[ BOOK REVIEW ]

Powerful expose on culture of international aid

[ BY M.R. NARAYAN SWAMY ]

This is a devastatingly powerful book. Wherever there are wars, conflicts and other disasters, international organizations, some well known and others not so, move in to provide services so very vital to the suffering mass of men, women and children in the Third World. Haven’t many of us quietly applauded and appreciated their selfless naure? Sreeram Chaulia, one of India’s most prolific commentators on international affairs who has served as a rights activist in Sri Lanka and the Philippines, rips through the culture of international aid. In this seminal work that is sure to trigger a global debate, the scholarly Chaulia argues how, in the post-Soviet world, global markets helped catapult humanitarianism "as a new colonizing principle."

Breaking new ground in political science, he says: "Aid agencies and development organizations strode the Global South like mini-colossuses that derived their authority not from moral power but the donor power of capitalist states and international financial situations."

As Horace G. Campbell of Syracuse University says in his forward, Chaulia "has broken the silence on the criminal actions that often get disguised as humanitarian acts." Having spent three years in war zones and with ordinary people who always bear the brunt of all conflicts, Chaulia realized that it was far more important to support organized local activism than the "colossal" racket called international humanitarian aid.

Backed with empirical evidence, Chaulia says that aid agencies enable donor states and their military industrial complexes to penetrate and weaken radical movements in countries like Sri Lanka and the Philippines, shrinking thus the local activist’s capacity for civilian protection. Humanitarians, he goes on, often turn their backs when approached by local activists to assist in protecting the ordinary civilians. Their ideological affinity with the donor states even spur them to call for military interventions in the name of restoring "peace" and "development."

The biggest myth of liberal humanitarianism is that aid agencies save lives. But ironically, says the author, "for most humanitarian IOs (International Organizations), the business of saving lives does not include protection of civilians from violence and abuse."

There is more. "As key actors in war zones, humanitarian IGOs (Inter-governmental Organizations) and INGOs (International Non-governmental Organizations) not only turn a blind eye to sexual violence on civilians but also sometimes take undue sexual advantage of the perilous circumstances in which civilians find themselves." This is a charge as serious as it can get.Some IOs, the book details, were partners in the militarization of parts of the Philippines (by the US) and in Sri Lanka’s northeast (by the military). This is/was done ostensibly to get access to the war zone. All through the book, Chaulia points out the huge gap between the rhetoric and reality as far as IOs go. In his view, UNDP in Sri Lanka was the worst culprit.

Chaulia shows that international humanitarians often shun local activists while showing great dependence on expatriate (read Western) `experts’ who may actually be far removed from reality.

"The mainstream ICRC culture is to distrust local activists and organizations and keep a safe distance from them." In the name of danger to their field activists, OXFAM, he says, failed to monitor and report abuse of civilians in remote places in Sri Lanka. The lesson from the book is that humanitarian aid is an ideological ally of Western liberal imperialism with "global consequences for war-torn societies and not merely a sop to pacify public opinion in Western donor agencies."

Setting sail from India to China on 'River of Smoke'

[ BY SHUBHA SINGH ]

River of Smoke" is the second book in Amitav Ghosh's trilogy that began with the story of the gathering of indentured laborers and convicts for their journey to Mauritius. "The Sea of Poppies", the first in the series, ends as the ship, Ibis, sails to Mauritius and gets caught in a terrific storm.

"River of Smoke" takes the action from India to Canton. The 19th century was an era of sea voyages, when people travelled to new places to seek their fortunes. It is a story that stretches across the sea routes of the Indian Ocean, linking the new trading ports of Singapore, Macau, Malacca and the still windswept wilderness of Hong Kong till it reaches Canton.

Three ships arrive at Canton, the Ibis from Mauritius, the Anahita from Bombay carrying a shipload of opium and the Redruth that brings horticulturist Fitcher Penrose and his new found assistant, Paulette, on the trail of an elusive golden camellia.

"River of Smoke" is not a sequel to the first book though some of the characters make a reappearance as they reach Canton on different ships. There is Neel, the zamindar convicted for forgery who escaped from the Ibis and Paulette, the daughter of a botanist. The new lead character of the engrossing novel is Behram Modi, the Parsi opium merchant who faces disaster for staking his fortune on the largest consignment ever of opium.

Ghosh uses the same patois, slang, Creole, etc., to draw an evocative picture of Canton, the port town where traders from around the world gather to trade with China. Many of the words are difficult to understand, but Ghosh is unrepentant.

As he says there were many words like mince pies and rhubarb in English literature that "we did not follow in English books but we managed to understand the drift." The floating shanty town of boats is described as "a rooker of bandits - of bonegrabbers, sotweeds, bangtails and scumsuckers of all sorts."

But it is opium that is the mainstay of the trade - opium grown in Hindustan and sold in 'Maha Chin' by Western traders; it is a trade that the Chinese emperor seeks to ban. Ghosh vividly paints the scenes of Canton's market, the boat people, the opium dens, the trading posts or factories of the foreign merchants called hongs, the taipan and its myriad characters. Fanqui-town is the foreign enclave in Canton, where no foreign women are allowed.

There are plots and sub-plots galore; the subplots provide the historical discourse on subjects as esoteric as plant collection and preservation, Western influence on Chinese painting and other topics. Ghosh lists one of the surprises of Fanqui- town - a great number of its denizens were from India. They came from Sindh and Goa, Bombay and Malabar, Madras and the Coringa hills - they were all known as 'Achhas' from their habit of saying achha. There was even a factory known as the Accha Hong and its young residents learn to play cricket during the blockade of the trader town - the first Indians to do so as the natives were not allowed to play the game in India. In the first two books of the trilogy, Ghosh brings back two colonial events of great significance that are lost to the mists of history, indenture and the opium trade. "River of Smoke" leaves the reader eager to know where Ghosh will take them on the third part of the journey.