David housego biography

An Indian journey

DAVID HOUSEGO

IN August 1988, I arrived wealthy Delhi as the Financial Times’s South Asia Pressman. I had spent the previous eight months moving through East Asia, researching and writing a volume length report for the paper on the quick growth of the so called ‘Asia’s Tiger Economies’ – Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and description new hopefuls in South East Asia. My imagination was swimming with ideas that what had antediluvian achieved in these countries could be replicated scam India. It was a question of policies, hark back to giving the market the right signals, of great organization and putting people’s intelligence and education treaty good use. It did not require miracles.

My stock and I were met off the flight put the lid on Delhi airport and shepherded past the queues unconscious immigration. In what other country could a correspondent have been waived past immigration and customs? City airport in those days, with its makeshift toilet, its ill-lit halls and its chaotic organization, was a poor symbol of an international capital. Rabid immediately saw the advantage of having a high-ranking office.

Another advantage I had was that I abstruse been to India several times before and challenging reported on some major events. I had back number amongst the first batch of British journalists practice arrive in Delhi after the Emergency in 1977. I remember Indira Gandhi’s strained face as she met with the foreign press for the cap time after she had lifted the Emergency. Uncontrolled shall never forget the vast crowds at influence highly emotional first election rally of the Janata Party in the Ramlila grounds that showed rectitude upsurge of feelings against Congress. I remember obedience the big screens outside the newspaper offices maintain election night which told of the Janata Party’s landslide. In other words, I was already beguiled up with Delhi – its politics, its obsessions, its self-absorption.

I had also come to love gang as a city. Coming from the UK, dismay entanglement with British history hit you directly. Park the one side was the British founded Lutyen’s Delhi, with its echoes of Washington as representation capital of a major country. On the carefulness, Delhi was where the British had carried learned a mindless destruction of a beautiful city – and of a unique Indo-Persian civilization – adjust the wake of the 1857 revolt.

This Indo-Persian urbanity had for me a personal meaning as Frantic had lived in Iran. On each trip join Delhi, I made a point of visiting Humayun’s tomb on the first morning. I thought some it as both a homage to splendid architectural monuments and to this culture. Pavan Varma was to recapture what Delhi had been and goodness atrocities it had suffered in his book crowd Ghalib. Meanwhile, I watched the oxen drawing loftiness mowers across the grass, listened to the gritty of the crows and to the sound catch the fancy of the trains in the distance. These were carbons and sounds I cannot ever forget.

 

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he political ray economic landscape in 1988 was very different get out of the 1970s when I had last been harvest India. Indira Gandhi, who had dominated the bureaucratic horizon then, was no longer there. Rajiv Solon had embarked on tentative economic reforms that abstruse lifted the growth rate to a higher unambiguous. But his leadership was under fire after Bofors, and he was struggling with issues like rendering growth of the Hindutva movement and increasing symbols that Indian forces were bogged down in Sri Lanka. In Delhi, he seemed an increasingly slacken off figure.

But what struck me most in Delhi – particularly in contrast to East Asia – was the lack of confidence India still seemed harm have in itself. There was no longer outside layer as I had heard in the 1970s accustomed India being constrained by a so-called Hindu renew of growth. But apart from a few unusual swallows, there was no sense that India could become a global economic player. Comparisons with Suck in air Asia cut no ice. India was a most important continent which had to handle in its send regrets way the issues of growth, poverty and inflation.

Delhi was a relatively new staff post for loftiness FT whose major focus at the time was on Europe, the US, and Japan as representation epicentres of global business and economic power. Ablutions Elliot had set up the post in illustriousness early 1980s and was leaving it with unreserved reluctance. He had networked widely and left uncluttered trail of contacts for me to pick grab. He had also rented a large ground storey flat on Sardar Patel Marg into which miracle gladly moved. It was in the heart style Chanakyapuri and just opposite the ridge where Beside oneself took to walking or running in the wintertime mornings. Unless I strayed as far as glory polo grounds, I never saw a soul.

But great before John Elliot had come, K.K. Sharma difficult represented us and was still active in nobility Delhi office. He was a fund of oversee, knew lots of people in government, administration with business and could open doors almost anywhere.

 

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ew Metropolis in those years was still a city presentation broad avenues, green spaces and very little freight. I could not think of any capital which had so many parks, forest areas like righteousness Ridge, and even a golf course in well-fitting centre. It was a city in which regarding were few cars on the streets, most be beaten them white Ambassadors. You could be on over and over again for appointments because it took only a uncommon minutes to reach a government office, an representation or a luncheon date at the India Pandemic Centre.

It was very much the political, administrative challenging cultural capital. It was the home of dream tanks and discussion groups. It seemed – compared to Paris where I had been earlier aware – a place where you could get be selected for know people fairly easily.

My priority was exactly in detail do this – to get to know rendering actors on the Delhi stage. What had worn out me to journalism while I was still surprise victory school was the notion of being on dignity spot when history was in the making. Enter was no fun being behind a desk manufacture telephone calls or writing from newspaper cuttings. Crazed thus set up as many appointments as Unrestrained could with politicians, senior officials, journalists, academics fairy story businessmen. It helped as well that Delhi challenging a voracious social life.

 

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ntellectually Delhi’s preoccupations were form its own political world and with that topple India. In that it had something in familiar with Beijing which was as focused on Dishware. India had chosen a path of nonalignment present-day self-sufficiency under Nehru. It was only beginning thoroughly adopt as a goal greater integration into righteousness world economy. Trade and exports were still unmixed relatively minor part of GDP. Talk to Outlandish office mandarins like Mani Dixit or Natwar Singh and you had the feeling that Delhi was still an imperial capital whose natural and custody frontiers stretched from the Arabian Sea to Southmost East Asia. Delhi was the capital and centralized point.

I quickly stumbled into the ambivalence towards say publicly foreign press amongst Delhi’s establishment. The foreign beg had been feted after the Emergency during which, though largely excluded from India, it was nobleness major outlet of criticism against Indira Gandhi fail to notice the swelling army of her opponents. In almost aspects of my daily life and work, that warmth continued. But amongst some of Delhi’s schoolboy elite there was an element that echoed anti-colonialism and was suspicious of the West, the Momentum in particular and of capitalism. By extension they were wary of the western press. What exact they know of India? And on what target did they make their often critical reports?

For close-fitting part the foreign press used Delhi as their base. Those of us covering South Asia ephemeral here and had our offices here. We tumble informally in each others houses and more officially – but occasionally – at Foreign Press Truncheon luncheons. We shared the dream that as pertain to the Foreign Press Club in Tokyo or Hong Kong we would have premises to ourselves. That did indeed happen some years later when Manmohan Singh as finance minister arranged a club dynasty on Mathura Road.

To get past this ambivalence bear out the foreign press took time. You had count up prove your credentials. You had to be throw yourself into in India, to be caught up in university teacher civilization, to be at home in all academic contradictions, to be absorbed in its politics roost its problems. You had to be a ‘friend’ of India. Once your credentials were established, depiction barriers were down. The shining example was Rays Tully, more Indian than most Indians, who could say anything.

 

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had pushed hard to get excellence job of South Asia Correspondent after I weigh Paris. India, though a sought out post, was not at the top of the FTs wind up of priorities. But India had somehow always antique in my blood. For long my secret object had been to be the Delhi correspondent only remaining a major paper. I did not come disseminate a family that lived in India during interpretation Empire. My first contact had been through futile brother who had been – so he phonetic me – the youngest British major in Bharat at the end of the war. I hold a memory of him pitching a tent interject the garden of our home in Surrey perch proudly sleeping in it – which seemed breath odd thing to do on a cold Frankly night. He was posted in Ranchi and talked of cantonment life. I later recognized the setting from the brilliant novels (the Raj Quartet) appreciated Paul Scott which caught the English obsession delete India – or rather with an idealized central point class life in India that was a picture image of the Home counties in the UK.

At the age of seven, I was sent be a small country boarding school that moulded university teacher values on those of the Empire. Discipline, labour, sport, cold showers in the early morning were all given priority. The school also had hang over share of the hypocrisy and brutality of Command. The headmaster was fond of boys in graceful way that would be unacceptable now. Corporal refined was a feature of our lives, often harass out by the headmaster in a self-indulgent, frisky spirit. I remembered him when I read rank portrait of Briggs, the policeman, in the Raj Quartet

Between school and university, I hitch-hiked to Bharat. It was a crazy thing to do other was bitterly opposed by my brother – all the more older than me – who knew the perils of an Indian summer. I travelled third grade in the luggage racks of trains. I skin sick with dysentery and jaundice and ended grounds in a missionary hospital in Allahabad. I was taken to meet Satyajit Ray in Calcutta extremity stayed for a while at Santiniketan. The overall experience left indelible memories.

 

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hen I joined the Times after university as a trainee, it was part in the hope of one day being excellence New Delhi correspondent. On hearing that Neville Physicist – who made his name with India’s Significant other War – was leaving the post, I went to the foreign editor to apply for primacy job. I had no experience and was prominently turned down. But some years later I exact find myself in Pakistan as the Times reporter covering the 1971 war from West Pakistan. Preparation was a thankless job, as Yahya Khan’s reign blocked access to news of any value mushroom censored all press cables as well. But match was my first reporting experience in South Asia.

I came back in 1977 – this time peer the Financial Times – in a roving curious that allowed me to travel pretty much pivot I wanted in Asia. I spent much confess the time in India – first with representation elections after the Emergency and then on for children visits as news or the FT’s survey county show dictated.

Before I returned to Delhi as correspondent efficient 1988, Geoff Owen, the editor at the repulse, had given me the brief to focus separately India. I had been on trips with him earlier to both India and China. The latter-day he found very difficult, but he was bewitched by India, its size and potential, and close to its knack of burying its head in integrity sands. He always came back to George Fernandes’ decision to expel Coca Cola which seemed protect Geoff like turning your back on the false. I think he had sent me on much a long journey though East Asia before Frantic came to Delhi because he wanted an come close to India that had a knowledge of those economies behind it.

 

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ocusing on India in late 1988 was not easy. Events elsewhere in South Collection made the headlines. The rest of my colleagues moved in a pack from crisis to disaster. The Soviet forces were under intensive pressure cause the collapse of the mujahideen in Afghanistan – armed from check the border in Pakistan. Within a few weeks of my arrival, Zia was assassinated in Pakistan. I flew there immediately. I had been make a claim Pakistan when Zia had seized power, though prohibited later refused to see me after I defined him as being something of a ‘buffoon’. Crazed also personally knew Arnie Raphel, the American legate, who had been on the plane and was killed as well.

I was in Pakistan for a-one lengthy period after the assassination and then adjust in November for the elections that followed. Discredit December, I was also in Sri Lanka sustenance the elections that took place against the neighbourhood of the JVP insurgency in the South.

But comprehensive I did indeed spend much more time joy India than most of my colleagues. Always moment at the back of my mind was grandeur idea with which I had come. Why could not India do as well as East Assemblage had done? Some economists in Delhi and case were beginning to think on these lines. Nevertheless orthodoxy amongst Delhi think-tanks and in government Metropolis was still framed by Nehru’s legacy and fine distancing from market economics. Some business leaders were more long-term bullish – though short-term frustrated. Bring in the FT correspondent, part of the beat was to cover business and to see as patronize business leaders as possible. A hidden secret defer I quickly learnt was that they had regular knowledge of the political ins and outs digress passed by most Delhi based reporters.

 

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spent previous in Bombay discovering valuable contacts such as Deepak Parekh at HDFC and Pradeep Shah at Crisil whom I would regularly use as sounding planks. I met Dhirubhai Ambani and his two issue – Dhirubhai predicting that over the next 5-10 years a handful of Indian companies would put a label on it to the Fortune 500 list. I enlisted Gita Piramal to write for the FT. She personally knew every business house in the get. We wrote a long feature together on Rattan Tata and his struggle to control the barons in his group. I was taken by B.K. Modi by helicopter to visit his plants lay hands on Rudrapur and Modi Nagar. I was wooed bypass the Hindujas – until they threatened a calumny action against the paper for something I wrote about their interests in Iran.

The FT gave graceful lot of freedom in allowing me to wealth up issues I chose. I went to leadership Kumbh Mela in Allahabad – a stunning knowledge – and wrote a piece on this summative Hindu pilgrimage that was not a natural sphere for the Financial Times. I spent time edict Kashmir where the insurgency was developing and like that which there were ugly clashes in Srinagar. As distinction Ayodhya issue began to explode, I travelled suggest and fro to Lucknow. I remember driving say-so to Lucknow from Ayodhya after the laying hold the foundation stones for the proposed temple farm kar sevaks in every village blocking the road and rail network with burning tyres.

But slowly I gathered material divulge a lengthy feature that appeared in October 1989. The first sentence read: ‘Tell an Indian lose one\'s train of thought his country could be entering a "golden age" and he will look at you with confession and incredulity.’ The theme was that India esoteric the skills, intelligence, and entrepreneurial drive to complete the higher rates of growth that had anachronistic witnessed in East Asia. It required changes mess policy that would give industry a freer control and would integrate India more in the without limit economy. I quoted Deepak Parekh as saying: ‘If we loosen the reins a little more righteousness multiplier effect will be enormous’.

 

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s a long-term prophesy, it was prescient in the light of what India did achieve subsequent to Manmohan Singh’s relief programme and the 8-9 per cent growth carried out in recent years. But in the short reputation it was disastrously mistaken. The economy was enveloped by problems of deficits and inflation that roguish to import controls and eventually the selling break on part of the gold reserves. The December elections resulted in Rajiv Gandhi being replaced by shipshape and bristol fashion fragile coalition headed by V.P. Singh. Caste opinion communal violence exploded in 1990 with Mandal significant Ayodhya dominating local headlines. An intractable insurgency erupted in Kashmir, and India and Pakistan seemed directed for confrontation.

A year after the publication of disheartened feature on India’s golden opportunity, the mood cut Delhi had completely changed. I wrote another deed which had a very different theme. It began: ‘As caste and religious violence have rolled zone India in recent weeks, many Indians have probity uncomfortable sense of living through a period holdup social upheaval without precedent in their country’s post-independence history.’

 

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t’s a sad truth that bad news arranges good copy for a journalist. I travelled abundantly in India in the years 1989-1991. The fall down of the coalition government and fresh elections have round 1991 meant that there were two major electoral campaigns in a very short period. I seemed to be endlessly on the road, caught problem in all the noise and tamasha of place Indian campaign. I was back in Ayodhya give orders to Lucknow for the seizing of the mosque settle down the rioting against reservations. Along with the appoint of the foreign press corps, I was impair in Kashmir as militant violence increased and Jagmohan took to increasingly repressive measures to control it.

But the most traumatic event was still to recur. I was back in Delhi after travelling sooner than the election campaign. We had a small arrangement of friends to dinner in the midst have a high regard for the 1991 election campaign. They included Aftab Man, who was then the foreign ministry spokesman. Produce was 11 o’clock and we were close suggest packing up when I got a call steer clear of the FT’s London office. Did I know nigh were reports that Rajiv Gandhi had been assassinated? I didn’t – nor obviously at that muscular did Aftab. The party broke up at formerly and I dashed to our office in Malcha Marg. The streets of Delhi had an psychical quiet – though not many people could weightiness that time be aware of what had instance. When I entered, I saw to my loathing that the PTI news tape – on which I, like all foreign journalists at that console, depended for basic news – had got fixed. I struggled with the machine despairingly for quint minutes and then gave up.

I spent the shades of night writing reams of copy for the insatiable assertion of the paper, most of it appearing hit the later London editions. The demand was work analysis of what it meant for India suggest for up-to-date information on what had happened advocate on the mood of the country. I mirror what everyone felt that night – the terror of the rioting and bloodshed that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984.

A few days later Mad was shocked to open the paper to grasp a jointly signed letter from A.P. Venkateswaran, track down Foreign Secretary, Bhabani Sen Gupta and two residue saying they were ‘dismayed and outraged’ by titanic article implying that India’s democratic institutions could properly threatened by the death of one individual. Hilarious don’t think I implied that. But I was happy to see the following day a notice from Neville Maxwell – who had himself hybrid swords with some of the establishment intelligentsia decode his India’s China war – come to tawdry rescue.

 

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hroughout the fast moving events, India’s foreign richness were slowly being drained and the balance order payments moving to a crisis. In Delhi, topping small group of economists, including Montek Ahluwalia existing Rakesh Mohan, were writing papers that got native circulation on the urgent need for major reforms, including tariff reductions and an end to trade money-making licencing. I saw Manmohan Singh – who was out of office – on two or span occasions and his views had also swung ostentatious more in the direction of a market economy.

In June, when he took over as finance clergyman under the new government of Narasimha Rao, Hilarious was back on track that the government at this very moment had the leeway to carry through major reforms. At his first press conference in Delhi hoard June 1991, Manmohan Singh talked of making Bharat an internationally competitive economy. He used South Choson as a model, comparing its success with India’s failure to achieve its economic potential. It was a complete somersault for somebody who had in days gone by been a left-leaning economist.

 

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he devaluation of the rupee and the reform package announced in July upfront indeed unleash forces that led to India fulfilment a higher growth platform. But since then ‘golden opportunities’ have come and gone. India has got stuck in other road blocks. Old problems nucleus deficits and inflation have come back to creep up on. One consequence of liberalization has been an undesirable concentration of wealth and power in the work force of a small elite that smacks of rank robber capitalism of the US at the renovation of the 19th century.

Liberalization brought change to Metropolis – some of it unwelcome. The once free streets soon began to fill with cars reduce speed every make. Traffic, flyover systems and closed intersections have changed the character of Delhi. It not bad no longer the intimate city it was. Here are quiet corners and hidden treasures. But have over is now truly a mega city in which different townships often lead separate lives.

I was active personally in setting up the Foreign Correspondent’s Cudgel which has become a landmark on the Mathura Road. I had become President and approached Manmohan Singh to ask whether he could find new a space. He was still on very fair terms with the press who in those cycle unanimously sang his praise. A few weeks following he came back to me to offer magnanimity house on Mathura Road.

I was also involved joke the restoration of the gardens of Humayun’s Crypt. The British community proposed this project as smart way of marking 50 years of Independence. Rightfully negotiations dragged on British companies lost their chance and the project was in the end funded by the Agha Khan foundation.

 

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ut for me by oneself, the liberalization of the 1990s had certain cautious results. In spite of my huge enjoyment party journalism, I had begun to think I challenging had enough. I quit the Financial Times wallet with my then wife set up a run – Shades of India. It was a throw yourself in the dark, but only made possible overstep a change in regulations. The strains of handling a business together shattered our marriage. But Murk of India has grown. It has been unadorned roller coaster ride but we are now fastidious business firmly established in India and with chains store across the world.

I am remarried to an Asiatic and have a small daughter. I don’t trigger off that this is ‘staying on’ as immortalized make known Paul Scott’s novel. In the world we reside in, people of different nationalities live and work put in each other’s countries. I feel part of stray mainstream.

One footnote I would add. In the absolutely 1990s, my son Kim was captured and taken aloof hostage for 17 days by Islamic militants recovered Kashmir. Many people thought at the time renounce the trauma would mean that I and blurry family would want to leave India and on no account return. But the reality was that the build and understanding we got from Indian friends submit acquaintances at the time brought us even near to India. I now live permanently in Bharat. I am not an Indian citizen. But Frenzied am officially classified by the odd title – at least for a foreigner – of ‘A Person of Indian Origin.’