An Interview With Mukesh.

Being new in the field of journalism I have to compete with established stalwarts and so I attempt the difficult. There have been a lot of reports on Mukesh Ambani’s new house, realising that the building was not an answer to Tolstoys ‘How much land does a man need?’ I sought to get clarifications from Mukesh as to why he spent a billion dollars on 6 people, to build a 27 storey edifice that will house more cars than humans and whose interiors are the dreams of a new breed of Maharajas who have money but no taste.

Getting this interview was no easy task and I will not elaborate how I got in. Initially Mukesh wanted to scream for help but after explaining to him that I was not interested in his blanky or teddy bear we got down to a chat.

Me – Congratulations on your new house. I hear the house warming is on the 28th of October?

Mukesh – Thank you! Yes the housewarming is on the 28th I just cant wait to see everyone’s face when they see what money can buy. It hasn’t been easy building the house you know. Searching for the most expensive stuff is not easy; everyone claims to have the most exclusive goodies but I have seen it in everyone’s house. I have seen Sachin’s and Shahrukh Khan’s house and their interiors and the houses in Bollywood movies; I knew I had to up the ante in kitschiness.

Me – Its heartening to note that you have been inspired by two other 'industry' stalwarts. What is the reason for 160 cars?

Mukesh – I am glad you have asked this. As you know I have three helipads and so will not be using these cars. However, initially the idea was to use each car twice a year and some other cars a little more often. This was my way of showing empathy with the rest of the Mumbaikars who suffer traffic jams etc, however as time is money the idea was canned. However, I plan to start a Taxi service for the rich. We already know about Salman Khan, Nanda and now John Abraham and their accidents, my cars will be as exclusive and expensive as theirs but my drivers wont run-over anyone enroute home. This is also my way of keeping those sleeping on the streets safe from bad drivers.

You may not know but my building is showcasing an answer to the parking problems. The ‘way up’ is the only answer to solve the problems down below. I must let you into a little secret – if ever I face financial crisis I will turn my house into a large parking-lot with added services like amphitheatre, gym etc.

Me – You do think far into the future and that is what has made you so ---

Mukesh – (Interrupting) You are correct when you say I think far into the future. Thinking is not enough; looking into the future is where the money is. We rich have the power to look into the future that is why I built the three helipads even though the Indian Navy is opposed to it. What do you think is the secret of success of the Jindals and the Adani’s (21 July 2010 Mubai Edn Economic Times) of the world? We are able to look into the future and see everything going our way.

Me – What is the story behind naming your house Antilia is it-----

Mukesh (once again interrupting) – It’s my way of showing concern for the future and respect for the past.

Antilia is a mythical island. You are aware that Climate Change is going to submerge many such pieces of land. I would like to ensure that they are not forgotten once they disappear under the sea and therefore have named it after an island - even if mythical.

I don’t know why I am sharing this with you but if you remove the ‘n’ and the ‘I’ from ‘Antilia’ it becomes ‘Atila’. Atilla has deeply affected me – positively at that. Was it greed and lust for power that fueled his conquests? I dont know! But what ever fueled his conquests is awe-inspiring not many can emulate him. I think I have an Attila in me.

Me – Tell me something about your building.

Mukesh (Gleefully) – I bet you are not interested in knowing who the designers are and all that BS?

This building is an ode to India’s and therefore our practices which engine our economic progress.

If you look closely at the building (he hands me a drawing of the building) you will see a series of inbuilt question marks. There have been articles that questioned how I purchased the land for the building and how my industries have grown; others have questioned the social and environmental cost of India’s growth. All these have inspired this building (see below).





I am also deeply concerned with unemployment in India and I have started an initiative through my house that will employ 600, yes 600 people. I would like other rich to follow me in employing people in this manner.

Me – Mukesh is there any advice you would like to give?

Mukesh (with great emotion) – My life is my message; I can’t leave behind anything for future generations because I plan to leave everything for my children.

Its already 4 am and Mukesh wants to get back to sleep, I thank him for his magnanimity in speaking to lil-ol-me, his kindness for not screaming, his generosity in spending a few hours in an interview.

My meeting Mukesh is wishful thinking.

Breaking News: Carbon Sequestering to Add Fizz to Aerated Drinks

In the hullabaloo on the War on Terror Wikileaks the media missed out on a startling piece of news: two international soft drink giants are competing against each other to corner the Carbon Sequestering market.

Carbon Sequestering, an idea that carbon can be stored under ground at high pressure, is similar to sweeping dirt under the carpet. Till now humans had no use for such ‘dirt’, it was also seen as a health and environmental problem. As there is so much unwanted CO2 floating around the idea of sequestering came up.

The higher echelons of these aerated drink companies have realised they may have hit the jackpot if they combine carbon sequestering and manufacturing aerated soft drinks. CO2 floating around or confined in small spaces would still be a waste therefore seeing it as a resource has them gassing about it.

Using modern deep sea drilling techniques, made famous recently in the Gulf of Mexico, on dry land the soft drink manufacturers are planning to sequester carbon under aquifers and then release the carbon into the aquifer at the required quantities. This would convert the water in the aquifer into soda. There would be a ‘soda-fountain’ like dispenser on the ground directly connected to the aquifer. The carbonated water from the aquifer would mix with colouring and taste agents inside the ‘soda fountain’ which would then dispense the liquid to the consumer.

This reporter was able to get a passing glimpse of the plan during an interview with one of the CEO's.


The companies are racing to not only patent this technology but also make it into a CDM project. Representatives contacted from both companies are of the opinion that such a technology will reduce the amount of sequestered carbon and therefore make room for the increasing carbon spewed out into the atmosphere. According to them, it would also reduce their operating costs as the carbonating process will be hived off the aerated drinks production process and will therefore further decrease the carbon footprint of these companies.

Both companies agreed that there would be need to increase the consumption of aerated drinks to make such a project 'viable'. Therefore they are planning to change their advertising strategy. To know more about their advertising strategy this reporter contacted their advertising companies independently; strangely their ideas revolve around similar concepts. The creative’s hinted that there would be a paradigm shift from the current advertising which teach new ways to hold cans or link happiness and thrill to coloured liquids. They would now be milking consumer consciousness and peoples concern for the environment and link increase in consumption to better environmental protection. The advertisers are thinking of catchy lines like ‘whats in you.’ Hoping that there would be a growing consumer base that will proudly say ‘sequestered carbon’.

In a developing story a major vehicle manufacturer known for its polluting vehicles plans to enter the aerated drinks business. But instead of retailing their drinks they intend to capture the niche Door/Home-Delivery and Do-It Yourself (DIY) market. They have filed a patent for an aerated drink manufacturing technique which will also be an end of pipe solution for vehicular pollution. The exhaust pipe will be fitted with a pressurised chamber containing sweetened water. The exhaust would mix with this water in the high pressure chamber to make a drink similar to the famous drink that the world loves with Rum.

Family Ties! Similarities between the IPL and India's Nuclear Establishment

Though patricide, fratricide and familial coups were a common occurrence amongst the various dynasties the world over, it has done nothing to deter business and politicians from using family to maintain power. Dynasties be it business or political have played important roles across continents, the Rothschild’s financed the Napoleonic wars, the Kennedy’s ruled America, the Tata’s, one of India’s first business houses, have ventures across the world and the Gandhi’s are touted to be the first-family of Indian politics.

There is good reason why kin are sought as business and political partners – it keeps the money and power in the clan. There is another reason for getting family into business and politics it allows newer members to milk the goodwill of the brand while also perpetuating it.

It is for this reason that the Indian National Congress christens most development projects after their past leaders – Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. This is a leitmotif reminding people of the antecedents of the party. This constant reminder of lineage gives budding leaders like Rahul Gandhi a platform from which to speak from.

Besides encashing on the brand, building on it and ensuring stability, family in politics helps in pushing agendas without much party disapproval. Family in politics also provides stability within the party as it reduces the possibility of infighting for top-jobs. In other words it maintains status –quo, keeping other hands out of the honey pot.

Even outside the party the family plays an important part in a politician’s life. Politicians use their wife, children and other family members as fronts to horde money. So it comes as no surprise to see a non earning wife with a bank balance as large as that of the husband when the politician makes his accounts public before elections.

Much like politics, business too makes use of family, for three major reasons one is to ensure that money remains within the family, the other is to keep power in the family and the third is to reward family. However unlike politics, business uses another set of people – close friends. Doing business with friends allows leeway that may not be there with others, it reduces the cost of risk, and it is a form of investment - collecting brownie points that can be exchanged at a later date. Friends are a special breed of venture capitalists who instead of only looking at future monetary gain look at such investments as future leverage or a form of ‘repayment’ for past favours or even as a cross that needs to be borne for being friends.

Thus, it is no surprise that Lalit Modi filled the Indian Premier League (IPL) and its ancillaries with friends and family. For one, being a new venture, people willing to take a financial risk and put money into his idea were needed, family and friends met the requirements. Also by getting family into the IPL, money did not change ownership nor was making deals difficult. Finally, filling the IPL with family and friends gave Lalit a free hand over the functioning of the IPL.

It was not only Lalit who used family and friends, it is alleged that a member of the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI), under whose wings the IPL grew, used his authority to change the rules of the BCCI to allow him to purchase an IPL team.

This kind of leverage that the use of family bestows in business and politics is mirrored in government bodies - the Indian nuclear establishment for example.

The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) was setup on August 3 1954 under the direct charge of the Prime Minister. In 1958 the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was established in the DAE. The resolution creating the AEC acknowledges giant strides made in the peaceful use of the atom since the creation of the DAE in 1954 and thus finds need for the creation of an organisation ‘with full authority to plan and implement the various measures on sound technical and economic principles and free from all non-essential restrictions or needlessly in-elastic rules. - - -’ The Secretary to the Government of India in the DAE is ex-officio Chairman of the Commission. Other Members of the AEC are appointed for each calendar year on the recommendation of the Chairman of the AEC and after approval by the Prime Minster. The functions of the AEC include formulating the policy of the DAE, preparing the budget of the DAE, implementing policies of government on Atomic energy

There are a number of organisations under the AEC; the Nuclear Power Corporation, Heavy Water Board for example; R & D institutions like Babha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) also come under AEC. The Atomic and Energy Regulatory Authority (AERB) is another institution under the AEC. It was constituted on November 15, 1983 by the President of India through the powers conferred by the Atomic Energy Act to carry out regulatory and safety functions under the Act.

As per the AERB Constitution Order DECEMBER 31,1983/PAUSA 10,1905[PART II-SEC.3(II) AERB ‘[AERB]shall have powers to lay down safety standard and frame rules and regulations in regard to the regulatory and safety requirements envisaged under the Atomic Energy Act,1962’ The Order lists out the functions of the Board which include developing safety codes, guidelines for site selection, design, construction, commissioning, operation and decommissioning of the different types of plants; ensuring compliance of regulations by DAE and Non-DAE bodies, reviewing from safety angle requests for authorising/commissioning/operation of DAE projects. These standards ensure the health and safety of the workers and the public.

So what we have here is a body that is supposed to ensure that all organisations working on different aspects of nuclear science and energy meet certain standards. To do so there is need for the AERB to be independent and immune to pressures. Instead the AERB, like the organisations that it is supposed to regulate, falls under the AEC, the patriarch. Thus we have a case where the AERB tattles on its siblings to the father which is the AEC.

This is made clear in Subsection (xvi) of Section 2 of the Order. It states that the AERB will ‘Send reports periodically to Chairman, AEC on safety status including observance of safety regulations and standards and implementation of the recommendations in all DAE and non-DAE units. It will also submit an Annual Report of its activities to Chairman, AEC.’

It is not enough that the regulator and regulated fall under the AEC; the last paragraph of Section 2 of the Order makes the relationship even stronger. The DAE Science Research Council (DAE SRC) along with the Directorate of Radiation Protection at BARC will assist the AERB to enforce the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 for radiation safety in the country and under the Factories Act, 1948 for industrial safety in the units under the control of DAE. They will review health and safety aspects of modifications in design/ operation involving changes in the technical specification adopted in any of the DAE units, review from the safety angle requests for authorising/ commissioning/ operation of DAE Projects/plants and ensure compliance by DAE and non-DAE installations of safety codes and standards during construction commissioning stages.

DAE working with the AERB to check on safety and other aspects of its own units is incongruous. How different is this from the lie of self-regulation? Or is this a more refined version of setting a thief to catch a thief? Or has the nuclear establishment created a self serving mechanism that allows it to perpetuate unhindered. This is quite similar to the ‘Governing Body’ setup by the BCCI whose members were from BCCI and were also part of the IPL working either as commentators or brand ambassadors. The fact that the wheelings and dealings of the IPL was carried out under the nose of the BCCI created Governing Council indicates the kind and level of latitude given within the family.

The ‘self serving mechanism’ of the nuclear industry in India is built on a close knit family. Like in business and politics, the consanguineous of the nuclear establishment ensures that operations continue unrestricted no matter what. The AEC through the family it has created is fulfilling its mandate to free the nuclear establishment from ‘all non-essential restrictions or needlessly in-elastic rules - - -‘ an objective of any other business and political party using similar means.

The charges against BCCI, IPL and Lalit Modi are no different from the charges made against the nuclear establishment. The lack of oversight, transparency and accountability, financial opaqueness are hallmarks of any establishment that uses family.

The human tendency to overlook misdeeds because of family considerations has been morphed into a business, political and a regulatory tool. But the BCCI IPL saga shows that the weight of family is insufficient to keep the lid on a can of worms, a lesson that the AEC should take to heart.

Avatar, the Bo, colonialism and technology

It was the 6th February when I watched Avatar and also read about the extinction of the Bo tribe in the Andaman Islands. The last remaining member of the Bo tribe was a woman (Senior Boa), in dying she took along with her a language, a culture, history and whatever else transforms individuals into a family, community and a tribe. The piece hovered between an obituary (to a person and a tribe) and a crime report.

As shown in Avatar the process of colonisation is filled with good intentions. Avatar has an anthropologist studying the Na’avi indigenous of the planet Pandora because their existence is being threatened by a mining company. She uses technology to gain their trust and to understand their culture, learn their language and become one with The People. She hopes to communicate the danger that surrounds them. She wants to tell them of their predicament - to survive they need to give up what they hold sacred. Her intentions are commendable - to keep the collateral damage to a minimum, while recording the culture of a race soon to be decimated. Much like other movies being churned out by Hollywood the hero begins his day with ulterior motives. However, by evening he transforms into a rebel with a cause saving The People he initially cheated and getting the girl.

The movie is not about the ‘we are the world, we are its children’ rhetoric, it also goes beyond the regular feminist cliché here the heroine kills the villain. It is also not promoting a Luddite principle because Pandora is a non-threatening, non-polluting industrial complex which not only sustains life but also produces a material similar to carbon fibre used by the Na’avi in their weapons.

The movie speaks about the process of colonisation and the manner in which this occurs.

Colonisation has many layers to it; it does not happen over night. History is replete with examples be it in the America’s, Australia or India. What begins as a challenge for an adventurer or a vocation for the religious or a small business venture grows into an enterprise based on usurpation. Riding tandem with the appropriation of wealth is the subjugation of people, culture and language, the introduction of disease and new ways of life. This is a common baggage that all colonisers carry, something depicted in Avatar and that finds reality in the extinction of the Bo. Survival International puts it succinctly in its report of Senior Boa’s death and the extinction of the tribe ‘Most were killed or died of diseases brought by the colonizers. The report adds “Having failed to ‘pacify’ the tribes through violence, the British tried to ‘civilize’ them by capturing many and keeping them in an ‘Andaman Home’. Of the 150 children born in the home, none lived beyond the age of two.”

As seen in Avatar, colonisation brings out the best and the worst in people. The battle between good and evil fought in such new territories has little to do with questioning the presence of colonisers but with the method of arrogation. The means differ, but the ends are the same. The dilemma is whether the process of dislocation/assimilation/seizure should begin with education or would education be a natural corollary of forced eviction? Colonisation is sold as emancipation, as a form of civilising the ‘savages’. Colonialists refuse to accept that the colonised have a culture, a language and a history.

The question that rises from a sci-fi film like Avatar and the extinction of the Bo is whether there should be limits to our search for knowledge. The idea of ‘knowledge for knowledge’s sake’ has never found resonance because ‘progress’ is an outcome of knowledge. Astronomy helped adventurers plot navigational charts, making it easy to reach the New World and colonise it. The very concept of ‘knowledge is power’ stems from what can be done with it. For all the good it has done technology has been used as a weapon both literally and figuratively.

It can be argued that there is a good side and a bad side to science. We know this because today there is a repository of events that show science can jeopardise our existence. It has been said that the road to development is littered with good intentions, the same goes for science. The good intentions with which scientists look into their microscopes in their sterile world gets morphed in the real world. Pesticides kill and maim people besides the bugs they target; nuclear energy finds itself in hot water because of nuclear waste and radiation leaks that go along with it. Besides this, good intentions transform into political machination and business interests in the real world.

Today the saga of colonisation continues with the need to save the world by venturing into new frontiers of science. One may ask how? Colonisation through science occurs when technologies like Genetic Engineering are packaged in terms like ‘fighting hunger’, ‘green revolution’; ‘drought resistance’ which exclude reasons that caused hunger, drought and the need for a ‘green revolution’ in the first place. These are terms of the modern colonists who see the need to ‘civilise’ and ‘modernise’ agriculture using modern technology. Like the Lost Generation of Australia who were forcibly relocated and taught or the American Indians who were put in reservations or like the Bo who are extinct, technologies like Genetic Engineering have the potential of subjugating many, destroying diversity and cultivating homogeneity all in the garb of good intentions.

There is need to pause and question how much more science do we need and if we do need science then what kind of science? The villains in Spiderman movies evolve from the failures of technologies they conceive and develop to save the world. The reason for science is because it is assumed that it can be transferred from a laboratory Petri dish to a real world cauldron.

There is another set of movies that deal with the thirst to understand our past. Most Indiana Jones movies see ancient relics being sacrificed at the temple of knowledge or to save the world. There is an ongoing debate whether anthropology actually begins the end of a tribe under study because in effect the baggage brought by the anthropologist is no different from that of the coloniser. There was a raging debate in 2000 about anthropologists studying the Yanomami tribe in the Amazon because of the kind of research done and the manner of interactions between the tribe and the anthropologists.

Colonisation in any form is an unnatural process of evolution. It does not give the evolutionary process time and opportunity to create checks and balances necessary for a species to adapt and survive. Put colloquially it’s similar to putting a gun in the hands of a child or contaminating a sterile laboratory.

We need to see what technology has done to us and what we are doing in the name of technology advancement. Once this is done then there is need to put in measures to ensure that there is no recidivism. However even as we wait for this to happen technology is being used to stem this new-age colonial onslaught.

The Surui tribe living in the forests of Brazil are using Google Earth and GPS to fight illegal logging. More recently the Dongria Kondh, an ancient tribe in Orissa fighting a steel conglomerate, invited James Cameron to make a movie on them and their struggle.

Foresight may not come naturally to us, but we have a lot to learn from the past - learn of what we did right and wrong when we used technology. This gives us scope to choose the kind of science and technology required. It gives us enough material to chart a course into the future where technology does not become a tool for colonisation but one of the choices at hand for improving our life’s if we so desire.

Colour - Dark Green.

Colour blind! All colours merge into black or white. How black is dark green on a scale that turns dark to light? Is this colour a bit more of this and less of that?

Green a colour. Dark green a mood? A brooding green? A blue green? A green with the blues? Daaaaarrrrkkk Greeeen!

A natural process of decaying light green- fresh, dark green on deaths door.