Corruption can no longer be dismissed as a developing world problem

Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian

A London summit must recognise, as the Panama Papers show, that these crimes are facilitated by the west

 

Illustration by Matt Kenyon.


By Thursday morning all the A-listers will have arrived. From Washington will fly in a succession of jets, bearing US secretary of state John Kerry as well as the bosses of the IMF and World Bank. Fifa and Uefa will send over their top bureaucrats. Captains of business will trail retinues of lobbyists.

All will join David Cameron and leaders from around 40 nations at an opulent London townhouse overlooking St James’s Park. Gathered there, in the slow-beating heart of Downton-ian Britain, they will launch into an almighty battle – over the meaning of a single word.

Not just any old word, mind you. It ranks among the most important terms for describing our broken-backed global capitalism. Indeed, it forms the very title of the day-long summit: corruption.

Explaining why he’s called the world’s first assembly on corruption, Cameron has said: “It destroys jobs … traps the poorest in desperate poverty, and undermines our security by pushing people towards extremist groups.” Absolutely right. What’s wrong is his definition of the term.

For Cameron, corruption equals bribery. It means greasing the palm of a bored official just to get through customs, tipping a hundred to a thuggish traffic cop so you can drive on. Or, at the luxury end of the market, a despot such as Nigeria’s General Sani Abacha, stealing billions from his home country and hiding the haul in foreign banks.

In other words, it’s something largely done by people in poor countries. As sardonic critics of this argument say, “Corruption has a black face.” That’s why the prime minister believes Thursday should be mainly about cracking down on states that take aid even while being blighted with bent officials, and tackling graft in sport.

And it is the argument of a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is the fervent agreement that bad things do happen – but Other People do them, never you or your country. On this reading, thievery is corruption. But receiving the same black money, laundering it and directing it back out to a tame tax haven or two – well, that’s just competition, isn’t it?

Time was when Britain, Europe and the US could get away with making this argument. The wealthiest countries in the world could with one hand wag a stern finger at the poorest nations, while with the other hand collecting their loot, and pushing it through their financial centres.

They could point to the surveys circulated by Transparency International in which perceptions of national corruption as reported by business leaders and “country experts” were totted up. Those publications proved, year after year, that the poorer the country, the more failed the state, the more corrupt the society. They also stated that the world’s “cleanest” countries included Switzerland, Singapore, the UK and the US.

David Cameron under pressure to end tax haven secrecy



All those breezy, boomtime justifications became exponentially harder to make after the 2008 crash. The era of austerity has left even rich governments scrabbling for tax revenues to fund their hospitals and schools. More importantly, it has prompted cash-strapped voters – from a Trump supporter in Indiana to a Corbynista in Kentish Town – to ask exactly who has been making how much money at their expense.

That brings us back to this week’s summit – because it’s here that developing nations such as Nigeria will join campaigning groups to make the argument that modern corruption now has a white face. They will argue that the onus is on Britain and other rich countries to crack down on the tax havens in their own backyards.
And they are right. Corruption of the sort that we normally discuss should be stamped out. It makes the lives of billions of the world’s poorest people harder and more insecure.

But it is peanuts compared to the much bigger sums that are raked in by the lawyers, accountants and other silky advisers who base themselves in the City of London and use Britain’s network of crown dependencies and overseas territories in Jersey, Guernsey, the Caymans and the British Virgin Islands.

Until the UK stops encouraging, advising and facilitating guilty men and women looking to stow their shady cash offshore, corruption will continue to flourish.

Modern corruption is a suit in a Panamanian office, who takes that general’s billions and sends it on to a private bank account, no impertinent questions asked along the way. It is the Mayfair estate agent who sells that multimillion-pound townhouse to an oligarch. It is that accountancy firm in the City that fills out the paperwork structuring the rich man’s affairs so that the money goes through one of their far-flung branch offices to wind up in a trust in the tax-free zones of the Caymans or the British Virgin Islands.

As yesterday’s letter from 350 top economists points out, there is no economic justification for these tax havens. They do not serve primarily to keep taxes in other countries down, but to allow very rich people to duck out of their obligations to the societies they live in. They shelter dirty cash from dictators, and siphon money out of developed countries. 

Like Gordon Brown before him, Cameron claims that Britain’s offshore havens are autonomous. They do not need to accept London’s tax laws – indeed, it is unclear whether they will turn up on Thursday. Yet the havens depend on London.

Take the Caymans, which, as Nicholas Shaxson notes in his book Treasure Islands, are effectively run by a governor appointed by the Queen, on the advice of Whitehall. The governor is responsible for “defence, internal security and foreign relations; he appoints the police commissioner, the complaints commissioner, auditor general, the attorney general, the judiciary and a number of other senior public officials. The final appeal court is the Privy Council in London.” And the national anthem is God Save the Queen.

Last week I met a tax lawyer in London who mused on how little Britain actually benefited from its spider’s web of tax havens. “A few people in the City of London make huge fees – I’d love to see how much that money benefits the rest of the country.”

But weren’t we powerless to stop Jersey and the rest? The lawyer went through the precedents. Britain, he pointed out, had repeatedly imposed its law on its overseas governments. In 2000, London forced the Caribbean territories to decriminalise homosexual acts by Order in Council. He thought the same thing could be done to force the offshore havens publicly to disclose who were the ultimate “beneficial” owners of the trust funds.
How long would that take? “Oh, two sides of A4. It could be done by the next morning. All it takes is the will.”

Dealing with parents' mortality

Rohit Brijnath in The Straits Times

My father, 81, and I talk occasionally about his death. At breakfast he, not an ailing man, can turn into a prophet of doom amidst spoonfuls of cereal. "I have two years left," he will pronounce, to which I reply that his predictions are unreliable since he has been saying this for the past six years. My mother, 83, laughs and he smiles. We are all, impossibly, trying to meet death with some humour and grace.

I am sounding braver than I actually feel for the inevitability of a parent's death is like a shadow that walks quietly with most of us. A 40-year-old woman I met recently revealed that when her parents are asleep, she stands over their beds in the dark, waiting for a tiny movement, a proof of life. Mortality is life's most towering lesson, not to be feared but gradually understood.

My parents' eventual death is hardly a preoccupation for me but for those of us who live on foreign shores, it's always there, lingering on the outskirts of our daily lives. It is hard to explain the two-second terror of the surprise phone call from our homes far away. I answer with a question that is always tense and terse: "Everything OK?" My father replies: "Of course, beta (son)."

Death will come, and somehow, it will always be imperfect. In old Bollywood films, parents made long, weepy speeches about family and love and then their heads fell dramatically to the side. Reality is never so scripted. The devilry of distance - I live two flights from my parents - means that it is unlikely we will be home in time. We do not want our parents to linger and yet the heart attack's unpredictable finality leaves no time for farewell. We are presuming, of course, that there is such a thing as a graceful goodbye. Perhaps it is in how we live with them that is more vital.

I talk occasionally to my parents about death, not because I am morbid but because I am inquisitive about mortality and because I do not want them to be scared or alone. Yet I find it is they who reassure me.

They return from frequent funerals, friends gone and family lost, and speak with voice softer but spirit intact. My father retreats deeper into his sofa and philosophy and tells me: "The whole, wonderful, joyful, exhilarating business of evolution would not exist if we were immortal." There can rarely be an equanimity about death - we all fear pain and indignity on the way there and we all feel loss - but sometimes we might strive for an acceptance that all things must finish.
Few other struggles are as impartial as ageing and illness, and the mortality of a parent. Every friend I spoke to carried a separate apprehension. A banker told me she is unafraid and yet had already asked close friends to attend her parents' funerals. Emotionally and practically, she knows she will need support. An executive, her parents still together after 61 years, sinks as she considers one parent left behind, like an old, steadied ship whose moorings have been cruelly cut. A flinty investigative journalist, bound to her mother who is her only parent alive, wonders about her sanity once left alone.

We feel hesitant often to raise some subjects with our parents as if they are too impertinent or inconvenient and yet practicality has a place. Was a will written, a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) ordered, all these seemingly minor matters which leave shaken families divided in emergency rooms. Do we know what our parents wish and how they want to go?

Clarity is the great courtesy that my friend Sharda's mother offered her: no life support, no unnecessary surgery. Another pal, Samar, has a paper packet at home given to him a while ago by his parents and only recently did he find the nerve to peek in. No religious rituals, his parents wrote; our bodies to be donated for medical purposes, they noted.

I found nothing grim in this but saw it instead as a gentle gift to their son by giving him answers to questions he cannot bear to ask. There was also in the giving of their bodies to science a beautiful, moral clarity. In their 80s, they had understood that in death, they might be able to do what so few of us can do while living: save a life.

Samar sees his parents every day and I call India every second day. In my wrestle with the eventual truth of a parent-less planet, I have learnt five things. The first is contact. To hear, see, touch. To talk and to learn. My father recently mentioned in conversation about the composers Johann Strauss Senior and Junior. I didn't tell him I thought there was only one. So thanks, dad.

Second, to speak your mind, to leave nothing unsaid, for in the sharing of love a relationship comes alive. Not everyone can find the words but regret is an incurable ache.

Third, mine them for stories, of where they came from, hardship they hurdled, love they found, museums they visited, people they became, dreams they left behind, times they lived in, fears they wore. If I don't write them down, then stories dim and histories die and there is nothing to carry forward.

Fourth, and this my mother is teaching me, is to respect choice. "Fight, fight" against age, against illness, we tell our parents, often selfishly, but not everything must be raged against. Dylan Thomas was wrong, sometimes you have to go gentle into that good night. Sometimes, life has been enough, a weariness comes to rest, all accounts are settled and people want to turn to the wall, away from life and slip away. As my closest friend, Namita, still grieving over a mother she recently lost, told me: "There is a great love in letting people go."

Fifth, and I am lousy at this, don't steal their autonomy and instead respect their choices, hear their opinions, let them be free to arrange the rhythms of their life. My brothers and I are always trying to buy our parents a TV, a fridge, as if we cannot fathom that their life does not need a new shine. Yet it is fine as it is. So what if the letters on my mother's keyboard wore away, she has not forgotten the unique order of this alphabet.

Still I search for clarity amidst the clutter of life's incessant questions. I wade, like us all, through the truths of ageing and loss. I think of a relative who cannot find a way to open cupboards and wander through the accumulated life of her parents she has recently lost. I am moved by a friend, a civil servant whose father passed away a while ago and who tells me: "I don't fear death. I feel I have had a fulfilling stint with my mum." We are, all of us, a forest of crooked trees, leaning on each other.

I find reassurance in the reality that my parents, hardly wealthy, not poor, have lived rich lives. My mother now sits with the stillness of a painting and reads. My father writes to me: "I am not frightened by death. I will be sad that I can no longer look at Michelangelo's David, Picasso's Guernica, listen to the cool jazz of Bill Evans' piano or smell the aroma of a beautiful woman!" Today he has gone, as he does many Sundays, to listen and learn from a younger man about his beloved Strauss and Bach and Mozart. To this music, always he comes alive.

On Pakistan's historical hero - Muhammad bin Qasim

Tax havens have no economic justification, say some top economists

Thomas Piketty and Jeffrey Sachs among signatories of letter urging world leaders at UK anti-corruption summit to lift secrecy

 

The British Virgin Islands. More than half of the companies set up by Mossack Fonseca, the law firm in the Panama Papers leak, were incorporated in British overseas territories such as BVI. Photograph: Alamy


Patrick Wintour in The Guardian



More than 300 economists, including Thomas Piketty, are urging world leaders at a London summit this week to recognise that there is no economic benefit to tax havens, demanding that the veil of secrecy that surrounds them be lifted.

David Cameron agreed to host the summit nearly a year ago, but the event is in danger of simply turning a spotlight on how the British government has failed to persuade its overseas territories to stop harbouring secretly stored cash.

British officials are locked in negotiations with the crown dependencies and overseas territories, trying to persuade them to agree to a form of automatic exchange of information on beneficial ownership of companies. So far the overseas territories have only agreed to allow UK law enforcement agencies access to a privately held register of beneficial ownership, but the automatic exchange agreement would give a wider range of countries access to information on the ownership of shell companies.

Many overseas territories including the Cayman Islands are resisting the idea, and their attendance at the summit is in doubt.

Apart from Piketty, author of the bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the impressive roll call of economists includes Angus Deaton, the Edinburgh-born 2015 Nobel prize-winner for economics, and Ha-Joon Chang, the highly regarded development economist at Cambridge University.

Other signatories include Nora Lustig, professor of Latin American economics at Tulane University, as well as influential experts who advise policymakers, such as Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and an adviser to UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, and Olivier Blanchard, former IMF chief economist.

In total 47 academics from British universities, including Oxford and the London School of Economics, have signed the letter which argues that tax evasion weakens both developed and developing economies, as well as driving inequality.

The signatories state: “Territories allowing assets to be hidden in shell companies or which encourage profits to be booked by companies that do no business there are distorting the working of the global economy.”

To counter this, they are urging governments to agree new global rules requiring companies to publicly report taxable activities in every country in which they operate, and ensure all territories publicly disclose information about the real owners of companies and trusts. A concerted drive by the EU is now under way to require companies to declare where their profits are made, and to ensure tax is paid there rather than in the country in which it is declared.

In a tough broadside against the British prime minister, Jeffrey Sachs said: “Tax havens do not just happen. The British Virgin Islands did not become a tax and secrecy haven through its own efforts. These havens are the deliberate choice of major governments, especially the United Kingdom and the United States, in partnership with major financial, accounting, and legal institutions that move the money.

“The abuses are not only shocking, but staring us directly in the face. We didn’t need the Panama Papers to know that global tax corruption through the havens is rampant, but we can say that this abusive global system needs to be brought to a rapid end. That is what is meant by good governance under the global commitment to sustainable development.”

More than half of the companies set up by Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers leak, were incorporated in British overseas territories such as the British Virgin Islands.

The signatories admit: “Taking on the tax havens will not be easy; there are powerful vested interests that benefit from the status quo. But it was Adam Smith who said that the rich ‘should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion’. There is no economic justification for allowing the continuation of tax havens which turn that statement on its head.”

Oxfam, which coordinated the letter, is urging the UK government to intervene to ensure that Britain’s offshore territories follow its lead by introducing full public registers showing who controls and profits from companies incorporated there. 

Oxfam estimates that Africa loses about $14bn (£10bn) in tax revenues annually – enough money to pay for healthcare that could save 4 million children’s lives a year and employ enough teachers to get every African child into school.

Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam GB, said: “It’s not good enough for information about company owners in UK-linked tax havens to be available only to HMRC – it needs to be fully public to ensure that governments and people around the world can claim the money they are owed and hold tax dodgers to account.”

On Dalit-Muslim unity - The Dalits’ dream of Pakistan

Tahir Mehdi in The Dawn


A group of Pakistani Dalits in Mirpurkhas gathered at their town hall recently. They vowed to initiate a movement to assert their distinct political identity, and fight for their communities’ rights.

The word ‘dalit’ literally means ‘oppressed people’; it has been in use since the 19th century to describe communities that fall outside of the four-caste Hindu hierarchy. These ‘outcastes’ or ‘untouchables’ have been subject to horrendous discrimination, in all spheres of life, for at least the past 2,000 years.

As political consciousness in undivided India arose towards the end of the British Raj, a number of Dalit leaders emerged to formulate and push forward their own political demands.

Most prolific among them was Dr B.R. Ambedkar, who did not trust the upper-caste-dominated Congress with the political interests and aspirations of his communities. He made a strong case for a separate electorate for Dalits in the 1930-32 Round Table Conferences. The Muslim League had also made the same demand the centre of their politics.

The Communal Award of 1932 accepted the positions of both, but Gandhi persuaded Ambedkar to agree to reserved seats for Dalits within a joint electorate system, rather than having Dalit voters elect Dalit parliamentarians separately.

The Government of India Act, 1935 included a schedule of castes that were subject of its specific clauses. The term ‘Scheduled Castes’ thus replaced ‘Dalits’ in official parlance. In Pakistan, the government also notified 40 castes as ‘Scheduled’ through an ordinance in 1957, which included Bheel, Kohli and Menghwar.

Dalits did establish a distinct identity — but their mobility within politics continued to remain restricted due to entrenched caste barriers.

Dr Ambedkar made it to the Constituent Assembly of India only with the help of fellow Dalit leader, Jogendra Nath Mandal.

Mandal, from East Bengal, belonged to the Namahsudra (an ‘untouchable’) caste. He was long associated with the Muslim League, and had served as a minister in the Suharwardy-led government of Bengal in 1946. Being a Dalit leader, he had found common cause with poor Bengali Muslims fighting against landlords and moneylenders, the majority of whom were upper-caste Hindus.

He supported the creation of Pakistan, and was made temporary chairman of the first Constituent Assembly. He served as a federal minister in the first cabinet.

Mandal’s elevation was perceived as a gesture towards Dalits, indicating that Muslim Pakistan would treat them better than the caste-plagued Hindu Congress. This gesture proved short-lived — and soon turned into a tale of betrayal.

In March 1949, a Dalit member of the first Constituent Assembly motioned to amend the Objectives Resolution to include ‘Scheduled Castes’ in the language which vowed to safeguard interests of minorities. Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar defended the original phrasing, arguing that specificity was not required; whether Muslim or Hindu, any marginalised community would be protected.

The amendment was turned down, which was a denial of the everyday realities of our society, where oppression is encoded into the caste system.

It became evident that Pakistan divides its population into two groups only — Muslims and non-Muslims — and that when it comes to sharing state resources and privileges, Muslims would benefit from their preferential status at the expense of non-Muslims.

Mandal resigned in 1950. If one is to trust the veracity of his resignation letter available online, he offered a scathing indictment of Pakistan’s failure to safeguard its minorities. He accused the rulers of extreme forms of discrimination against Dalits — including forced conversions and even mass murder. A dejected Mandal moved back to Kolkata. That is how Dalits’ dream of Pakistan turned into a nightmare. But the worst was yet to come.

Gen Zia introduced the separate electorate system, and allotted seats in elected houses to ‘Hindus and Scheduled Castes’. This collating of Dalits and caste Hindus not only stripped Dalits of the distinct political identity they had struggled for, it also pushed them back into the same Hindu fold, against which Mandal and the Muslim League had sided. Zia’s system was later changed, but the succeeding scheme continued to prefer upper-caste Hindus.

This resulted in rich caste Hindus obtaining ruling positions by using Dalits as their ladder. While there is little doubt that the rich in majority communities also get most party posts and parliamentary seats, in the Dalit context this has additional ramifications.

For example, the well-educated, upper-caste, Sindhi Hindus get admissions in higher education institutions on merit, and happen to occupy more seats than their proportion in the population. It makes sense for them not to demand quotas.

The absence of a quota, however, is against the interests of Dalits, who have a poor educational profile and seldom get good jobs. Their quota demands cannot make headway as long as their representatives belong to the upper-caste.

In matters of personal laws, the positions of Dalits and caste Hindus diverge on issues as important as divorce. Marriage cannot be dissolved according to the upper-caste code, but this is not so with Dalits. Upper-caste insistence that Hindu marriage law should not include a divorce clause has been a major impediment in its enactment.

The upper castes are a minuscule minority within Pakistani Hindus, and the vast Dalit electorate is all that democratically legitimises their politics. Yet, no sincere attempt to reach out to them has been made.

Community organisations formed by the upper castes have primarily charitable goals which, of course, do not include ‘annihilation of caste’. Their membership fees are often more than what most Dalits of Thar could ever pay, even with a loan guarantee taken for a lifetime of bonded labour.

Dalits complain bitterly that when an upper-caste girl is forcibly converted, caste Hindus parade the length of Sindh in protest, making headlines. Dalit women, on the other hand, suffer the same ordeal every day, but all they get from their community ‘leaders’ are empty promises.

The Dalit gathering in Mirpurkhas featured a large poster of Dr Ambedkar. Perhaps Mandal’s decision to call it quits on Pakistan was wrong. Pakistani Dalits will have to pick up the pieces of their broken dream, and start from where Mandal left off.

Offshore finance: more than £12tn siphoned out of emerging countries

Analysis shows £1.3tn of assets from Russia sitting offshore, as David Cameron prepares to host anti-corruption summit.

 

Russian banknotes. A detailed 18-month research project has uncovered a sharp increase in the capital flowing offshore from developing countries, in particular Russia and China. Photograph: Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters


Heather Stewart in The Guardian


More than $12tn (£8tn) has been siphoned out of Russia, China and other emerging economies into the secretive world of offshore finance, new research has revealed, as David Cameron prepares to host world leaders for an anti-corruption summit.

A detailed 18-month research project has uncovered a sharp increase in the capital flowing offshore from developing countries, in particular Russia and China.

David Cameron under pressure to end tax haven secrecy



The analysis, carried out by Columbia University professor James S Henry for the Tax Justice Network, shows that by the end of 2014, $1.3tn of assets from Russia were sitting offshore. The figures, which came from compiling and cross-checking data from global institutions including the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, follow the Panama Papers revelations of global, systemic tax avoidance.

Chinese citizens have $1.2tn stashed away in tax havens, once estimates for Hong Kong and Macau are included. Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia – all of which have seen high-profile corruption scandals in recent years – also come high on the list of the worst-affected countries.

Henry, a former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey, told the Guardian his research underlines the fact that tax-dodging is not the only motivation for using tax havens – criminals and kleptocrats also make prolific use of their services, to keep their wealth secret, and their money safe. He said the list of users of offshore jurisdictions is like the cantina scene in Star Wars, where a motley group of unsavoury intergalactic characters is assembled. Henry said: “It’s like the Star Wars scene: you have the tax dodgers in one corner, the arms dealers in another, the kleptocrats over here. There’s also those using tax havens for money laundering, or fraud.”

Oil-rich countries including Nigeria and Angola feature as key sources of offshore funds, the research finds, as do Brazil and Argentina. Henry said the owners of this hidden capital are often so keen to secure secrecy and avoid their wealth being appropriated back home, that they are willing to accept paltry financial returns rather than investing it in ways that might promote economic development. Charging just 1% tax on this mountain of offshore wealth would yield more than $120bn a year — almost equivalent to the entire $131bn global aid budget.

The TJN is urging Cameron to push for agreement on a series of issues at this week’s summit, including a tougher crackdown on the banks, lawyers and other professionals who facilitate financial secrecy; and an obligation on all politicians to make their personal financial situation transparent.

The prime minister published a summary of his tax affairs last month, after the Panama Papers leaks revealed that his father had set up an investment fund, Blairmore, based in the offshore jurisdiction of Panama.

Henry argued that when senior figures in authoritarian states such as China use tax havens to guard their money safely, they are effectively free-riding on the legal and financial systems of other countries. “All of these felons and kleptocrats are in a way essentially dependent on the rule of law when it comes to protecting their money,” he said.

He said it was not just exotic locations such as the Cayman Islands where money can effectively be hidden, but also some US states, such as Delaware, where it is possible for foreign investors to start up and run a company without making clear its ultimate ownership – something all UK firms will have to do from later this year.

After two years of baby talk, how about some grown-up action?

Shobhaa De in Politically Incorrect | India | TOI


They call them the Terrible Twos. I can confidently confirm that. My neighbour has a cuddly grandson who just turned two. I have been observing him closely — not only because he is their first grandchild, but because, he was born at about the same time a brand new political force came into existence. The grandson took over our hearts. The political force took over the country.

Last year, around this time, I was watching the neighbour’s kid take his first few baby steps. He fell, got up, fell again. I clapped. I encouraged him to try again. I rewarded him with hugs, smiles and kisses. Occasionally, I dangled carrots as incentives. He was cutting his teeth. He was nearly potty-trained. There were a few accidents. But he could tell from our reactions that we wanted our Bharat to be swachh — starting with the drawingroom carpet. We indulged him. Bachche toh bachche hain, we said, as he ran around, refusing to stay put in any one place for long. We noticed he was more willing to make friends with strangers than with his own folks. He’d meet new kids in the garden and promptly invite them home. He was keen to share his favourite toys with padosis but not that keen on sharing the same with his brothers. He liked all the foreign kids he met in the park. And they seemed to like him, too. Except when he hugged them, squeezed them and refused to let go till his pictures were clicked. This led to a few embarrassing situations. While American kids reciprocated, sort of, European bachchas gave him the cold shoulder. Especially, the Italians. We told him not to feel bad. He was too inexperienced to understand how far he could go with foreigners and those bear hugs.

His popularity in the neighbourhood was high. If one overlooked the usual dog-in-the-manger attitude kids display when their playthings are being snatched. Several kids attended his birthday party that first year and everybody had a ball. You see, an elaborate magic show had been orchestrated for the benefit of guests, and the clever magician was busy pulling all sorts of wonderful things out of his hat. The kids were mesmerised and thrilled. They wanted the magician to reveal how he performed all those fantastic tricks making objects — and people — disappear. Of course he didn’t oblige. The kids were most disappointed and started chorusing “Cheater! Cheater!” Kids can be very blunt, and very cruel. Adults are more accommodating. They know exactly the sort of tricks magicians play on gullible audiences.

Then there was the other big problem faced by our two-year-old. He couldn’t — and still can’t — separate fact from fiction, fantasy from reality. In his mind, there is only one version of the truth — his. Idle bystanders accuse us of being intolerant when we try and correct him in public. We are not happy with these interventions, since we believe we are entitled to our opinions when it comes to an obstinate two-year-old who refuses to see reason. But then we are always outnumbered!

Actually, it’s fun being a two-year-old. Zero responsibilities and lots of noise! Two-year-olds are compulsive attention-seekers. They love the spotlight on them and are pretty good at hogging the show. Of course, they are selfish and selfcentred. A toddler gets away with virtually anything! People nod understandingly and say, “Give some more time… be patient. Wait for improvement.” Our little fellow is a fast learner. He knows he has to compete and beat that kid next door. The dimpled cutie who is still a mama’s boy and, gulp… is still learning how to talk. But he has the best toys in the neighbourhood — Italian choppers, etc.

Our kid does talk. But not to us. He prefers to talk to himself. Last week we overheard him muttering “achhe din… achhe din” over and over again. We clapped and patted him on the back. Next week our kid has a big test to clear. It is an entrance exam to get into a good primary school. Stiff competition is posed by aggressive rivals. But our two-year-old is super confident. He has armed himself with a big stick to beat those who stand in his way. Once a brat, always a brat, they say.