Development as Distraction: Give Your Vote

Worse news for the Lib Dems following their disappointing 2010 General Election display. It turns out that their paltry vote would have been even lower had it not been for a particularly radical exercise in globalised democracy. Give Your Vote was a flawed campaign addressing the lack of accountability in international politics, aiming to deliver the simple message (in their words): “In our globalised world, politics doesn't stop at the border. But democracy does. To challenge this, voters in the UK pledged their votes to people in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana who are directly affected by UK policies.” To that they managed to add the usual rent-a-voice of Desmond Tutu and a random UK c-list celebrity who looks moderately old, dishevelled, and like he would have been friends with Jonathon Peel (this is essential in order to give the campaign its “alternative” status, and show that it is supported by people who have “lived” life. Unfortunately in this case it is only Keith Allen, famous for being the owner of the sperm that created UK pop-star/Chanel model/cricket fan model Lilly Allen). Top that off with a well designed website and you have a global campaign ready to go.

Give Your Vote’s outcome of the vote pledging showed that 51.3% of voters from Ghana, Bangladesh and Afghanistan voted for the Lib Dems, the party which received only 23% of votes in the UK. Imagine; could it be possible that had they not received this foreign assistance, the Lib Dems wouldn’t have had enough votes to join the current coalition? I doubt it, but straight off I have to say that I feel sorry for the globally enfranchised voters as they are probably feeling robbed by the coalition outcome of the election which has already said it will cap non-EU immigration and not set a withdrawal date for Afghanistan, and feel that the UK’s own electoral system of first past the post has let them down.

Rather presumptuously Give My Vote had already allocated anti-war to Afghanistan, climate change to Bangladesh and poverty reduction to Ghana. Also, the campaign seemed to also assume that it would be the common, salt of the earth voter who would be participating, and didn’t feel the need to make clear exactly how the foreign voters could register, nor the gender, age or socio-economic breakdown. And the same approach was applied to the results, with no voter breakdown or numbers despite numerous requests on their website, instead sticking to the rather vague quantification of “thousands”. It’s a shame, because for the experiment to work (and I wanted it to work at the basic level, even if I continue to pick holes) it at least needed to transparently provide basic information for people to interpret the demand for cross-border voting, and which agendas those participating in the vote felt they should be able to hold the UK government accountable for.

Instead, by providing no follow-up the campaign only reinforces the shallow experience of democracy for those very cross-border voters (at least in Bangladesh), which extends only to Election Day when the voter is able to select a party for government. Any accountability to the population or between parties beyond that (the mainstay of a functioning democracy), is non-existent as the government and political system then settles down to serve its own needs and ends for the remainder of the term. Specifically on the issue of climate change, for which this campaign was apparently all about, the Bangladeshi government not only fails to respond to the issue even when money is thrown at them by the international community, but exacerbates the grotesque environmental degradation of the country through supporting illegal logging, illegal dredging, illegal construction, ship breaking, the recent decision to pursue coal as the key energy source for energy production, and the failure to re-build flood defences following cyclone Aila. Instead the government and opposition currently spend most of their time arguing over the renaming of the international airport, deciding who the founding father of the country is, and accusing, trying and executing each other over 'war crimes' committed 30 years ago. 

 

But as we live in a globalised world, lets have a go at interpreting the single result that Give Your Vote provided in an attempt to analyse how the globalised electorate views the UK: 

1. It could simply be that voters in the developing world like the colour yellow, more than the colours blue and red. Or the symbol of a bird (freedom!) is more appealing than a rose (romance!) or a tree (static…).
2. But that is too harsh on our ballot-box brothers, and it could be that they are democratic visionaries. Coming from countries with broken electoral systems, they knew that first-past-the-post is archaic, and wanted to liberate us from its two-party oppression by creating a hung parliament.
3. Or voters in the developing world are primarily liberals and wanted to prove that, for after all they are the enfranchised ambassadors of the globalised world in which we live and which in theory implies a reduced role for the traditional (Westphalian) nation-state, which is also what the Lib Dems are intent on breaking down.
4. In Bangladesh, I’m pretty certain that they were disappointed with Cameron’s Big Society idea, as they already have enough NGOs and volunteers and community mobilisers and they’ve hardly improved the conditions within the country over the past 30 years. Perhaps Cleggmania had a more sustainably impact outside of the UK, whereas “Biggotgate” clearly had little impact as politicians spend more time in the Jatiya Sangsad calling each other war criminals than legislating.

This whole campaign was merely a part of the wider disappointment of the UK 2010 elections, falling into the Bono-Bob Geldolf category of image and self-congratulation over actual substance and results. It would be much more effective, though much less sexy and radical, if they were to engage with the very large 1^st and 2^nd generation Bangladeshi diaspora in the UK who have the right to vote, and to whom the UK government is directly accountable to make sure that they do vote (whilst thinking also about how their vote would affect their relatives back in Bangladesh). And combine that with helping to promote grass-roots political transparency in Bangladesh.

Dhaka Life: The Race to the Bottom

Its official: Dhaka has won the race to bottom. Well actually it came second from bottom to Harare as the worst city to live in the world, but it is still pretty awful. According to the Economic Intelligence Unit who compiled the Global Liveability Report, in Dhaka “most aspects of living are severely restricted”, and the city is 2.5 times worse than Vancouver who topped the list. Only 2.5 times! Can you watch children poo in the streets in Vancouver?

Actually, I think that the survey was deliberately fixed against Dhaka, as they only selected questions for which the city would fail. Of course it will score lowly on “quality of public transport”, “discomfort of climate to travellers” and “prevalence of petty crime”. Those are the very characteristics which give the city its unique feel. Can you buy a spicy and tasty snack which you eat with a recycled business card on any Vancouver street corner for $0.03? So out of defence for the city that I call home (for another 11 months maximum), I have compiled the questions for which Dhaka would undoubtedly win:

1. Prevalence of men pissing in the street.

2. Easiness to catch dengue fever.
3. Variety of human illnesses that are caused by the (6) changes in season.
4. Number of beggars per traffic light.
5. Average number of power cuts per day.
6. Lack of adherence to building codes.
7. Availability of cheap transport in the form of human slavery.
8. Number of hours spent in traffic jams.
9. Access to popcorn vendors in the street.
10. Variety of disabilities visible at the side of the road.

In fact the only questions in the EIU survey I assume it scored highly are “availability of over-the-counter drugs” for which Bangladesh is a world leader (fancy some ketamine for your horse anyone?) and “threat of military of conflict” (who would want to go to war with Bangladesh?). Lets be honest, the only thing that is saving it from being the worst city in the world is the fact that Robert Mugabe doesn’t live here.

Can anyone think of some more Dhaka-specific questions to incresae the chances of victory?

Expat Human Rights: The Right to self-define your Nationality

It was a friend who has also recently started blogging that summarised it best when he drunkenly confessed that he felt most at ease as an Englishman only when abroad. And by abroad he meant Kabul and Buenos Aires, not Magaluf or Torremolinos which further clarifies his sentiment. And I have to agree (soberly) that I too feel the same.

My parents divorced so early that I have no memory of it, indeed I grew up taking the arrangement for granted. In hindsight it was unfair of my parents to divorce so early as it robbed me of an easy “issue” to have and rebel against in my adolescence (actually I took it so much for granted that my mother’s two subsequent divorces also failed to really upset me). I had spots but never had to resort to special creams or soaps, my vision is 20:20 and so I had no need for glasses, whilst I have no muscles I’m certainly not fat, and I managed to have my first snog aged 12 on the top floor of the science block which removed any doubts as to my sexuality or frigidity from an early stage.

All this left me with was my dual nationality which I had to exploit ion order to generate an adolescent confusion and unhappiness that made me feel comfortable and normal. In hindsight the confusion was very mild, and only possible because suburban South Manchester in the 1990s was about as exotic as sangria. But it was an easy issue to have as I watched a lot of sport, and so frequently witnessed the moronic nationalism whereby people get so passionate about matches that England were destined to lose. Normally this started by singing the national anthem at the TV as loud as possible under the mistaken pretence that the sound waves could somehow transport themselves to Wembley or Twickenham and literally lift the team to victory. It made little sense to me, and I was able to hide from it by being a little bit Spanish.

And we’re talking a very little bit: I look English, I speak Spanish with an accent that the locals assume is French which is pretty upsetting. At the same time I did once spend a night snogging a student at the Elemental night club when I was only 17, just for having shown her my Spanish ID card. Again, that probably reflects more on the lowly state of UK students more than my Hispanity.


Anyhow, being an Englishman abroad, and a comfortable one at that, what better chance to celebrate than by watching the England cricket team play a five-day test. It allowed for months of banter in advance with confused foreigners as I resolutely justified a sport that lasts for 5 days with the possibility of no winner, stops for lunch and tea, is played in white pyjamas and only by ex-colonial nations. But alas my celebration was short-lived, and instead I was plunged back into my adolescent confusion with the arrival of the Barmy Army ™. One Saturday I turned up to the British club to find that it had turned into a Sussex beer garden in late summer: fat pink men with man-breasts and prison tattoos were sat everywhere, discussing the best tactics at winning Britain’s Got Talent (never seen it) or arguing over the best pie shop in Leicestershire (never want to go there). There were even some women sat there apparently, though to me they were indistinguishable from the men (i.e. fat and pink with prison tattoos). And they were all talking in regional accents that even I struggled to understand, and of course breaking into song to once again uplift the national team. Once again, it all made little sense to me and if this is was real English, then what was I?

The next morning I just swallowed my doubt, along with two ibuprofen to sooth my hangover, and headed off to the stadium. I supported England and in the end the Guardian posted pictures online of the Barmy Army™ basting in the Dhaka midday sun with some suitably class-based derogative remarks, which served to defuse my confusion for the time being. After all, only a true English man can take solace in knowing he is superior by birth and education to his fellow man. Oh, and the cricket was great, and Bangladesh even did a decent job of trying to win a match (which they predictably lost).

Tavelling in... India: Kolkata

It was destined to be my favourite Indian city; I'd already heard so much about it from Bangladeshi colleagues at work, have sufficient command of the language to banter a local, and had booked into the Oberoi Grand for the last two nights of the trip.

As an NGO worker, it is imperative that I live my life as I preach to others which means that every time I finish something I have to identify the lessons learnt. In the case of this trip, the lesson learnt is that I can still backpack, i.e. sleep in holes, eat in dumps, dump in holes, travel in wrecks, and haggle mercilessly for the privelige of doing so). I believe that you get to see a lot more of any country that way way and it always keeps you on the move. At the same time being a backpacker is tiring, stressful, dirty and dangerous, and if going on holiday is a form of escape then these are not things one would naturally wish to escape too for extended periods.

So unless you've just escaped from prison, is it really possible to derive pleasure from paying to sleep in a bed with blood-stained sheets which you end up making our own donation to because the mattress has fleas? What about having a bathroom in which the water runs out of the taps red, the taps shock because they are not earthed and you have to keep the door closed not because of any smell you may have made but because of the smell left by the previous dozen guests? Actually in India its likely that there are people who would enjoy that, but ultimately the ability to backpack is directly related to your income and tightness (and if you've just escaped from jail). And so after 14 days and nights I cracked and booked into the Oberoi Grand, which "combines classic victorian architecture and charm with state of the art amenities and facilities, offering our guests an oasis of tranquillity amidst this bustling city". You could drink the water out of the taps in the bathroom. In India. I would have paid $50 just for that state of the art amenity alone. And cleverly, by chosing this heritage hotel I was able to combine doing nothing whilst appreciating the history of the city. Actually that theory is rubbish as we all ended up doing more hotel than tourism, and so I can tell you more about the culinary hot spots of Portland Oregon (thanks to a ridiculous programme called Man vs. Food) than of Kolkata's infamous Bengali cuisine, or better quote the professional philosophies of the living legend that is Shah Rukh Khan (Living with a Superstar:SRK) rather than the dead poet Tagore.

What I did see of the city I liked. The centre of Kolkata has engineered an orderly state of decay, as crumbling Victorian buildings provide collonaded passageways which are perfect for streethawkers to sell ugly t-shirts, sunglasses and porn. Public squares provide the perfect place for rickshaws to collect, and around the edges there are even more streethawkers seeling ugly t-shirts, sunglasses and porn. Some also sell belts, but basically there are a lot of street vendors selling crap. The atmosphere is completed by armoured-car trams and yellow Ambassador cabs which have the loudest horns in the world, helping them to navigate through the old one-way streets. But such a romanticised view is borne of the fact that I was able to esape the heat and chaos, stick my head under the bathroom sink to slake my thirst and go for a swim in the hotel pool. Or lie in bed in my hotel dressing gown and watch Discovery Channel Travel & Living after taking a massage shower and eating a full English breakfast.

One of the best moments of the entire trip was haggling the taxi to the hotel from the train station. Actually, it wasn't a taxi, as no matter how hard I tried to get a pre-paid taxi at a train station we were always bundled into a random car and charged four times the price for the privelige. On this occassion, tired and stinking after another very delayed night train, we were pushed into an unmarked car which had a boot that had to be tied together with a handkerchief. The tout agrees to 120 rupees to the New Market area. The driver distracted because he wasn't able to mop his brow because we convinved him to close the boot for the security of our luggage, asks which hotel we want to go to in the New Market area, and when I answer the prices doubles again. I storm out of the car (I needed a drink of tap water desperately by this point) and start to unpick the knot to release our luggage and they grudgingly agree to take us. And therein lies one of the greatest pleasures of being a backpacker; thinking you outwitted a tout so that you were marginally less ripped off.

Travelling in... India: Sikkim

It was going to prove impossible to avoid having to speak to the other backpackers, especially considering how we were perched on top of a hill on top of a mountain in the middle of a huge thunderstorm in a powercut. So “deep” conversations were on the menu alongside the unsurprisingly tasteless daal bhat, led by Brian from Louisiana who wanted to start his own NGO to save India through funds raised through the raffle of one car (him: seriously, $20,000 is a lot of money so how hard can it be? me: very), a Sebastian from Toronto who was going to join a Buddhist monastery (him: its a religion that speaks a lot of sense! me: the instructions on a tube of aspirin speak a lot of sense!), and a recent graduate with an even more recent moustache (me: oh how louche) and the modest ambition of owning a piece of farmland in the US just so as to be able to live self-sustainably, whist living in the city to remain culturally in touch, but also work abroad for a couple of years, whilst somewhere fitting in a masters (me: but you've just spent 4 days sat on a hill stoned out of you brain, where will you find the time?).

They complemented each other perfectly, whereas all I wanted was a metaphorical discussion on the difference between a garden shed and the bedroom I was due to sleep in, as I failed to see any. Thankfully the storm got even worse so that the conversation became impossible over the noise of the rain and I was able to retire to my bed, which i the dark I was not able to distinguish from a table in a potting shed. At least me being in the room/shed provided it with some extra anchorage preventing it being blown away. And in the morning I awoke to a perfect blue sky and a Himalayan vista of the third highest mountain in the world. The air was so fresh and I'd even been cold in the night, I wasn't dehydrated just from walking to the breakfast table and I was still in India. Therein lies much of the appeal of Sikkim.

Annexed in 1976, it is the yak cheese in a Himalayan cheese sandwich, between the Tibetan bread slices of Nepal and Bhutan. Apart from the stunning scenery and the different faces, languages, foods and dominant religion, there is a level of development in the state which makes it a true pleasure to travel and hike in. A minor example is that along all the routes we hiked were oil cans converted into dustbins which were being used, and all the towns we were in actually enforced the 2008 law banning smoking in public places, although this is probably because its one of the few places in India where the air is clear enough to notice. There are lots of kids in school uniforms constantly going too and from school and seemingly endless cash for work projects. All of this success if very publicly claimed by the Sikkim Democratic Front whose flags fly everywhere, and whose leader's words of wisdom (“a man with no cultural heritage is a tree with no roots") compete on the roadsides with the safety messages of the Border Roads Organisation (“go easy on my curves”). Given the sheer visible dominance of the SDF, I don't doubt that its one big system of patronage (read corruption) but it really does look as if it works, and rising out of the chaos of West Bengal and remembering back to treking last year in Nepal, it seems a genuine success.

On our final day we descended out of one cloud and ascended into another to visit the Buddhist monastery at Rumtek which is the seat-in-exile of the Kamtsang Kagyu (Black Hats school) of the Tibetan faith. It is an impressive complex, with constant chanting, horn-blowing and drum-beating in the main temple. What seals the unique atmosphere though is the fact that the Black Hats are showing a refreshing break from the traditional Buddhist clichés of peace and understanding with two successor monks both claiming the temple, leading to the need for heavily armed guards to protect the site from outside attacks. Once again, India's power to confound all basic assumptions was the lasting impression.

Leaving Sikkim we squashed into a small car and wove down pot-holed roads (but they were sealed ,not dirt) between farting lorries and suicidal jeeps, peeling off layers as the temperature increased inversely to our altitude. In the end we used the discarded jumpers as makeshift gasmasks as our lungs struggled to cope once again with the India pollution that after a 6 day sojourn, I was able to taste. At the end of the trip it was so bad I declared and I was so sensitive to the smell that I declared myself to be pregnant, and after nearly three weeks in India I wouldn't be shocked if it turned out to be the case.

Travelling in... India: This Summer's Male Accessory

Move over manbag (or whatever what was just in fashion), because here in (north) India the ultimate summer accesory is the piece of cloth wrapped around the head. This isn't just a Sikh or Gujarati thing, though I have to admit that they do have the most dashing wrapping, led by the Indian prime minister himself.

This is a thing that all men of all ages are doing, from all backgrounds and for a range of reasons: avoiding the April heat, protection whilst riding a motorbike, adding to your status as a Sadhu, wanting to look like a 1980s gangster, or simply wishing to balance a tea-towel on your head.

What is most impressive is that clearly any piece of cloth can be wrapped in any way, just as long as the cloth stays put, therefore making it the ultimate male accessory as you can personalise it so easily.

Travelling in... India: Night Trains

This post should only be read in the context of sleeper class.

Even Karl Marx agreed that although the British messed up a lot of things in India, they got the trains right. Indeed they're so popular that it is necessary to book a place on a night train at least a month in advance, and that's just for a simple bunk in an open carriage (sleeper class). Such a trip tends to cost on average of $5 for a ticket to cross an entire state so its not hard to understand why there is such demand. Having purchased your ticket a month in advance, all that is left for the remaining 4 weeks is to prepare yourself for the ordeal.

For me it has proven to be the final frontier in developing a tolerance for travelling in India. First, you have to expel the notion of sleep as a personal or intimate experience, as like with everything else in India you don't actually have any personal space. You may get a whole bench to yourself, but in reality that only extends to what can be covered by your body when lying on it. Other people will then lean on, hang on, play on, beg on or sell on the remaining parts that your body does not cover and on a moving train they often miss those non-covered parts so that you are constantly being touched. Often by the same people who have no bench for themselves but hang around to watch people sleep whilst evading the conductor. Nothing strange there then.

The main culprit is the salesman. Fancy a cup of tea at 3:00 am? No. Fancy a cup of tea at 3:02 am? No. Fancy a tcup of tea at 3:07 am? Fuck off. On a night train from Patna I was woken at 5:30 am by a man selling shirts to which I politely declined. The shirts salesman decided to use my legs as props for an impromptu display of his wares and I was too tired to object. As I fell back asleep he tapped me again to see if I had change of a 100 Rupee note. Again, I told him to fuck off.

Finally there are the other groups of touchers who are beggars. On the same Patna train, our whole section of the carriage was woken (again) at 6:00 am by an impromptu duet by what I assume were two sisters. It was ok, but neither sister was disfigured or disabled or any good at singing and so failed to elicit any real pity from me at such an early hour, even after one of them decided to give me a solo in bed. Again, nothing strange there. On a different train from Agra, a young lady came round clapping in the faces of everyone asleep. That had already been a particularly traumatic journey and so I also told her to fuck off, and she quickly moved on to terrorising the 7 men sharing the two bunks below me. The conductor had previously tried to deal with that increased numbers of passengers at 2:00 am and was promptly punched for his troubles. Apparently that's a job you have to bribe to be awarded.

Hygiene also goes out of the window, along with all of the passengers solid waste. In effect you are sleeping on a bed that has been used by a different person each night for the past decade without having the sheets changed, in the second dirtiest bedroom in the world and with the bedroom door left open. One of our travelling party on the first train tried to sterilise her bunk straight away using wet wipes, but she ran out and the bench won that battle. By the end of the trip she would just dump her bag and sleep fully dressed, so it won the war too.

Basically a sleeper train requires a whole new extreme of patience, and once I came to appreciate that I was not actually going to sleep on the train then it was fine. Except for the touching.