Following are edited excerpts of an interview with Mr. Rashid, author of “Pakistan on the Brink.”

In your book, you write that Pakistan is now considered the most fragile place on earth because of what might happen there politically and what it can foster elsewhere. You say it’s not yet a failed state but if it continues the way it’s doing right now… it’s sliding down the path of becoming one quickly. Why is Pakistan unraveling so rapidly now… more so than any other point in its history?

I think there is an internal crisis that has really not been addressed and this is the failure of the Pakistani elite, both civil and military, to cope with the end of the Cold War and the consequences of that. The end of the Cold War presented a lot of benefits to many countries but it passed Pakistan by completely. The whole era of economic reforms, globalization, high-tech, new industries, regional trade and peace attempts, it just totally bypassed Pakistan. So we are suffering from a 20-year lag, basically, of a failure to address the problems and the advantages and the benefits that the end of the Cold War produced.

Is this because Pakistan has been so focused on India?

I think the main problem has been internal. It’s been a failure of the elite to want to change its monopoly on power, on income, on the lack of taxation, on the lack of responsibility the elite has for development and the people. If you look at all the major indices, they have all gone down… whether it’s education or health.

Since 2004… India has not been such a major issue. Certainly, the budgetary focus, the defense spending is aimed at India, and if there is a foreign-policy dilemma in Afghanistan, it’s partly India-driven. But I will say it’s an internal crisis shown by a lack of vision by our politicians and generals who have not been able to wake up to reality.

If there has been a failure on the part of the elite, then what about regular people? Is there a possibility of something like an Arab Spring in Pakistan, where young Pakistanis take to the streets and demand accountability from the government?

The fear in Pakistan is on the contrary. That if there was a mass movement like that, it would probably very quickly fall into the hands of the Islamic parties and the extremists. We should remember that in the Arab world, Islamic parties were crushed and driven underground for 30-40 years and they were partly responsible for the Arab Spring, in that for the first time, they saw the freedoms and reacted in a very modern way. They are talking about democracy and women’s rights and education and industry.

On the other hand, Pakistan’s religious parties are not talking about any of these issues. They are not talking about issues that really concern people and, if there was an Arab Spring, they are the most organized force. Civil society is certainly there in Pakistan and has a powerful voice, I would say, through the media, through the NGOs and human rights groups, but they are not organized.

Read the rest of my Q&A for The Wall Street Journal here. 

Currently the co-host of cooking program MasterChef India 2, Mr. Khanna spoke to India Real Time about returning to his roots, the evolving food landscape in India, and why Indians can never drift away from “Mummy Ka Khana” (Mom’s dishes.)

Edited excerpts:

At last count, there were more than 250 cooking shows on Indian TV. You yourself are co-hosting MasterChef India 2. What do you make of our sudden interest in cooking shows?

As Indians, we are deeply passionate about our cuisine. Now, when we have a stage to express that passion, there is an immense excitement about the different types of food we can showcase. It’s like giving an instrument to a child who has been listening to music for several years. It’s in his subconscious, but now he can express it.

What are the key ingredients to a successful cooking show? In India, do you get a sense that as we cook less in our own kitchens, we consume more culinary shows?

A cooking show can’t just be about lectures and recipes. It has to be entertaining. As a culture, just like America, we love entertainment. The show must also have emotion – something we can connect to as regular people. It should also be about inspiration and should have a factor of relatability: Viewers should be able to relate to the food, the contestants and the judges.

I don’t agree that we are cooking less. Those people are in a minority. There are still people who cook three meals a day and these are the people to whom shows can be tailored to. People will watch shows they can relate to. My mother might say, “Oh this chef is cooking simple food, I like it,” while you might say “Oh, this chef is really entertaining. I am going to watch him.” There is a need for a lot of different types of shows and everyone will find a show to their liking.

Read the rest of my piece for The Wall Street Journal here. 

A few weeks ago, I witnessed the unfortunate collapse of my weakly-structured exercise regime. A bout of laziness steered me away from the gym. Too many “cat poses” and “downward dog” postures saw me crawl away on all fours from my power yoga class and some pointing and laughing at my dancing abilities at my salsa lessons saw me slink away in shame. 

I was back to square one: shuffling around the house in track pants, noisily eating cereal out of a box. I needed a new exercise routine. Then came “Kalaripayattu,” an ancient South Indian martial arts form that not only trains you in unarmed combat, but also teaches you how to handle daggers as well as herbal medicines.

Kalari, how Kalaripayattu is also known, burns calories and whips you back into shape – all while training you to become a warrior.

Read the rest of my piece for The Wall Street Journal here.

Higher fuel prices and a poor electoral performance in key states have saddled the Congress-led UPA government with a political tinderbox at home, while it also is being asked to pick sides between old friends Iran and Israel.

New Delhi is walking a tightrope.

Trita Parsi, the founder and president of the Washington-based National Iranian Council, assesses India’s diplomatic performance so far and offers a view of how the U.S. can defuse the tension over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Parsi is the author of “A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy With Iran.”

Edited excerpts:

India imports 80% of its petroleum needs and buys $12 billion of Iranian oil annually. How damaging to oil prices is Iran’s saber-rattling?
The U.S. has been trying to get sanctions on Iran and what the Iranians want to do in response is hurt the West. And one of the ways to do that is through saber-rattling that gets oil prices to shoot up. The Iranian government benefits because it’s an oil producer and exporter and the Western countries take a big hit because they are consumers. Obama takes a particularly big hit because higher petrol prices mean higher gas prices. And higher gas prices mean it’s going to be more difficult to create jobs in the United States.

Can OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia make up for the shortfall in Iranian oil production?
I’m not an expert on Saudi oil and their capacity to produce but what is clear is that whatever their capacity is, the markets don’t seem to be convinced and petrol prices are shooting up.

Despite the Iran-Israel standoff, India is pressing ahead with its economic agenda with Tehran. We’re looking at refurbishing the Chabahar port in Iran and we also managed to find a way around the West’s oil sanctions by making oil payments in rupees. How are these moves being perceived in Washington — who India has great relations with — and in Israel, from whom India buys its arms?
Both Israel and the United States are annoyed that throughout this period, India has managed to keep a neutral position and have good relations with all sides. At the same time India is such an important country that it has become difficult for the United States to increase its pressure on India too much. Obviously there will be some increased pressure but the question is how far the West can go on this issue. I’ve heard that the U.S. will now tell India that they view the relationship with Iran as “offensive” which is a step higher than how it has been viewed in the past.

And how might that impact U.S.-India relations?
The question is how far the U.S. is willing to take this and it seems unlikely that the U.S. is willing to risk a conflict with India over this issue. At the same time how far is India willing to take this? Is India willing to forgo the Iranian market and Iranian energy in order to retain its position with the West? I feel the Indian government’s calculation is that it feels it is completely unfair for the West, and the U.S. in particular, to put India in a position where it has to choose one friend over another. And some of India’s resistance is that it simply refuses to yield into such a pressure that perhaps smaller countries can succumb to, but for a rising power like India, it would be a bit embarrassing.

This piece first appeared in The Wall Street Journal’s India Real Time Blog. 

The MTA is getting set to eliminate the Queens bound W train, drawing howls of protest from Astoria residents (Pic Courtesy: The Daily News)

The “W” line that runs from Astoria, Queens, to Manhattan’s South Ferry is the quintessential middle child. It has trouble attracting attention and competes with its three other siblings, the N, Q, and R lines.

The elimination of the “W” line drew howls of protest from local commuters who take the train to and from Astoria, but what about commuters downtown – who take the train from Manhattan to South Ferry?

Kiwi Grady, who commutes from New York University to Whitehall each day, says she could easily take other trains if the “W” doesn’t show up. “As long as the “R” runs I will take that. I can also take the 4 or 5 which are faster but more crowded.”

Grady believes the elimination of the “W” would hit commuters to Queens the hardest. “Down here in Manhattan, you have a lot of options. But for those in the outer boroughs, they’ll be hit hardest”. Fred Willis, who hopped on the “W” at 42^nd Street, agreed. “I don’t think, it makes a big difference downtown,” he said, adding, “it is just a convenient connector.”

The axing of the “W” line is just one of the several service reductions outlined in the MTA’s 2010 budget. The “Z” train and 24 bus routes are also to be canceled, and free student MetroCards will no longer be offered. The cuts are meant to close a $383 million budget gap.

But for commuters on the downtown “W” line, crowds are not a worry. “It is crowded only in rush hour,” said Davawn Cassidy, a package delivery man from Brooklyn who rides the train more than ten times each week. “The R train runs on the same line, and the N is an express – so no worries,” Cassidy smiles and draws his big bag of packages around him in a car that has only two other people in it.

So, will commuters downtown miss the “W” when it is finally guillotined?

“I missed it now,” puffed Maria Bido, as she watched the train pull away from the platform.

Read more:

Commuters in LIC/Astoria protest “W” train cuts.

Why the “W” should stay

Day laborers gather at Hart Part, Queens for a hot breakfast given by a local soup kitchen. Residents are angry at the increasing crowds milling outside the park (Photo: Smriti Rao)

On any given day, you would find day worker Jose Manuel at Hart Park, 69th at 37th Avenue, Jackson Heights. The painter from Mexico comes to the park each morning hoping to be picked up for work. On Tuesdays, a mobile soup kitchen run by St. John’s Bread and Life provides him and his friends with a hot breakfast of pasta and beans that makes the wait, which has gotten longer, a little more bearable.

“I have been coming here for a long time now,” said Manuel, eating his breakfast. “Earlier they weren’t this many people,” he said referring to about 60 day laborers still waiting for work at 10.30 in the morning. “But now there are no jobs,” he continues, adding “maybe in January it will get a little better.”

As Manuel and his friends mill outside Hart Park waiting for work; across the street, Stathis Amides, the superintendent of the building across the Park is seething. He stands with a small camera in his hand to record any digressions the workers make.

“I have been seeing this for a year now,” says Amidis, referring to the mobile soup kitchen. “They feed the people, then the workers take their platters to Roosevelt Avenue, and litter all along the block,” he said, adding he was normally up at about 6 am each day to clean up after the workers. “This is a very big problem for me,” he fumed.

Amidis is not alone in his anger towards the workers. A group of irritated residents went as far as posting on a neighborhood blog, their complaints against the soup kitchen and the workers.

Amidst calls for the soup kitchen to move elsewhere in Woodside, the angry residents, who were unnamed on the blog wrote: “Their [the soup kitchen] intrusion into our neighborhood is unwanted and unneeded. None of the residents ever take food from them.” Saying the soup kitchen feeding immigrants was a “creepy intrusion,” the residents worried about their children being exposed to the workers, complained about the bathrooms in the park getting dirty and said the soup kitchen and the day laborers both contributed in reducing the quality of life in the neighborhood.

St.John’s Bread and Life says it is bewildered by the open hostility. “We have been doing this [running the soup kitchen], at the same site, for the last two years now,” said Anthony Butler, Executive Director of the program that feeds roughly 300 laborers at Hart Park each Tuesday and about 3000 others city wide. “But the complaints started just two months ago. It’s kind of xenophobic, really,” he said, adding while undocumented labor was a big issue in the Country, people were being scrooges at this time of the year. “So, should we only feed people who are legal,” he asked adding there was a great deal of racism when it came to to the complaints. “We have seen a 20-30% increase in laborers because of the recession, and we have also seen an uptick in anti-immigrant sentiment. The undocumented [laborers] get blamed for everything,” he said.

Meanwhile, Amides, who has to deal with the workers on an everyday basis, said he wasn’t against the workers, only their attitudes. “Everyday, they bother the tenants,” he said, referring to the workers, “they tease the young girls, “Yo mamita, Yo mamita,” he mimicked.”I understand they are looking for jobs, but I can’t understand them bothering the little girls.”

Residents also complain that they feel unsafe for their children when the workers are milling about Hart Park.”We don’t mind them staying in Woodside, but not on the playground,” said another resident who wished to be unnamed. “They [the soup kitchen] are welcome to stay in Woodside,” she said, “Just move three or four blocks in either direction.”

A request that Sister Kathy Byrnes of St. John’s Bread and Life says, is untenable. “Some neighborhoods want immigrants to disappear,” she said, “We came here because the workers gather here, it’s not the other way around. We try to serve those most in need.” She said that since the soup kitchen clarified park rules,  workers have been notified not to enter Hart Park, as it is against the rules to enter the park without children. “Now, they don’t go into the park, but they can use the bathrooms,” she specified, much to the chagrin of the residents.

As the soup kitchen and the residents battle it out, workers like Jose and his friends admit to a few bad apples in their crowd. “Sometimes, some workers drink in the park in summer,” Jose said, “we tell them not to, but they still do it,” he added. He said the workers were warned by the local precinct to behave and added that it was a  shame that some workers didn’t play by the rules. “This is where we have to meet everyday,” he said, referring to the pick up point. “If they [residents] kick us out from here, where will we go?” he asked, as he finished his breakfast and started another long wait in the biting cold – hoping to be picked up for work.

This piece first appeared in Queens Chronicle

Helen Fielding's clumsy protagonist Bridget Jones struggles with the double whammy of making wrong choices; both with her food and with her men!

Peer into any chick-lit lover’s bookshelf and you might spot the obligatory Bridget Jones’ Diary, The Devil Wears Prada and the terrifyingly titled Skinny Bitch. Page after soppy page details the travails of heroines who stumble and bumble through their diets, makeovers and professional lives—only to emerge skinny, chic, successful and finally with that job at The New Yorker.

Positive these successes could be duplicated in our dingy lives, we swear off the fudge and trash that bag of chips, convinced that a diet could help us shed a few pounds here, make us a little leaner there and hold the ticket to success. But what if it didn’t.

Author Lorraine Duffy Merkl dishes on her debut novel Fat Chick (Pic Courtesy: Our Town)

In her debut novel Fat Chick, columnist Lorraine Duffy Merkl holds up a mirror to the lessons of a lifetime of dieting. While every girl eager to find her prince kisses frogs called diets, it may turn out you’re wasting your time on the wrong thing. In the novel, protagonist Trish is an advertising professional who has just lost a prestigious account to a skinny colleague. Talented and on a mission to reclaim her position in the agency, Trish embarks on a vicious dieting routine with surprising consequences.

Merkl, a freelance advertising consultant whose work has been published in the New York Times and New York Post, recently sat down over breakfast to give us the skinny on Fat Chick. She is already at work on her second book.

Q: You say there is a difference between fat chick and a fat chick mentality.

A: When I tell women what the book is about, more than one person has asked, “Am I on the cover of the book?” They say it jokingly, but you know there is some truth to their saying it. If you are a size 2 and you turn around and ask your friend if you look fat in an outfit, that’s not a fat chick, but a fat chick mentality.

Q: Your protagonist Trish is similar to the pre-makeover Peggy Olson, from Mad Men. Maybe she could take a few lessons from Joan?

A: Joan is a perfect example of someone who is “stacked.” She is poised, gracious, so confident—she looks beautiful—yet she is a big woman. The de facto heroine in my book is also a big woman, a plus-size model who carries herself with great confidence and poise. People trash media images for projecting certain body types. But even if there were no models, no pictures, you would still see women in a communal changing room or in a bathing suit at the beach and compare yourself to other people. You should not be caught up in what others think. The book talks about fashion, but it doesn’t trash fashion or magazines for women’s body issues.

Q: You are 51 now and have yo-yo dieted since you were 13. Is this a memoir?

A: It’s not a memoir, it’s a novel. As with any fiction writer, I took stories from my own life. I didn’t want this story to be about a fat girl that lives happily ever after, after losing a ton of weight. If that were true, then people like Kirstie Alley wouldn’t be gaining weight.

Q: Do thin chicks get the guys, or is that a myth?

A: It’s a myth. People like [Tiger Wood’s wife] Elin Nordegren, Jennifer Aniston—people we hold up as beautiful women and think, “If only I had her hair, if I had her legs,” if that were all it took to be happy, then bad things would never happen to beautiful people. Comparing yourself to others is a waste of time. Run your own race.

–
Fat Chick is available exclusively at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

This piece originally appeared in Our Town

Ta Ta Tiger! Tag Heuer is the latest company after Accenture, Gillette, AT&T to drop Tiger Woods from their campaigns

The Tiger saga continues to play out like a train wreck on a car wreck.

In the third biggest endorsement loss this month, Swiss watch maker Tag Heuer has dropped Tiger Woods from their marketing campaign.

The move comes after the public unraveling of Tiger’s marital and sex life after almost 14 alleged mistresses tumbled out the closet, mussed hair and all, to claim affairs with the golfing superstar.

“We recognize Tiger Woods as a great sportsman, but we have to take account of the sensitivity of some consumers in relation to recent events,” Tag Heuer CEO Jean-Christophe Babain told Swiss newspaper Le Matin.”

The company — whose luxury timepieces sell for thousands of dollars — said it would continue to support Woods’ charitable foundation but would rely on other celebrities, such as Leonardo DiCaprio, to be its public face.”

Leonardo DiCaprio, leader of the rumored legendary late-’90s entourage known as “The P—y Posse.” Wonder if Tag Heuer remembers that, added New York Magazine snarkily.

Whatevs! Getting booted out by Leo is the latest in a string of rejections for Tiger.

On Sunday, consulting firm Accenture dropped the athlete, saying he was “no longer the right representative” of the company’s values. Gillette, a unit of the Procter & Gamble Co., said over the weekend that it won’t air ads for its razors that include Woods or include him in public appearances. AT&T said it is evaluating its relationship with the golf superstar.

And so it goes…

Its title, Five Flawed Assumptions of Obama’s Afghan Surge, says it all, and the piece itself summarizes concisely points that this site and many others have been arguing for months:
1. Expanding the ground war against the Taliban will in no way guarantee us any greater success in finding and confront members of Al-Qaeda.
2. We cannot build an Afghan National Army capable of defending its national sovereignty within a few years.

3. We cannot work with President Karzai.

4. A an alleged withdrawal date will not exert pressure on President Karzai, who has been forging alliances with the expectation that we will leave eventually anyway.

5. Pakistan may take on insurgents that challenge its own government, but it never has, and probably never will fight members of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban on the border if they are merely using the region to launch attacks into Afghanistan.

Conducting a war under these realities is a lot harder than waging one under the false assumptions the Obama administration has presented.

Surprisingly, the Time article does not even offer an “on the hand” argument. This article is firmly against Obama’s Afghanistan policy, in more decisive terms than any publication of its stature. It’s worth checking out.

The most recent Time issue also includes a typically wishy-washy editorial from Joe Klein, who does include a gem of a sentence in which he calls Obama’s deliberations over the war: the struggles of a highly intelligent, dispassionate man to find a rationale for a mission that is crucial but slightly crazy, a decision that will define his presidency.

Amen.

Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Economics Prize, 1998. Pic Courtesy: Outlook Magazine

‘Tis the Nobel season anyways, and while we are yakking up Obama and his Nobel Peace Prize, here is another winner. Albeit for economics, and from another year.  Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998 for his work in welfare economics. While I have never had the stomach to digest his massive tome The Argumentative Indian, I did manage to read through his interview with Vinod Mehta in Outlook magazine.

Asked how many cheers he would give Indian democracy, Sen replied he would give it more than two and somewhere less than three.  “If you take the view, is democracy functioning as well as it could, it may even be one. But given the adversities we have had—a very poor country, largely illiterate, border wars with China and Pakistan, with Pakistan going its peculiarly difficult way, the relationship problems that we have had with the United States and the global powers—have we done as well as expected? Yes. Except in one big respect, namely that I had expected that non-dramatic deprivations would receive more attention than they ended up getting. Famines did go away with democracy, as I had expected, but I thought other things like gender inequality and the huge undernourishment of children would get more attention, but they did not get enough. That’s the disappointment.”

Famines did go away with democracy, as I had expected, but I thought other things like gender inequality and the huge undernourishment of children would get more attention, but they did not get enough. That’s the disappointment.

On Prakash Karat’s (General Secretary of the Communist Party of India) ridiculous statement that Cuba is a good role model for India, Amartya Sen  laughs and says that there are things to learn from Cuba about health-care and basic education, not about democracy and not about media freedom. He notes that it is a very unfree country. Sen also points out there are things to learn from America, but not about medical care for the masses , adding there is no country that provides us with a model.

Read Amartya Sen’s full interview here.