India’s Future Rests With the Markets

India's Future Rests With the Markets

NEW DELHI â€" Hours after the Indian government introduced its own tablet computer, Steven P. Jobs died. There were no other omens.

In fact, on Oct. 5, 2011, and in the weeks that followed, the Ministry of Human Resource Development appeared to have reason to be confident and proud, and it received somewhat congratulatory world attention for its tablet, called Aakash. At just over 2,000 rupees, or about $35, it would be the lowest-priced tablet in the world, and it would be distributed to millions of Indian students at an even lower price.

That was the plan.

But, less than 18 months after its introduction, the future of the tablet looks uncertain, even though the government is trying to rescue it. Aakash has been hit by production delays and quality concerns, and its very relevance has been put to question by the sudden rise of competing low-cost tablets from private companies.

Aakash is yet another reminder from India that to achieve good deeds in a developing nation, noble intentions are usually not as efficient as the natural forces of materialism, corporate self-interest and the market.

Last Friday, Pallam Raju, the minister of human resource development, hinted during a news conference that the government might review the project. But he played down the setback by saying, “Let’s not get obsessed with hardware.” He said it made more sense for the government to focus on improving Internet connectivity for the students instead of making machines they might not want.

It is a view that would elicit a sage nod from the executive chairman of Google, Eric E. Schmidt, who was in Delhi last week and appeared to be mildly baffled that only 20 million Indians out of 1.24 billion had broadband connectivity. He also said during his visit that a $50 Google-blessed smartphone was coming soon and that such a low-cost device had the power to transform Indian society, especially in education and medicine. If he is right, the smartphone will further erode the relevance of Aakash.

Mr. Raju, soon after igniting feverish speculation about the fate of Aakash, appeared to come under pressure from the government to make amends, because the project is expected to be one of the government’s trophies when it goes to the polls next year â€" if it lasts a full term. Days after he lighted the fire, Mr. Raju told journalists in the southern state of Kerala that the tablet project was in good health.

It is not the first time that the future of Aakash has been in the news. Last year, Narendra Modi, a probable prime ministerial candidate in the next elections and the chief tormentor of the governing Indian National Congress party, threw jibes at the government for the delays in delivering the celebrated device to students. Mr. Modi, a poet, played with the word “aakash,” which means sky in Hindi. He asked, referring to the delay in the tablet’s arrival on the market, why Aakash “has not come down to Earth.”

In response, the man who was then the human resources development minister, Kapil Sibal â€" who, too, is a poet â€" said that because Mr. Modi lived in “the netherworld,” he had to be shown the sky. And so, Mr. Sibal sent an Aakash tablet to Mr. Modi, who returned it.

Aakash has political significance not only because it is low-cost, but also because it is a computer, and the computer in India has long had a mythical quality to it. For millions, it promises transformation, a generational leap. It is a symbol of prestige much the way a pen in a shirt pocket was not long ago.

“E-governance” is a sweet nothing several politicians have mouthed even in states where there is no electricity to run computers for hours a day. This confused Bill Gates very much on one of his visits to India a few years ago. He said India had to focus on providing basic infrastructure before worshiping the computer, even if it ran on Windows. The image of a farmer in a turban doing something on a desktop as his happy family looks on is not an uncommon sight in government publicity material.

A few weeks ago, the chief minister of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which has a sub-Saharan quality of life, stood on a stage with his wife and gave free laptops to high school students, much in the manner of giving alms. He has promised to give away more.

The combination of extreme poverty and the worship of digital technology in India has, over the last decade or so, inspired an industry of local and foreign nonprofit organizations that are sold on the idea that India can become a center of cheap innovation that can transform the developing world. Aakash is, in a way, the consequence of this belief, which has taken hold here.

The efforts of many of these organizations, like the quests for a low-cost computer and voice-based translation software, were honest and spirited projects, but nothing viable came of them. When India eventually made the world’s lowest-priced car, it was through purely commercial enterprise. The car, the Tata Nano, like Aakash, faced several problems, and despite the hype surrounding its introduction, it was not a hit in India. But the force of corporate self-interest sustained it through the difficult years, and the car is now beginning to redeem itself.

The most profound changes in modern Indian society have come not of good intentions, but through market forces, like the steep fall in the price of mobile handsets and call rates. It is in this way that greed is good.

Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People.”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 28, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.

Lawsuit Accuses Founder of Yoga Empire of Misconduct

Reed Saxon/Associated Press

Bikram Choudhury leading a giant yoga class in Los Angeles in 2003. He oversees hundreds of studios worldwide.

A former student has sued Bikram Choudhury, the millionaire founder of a wildly popular yoga franchise, accusing him of sexual harassment, discrimination and defamation.

Mr. Choudhury, who is 67, at an event last year. A former student said he harassed her at a training course when she was 20.

According to legal documents filed this month in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Sarah Baughn, 28, a Bikram student, teacher and international competitor who lives in San Francisco, said she considered Mr. Choudhury her hero until he made advances toward her during a 2005 teacher training course in Los Angeles.

Ms. Baughn, who was 20 at the time, said she was uncomfortable when she first noticed how other female students would brush his hair, wash his feet and give him massages, but she chalked it up to cultural differences. Then, she says, he offered her his diamond Rolex watch, which she did not accept, and told her he had known her in a past life.

“What should we do about this” the lawsuit claims Mr. Choudhury said. “I have never felt this way about anyone,” he continued, adding, “Should we make this a relationship”

Mr. Choudhury opened his first yoga studio in the early 1970s in the basement of a bank building in Beverly Hills, Calif. A national yoga champion from Calcutta, Mr. Choudhury was said to sleep on the studio floor, spurn the advances of women and offer classes by donation only. Then Shirley MacLaine, an early student, gave him some advice.

“She said no American respects anything that’s free,” Mr. Choudhury recalled at the 2012 Bishnu Charan Ghosh Cup, the yoga asana competition named after his guru.

Now, Mr. Choudhury, 67, charges $25 per class, oversees hundreds of studios on six continents, owns several Rolls-Royces and is called “Yoga’s Bad Boy” by Yoga Journal. His copyrighted yoga sequence is practiced in a 105-degree room often nicknamed the torture chamber.

“Sarah dropped out of college to study with Bikram, and every penny she had went to him,” said Mary Shea Hagebols, Ms. Baughn’s lawyer. “She was a true believer and student.”

Ms. Baughn says she rebuffed Mr. Choudhury’s repeated advances and at times tried to redirect his attention to his wife, also a teacher and the founder of USA Yoga, a yoga sports federation with Olympic ambitions. The legal document claims that his advances continued; he is accused of pressing his body against hers while adjusting her posture, whispering sexually charged comments into her ear, ordering her to kiss him in front of other trainees, and assaulting her in a hotel room in Acapulco, Mexico, during a teacher training.

Her lawyer declined to say whether Ms. Baughn ever reported any of these accusations to the police, but she did speak with senior teachers at his Los Angeles-based Yoga College of India. “Sarah wants whatever justice the jury decides so that this never happens again â€" that’s her primary goal,” Ms. Hagebols said.

Neither Mr. Choudhury nor his wife, Rajashree, who is also being sued for her role in running the business and the teacher training program, could be reached for comment. But a spokeswoman for USA Yoga said the group was confident that the court would determine the truth.

“In the interim,” said the spokeswoman, Rachel Golden, “we believe it is vitally important to continue to support the millions of devoted yoga practitioners around the world in reaping the benefits of their practice.”

Reporting Mr. Choudhury’s behavior to the senior teachers did little good, Ms. Baughn says in the suit. They promised that he was harmless and “innocent, like a child,” she said. Ms. Baughn said she was told that she needed to “separate the man from the teacher” and understand that powerful men were often flirtatious.

“Vulnerability and devotion are big parts of the practice,” said Benjamin Lorr, the author of the memoir “Hellbent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga.” “Bikram creates this mentality that the outside is phony. There is no path but this path, and everything that happens in this path is just a part of your yoga, that you have to learn to be strong and get past it.”

Considered a guru to celebrities like Madonna, George Clooney and Jennifer Aniston, Mr. Choudhury wears a Speedo while presiding over teacher trainings that cost $11,000. Over 300 would-be teachers practice three hours of yoga per day in a sweltering hotel conference room. They also study anatomy, Hindu philosophy and Bikram’s views on life, love and ethics.

Ms. Baughn says her financial investment was one reason she continued to study, practice and teach the series despite her accusations that Mr. Choudhury attempted to sabotage her career and competition results when she repeatedly refused his advances.

“There was a culture of fear,” Mr. Lorr said of the Bikram teacher trainings he experienced, where he tried to interview other students. “No one really wanted to go on the record with me. They thought they would lose their certificates, that all the hard work and money they put into it would be taken away.”

Some Bikram studio owners are wondering how to confront the accusations.

Tricia Donegan, the owner of Bikram Yoga on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, explained that some students did not even know that Bikram was an actual person.

“Bikram’s name may be on the door,” she said, “but my particular space is a safe haven.”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 27, 2013, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Lawsuit Accuses Founder of Yoga Empire of Misconduct.

Group of Emerging Nations Plans to Form Development Bank

Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday in Durban, South Africa,  just ahead of Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, South Africa’s defense minister.

JOHANNESBURG â€" A group of five emerging world economic powers met in Africa for the first time Tuesday, gathering in South Africa for a summit meeting at which they plan to announce the creation of a new development bank, a direct challenge to the dominance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, all members of the so-called BRICS Group of developing nations, have agreed to create the bank to focus on infrastructure and development in emerging markets. The countries are aso planning to discuss pooling their foreign reserves as a bulwark against currency crises, part of a growing effort by emerging economic powers to build institutions and forums that are alternatives to Western-dominated ones.

“Up until now, it has been a loose arrangement of five countries meeting once a year,” said Abdullah Verachia, director of the Frontier Advisory Group, which focuses on emerging markets. “It is going to be the first real institution we have seen.”

But the alliance faces serious questions about whether the member countries have enough in common and enough shared goals to function effectively as a counterweight to the West.

“Despite the political rhetoric around partnerships, there is a huge amount of competition between the countries,” Mr. Verachia said.

For all the talk of solidarity among emerging giants, the group’s concrete achievements have been few since its first full meeting, in Russia in 2009. This is partly because its members are deeply divided on some basic issues and are in many ways rivals, not allies, in the global economy.

They have widely divergent economies, disparate foreign policy aims and different forms of government. India, Brazil and South Africa have strong democratic traditions, while Russia and China are autocratic.

The bloc even struggles to agree on overhauling international institutions. India, Brazil and South Africa want permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council, for example, but China, which already has one, has shown little interest in shaking up the status quo.

The developing countries in the bloc hardly invest in one another, preferring their neighbors and the developed world’s major economies, according to a report released Monday by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Just 2.5 percent of foreign investment by BRICS countries goes to other countries in the group, the report said, while more than 40 percent of their foreign investment goes to the developed world’s largest economies, the European Union, the United States and Japan.

Africa, home to several of the world’s fastest-growing economies, drew less than 5 percent of total investment from BRICS nations, the report said. France and the United States still have the highest rate of foreign investment in Africa. Despite China’s reputation for heavy investment in Africa, Malaysia has actually invested $2 billion more in Africa than China has.

Still, 15 African heads of state were invited to the summit meeting in South Africa as observers, a sign of the continent’s increasing importance as an investment destination for all of the BRICS countries.

China is in many ways a major competitor of its fellow BRICS member, South Africa. South African manufacturers, retail chains, cellphone service providers, mining operations and tourism companies have bet heavily on African economic growth and in some ways go head-to-head against Chinese companies on the continent.

South Africa is playing host for the first time since becoming the newest member of what had been known previously as BRIC. Many analysts have questioned South Africa’s inclusion in the group because its economy is tiny compared with the other members, ranking 28th in the world, and its growth rates in recent years have been anemic.

In an interview last year with a South African newspaper, Jim O’Neill, the Goldman Sachs executive who coined the term BRIC, said South Africa did not belong in the group.

“South Africa has too small an economy,” Mr. O’Neill told the newspaper, The Mail & Guardian. “There are not many similarities with the other four countries in terms of the numbers. In fact, South Africa’s inclusion has somewhat weakened the group’s power.”

But South Africa’s sluggish growth has become the rule, not the exception, among the onetime powerhouse nations. India’s hopes of reaching double-digit growth have ebbed. Brazil’s surging economy, credited with pulling millions out of poverty, has cooled drastically. Even China’s growth has slowed.

And once welcome, Chinese investment in Africa is viewed with increasing suspicion.

On a visit to Beijing last year, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa warned that Chinese trade ties in Africa were following a troubling pattern.

“Africa’s commitment to China’s development has been demonstrated by supply of raw materials, other products and technology transfer,” Mr. Zuma said. “This trade pattern is unsustainable in the long term. Africa’s past economic experience with Europe dictates a need to be cautious when entering into partnerships with other economies.”

Mr. Zuma appeared to have a change of heart before the summit meeting, saying Monday that China does not approach Africa with a colonial attitude.

But other African leaders are not so sure. Lamido Sanusi, governor of Nigeria’s central bank, wrote in an opinion article published in The Financial Times this month that China’s approach to Africa is in many ways as exploitative as the West’s has been.

“China is no longer a fellow underdeveloped economy â€" it is the world’s second-biggest, capable of the same forms of exploitation as the West,” he wrote. “It is a significant contributor to Africa’s deindustrialization and underdevelopment.”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 27, 2013, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Group of Emerging Nations Plans to Form Development Bank.

The War in Syria Through a Child’s Eyes

This week, Britain’s Channel 4 News broadcast a devastating video report by the German photojournalist Marcel Mettelsiefen on the impact of the war in Syria on the children of Aleppo, the country’s ruined commercial capital. The film, which contains some disturbing images, focuses on the life of a 12-year-old boy named Mohamed Asaf, who spends long days and nights working in a medical clinic that treats residents and rebel fighters.

A video report on the life of a child in the Syrian city of Aleppo by the photojournalist Marcel Mettelsiefen.

Google Street View Captures Ghost Towns of Japan

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The eerily empty streets of Namie, a town deep in the evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, are featured in the latest images captured by Google for its Street View mapping project.

The scene is wrenching: houses flatted by the quake and now abandoned for fear of radiation; rows of empty shutters
on a boulevard that once hosted Namie’s annual autumn festival; ships and debris that still dot a landscape laid bare by the 50-foot waves that destroyed its coastline over two years ago.

Namie’s 21,000 residents are still in government-mandated exile, scattered throughout Fukushima and across Japan. They are allowed brief visits no more than once a month to check on their homes.

Google Street View

Another 90,000 people remain unable to return to their homes in the exclusion zone. Both experts and government officials have said that
some of the most heavily-contaminated areas in the exclusion zone may be uninhabitable for years, or even decades.

Invited by mayor Tamotsu Baba to document the town’s deserted streets, Google began mapping Namie earlier this month. It used a car fitted with a special camera that captures a 360-degree view of its journey.

Google has mapped other parts of Japan’s tsunami zone but the scenes released Wednesday were the first from within the exclusion zone.

“Many of the displaced townspeople have asked to see the current state of their city, and there are surely many people around the world who want a better sense of how the nuclear incident affected communities,” Mr. Baba said in a blog post on Google.

Mr. Baba, as well as Namie’s town hall operations, remain evacuated in Nihonmatsu, a city about 30 kilometers inland.

“Ever since the March disaster, the rest of the world has been moving forward, and many places in Japan have started recovering,” he says. “But in Namie­machi, time stands still.”

Jailed Bahraini Activists on Hunger Strike

Two jailed Bahraini human rights activists â€" a father and daughter â€" have gone on a hunger strike and their medical conditions are worsening, according to a family member and a rights group.

Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and his daughter Zainab started their hunger strike last week after being denied family visitation rights, but they recently began to take water as their conditions worsened.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Maryam al-Khawaja, the other daughter of Mr. Khawaja, and Zainab’s sister, said the last news her family heard was on Tuesday, when they found out that Mr. Khawaja’s health had deteriorated and another jailed relative convinced him to drink some water. She also said that Zainab had begun coughing up blood, and she had taken a small amount of water as well.

Maryam, who criticized the United States and Britain for their support of the Bahraini government, said that the authorities had not given her sister medical treatment, but had instead sent an officer to videotape her in her jail cell.

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights said in a statement on Sunday that the two are also refusing to wear prison uniforms. Fatima Haji, an internal medicine specialist, said of Zainab:

Her family reported that she sounded fatigued, said she was suffering loss of memory and concentration. Having initiated a dry hunger strike now, including no intake of glucose, will put her at high risk of sudden onset arrhythmias, loss of consciousness and possibly death especially that she is in a detention center where no cardiac monitor or cardiac resuscitation service is available.

Zainab, who has charted the protest movement on her @AngryArabiya Twitter feed, wrote a letter from jail that was posted on the blog of New York Times Op-Ed columnist Nicholas Kristof:

When I was placed in a cell with fourteen people â€" including two convicted murderers â€" and I was handed orange prison clothes, I knew I couldn’t put them on without having to swallow a little bit of my dignity. Not wearing the convicts’ clothes, because I have committed no crime, that became my small act of civil disobedience. Not letting me see my family and my three-year-old daughter, that has been their punishment. That is why I am on hunger strike.

Mr. Khawaja, who has been on hunger strike before, along with other dissidents are in prison on charges related to their participation in an uprising against the ruling monarchy that began in February 2011.

A request for comment from the Bahrain government was not immediately available on Wednesday. But the Ministry of Interior had said visitations were denied to prisoners for refusing to wear uniforms.

Violations were related to refusing to wear their uniforms, hence the visits were postponed according to the rules #Bahrain

â€" Ministry of Interior (@moi_bahrain) 23 Mar 13

A “Free Zainab” campaign was started on Twitter in another sign of the attention the uprising and activists in Bahrain have drawn. There has also been renewed criticism of the United States for its support of Bahrain, which is the regional base for an American naval fleet.

Freedom House fears for health of activists Zainab, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja on hunger strike http://t.co/yFWphQ3Ens #Bahrain #humanrights

â€" Freedom House (@FreedomHouseDC) 25 Mar 13

USA should not support brutal #Bahrain regime
Read eloquent letter from human rights activist, on hunger strike, http://t.co/xKVZmL2CNy

â€" mia farrow (@MiaFarrow) 25 Mar 13

Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.

Video of Petraeus Apologizing for Extramarital Affair

David H. Petraeus apologizes for the extramarital affair that led to his resignation last November as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In his first public appearance since resigning last November as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David H. Petraeus apologized for the “circumstances” that led him to step down and cause so much pain for his family and friends.

As my colleague, Michael R. Gordon reported on Monday, Mr. Petraeus intended to use the speech at an event honoring veterans and the R.O.T.C. last night to begin carving out a new role for himself in the private sector, speaking out on economic, energy and veteran issues.

“Needless to say, I join you keenly aware that I am regarded in a different light now than I was a year ago,” Mr. Petraeus, one of the nation’s most decorated four-star generals, said in remarks delivered at the University of California.

“I am also keenly aware that the reason for my recent journey was my own doing,” he said. “So please allow me to begin my remarks this evening by reiterating how deeply I regret â€" and apologize for â€" the circumstances that led to my resignation from the C.I.A. that caused such pain for my family, friends and supporters.”

Mr. Petraeus stepped down after an F.B.I. investigation uncovered evidence that he had been involved in an extramarital affair with a biographer, Paula Broadwell. His resignation ended a career that included commanding the American-led coalition during the troop “surge” in Iraq and the military effort in Afghanistan.

Ms. Broadwell, the co-author of a biography of Mr. Petraeus, is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and spent 15 years in the military.