Formula One Veers Into Global Politics Again

DELHI - Just when it seemed international politics would not enter back into a Formula One racing weekend until the series visits Bahrain next year - remember the worldwide protestations against the series going to the Gulf nation in April? - political controversy has again struck the paddock, at the Indian Grand Prix, scheduled for Sunday.

This time, the focus is on a single team and not all of Formula One. The team happens to be the best known and one of the best known sports brands in the world: Ferrari. The Italian team's cars raced in the practice session Friday emblazoned with the image of the Italian Navy's flag.

The move was a show of solidarity with two Italian marines being held in India after they mistakenly killed two Indian fishermen, thinking they were pirates attacking an Italian ship.

But showing the flag has sparked outrage in the media here. (It has also produced the only red hot - darker than the color of the famous Ferrari livery - exc itement of the day, in a practice session that confirmed Sebastian Vettel and the Red Bull team as the fastest racers of the moment.)

Stefano Domenicali, the Ferrari team director, had been scheduled to take part in the customary Friday afternoon press conference. He was grilled by both local and foreign media. He refused to provide any detailed answer, other than to say the Italian team was not making a political statement.

It is written in the statues of the International Automobile Federation, the sport's governing body, that the teams must not take part in or make any political or religious statements.

“There was no political intention of this,” said Mr. Domenicali to one Indian journalist, before becoming visibly annoyed with an insistent British journalist who said Ferrari was clearly taking sides in a political matter. “It's not true what you're saying,” Mr. Domenicali said to the journalist.

Immediately after the press conference, th e Ferrari team spokesperson was grilled by the Indian media and others in the paddock, and he too said this was not a political statement. He reminded the journalists that the team has frequently used its cars to express support during times of tragedy, such as when the its two cars raced at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in 2001 less than a week after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The noses of the cars bore black paint. The cars were used to make a similar gesture in Italy after the Japanese tsunami and earthquake.

Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One promoter, when queried by a reporter in the paddock, said that it was not a problem for him to deal with, that the series was not political.

“We'd look at the national sporting authority here to have a look at that,” said Mr. Ecclestone, referring to the Federation of Motor Sports Club of India.

Mr. Ecclestone and all of the Formula One teams were severely criticized in April for running the Bahrain Gran d Prix while a political uprising was underway in that country. The race had been canceled for the same reason last year, but Formula One had decided to race in Bahrain this year partly in order to not be seen bending to political pressure, which could in itself be considered a political statement.

According to The Associated Press, Ferrari's decision to run the cars with the navy flags was hailed by the Italian foreign minister, Guilio Terzi, who tweeted: “Congratulations to Ferrari for displaying the navy's symbol at the India GP. It will show the sailors the whole country is behind them.”

The Italian marines are accused of killing the fishermen in February, while the navy was protecting an Italian cargo ship in the Indian Ocean. The marines were granted bail but must remain in India. Italy has requested they be allowed to return home as the incident took place in international waters.

Just as happened in Bahrain, of course, with Formula One being u nder the spotlight of the international media, a case that would not otherwise have been heard to such an extent around the world has once again received a massive amount of publicity.

Of course, had there been some bigger surprise event, like the only Indian driver in the series - Narain Karthikeyan of the HRT team - setting the fastest lap of the day rather than one of the slowest, which he did, there would have been less talk about sailors…..

Newswallah: Long Reads Edition

ReutersA magazine stand on a railway platform in Mumbai.

Whether it is Communist China or democratic, socialist India, corruption by top politicians seems to follow the same path, use the same techniques and yield the same results - politicians and their family members suddenly become rich as they become powerful.

In India, of course, politicians have followed similar pattern, irrespective of the party they came from. Examples include corruption in the telecommunications industry, the Commonwealth Games, the allocation of coal mining blocks and the illegal mining of iron ore. Allegations about companies promoted by Nitin Gadkari, the president of opposi tion Bharatiya Janata Party and Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, also follow the same patterns.

In “Hunger Stalks My Father's India Long After Starvation Ends,” the Bloomberg reporter Mehul Srivastava returns to his father's village of Auar, in Uttar Pradesh, where villagers once survived on coarse, imported wheat from the United States in the 1950s, to find their situation little improved now.

Mr. Srivastava and his immediate family escaped the plight of many of these villagers thanks to his family's emphasis on education. A “single generation of good nutrition” that he and his cousins experienced separates them from their parents, and catapulted them into the top 10 percent in India for height and health, he wrote. “In Auar, I felt like a giant, stooping through doorways, my feet dangling over the edge of my borrowed cot.”

Time Magazine's special report on India, carried a series of articles that focus ed on the overarching theme-“can the nation recover its magic?” One of the articles, by the author Akash Kapur, argues that the entire country “has been reduced to a giant dumping yard,” with plastic bags, bottles and rubber tires strewn around and the air polluted with chemicals. He writes that the “garbage crisis” is symptomatic of the “nation's troubled engagement with modern capitalism - reflecting a new prosperity and consumer boom, yet a reminder too of the terrible price often expected by that boom.”

Mr. Kapur postulates that if India wants to overcome social, cultural and environmental depravation, it needs to search for a new identity. An alternate model of development will matter deeply not only to India, but also other emerging economies around the world, he notes. “Even in the West, with capitalism in crisis and a sense of old certainties crumbling, India's search has a new salience.”

In Cabinet Reshuffle, a Focus on Youth

In an effort to improve the electoral prospects of the governing United Progressive Alliance, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India inducted 22 new  members into his predominantly elderly cabinet on Sunday.

The Congress Party-led coalition government is facing criticism because of multiple corruption charges, a slowing economy, rising public agitation and pending anti-corruption legislation. In recent months the government took steps to streamline the economy and attract foreign investment.

The cabinet reshuffle Sunday is likely to be the biggest push for an image makeover before the 2014 national elections. The new appointees include 7 ministers of cabinet rank, 2 junior ministers with independent portfolios and 13 junior ministers. (Read the full list here, under “Press Comminique,” October 28.) Seven long-time cabinet appointees retired ahead of the shuffle, including external affairs minister S.M. Krishna, 80.

The Co ngress Party seems to be aiming for political balance in states where their political prospects are low, including West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. Out of 22, 17 are new inductees and 5 ministers have been promoted to cabinet status.

Yet for all the spectacle, the new-look government was also notable for who was not included: Rahul Gandhi.

For days, Indian analysts have speculated about whether Mr. Gandhi would finally join the government. Instead, Mr. Gandhi, considered the heir to the Congress Party leadership, has apparently decided, for the moment, to continue focusing on party work, rather than jumping into governing.

CNN-IBN, a private news channel quoted Mr. Singh, after the oath ceremony, saying “I always wanted to Rahul to be in the cabinet, but he wants to strengthen the party. This is hopefully the last cabinet reshuffle.”

The new lineup represents an attempt by Mr. Singh and the Congress Party President, Sonia Gandhi, to build some posi tive momentum for what remains of the decidedly bumpy term of the current governing coalition. Most analysts say that Congress is staring at significant losses unless it can somehow show tangible progress in the coming months.

Among the change of portfolios, the new foreign minister is Salman Khursheed; he was the law minister till recently. Several young and junior ministers were also given new independent portfolios, including Jyotirditya Madhavrao Sciendia to the power ministry, Sachin Pilot to corporate affairs and Jitender Singh to youth affairs and sports.

It is expected that the Congress party will make some changes among party leadership ranks soon.

How India Made Its Grand Prix Dream Come True

Vivek Prakash/Reuters

Red Bull Formula One driver Sebastian Vettel of Germany driving out of the pit lane during the first practice session of the Indian Grand Prix at the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida, on the outskirts of New Delhi, on Friday.

The Indian Grand Prix, which is running for the second year this weekend in Greater Noida, outside New Delhi, was one of the Formula One races that it had once seemed would never happen, could never happen - and then not only did it happen, but when it did it wowed the world.

Workers cleaning the track, which was dusty last year,  for the second Indian Grand Prix.

After Formula One came to China with its race outside Shanghai in 2004, there remained no market in Asia more important for the elite racing series to break into than India. With a population of 1.2 billion and a growing middle class, the powerhouse on the subcontinent was a vast and potentially lucrative market for the series and its sponsors. Moreover, India even had a small auto-racing tradition of its own.

The British had started running rally races in the country in the 1920s, and there were Indian single-seater series. But most racing had not taken place on permanent, Formula One-style racetracks, of which there were only two in India, in Chennai and in Coimbatore, and neither was even close to meeting Formula One standards.

Formula One races had begun to be televised in India regularly in the 1990s, and the Kingfisher beer and airline company, owned by the racing fan Vijay Mallya, had been sponsoring teams since the 1990s.

Mallya then went on from sponsorship into team ownership, creating the Force India team in 2008.

“It has always been my dream to bring Formula One to India,” Mallya said when introducing the new team's car that year. “The government of Delhi I think really wants Formula One in India and I am optimistic that maybe we will be able to host our first race in 2009.”

There had been Indian drivers in the series. Narain Karthikeyan raced with the Jordan team in 2005 and was a test driver at the Williams team for a couple of seasons after that. This year he is driving for the HRT team. Karun Chandhok started racing in the series at the new Hispania team in 2010 and also drove for Lotus in 2011.

Indeed, all that was missing was an Indian Grand Prix. Mallya and Chandhok's father, Vicky, had been pushing for one for years, via the Indian auto-racing organization.

But in the modern version of Formula One that was expanding around the world, virtually all of the new races had come about thanks to funding by local governments. In India, where poverty levels and need for development are a priority despite the booming economy, government support of a car race was not a priority, although the government did show some interest.

The tale of trying to hold the Grand Prix is indeed a long and convoluted one. As early as 1997, there had been talk of holding a race in Calcutta. But by 2003, the idea shifted to holding it near Bangalore airport. At the same time, the chief minister of the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh had set aside land to build the circuit near the airport at Hyderabad, and then a seven-year agreement was signed to hold the race elsewhere outside Hyderabad, starting in 2007.

Then, early in 2004, Mumbai began to show interest, and it was decided that the race would take place either there or in Hyderabad. By the end of that year, however, the deal fell through as the government changed its mind about spending money on racing.

By 2007, five sites around the country were being considered. In the end, Formula One signed a deal for the race with the Indian Olympic Association. It was decided to build the circuit in Greater Noida, outside New Delhi, with funding entirely from the private sector.

Even then, it looked as if the race would never really happen. The Grand Prix was announced for 2009, then 2010, and finally 2011.

Given this tumultuous history, but also because of the widely criticized organization of the Commonwealth Games staged in New Delhi in 2010, skeptics around the world wondered if India was capable of hosting an international sporting event of such magnitude.

Then, racing against time and employing thousands of workers - many of whom lived in tents at the circuit site - the Indians managed to build one of the world's great sporting stadiums, the Buddh International Circuit, with a gargantuan, curved awning overhanging the 13,000 seats in the grandstand of the main straight and a world-class pit and paddock area. The organizers had fulfilled their commitment to Formula One to perfection.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 27, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune.

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Newswallah: Bharat Edition

Jammu and Kashmir: Beekeeping is picking up in the state after years of decline, The Indian Express reported. Honey output has jumped from 300 tons to 597 tons since 2010, according to the article. Apiculture is creating job opportunities, state officials said.

Assam: At least six people died and several others were injured in traffic accidents in the state during the five-day Durga Puja festivities, and residents clashed with police after one of the deaths, The Pioneer reported. A curfew was imposed in the Dhubri region on Wednesday, the last day of the celebrations, as a precautionary measure after a stabbing was reported.

West Bengal: Two government-supported girls' schools in the Nadia district have had no students on their rolls for three years, but teachers and other staff members have continued to receive salaries, The Indian Express reported. The article said the schools' 14 teachers “mostly while away their time by read ing newspapers, magazines and plain gossiping.”

Bihar: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been invited to Pakistan next month, Business Standard reported. Pakistan's high commissioner in India, Salman Bashir, recently visited the state and lauded Mr. Kumar's efforts at developing the state, but not everyone in Bihar would agree with him, the analytical piece says.

Rajasthan: Rajasthan's State Human Rights Commission is scrutinizing khap panchayats, the unelected, caste-based village councils that have recently drawn attention over comments made about rape cases in neighboring Haryana, Daily Bhaskar reported. The panel plans to recommend legislation dealing with the unelected bodies.

Tamil Nadu: A nongovernmental organization, Action Aid, says that only 12 of the state's 25 homeless shelters are functional, according to The New Indian Express. Supreme Court guidelines say that a state Tamil Nadu's size should have 123 homeless shelters, the newspaper noted.< /p>

Bangalore\'s Female Trash Pickers

Courtesy of Sonia FaleiroShobha, a garbage collector at her home in Bangalore, Karnataka.

New rules that require Bangalore's residents to sort their garbage aim to reduce inefficiencies in a system that has the city teeming with open dumps. The dumps attract cows, stray dogs and rats, and are a surprising sight in a city that prides itself as the Silicon Valley of India.

But an investigation into the work-life conditions of the 14,000 garbage collectors, or pourakarmikas, responsible for cleaning up an estimated 3,000 tons of garbage daily, offer an insight into why this task is a difficult one. It suggests that unless the lives of the pouraka rmikas improve, neither will the city's sanitation.

Shobha, 25, who goes by one name, is a widow who supports her elderly mother and her two children on a salary of 5,000 rupees ($96) a month. The family lives in a tiny room in a Cox Town slum. Shobha owns exactly two pieces of furniture: chairs foraged from the very garbage dump she visits, stuffed with the garbage she's handed most often-paper and plastic bags.

Shobha is clearly poor. But her circumstances are made more acute by the fact that her profession is despised and deemed fit only for people of the so-called low castes. She's a Dalit, as are most of the city's pourakarmikas. And like her, they're illiterate, unskilled and chose garbage collection because their parents were pourakarmikas too. Many feel they're equated with and treated like the garbage they collect. “I tried to explain the new rules to one housewife,” said Shobha. “She replied, ‘You're no one to talk to me.' Then she flung a bottle at my head.”

The impact of Shobha's poverty on her physical wellbeing is clear. The impact on her job is clear too. She signs in for an eight-hour shift at 6:30 a.m. But long before that she joins a queue of people to draw water from a public tap. She could hardly have slept well the previous night - her room doesn't have electricity, so to keep from stifling, she leaves the door open. Fear of intruders keeps her awake. During the monsoon, rain sweeps in.

By the time she reaches work, Shobha is tired and often filled with hopelessness. But she's responsible for manually cleaning approximately 1.5 kilometers (almost 1 mile) of road and collecting garbage from about 500 households.

The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (B.B.M.P.), or municipal corporation responsible for the city's civic governance, has only 2,000 pourakarmikas on its rolls. These “permanent” workers, as they're known, are protected by labor laws. But si nce the 1990s the B.B.M.P. has hired only temporary pourakarmikas through contractors, and so the majority of pourakarmikas like Shobha aren't covered under labor laws. They're paid irregularly, cannot comfortably afford basic amenities, and are even expected to acquire their work tools.

Shobha goes through four brooms a month, at a personal expense of 160 rupees. To save money, she scoops up trash with pieces of metal, cardboard or Styrofoam, which, like the containers into which she haphazardly empties waste, are foraged from the dump. If she can't find a container, she uses plastic bags.

Even permanent pourakarmikas are only given thin gloves to wear, but Shobha must handle all sorts of waste - wet, dry, and hazardous - with her bare hands. On her feet she wears the sort of slippers most people would consider too flimsy to venture outside with. In these she tramps down roads and wades ankle deep into dumps wet with animal excrement.

The B.B.M.P. does pro vide temporary pourakarmikas with a uniform, a green cotton jacket they're expected to slip over their salwar kameez or sari. But they get just one jacket every five years or so. They're also given a metal cart for their garbage containers. A cart could be broken on all sides, but as long as its wheels move, it's considered usable.

So far this year, according to one news report, the B.B.M.P. has collected 250 million rupees from Bangalore's residents in garbage taxes. And this summer it earmarked 320 crore, or 3.2 billion rupees for solid waste management. Its ambitious plans to recycle and compost garbage include a proposed purchase of 200 acres of land to process waste, new garbage collection centers and new contracts with villages earmarked as dumping grounds.

But even with all the money the city has made, there are no new plans for the people who will, on its behalf, make first contact with the garbage. Far from modernizing its collection system, the city do esn't even plan to expand it. About 14,000 people will continue to clean up after 8.5 million with their hands.

In fact, despite numerous public statements by B.B.M.P. officials describing the pourakarmikas' enlarged role under the new rules, half a dozen garbage collectors interviewed for this story weren't even aware of the changes.

Rani, 33, a pourakarmika from Fraser Town who goes by one name, said it was a housewife who explained them to her. “She handed me three separate bags of waste,” said Rani. “Which was nice of her. But I don't even have one container. So I emptied all three bags straight into my cart.”

Dr. C. Suresh, a B.B.M.P. health officer, said that he doesn't expect real change in Bangalore's garbage disposal and collection habits for another two or three months. But he may have to wait longer than that.

Largely as a result of the B.B.M.P.'s own lack of foresight, the city's pourakarmikas are ill-equipped to handle their work and unlikely to do so successfully. S. Balan, who heads the only registered union of pourakarmikas in Bangalore, rolls his eyes at the irony. “Everyone wants a clean city,” he said. “But the cleanliness and well-being of the cleaners is of concern to nobody.”

Sonia Faleiro is the author of Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars. Read more of her work at www.soniafaleiro.com. She will be appearing in Pop-Up Magazine on Nov. 8 at Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco.