INDIA / 10 October 2008
OVERVIEW
The rising threat posed by terrorists from India’s Muslim minority of at least 13.4 percent was made plain by a string of five crude bombings in New Delhi on 13 September that killed 25 people and wounded over 100. The targets were the commercial hubs of Connaught Place and Greater Kailash 1, and the Ghaffar Market area of Karol Bagh.
The group Indian Mujahideen (IM) claimed credit. It previously declared responsibility for 21 crude bombings in Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat State, that killed 56 people and hurt over 200 on 26 July, as well as nine crude bombings in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan State, that killed 63 people and injured over 200 on 13 May. It also said it was behind blasts in three cities in Uttar Pradesh State that killed 13 people and hurt 40 on 23 November 2007.
Police claimed to have cracked the IM cell behind all of those attacks by shooting dead two suspects in New Delhi on 19 September, and subsequently making several arrests. They described IM as an offshoot of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), and said it had been aided by Kashmir jihadist group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LT – Army of the Pure), an outfit backed by Pakistani intelligence that has staged terror attacks in major Indian cities with military-grade explosives. But the breadth of the assertions raised doubt, as did the history of Indian police killing general terror suspects and then accusing them of orchestrating attacks.
In any case, it is clear that local Muslim extremists increasingly are prone to terrorism, even as LT and other Kashmir jihad groups continue to pose a threat.
While none of the bombings of recent years have targeted US and other multinational interests, it is impossible to rule out such attacks. Companies operating in New Delhi and Mumbai, and in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai (Madras), the key cities in the IT triangle, should review and, if necessary, upgrade access controls and bomb-prevention measures. Personnel should minimize their exposure to transportation hubs, trains, tourist attractions, government buildings, markets and cinemas, all of which are traditional terrorist targets.
Personnel should avoid Jammu and Kashmir State and closely monitor India-Pakistan relations and Hindu-Muslim tensions inside India. Because religious, political and economic disputes often lead to rioting, personnel should steer clear of all demonstrations. In the event of unrest, they should remain indoors. Meanwhile, coordination with police and professional security consultants is imperative before traveling to rural areas of several eastern states running south from the Nepalese border, where Maoist rebels are active, and beyond Bangladesh in India’s far northeast, where numerous tribal insurgencies ebb and flow.
Foreign and local companies were unnerved by the 22 September murder by a mob of unionized workers of the Indian boss of the factory of the Italian company Graziano Transmissioni in Greater Noida, a prime industrial zone in the Delhi region. Multinationals involved in potentially controversial actions – either affecting staff or the local community – should take precautions against unrest and provide armed protection to executives and their families. Armed protection also is warranted by the growing problem of ransom kidnappings of wealthy locals and their dependents. Violent crime is not common, but personnel constantly need to guard against sneak thievery.
INSIGHTS: TERRORISM
Five bombs exploded in New Delhi between 1807 and 1838 on 13 September. All of the devices were crudely constructed, with a low concentration of ammonium nitrate, ball bearings and glass.
The first blast occurred at Ghaffar market in Karol Bagh. The bomb was planted near a parked car.
Nearly a half-hour later, there were two explosions in garbage cans in and near Connaught Place, a popular shopping and entertainment hub. The first occurred on Barakhamba Road, near the offices of foreign and local companies and banks. The second occurred a minute later in the newly constructed park over a metro station in the middle of the Connaught Place roundabout.
Three minutes later, there were two nearly simultaneous explosions in the M-Block market in Greater Kailash 1, the first near the popular Prince Paan Corner, and the other near a Levi's store.
Four bombs that failed to detonate were discovered later. One was at India Gate, another on Parliament Street and the other two in Connaught Place.
The Ahmedabad bombings of 26 July and Jaipur bombings of 13 May involved similar low-intensity explosives and tactics. In Ahmedabad, there were two series of explosions about an hour apart. The first occurred near a busy market and inflicted most of the carnage. The second series of bombings occurred near a hospital.
Two unexploded bombs were discovered later that same day in Ahmedabad. Yet another two unexploded bombs were found the following day in cars in the city of Surat, a diamond-polishing hub 175 miles away. On 29 July, 10 bombs were found in various places in Surat, but they were inoperable due to technical faults.
In Jaipur, one of India’s leading tourist destinations, bombs exploded in various locations over a span of several minutes beginning at about 1915. One targeted a temple to Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, who traditionally is worshipped on Tuesday – the day of the attack. Another was aimed at the Hawa Mahal, or Palace of Winds, a major attraction for visitors. There were no reports of injuries to foreigners. Many of the bombs were strapped to bicycles.
The first operation IM claimed credit for was the Uttar Pradesh bombings on 23 November 2007. There were nearly simultaneous blasts outside courthouses in the cities of Varanasi, where nine people were killed, Faizabad, where four people died, and the state capital of Lucknow, where no one died. Many of the victims were lawyers, who appear to have been targeted because the state bar association days earlier had refused to defend Islamic terror suspects. Also, alleged Muslim militants recently had been arrested in the state.
IM claimed each series of bombings by email. For example, in a missive sent five minutes before the first Ahmedabad explosion, it said it was avenging the deaths of 2,500 Muslims in Gujarat State at the hands of Hindu mobs in 2002. It also warned leaders of Gujarat and other states against what it called harassment of Muslims, and said Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, should think twice about his plan to build a 27-story luxury residence on land in Mumbai that once was held by a Muslim charity.
Despite making some arrests, Indian authorities made little headway in the investigations of the attacks for which IM claimed credit. They repeatedly pointed the finger at a nexus of SIMI and LT, and particularly in connection with the Uttar Pradesh blasts blamed Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HJI), a Bangladesh-based terrorist group allegedly supported by Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s murky military intelligence agency.
Then on 19 September, in the aftermath of the New Delhi bombings, police claimed to have cracked the IM cell behind all the attacks. Officers raided a suspected safe house in the mainly Muslim Jamia Nagar district in the south of the capital, leading to gunfire that killed two suspects, including the alleged mastermind of the cell, a recent university graduate named Atif Ameen, also known as Basheer. Two suspects were arrested, and two others got away.
Police in ensuing days arrested several other alleged cell members, all of them like the two slain suspects from Azamgarh, in Uttar Pradesh. In police press conferences, IM was described as an armed faction of SIMI that had loose but critical ties to LT, and through that channel to the ISI. Going further, officials described a complicated supply chain that the cell used to obtain explosives, and linked the cell to other bombings, including blasts in Varanasi in March 2006, Hyderabad in August 2007 and Bangalore in July 2008.
The extremely broad police description of the cell’s activities struck many as too neat. Also, Indian authorities so often accuse the ISI of involvement in terrorism in India without producing evidence that they lack credibility on the subject. And then there is the inability of Indian authorities to definitively link SIMI to terrorism – a special tribunal lifted the seven-year-old ban on the group on 5 August of this year after finding insufficient evidence of involvement in attacks, but the ban was reinstated the next day by the Supreme Court.
Not least, questions have been raised about the 19 September encounter, particularly concerning the unclear nature of the fatal bullet wounds suffered by a senior anti-terrorism officer and the escape of two suspects from a building that had only one exit and was surrounded by police. The undermanned, undertrained and underfunded Indian police have a history of trumping up charges against terrorist suspects and even innocent people. They also have a habit of staging so-called encounter killings, in which suspects are shot dead and the scene made to look as though a gunfight took place.
Police on 7 October said a Muslim software engineer for the local division of US-based Yahoo was responsible for putting out IM’s email claims of credit for its attacks. The suspect is a resident of the western city of Pune, a hub for the IT industry. His brother is a physician in Britain, and he reportedly visited the United States several times without incident.
The suspect’s family accused the police of framing an innocent man in response to political pressure for action against terrorism. Regardless of his guilt or innocence, multinationals clearly face the risk of having terrorists or lesser extremists on their payrolls. Employees should be screened thoroughly prior to being hired, and regularly thereafter.
In any event, it does seem that an important terror cell was cracked on 19 September. But it is also likely that other cells were involved in some of the recent attacks, and will be heard from in the future.
Indeed, Muslim militants probably were behind the planting of 17 crude bombs that were discovered and safely defused on 29 September in Ahmedabad. The devices were inside small tobacco tins dispersed in the Kalupur area of the city. It is possible that the responsible party wanted to cause harm─or at least send a message─coinciding with the start of the nine-day Hindu festival of Navratri.
Recent bombings in southern India demonstrated that no region of the country is immune to terrorism. Some IT companies in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka State, stepped up security after two people were killed and 15 wounded in a string of eight bomb blasts on local streets on 25 July. The devices contained a relatively small quantity of explosives, but were packed with nuts, bolts and nails. They were set off by timers. Muslim militants are at the top of the suspects list.
Muslim militants also widely are thought to have been behind two nearly simultaneous bombings that killed 42 people and injured some 60 others on the evening of 25 August 2007 in Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh State and another of the key cities of southern India’s IT triangle. One blast occurred at the entrance to the Gokul Chat family restaurant in the Kothi Market. The other took place at an outdoor laser show in Lumbini Park.
On 28 December 2005, an LT operative opened fire on scientists emerging from an international conference at a prestigious institute in Bangalore. An Indian scientist was killed and four others wounded in what clearly was an attack against the Indian economy.
In a more recent operation that showed the shifting tactics of Muslim terrorism, gunmen dressed in army uniforms in the early hours of 1 January 2008 killed seven soldiers and wounded six others in an unprecedented attack on a paramilitary camp in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh. No group claimed credit, but the raid resembled a guerrilla attack in Kashmir. In a carefully planned operation, gunmen threw grenades at the gate of the camp, killing a rickshaw driver. Under cover of heavy machine-gun fire, they then stormed a control room near the gate, shooting indiscriminately at soldiers. All of the assailants escaped.
On 18 February 2007, 68 passengers, most of them Pakistani, were killed when four explosions ignited a devastating fire aboard a train traveling from New Delhi to the Pakistani city of Lahore. Extremists bent on disrupting the peace process between India and Pakistan are the prime suspects, but the case remains unsolved.
In the deadliest act of terrorism in India since 2003, a string of bombings aboard commuter trains and railway station platforms in Mumbai on 11 July 2006 killed 186 people and injured some 700. LT and SIMI were blamed by police, who arrested both local Muslims and Pakistanis.
The bombs used in the February 2007 and July 2006 atrocities contained the military-grade explosive RDX, a staple in the arsenal of LT and other ISI-backed Kashmir jihad groups like Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM – Party of Holy Warriors) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JM – Army of Mohammed). It is the absence of military-grade explosives in IM’s attacks that indicates a trend toward purely homegrown Muslim terrorism. Some Indian officials have suggested that the ISI has stepped back from more direct involvement in terrorist attacks in major Indian cities to preserve deniability.
Muslim terrorism in India should not necessarily be viewed in the context of transnational Islamic terrorism, or even the India-Pakistan rivalry. There is a long and complex history of communal bloodshed between Indian Hindus and Muslims, with both sides guilty of atrocities. The situation has been exacerbated by the proliferation since the early 1990s of the Hinduvta (Hinduness) ideology and the rise to power at the national and state levels of the Hindu-inspired Indian People’s Party (Hindi abbr: BJP), which has open links to the aggressively chauvinistic National Volunteers Organization (Hindi abbr: RSS), a Hindu social movement.
Recent unsolved bombings targeting Muslims suggest that Hindu extremists may be turning to terrorism. On 18 May 2007, 11 people were killed and some 50 wounded when a bomb exploded during Friday prayers at the main mosque in Hyderabad. Two other bombs were found nearby and defused. Five more Muslims were killed in subsequent rioting that broke out in the city following the bombing. A protest calling for better protection quickly descended into rock throwing at police, who responded with tear gas and live rounds.
On 8 September 2006, 37 people were killed and 150 wounded in a bombing outside a mosque in the Muslim-majority city of Malegaon, located 160 miles northeast of Mumbai in Maharashtra State. The city has a history of violence between Muslims and Hindus, and only the quick deployment of large numbers of police prevented rioting from breaking out. Indian authorities ultimately assigned blame to fugitive members of SIMI who wanted to stoke unrest.
On 29 September of this year, five people were killed and 30 hurt in a bombing targeting a Malegaon market full of Muslims breaking the daily Ramadan fast. After the attack, thousands of angry Muslims clashed with police, leaving 22 officers injured. The same day a bomb killed one person and wounded 15 in a market full of Muslims in Modasa, in Gujarat State.
The bottom line is that bombings will continue to occur sporadically for the foreseeable future. It is not inconceivable that Westerners could be targeted directly.
Unfortunately, no hotel in New Delhi or Mumbai has adequate defenses against suicide car-bombing, a tactic employed against hotels in other countries by Islamic terrorists. One option is to seek out a hotel that is a complex of low-rise buildings, and to book rooms as far from the lobby and driveway as possible. For those who must stay in high-rise hotels, the same guideline holds. Rooms should be booked as far from the lobby as possible and facing away from any driveway or road.
The Muslim insurgency in India’s Jammu and Kashmir State has dwindled significantly since New Delhi and Islamabad implemented a ceasefire in November 2003 across the Line of Control that has divided Kashmir since the end of British colonial rule in 1947. Without Pakistani army artillery support, LT and other Islamabad-supported Kashmir jihadist groups no longer are able to infiltrate the Indian-held portion of the territory in large number.
Yet rebels and Indian security forces continue to clash on a daily basis. The most volatile point is the overwhelmingly Muslim Kashmir Valley, which lies near Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and is the principal object of the territorial dispute between the two countries. But Muslim rebel attacks also occur in the Hindu-majority Jammu region, to the south.
Police killed at least 30 people and injured 600 in the Kashmir Valley in July and August amid the largest pro-independence demonstrations since the current insurgency erupted in 1989. Authorities clamped a curfew on the region.
The turmoil erupted in July when Muslim protests forced the state government to scrap a plan to transfer forest land to a Hindu trust that wanted to build shelters and other facilities for Hindu pilgrims visiting a nearby mountain shrine. The decision enraged Hindus, who in turn launched a wave of protests in the Jammu region.
Hindu mobs clashed with Muslims near the city of Jammu. Also, Hindu activists in the south of the state organized an economic blockade of the Kashmir Valley, causing severe economic problems there and adding to Muslim resentment.
Both Muslim and Hindu politicians have whipped up the unrest with the November state elections in mind. But there is no end in sight to violence in the region.
Personnel should avoid entirely the Kashmir Valley and adjoining areas. Trips to the Jammu region should be limited to brief forays made in consultation with security professionals.
The far northeast of the country – on the other side of Bangladesh – very much remains a cauldron of unrest. Numerous ethnically distinct tribes inhabit the region, and some 30 insurgent groups are active.
The rebels oppose “outside” domination of land and natural resources. While indigenous people do not necessarily back the racketeering and thuggery for which most of the rebel groups are notorious, they are alienated from the government due to the chronic lack of economic development.
The security forces can do no more than manage the unrest. Of the region’s seven states, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur and Tripura are the most insecure; they regularly witness bombings and other attacks by tribal insurgents against Indian security forces and civilians who are not native to the region. Westerners also are on the insurgents’ target lists.
The United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), the most powerful of the regional rebel groups, suffered a heavy blow on 24 June when several commanders from one of its most battle-hardened units broke away and declared an indefinite truce with New Delhi. The dissidents said they wanted to negotiate a solution to the long-running conflict in Assam State.
ULFA still has between 700 and 800 combatants, and its senior commanders effectively have sanctuary in Bangladesh. But the group has been hit hard by the capture and killing of senior figures in recent years.
Generally speaking, personnel should travel to the far northeast only on pressing business and with trusted local escorts. Some parts of the region can only be visited with special government permission.
The biggest challenge Indian security forces face arguably is posed by Maoist rebels, who number about 10,000 and are present in the interior of 13 of India’s 29 states. All of the states in question are in the east, running from the Nepalese border all the way south. The rebels are particularly strong in rural areas of the states of Chhattisgarh and Orissa, and also are a force to be reckoned with in various parts of the states of Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal.
On 16 July, Maoist rebels exploded a landmine under a security van in Orissa’s remote Malkangiri district, killing 17 of the 24 police commandos aboard. The victims were traveling to the site of an earlier attack when a rebel roadblock forced them to take a detour along which the mine had been planted. A fierce shootout erupted after the powerful explosion.
It was the second spectacular attack by the Maoists in Malkangiri district in a little over two weeks. Thirty-eight elite counterinsurgency troops were killed when their boat was sunk by insurgents on 29 June. Twenty-nine other commandos survived, some with gunshot wounds. The Maoists opened fire with rockets and grenades as the boat passed through a gorge in Chitrakonda Reservoir.
The boat attack was the deadliest operation by Maoists in nearly a year. On 10 July 2007, some 300 Maoist insurgents killed 24 paramilitary soldiers and special policemen in an ambush in Dantewada District of Chhattisgarh State. A contingent of over 100 security personnel came under intense assault rifle fire when hunting for a rebel camp in the forested hills of the area. Twenty rebels were killed in the clash.
That ambush echoed the spectacular storming by Maoist rebels in the early hours of 15 March 2007 of a makeshift police camp near Bijapur in Dantewada District. Sixteen policemen and 39 pro-government militiamen were killed by up to 400 assailants who threw grenades and Molotov cocktails before opening fire with guns at close range. Only about 20 security personnel at the camp survived, while just a handful of rebels were killed. The attackers made off with large quantities of firearms, ammunition and explosives.
Dantewada District and other points in southern Chhattisgarh are the scene of a savage struggle between the Maoists and Salwa Judum (Campaign for Peace), a civil-defense militia set up by the state government in June 2005. There are regular insurgent attacks on refugee camps where family members of the militiamen are sheltered.
The Maoists occasionally attack economic targets, particularly mines. In the early hours of 25 April of this year, some 300 heavily armed fighters torched 53 trucks and three pieces of heavy machinery in a raid against an iron-ore processing plant in Chhattisgarh owned by Essar Steel, an India-based company with American, Canadian and other overseas assets. The assailants overpowered the small guard staff on duty and made good their escape after sowing destruction. No injuries were reported. The incident occurred in the Kirandul area of Dantewada District.
The rebels occasionally threaten foreign companies, but have not directly attacked one since 2002, when a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Andhra Pradesh was blown up. To be on the safe side, multinationals doing business in or near Maoist zones of operation should maintain rigorous bomb defenses.
It is essential for newcomers to India to understand that deadly rioting can erupt virtually anywhere, anytime, over any issue.
Fatal traffic accidents are one spark. For example, angry Muslims on 29 August 2007 clashed with police and torched vehicles in Agra, 120 miles south of New Delhi, after four of their own were run over by a speeding truck while returning from special prayers for the dead. The Taj Mahal, two miles from the accident scene, was briefly closed. During the unrest, the government of Uttar Pradesh imposed a curfew and advised tourists to remain in their hotels.
One person was killed by a stray police bullet and nine others were injured in the riot. Muslims threw stones, bottles and other objects at police, and torched some 20 trucks and cars as well as a shoe factory.
Earlier in August 2007, Hindus went on a rampage in New Delhi when two of their pilgrims were run over and killed. They torched buses and blocked a highway.
Religious, caste, tribal and economic tensions also regularly boil over into street violence. The Gujjar minority, a small group that historically has been disadvantaged, began blocking roads in Rajasthan State on 23 May of this year to press its demand to be classified lower in the Hindu caste system so that they could qualify for government job and higher education quotas. Over the next several days, some three dozen protesters were shot dead by police. Until well into June, bodies of the slain protesters were used in roadblocks.
The protest came to New Delhi for two days in late May, with Gujjar highway blockades causing huge traffic jams in the industrial hubs of Noida and Gurgoan, forcing many IT companies and international call centers to scale back operations. The protesters also prevented some trains from running to the capital. Finally, the Gujjars signed an agreement with Rajasthan officials on 18 June that ended the protests.
Highly disruptive strikes also are common. In connection with turbulent protests in the early days of this June over surging fuel prices, there were strikes that froze ground transportation in various parts of the country, notably Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal states. Many software companies in those two states were forced to close due to the inability of employees to get to work. In New Delhi, opposition protesters clashed with police near parliament.
Some 4 million truckers on 4 July ended a strike over skyrocketing diesel fuel costs after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to freeze highway tolls until the end of the year. The indefinite strike was in its fourth day, and had threatened to undermine commerce on a large scale.
Personnel should monitor events closely to minimize inconveniences. All demonstrations should be given wide berth, and personnel should seek indoor shelter if violence breaks out.
Multinationals and large Indian companies regularly are met with protests when they build factories in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) on former farmland. No case has drawn more international attention than that of domestic giant Tata Motors, which had intended to produce its new Nano car at a specially built plant in Singur, 25 miles from Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal State. From the time construction began in January 2007, the company invested $350 million and attracted 60 suppliers to set up nearby.
But the project was plagued from the beginning by violent protests by farmers claiming that their land was taken without their consent, or that they received too little compensation from the communist-led state government. Whipping up the protests was Trinamool Congress, a state opposition party, and leftist activists.
With plant construction running behind schedule, Tata was staring at a self-imposed deadline of October to begin production of the tiny Nano, which it bills as the world’s cheapest car. Upping the ante, demonstrators late this summer threatened a siege. Construction work halted on 29 August, when laborers failed to show up in the face of raucous protests. In an act of brinkmanship, Tata Motors on 2 September announced that it was suspending construction of the plant indefinitely. After the farmers and Trinamool Congress rejected an offer by the West Bengal government for higher compensation and the return of some land, Tata Motors signaled that it might launch Nano production at one of its plants in another state.
Sure enough, the company on 3 October announced the cancellation of its plans to build the Nano in West Bengal. Four days later, it said the car would be produced in Sanand, near Ahmedabad, in Gujarat State. The land in question is already owned by the state government. The company said it expected to begin production in seven to eight months.
In a similar case, some 300 tribesmen armed with bows and arrows on 26 June stormed a site in the eastern state of Orissa where another division of the Tata conglomerate, Tata Steel, is building a plant. The protesters beat up workers building a perimeter wall and burned several of their vehicles before being driven off by police.
Tata Steel and Orissa authorities in 2004 signed a deal for land acquisition and construction of the plant in the Kalinga Nagar industrial zone. In 2006, police shot dead 14 tribesmen protesting construction of the plant on their ancestral land. Construction of the plant has been delayed by protests.
South Korean steel giant POSCO has faced repeated violent protests against its construction of a $12 billion plant in the Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa that would be India’s biggest single foreign investment. The Supreme Court on 8 August gave the go-ahead for the project, ruling against those opposed to the seizure of forest land. Protests at the site, however, continued.
In October 2007, protesters briefly abducted four POSCO officials, including three Koreans and one Indian, who were surveying the site. The four were released after the company promised not to send any more representatives until the dispute was resolved.
Foes of the introduction of Western-style supermarkets and mega-stores to the Indian market also have staged violent protests. For example, on 23 October 2007 an outlet of domestic retailer D-Mart in Mumbai was attacked, forcing it to close. Several display windows were smashed with sticks and stones.
On 27 August 2007, violent protests by leftists forced the domestic supermarket chain Reliance Retail to temporarily close its existing stores and suspend construction of new ones in West Bengal. Earlier that month, the government of Uttar Pradesh closed 30 Reliance stores after they were targeted by unruly protesters.
Mega-stores are becoming popular among Indian consumers. But the mom-and-pop shop owners who traditionally have dominated the food retail sector have fought fiercely to preserve their livelihoods. Unions and leftist political parties have supported them.
There are other issues that can prompt violence against large companies. About 100 villagers upset about pollution on 25 July set fire to the construction site for a Dow Chemical research and development center in Shinde, about 120 miles from Mumbai. They failed to comprehend that the research center would not discharge pollutants.
Dow in 2001 took over Union Carbide, thus linking itself in the minds of many Indians to the catastrophic industrial accident in 1984 in the central Indian city of Bhopal, in which nearly 3,800 people were killed by the leakage of tons of toxic gas.
Finally, Indian unions routinely play hardball with foreign and domestic companies. But matters got far out of hand on 22 September when a mob of workers bludgeoned to death L.K. Choudhary, the Indian boss of Graziano Transmissioni India, in the company’s factory outside New Delhi. Several other Indian managers were among the approximately 50 people hurt. Executives visiting from the auto components company’s headquarters in Italy narrowly escaped injury.
Choudhary was beaten to death as he tried to pacify a mob of some 150 unionized workers rampaging through the company’s plant in Greater Noida, an industrial zone that is home to many multinationals and Indian companies. The mob had forced its way in, and was using iron bars to smash machinery, computers, windowpanes and vehicles.
After many months of turmoil over layoffs and salary levels, the company in July locked out over 200 workers who had engaged in vandalism while protesting employment conditions. On 22 September, Choudhary reportedly asked a small number of terminated employees to come to the plant for talks. Some 150 members of the local trade union came with them in a show of support. By one account, the violence escalated when a guard fired a gunshot into the air to keep the mob at bay.
Police made some 130 arrests, with 63 of those rounded up charged with murder. But the company claimed the police failed to respond to requests that morning for protection, and that officers only showed up after the rampage was over and the mob had fled.
Although the Choudhary case was exceptional, it demonstrated the extent to which it is critical for multinationals and domestic companies to develop contingency plans for violence. Companies involved in potentially controversial actions – either affecting staff or the local community – should redouble precautions and provide armed protection to executives and their families. Even at the best of times, it is imperative for companies to maintain strong access controls.
INSIGHTS: CRIME
Kidnapping is a serious problem in India. Most victims are low-income people connected to shady dealing or other intrigue. But executives of local companies and multinationals and their dependants increasingly are being targeted by criminals seeking large ransoms.
The most recent major case involved Ashish Dwivedi, 37, the CEO of Expedient e-Solutions Ltd. On 27 September at 2145, he was driving home from work in Noida, a major corporate hub in the Delhi region, when a Tavera SUV that had been trailing his Honda Civic suddenly pulled ahead and cut him off. Four men, two of them armed with pistols, emerged. When they failed to force open the locked doors of the Honda, one of them smashed the driver’s door window with an iron bar. They dragged Dwivedi out, and attempted to force him into their vehicle. But a gathering crowd apparently frightened the assailants into fleeing without the would-be hostage.
Dwivedi later told the media that initially the assailants got in the car with him and fumbled with the parking brake, and that after he was dragged out he lay down on the street to resist being taken. He suffered serious injuries in the attack.
The son of a police sub-inspector was arrested on suspicion of organizing the abduction scheme. A 23-year-old student at Ghaziabad Technical Institute, he allegedly aimed to raise funds for a run for parliament from Madhya Pradesh State.
The case was cracked based on witnesses seeing part of the license plate number of the Tavera. The owner of the vehicle, who had been working as a driver for Noida call centers, was arrested along with the alleged ringleader. Two other suspects remain at large.
In another case that made headlines, two unidentified men on 4 September 2007 seized the 3-year-old son of a pair of IT professionals from a school in the Kondapur area of Hyderabad. The perpetrators were said to have climbed an outer wall and befriended the child before making off with him in a car.
Reportedly, a ransom demand equivalent to $245,000 was made. The boy was released unharmed the next day. The police and family insisted a ransom had not been paid.
In another disturbing incident, Vedula Satyanarayana, a senior executive with Hyderabad-based, IT-services provider Satyam Services Ltd., was abducted 24 July 2007 as he dropped his children at school in the Secunderabad area of Hyderabad. The abduction was observed by passing motorists.
Satyanarayana was rescued late the same evening from a safe house in Nekkonda, in Warangal District, 100 miles from Hyderabad, by a special police team. Reportedly, the police were able to track his location from a ransom-demand call made to his family. Four suspects were taken into custody.
In the first known kidnapping case affecting a multinational, the 3-year-old son of Naresh Gupta, an Indian citizen who heads the local division of US-based Adobe Software, was seized 13 November 2006 in posh Sector 15-A of Noida. Two men on a motorcycle, their faces obscured by helmets and the license plate covered by a sticker, abducted little Anant Gupta as he was being escorted by a maid to a nursery school bus stop near the family home. The maid was pushed to the ground and the assailants made good their escape with the victim.
Naresh Gupta, who spends much of his time in the United States, rushed back to India to deal with the crisis. The family raised a ransom, reportedly the equivalent of $100,000, and the boy was released in good physical condition at about noon on 17 November 2006.
The kidnappers were not hardened professionals. They reportedly were on the phone with the family multiple times per day, and at one point allowed the boy to talk to his mother. The ransom drop was made by an uncle from a moving train in the middle of the night.
Police falsely claimed to have staged a rescue operation. But they were on top of the case from the beginning. The area around the kidnap scene immediately was sealed off and patrolmen placed on alert on all roads leading out of Noida, albeit to no avail. A special task force of the Uttar Pradesh police was in constant touch with the Gupta family and went all out to catch the perpetrators.
A day after the boy was released, the alleged mastermind, known as Chhatrapal, was arrested in Noida. His accomplice, Pawan, was captured a short time later. Chhatrapal reportedly failed in an attempt to enter the movie industry in Mumbai and ended up working at his father’s Mother Dairy outlet near the Gupta family home. He observed the boy going to school and reportedly plotted the kidnapping as a way to come up with cash to impress the woman of his dreams.
A major reason why kidnapping is common is that the woefully undermanned, underequipped and corrupt police generally fail to provide protection to citizens. Yet it is worth noting that when businessmen or other important people are abducted, the police invariably become deeply involved, for better or worse. Also, the press almost invariably gets wind of notable kidnapping cases.
The bottom line is that kidnapping for ransom will remain part of the Indian scene. Armed bodyguards are recommended for senior Indian executives and their dependents. While Western corporate personnel of non-Indian origin and their dependents are much less likely than locals to be targeted, they should take nothing for granted.
In fact, Westerners rarely fall victim to violent crime in India. When they do, it is usually because they were walking alone on side streets or alleys in rundown areas.
Foreign women, however, need to guard against rape and sexual harassment in all places at all times. The problem received international attention in the early days of 2008 due to a spate of egregious attacks. One incident involved the rape of a British woman at a Goa beach resort. There also were separate assaults against a British woman and an American woman in Rajasthan State, and assaults against at least two foreign women in Kerala State.
In another major incident, two Indian women residents of the United States who emerged from the JW Marriott Hotel in the elite Juhu section of Mumbai in the early hours of 1 January 2008 were molested and groped by a large group of men. The attack occurred when the women and two male friends left a party at the hotel at 0145 and headed for the nearby beach. Some 40 drunken men began to harass them, and soon approximately 40 more hooligans joined the mob. The women were trapped between a vehicle and a tree, and one had her dress torn off. Dozens of men jumped on the women after they fell to the ground.
Two newspaper photographers who happened to be on the scene did not intervene effectively but took pictures. After 15 minutes, one of the photographers noticed a traffic police van nearby and called for help, causing the ruffians to flee.
Police initially were reluctant to investigate, but were compelled to act after the photos appeared in the press. Fourteen arrests were made.
Rape is sufficiently common that neither Indian nor Western women should go out in public alone at night, and should not stray from well-beaten paths in affluent areas when they are alone during the day. It is important to note that even foreign women with years of experience in India do not take taxis by themselves after dark, and that they sit in the back and refrain from chit-chat with the driver when they do so alone in daylight hours.
Outside of enclosed resort areas, it is essential for women to wear conservative clothing. It also is critical for foreign women to understand that what seem to them to be innocuous conversations with local men tend to be interpreted by the other party as sexual come-ons.
“Eve teasing,” the local term for sexual harassment, is routine. This usually takes the form of catcalling, or pinching and groping in packed public places. The situation is at its worst in northern cities, but there is no shortage of unpleasant incidents elsewhere.
Harassers should not be confronted directly. Rather, victims should duck into a shop or restaurant, and call police or a trusted male colleague if the harasser refuses to leave.
For foreign women and men, petty theft risks are the immediate concern. Pickpockets work sidewalks, markets, transportation hubs and any other place where people congregate. Usually they work in teams, with one member snatching a targeted wallet or other object as a confederate or two stage a distraction. Among the standard distractions are the bump, asking a question and staging a fight or other spectacle. Some gangs use razor blades or other sharp objects to cut straps, or slice their way into bags.
Usually, victims of petty theft have no idea anything has been taken until later. There are cases, however, in which perpetrators shove marks to facilitate their escape.
It is not unknown for thieves on motorbikes to snatch valuables from pedestrians. Therefore, personnel should walk as far from the street as possible and strap bags, cameras and other attractive items over their shoulder furthest from the curb.
Street crime risks can be reduced considerably by adhering to commonsense precautions. First and foremost, it is essential to be alert at all times. Downtrodden areas should be avoided without exception. Men should place wallets in front-pants pockets while women should strap handbags across the front of the body. Cash, credit cards, jewelry and other accoutrements not needed for the tasks at hand should be kept locked up in hotel, residence or office. Men may undertake pedestrian activity in relatively affluent areas well into the evening, but should stick to main streets. Women, as stated previously, should move about after dark only in trusted male company.
As in any country in the world, a handbag, briefcase, mobile phone or other attractive object set down and left unwatched in a restaurant, shop or other enclosed public venue can disappear in the blink of an eye. If valuables must be put down, they should be kept constantly in sight and in reach.
It is routine for touts and other hucksters to follow Westerners on the street trying to strike up conversation. At the same time, Westerners who randomly approach a local for directions or other seemingly minor assistance open themselves up to being bamboozled.
It is standard for touts operating on the street to seek commissions by steering Westerners into certain shops. The touts give wrong directions, say incorrectly that attractions are closed, or tell any number of other lies.
It is all too common for a newfound acquaintance to look at a Westerner’s train or tour ticket, and say it is fraudulent or needs to be validated. The “acquaintance” offers to fix the problem he has invented. The solution, of course, requires money.
An American businessman walking near the InterContinental Hotel off of Connaught Place in New Delhi one afternoon in September was informed that he had excrement on his shoe by a young man who had been tagging along and attempting to strike up conversation. Sure enough, the American looked down to see revolting green goo on top of his right shoe. He immediately became suspicious when the young man making a nuisance of himself suggested that a shoe-shine man who happened to be right there take care of the problem. Thinking that a shoe-cleaning could not possibly cost more than a dollar, the American allowed the shoe-shine man to go to work.
The situation turned farcical when toward the end of the cleaning the American asked how much he should pay. The shoe-shine man said 800 rupees ($18.14). The American became angry. A third party to the scam, attempting to play role of the honest broker, approached and said, “Maximum, 400 rupees ($8.54).” The American then confronted the young man who had pointed out the excrement on his shoe, and told him he had put it there. The young man immediately disappeared, as did the honest broker. The American handed the shoe-shine man 50 rupees ($1.07), which he later learned was about four times too much for the service rendered.
The incident was so absurd it was funny. Victims of such scams, however, should not tempt fate by becoming physically aggressive.
Potentially more damaging monetarily are scams by merchants. Outside of modern malls, prices are negotiated, and when foreigners enter the picture merchants typically start off by asking for ten times the value of the good in question.
Most unscrupulous of all are sellers of jewelry, carpets and other high-cost items. More often than not, the items are not of the quality stated. And even when purchased goods are of stated quality, cheaper versions often are substituted in the shipping process.
Foreigners regularly are conned into buying fake gems or gold by being told that they can avoid large customs fees by carrying their purchase out of the country themselves. In fact, taking gems and gold out of the country without proper documentation can result in arrest.
Some con artists can be extremely patient. Feigning friendship, they show marks the sights for several days before steering them into making unreasonable purchases or otherwise taking advantage of them.
Beggars, many of them women and children, are everywhere in Indian cities. They routinely approach foreign pedestrians, or come up to windows of vehicles stopped in traffic. Making matters all the more unpleasant, many of them have hideous deformities.
Some beggars seek only handouts. But others work to create opportunities to snatch valuables.
Personnel should give wide berth to all street people. Because giving money to one beggar draws others, they all should be ignored, difficult though that may be at times.
Many foreigners use credit cards without incident in modern malls. But this cannot be recommended, since fraud is not uncommon. Ideally, charges only should be made at the front desks of business-class hotels, and even then cards should be watched closely.
ATM fraud is not common. But to be on the safe side, only cash machines inside of banks and luxury hotels or office buildings should be used.
When it comes to getting around, chauffeur-driven vehicles are the way to go. Visiting personnel without access to company cars and drivers should book vehicles and chauffeurs through business-class hotels. The alternative is to book hotel cars by the ride.
Registered taxis can be patronized, but many of these are rolling pieces of junk that lack air-conditioning. Newcomers should have hotel staff or trusted local colleagues summon cabs, relay directions and negotiate a flat fare. Veterans familiar with fares between given points have the option of negotiating flat rates on their own, although they should summon taxis by phone or at hotels or other hubs rather hail them from the street. To give a rough sense of rates in New Delhi, the going price for the ride between the commercial and retail hub of Connaught Place and the diplomatic district of Chenakyapuri is 150 rupees ($3.13).
Registered cabs are equipped with meters, but many drivers put a cloth over them. If asked, drivers often will agree to use the meter. Drivers, however, may take circular routes to inflate fares when the meter is engaged.
Personnel never should enter a taxi if anyone besides the driver is inside. They should not allow the driver to pick up additional passengers.
Three-wheel taxis, motorcycle taxis and pedicabs should not be patronized at all. All present major safety risks.
Public transportation should be considered off-limits due to both terrorism and petty-crime risks. In addition, there are serious issues of mechanical safety.
Even though hiring a full-time chauffeur costs only about $250 per month, many foreigners self-drive. This cannot be recommended. Modern highways are few and far between. Instead, most driving is on battered roads on which cars in various states of repair, rickety trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, animal-drawn carts, cows and people move at varying speeds. With the burgeoning Indian middle class rapidly buying cars, traffic is more congested than ever and parking increasingly is hard to come by.
Needless to say, traffic accident rates are extraordinarily high. Seatbelts must be worn without exception.
Carjacking is a problem, including in affluent parts of the New Delhi and Mumbai areas. The usual targets are high-end sedans and SUVs. Assailants sometimes go after parked vehicles with the driver inside. Other times they use their own car to tail a moving vehicle for a short distance and then cut it off. Victims are forced at gunpoint to exit their vehicles. If confronted by carjackers, personnel should comply with all demands without the slightest hesitation. There have been no reports of carjackings evolving into express kidnappings. Car-jacking risks can be reduced significantly by not driving at night.
Conventional vehicle theft is a major problem across the country. Audible alarms and some combination of steering wheel and brake locks and ignition and fuel-cutoff switches are essential. Protected parking is strongly recommended after dark, even when there is a chauffeur to stay with a parked vehicle.
Although the main international airports in New Delhi and Mumbai are being upgraded by public-private partnerships, they remain grossly substandard. The country’s best airports are in Kochi, Chennai and Hyderabad.
Incoming personnel should pre-arrange a pickup by company or hotel car. The much more stressful fallback option is to book a pre-paid taxi beyond customs. In New Delhi, air-conditioned, newer vehicles can be arranged at a clearly marked booth inside the terminal, while just outside slightly cheaper jalopies without air-conditioning can be arranged. After handing over the appropriate sum, passengers are given a slip with a license-plate number on it. In many cases, they must then find the corresponding taxi on their own. In turn, the driver before leaving the airport should hand the slip to a guard who notes down the destination and license-plate number.
The backward state of Indian airports can make transferring from international to domestic flights problematic. Typically, travelers must claim their checked luggage and clear customs, and then go outside to get to the domestic terminal. Taxi drivers often prey on unwitting foreigners by charging an outrageous price for a ride of a few hundred yards.
Although many business-class hotels are under construction or on the drawing board, it will be many years before there are enough rooms to meet surging demand. The upshot is that rooms at business-class hotels often go for $300 or more per night.
Internal security at major hotels generally is solid. Guests, however, should take the precaution of consigning valuables to lobby safe-deposit facilities and using all available bolts and chains on the doors to their rooms. Doors never should be opened to strangers. It is prudent to book rooms no higher than the seventh floor, above which Indian firefighting equipment cannot reach.
Residential burglary is a serious problem. In cities like Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore, where apartment living is the norm for corporate personnel, it is essential to select a building that has solid access controls, including a receptionist who announces visitors to tenants and a guard service that continually patrols the grounds. Individual units should be above the second and below the top floors, and should be outfitted with solid-core entry doors with deadbolt locks and 190-degree optical viewers. Accessible windows and other openings should be grilled. A fully charged mobile phone should be on hand for use in an emergency.
Detached homes, which are favored by corporate personnel in Hyderabad and Madras, require all of the features mentioned above as well as high perimeter walls and redundant exterior lighting. Guard service is strongly recommended, although it should be noted that even guards from well-established companies like Group 4 Secoricor fall asleep, take off their shoes and do countless other things that would get them fired instantly in a Western country.
The mere presence of maids, babysitters and other domestic servants is a deterrent to burglars. At the same time, it is imperative to screen domestics thoroughly prior to hiring them, as all too many burglaries are inside jobs. A police background check should be part of the screening process. Also, medical checks are necessary to ensure against bringing communicable diseases into the house. Finally, parents need to be aware that male servants have been known to engage in child molestation.
In New Delhi, prime residential areas include Vasant Vihar and the West End, both of which are spacious and secure and offer good access to the commercial and government sections of the city and the international airport. But house prices have shot up so high that multinationals and embassies generally are moving their personnel from detached units to apartments in new buildings in Gurgoan and other elite satellite towns.
Mumbai is expanding rapidly northward along the seacoast. Virtually every neighborhood along a 30-mile stretch from Madh Island, in the remote north, to Cuffe Parade, the city’s southernmost district, offers a reasonable selection of secure apartment buildings. There are practically no detached houses for rent in Mumbai.
INSIGHTS: POLITICS
The global credit crisis that exploded in late September unquestionably will bite into India’s economic growth.
Some $20 billion in overseas capital flooded into the Indian stock market in the fiscal year ending 31 March. In the same period, foreign banks readily were extending loans to Indian companies. But given world-wide economic uncertainty, foreigners in recent months have been pulling their money out of India.
Meanwhile, inflation hit a 13-year high of 11.05 percent in June, mainly due to skyrocketing world oil and food prices. The central bank responded by raising interest rates to a record-high 8.5 percent, which in turn has crimped industrial output and investment in general.
Tax revenues are rising fast, but government spending is higher. The result is a fiscal deficit of over 8 percent of GDP and the downgrading of Indian debt.
GDP growth is expected to slow from 9.1 percent in fiscal 2007-08 to about 7 percent this fiscal year. That figure still would represent strong expansion, but would be a serious setback considering that India is striving to become a leading global commercial player and needs to lift several hundred million of its citizens out of dire poverty.
The slump hurts the prospects of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress Party ahead of parliamentary elections that must be held by next May. Singh this June slightly reduced gasoline, diesel and cooking-gas subsidies, incurring public wrath. Yet that did virtually nothing to ease fiscal problems, since fuel remains heavily subsidized, farmers continue to be lavished with discounted fertilizer, cheap loans and other aid, and government workers have received pay hikes.
The Congress Party has lost all four state elections held this year, and controls only eight of the 28 states. The opposition Indian National Party (Hindi abbr: BJP) controls 12 states either outright or in coalition.
Yet the BJP is undermined by infighting, and its national leadership is aging. Congress has been gaining ground in recent national polls, and may be able to come out on top in the elections and put together another broad coalition with small parties. Increasingly, it appears Congress will call elections for the first quarter of 2009, when food prices will be lower due to weather conditions and before electoral laws constraining government spending have a chance to kick in.
Congress, however, has failed to deliver the “growth with equity” it promised ahead of its upset victory in the last elections in May 2004. Voters turned to Congress at that time because so many of them felt left behind amid the spectacular economic growth that a relatively pro-free market BJP-led government presided over the previous five years.
Yet Congress won just 27 percent of the vote, forcing it to form an unwieldy 12-party governing coalition. Making matters worse, the coalition needed voting support from communists and other leftists for a parliamentary majority.
The communists torpedoed reform time and again until Singh finally ditched them this July, bringing in the Uttar Pradesh-based Samajwadi Party as a substitute. But Singh still has to satisfy the selfish interests of all the parties in the coalition to enact even routine legislation.
The ardently pro-reform Singh is also heavily constrained by the fact that he is not the chairman of Congress. That is the job of Sonia Gandhi, a Roman Catholic Italian whose spoken Hindi is flawed, offsetting the political mantle of her assassinated husband, one-time prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, whose mother, Indira Gandhi, and grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, also served as prime minister.
When Congress won the 2004 elections, Sonia Gandhi declined to become prime minister. But she has remained influential, pressing Singh repeatedly to implement expensive social welfare programs to maintain the party’s support base. She also has caved in all too often to the influential left wing of Congress, which is knee-jerk anti-capitalist.
The stewards of Congress have determined that it is not yet time for Rahul Gandhi, Sonia and Rajiv’s 38-year-old son, to be installed as prime minister. But he clearly is being prepared for the role.
As for Singh, he is esteemed widely. As finance minister in 1991, he was the driving force behind the initial wave of market reform that laid the foundation for the current boom. He also has run the central bank and planning ministry, giving him deep experience to go along with his doctorate from Oxford. Adding to his luster, he has a reputation for probity.
The problem is that Singh is a technocrat who has proven unable to deal effectively with all the political restraints on his leadership. What is more, he has not exercised strong control over his cabinet, thereby letting some ministers follow their own agendas. And he has put too much trust in the notoriously corrupt and moribund bureaucracy to implement the piecemeal reforms he has managed to push through the ruling coalition and parliament.
Hope has receded for systematic implementation of desperately needed reforms. Infrastructure improvements are being undertaken far too slowly to meet the demands of the surging economy. The tax system is punitive and backward. Antiquated labor laws handcuff businesses. Banking remains virtually closed to foreign investment. The insurance sector is mostly in state hands. Pensions are entirely government run. The retail sector is utterly underdeveloped. And the huge farm sector is woefully backward.
The situation is summed up in many ways by purpose-built industrial and residential hubs like Gurgoan that have attracted large numbers of multinationals and domestic companies. In many respects such enclaves are First World, but the Third World knocks on the door in the form of chronic electricity and water shortages, ever-growing mountains of putrid trash and rising crime rates.
Despite all of the problems, India unquestionably is on the rise. Only China’s economy has grown faster over the past 16 years. By 2020, the Indian economy could pass Britain’s in size.
Business in today’s India goes far beyond the spectacularly successful IT sector and call centers. Even as some 125 companies in the Fortune 500 have research and development facilities in the country, domestic powerhouses like Infosys and Tata Group are becoming known the world over.
There is endless room for growth in the enormously underdeveloped market of 1.1 billion people. At the same time, the nearly 300 million-strong Indian middle class already presents huge opportunities for domestic and foreign entrepreneurs.