← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Cold in Calcutta
00:28:09
Reporters worldwide: Rahul Tandon is in Calcutta as its people struggle to cope with...
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- [00:00]
Nick Thorpe
This is a download from the BBC.
- [00:02]
Kate Adye
It's the latest edition of from our own correspondent, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Adye.
- [00:11]
Nick Thorpe
Today, public frustration and economic despair bring down the government in Bulgaria. Difficult decisions for the Guatemalans who'd rather their children didn't go to school. Why Canadians are worried. Europe's batting its eyelashes at the US and the coldest winter in a hundred years. It's causing a few wardrobe problems in calculus Qatar. Tens of thousands of Bulgarians have taken to the streets in cities across the country to protest about poor living standards, high prices and corruption among officials. The widespread discontent has led to the fall of the centre right government and even apparently to a number of people setting fire to themselves. Yesterday, the outgoing parliament in Sofia agreed to change the laws so electricity prices can be slashed. One of the demonstrator's key demands. Nick Thorpe says people there are furious that joining the European Union back in 2007 has done little to lift their country out of poverty.
- [01:11]
Angelo Slavchev
We meet in the Mamma Mia Pizzeria behind the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, beyond the metal fences and the riot police vans. After nearly a week in Sofia, I finally manage to track down one of the leaders of this leaderless revolution. From his coat, Angelo Slavchev produces a battered piece of paper, much folded and photocopied as a revolutionary manifesto. It's in a similar state to most other such bits of paper, banded about from pocket to pocket since the storming of the Bastille. National meeting in Slieven is the heading 23rd of February 2013. The Cyrillic script is divided into four sections with Latin demands, monopolies, heating providers and water providers. The social upheaval sweeping Bulgaria is a powerful cocktail of mundane everyday issues like electricity and heating bills and abstract political demands like new forms of citizens representation, which would reduce the power of political parties. It all began as a flash mob, Angelo explains. A handful of consumers gathering on the pavement in front of the Ministry of Economy last July to protest against a 13% rise in electricity prices. Now it has snowballed into a nationwide movement, several hundred thousand strong, enjoying 80% support from Bulgaria's 7.3 million people. It's struggling to articulate demands and develop democratic decision making procedures. Angelo is 31, an IT manager. He and his fellows Doncho Dudev, a marketing manager, and Janko Petrov, who runs a building complex, must now lock horns on the seabed with other older sea monsters of Bulgarian democracy. President Rosen Plevneliev and a cluster of political parties from the left to the far Right. All jealously defending their legitimacy and authority. One immediate issue for Angelo is how to channel the energy of the street. The protesters meet in March every evening at 6:30 in Sofia and other cities, with two massive demonstrations so far on Sundays. He's worried that the daily protests will exhaust the people and favours the weekend model. He's encouraged by the willingness of the President to accept a presumably more legible copy of the same battered piece of paper. And he's scathing about yesterday's men, the leaders of all the political parties who've run Bulgaria in close tandem with their business interests for the past 23 years. The mood within the crowd of 20 to 40,000, which sweeps from Parliament to presidency, from Ministry of Economy to Ministry of Justice, is ebullient. One slogan from the 1994 Football World cup, when Bulgaria miraculously reached the last four, dominates all others. Together Bulgarians are strong, roar the crowd, wrapped in their green, white and red flags. The bells of the Nevsky Cathedral ring out all day as Bulgaria's Orthodox faithful coincidentally choose a new patriarch. Neofyt replaced the ancient Maxim, who died last November at the age of 98. Loudspeakers around the cathedral broadcast the sweet voices of the choir across the city, and black cassocked, white bearded priests fly in flocks across the cobbled squares. A little girl in a pink frock dances past the police control point. For the moment at least, the actors in the Bulgarian drama do not seem opposed to one another. They just perform their parts, then step aside to let the next player speak. I witness an interesting exchange in front of the presidency. We must respect each other. Our diversity is our strength, one man exhorts the crowd. Go back to your Turks and Gypsies. Shout the skinheads. The police are with us, bellows the next speaker. This is a very rough and ready democracy where everyone can speak their mind. Which other hated politicians have you met apart from me? Asks Socialist Party leader Sergei Stanishev as I leave his office. At only 46 and leader of the main opposition party, he has more chance than most of winning the next elections. The refrigerator defeated the television set, he says cryptically, meaning that the poverty of most Bulgarians overcame what they were told by pro government TV channels. But he dismisses many of the demands of the street as unworkable or naive, just as many on the street dismiss him and his party and as part of the problem, not the solution. Deep in the crypt of St Sophia's church, the ancient red brick edifice which gave the city its name, big fragments of the original mosaic floor are on display. The jigsaw puzzle of Bulgaria's past beside the jigsaw puzzle of Bulgaria's future. So many pieces are still missing.
- [06:03]
Nick Thorpe
Nick Thorpe in Sofia. The last time Kenya held a general election, the result was contested. Different ethnic groups turned on one another and thousand people were killed. So as the country prepares to go to the polls again on Monday, there's understandably a certain amount of nervousness. In his report into the violence five years ago, the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said that disputes over land were a major contributing factor. And as Gabriel Gatehouse has been finding out, many of those disputes remain unresolved today, especially in Mombasa, Kenya's main port city, where a separatist movement is capitalizing on widespread political disenchantment.
- [06:47]
Gabriel Gatehouse
Not here, said the separatist. He looked nervous as I tried to lead him to what I thought was a secluded cafe where we might talk undisturbed. The place, he said, was a favourite hangout for the police. Randoon Zairua is the Secretary General of the Mombasa Republican Council, or mrc. He and his followers want independence for Kenya's coast. The Kenyan government has tried to ban the group. Its leaders have been arrested and beaten, so Mr. Rua is on his guard. We went to a nearby car park where we sat down in the shade of a tree in the sweltering humidity of Kenya's second city. Mr. Ruer says the group's aim is to liberate the coast from what he calls the neo colonialism of the Kenyan government. His argument to the people of the coast is since independence you've been progressively marginalized. Jobs go not to the locals, but to outsiders from central and western Kenya. Your land is being grabbed. Enough is enough. For some, this is a compelling narrative. The previous day we'd met a group of MRC followers, a dozen young men in their 20s and 30s. None had a job. All were living under the threat of eviction because a court has ruled that the land they live on belongs to a well connected businessman from up country. None of the 12 men was planning to vote in the election. The MRC has called for a boycott instead. On the walls of their neighbourhood, they'd scrawled their slogan, pwani si Kenya. In Swahili it means the coast is not Kenya. Randu Ruh and his fellow secessionists say they have history on their side. They cite ancient treaties with the Sultanate of Oman and later with the British. They envisage an independent Republic of Mombasa and stretching the entire length of Kenya's Indian Ocean coastline, from the border with Tanzania in the south to the Lahmu Archipelago and the Somali frontier in the north. It's unclear exactly how much support the movement has, but their chances of success are slim to non existent. The MRC talks of taking its case to the international courts. And if that fails for a revolutionary, Mr. Ruhr is distinctly lacking in bellicose rhetoric. Backed into a corner, he resorts not to the sword but to the pen. He had, he said, written to the Queen to plead his case. It may seem ironic that 50 years after independence from Britain, Kenya's coastal secessionists are appealing to the former colonial power. But in fact, Kenya's current problems have their roots in the manner in which it emerged from colonial rule. The struggle for independence was all about land. The MAU MAU emergency was a guerrilla war fought in Kenya's central highlands to oust white settlers from Kikuyu farmland. The rebellion was brutally suppressed by the colonial authorities with the enthusiastic support of some in the Kikuyu community. When independence came and the MAU MAU fighters emerged from prison or from the bush, they found that much of the land they'd fought for had already been claimed by those who'd worked with the British and were now running the country. As compensation, these former guerrillas were given land in other parts of Kenya, some in the Rift Valley, some on the coast. In the decades that followed, Kenyan politicians continued to parcel out land in exchange for political capital. Many of the outsiders whom the MRC accuse of grabbing their land are themselves the descendants of those who were pushed off their land by a previous generation. Land, wealth, ethnicity is the axis around which Kenyan politics revolves. It was this combustible mix that sparked the violence that followed the last general election five years ago. Today, as a new election looms, conflicts over land are again coming to a head. On a hill overlooking the sea, I met Nasma Juma in October. Her home and those of 300 others had been flattened by bulldozers. A company based in Nairobi had laid claim to the land. But behind Nasma's Islamic name and her bright red headscarf lies a more complicated story. Nasma is Kikuyu. She was born Maureen Wangari and converted to Islam. Her parents came from upcountry in the 1970s and settled on the coast in the hope of finding work. The streets of Mombasa were not paved with gold. Her husband earns a meager living doing odd jobs and building work. Nasma looks after their four children. Now they're homeless. But Nasma Juma does not support the MRC's drive for independence. The problem, she says, is not Kikuyu against Swahili, not the coast versus the rest. The problem is rich against poor. Rich people, she says. They have the law. Poor people have nothing.
- [11:34]
Nick Thorpe
And that's Gabriel Gatehouse. Guatemala's a country of volcanoes, lakes, orchids and exotic birds, and it's determined to become a key player in the global economy. First, however, it needs to distance itself from a history of violence, corruption and repression. More than 200,000 of its citizens, most of them civilians, died in a vicious civil war which ended in the late 90s. Today, one of the biggest exports from this Central American nation is sugar. But as Humphrey Hawksley has been finding out, some of the younger generation are abandoning sugar for a more lucrative and indeed lethal business.
- [12:12]
Humphrey Hawksley
The sky around was clear blue and streaked with smoke that curled up in grey clouds. Bumps then blew away in the wind. The air above the field of high green sugar cane shimmered, and orange flames rose into the flare of the sun. Half the field had been harvested, the ground dark and scorched. A truck stood in the middle to be loaded. Beyond that was cane yet to be cut, and figures appeared from it, then vanished, then reappeared again as they moved in and out with their machetes, slashing down the shafts and throwing them to the ground. Their faces were black like Dickensian chimney sweeps. Soot and grime caked their hands. Their feet were protected only by sandals so black that it was difficult to tell the plastic straps from the human skin. They set fire to the field before starting work, to ward off rats and snakes and to burn old leaves and rubbish that would hamper their cutting. This scene in rural Guatemala wouldn't have changed much since the first sugar refinery was built here in the 16th century. Their income is a pittance for work that begins in the middle of the night, and they keep going until dusk. Fathers cut cane with sons who should be at school. It's hard, complained Michael, who said he was 14 but in his grubby red T shirt looked much younger. But but why isn't he at school? I asked the father, who replied, I prefer to have my child at my side, working so that he doesn't become a delinquent. It was an answer that didn't yet quite add up. Guatemala's sugar and other food industries are making a push into international markets, where consumers are becoming intolerant of child labour and poverty like this. The global sugar companies earn billions every year. Yet in the village of Las Flores, next to the cane field. The roads are unpaved, sanitation is poor, the homes are shanty huts, and almost half the children suffer from malnutrition. The young people here might be poor, but they're still hooked up to Facebook and Twitter, and now imagine a different kind of future for themselves. But exactly what because in these parts, one alternative to working in the cane fields is is particularly unpalatable in the nearby small town of San Jose El Idolo, Mayor Alfredo Lamb cuts a commanding figure as he moves through the crowd of women with their children who have come to him for help. He's a large man, his dark blue shirt tight around his stomach, a businessman who ran for mayor when he saw his town turn more violent and its people more desperate. You're a widow, right? He asks one young woman holding a child on her shoulder and another standing with her free hand. Yes, I'm a single mother, she says. And he left you how many children? I have two, she says. He turns to explain. He left her with two children, and one has special needs. These are all mothers here. Single mothers, widows, abandoned by their men. All the men are in prison. He takes me on a tour of the town and the surrounding areas. We talk as we drive about the general violence that's wracking Guatemala 16 murders a day among just 14 million people, much of it linked to drug crime, and how it's affecting the rural sugar cane belt where he lives. Since 2006, the northern neighbor, Mexico, has waged war on its drug cartels. More than 50,000 people have been killed, and as the cartels are squeezed there, they've moved their guns and money across the border to Guatemala. The young people, they don't want to work on the banana plantation, says the mayor as we pass a collapsed, rusting bridge destroyed by a long ago flood. They don't want to cut sugarcane either. That's why we have a problem with drug gangs, because we're close to the border with Mexico and the young people can make a lot of money. So how do you fight it? I asked. He drove us to the police station in the town's narrow High Street. There are just nine policemen for a population of 11,000, and only one was there when I called, and he couldn't go out because there were no vehicles. The police can't fight this, says the mayor. We need education and jobs. Suddenly the conversation I'd had with little Michael's father in the cane field made sense. The choice he faced wasn't between his son working or going to school. It was more sinister than that. It was between cutting Cain in those appalling conditions or being pressured into joining a gang with the risk of getting killed in a drug war.
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Nick Thorpe
Humphrey Hawksley In Guatemala, the European Union and the United States are to begin formal talks on a free trade agreement, paving the way for the biggest trade deal in history. Both sides hope the deal will boost their struggling economies by lowering tariffs and reducing regulatory barriers to trade. But there's one party that's looking on in dismay. The Canadians launched their own trade talks with the European Union over four years ago, and they're worried that the Europeans will no longer be interested now that the American prize is up for grabs. Free trade has long been a sensitive issue in Canada. Jennifer Chevalier is based in the capital Ottawa, and has been investigating opposition to the Canada EU trade agreement, known as ceta.
- [17:51]
Kate Adye
There are essentially two kinds of ice skates. Hockey skates have a long, smooth blade along the bottom. Figure skates have serrated picks at the toe. If you learn how to skate in one kind, it's actually quite difficult to adapt to the other. But I didn't know this until recently. I was sent to cover an anti free trade protest that was scheduled to take place on Ottawa's frozen canal. The press release said that the group, the Council of Canadians, wanted to put SITA on ice, figuratively speaking. The EU delegation were in town negotiating, so the protesters vowed to skate down the Rideau Canal with banners and lights. And if they were stopped and told to leave the eight kilometer long skateway, they said they had other plans to draw attention to their cause. So I borrowed another reporter's hockey skates that she presumably keeps stuffed under her desk for just this kind of Canadian situation. I wanted to be able to keep up with the crowd of protesters and didn't know how far down the canal they would get until the authorities stopped them or what would actually happen if they did. CETA is the biggest bilateral trade deal that Canada has negotiated since the Canada U.S. free Trade Agreement in 1988. Back then there were vociferous cross country protests. The 1988 election was fought entirely on this one issue. On campus in cafes, all we talked about was free trade. The writer, Margaret Atwood, said the deal would kill Canada and other public intellectuals lamented it would turn us all into Americans. How would Canada, the argument went, with a tenth of America's population, possibly be able to compete in an open market? Our water, our healthcare system, our national identity would all wash away south. But when I laced up my skates and got onto the canal with my microphone in my hand. I was shocked, firstly because I was totally unable to skate in my colleagues borrowed hockey skates. I was wobbling and floundering like I'd never been on the ice before. I was about to fall flat on my face in the middle of an interview. The next surprise, though, was that I couldn't find the crowd of protesters. Where was the angry mob, the people shouting about job losses and their sovereignty? I managed to locate them seven cold but cheerful evangelists who skated back and forth a few times while chanting Put Sita on ice. And then called it a night. Canada may be on the brink of a massive trade agreement with Europe that some feel could have negative repercussions for the country. Health care costs could rise because the Europeans are looking for an extension on pharmaceutical patents, meaning Canadians couldn't access cheaper generic drugs. An influx of European cheese could destabilize the heavily protected dairy industry here, and city councils would no longer be able to prefer local firms over international bidders. But unlike the situation over 25 years ago, most Canadians don't seem worried. Maybe the hyperbole surrounding the last free trade negotiation has made Canadians wary of believing the hype now. Because, of course, free trade with the US didn't kill Canada. It didn't take away our health care or water or stop Canadian writers from telling Canadian stories. The protesters in the 1980s were wrong, but in some ways they were also right. After the agreement came into force, Canada was thrown into a recession partly because of free trade. 200,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in the first two years. And while trade with the US has more than tripled, some analysts still think the deal didn't encourage Canadian companies to become more productive or to invest in research and development the way it was predicted they would. Still, some say free trade made Canada what it is confident. Laura Dawson is an Expert on Canada US Trade who believes that Canadian companies like BlackBerry and the trendy sportswear designer Lululemon were allowed to flourish and take on the world because of free trade. But now she's worried about the Americans again. The US Sucks all the oxygen out of the room, she sighs. Trade negotiations with both Korea and Central America failed when Canada's would be partners notice the big guy from next door walk onto the dance floor. Laura thinks the fact that Europe is batting its eyelashes at the US spells trouble for Canada, and NAFTA's chief negotiator agrees with her. John Weeks told me that these days bilateral negotiations are a competitive game. The first one in gets the best deal. So in one respect, Canada's attitude to free trade is exactly the same as it was in the 1980s. We're no longer quite so protectionist. In fact, we're openly ambitious. But we still worry about how to compete against the United States. In the meantime, CETA negotiators haven't come to an agreement yet, and so the talks will continue to wobble along as if on hockey skates, trying not to fall flat on their face.
- [22:48]
Nick Thorpe
Jennifer Chevalier in Ottawa In Britain, there are some signs of spring this morning, little bit of sunshine, some blossom poking through in the south. But no one, I think, is putting the hot water bottle away just yet. Climate change clearly affects different countries in different ways. Here it seems to mean more snow at this time of year, more rain during the summer, fewer hours of sunshine as well. The weather is also a major talking point in India at the moment. Rahul Tandon says dressing for the unaccustomed cold in Calcutta has been posing a few problems.
- [23:24]
Rahul Tandon
When you think of India, you think of heat, whether it's the country's temperature or its food. So how do people here cope with winter? Well, that varies from region to region. When I asked a friend of mine from southern India, he laughed as he replied, saying, we don't have a winter. It's always hot. My family in Delhi in the north, where the temperature really does drop, just shrugged their shoulders and said, we're used to it. They also have a few brandies, sometimes more than a few, to help them through the cold months. But here in Calcutta in the east, there is a different reaction. Firstly, let's look at how low the mercury goes. This year it dropped to 9 degrees Celsius, balmy for London or New York in the winter, but here it was the coldest day for 100 years. Calcutta is known as the City of Joy, but believe me, on that day there was little of it in India's former capital. And all across one of the world's biggest cities, you could hear millions of mothers frantically telling their children, tupi po tande la gejabe. Wear a hat, otherwise you'll catch a cold. To be fair, it's a phrase they use even when the temperatures are as high as 20 degrees Celsius, as whatever the thermometer says. People here start wrapping up warmly in December and keep their hats on till February. And they do not just wear any old hat. It has to be a monkey cap. I had never seen one till I came to Calcutta. When I told my cousin this, he looked at me like I was mad. You live in England, he said. Surely you must wear one even in the summer. When I explained that I was from Yorkshire and that even on the coldest days some people only wear T shirts, I thought he was going to faint. After recovering, all he could say was to think, the British ruled us for so many years and they don't even know how to dress. For those of you who have never seen a monkey cap, here is a quick description. It's a thick woolen hat that totally covers your head, your neck and your ears. The only parts which are open to the elements are the mouth, eyes and nose. It has come to be known here in India as the Bengali topi or hat. Basically, it looks a bit like a balaclava. So when an American friend of mine landed at Calcutta airport recently to be greeted by the sight of everyone walking about wearing one, he joked that he thought that he'd walked into a city holding a bank robbers convention. This year there is also a new fashion accessory to accompany the monkey cap. With the weather so cold, earmuffs are the new must have. From a distance it looks like some older Bengalis are wearing huge headphones and it can lead to some comical scenes. Recently I noticed two elderly gentlemen attempting to have a conversation. They both appeared to be wearing half their wardrobes to keep away the dreaded cold. One of them was trying to speak, but his mouth was covered by a scarf and anyway his friend could not hear anything as he had huge earmuffs on. I politely interrupted their attempted conversation and asked them why they did not just take their winter paraphernalia off for a few minutes so they could understand each other. One of them laughed and mumbled, but then we might catch a cold. It's not worth taking a chance like that. And that is what many here feel. Winter means staying in. So at night, streets in this crowded city are deserted except for those who have to live on them. The homeless huddle around fires as they desperately try to keep warm. It also means days start later. When I asked my wife why she was going to work at 10 in the morning rather than 9, she replied that everyone was coming to work late because it was cold. I got the same response from the man who delivers my newspapers. When I asked him why they were now appearing two hours late, he replied, no one can get up early in this cold, so why do you need your papers? Go with the flow. At least I think that's what he said. I could hardly hear through my earmuffs. And that is what you have to do in Calcutta in the winter. Anyway, I have to go and get ready now. What color monkey hat should I wear today?
- [27:57]
Nick Thorpe
9 degrees Celsius. That's almost sunbathing weather. Rahul Tandon in a wintry Calcutta, bringing this edition to a close. I'll be back on Saturday Morning with more from correspondents around the world. Do join us. Goodbye.