A New Start

FT: Japan's quest for innovative freedom

Japan's quest for innovative freedom

By Jonathan Guthrie and Robin Harding

Published: June 12 2008 03:00 | Last updated: June 12 2008 03:00

Nodding politely, a mechanical doll created by Toshiba founder Hisahige Tanaka totters across a tabletop and offers a visitor a cup of tea at the company's research and development centre near Tokyo. Ingenious and intriguing, the automaton was produced in the 19th century, portending the renaissance in Japanese applied technology that followed the second world war. This delivered such consumer boons as Toshiba laptops, Toyota cars and Nintendo games.

Now Japan is questioning wheth- er its innovation system can serve it as well in the 21st century as in the 20th. There are doubts over whether Japan's Y18,000bn ($168bn) annual R&D budget is well spent. Reformers want an environment that is more entrepreneurial and less dominated by big companies. Corporate R&D bosses and academics are struggling to put aside long-standing grudges.

If Japan were a technology company it would be worried about its pipeline. The job of replenishing this has traditionally fallen to big corporations such as Toshiba. Ichiro Tai, a jolly, bespectacled man who runs Toshiba's R&D centre, says: "We have 1,000 researchers and they should have far more ideas. The number of patents [one each a year] is far too small."

Dissatisfaction is as much a management tool for Mr Tai as it is for a sales boss driving his team towards ever-higher targets. Tosh-iba could nevertheless do with some high-profile breakthroughs after losing its battle with Sony to set the standard for high definition video players. Mr Tai duly shows off hopeful new technologies to awed visitors. One is a system that uses quantum physics effects to encrypt data. Another is a battery that can be recharged in five minutes which could be used to power electric vehicles.

Mr Tai muses that greater freedom could spur the creativity of company research staff. Yet Toshiba is characteristic of Japanese technology companies in protecting its elite scientists from commercial pressures more than many western ones. The electronics group, which had sales of about Y7,000bn in the year to March 2007, uses a tripartite structure. The R&D centre and its academic satellites do blue-sky research. A second tier of labs commercialise new technologies. A third layer engages in the nitty-gritty of improving existing products within business units.

Politicians and bureaucrats are now asking whether Japan is over-reliant on such corporate ideas factories. Like every country with a decent science base, Japan envies the global success of Microsoft in PC operating systems and Google in internet search. Surely, the argument runs, Japan would produce new global gorillas of its own if its innovation system were more like that of the US.

The Japanese government has accordingly announced a Y100bn venture fund to invest in fledgling technology businesses. The idea is to encourage more private and institutional investors to pump their money into start-ups too.

However, there are formidable barriers to injecting some of the pep of Silicon Valley into the commercialisation of new technology in Japan. The biggest is that Japan does not have an Anglo Saxon-style enterprise culture. Would-be entrepreneurs have few role models apart from Masayoshi Son, founder of communications group Softbank. Aspiring to become very wealthy is regarded as faintly unJapanese.

Equally, "business failure is seen as shameful in Japan, though that perception is beginning to erode", says Seiichi Yoshikawa of Nippon Keidanren, Japan's powerful business lobby. When new technology ventures fail, it tends to be as units of large corporations, rather than as standalone companies. This cushions the impact. The downside of the system is that it can suppress maverick talent.

At Japan's ministry of economy, trade and industry, Yuji Tokumasu, who works on science and technology policy, is fretting over a parallel problem. According to a chart he brandishes, even as Japan's spending on research and development has soared in the past 20 years, value added in the manufacturing sector has stagnated.

Japan already spends more than 3 per cent of its gross domestic product on R&D - more than any other country. One way of reading the chart is to surmise that diminishing returns have set in, that every extra yen spent on R&D goes to employ less talented researchers, who study less promising approaches to the same problems. Japanese universities' poor record on turning research funding into results published by top scientific journals suggests that government money can be more efficiently spent. It could be that rather than spending too little on R&D, Japan spends too much.

However, Mr Tokumasu and others in the technology establishment take heart from R&D expenditure data. If only Japan could convert all of this spending into scientific breakthroughs, new businesses and saleable products, they argue, it would prove a powerful source of economic growth.

The country has a world-class science base, as exemplified by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University. In 2006 Professor Yamanaka created cells resembling embryonic stem cells from other tissue in mice. Last year, in parallel with US researchers, he repeated the feat for humans. The technique has huge potential to advance gene therapy, given moral strictures on using real embryonic cells. Prof Yamanaka has a chance of winning a Nobel Prize.

But businesses can be impeded from working with university researchers such as Prof Yamanaka by historically chilly relations. During the growth years of the 1960s and 1970s, corporations sought independence in R&D. Public service anti-corruption rules made it difficult for academics to hobnob with business people. It is telling that two of Toshiba's most important academic collaborations are with British universities - Cambridge and Bristol.

In 2004 universities were incorporated and gained ownership of the intellectual property created in their laboratories. The change irritated some people. "Before, they got research for free," says Takafumi Yamamoto, plain-speaking boss of Todai TLO, Tokyo University's licensing organisation.

Mr Yamamoto believes the dominant role of large corporations in business life is weakening. Partly thanks to entrepreneurship education "young people do not all want to be soldiers for big companies", he says. Flotations of university spin-outs have increased enthusiasm for the commercialisation of research among academics. They are meanwhile likely to become more assertive in protecting their intellectual property rights following the establishment of a new division of the High Court specialising in IPR. Mr Yamamoto says: "There could be an increasing number of cases brought by the universities against the companies."

So is traditional Japanese consensus under threat? Not according to Yutaka Asai, chief technology officer of Oki, the telecoms and printers group, who neatly reconciles the spat between business and universities. Companies may wind up with a smaller share of revenues from individual academic collaborations, he says. But, at the same time, a fairer division of the spoils should prompt more tie-ins, making everyone better off.

A 'technique' for managing academics is vital for collaboration

Yukinori Kida, owner of a small Toyko-based components business, has some advice for big Japanese companies forging collaborations with universities. Making it work depends on "technique" in managing academics, he says.

Innovation has helped KDA keep going in the face of Chinese competition. Six years ago, with help from the University of Tokyo, the company found a better way of moulding the ceramic bolts used in equipment exposed to high temperatures. The breakthrough allowed Mr Kida to cut costs and won him a valuable market niche.

KDA, which employs 50 staff including Kaori, Mr Kida's daughter and expected successor, made a profit of Y30m on sales of Y1bn last year. It is now working on new plastics and ceramics moulding methods with researchers from Tokyo and Nagoya universities. "In three years we hope to double sales," Mr Kida says.

KDA spends a healthy 3 per cent of sales revenue on new product development. Mr Kida uses students as researchers, believing they are open-minded as well as cheaper: "University professors are strong on narrow subject areas, but if you need to study a problem from a new perspective, they are really not that good."

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT: What drives the race to the top

It could be that potential entrants are put off by the working hours and high-pressure environment as well as the riskiness. It could also be a matter of timing. The really spectacular gains at the top are quite recent; and who knows how long they will last? Luck, too, enters into the picture. A young person starting out 20 years ago would not have been able to guess quite how large the pickings of the investment banker might be relative to that of a country solicitor or college head.

My hunch is that events will sort out many of these features. If electorates can accept the element of luck that goes into the earnings of superstars or the winnings from national lotteries, why cannot they accept this same element in the top professional and financial categories?

= = = =

What drives the race to the top

By Samuel Brittan

Published: July 4 2008 03:00 | Last updated: July 4 2008 03:00

"The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer." Such beliefs fire the indignation of critics of capitalism and provide a guilty thrill for some of the better off. If only it were as simple.

Thank heavens, then, for the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which sheds so much light on the subject, for example in its recent Poverty and Inequality in the UK survey. My only quarrel with it is that it follows the academic herd in using the loaded term "inequality".

Its summary finding is that the so-called Gini coefficient of inequality (which I should prefer to call an index of skewness) rose "dramatically" in the Thatcher period of the 1980s, but remained more or less unchanged in the Major and Blair years, when it remained at historically high levels. In the Blair period, incomes after tax and benefit rose fairly evenly, taking one year with another, over all quintiles - that is, groups covering fifths of all households. Absolute poverty, defined as income below 60 per cent of the 1996-1997 middle-ranking citizen, has fallen from 25 per cent to 13 per cent of all households. But to achieve the target of halving (relative) child poverty by 2010-2011, additional public spending of nearly £3bn per annum would be required.

The most spectacular IFS finding, however, is that incomes of the top 1 per cent increased much faster and of the very top 0.1 per cent faster still. As the incomes of the very rich are highly correlated with the stock market and financial conditions, later estimates may show a partial reversal and hence more "equality" - cold comfort to those who lose their jobs.

An illuminating discussion of the reasons for what has happened is provided by Robert Gordon and Ian Dew-Becker in their survey , Controversies about the Rise in American Inequality (CEPR discussion paper 6817) - British trends are quite similar to those of US, if in less extreme form. The authors distinguish between three types of high-level gainer. First, there are the superstars, for example in sports and entertainment, where technological developments have magnified the reach of top individuals and reduced the demand for the not-quite-so-good. Second, there are the professionals, including lawyers, bankers and hedge-fund managers. Third come the chief executive officers, whose incomes can be enhanced by the back-scratching of their peers.

The sky-high earnings in at least some of these groups seem to fly in the face of one of the most basic teachings of Adam Smith: the tendency to equality of net advantages among non-competing groups. This suggests that the real advantages in different occupations will tend to be the same through the forces of competition, such as the entry of more workers into the highly remunerated fields and their exit, or non-replacement, in the badly remunerated ones. The classic example is that of the civil servant who would earn much less than his equivalent in a commercial concern but would compensate for it by job security, challenging problems and indexed pensions.

Why, then, are the spiralling rewards not competed away by would-be entrants? The superstars do form a non-competing group by virtue of inborn talent, aided of course by determination and ambition. It is the other categories that are more puzzling. When the top ranks of banks and investment institutions were confined to a narrow circle of people in striped pants who had been to a limited number of schools, tacit entry barriers would explain a lot. But a visit to any bar in a major financial centre would confirm that these barriers are largely down.

It could be that potential entrants are put off by the working hours and high-pressure environment as well as the riskiness. It could also be a matter of timing. The really spectacular gains at the top are quite recent; and who knows how long they will last? Luck, too, enters into the picture. A young person starting out 20 years ago would not have been able to guess quite how large the pickings of the investment banker might be relative to that of a country solicitor or college head.

My hunch is that events will sort out many of these features. If electorates can accept the element of luck that goes into the earnings of superstars or the winnings from national lotteries, why cannot they accept this same element in the top professional and financial categories?

The main argument for much higher taxation among top groups would be if it could provide a large sum for redistribution. The IFS estimates that the top 0.1 per cent of UK adults had average pre-tax incomes in 2004-2005 of £780,000 per annum and on average paid 35 per cent in income tax. If their tax contribution were doubled and divided among all 29.5m taxpayers, this would yield about £870 a year or £17 per week. This is not a negligible sum; but it would not take much in the way of disincentive effects, emigration or tax avoidance at the top to wipe it out altogether. A safer but less popular way of helping the least well off would be through modest increases in taxes throughout the income distribution - or selective cuts in public spending. Admittedly this route would not provide the same outlet for jealousy and envy.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT: Banks must learn to trust the word of humans too

Banks must learn to trust the word of humans too

By Gillian Tett

Published: July 4 2008 03:00 | Last updated: July 4 2008 03:00

A few years ago, Ron den Braber, an outspoken Dutch mathematics geek, was working in the risk department at Royal Bank of Scotland when he became alarmed about the models being used to price collateralised debt obligations.

Most notably, he concluded that the so-called Gaussian Copula approach then in use at RBS (and many other banks) significantly underplayed risks attached to the most senior pieces of debt - creating a danger of future, large losses.

So he duly tried to raise the alarm. But, as he tells the tale, he faced hostility. "I started saying things gently - in banks you don't use the word 'error', but the problem is that in banks . . . people just don't want to listen to bad news," Mr den Braber recalls.

Now, every corporate tale has many sides - and RBS, for its part, vehemently denies that it ever ignores challenges or stifles debate. It says it could not find any record of strong warnings about the Gaussian Copula model, is aware of its shortcomings, and, while it has recently suffered CDO losses, these relate to products acquired after Mr den Braber's time.

However, the story is worth noting since echoes of this saga now seem to be emanating from numerous banks. In particular, many other bankers have also recently told me that they knew that structured finance models were mis-pricing risk at an early date - and yet in many cases the attempts to raise the alarm were crushed.

Or as one senior risk manager writes (anonymously since he remains employed): "[My] institution has now taken multibillion writedowns - job losses result and significant share price erosion - and I wonder how this can have happened? Upfront we did express to senior management that we lacked the analytical skills . . . and highlighted deep concerns about the approach colleagues in the market risk area had taken . . . I feel responsible for not doing more, but I really did push my views, risking my immediate career."

So can anything be done to redress this? (Or prevent it playing out again now in the commodities world, say?)

Perhaps not.

Few bankers want to hear dissent about the models when they are enjoying a profit bonanza. Greed is what drives much of the modern financial world - combined with fear of getting sacked.

But, if nothing else, this saga shows the great blind spot that still haunts many banks. This decade, financiers have invented so many brilliantly clever mathematical tools to repackage risk that the industry has slipped, almost unthinkingly, into an assumption that "credit" is a collection of abstract equations, stripped from any human context.

Thus banks have become so dazzled with their powers that they have ignored how they interact with the rest of society - or how the tribal aspects of their own institutions can create dangerous traps.

Meanwhile, the cult of models has become so extreme that banks have believed them even when this collides with common sense. Yet, as any Latin scholar knows, the word "credit" hails from credere: "to trust". It is, in other words, also a social construct.

And bankers forget this human dimension to their cost - no matter how impressive the abstract numbers might seem. Or as the same risk officer says: "The billions involved were so hard to contemplate that we almost certainly lost sight of the possible consequences [of our credit business] until it was too late."

So, as the banks nurse their credit losses, they certainly do need to review why some of their clever mathematical models failed. That geeky Gaussian Copula stuff, in other words, matters hugely.

But, most important of all, they need to work out why the human processes around the models failed, too. Not just in the eyes of Mr den Braber, but also in the experience of numerous other junior employees who are now hugging their war stories, but are far too nervous to speak out.

* In the coming weeks I will be on sabbatical writing a book (about CDOs, modern banking tribes and much else.) I will return to the column after the summer.

gillian.tett@ft.com

FT: In a class of their own

In a class of their own

By Catherine Moye

Published: July 5 2008 03:00 | Last updated: July 5 2008 03:00

Like Oxford's spires, British fee-paying schools evoke notions of educational perfection. For many affluent non-Britons, names such as Eton and Harrow share a pedigree with buildings such as Buckingham Palace and St Paul's cathedral: traditional British institutions that cannot be outsourced to China.

Thus many overseas parents move to the UK, be it as non-domiciled aliens or relocators, as buyers or renters, full or part-time. Their search for British schooling for their children helps fuel demand for housing in prime areas, especially in London.

"Business, tax and education are the main reasons that overseas nationals come to live in London," says Richard Sharples of buying agency Property Vision. "The perception is that the British [education] system is the finest in the world and most people think it's a good idea for their children to learn English. There's also an element of prestige in having your child go to Harrow or wherever."

That might be the case but securing your child a place at Britain's most venerable scholastic institutions can be like obtaining a seat at King Arthur's round table - especially for an overseas national. Pressure on places is tough and growing and only a lucky few are admitted.

"We get hundreds of overseas enquiries. I would say that number has more than doubled in the past three years," says Kirsty Shanahan, communications manager of Harrow school, where fees are approximately £26,500 a year. "The bulk of the increase is from the emerging economies of India, Russia and China."

Yet only about 10 per cent of Harrow's pupils are from outside the UK, according to Shanahan. "That's been fairly consistent throughout. It's not set in stone but we do keep one eye on the quota, otherwise it's not good for the school as a whole."

Historically the overseas clientele were wealthy parents from Asia, the Middle East and commonwealth African countries. They sent their children to British public schools that they had almost invariably attended themselves before going on to the universities of Oxford or Cambridge. (In Britain, in one of those quirks apparently designed to fox foreigners, independently run, fee-charging schools are termed "public" because historically pupils were gathered in public to be taught rather than privately at home by a tutor).

"To a certain extent it's snob value and the fact that children are worked much harder in the English public school system than, say, the American system," says buying agent Robert Bailey, many of whose clients want second homes for education-related reasons. "That is, the American system is more sports-led and a lot less arduous academically. We are very results-orientated."

The attraction of a British boarding school is also perhaps an unconscious backlash against the globalised era of You Tube, the IPod and the other relentless technology assailing children. The public school boarding house is seen as a bastion of discipline and offers the original and unsurpassable version of social websites such as Facebook and Bebo: the old school tie network. Not that all parents are up to speed with the protocol. "I am constantly being asked if I can try and pull a few strings and, you know, offer a school a sizeable 'donation'," says Bailey.

Education consultant Martin Humphrys says he has never been so inundated with requests for schools and has witnessed a marked increase in interest from emerging countries, especially Russia and China.

"The demand for places is very high at the moment," says Humphrys. "We've been in that situation for about the past nine years." But if overseas parents' dreams for their children are somehow bound up with the public school system, Humphrys reckons that 99 per cent of his job is about managing their expectations.

"Places are at a premium in the key schools such as Eton and the entrance exams are incredibly tough for children whose first language isn't English," he explains. "And there are certain schools that, if parents haven't registered their child by the age of 10 and a half they're not going to get them in at 13."

Even if the star names are oversubscribed, Humphrys is firm in his conviction that British public schools offer the best education in the world. "London especially has excellent schools, from nurseries right through to senior schools," he says. "People come here because you will not find schools bettered anywhere."

Although there are no specific statistics on how many overseas nationals relocate to the UK to buy second homes, many parents will want somewhere in the capital for family get-togethers, especially during boarding school holidays. To that extent their housing needs are more prêt-a-porter than couture.

"These buyers are looking for easy maintenance, lock-up-and-leave apartments that are secure, with 24-hour porterage," says Camilla Dell of buying agents Black Brick Property Solutions. "They want them in safe areas such as St John's Wood or Knightsbridge for when the children reach 16 or 17 and stay there by themselves, and that are good for public transport."

But matching the right child to the right school often means looking outside London. "The most important thing is that the school is a genuine boarding school and not dominated by flexi or weekly boarders with just a trickle of overseas children left at the weekends," says Catherine Stoker, director of education and guardianship services at educational consultancy Gabbitas. To that end, schools such as Marlborough and Haileybury in Herfordshire and Uppingham in Rutland are popular choices.

Berkshire schools close to Heathrow airport are also popular choices for overseas parents with children returning home at the end of each term - notably Bradfield College, Wellington College, and St George's at Ascot. And different nationalities have their own reasons for being often drawn to particular parts of the UK.

"In Tokyo they tend to live in apartments the size of postage stamps and so they love going to boarding schools set in large historical buildings," says Stoker. "We just took a Japanese girl to see Gordonstoun [in Scotland] and she loved it."

That blue-chip schools attract great wealth and prestige to the nation is music to the ears of Tony Little, head master of Eton College. "Ours is very much a British school and we are already over-subscribed from our British market. We don't actually have figures for nationality but the figure that springs to mind is about 100 boys [from overseas] out of 1,300," he says.

"UK independent schools have the strongest track record of any sector anywhere," he explains. "When you speak to people in, say, Russia or China, what they admire most is our great tradition of liberal education."

By this Little means that it is holistic and centred upon the person. "The Chinese, for example, are very conscious of the fact that they are strong in theoretical 'Confucian-style' education but the British system has the X-factor of building students' confidence and practical abilities in the wider world."

London also has highly regarded international schools serving the needs of foreign families, especially those relocating for short periods. Notable examples include the French Lycée in Kensington, Marymount in Kingston upon Thames, Woodside Park in Frien Barnet and Egham International in Surrey, all of which operate the International Baccalaureate system.

Those of us who live in the St John's Wood district of north London can be in no doubt as to the knock-on effect that a prestigious school can have on an area. The American School, which has existed in various incarnations since 1969, is one of the principal drivers in the local economy. Its presence is felt in everything from the cost of quality housing to the lengths of the queues at Starbucks.

Americans are the dominant group relocating to London. "[They] represent a large percentage of our sales and lettings," says James Simpson of estate agency Knight Frank's St. John's Wood office. "Most Americans rent but we also get investors looking to buy to rent to American families. Principally they want detached five-bedroom Victorian homes in side streets."

Greek-born Alicia Cornelius and her husband, Alex, a banker, divide their time between New York, Athens and London, where their 14-year old daughter is at boarding school. "We have a two-bedroom flat in a new-build block overlooking the river that just takes care of itself," says Cornelius.

Her own upbringing as much as her regard for the British school system came into play when deciding upon her daughter's education. "My parents were diplomats, so I went to at least a dozen schools around the world," she says. "I meet a lot of people today who went through the same and want nothing more than to settle their children in one place throughout their schooling."

Naomi Heaton of property investors London Central Portfolio, finds that mapping out your child's educational needs is not so different to mapping out an investment plan. "In both cases you are looking at around an eight-year cycle," she observes. "Your child is likely to be here at school or college for eight years and we see that time as the normal doubling of the London (market) cycle. In my experience, buying for the children is just a good rationale for something that people were going to do anyway."

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT, Economist etc: Celebrated Indian field marshal with a razor-sharp wit

Manekshaw himself once remarked on the fine line between being a field marshal and being fired. Yet his approach never wavered. "A yes man is a dangerous man," he once said. "He will be despised by his subordinates and used by his superiors."

= = = =

Celebrated Indian field marshal with a razor-sharp wit

By Stephen Fidler

Published: July 5 2008 03:00 | Last updated: July 5 2008 03:00

It was February 1942 on the Sittang River in Burma. Sam Manekshaw had already lost half his men as they fought to take Pagoda Hill from the Japanese invaders. He rallied what was left of his company, urging them to continue the advance.

Then, just as they captured the hill, a burst of machinegun fire hit Manekshaw in the stomach. As he lay there he was spotted by Major General David Cowan, who had seen the young captain's bravery but feared his wounds might be mortal. Kneeling beside him, Cowan took off his own Military Cross ribbon and pinned it on Manekshaw's chest, saying: "A dead man cannot be awarded the Military Cross."

[from The Economist: Another story has it that a surgeon was going to give up on his bullet-riddled body, until he asked him what had happened and got the reply, "I was kicked by a donkey." A joker at such a time, the surgeon reckoned, had a chance.]

The general was wrong to doubt the officer's powers of survival but right about his valour. The courage of Sam Manekshaw, who has died a field marshal at the age of 94, was to help make him one of India's most successful military leaders. His seminal victory over Pakistan's forces in 1971 led to the creation of Bangladesh and turned Manekshaw into a national hero. One biographer described him as having "charm and persistence, an irreverence towards red tape, an iron determination, an eye for details plus a strategic mind that embraced all". He also had a razor-sharp wit.

A man with an eye for the ladies, his relationship with one lady in particular, Indira Gandhi, India's prime minister during the 1971 war, defined his career. When she asked him before the conflict if he was prepared, he replied: "I'm always ready, sweetie." Unlike politicians and top bureaucrats, he refused to call her madam, saying it was a term "better suited to a brothel keeper".

He was one of those men whose personality leaps out of his photograph. There is one of him sitting at a military parade in 2004. He is 90 and his back is not as straight as it was, but his eyes look directly at the camera and, beneath the military moustache, there is the hint of a smile. His left breast is bedecked with medals, his feet with shiny black brogues and he holds an elaborately carved swagger stick in his right hand. Manekshaw was fastidious about his appearance but his uniform, typically, did not conform to regulation.

For a man to become a myth in his own lifetime, it helps to live for a long time, not least because many of his rivals will not. It helps if he fosters a reputation for straight talking and to have a sense of humour - not least about himself. Yet Manekshaw never seemed to be consciously managing his own image.

Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw was born in 1914 in the age of the Raj. His parents were members of the Parsi community - Zoroastrians who immigrated from Persia 1,000 years ago and who have occupied some of the highest positions in modern India in the military, the law, the arts and business.

The young Sam grew up in Amritsar, capital of the Punjab, and attended the British-style boarding school, Sherwood College. He had wanted to study medicine but instead joined the first ever cohort of officer cadets to attend the new Indian Military College at Dehradun. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1934, he was for a time attached to Britain's Royal Scots regiment. In 1939 he married Siloo Bode, and the couple had two daughters.

During the second world war he served twice in Burma. Having recovered from his wounds at Pagoda Hill - the official citation for his MC said the success of the attack was "largely due to the excellent leadership and bearing of Captain Manekshaw" - he was sent back to Burma and was wounded a second time. At the end of the war, he showed his talent for planning and organisation first in rehabilitating 10,000 prisoners of war and then in the run-up to the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.

In 1971, it was the crisis between east and west Pakistan, created as two unconnected territories at the time of partition, that was to prove Manekshaw's finest moment. The rout of Pakistan's forces under his leadership was a strategic coup for New Delhi. It split east from west Pakistan and led to the creation of the independent state of Bangladesh. This meant that never again would India have to fight its rival on two fronts at the same time. The rapid victory erased memories of the humiliating defeat in a border conflict with the Chinese in 1962 and the stalemate of the 1965 war with Pakistan over Kashmir.

With millions of refugees pouring over the border, some of the politicians had wanted to go to war in April but the key to victory was to wait until December to engage with the Pakistanis. This ensured the monsoon season had passed and the plains of Bengal were drier. By then, too, snow in the Himalayas blocked off any prospect of Chinese intervention. It was Manekshaw who was credited with standing up to the impatient politicians and his resistance made him a hugely popular figure. Some have subsequently questioned his role. General Jacob-Farj-Rafael Jacob, chief of staff for India's eastern command in 1971, became the brunt of fierce criticism last year when he said it was he and not Manekshaw who had refused to attack in April. Moreover, he added that Manekshaw's military plan did not include taking Dhaka, the fall of which was essential to victory. Ramachandra Guha, a leading historian of modern India, has also claimed that the archives suggest that Manekshaw did not play that primary a role.

Whether a revision of Manekshaw's place in history will follow his death is uncertain. But his death is significant perhaps in other respects. It sym-bolises the passing of the generation of officers that served in both the British and Indian armies. Their legacy remains. "Indian generals still feel more comfortable with their British counterparts than with those from the US," says Professor Guha.

Manekshaw himself once remarked on the fine line between being a field marshal and being fired. Yet his approach never wavered. "A yes man is a dangerous man," he once said. "He will be despised by his subordinates and used by his superiors."

Stephen Fidler

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Sam Manekshaw

Jul 3rd 2008
From The Economist print edition

EPA

Sam Manekshaw, soldier, died on June 27th, aged 94

HIS most famous remark was not, strictly speaking, true. On the eve of the war with Pakistan in December 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh, India's prime minister, Indira Gandhi, asked her army chief, Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw, if he was ready for the fight. He replied with the gallantry, flirtatiousness and sheer cheek for which he was famous: "I am always ready, sweetie." (He said he could not bring himself to call Mrs Gandhi "Madame", because it reminded him of a bawdy-house.)

Yet General Manekshaw himself recounted a cabinet meeting in Mrs Gandhi's office in April 1971. To forestall secession, the Pakistani government had already cracked down in what was then East Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of refugees had crossed the border into India. Mrs Gandhi wanted the army to invade Pakistan. General Manekshaw resisted. The monsoon, he pointed out, would soon start in East Pakistan, turning rivers into oceans. His armoured division and two infantry divisions were deployed elsewhere. To shift them would need the entire railway network, so the grain harvest could not be transported and would rot, bringing famine. And of his armoured division's 189 tanks, only 11 were fit to fight.

He was not, in other words, ready. But, as he put it, "There is a very thin line between being dismissed and becoming a field-marshal." Mrs Gandhi rejected the resignation he offered, and acceded to the delay he wanted. His job, he told her, was to fight to win. In December he did, cutting through the Pakistani army like a knife through butter, and taking Dhaka within two weeks. Quibblers later noted that this was not one of his original war aims. He had the most important attribute of any successful general: good luck.

That was not the only time he threatened to quit. Mrs Gandhi once questioned him about rumours that he was plotting a coup. In response, he asked if she wanted his resignation on grounds of mental instability. Yet if she and other politicians were in awe of him as a professional soldier and grateful for his lack of political ambition, his men loved him for his willingness to take on their civilian bosses and stand up for the army's interests.

He had shown this in the Indian army's darkest hour, the abject defeat in 1962 by China. Already a general, he had the previous year quarrelled with India's defence minister, V.K. Krishna Menon, about national security. He was vindicated when the Chinese army swatted aside Indian resistance and briefly occupied what is now the state of Arunachal Pradesh. Mr Menon resigned. General Manekshaw was rushed to the front to rally the demoralised troops. His first order was: "There will be no withdrawal without written orders and these orders shall never be issued."

General Manekshaw was able to demand courage from his soldiers because his own was not in doubt. Known as Sam "Bahadur", or Sam the Brave, an honorific given him by the Indian army's Gurkhas, the first of his five wars was for the British in Burma, where he was seriously wounded. Assuming he would die, an English general pinned his own Military Cross on Captain Manekshaw's chest, since the medal could not be awarded posthumously. Another story has it that a surgeon was going to give up on his bullet-riddled body, until he asked him what had happened and got the reply, "I was kicked by a donkey." A joker at such a time, the surgeon reckoned, had a chance.

Stiff but hairy

There was something of British military tradition in his stiff upper lip, the lavish handlebar moustache in which he cloaked it, the dapper little embellishments to his uniform and his partiality for Scotch whisky. Yet he was born into a very particular and tight-knit community: India' s small and dwindling Parsi minority, which has produced a disproportionate number of leading Indians, such as the members of the Tata and Godrej business dynasties. Sam Manekshaw was another Parsi overachiever. He was the first of only two field-marshals ever created in the army.

Yet his retirement since 1973 was not one long bask in glory. Former deputies felt he had monopolised the credit for various victories. Then last year his name was linked to bizarre allegations, by the son of a former Pakistani president, against an unnamed brigadier who had once sold Indian war plans to Pakistan. All nonsense, said those who knew him. Already in hospital, General Manekshaw was in part shielded from controversy.

After his death, anger at the slur, and at the lack of proper honour for one of India's true heroes, rumbled on. The prime minister, along with the army, navy, and air-force chiefs, all missed his funeral—which was a modest one held in Tamil Nadu in the south, not a grand one in the capital. His friends grumbled that even foreigners such as Lord Mountbatten were afforded greater respect in death. Bangladesh, however, paid grateful tribute to his part in the nation's foundation.

He too might well have been disappointed that his obsequies were not grander. His last words were "I'm OK", though he had rehearsed a better line nearly 37 years earlier. For death at least, the brave soldier had indeed shown himself "always ready".

Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

http://www.india-today.com/itoday/millennium/100people/sam.html

BUILDERS & BREAKERS Prophet of Hate Sam Manekshaw By A S Kalkat
1914: Born in Amritsar. 1933: Joins the Indian Military Academy. 1934: Commissioned into the army. 1947: Pakistan invades Kashmir. Is colonel in charge of operations. 1962: Sent to NEFA to check further Chinese intrusion. 1965: Commander, Eastern Command during the Indo-Pak war. 1969: Appointed chief of the army staff. 1971: Indo-Pak war. Steers India to victory. and Bangladesh is created. 1973: Given the rank of Field Marshal.

In 1942 at the height of the World War II a fierce battle was raging in Myanmar, then Burma, at the Sittang Bridge. A company of the Indian Army was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the invading Japanese forces for the capture of a position, which was critical for the control of the bridge. The young company commander was exhorting his troops when his stomach was riddled by a machine gun burst. Afraid that his company would be left leaderless if he were evacuated, he continued fighting till he collapsed.

His company won the day and the general commanding the Indian forces arrived at the scene to congratulate the soldiers. On seeing the critically wounded commander, he announced the immediate award of the Military Cross -- the young officer was not expected to survive much longer and the Military Cross is not awarded posthumously. Thus began a historic military career that spanned the Indo-Pak wars and the Sino-Indian conflict, the wounded captain surviving to become India's first field marshal.

In 1947 when Pakistan invaded Kashmir, Sam Manekshaw was the colonel in charge of operations at the Army Headquarters. His incisive grasp of the situation and his acumen for planning instantly drew the attention of his superiors and Manekshaw's rise was spectacular, though not without controversy. He was outspoken and stood by his convictions. This, coupled with his sense of humour, often got him into trouble with politicians.

In 1961, for instance, he refused to toe the line of the then defence minister V.K. Krishna Menon and was sidelined. He was vindicated soon after when the Indian army suffered a humiliating defeat in nefa the next year, at the hands of the Chinese, resulting in Menon's resignation. Prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru rushed Manekshaw to nefa to command the retreating Indian forces. This had an electrifying effect on the demoralised officers. In no time, Manekshaw convinced the troops that the Chinese soldier was not "10 ft tall". His first order of the day characteristically said, "There will be no withdrawal without written orders and these orders shall never be issued." The soldiers showed faith in their new commander and successfully checked further ingress by the Chinese.

The Indo-Pak war of 1965 saw Manekshaw as army commander, Eastern Command. When India was forced to launch operations in the west, Manekshaw was against attacking in the east since the main sufferers would be the people of East Pakistan. The wisdom of his advice dawned when the Indian forces fought the Pakistan army in East Pakistan in 1971.

This was Manekshaw's finest hour. As army chief and chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee, he planned the operation meticulously refusing to be coerced by politicians to act prematurely. His strategic and operational finesse was evident when Indian pincers cut through Pakistani forces like knife through butter, quickly checkmating them.

When the prime minister asked him to go to Dhaka and accept the surrender of the Pakistani forces, he declined, magnanimously saying the honour should go to his army commander in the east. He would only go if it were to accept the surrender of the entire Pakistan Army.

Manekshaw's competence, professional standing and public stature was such that the politician and the bureaucrat alike crossed his path only at their peril. On one occasion, he found that the defence secretary had penned his own observations on a note he had written to the prime minister and defence minister. Infuriated, Manekshaw took the file and walked straight into Mrs Gandhi's office. He told her that if she found the defence secretary more competent than him to advise her on military matters she did not have a need for him. The defence secretary was found a new job.

As a commander, he was a hard taskmaster. He encouraged his officers in the face of adversity but did not tolerate incompetence. That is perhaps Manekshaw's greatest contribution, to instil a sense of duty, efficiency, professionalism in a modern Indian army and to stand up to political masters and bureaucratic interference.

In a way, he was following the path of other army chiefs, K.S. Thimayya K.M. Cariappa. A holy terror, there are many tales of the power of his whiplash. Following Pakistan's surrender in the east, Manekshaw flew into Calcutta to compliment his officers. The ceremonial reception over at Dum Dum airport, he was escorted to a car -- a Mercedes captured from the enemy. Manekshaw refused to sit in it, leaving the officers red-faced.

On another occasion, a general accused of misusing funds was marched up to him. "Sir, do you know what you are saying?" asked the general. "You are accusing a general of being dishonest." Replied Manekshaw: "Your chief is not only accusing you of being dishonest but also calling you a thief. If I were you I would go home and either shoot myself or resign. I am waiting to see what you will do." The general submitted his resignation that evening.

Lt-General A.K. Kalkat is a former army commander and belongs to Manekshaw's regiment, 8 Gorkha Rifles.

FT: The playwright who became president

Havel is, however, disappointed that ex-communist societies have followed the west in embracing globalisation and rampant consumerism. At our meeting he makes clear that there is little that can be done about this in free societies. "But I feel there is no reason why we shouldn't reflect upon this trend. It is a two-faced trend: on the one hand it brings people thousands of advantages and joys and pleasures; on the other, it is endangering the human race."

I wonder whether there isn't some intellectual snobbery hiding behind this anti- consumerism and put it to him that if people wished to use their freedom to go to McDonald's, why shouldn't they? He responds: "I don't want to prevent anyone from being able to do that. What I want to say is something different . . . I get the sense that we are the first civilisation in the history of mankind that is completely atheist. Human existence now isn't metaphysically anchored in any way in a code of moral conduct, from which we could then derive a legal code.

"That doesn't mean I don't enjoy the delicacies I can buy at the local supermarket . . . What I'm talking about is the underlying atheism and anti-spirituality of our civilis-ation. We don't know where it's going to go from here and what it will bring for the human race."

His book has more to say about the US than Europe, and I ask Havel about his admiration for America. He says: "The US, and especially New York, is a sort of a bazaar of the entire world. Everything is there, mixed together. It's a view upon the entire world, isn't it? I find that atmosphere appealing. It's a truly free country."

I ask him whether his fascination with the US is compatible with his concerns about consumerism and globalisation, in which American companies are prominent. He insists there is no contradiction: "Global corporations are by definition global, so it is not just a US invention or a US job, even though obviously the US plays a bigger role in this than the Czech Republic, for instance," he says. "It is a phenomenon of our civilisation. I don't think it's good to associate it solely with America or even with America as a country that invented this."

===

The playwright who became president

By Stefan Wagstyl

Published: July 5 2008 03:00 | Last updated: July 5 2008 03:00

Always a shy man, Václav Havel shuffles into view as if, even in his own office, he feels uncertain of his surroundings.

Years of fame as a dissident writer, anti-communist revolutionary and president of both Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic do not seem to have robbed the 71-year-old philosopher-king of his natural diffidence.

His welcome is warm but a little hesitant. His handshake is restrained. His voice, gravelled by decades of smoking that ended in lung cancer, is so gentle that it is hard to imagine him delivering the hundreds of speeches that he has made.

And yet the moment the conversation begins he comes alive. It is as if the mind inside this frail body has energy far bigger than the frame in which it is confined. He listens intently, pauses before speaking and shapes his answers with deliberate care - plus occasional flashes of the wit that brought him early acclaim as a playwright.

We sit down at a stylish cherry-red table in a space carved out of a period building in Prague's historic centre. It is a selfconsciously modern office with glass bookshelves and walls hung with contemporary art. Havel wears jeans and an open-necked blue shirt. Around him are scores of books in Czech, German and English.

Coffee is served - a mug for Havel and a delicate china cup for me - and a plate of chocolate biscuits that go untouched. I had asked to meet in a restaurant for lunch, but was told this would be difficult because Havel is so well known that we would be constantly interrupted.

I quiz Havel about his pictures. He says they are largely gifts he received as president and points to a colourful Buddhist tapestry. "There are small things here. But what is important is this carpet. It is a gift from the Dalai Lama, and only seven people all around the world have this kind of carpet," says Havel.

For many other public figures this would be a boast. But for Havel it is a statement of the obvious: his time as president transformed his life into what he calls "a fairytale" in which extraordinary events such as meetings with the Dalai Lama, not to mention Pope John Paul II, the Clintons and Robert Redford, became ordinary.

This year Havel published an English edition of his recollections of his presidency, entitled To the Castle and Back . It is not so much a memoir as a series of commentaries, interspersed with contemporan-eous office notes and entries from a diary he kept in 2005 while working on the book. President Havel worries about everything from the future of the planet to the half-cooked potatoes served to the visiting Emperor of Japan and the bat that has taken up residence in his summer house. "In the closet where the vacuum cleaner is kept there also lives a bat. How to get rid of it? The light bulb has been unscrewed so as not to wake it up and upset it."

As he leaves the castle for the last time, he wonders about what happens to an ex-president in a country with little experience of ex-presidents. He writes: "I have to smile to myself when I realise that people don't know how to address me. Some say 'Mr President', others say 'Mr former President', some say 'Mr Havel' and it's only a matter of time before someone addresses me as 'Mr former Havel.'"

He also worries about the failure of ex-communist states to complete the revolutions of 1989 by reforming what he calls post-communism - the domination of former communists in positions of economic power. I ask him how the reform of post-communism is progressing. He says the fight is still on, with victories in popular revolts in Ukraine and Georgia and more sedate gains in central Europe. "As the young generation grows up, society needs to rid itself of the power of the people deformed by communism, people who had succeeded in quickly establishing themselves in the new regimes and in occupying various powerful positions."

Havel is, however, disappointed that ex-communist societies have followed the west in embracing globalisation and rampant consumerism. At our meeting he makes clear that there is little that can be done about this in free societies. "But I feel there is no reason why we shouldn't reflect upon this trend. It is a two-faced trend: on the one hand it brings people thousands of advantages and joys and pleasures; on the other, it is endangering the human race."

I wonder whether there isn't some intellectual snobbery hiding behind this anti- consumerism and put it to him that if people wished to use their freedom to go to McDonald's, why shouldn't they? He responds: "I don't want to prevent anyone from being able to do that. What I want to say is something different . . . I get the sense that we are the first civilisation in the history of mankind that is completely atheist. Human existence now isn't metaphysically anchored in any way in a code of moral conduct, from which we could then derive a legal code.

"That doesn't mean I don't enjoy the delicacies I can buy at the local supermarket . . . What I'm talking about is the underlying atheism and anti-spirituality of our civilis-ation. We don't know where it's going to go from here and what it will bring for the human race."

Pointing to a mobile phone, he says: "Fifty years ago, I wouldn't have imagined this little device could be used to make calls all over the world, to make video recordings, and to send images. If someone had told me about this then, I would have thought the future world would be a wonderful one when people would have these things and would be able to communicate better. But that didn't happen. The world today is worse, and it is full of more traps and contradictions than it was 50 years ago."

I am shocked to hear him go this far. Surely, at least in ex-communist central Europe, the world is incomparably better than it was 50 years ago? Havel answers patiently: "Yes, of course it is a good thing that the Iron Curtain fell and that communism ended, but that still doesn't mean that the world is a better place. The big differences between the developed world and the developing world are deeper than ever. The unifying forces of globalisation incite various forms of chauvinism or nationalism. Terrorists almost have the capacity to fire nuclear missiles. The world is full of various dangers, including ecological ones in the form of climate change, and so on."

He continues: "I'd say that it is a good thing that the world is no longer divided in two, but new superpowers are emerging, and who knows what this will bring? China today is more powerful than Russia. Russia is witnessing the rise of a strange, special sort of dictatorship with strong imperialist demands, albeit dressed more elegantly than before."

I ask Havel why, in his book, he is so rude about his fellow Czechs. He writes of the "bitter provincialism" of the "little Czechs". Elsewhere he writes: "What they [Czechs] consider ideal is the capacity to enjoy various blessings - as far as possible with no struggle, no work and no cost."

Although Havel does not say so, a prime exponent of "little Czech" politics is the Eurosceptic Václav Klaus, his rival and successor as Czech president. Havel describes in his book how the Thatcherite Klaus made an uneasy political companion for Havel and other mainstream liberals who led 1989's "Velvet Revolution". When Havel became president and Klaus prime minister, Klaus's well-known arrogance caused repeated conflicts even over the most trivial incidents, such as Havel's decision to express officially his regrets at the death of Frank Zappa. Havel writes that Klaus would have been "happiest if I had submitted everything to him in advance for approval".

Despite these barbs, many Czechs are disappointed the book does not say more about the Havel-Klaus relationship. Havel says: "I am very much opposed to reducing the last 20 years of our history to personal tiffs between myself and Václav Klaus. And I don't like it when people get the impression that I did nothing but fight with him. I don't like that, and it doesn't reflect reality."

Havel denies that Leaving , the first play he has written since the end of communism, has anything to do with Klaus, even though many Czechs think it has. The work concerns a leader who has lost power but is reluctant to admit it and refuses to surrender his official residence to a successor named Vlastik Klein. Havel insists he conceived the idea in 1988, before the Velvet Revolution.

I ask Havel about his controversial second wife, the actress Dagmar Veskrnová. Many Czechs were upset when Havel married Ms Veskrnova, his long-standing girlfriend, in 1997 in what they saw as indecent haste within months of the death of his first wife, the widely admired Olga Havlová. I suggest that having become a moral authority far beyond his country's borders, he might have behaved with greater care. He shoots back: "Yes, but even a moral authority has the right to marry a second wife when his first wife dies, no? It was about something else . . . These campaigns [against Dagmar] had a strange element of jealousy, as though the public felt abandoned or betrayed when I remarried, as if society were an abandoned lover. It's an interesting phenomenon."

We turn to Europe. Havel, a passionate pro-European, is keen that the European Union's constitutional treaty should be kept alive despite its rejection in the recent Irish referendum. He is convinced the EU will muddle through, and, ignoring President Klaus's misgivings, says the Czech Republic should press on with ratification. Only then, he believes, should the EU consider a simpler treaty: "It would be best now to quietly select some three or four people who could create a beautiful, simple constitution that children could learn about at school."

His book has more to say about the US than Europe, and I ask Havel about his admiration for America. He says: "The US, and especially New York, is a sort of a bazaar of the entire world. Everything is there, mixed together. It's a view upon the entire world, isn't it? I find that atmosphere appealing. It's a truly free country."

I ask him whether his fascination with the US is compatible with his concerns about consumerism and globalisation, in which American companies are prominent. He insists there is no contradiction: "Global corporations are by definition global, so it is not just a US invention or a US job, even though obviously the US plays a bigger role in this than the Czech Republic, for instance," he says. "It is a phenomenon of our civilisation. I don't think it's good to associate it solely with America or even with America as a country that invented this."

A last question. Has he, I ask, since he is photographed on the cover of his book with a cigarette in hand, stuck to his promise to stop smoking? "I haven't smoked in 12 years," he says, "but about 40 times a day I feel like having a cigarette."

Stefan Wagstyl is the FT's eastern Europe editor. 'To the Castle and Back' (Portobello Books, £20). To buy it for the special FT Bookshop price of £16 plus P&P, call: 0870-429 5884.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT: It's watershed time for rivers

It's watershed time for rivers

By Harry Eyres

Published: July 5 2008 03:00 | Last updated: July 5 2008 03:00

Not long ago, the passing-bell tolled for the Yangtze River dolphin. In August last year, scientists announced that the baiji , or Goddess of the Yangtze, a species venerated for thousands of years in China until Mao's Great Leap Forward turned it into bushmeat, was probably extinct as a result of overfishing and pollution.

It will not be the last Yangtze species to go the way of the Great Auk and the Hawaii O'o. The giant Chinese sturgeon, which migrates from the Pacific to the Yangtze to spawn, may not last out this decade. According to Wei Qiwei of the Yangtze River Fisheries Research Insitute in Jingzhou, "there may be only 1,000 of the creatures left in the river". The valiant Mr Wei has not given up hope: "The Chinese sturgeon is very precious to us," he says: "I don't want it to disappear on my watch." The Yangtze is the fourth or fifth-longest river in the world, perhaps the greatest in terms of its impact on civilisation. But now its reputation is clouded by another statistic: the Great River is reckoned to be the largest single source of pollution entering the Pacific Ocean. Since the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, environmental degradation has increased dramatically: there is a risk of "an environmental catastrophe", according to a Chinese forum of scientists - the same forum, ironically, that recommended building the dam in the first place.

If all this makes me melancholic, that is partly because I have always had a thing about rivers. As quite a young child, I pored over encyclopedias and geography books, gobbling up statistics like jam doughnuts: was the Mississippi-Missouri really the longest river, or was it the Nile or the Amazon? Which was bigger, the Ob or the Yenisei, the Amur or the Lena? Since English rivers are little more than trickles, the first river that really impressed me was the broad and beautiful though shallow Loire. Three hundred yards across was an impressive breadth, a good drive and a pitch.

What had not yet occurred to me was that rivers might be de-rivered. Already in the 1952 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (the one I have on my shelves) there is an ominous sign: the article on rivers is entitled "River and River Engineering". Here is an illustration of the point Heidegger makes in his essay "The Question Concerning Technology". "The hydroelectric plant is not built into the Rhine River as was the old wooden bridge that joined bank with bank for hundreds of years. Rather, the river is dammed up into the power plant. What the river is now, namely, a water-power supplier, derives from the essence of the power plant." Heidegger is saying that the river, Father Rhine, central thread of German culture, hymned by the poet Hölderlin, beginning and ending of Wagner's Ring cycle, is no longer a river. Technology has supplanted nature.

Is that the end of the story? Must we sit back and watch while river after river loses its immemorial "riverness" and becomes merely a drain and a water supply, for irrigation or power generation? Or is there another, more hopeful scenario: can rivers be re-rivered?

London is the city which did in its rivers first. Not only was Edmund Spenser's "sweet Thames" declared biologically dead in the 1950s, but nearly all the other London rivers were forgotten, built over or running underground like sewers. Now there is a scheme, proposed by an adviser to the Mayor of London, to revive several of London's lost streams.

"When these rivers are opened up," says Peter Bishop, director of Design for London, "I think Londoners will be absolutely amazed. [The rivers] have been there all the time but you never see them." He is talking about such rivers as the Fleet (which runs under Fleet Street, of journalistic renown); the Bourne, part of which still forms the beautiful lake in Hyde Park called the Serpentine, which includes London's first swimming lido; the Wandle, which runs from Wandsworth to Croydon; and the splendidly named River Quaggy in south-east London.

The scheme is intended not just to beautify the capital city, but to cool it: London, increasingly covered by tarmac and concrete, can get uncomfortably warm in heatwaves. Perhaps these rivers will even be clean enough to swim in, as the Thames now is quite far downstream.

Last month's devastating Mississippi floods remind us that rivers have not lost their power. The St Louis-born poet TS Eliot's lines in "The Dry Salvages" remain relevant: "I think that the river/Is a strong brown god - sullen, untamed and intractable." For all our attempts to control them, rivers have a habit of striking back. Entirely understandable are the Chinese authorities' attempts to tame the Yangtze and the Yellow River, whose floods have cost millions of lives. But it seems we need a new way of living with and not denaturing our rivers, so we can say once again with the great Chinese poet Li Bai, "all I see is the long river flowing to the edge of the sky".

harry.eyres@ft.com

ST; TABLE TALK: WITH FAREED ZAKARIA Political leadership for a new global order

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July 5, 2008
TABLE TALK: WITH FAREED ZAKARIA Political leadership for a new global order
How might Singapore deal with a world in which people are richer than ever before and many players are jostling for supremacy? The editor of Newsweek International, Dr Fareed Zakaria, proffers his thoughts
By Cheong Suk-Wai, Senior Writer
A SINGAPOREAN taxi driver's chance remark set Dr Fareed Zakaria thinking how best he might write about a world in which people are richer than ever before and many players are jostling for supremacy. Meeting The Straits Times in his London hotel suite earlier this week, the editor of Newsweek International recalled how the cabby pointed to the Republic's new ferris wheel, the Singapore Flyer. 'I looked at it and I said - I suppose in a somewhat patronising voice: 'How nice, you have a ferris wheel.' 'And he turns around and says: 'Sir, that's the largest ferris wheel in the world'.' A month later, he was being shown around the South China mall in Dongguan, when his host told him that the 9.6 million-sq ft complex was the world's largest. Dr Zakaria did not buy that at first. He thought The Mall of America in Minnesota still held that title. (Actually it is only the 18th largest these days). Dr Zakaria recalled: 'At that point I decided I had learnt my lesson. I began to realise these anecdotes I had been hearing about this country growing and that country growing were adding up to something quite significant.' So he decided his new book - his second after the best-selling The Future Of Freedom - would examine how the world's new thriving countries will change the character of international economics, politics and culture. Dr Zakaria's big, hawk-sharp eyes, which are very alert indeed, give the lie to his relaxed demeanour. His laptop pings away with news updates on a side table while we talk. Everything about him tells you he is his own man - from his powder purple polo T-shirt, an unusual colour choice, to his Indian-accented English, although he has been a naturalised American citizen for many years now. He was in London for the launch of his new weekly current affairs show on CNN. Called Global Public Square, it premiered on June 1, and the first episode saw him interviewing British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Conservative Party leader David Cameron. The son of an Indian politician and a newspaper editor, Dr Zakaria is a Harvard political science alumnus. He had the ear of such luminaries as former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger from early in his career. But he really made his mark with his 2001 essay, Why They Hate Us, which he wrote just after the Sept 11 terror attacks on the US. His weekly column in Newsweek is now required reading for anyone interested in global affairs. The way forward THIRTY years ago, if anyone from Brazil, India or Mexico had predicted his country would soon be revving the world's economic engines, he would have been brushed off as a wishful thinker at best. But today, these countries are charging into the future after having embraced capitalism. As a result, three billion new players are competing for the world's ever-dwindling resources. Indeed, as Dr Zakaria points out in his new book, The Post-American World, the economies of 124 countries, including 30 African states, are now growing at the rate of at least 4 per cent a year. Compare that with the only 35 countries that enjoyed that sort of growth 30 years ago, he says, and what you have is 'the birth of a truly global order'. Singapore, he adds, is handling this brave new order very well. 'What Singapore has done very adroitly is to have moved up the value chain - to have said that 'okay, we can't compete with other countries in cheap labour, and so we're going to do value-added products, we're going to try services, we can compete (in) these areas, we're going to move to the next level'.' He applauds the Republic's 'very clever' forays into such areas as tourism, film-making and software design. And all this, on top of managing good relations with both the United States and China, he notes admiringly. But he adds that Singapore is the only rich country in the world without a fully functioning multi-party democracy. That will hobble its advance in the long run, he believes, because people 'want not only economic rights, but also freedom of association, freedom of speech and freedom of thought'. 'You may get lucky with a particular autocrat, but what happens after him?...If you could guarantee me in advance that you'll get Lee Kuan Yew, that's a whole different thing. But there's no way beforehand to know that you're going to get a leader like Lee Kuan Yew.' He adds wryly, wondering whether this would get into print: 'I think that the political system is rigged in favour of the People's Action Party (PAP). Some of it is formal...Some of it is informal. But all of it is largely unnecessary.' Singapore is already 'a very open society in many ways', he points out. 'I often say this to people because they have an image of Singapore which is essentially incorrect...It is a place where you would certainly feel as if you had many, many freedoms and liberties...It has been lucky in having very wise leadership.' But it has to widen its political outlook much more, he insists. 'Singapore's leaders have succeeded more than they realise. They created a modern society, and in creating that modern society, they must now also trust it more than they do.' He adds: 'That, in some ways, is the genius of democracy. It turns the relationship between governed and governors into a two-way street, and that will make for a much greater degree of sense of loyalty and pride in Singapore for the next generation.' He muses: 'It's funny: Whenever I meet senior Singapore government officials, I will sometimes mention this. And they'll go: 'Oh, no, no, it's not a real problem, don't worry.' And I'll say: 'You know, younger Singaporeans do feel frustrated.' And they'll say: 'Oh, I don't know if you are right about that.' 'And then, as I'm escorted out by one of the young aides to the senior government officials, they will tell me: 'By the way, Dr Zakaria, you are 100 per cent right. We are very frustrated'.' 'And these,' he notes, 'are people in the heart of the political structure.' Dr Zakaria is quite sure that if the PAP held what he calls 'open competitive elections', it would do 'quite well'. And as for Minister Mentor Lee's view that a non-PAP government would act irresponsibly by exhausting Singapore's coffers, Dr Zakaria says: 'You can produce checks and counter-checks. Nobody's talking about giving day-to-day control of Temasek (Holdings) and the Government Investment Corporation to Parliament. You can create institutions that are independent and therefore somewhat sheltered from day-to-day political control.' Tackling global crises AND political control, by the way, is what he feels the new global order needs in a big way. Great global growth brings with it great global worries. And therein lies the rub. The current lone superpower, the US, is not only being outstripped by new players on the economic front, it has also lost its intellectual and moral high ground since it invaded Iraq in 2003. On top of that, though food, fuel and weather woes have spilled over into the international arena, most countries are still thinking of how to solve these problems locally, when what is really needed is greater global consultation, cooperation and compromise. 'We have crises now. The question is whether we have the leadership.' China, he feels, is not ready to fill the vacuum America has left for two reasons. First, there is considerable scepticism about China, particularly in India, Japan and Indonesia. 'It's not as if the world is hungering for Chinese leadership.' Second, if China or any other Asian economic dragon wants to lead the world in the way the US has in the past 60 years, it would first need to present 'a compelling vision for other people to buy into and say, 'You know, we like the way Asians think about the world'.' 'It's not just about money,' Dr Zakaria insists. 'It's about setting an agenda, making people feel that there's a vision that you want to work towards.' For that reason alone, he thinks the US can still play a pivotal role. It can bring the world together to work out solutions to problems like energy and global warming. Asked which US presidential contender is better poised to lead in a post-American world, he plumps firmly for the Democrat, Senator Barack Obama. He finds Mr Obama's willingness to challenge settled wisdom in Washington - like his willingness to talk to US 'enemies' - 'refreshing'. 'And though he was criticised for it, he stuck to his guns,' notes Dr Zakaria. 'I think that was very impressive.' Mr Obama's rival, Senator John McCain, on the other hand, is 'a Cold Warrior', says Dr Zakaria, referring to the Republican's less than friendly references to Russia and China. 'That is just the wrong vision for the future.' Dr Zakaria himself is a long-term optimist about the post-American world. 'At the end of the day, the power of two to three billion people for the first time consuming, investing, producing, dreaming, inventing and problem-solving is very, very powerful,' he proclaims. suk@sph.com.sg

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July 5, 2008
Dr Zakaria on...
FIRM GROUND: PAP supporters pitching in during the 2006 election campaign. OPPOSITES?: US presidential candidates John McCain (left) and Barack Obama. -- PHOTO: THE BUSINESS TIMES PHOTO: AP   View more photos Economic and political rights: People want economic rights but they also want political rights. They want property rights but they also want freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of thought. You may get lucky with a particular autocrat, but what happens after him? The great problem with the idea that an autocracy is a good idea is that most people don't end up with Lee Kuan Yew. They end up with Mobuto or Marcos or Mugabe. If you could guarantee me in advance that you'll get Lee Kuan Yew, that's a whole different thing. But there's no way beforehand to know that you're going to get a leader like Lee Kuan Yew. I think that for societies that are not yet at an advanced industrial state, there are considerable questions as to whether introducing multi-party democracy right away produce stability. In places like Iraq we should have had a much greater emphasis on stability and order, rather than holding as we did four or five different elections. But in the long run, for a rich country, there are very few alternatives. Singapore is the only rich country in the world that does not have a fully functioning multi- party democracy. And Singapore is a very unusual case. First of all, it is a very open society. It is also a very small country that has been very lucky in having very wise leadership - and there's no way to guarantee that. One-party rule in Singapore The system needs more checks and balances. You need the prospect of losing power to produce a certain degree of discipline. The Singapore Government They've done a very good job, but younger Singaporeans do feel frustrated. They feel the society, the political system is too closed and it's too much of an insider's club. A sense of belonging What makes somebody a Singaporean in a world in which you are going to need people who have come two years, three years ago? How do you make them think of themselves as Singaporeans? Part of it has to be, I think, that they feel they are full participants in the destiny and political structures of the country. I can tell you that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong thinks a lot about this, because he and I have had several conversations about this. China Whenever you talk about the rise of Asia, you're really often talking about the rise of China. But the rise of China produces very complicated feelings in India and Japan. So there might actually be forces within Asia that can act and counteract these things. India I feel very frustrated watching India, because I think it has extraordinary potential. Indian society is so ready for globalisation (but) the Indian state is so scared and backward-looking and corrupt and caught up with its own phobias and ideologies from a different era. The 2008 US presidential race One of the advantages of this (long) process this time around is that the crazies are out of the race. There were a lot of candidates that had very disturbing views about the world, very confrontational, very nasty and would have taken America down a very dark road. And they were all th