force chased these drones away from Pakistani airspace? Is Pakistan incapable of firing at the drones, thereby allowing its airspace to be violated?

It is difficult to accept that Pakistan does not have the capacity to fire at drones using missiles, or chase them using fighter aircraft. Hypothetically speaking, if India were to use similar drones in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, will Islamabad and Rawalpindi keep complaining only about violation of airspace? Pakistan’s sovereignty argument does not make any sense.

The sovereignty argument over the use of drones also contradicts Pakistan’s earlier understanding with the U.S. Before the CIA took the drone programme into Afghanistan, across the Durand Line, were not drones being used from the Shamsi base in Balochistan? What was the understanding between the CIA and Pakistan’s military at that time, when the latter allowed the former to use the Shamsi airbase by the U.S.?

These are hard questions that Pakistan should ask its political and military leadership. Unfortunately for the U.S., the anti-American sentiment has greatly clouded the judgment of Pakistan’s civil society on this issue. Perhaps Mr. Nawaz Sharif is correct; drone attacks have increased anti-American sentiments, but the political leadership has allowed this purposefully to happen — to let the Americans take the full blame.

On dialogue

Finally, the issue of drones preventing Pakistan from initiating a dialogue with the Taliban, especially the TTP. True, the killing of Nek Mohammad, a former Taliban fighter, in 2004 did affect the dialogue then between the militants and Pakistan; however, after that, there were multiple dialogues between the military, the ISI and the TTP. Perhaps the drone attacks and the killing of Hakimullah Mehsud is a good omen for Pakistan. The TTP may get destabilised and will provide a better opportunity for Pakistan to negotiate with them — from a position of strength.

Why do private-sector zealots choose to ignore the countless ways public money underpins daily life?

OWEN JONES 

Wednesday 13 November 2013

Free market capitalism is a con. The state is the backbone of modern British capitalism

 

 

Clutch your mobile phone close to your bosom, stroke it tenderly, and praise the Fairy Godmother of Free Market Capitalism that you’re not walking around with an obscene brick stuck to your ear, a breadstick aerial reaching towards the heavens. “Imagine what telephones would look like if the public sector had been entrusted with designing and making them,” as an opinion piece in theTelegraph had it this week, reflecting views widely held on the Right. “The smartphone revolution would probably be at least another couple of decades away.”

One tiny little flaw with this dystopic piece of counter-factualism: er, the public sector was entrusted with doing just that. Economics professor Mariana Mazzucato’s The Entrepreneurial State shows how – to take just one example – the Apple iPhone brings together a dazzling array of state-funded innovations: like the touchscreen display, microelectronics, and the global positioning system.

The governing ideology of this country is that it is the entrepreneurial private sector that drives human progress. The state is a bureaucratic mess of red tape that just gets in the way. But free market capitalism is a con, a myth. The state is the very backbone of modern British capitalism.

It begins with the state’s protection of property rights, which needs a costly legal system to protect. Patent law prevents companies having their products ripped off by rivals, and limited liability and insolvency law encourages investment by preventing shareholders being made personally liable for debts. As the economist Ha-Joon Chang has pointed out, in the early days of capitalism a businessperson would have to sell all their earthly possessions if they fell into ruinous debt, even facing the prospect of the debtors’ prison.

The state spends billions of pounds a year on research and development that directly benefits business: no wonder the CBI applauds “additional spending on research and innovation” that attracts business investment. Businesses depend on the billions the state lavishes on infrastructure, too. The CBI routinely demands more and more public dosh is thrown at roads and airport expansion. Our taxpayer-subsidised privatised railway network is a classic example of how our modern economic system works. The government splashes out several times more money than in the days of British Rail.

Recently, the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee denounced the Government for throwing a £1.2bn subsidy at British Telecom for building rural broadband. Fossil-fuel industries are granted effective subsidies, too, with generous tax allowances, and by leaving the state to deal with the costly environmental damage they inflict. A recent environmental committee of MPs found that nuclear power gets an annual subsidy worth £2.3bn, and arms exports benefit from government subsidies worth £890m a year.

Who do businesses depend on to train their workers? State-funded education, of course, and indeed there are those who advocate letting for-profit companies take over schools, which would mean taxpayers’ money subsidising shareholders rather than looking after children.

Many companies pay poverty wages, leaving the state to subsidise them with billions of pounds of tax credits, housing benefits and other in-work benefits. Businesses are even increasingly benefiting from free labour with the rise of so-called workfare, where they pay nothing to shelf-stackers and other workers, leaving the taxpayer to pay out derisory benefits instead.

Privatisation has proved a generous subsidy of the private sector, too, with £1 in every £3 of government spending on public spending going straight to profiteers. Like G4S, for example, which failed to provide the security personnel for the Olympics, leaving the state to come to the rescue. Or take PFI, where private contractors are paid to build schools and hospitals and lease them back to the state. The actual worth of the completed projects was £54.7 billion, but the taxpayer is projected to pay them £310 billion when it finally pays them off. And then there’s the financial system that all businesses depend on. It wasn’t free-market dogma that saved the banks: it was, of course, the state.

Free-market triumphalism is endemic among the British elite, but rarely challenged. It’s time to start exposing it for the sham it is. They demonise the state, but they are dependent on it. Perhaps they should be a bit more grateful.  

Tendulkar - David to a thousand Goliaths

  

Tendulkar has become a national symbol of optimism and pride but when he bats, we still see him as an underdog

Mark NicholasNovember 14, 2013

 

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The airwaves fizz every time Tendulkar walks out to the middle © BCCI

 

For the past two decades, the fall of the second Indian wicket has created an unparalleled frenzy. This comes first from the crowds, who at once animate a mild sadness at the departure of one man and an unbridled joy at the entrance of another. In homes all around India, families alert one another to the moment and gather close to their television screens.

At the ground itself, the cameramen have switched their focus from the pitch to the Indian dressing room, where a small, strong man is reacting. Still sitting, he pulls on his arm guard and rubs his hands as if drying the palms. Before standing he puts the first batting glove on his right hand and then, as he rises to his feet, he carefully positions a protective helmet upon his head, eases the strap under his chin and tucks almost 3lbs of bat under his left arm. As he begins the walk to the middle he pulls on his right batting glove. He is now ready for the calling that has been his life.

Sachin Tendulkar is 40 years old. He first played for India when he was 16. He made a hundred for India when he was 17 years and 112 days old. He has made 51 Test hundreds and 49 one-day hundreds. He, along with his captain MS Dhoni and a couple of film stars, is the best known person in a land of more than a billion people. But even his recognisable peers do not carry the hopes of that nation each minute of every day. Tendulkar is a victim of himself and so powerful is the impact that adoring followers hyperventilate around him.

He is unarguably a great cricketer and a near-perfect ambassador for modern, progressive India. He likes popular music, clothes and cars, and he has worn jewellery. Yet he retains an old-fashioned perspective. His wife is a doctor, his children like cricket. The family takes holidays behind walls or disappears into cities on faraway continents. He is unfailingly polite, angelic almost. He is as much a part of the fabric of India as the Red Fort, the Pink Palace, the Maharajas, and Diwali. Indians like cricket but they truly love Sachin Tendulkar. He has been David to a thousand Goliaths. He may, or may not, be the second-finest batsman to have played the game. To many Indians, he is a god. Or God. And now he retires from the game that has defined him.

Twenty yards from the pavilion, he stretches his back and rocks his torso from side to side. He rolls his shoulders and swings his arms before linking his bat to his body with a series of left- and right-handed movements. He rehearses some strokes. The bat looks too big for his body. It always has. He twists his mouth and contorts his jaw. He squints and then opens his eyes, wide as they will, to the brighter light. He looks to the heavens, as if acknowledging a friend.

The television director brings the statistics of a life's work to the screen: 15,837 runs at an average of 53.87; 67 fifties, 51 hundreds; highest score 248 not out. The commentators talk lavishly of his achievements and of the legacy. The excitement is at fever pitch. The spectators stand and roar their appreciation. The airwaves fizz. The viewer feels a shiver through his spine.

“There is no single thing that can be attached to Tendulkar. You cannot say he has a style and he reveals little of his personality

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Tendulkar takes guard, marking a line in the crease with a forceful rip of the spike in his shoe. I think back to Karachi in 1989 when he did this for the first time in a Test match. The attack against him was Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Abdul Qadir. He may have never faced better. He looked boyish then because he was a boy. He still appears boyish now. In those days, he had set records at school, club and state level. India wondered if the kid could cut it. Now they know. In the fourth Test of that first series, Imran floored him with a short ball. Tendulkar refused the idea that he should retire hurt, dusted himself down and made a fifty. He may never have achieved more. But he did.

Now, in Kolkata, in the only innings of his 199th Test, he looks around the field. Is this for fielders or for gaps? He blocks convincingly off front foot and back. Then he drives Shane Shillingford through the gap at midwicket. The ball rolls over the boundary rope. Two balls later, he hits the same gap. The ball speeds over the same rope. The crowd goes apoplectic. He fiddles with his thigh pad, pushing one way and the other and then he squats, stretching out his groin, before repositioning his protective box and settling deliberately back into his stance. These fidgets, these idiosyncrasies, have never changed. Ball after ball, match after match, year after year they have remained the same. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

I think back to the catch at Lord's on his first tour of England. An athletic, running effort that hinted at real talent. I think of his match-saving hundred in the next Test, at Old Trafford, when, aged 17 years and 112 days, remember, he appeared to marshall his senior partner, Manoj Prabhakar. I think of the way in which hard-bitten Yorkshire embraced him as their first overseas cricketer. I think of his smile and of the sense of fun that burst from his youth.

Oddly, this makes me think of his bowling, which always looked like a release from the strain of true responsibility. I think that I remember him saving a match with the ball. I look it up. He did, using a quirky mix of swing and spin to restrict South Africa to just three runs when six were needed from the last over of the Hero Cup semi-final in Kolkata. Mohammad Azharuddin was his captain then.

Tendulkar plays quietly forward. It is an aesthetically pleasing push/punch. His hands hold the lower part of the bat handle, revealing the butt at the top of the grip to be covered by a different colour of rubber. In the push/punch the blade of the bat is exactly straight, showing its whole face to the bowler. It was ever thus.

A primeval instinct: the upper cut off Shoaib Akhtar in Centurion in the 2003 World Cup© Getty Images

He went to that first hundred at Old Trafford with a wonderful boundary past mid-off from his back foot. It is about the most difficult stroke there is and it is a Tendulkar trademark. That, the straight drive that misses leg stump at the non-striker's end, and any number off wristy leg-side moments that draw intakes of breath from opponent and audience alike. Then I think about theslaughter of Shoaib Akhtar during the 2003 World Cup in South Africa and the almost primeval approach to that innings that set him apart. Even Virender Sehwag has not played an innings of such brutality. Tendulkar has said that he was once like Sehwag. But we all run out of years.

He dips at the knees in that squat once more, shuffles his box and settles into another perfect stance. Side-on, eyes level, bat tucked behind the right foot. He watches the ball closely of course, a prerequisite of good batting, and has uncanny balance in all his strokes. I think of the systematic attack on Shane Warne and the Australians in India in 1998 - pre-planned, well practised and brilliantly executed - a performance of which Ian Healy said: "Bradman must have been good if he was better than him." I think of the double-hundred in Sydney - a considered and controlled performance that came from a chronic elbow injury and the desire to succeed in spite of it.

A tweet from Brian Lara flashes across the screen: "The only man I would pay money to watch," says Lara of his old adversary. Was one a better batsman than the other? Perhaps the West Indian was the greater match-winner; the Indian, the greater technician. I think of two innings at the Kensington Oval in Barbados. Lara'sunbeaten 153 to outwit the Australians and Tendulkar's 92 on a really bad pitch, a dangerous pitch (one of the few on that fine field) against Curtly Ambrose and Ian Bishop. The most revered right- and left-handed batsmen of the age. I imagine them at the wicket together, a kind of nirvana.

The age of Tendulkar has seen five unarguably great batsmen. Lara had an arrogance, Viv Richards an aura. For Jacques Kallis' statesman think Ricky Ponting's streetfighter. But there is no single thing that can be attached to Tendulkar. You cannot say he has a style and he reveals little of his personality. Perhaps this is a conscious approach, designed to give the opponent no clue. Summarising his emotion is impossible, he doesn't do drama. If anything there is sense of vulnerability that makes him attractive. We still see him as the underdog, and this a man who has become a national symbol of optimism and pride.

Now he is in his stance again. Shillingford rolls in and delivers the doosra. It beats our hero on the back foot and hits him around the upper thigh. Shillingford and other West Indians appeal ferociously. The English umpire, Nigel Llong, gives it out. Ye gods, Nigel, what were you thinking!

My mind goes to Cape Town in 1997 and the post-lunch partnership with Azharuddin. I have never seen such batting. Nor, one suspects, had President Mandela, who had come to say hello. Of the first 12 balls of the session, 11 were hit for four or six. In 40 overs they put on 222. It took a remarkable catch to finish Tendulkar at 169. I was as disappointed then with the man who took the catch, Adam Bacher, as I am now with Umpire Llong. (Editor's note - I have always felt that batting was never better as in the Cape Town partnership.)

I stay in a Cape Town sort of mind for the innings less than three years back, when a spiteful pitch encouraged Dale Steyn and company. I asked Sachin about this and he rated the 146 that day among the best. I asked if the standard of bowling had diminished during his time in the game and he thought it had changed in method rather than quality. The bowlers defend better than earlier, thus his own game has retreated from aspiration towards attrition.

I recall Perth in 1992, when the free-thinking 18-year-old model flayed Merv Hughes and Craig McDermott on the world's fastest pitch. Incidentally, he thinks Steyn is as good as anyone, which, given a list that begins with Imran and incorporates Malcolm Marshall, Wasim Akram and Allan Donald, is high praise.

The crowd reacts with shock to Llong's decision. Tendulkar appears resigned to the moment, as if he has seen it before. The DRS would have saved him but he and colleagues have not supported it. With typical dignity he begins the long walk to the dressing room. The crowd rise to applaud, more than aware of the dying light. It is hard to be sure when greatness slipped away from Tendulkar but the World Cup win in 2011 seemed to provide the perfect final chapter to an extraordinary story. He chose to write an epilogue but it has lacked the possibilities of the previous narrative.

Suddenly he has gone from view. As he will next Monday, for ever. A piece of us goes with him. I have seen, either live or on television, every one of the innings remembered here and many more. Each of his journeys to the wicket has led to a nervous excitement and each performance has given immense pleasure. India's most precious son has been a gift to the rest of the world too.

Questions about India’s drug industry

NARAYAN LAKSHMAN in the hindu

 

Change that supports measures such as surprise checks on manufacturing facilities, and greater transparency in and policing of drug approval processes and clinical trials is a must. Photo: M. A. Sriram

 

Unless a deeper, institutional change is ushered in to break the nexus between drug companies and the regulatory regime, Indians consuming drugs may be exposing themselves to serious risks

Even before I walked into the Mayflower Hotel in the heart of Washington on a crisp autumn afternoon to meet Dinesh Thakur, whistle-blower and former director of India-based pharmaceutical giant Ranbaxy, I had a hunch that this conversation would spark some troubling questions on India’s malfunctioning drug industry.

On May 13, 2013, Ranbaxy pleaded guilty to seven felonies relating to drug manufacturing fraud and agreed to cough up $500 million to settle the case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) after eight years of investigation. The vast evidence in the case, some of it supplied by Mr. Thakur and marshalled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), included inspection reports compiled after multiple FDA visits to Ranbaxy plants in India — in Paonta Sahib, Himachal Pradesh, and Dewas, Madhya Pradesh.

Ranbaxy makes a long list of generic medications — 200 different “molecules”, according to its website — everything from anti-retroviral drugs to treat HIV-AIDS to commonly used antibiotics such as Amoxicillin and Cephalexin (Mox and Sporidex in India). It makes generic combinations of Paracetamol and Ibuprofen, and sells numerous over-the-counter products, such as pain relief gel Volini and cosmetic product Revital in India.

While it is apparent that Indians consume Ranbaxy drugs at a prolific rate — accounting for approximately Rs.2,600 crore, or 18 per cent of the company’s global revenue for 2012 — what is less clear is why the Indian government has not launched a vigorous investigation into the current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) violations that the U.S. authorities found at multiple Ranbaxy facilities.

Go-slow approach

The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI), G.N. Singh, said in June: “When the issue has been flagged, as a regulator it is our duty to see that whatever medicines have been produced here are of assured quality.” But he did not specify the date by which a “review” of Ranbaxy’s past drug applications would be completed, leave alone committing himself to holding surprise visits to facilities aimed at investigating manufacturing standards.

This go-slow approach is all the more baffling given that, despite assurances by Ranbaxy after its admission of guilt in May that all of its other facilities adhered to the required process quality standards, a third plant, this time in Mohali, Punjab, was slapped with an import alert by the U.S. in September.

If any doubt remains about the seriousness of the claims made by the FDA so far, it is worth taking a quick look at the dossier of evidence submitted by the DoJ in the case against Ranbaxy.

Settlement documents make it clear that Ranbaxy admitted that had the seven felony charges brought by the DoJ gone to trial, the government “would have proven … beyond a reasonable doubt” that the company in 2006 had “knowingly made materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements,” with regard to the stability testing of drugs, and in 2003, it “with intent to defraud and mislead,” failed to submit timely field reports to the FDA.

FDA investigation

According to the FDA’s investigation, Ranbaxy acknowledged violations of cGMP regulations with regard to a U.S.-distributed drug, Sotret, even as far back as 2003. That was at a time when the billionaire brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh owned the company. The Singh brothers sold Ranbaxy to Japanese Daiichi-Sankyo in 2008 and walked away with a cool $4.6 billion.

Nevertheless, the Sotret episode marked the beginning of a series of FDA investigations of Ranbaxy facilities in India, particularly of the two that focussed on production for U.S. markets: Paonta Sahib and Dewas, where Ranbaxy manufactured Sotret and two other popular drugs, Gabapentin and Ciprofloxacin.

Inspecting Paonta Sahib in February 2006, the FDA found no fewer than eight deviations from cGMPs. These included failure to include a complete record of all drug testing data as required by FDA guidelines, and failure to establish an adequate testing programme for the stability characteristics of drugs — essential to determine drug storage conditions and expiration dates.

Dewas was also investigated the same month and the FDA found not only a similar unavailability of quality-control data but also a “failure to extend investigations into any unexplained discrepancy,” such as testing deviations noted for specific drug batches.

Quality issues

Additional inspections of the Dewas facility in 2008 unearthed a range of quality problems. For example, there were no separately defined areas for the production and packaging of penicillin that could prevent microbiological contamination of this drug from exposure to other drugs in the vicinity. Again, quality control test failures of certain drugs were not thoroughly investigated.

These early hints ought to have set alarm bells ringing at FDA headquarters: prescribed procedures were not being followed; the required data documenting these procedures were not being compiled; and where deviations were noted, they were not being investigated. They did not appear to raise the red flag — or at least not enough of them.

Thus, in November 2011, the FDA did not see it fit to hold Ranbaxy back from selling generic Lipitor, the popular cholesterol-reducer. Blessed with a six-month exclusivity grant, the company went on to rake in $600 million in sales revenue. Only when “fate” appeared to intervene and glass particles were discovered in samples of the drug did Ranbaxy issue a massive recall notice.

Yet, if the FDA only scratched the surface of drug quality problems at three Ranbaxy facilities, then there is an enormous question mark over the extent to which other Ranbaxy facilities beyond the ken of U.S. authorities are similarly involved — a matter of great importance to the 150-odd countries in which Ranbaxy sells its products, including India.

Poor enforcement in India

In this context, the Indian drug control authorities must share some of the blame for not coming down harder on fraud. The institutional reasons for poor enforcement in India are well known. In the context of drug regulation, the point was made most poignantly by the department-related Rajya Sabha Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare in its 59th report, on the functioning of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO).

In 2012, the Standing Committee lambasted the “collusive nexus between drug manufacturers, some functionaries of CDSCO and some medical experts,” citing in one case the spurious nature of the approvals process for new drug applications made by pharmaceutical companies.

While there is much more that the DCGI and CDSCO could do, it would be unfair to say they haven’t been jolted into action by l’affaire Ranbaxy, and then again by the FDA issuing import alerts against another Indian generics company, Wockhardt.

Earlier this month, the DCGI reportedly ordered a third pharmaceutical major, Sun Pharmaceutical, to suspend clinical research activities and new drug filings and applications at its Mumbai-based bio-analytic laboratory, “after discovering that Sun didn’t have the requisite approval from the Central government for operating the laboratory.”

However, until a deeper, institutional change takes place to break the nexus between drug companies and India’s regulatory regime — a change that incorporates everything from surprise checks on manufacturing facilities to greater transparency in, and policing of, drug approvals processes and clinical trials — there is a strong likelihood that Indian consumers of drugs made by these companies have poison coursing through their veins.