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Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 
Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus is a fortnightly series of articles on the role of art in public policymaking. This series invites WPI fellows and project leaders as well as external practitioners to contribute pieces on how artists have led policy change and how policymakers can use creative strategies.
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Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World
In Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World, World Policy Institute Senior Fellow Ian Bremmer illustrates a historic shift in the international system and the world economy—and an unprecedented moment of global uncertainty.
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Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Brysac: A Glimpse of Reality in Kerala
This article was originally published by Untold Stories: Dispatches from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Trivandrum—Our first interview in Trivandrum, capital of Kerala, yielded a disconcerting assertion: “The Kerala model is collapsing,” declared C. K. Vishwanath, a youthful, intense authority on communal strife. We pressed for details, having flown halfway around the world to visit what experts said was an outstanding example of democratic social progress.
Our visitor elaborated: Yes, the south Indian state had achieved a first-world quality of life on meager average incomes, but it is a victim of its own success. “Kerala doesn’t produce anything, so it can’t provide job for its better-educated job seekers.” Moreover, its health care system is being overstretched by an aging population as life expectancy has reached Western standards.
All true, but based on first impressions, not the whole story. Our tour began with a glimpse of reality. We wheeled through much of Trivandrum, but did not encounter the omnipresent beggars, nor were we grabbed by roving gangs of children pleading for rupees that we found in central Mumbai. Instead, an air of animated cheerfulness permeated the streets, accented by a rainbow of faultless saris on the matrons and the now trendy salwar kameez of the twenty-somethings (a fashion which has now migrated south from the Punjab).
Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Brysac: Report on Mumbai
This article was originally published by Untold Stories: Dispatches from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Mumbai—We arrived on Wednesday, Nov. 11, in Mumbai, formerly Bombay and India’s financial capital, on the Asian leg of Project Patchwork, our year-long quest for examples of multicultural societies where people of different creeds seemingly live together peacefully. Why Mumbai? One may well ask: a year ago, ten young Pakistani gunmen glided unseen into this great port and in a three-day rampage slaughtered at least 170 Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Jews, purportedly in the name of Islam. And we arrived on the eve of the first anniversary of the November 26-29 bloodbath.
Yet we quickly learned that there is little new Hindu-Muslim tension. “Most people see the killings as an act of foreign aggression,” we were told by Naresh Fernandes, editor-in-chief of Time Out Mumbai and editorial board member of World Policy Journal. “Things have been calm locally during the last four or five years, and the real dispute nowadays is about linguistic nativism.” He was referring to a bizarre controversy over the politically and legally correct language to be used by an elected lawmaker in taking his or her oath of office.
Most native-born Mumbaikars speak Marathi, and a calculated storm arose in the city’s legislative assembly when an incoming opposition lawmaker from neighboring Uttar Pradesh took his oath in Hindi, India’s most widely spoken language. [Watch a video on the controversy here.] For this offense, he was roughed up by Marathi-only militants linked to a fundamentalist Hindu party, the MNS (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena) led by Raj Thackeray, who regards migrant workers from other Indian states as hostile aliens. The subtext for language is jobs. The MNS first targeted polyglot Tamils, then Muslims, and currently northern newcomers. As the furor mounted, Thackeray tellingly upped the ante by demanding that in Mumbai all job seekers at the State Bank of India (SBI) had to be fluent in Marathi. And this just as the SBI says it needs 20,000 new clerical employees.
Mira Kamdar: Outsourcing India: For Obama and Singh, Democracy Means Business
This article was originally published in The Huffington Post.
While the administration rolled out the red carpet to welcome Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington this week, the real action wasn't around the elegantly set tables at the Obama's first state dinner. It was across the street at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That's right: the same folks who are spending millions to fight any government action to prevent climate change are about to be put in charge of the relationship between two of the countries most essential to finding solutions for that and other pressing global challenges.
As Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia put it at an "India Day" celebration at defense and communications giant Honeywell: "The most important part of our relationship is that increasingly governments matter less and less and it's more about empowering the private sector and our businesses, our scientists, educators so that they can all work together to achieve great things." Honeywell's CEO David Cote is the head of the newly expanded India-U.S. CEO Forum, which met during the Indian prime minister's visit.
The India side is headed by Ratan Tata, one of seven Indian CEOs who accompanied the prime minister. On Monday, Nov. 23, Prime Minister Singh addressed the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC); part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the biggest lobbyist for the U.S.-India nuclear deal, which saw final approval in the last weeks of the George W. Bush administration. In fact, to clear one of the last remaining hurdles of the deal, the Indian cabinet just green-lighted a provision to make immune from liability U.S. nuclear plant builders in the event of an accident. This is no small feat in a country that still hasn't gotten over the Union Carbide poisonous gas leak in Bhopal, the worst industrial accident in history. The bill must still pass India's parliament.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has identified five pillars of the U.S.-India relationship: strategy, agriculture, health care, science and technology, and education. In all cases, the Obama administration is putting the private sector in the driver's seat. As Robert Blake put it at meeting in Washington last Wednesday, Nov. 18: "[T]he Obama administration would really like to do much more to try to engage the private sector, both in private-public partnerships, but also in advising and working with both governments, to see how we can make the private sector portion bring the private sector to the fore in all of these dialogues."
While the administration rolled out the red carpet to welcome Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington this week, the real action wasn't around the elegantly set tables at the Obama's first state dinner. It was across the street at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That's right: the same folks who are spending millions to fight any government action to prevent climate change are about to be put in charge of the relationship between two of the countries most essential to finding solutions for that and other pressing global challenges.
As Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia put it at an "India Day" celebration at defense and communications giant Honeywell: "The most important part of our relationship is that increasingly governments matter less and less and it's more about empowering the private sector and our businesses, our scientists, educators so that they can all work together to achieve great things." Honeywell's CEO David Cote is the head of the newly expanded India-U.S. CEO Forum, which met during the Indian prime minister's visit.
The India side is headed by Ratan Tata, one of seven Indian CEOs who accompanied the prime minister. On Monday, Nov. 23, Prime Minister Singh addressed the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC); part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the biggest lobbyist for the U.S.-India nuclear deal, which saw final approval in the last weeks of the George W. Bush administration. In fact, to clear one of the last remaining hurdles of the deal, the Indian cabinet just green-lighted a provision to make immune from liability U.S. nuclear plant builders in the event of an accident. This is no small feat in a country that still hasn't gotten over the Union Carbide poisonous gas leak in Bhopal, the worst industrial accident in history. The bill must still pass India's parliament.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has identified five pillars of the U.S.-India relationship: strategy, agriculture, health care, science and technology, and education. In all cases, the Obama administration is putting the private sector in the driver's seat. As Robert Blake put it at meeting in Washington last Wednesday, Nov. 18: "[T]he Obama administration would really like to do much more to try to engage the private sector, both in private-public partnerships, but also in advising and working with both governments, to see how we can make the private sector portion bring the private sector to the fore in all of these dialogues." 
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Tags: Barack Obama, Barack Obama, business, Development, Diplomacy, Hillary Clinton, India, India, india-u.s. business council, Manmohan Singh, Mira Kamdar, ratan tata, singh-obama summit, sino-u.s. relationship, u.s. chamber of commerce, U.S. Foreign Policy, u.s.-india relationship, United States 