Rebuilding the World Trade Center - Vicky Roy
To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
A cocktail party drew me into the world of street children.
Over a glass of wine, my sister introduced me to Meera Dewan, who had just made a film about child workers in the bangle factories of Ferozabad. “Now I see deprived children everywhere, on the streets, at the railway station. If you know of someone who would be good with children, I’d like to initiate some work with street children.”
I knew just the person. Cecil Qadir, fellow actor at Theatre Action Group (TAG), he of the startling blue eyes, and the slow, thoughtful mien. A gentle Pied Piper, he attracted a group of 18 boys inhabiting the dark corners of the New Delhi Railway Station. Every morning, they would gather at a dhaba near the Paharganj entrance, for a glass of tea, a boiled egg, and a rusk. And for a listening ear. Cecil would bring them news of the world, tell them stories, encourage them to talk of their own lives. Each one a deep dive into the the human condition, of poverty, alcoholism, second marriages; but above all, of the spark of these boys who boarded a train, away from home, and into an alien world, saying, “Not this. I deserve better.”
Our little work gathered support from the most unexpected corners. The recurring villains in the drama of these boys’ lives was the burly policeman patrolling the station. Yet, one day, the SHO of the Government Railway Police asked Cecil what this daily gathering was about. “The first floor of our station is hardly used. Would you like to gather the children there?”
The covered balcony of the GRP station became our first home, and the unused lockers of the policemen became the first safe places where the boys could store a change of clothes, a personal memento. Theatre friends visited, and I remember Amar Talwar read out from his diary, “These are kids who jump on you by way of saying ‘Hello’”.
For all the camaraderie and the building of trust, somewhere Cecil felt he was reaching a dead end, in understanding the emotional lives of these children, those dark holes into which no other hearts would be allowed. We turned to our theatre guru, Barry John. Perhaps a series of workshops, where the first-person could become the third, a projection of narrative, rather than a scary intimacy? Delhi’s Triveni Kala Sangam gave us their amphitheatre for several weeks, and with his slow magic, Barry crafted a searing piece of theatre, Jeevan ki Gaadi.
The raw sparks of those brave little lives lit the stage on a dark Delhi night, a thousand hearts were touched, and we were able, for the first time, to gather funds; to employ a teacher and another social worker, to help with medical expenses, to buy warm clothes and blankets. With pen and ink, Barry created a logo of a little child studying under a street lamp. Our work now had a name, Nukkad, or street corner. Rather than register a new entity, Nukkad became an arm of TAG.
But it was an arm with little connection to the rest of the body. We were rehearsing a play, perhaps a bedroom comedy, when I realised that our young actors knew nothing of these other, younger lives, and the work we were doing with them. One evening, we stopped work early, and asked Cecil to talk about Nukkad for half an hour. There were tears in many eyes as he ended with the words, “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”, from Hamlet.
We adopted those words for our work. They went on mailers and fund-raising brochures. They crept into our early discourse about where we were headed. They reminded us that we must reach beyond the obvious, of safe places to sleep, nutritious food, health and education. That we must create spaces where young minds could dream, and summon the organisational energy to help some of those dreams come true.
Given our early success with theatre, and our connections to the performing arts, the children of Nukkad were drawn by the stage, and a play became an annual fixture. A couple of years later, another TAG alumnus, Mira Nair, released her stellar debut, Salaam Bombay, and we collaborated to leverage the success of the film into more funding for street kids. The Salaam Baalak Trust was born, and a few years later, Nukkad adopted the name and form of this independent trust.
I retain only the most tenuous of links with Salaam Baalak Trust, or SBT, as we call it, but every year - before the pandemic, that is - I attend the play, a raucous celebration of the energy and joie de vivre of its children. When the music stops, and the actors line up for the final applause, they summon the director to the stage: an SBT alumnus. The music director, an SBT alum. Script, the kids, guided by an alum. Choreographer, an SBT alumnus.
I don’t want to overstate the case, because hundreds of children pass through SBT every year now, and most find their way into mainstream professions, in offices and factories, at toll plazas or self-owned businesses. But every so often, a talent shone through, and found itself on a stage with the puppet maestro Dadi Pudumjee, or toured the world with the sadly departed modern dancer Astad Deboo. One of my proudest moments was being directed by Saleem, now an independent puppeteer, as he recorded my voice for a production that debuted at the India Habitat Center.
Vicky Roy, whose photograph heads this newsletter, discovered his inner eye at an SBT photography workshop, and emerged as one of the finest chroniclers of the Delhi streets. In 2008, the Maybach Foundation launched a global search for 4 young photographers to hone their skills documenting the reconstruction of the World Trade Center. Vicky’s work, as one of those select four, showed his ability to leap from the familiar to the exotic, to frame a thousand eloquent words around subjects unknown.
Maybe the roots of Salaam Baalak Trust foretold this steady stream of artistic talent. But I think that would be to underplay the role of narrative. When Cecil gifted our work those lovely words, “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”, I believe he altered the course of many lives.
We are profoundly shaped by narrative. Equally, each of us have the power to create new realities, by crafting new narratives.
Budget Expectations
None.
This annual exercise has been fetishised, but today, when the government needs to boost the economy, it has little wiggle room to help.
The Union Government is not able to collect even 10% of GDP by way of taxes, and this number has hardly moved for decades.
Our government spends much more than it collects, and makes up the difference by borrowing money. The cost of this habit is piling up, and last year, interest payments on borrowings already accounted for 40% of tax collections. This year, it will cross 50%, thanks to additional borrowings during the pandemic. Fixed expenses like salaries and pensions ratchet up automatically each year, and defence expenses can hardly be cut. Once you account for all of these, there is little space in the budget for fresh initiatives to bring back jobs, or consumer confidence.
The cost of government borrowing, best signified by the ‘yield’ on 10-year bonds, has already gone up 0.5% since last summer. It seems as if borrowing costs will rise around the globe this year, which should make the Finance Ministry cautious about framing an expenditure budget that requires a larger deficit to be funded.
On the revenue side, the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections have acquired the proportions of a national referendum on the state of governance, so it is extremely unlikely that either personal income taxes or GST rates would be hiked. The only logical way to hike tax revenue would be to reverse some of the corporate tax cuts of 2019; but after all the messaging of the time, that India was becoming increasingly investment-friendly, I think this will be too sharp a shift in the narrative.
Expect, then, continued optimism on tax collection, overly ambitious numbers for sale of public assets, and lots of virtue signalling. I certainly hope there aren’t any adventurous experiments, because the global financial scenario is turning tighter and less predictable, which will amplify any unfortunate consequences of sharp changes.
Equity Review
In the 6th edition of ‘Gimme Mo’, on December 26th, I set out some potential pitfalls for the economy.
Omicron
The first was a surge of COVID cases. Within days, Covid surged across the nation, and I don’t know of a single family that was not affected in the last 4 weeks. Mercifully, the severity of this wave was limited, and the health system was not strained but economic activity was impacted. Travel, tourism, and dining out were slammed, and education disrupted, yet again. Globally, the supply chain has seen Backlog 2, which will have downstream effects on both consumption and production. Computer chips are the most significant symptom of choked supply, and personally, the new touring cycle I ordered at Christmas 2020 has not yet entered my chimney.
Interest Rates and Inflation
The two are linked. As the US Fed has realised that inflation is real, interest rates have gone up around the world, and you can actually earn money on German government bonds (‘Bunds’, as they are affectionately called).
The imminent move to tighter liquidity has had an immediate impact on fund flows to emerging markets. In January, foreign investors took 27,500 crores out of Indian stock markets. Except for a negligible withdrawal in FY 19, Indian equity markets have been supported by foreign investors since FY 17. During the height of the pandemic, in FY 21, when central banks turned on the faucets, we received 274,000 cr, roughly 40 billion dollars of investment. With roughly two months left to go, this financial year has seen 58,000 cr of withdrawals, about 8 billion USD. As this continues, Indian stock markets will be hurt. This can have a reflexive impact on fund-raising, IPOs, and divestment of public sector assets, which have - in any case - always proved to be that elusive White Knight of the Indian government budget.
Meanwhile, from Hindustan Lever and Britannia to Larsen and Toubro, corporate results of the October - December quarter show how manufacturing businesses are struggling to find a balance between slow growth and high costs.
In a dart chart I put out in NL 6, I suggested it would be difficult for Indian equities to post gains in 2022. Turn the pessimism dial up a notch.