Repentant, resolute

The FT report was less interpretive about Vajpayee8217;s remarks on economic reform. Here, the prime minister rejected the unfavourable comparisons with China and pointed out that reforms in a democracy are more sustainable. He commended coalition governments for 8216;8216;balancing divergent views and accommodating regional and sectoral interests more effectively8217;8217;. He emphasised the focus on infrastructure development in rural areas 8216;8216;so that the correlation between our economic growth and the monsoon can be reduced further8217;8217;. He told the FT his government was finalising legislation to permit the creation of special economic zones.

On the economic front, it seems, the FT didn8217;t need any persuading in the first place. In an editorial this week, the paper was hugely complimentary about India8217;s economic performance. It declared that the country may be making a 8216;8216;comeback8217;8217; after years of staying in China8217;s shadow. 8216;8216;India, it is whispered, may at last have what it takes to start catching up with its larger neighbour8217;8217;.

Cancun trio

This week, the NEW YORK TIMES spelt out the 8216;8216;new global trade line-up8217;8217;: Haves, Have-nots, Have-Somes.

The clarifying moment, the NYT recalled, came at Cancun in September when the talks broke down amid accusations of bad faith. Away from the blamegames, there was the 8216;8216;striking new development8217;8217;: the emergence of a coalition of nations that no longer fits the profile of either have or have-not. The Group of 20-plus, conceived by Brazil and India to bring together large resource-rich nations of the 8216;8216;South8217;8217;. Countries that have the clout to demand greater access to the markets of industrialised nations because together they add up to more than half the world8217;s population 8212; and that also boast of substantial manufacturing centres of their own.

But, said the NYT, there are cracks within the Group of 20-plus and a gulf between the Group of 20-plus and the rest of what is known as the developing world. The danger, now, it quoted Jagdish Bhagwati, is that trade talks will be transformed in a 8216;8216;spaghetti bowl8217;8217; of bilateral and regional agreements. This is dangerous because 8216;8216;poor countries are singularly unequipped to cope with the chaotic regime8217;8217;.

In Marquez8217;s den

In the week that Gabriel Garcia Marquez8217;s Living to Tell the Tale arrived to bookshelves in India in its English translation, a very affectionate tribute to the patriarch in the NEW YORK TIMES. Writer Francisco Goldman remembered that moment when he first came upon the words 8216;8216;magic realism8217;8217; and realised the power of the dictum that 8216;8216;nothing but the marvellous is beautiful8217;8217;.

Goldman wrote about the Marquez he had heard about. The man who is like an excited youth at his first job at editorial meetings of Cambio, a Mexican weekly magazine. The man of legendary charm and powers of persuasion.

He wrote about the Marquez who could be imagined from his writings. Those writings, without which it is now difficult to imagine Latin America, or indeed the novel. Those novels which have made the world look at the backwaters in a new way. 8216;8216;Before, Columbian novelists had usually described such places with anthropological or political earnestness8230; Garcia Marquez8230; narrated phantasmal and radiant inner lives and childhood memories as if they were more concrete than their surroundings8230; He found a place for the tropical village at the heart of world literature8217;8217;.

Readers the world over, said Goldman, now find themselves remembering 8216;8216;that distant afternoon8217;8217; when they were taken by their father 8216;8216;8216;to discover ice8217;8217;. In a story by the exiled Iraqi writer Najem Wali, a character rediscovers his city of Basra in Macondo.

Goldman railed against the stereotype that magic realism is the authentic and predominant Latin American form of literary expression. It was uniquely Garcia Marquez8217;s manner of transforming life into fiction, he said.

And then he wrote about meeting the writer in flesh and blood on a hot Sunday afternoon. When, sitting in Marquez8217;s den, his voice vanished. And he could only nod mutely when Marquez leaned forward and said that only good journalists can save the world.

P.S.: Even a playwright couldn8217;t imagine such a tale, he wrote. Last week in the GUARDIAN, playwright Neil LaBrute was watching the 9/11 toll go down. Until now, the number of dead was 2,792. Now strike that number from your mind and replace it with 2,752. 8216;8216;Just like that8217;8217; the NEW YORK TIMES exclaimed.

But of course, there is a reason why forty names must be removed from official death tallies. These people could not be properly identified. In some instances, their very existence was in question and several cases involved fraud.

After September 11, LaBrute had written a play 8216;The Mercy Seat8217; about a man using this moment in history for personal gain: he uses the cataclysmic day to gain a certain amount of personal freedom for himself and his mistress. Last week, as the toll dipped, the playwright wrote with a wry sadness about reality imitating his imagination.

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