Columns

By Nishant Arora
New Delhi, Sep 16 (IANS) After six stressful and tough learning months, Byju Raveendran is back in the game, consolidating the loss-making acquisitions like WhiteHat Jr and optimising the rest, while doubling down on opening more physical tuition centres. According to him, "the worst is finally over" and there is only "growth ahead" as seen in the company's FY22 financial results.



The edtech company with nearly $22 billion valuation went through an ordeal as it delayed the audited FY21 financial reports for nearly 18 months, inviting government scrutiny and serious questions from the public.

The FY21 report is out, with massive losses to the tune of Rs 4,500 crore, while BYJU's needs to pay the rest of the acquisition amount (about Rs 2,000 crore) to global VC firm Blackstore in the $950 million Aakash acquisition by September 23.

Raveendran told IANS that he is not worried at all about paying the rest of the acquisition money as the core education business is doing excellent and the company has a healthy cash reserve of more than $1 billion.

"The losses that you see in FY21 is because 40 per cent of the revenue got deferred on account of two things: revenue recognition change because of streaming revenue getting recognised over the period of consumption of the product," Raveendran explained in a free-wheeling interview.

He said that the other reason for the audit delay was that EMI or credit sales were getting recognised after the complete significant collection was done.

"There are the main reasons for audit delay, apart from the initial reasons like Covid and then the complexity of our business moving from a single product, single geography offering to multi-product, multi subsidiary offering across the world," emphasised Raveendran, adding that while the revenue got pushed out, the cost expenses during the financial year did not.

In 2007, he founded the test preparation business Byju's Classes, and in 2011 Raveendran founded BYJU's with his wife, Divya Gokulnath.

Last year, he went on an acquisition spree. The edtech unicorn made at least 10 acquisitions for a cumulative transaction value of about $2.5 billion -- including Delhi-based offline test preparatory services provider Aakash for $950 million.

Raveendran said that loss-making acquisitions like WhiteHat Jr, the beleaguered coding platform BYJU's acquired for $300 million, are now being consolidated.

"WhiteHat Jr is underperforming as it has a very high marketing cost attached to it. This is one of the businesses where we are seeing Covid pull-back. We have the structural challenges as it has an inefficient cost structure," he told IANS.

Raveendran said that they don't have the product challenge with WhiteHat Jr as they added Maths with coding on the platform.

The edtech major clocked gross revenues of nearly Rs 10,000 crore in FY22, leaving its investors happy and Raveendran, a relieved man.

"From here on, we will double down on growth as our core business is booming. Both Aakash Institute and Great Learning are doing excellent and have doubled their revenues," Raveendran stressed.

In June, BYJU cut at least 600 jobs -- asking 300 employees at its Toppr learning platform and another 300 at coding platform WhiteHat Jr to go.

On any future job cuts, Raveendran said that apart from getting rid of few redundant roles and some functions becoming optimised, BYJU's is actually hiring more people while absorbing the right mix of workers into other products.

"We today have 50,000-plus employees, that's up from 20,000-plus 18 months back. The total number of employees in the ecosystem is growing. Several new functions and initiatives have been created where we are hiring a lot of teachers, because of the hybrid learning centres like Akash which are really growing well," the BYJU's CEO told IANS.

He said BYJU's is hiring at least 1,000 employees on a month-to-month basis, even more.

Raveendran is confident that the remaining amount in the Aakash deal will reach Blackstone soon, as he charts a new course for BYJU's in months to come, as the next big funding raise is in the offing.

(Nishant Arora can be reached at nishant.a@ians.in)

--IANS
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By Vikas Datta
Literature, like all forms of cultural expression, cannot be immune to acquiring or displaying a political and ideological aspect, despite the professed intentions or protestations of its creators.



It may well be an unconscious impulse but the writers are directly or indirectly influenced by their socio-political millieu, even when opposing it, and you don't need to be a Marxist to acknowledge that.

As Edward Said showed in his examination of 'Orientalism', or recent works showcasing the overt or covert politics of such literary figures as William Wordsworth (Jonathan Bate's "Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World") and Jane Austen (Helena Kelly's "Jane Austen, The Secret Radical"), politics can intrude into the poetic realm or comedies of manners -- or other forms of fiction, too. And this can span the entire gamut from literary classics to pulp fiction.

The Cold War is a fitting example. As two contrasting systems of social and political organisation vied for global influence, the conflict for influencing hearts and minds underpinned the diplomatic and military manoeuvres.

Duncan White's "Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War" (2019) offers an overview of how novelists and poets were embroiled in games of betrayal, espionage, and conspiracy in the conflict, through the cases of George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Mary McCarthy, Graham Greene, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, John le Carre, Anna Akhmatova, Ernest Hemingway, and Boris Pasternak (among others).

But let us take one aspect -- popular fiction, of the thrillers variety, and one person -- Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and seen as the unsuccessful reformer who brought down the edifice.

Soviet rulers largely did not have very complimentary representations across Western fiction.

Lenin -- despite his immense potential as a profound ideologue - is largely missing, save in one dimly recollected thriller where a British operative, tasked with saving the last Tsar, Nicholas II (at the private initiative of his cousins, the British King and the German Kaiser) encounters him in his abortive mission.

Stalin is better served, featuring in Michael "House of Cards" Dobbs' culminating work of his Winston Churchill quartet, "Churchill's Triumph" (2005), the first two books of Simon Sebag-Montefiore's Soviet trilogy -- "Sashenka" (2008) and "One Night in Winter" (2013) -- and all of Sam Eastland's Pekkala series, from "Eye of the Red Tsar" (2010) to "Berlin Red" (2016), though the depiction ranges from a manipulative autocrat (at best) to an insecure and highly suspicious psychopath.

Nikita Khrushchev only features in one major work, in Barbara Allen's "Bombshell" (2004), where he is targeted for assassination during his US visit -- and saved by the intervention of Marilyn Monroe and Walt Disney!

Leonid Brezhnev remains absent despite his potential, Yuri Andropov only gets cameos in Ted Allbeury's "Moscow Quadrille" (1976) -- as the then KGB chief -- though his two or three appearances are quite powerful; and in Robert Littell's "The Company" (2002). The rather colourless Konstantin Chernenko did not stay in power long enough to count.

Gorbachev, though, was different -- his accession to power came as a breath of fresh air to the Soviet people accustomed to the gerontocracy in the Kremlin for over a decade. His Western interlocutors welcomed a leader not steeped in orthodoxy like his predecessors, with Margaret Thatcher's "we can do business with him" endorsement setting the pace.

He would go on to deliver. The arms control and reduction treaties, the withdrawal of the Soviets from the Afghan quagmire, and then East Europe would make him a respected statesman in most of the world's eyes. He was not that successful at home, though, as his attempts at reform encountered decades of inertia and vested interests -- and pushback was inevitable.

That's how he appears in most Western thrillers. Threatened by attempts to overthrow or assassinate him, (and here comes the political subtext) he has a gamut of Western spies/secret agents heading to his aid. There are exceptions, though.

Frederick Forsyth's "The Negotiator" (1989) is one of them. The basic plot is that Gorbachev and his US counterpart, President John Cormack, agree on an expansive arms reduction treaty, but there are sections in both countries that are not pleased.

The President's son is kidnapped from Oxford, and despite the efforts of a senior but maverick hostage release expert, the "Negotiator" of the title, is killed at the time of release. A Soviet device is found on his body, scuttling the deal. The Negotiator digs in -- aided by the KGB.

Gorbachev has a major role -- and especially sparkles in a scene, where he summons a senior military officer, who is a key character, to his office and silently gestures to an array of pictures showing a ham-handed action by the security forces against a nationalist rally. The officer just raises one eyebrow, and Gorbachev says to himself, "Bastard."

This was not out of character for the General Secretary. Records show Gorbachev could be quite vitriolic and sarcastic, even with the military.

The Mathias Rust incident was a case in point. The amateur German aviator, then aged 18, flew his Cessna aircraft from Helsinki on May 28, 1987, into the Soviet Union -- and while detected and tracked, carried on unhindered all the way to Moscow, landing near the Red Square. What made it worse was that the day in question happened to be the National Border Guards Day.

A furious Gorbachev summoned the military top brass and lambasted them -- a candid admission by the Air Defence Forces chief that he learned of the incident only once the aircraft landed in Moscow drew special wrath on his head.

"I suppose the Traffic Police told you," was the kindest thing he heard.

The Soviet leader also appears in three of Tom Clancy's early Jack Ryan novels -- though not under his name. Andrey Ilych Narmonov, the Soviet General Secretary in the "The Hunt for Red October" (1984), "The Cardinal of the Kremlin" (1988) and "The Sum of All Fears" (1991), is clearly modelled on Gorbachev.

Narmonov just appears in the Soviet scenes of the first. He and Ryan -- who has just pulled off an audacious gambit to save an agent and help forestall a challenge to Narmonov's rule -- meet at the end of the "The Cardinal" and he is overtly dismissive of American help.

In the final one too -- the last to feature the Soviet Union -- a purported conspiracy to unseat Narmonov is a key plot element, and in the climax, where the situation is fast unravelling, it is his decision to ease up the tensions a bit that prevent disaster.

The parallels with the real-world Gorbachev could not be more clear.

As noted earlier, most of the other deal with threats to Gorbachev, who survives with overt or covert Western help.

In Herbert Burkholz's "Strange Bedfellows" (1988), as Gorbachev prepares to sign a treaty with the US, one his "closest associates" tries to kill him, but "the attempt is a failure; the assassin swallows cyanide." The US government is determined to unveil the conspiracy by enlisting their most effective spy, Ben Slade. A highly trained 'sensitive', he is blessed and cursed with the ability to read minds.

Dennis Jones' "Concerto" (1990) has a fake TV unit enter the high-security compound of the Soviet consulate outside New York City, and "within minutes, nine men lie dead, and the Soviet Union's most powerful and respected leader -- Mikhail Gorbachev -- is missing".

Conservative author and briefly CIA operative William F. Buckley, Jr's spy 'Blackford Oakes' ("A Very Private Plot", 1993) and Adam Hall's Quiller (in "Quiller KGB", 1989) take a stab as well at saving the Soviet leader.

Joseph Finder's "The Moscow Club" (1991), of yet another conspiracy, is a bit prescient and it came months before the abortive coup attempt in August 1991. Yet, it did come true in the end, and the Soviet Union did go into history -- but no conspiracy was needed against Gorbachev.

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

--IANS
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By Vishnu Makhijani
New Delhi, Sep 4 (IANS) She's a traditionalist who loves to preserve the heritage of a bygone era - be it recipes, textiles or crafts - and believes "the woods are lovely, dark and deep and I have miles to go before I sleep". Freelance writer, food columnist and broadcaster Sabita Radhakrishna's latest offering, "Paachakam - Heritage Cuisine of Kerala", could not be better timed, coming as does in the midst of the Onam season.


There's a double bonus in this book - not only does it lead you through the varied cuisine of God's Own Country but there's also a double-page spread of the 24-items that make up the Sadya feast served on Onam and other special occasions and their precise positioning on a plantain leaf.

"I am a foodie, and my idea was to retrieve old recipes which would die with the people who cooked them and I started to document all my mother's recipes in 'Aharam' which was my first book on traditional cuisine. For one thing, I love to preserve recipes of a bygone era, and I am a traditionalist and do not like precious heritage items to languish, be it textiles, craft, or the craft of cooking food," Radhakrishna told IANS of "Paachakam" (Roli Books).

"My idea was not to write 'just a cookbook'. I needed to learn and understand the history of origin of the food, in this case Kerala, and to study the different communities and food habits. It was also a learning curve for me and I enjoyed it. I talked to women who were excellent cooks and chose one from each community who would be the central figure representing her community and who would guide me through.

"I am grateful to all those women from different regions who shared their family recipes. It was a long route just trying to standardize and test the recipes, and retrying if they didn't turn out right. It took me about one-and-a-half years before I submitted my manuscript," Radhakrishna explained.

This was just one part of the research that went into the writing of the book.

"I belong to an old school where I research in the conventional way, going to libraries and looking at archival material and reading books by other authors. I do not believe in just going to the internet and collecting material. I used to visit the library of (Chennai's) DakshinaChitra (heritage museum) though it is quite far away, and went through food history. Another valuable source and very good reading was the book by (food scientist and nutritionist) K.T. Achaya on the history of food in general.

"This is a challenge that every writer faces when you write about a culture alien to you. You research extensively, you talk to experts in the field and it is a long process of learning and understanding a different kind of cuisine. I decided to cover the major communities in Kerala, and their diversity and food habits were a revelation and so very interesting. I met many women who cooked traditional Kerala food," Radhakrishna elaborated.

The book focuses on major communities like the Nairs, Syrian Christians, Nambuthiris, Poduvals, Thiyas and Cochin Jews.

"I chose foodies who were very conversant with the pan-Indian recipes which today are diluted and sometimes changed drastically. I wanted no less than the original at least as close as possible," Radhakrishna said of her quest.

"I have found that in Kerala, most women who cook stick to original recipes though understandably they switch to short cuts which are inevitable," she added.

The recipes apart, the author also provides pen-sketches of the communities featured in the book.

Kanjee is the staple food of the Nairs, sometimes consumed thrice a day. Coconut, jackfruit, bananas and mangoes feature prominently in their cooking. Fish is preferred to chicken and fowl but beef is taboo.

Essentially non-vegetarian, Syrian Christians eat meat anytime, starting with their breakfast. Short red rice and tapioca are a must almost every day. The use of 'kodam puli' (tamarind), with its tangy flavour, makes the curries stand out.

While most of Kerala is predominantly non-vegetarian, Nambuthiris and Poduvals are pure vegetarians, also abstaining from garlic, onion and alcohol.

The history of the Thiya community of Malabar is shrouded in conjecture. Some converted to Islam around the ninth century due to the influence of Arab traders. A section of the Travancore Royal Family moved to North Kerala, where they cultivated rice and local vegetables while the larger community lived on a largely seafood diet. The advent of colonial rule saw the hot curries, for instance, gave way to stews, while the French introduced baking.

The food of the Cochin Jews is kosher - meat and dairy products cannot be mixed; pork is banned, as also fish cooked with fins and scales. The staple food of the Cochinis is unpolished parboiled rice which takes on many incarnations like dosa, idli, appam puttu. In this cuisine, large quantities of onions are browned, and the vegetables and other ingredients are cooked in onion juice instead of water, which gives them a distinct and special flavour.

In exploring the diverse foods and customs, interviewing community leaders, and researching preferred spices and flavours, Radhakrishna uncovers special commonalities between them that serve to define Kerala cuisine as a whole.

One thing that Radhakrishna was very insistent about is hone ground spices.

"There is no comparison between home ground masala powder and the commercial variety. At home we are careful to broil each ingredient separately and make just enough to last for a short time. Commercial powders are produced in large quantities, and preservatives have to be added for longer shelf life. I make my own powders at home, even today and definitely it contributes to a better taste. Flavours are undoubtedly better and the food is tastier with home ground spice powders," Radhakrishna maintained.

However, "the market today is flooded with readymade spice powders, and if you are a young working woman it is too tempting as these people do not have the time or patience to make powders at home", she added.

"Paachakam" is Radhkrishna's fifth book, two of which have won international award, but there's no letting up for her.

She also runs an NGO, Udhavi, which she founded nine years ago, "providing company for elders living alone and connecting them to services which they might need. I wrote a small book called 'Handbook for Silvers', less than 100 pages and it is selling very well".

"I am now compiling a book of recipes I have tried over and over again, which my friends and family love. I know people can get recipes from the Net, but nothing like a book with time-tested recipes. They are a mix of the old and the new and is called 'Amma's Kitchen'. It is my legacy to my children and their children who have always enjoyed my cooking.

"Would I be doing another regional cookbook? I really do not know as it requires so much work.

"Yes, the woods are lovely dark and deep and I have miles to go before I sleep," Radhikrishna concluded, quoting the American poet Robert Frost.

(Vishnu Makhijani can be reached at vishnu.makhijani@ians.in)

--IANS
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By Deepika Bhan
It has been an ongoing debate for more than seven decades and it is about Kashmir's dominance in the erstwhile state of J&K with Jammu and Ladakh feeling neglected.


Three years ago, this was ended with the stripping away of the special status and freeing Ladakh, but the divide between the other two constituents of the erstwhile state has gone deeper. A stark manifestation of the divide is the difference in the political preferences and ideologies of the two regions.

It was in 2014 that Jammu overwhelmingly voted for the BJP for the first time in the erstwhile state's history. For the BJP, the chinks in the Kashmir-centred politics were deep enough to strike its roots in Jammu and today, eight years on, the party's growth has been tremendous.

What happened in 2014 was repeated in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. The BJP won two LS seats in Jammu and also improved its vote share in the sensitive border state -- from 34.40 per cent in 2014 to 46.4 per cent in 2019.

Making its political preference clear, Jammu struck back at what it perceived as Kashmir's dominance and discrimination by negating Farooq Abdullah's National Conference, the Congress and other Kashmir-based parties.

The difference between the two regions is too apparent. It is rooted in religion, ideology, language and culture. In power sharing, the Kashmiris had always dominated the erstwhile state's politics.

The National Conference since its inception has essentially represented the regional patriotism of Kashmir. Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's People's Democratic Party (PDP) is viewed as being tilted towards separatists and the other parties too have traditionally confined their activities around the regional patriotism of Kashmir.

The feeling of deprivation in Jammu has always been about political empowerment. The seeds of political disempowerment were sown with the distribution of seats for the State Constituent Assembly by Sheikh Abdullah's government in 1951.

Out of the 75 Assembly seats, Kashmir got 43, Jammu was given 30 and two went to Ladakh. Jammu, and even Ladakh, therefore were not properly represented in the power structure and that only ensured concentration of power in the hands of Kashmiri politicians, which also meant that no person from Jammu or Ladakh could ever become the Chief Minister of J&K. The only time that a person from Jammu became the state CM was Ghulam Nabi Azad, who hails from Jammu's Bhaderwah town.

This led to the widespread feeling that all decisions were Kashmir-oriented, including the allocation of resources, which went more to the Valley.

As Kashmir took away the lion's share of all investments, and even received more attention from the Centre, Jammu's feeling of neglect grew over the years. This was accentuated by the advent of terrorism and the forcible exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, who took refuge in Hindu-dominated Jammu.

Even as the discrimination was sought to be portrayed as a "myth" by Kashmir-based parties, four commissions -- Gajendragadkar Commission (1967), Qadri Commission (1972), Sikri Commission (1979) and the Wazir Commission (1981) -- were constituted to look into the complaints.

The commissions dealing with regional disparities and inter-regional animosity, particularly the Gajendragadkar Commission, admitted injustice to the Jammu region and also made recommendations to ensure Jammu and Ladakh's "effective and real participation in the state's political and economic processes".

The Sikri Commission had presciently noted the injustices meted out to Jammu by stating that there existed "discrimination and favouritism in the fields of development, employment and education in the context of different regions, which was giving rise to irritation and tension among the people of the state".

Whether the discrimination by the Kashmir-based rulers was deliberate in view of the religious and cultural differences cannot be ascertained, but it created a wall of distrust that has grown over the years.

The Modi wave, which overtook the country in 2014, overwhelmed Jammu as well, which gave the BJP a historic 25 seats. The divide was further deepened after the abrogation of Article 370, which has given state citizenship to lakhs of displaced persons and refugees, who had been denied this right by the previous governments, fearing a change in election dynamics.

In the last three decades, as the Valley was overtaken by terrorism and radicalisation became rampant, Jammu has seen a rise of the right wing. The situation is such that any incident gets a religion and Jammu vs Kashmir colour. The rape of a 8-year-old girl in Jammu's Kathua was not treated as a crime, but took a communal and regional colour.

Today, when talks of Assembly elections have started doing the rounds, communal and regional politics have also started taking the centrestage.

The BJP may think it is well-placed in Jammu, but there are pockets in the region where Muslims are present in sizable numbers. After the carving out of new Assembly segments, these Muslim voters will play a decisive role in 10 out of the 43 seats in Jammu, while in the 47 seats in the Valley, the BJP may still not be able to open its account.

In most of these 10 seats, Ghulam Nabi Azad, who has left the Congress to form his own party, can play a key role. Azad is from Jammu's Bhaderwah town and he has an area of influence, limited though it may be. Once he gets going with his own party, he can create a ripple in these segments.

Given that Azad has been praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi of late, a congenial atmosphere may be created. If that happens, Azad may be able to bridge the gap between Jammu and Kashmir.

The highly-anticipated Assembly elections, whenever they are held, will give a new political direction to the Union Territory. The divide has helped the BJP to establish itself in Jammu even as the Kashmir-based parties are trying to play regional patriotism to their advantage.

(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)

--IANS
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Islamabad, Aug 30 (IANS) UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has warned that Pakistan is facing a "monsoon on steroids" as the government issued more flood warnings for the next 24 hours, media reports said.

Heavy rains over two months have caused the worst flooding in more than a decade and damaged more than one million homes in Pakistan, The Guardian reported.

Guterres said on Tuesday that south Asia was a hotspot for the climate crisis and that the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan that has left tens of millions needing help was a warning to every nation of the destruction wreaked by human-caused global heating, The Guardian reported.

"The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids – the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding. It breaks my heart to see these generous people suffering so much," he said.

The UN has issued an urgent appeal for $160 million to provide help.

"People living in these [climate crisis] hotspots are 15 times more likely to die from climate impacts," Guterres said, adding, "As we continue to see more and more extreme weather events around the world, it is outrageous that climate action is being put on the back burner, putting all of us, everywhere, in growing danger."

In Pakistan, Balochistan and Sindh provinces have had more than four times the average rainfall of the last three decades.

Flash floods fuelled by the climate crisis have affected more than 33 million people, officials have said. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDA) said on Monday the death toll from the monsoon rains and floods in Pakistan had reached 1,136 – with 75 killed in the last 24 hours, The Guardian reported.

The NDMA said that more than 1m houses had been damaged. In an immediate warning issued on Tuesday, Pakistan's Flood Forecasting Division (FFD) said that over the next 24 hours a very high level of flooding was likely to continue in the Kabul River, which flows into Pakistan's Indus River.

The Indus highway, in Sindh, was submerged under two feet of water. The highway connects Sindh with Punjab and Balochistan provinces.

A video shared by residents showed a coach that had slipped on the highway while water was flowing and authorities were involved in the rescue of passengers. Local people say there were no casualties, The Guardian reported.

The local media reported that there was a rise in waterborne diseases in Sindh and other parts of Pakistan. In some parts of Sindh, there has been a 100 per cent increase in diseases.

The flash flood triggered by an abnormal monsoon has washed away bridges, roads, houses, livestock and people across the country.

--IANS
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