Storm in Perumatty

Coca Cola dismisses its opponents as 8216;8216;anti-capitalist8217;8217;. The GUARDIAN said the case has become a cause celebre for Indian social activists protesting about 8216;8216;unacceptable globalisation8217;8217;.

It8217;s a revolution

THE NEW YORK TIMES put an ear to the ground and heard a revolution. 8216;8216;In this democracy of more than one billion people, an educational revolution is under way8230;8217;8217; it reported from Manua, Bihar. 8216;8216;From slums to villages, the march to private education, once reserved for the elite, is on.8217;8217;

The NYT spotted 17 private schools on the four-mile road between Manua and Hajipur, hundreds more in Patna, and tens of thousands more across India. There is a mass shift from government to private schools, it said, and it reflects the people8217;s hope and faith in English 8212; English is mostly the language of instruction in private schools. And a 8216;8216;new certainty among many poor parents that if they provide the right education, neither caste no class will be a barrier8230;8217;8217;

The NYT spelt out the bad news too: 8216;8216;If anything should be free, it is primary education8217;8217;, it quoted Amartya Sen. Sen points out that no developed country educated itself using private schools. The demise of government primary education is a tragedy and an abdication.

The paper noted that the law passed in India last year making free and compulsory education a fundamental right for children up to the age of 14 does not address the crucial problem of the quality of government schools.

When Bush met Blair

The terrible blasts in Turkey have abruptly changed the subject. But all this week, the American and British media were full of the US president8217;s state visit to Britain.

Commentators on both sides of the Atlantic played on the 8216;bubble8217; image. Bush, they said, was travelling in a bubble of extravagant security. In the bubble, all is calm. From the bubble, Bush made a powerful case for multilateralism, with impunity. 8216;8216;The bubble in London is just an extension of the bubble the Bush team lives in at home8217;8217;, remarked NYT8217;s Maureen Dowd.

In the GUARDIAN, Polly Toynbee again wondered about Bush and Blair and declared her verdict: 8216;8216;Only Colgate explains the artificial grin between this most ultra rightwing president and Britain8217;s social democrat prime minister8217;8217;. In the same paper, Jonathan Freedland recalled lines from the old Tracey Ullman song: 8216;8216;Why should it matter to us if they don8217;t approve8230;8216;cause they don8217;t know 8216;bout us/And they8217;ve never heard of love8217;8217;.

Freedland was seriously concerned about another relationship involving the two: How did the two old partners, Europe and America, grow so far apart that, as Robert Kagan wrote recently, they don8217;t even 8216;8216;occupy the same world8217;8217;? Freedland played marriage counsellor: US and Europe must become more like each other. Americans need to be 8216;8216;more mutilateral, more amenable to international agreements, readier to use persuasion rather than coercion8217;8217;. Europeans must admit 8216;8216;it is contemptible to condemn America for its military reach one moment, only to demand it take action in the next8217;8217;.

Timothy Garton Ash wrote about the gulf between America and Europe and made the point that it8217;s not so simple anymore. 8216;8216;What8217;s happening in London8230; is a meeting between the prime minister of one divided country and the president of another8217;8217;. As a European country, he said, Britain is torn over Bush. So is America.

First tsar

And in Britain8217;s FINANCIAL TIMES, a peek into the mind of India8217;s new Censor Board chief. Anupam Kher told FT he wants to rewrite India8217;s 50-year old cinema censorship law, last revised in 1991. That was the year economic reform took off, the FT said. Which makes Kher 8216;8216;the first cultural tsar of post-liberalisation India8217;8217;.

Tsar with an agenda. The paper pointed to tell tale signs of a 8216;8216;cultural conservatism8217;8217; that it said Kher appears to share with the government that appointed him. Kher condemns 8216;8216;vulgar music videos8217;8217; on MTV. On self censorship, he told the FT: 8216;8216;You cannot put down hard rules. Yet there must be standards. Self-censorship is not always effective8217;8217;.

Kher speaks about protecting 8216;8216;Indian values8217;8217;: 8216;8216;The larger audience is not a liberal one and it could be influenced by what it sees8217;8217;. The FT immediately pointed out that there is little anthropological evidence to suggest violence in film influences society at large.

P.S.: Also in the FT, Dilip Singh Judeo8217;s invocation of Gandhi was pegged as just 8216;8216;Indian fun8217;8217;. Judeo was surely being humorous when he said even Gandhi had taken money. Gandhi did take donations from leading business houses, 8216;8216;but no one suggested there was ever a quid pro quo8230; it would be hard to find a historical figure more self-denying than the Mahatma8217;8217;. The FT awarded Judeo an A-grade for trying. Still, it hoped the jest was deliberate.