So when the local journalist I work with suggested parking illegally near a courthouse, I said okay, noticing everyone else
was doing it. And that’s when I got a lesson in Pakistani parking control.

When we returned, our car was gone from its spot, but not far.

A forklift had gently lifted the car and placed it on the sidewalk. And the driver was doing the same thing to dozens of vehicles.

He arranged the cars so they were pretty much boxed in, making a quick getaway impossible.

His partner, the ticketing officer, explained what was going on.

“This is reserved parking for the lawyers who work at these courts and they’ve designated vehicles with stickers to mark them and they are the only ones allowed to park here,” he said.

Okay, we knew that.

But why a forklift and why put them on the sidewalk? Why not just tow them away?

Turns out, there is a very practical answer.

“There’s not a good registration system for vehicles here, so we can’t fine people online or through an electronic system so we lift the cars and put them somewhere where the drivers can’t get away,” the parking officer said. “Then we fine them to ensure the fine is paid.”

And it works. We paid our fine, the equivalent of just over 2 dollars, and we watched dozens of others do the same with very little grumbling.

It was a sight to watch as car after car was lifted, carried, set down and then lifted again and returned to their owners as the fines were paid in.

And one other notable point: turns out the police who monitor parking and the highways have been praised by anti-corruption group Transparency International for their integrity.

That’s no small feat in what is otherwise one of the world’s more corrupt nations.

A man smokes in front of a closed shop displaying the Loop mobile logo on its shutter in Mumbai. (Photo: REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui)

From our colleagues at the BBC:

India’s Supreme Court has canceled 122 telecommunications licenses awarded to companies in 2008.

The licenses were issued by former minister A Raja, who is accused of mis-selling bandwidth in what has been called India’s biggest corruption scandal. Mr Raja denies wrongdoing.

Government auditors say the scandal cost the country about $40bn (£24.5bn).

The judges also ordered a court to decide whether Home Minister P Chidambaram should be investigated.

Opposition MPs accuse Mr Chidambaram of failing to prevent the scandal when he was finance minister. He denies any wrongdoing.

Mr Raja is currently on trial for fraud.

The ruling is the latest chapter in a long-running drama about corruption in India. The country is one of the world’s fastest growing markets for mobile telephones with just under 900 million connections. The sale of these telecoms licenses had therefore provoked outrage in certain quarters of the Indian media for years.

Such public criticism and suspicion provided much of the impetus for the recent anti-corruption protests led by civil society activist Anna Hazare and yoga guru Baba Ramdev.

We’ve been covering those protests for a while, including Hazare’s public fast in December.

Here’s more on the implications of the telecoms ruling from Alam Srinivas, author of The Indian Consumer:

The Supreme Court order will have significant implications.

It will affect the millions of subscribers of the companies whose licenses have been revoked. The consumers will need to change their service providers, or wait for new licenses to be issued.

Well-known global telecom firms like SingTel and Docomo, which bought stakes in Indian companies after paying a massive premium, will need to rethink their India strategy and look for legal ways to recover their existing investments.

Sentiments among the domestic and foreign community about doing business in India will turn negative.

Indian banks, which gave huge loans to the new licence holders, will have to show more bad loans, or non-performing assets, on their balance sheets.

The good news: the government can now hold an auction for fresh licenses which may result in huge revenues that can positively impact the fiscal deficit in 2011-12.

Needless to say, some of the Indian telecoms firms that bought licenses in 2008 are deeply unhappy at this ruling. More from the BBC story:

Uninor, the Indian joint venture of Norway’s Telenor, said it had been “unfairly treated” and “was shocked” by the court verdict.

Telenor President Jon Fredrik Baksaas told the BBC that the ruling was “extraordinary”.

“There’s frustration we are not seeing a regulatory framework with some nuts and bolts so it justifies the numerous investments that we and others have made,” he said.

Telenor has 30 million customers in India who face losing their connection in four months, Mr Baksaas said.

“If the worst comes to worst, it will be the end of Telenor’s business in India,” he added.

Every cop on the force has been ordered to leave his or her home and move into well-defended hotels.

A drug cartel has been carrying out its threat to kill one policemen a day.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Angela Kocherga who has been reporting the story for Belo, the Texas-based news corporation.

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Marco Werman: The police force is also under siege in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez. Every cop on the force has been ordered to leave his or her home and move into well-defended hotels. A drug cartel has threatened to kill one policeman a day in Juarez, and at least eight have been killed so far this year. Angela Kocherga has been reporting the story for the Texas-based new organization Belo. She’s now back in El Paso. So, the cops are the ones who are supposed to protect people. Now, they’re getting protected. What’s going on, Angela, why have the cops been targeted?

Angela Kocherga: Yeah, they’re really working double duty. They’re protecting the city and each other around the clock. Basically, you have a drug cartel calling itself the New Juarez Cartel, according to the police chief, that’s targeting the officers in an effort to force the police chief to step down, saying they’ll kill an officer a day. And they have until recently pretty much carried out that threat. They’ve been killing officers, mostly off duty, which is why they’ve decided when these officers are trying to sleep or get some rest they’re gonna put them in these guarded hotels.

Werman: So how is this working? How many hotels are being used and how crowded are the rooms?

Kocherga: Well, they’re being very secretive about how many hotels, but it’s pretty easy to tell as you drive around which ones. We went to one called Del Rio, which is housing a majority, a big chunk of the police force, not all of them. And the officers you know, they’ve got heavily guarded officers standing outside, so you can pretty much tell where they are. The officers told me, and they were reluctant to speak openly about this, that they’re being crowded into as many as seven per room. And of course, these are officers that have homes and families, so they’re unhappy about being stuck in hotels.

Werman: Well, I was gonna say, presumably it’s not hard for the cartels to find out where these police officers homes are, what about the families of the police men and women? They must be as concerned, maybe even more so than the police who are in the hotels.

Kocherga: Yeah, definitely, some of the police officers that I spoke to said they were dealing with just the day to day childcare, which they’re also worried about their families; that the cartels have great intelligence. They can certainly track down the family members. They also seem to think that some of the killings are targeted. One police officer I talked to had been stopped on the way home; her path had been blocked. She had been hit with the butt of an AK47, had a big bruise on her forehead, but she said when she explained who she was the hit man seemed to understand she wasn’t their target and they moved on to another person.

Werman: You know, the drug cartels are not known for being timid, is there a concern they’d actually try and attack any of these hotels if they found out where they were?

Kocherga: They probably know where they are. They seem to have been kind of a hit you know, kind of surprise attacks, so it would be hard to come upon one of these hotels with all the guards outside and attack. They tend to attack when they cops’ guards are down. They look for opportunities. The other morning we had some police officers at a gas station filling up right near a substation and that’s when they came under fire. And actually, the gunman tossed a grenade at the officers. It failed to detonate, so you didn’t have a big explosion, but you did have a firefight; three gunmen killed and three officers injured, and a suspect taken into custody.

Werman: Angela, I was reading that the cartel gets it messages out using giant banners. What do they look like and where do they hang them?

Kocherga: This is very common throughout Mexico and utilized by different cartels. It’s been a very effective way to send out a message to the government, to law enforcement, to their rival cartels and to the general public. And these are just big banners they unfurl, handwritten with messages, usually very targeted, very directed. The most recent ones, there were allegedly 10 banners out there throughout Juarez hung in public places, directed at the police chief, saying they’re pretty much gonna kill an officer a day until he steps down. Now, just so you know, that technique, that threat did work on the previous police chief. He did leave. He left and it took a while to get this new police chief and he has vowed he will not leave his job, he will not bow down to threats.

Werman: Angela Kocherga, border bureau chief for Belo News, just back from Cuidad Juarez, thank you very much for your time.

Kocherga: Thank you.

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The lawmakers had to act after months of public demonstrations brought thousands of Indians into the streets to protest government graft.

Meanwhile anti-corruption activist in India, Anna Hazare began a three-day hunger strike, his third this year. He has been campaigning for a stronger law to check corruption than the one being debated in India’s parliament.

Anchor Lisa Mullins talks to Vikas Bajaj, a New York Times correspondent who was present at a rally in Mumbai Tuesday. He tells why this is such an emotive issue in the country.

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Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston. The lower house of the Indian parliament passed a bill today to create and anti-corruption ombudsman. The lawmakers pretty much had to act after months of public demonstrations brought tens of thousands of Indians onto the streets to protest government graft. Meanwhile a prominent opponent of the bill began a three-day fast in Mumbai. Anna Hazare is demanding much tougher legislation. New York Times Mumbai correspondent Vikas Bajaj was at the protest rally that Hazare organized. What is the nature of the protests that pressured the government?

Vikas Bajaj: The nature of the protests is rallies around Mr. Hazare when he’s fasting. There are also rallies in the streets from time to time. It’s not you know, it’s nothing compared to what we saw in the Arab Spring, but there have been many instances now this year of people coming out into the streets and thousands to protest corruption. Indians see corruption sort of in their everyday lives, although it’s unclear whether that’s what’s motivating them or whether it’s the large corruption scandals that have been uncovered this year related to telecom licenses and the Commonwealth Games that were held last year.

Mullins: Describe both of those for us. What happened on a mega level and then what’s happening individually in terms of people’s lives and that’s certainly not new.

Bajaj: At the mega level there were these telecom licenses that were given out in 2008 and a government audit found that perhaps as much as $40 billion in revenues was lost because the licenses were given out in a first come, first served basis, rather than being auctioned as they would’ve been say in the United States. The assumption is many officials were paid off to rid the licenses in such a way that certain favored companies got them. In the Commonwealth Games, this was the big games held last year, that a lot of equipment and construction was done at really inflated prices. And there are people in jail in both of these scandals who are awaiting trial.

Mullins: How about on the micro level, how corruption still reaches down to the people?

Bajaj: So the micro level, you know, the corruption that most people are really upset about is the corruption that involves police officers for instance, you know, you have to bribe them when they stop you for traffic infractions, or you have to bribe them to register a complaint. If you want to get what’s called a ration card, which is a card that essentially allows you to buy food at a subsidized rate you have to pay somebody off. If you want to get a passport you have to pay usually the passport office and then the police officer who comes to check.

Mullins: So, this activist is as you said on his third hunger strike of the year, Anna Hazare, how is he doing physically by the way?

Bajaj: His aids say that he is ill. He’s got a virus infection, and they say that he already hasn’t been eating for two days, and he’s been on medication. One of them when I was there at the rally today said that he asked him to at least have some fruit so that he’d recover some strength, but he appears not to heed that advice.

Mullins: Vikas Bajaj of the New York Times in Mumbai, thank you very much.

Bajaj: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

What made it distinctly Indian was one of the figures at the center of the protest: a bare-chested yoga guru named Baba Ramdev who undertook a public fast. (The other central figure was–and remains–the social activist Anna Hazare.)

These days stories from India tend to be about the country’s technology-driven charge into the 21st century, powered by an army of web gurus.

In contrast, the notion of spiritual gurus conjures the image of hermits living in the mountains, or bearded sages from the sixties living in remote ashrams.

So how did they become some of India’s most powerful figures?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is one of India’s most visible gurus. He displays all the hallmarks of the Indian guru: He’s childlike, he giggles; there’s flowing hair and simple robes.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

Don’t confuse Sri Sri Ravi Shankar with Ravi Shankar the sitar player. This one leads an international non-profit organization called The Art of Living: it aims to create a world free from violence by eliminating stress.

But the guru says he’s also obliged to speak out on Indian politics, for instance corruption. “Spiritual leaders cannot sit back and say this is not my area. They have to take action. They have the role of reformers, not rulers, but they will have to have a say.”

They already do have a say.

When Baba Ramdev arrived for his anti-corruption fast in Delhi, Indian government ministers took the time to meet him at the airport. That’s a lot of political bowing and scraping for someone unelected. And it provoked a degree of soul-searching in the Indian media.

On Indian TV commentators wondered if the likes of Baba Ramdev were indeed more like politicians than gurus. Was it, they asked, for him to be weighing in on complicated national issues such as corruption?

The consensus is that spiritual leaders like Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar have managed to do what India’s political leaders have so far not: capture the hearts and minds of many in India’s growing middle-class.

Ramnath Narayanswamy is a professor of management at a Bangalore business college. He teaches a course called ‘Spirituality for Global Managers’.

“I think India’s unique contribution to world civilization is precisely what we call in Sanskrit a ‘guru shishya parampara’, the relationship between a master and his disciple” he says.

Ramnath Narayanswamy's ring bears the image of his guru (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

That master-disciple relationship still resonates throughout Indian society–from the office to the school to the ashram. Pair a genuine teacher with a committed student and knowledge will flow.

Narayanswamy met his own guru on July 28th, 2007.

“It was an enormous outpouring of love,” he remembers.

Narayanswamy says his guru has spiritual powers beyond rational understanding.

“As soon as I approached he seemed to know everything about me. In about three minutes he told me my whole life. He knew everything. If there’s a scratch on your body, he’d know about it. And he’s never wrong.”

But millions of Indians–especially young Indians–aren’t so comfortable with that degree of belief.

Young professionals like Nandini Rao are members of the secular global community. She’s a brand manager for an IT company in Bangalore. But she’s also Indian.

“At one level we feel very educated, all of us are traveling across the globe,” she says.

“But at the same time there is a conflict.. How much of a connection should I have to my Indian roots?”

The problem is that, as India’s middle class has grown, its Indian roots have become harder to grasp.

In a city like Bangalore, people don’t know their neighbors any more. They’re unhappy with their careers, or their appearance. They’re money-conscious and time-poor.

So what do you do?

Well therapy’s out, says Sumit Acharya, another IT worker. This is India, after all.

“If somebody wants to go and talk to a psychologist it will be considered a negative in the society,” he argues.

“But if somebody goes and meets the gurus, [it] will be considered a very positive step forward.”

So you’ve got a growing Indian middle class that’s feeling cut off from its roots. And you’ve got this cultural ideal of the master-disciple relationship. Put the two together and you get some pretty fertile soil for an enterprising guru.

A bearded sage by the name of Sadhguru appears on giant billboards throughout Bangalore. He’s developed a philosophy designed to appeal to tech-savvy Indians. It’s called ‘Inner Engineering’.

A Bangalore billboard promoting 'Inner Engineering' (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

Sadhguru is a kind of life coach as much as anything else.

“Engineering fundamentally means to create situations the way we want it. But our inner situations are not the way we want it.”

He sells DVDs and self-help books alongside his Inner Engineering course. The profits, his foundation says, help fund charitable projects in rural India.

But even if the motives of Sadhguru and others are humanitarian, the sheer scale of their operations makes others uneasy. Ramachandra Guha is a well-known Indian author and columnist.

“Historically and traditionally, spirituality has been associated with solitude, with a retreat from the world,” he says.

“It’s rather difficult for someone like me to think of such a guru who’s interested in brand strategy and brand marketing and expanding his empire. But that’s how many Indian gurus are today.”

Some say many of today’s gurus are something else: corrupt.

Sathya Sai Baba, who died earlier this year, was one of India’s most powerful and revered spiritual leaders.

He built schools, hospitals, and transformed his own village into a thriving city. But over the years, he was also publicly accused of money-laundering, fraud and sexual abuse–charges he always denied. And after his death, large amounts of cash, gold and silver were found in his private quarters.

For Ranji David, an IT training manager, he was just one of many gurus who didn’t live up to their billing.

“What makes it frustrating for the urban youth is that every time these babajis come it’s good work and you know packaged really well. But somewhere down the line they get exposed.”

So how can Indians today tell the difference between the fraud and the teacher worth following? It’s an important question, not just for India’s spiritual life, but for its political future too.

One straightforward answer came from, as it happened, another guru–a clean-shaven man named Eswaran. He lives with his wife in a small apartment near the center of Bangalore.

Vedanta guru Eswaran at home in Bangalore (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

“When it comes to the teaching of the master, you [must] go extremely critical,” he says.

“You’ve got to be doubting, doubting, questioning, questioning, questioning.”

In other words, don’t forget to use your brain.

“God has given intellect to human being[s], right. For what? To think.”

Good advice in any age.

But the growing turmoil in the country cannot be good for the Assad regime.

The violence is depressing Syria’s economy, which in turn is diminishing the regime’s income and its ability to keep the money flowing to supporters.

Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks to Alastair Smith, professor of politics at New York University.

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Lisa Mullins: So far the Syrian government has refused to yield to the demands of its opponents. The growing turmoil in the country is not helpful to the Assad regime; for one thing, the violence depresses Syria’s economy and that in turn diminishes the regime’s income and it’s ability to keep the money flowing to supporters. Syria is considered one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Alastair Smith is a co-author of an article about this in Foreign Policy magazine. He’s also a professor of politics at New York University. You say in the article you believe that reform in Syria is inevitable. How come?

Alastair Smith: Well, leaders often get themselves into trouble, dictatorial leaders, when they can no longer promise to keep paying their backers. So Assad is very similar to many dictators where he relies upon a few thousand key supporters, several thousand key supporters, and he needs to be able to reward them well and he needs to be able to pay the military. If he doesn’t have the money to do that they’re gonna turn to the next person who they think can. His big problem those is oil is no longer the lifeblood of the regime, and so he has to find a source of income, and this is increasingly been taxation. The economy is growing well over the last 5-10 years, but the trouble with liberalizing the economy is it frees up the people to protest against it.

Mullins: At the same time the people are protesting in part because of what he has been and his government have been doing, allegedly killing an estimated 5,000 people.

Smith: Right, but here it all comes down to money. He would like to keep repressing the people, but he’s gotta be able to pay. The fact that with the repression going on the economy is stagnating, it’s going to make it harder and harder to keep paying that wage bill to keep his supporters happy.

Mullins: So you’re saying that you know, despite the fact that we think of him as a dictator, he is sort of the titan of a company. He needs a small but loyal bunch of people around him to survive, and therefore, he needs the money to pay those people. How specifically does he keep them happy? How does it work?

Smith: You’ve hit the nail on the head. So we like to think of people, of dictators, they have this sort of omnipotent power and they dictate everything in their country, but the reality is you need people to carry out operations. You need people to run security forces. You need people to run the courts, have people arrested, run public policy, sort of a very opaque country. It’s a very opaque country for a reason, is the rewarding of 3,000-4,000 people you do through bribery, corruption, grafts, privilege to the few, at the expense of the many. This is how the regime survives.

Mullins: It sounds like he would have to be thinking logically, and from the international perspective he doesn’t seem to be thinking that way at all.

Smith: Oh, I completely beg to differ. So, this is a classic thing is that we accuse leaders of being crazy, whether it’s the recently departed Kim Jung Il, Saddam Hussein, we accuse these leaders of being crazy. But they’re not crazy, these are people who’ve come to power and have held power for a really long time. They know what they’re doing. What they’re doing is finding ways to reward the few, find out through crazy policies, find out who’s actually really behind them, who is really loyal and who thinks that they would like to switch to another leader.

Mullins: At the same time though how is it in his interest to keep having his supporters attacking their people? How does that reward him?

Smith: He has to keep those around him loyal and if that means making the lives of the people miserable, that’s what he’s gonna do. We shouldn’t infer that he’s crazy because he makes the people suffer, which infers a good leader because he makes the people suffer.

Mullins: What’s the timeline in your view here? How long do you think he has before reform happens whether or not he likes it, and whether or not Syrians even believe in that reform?

Smith: Well, I think that we’re looking sort of 3-4 years down the line. I mean I see in the short term he manages to hold it all together because the likes of Iran and Iraq are funneling money to him in the billions of dollars of aid. There’s lot of investment going in in trade. Should any of those resources dry up then we’re gonna find that he’s no longer gonna be able to payoff his cronies, and the only way then at that point is to actually reform.

Mullins: Alastair Smith is co-author of the book, The Dictator’s Handbook, and he cowrote Assessing Assad in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Thanks a lot.

Smith: Thank you.

Mullins: You can find more of our in-depth coverage of the unrest in Syria and get the latest news from our partners at the BBC through the weekend; it’s all at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

However, Ortega was on the ballot in defiance of a constitutional ban on the re-election of sitting presidents. In fact, his refusal to step down has critics comparing Ortega to the Somoza dictatorship, which ruled Nicaragua for 43 years.

As a guerrilla leader, Ortega helped topple the Somoza regime in 1979 and his Sandinista government confiscated all of the Somoza’s land and businesses.

But one member of the Somoza dynasty has since returned to Nicaragua in a quest to rehabilitate his family’s name.

Alvaro Somoza takes me on a tour of what was once the presidential palace, where he grew up.

“This is where I took accordion lessons as a kid,” he said.

Somoza is the son of Luis Somoza, the second of three Somoza dictators who ruled Nicaragua between 1936 and 1979.

By all accounts Luis Somoza was the best of the three Somoza rulers.

“My father started the social security system in this country,” Alvaro said. “The minimum wage was established by my father; the labor code, the right to syndicate. I could go on and on and on and on.”

But Luis Somoza died of a heart attack in 1967 and his younger brother, Anastasio, who was commander of the country’s military, took over. Anastasio Somoza’s corruption, massive wealth and violent crackdowns on the opposition helped fuel the Sandinista revolution.

Shortly before his uncle was overthrown, Alvaro Somoza, who was then 27, fled Managua aboard his Cessna airplane.

“I managed to get to the airport with an overnight bag for three or four days, hoping that the shooting would be over,” he said. “I got in my 1-85 and flew to El Salvador, and I never came back. The shooting never stopped.”

Alvaro Somoza resettled in Florida where he sold luxury cars and started one of the state’s largest landscape nurseries.

After the Sandinistas were voted out of office in 1990, he became the first Somoza to return to Nicaragua. By then, the Sandinistas had torn down the statue to his father. They also rechristened hospitals and schools built by the Somozas with revolutionary names. Luis Somoza’s former mansion now houses the defense ministry, and it was renamed after a Sandinista guerrilla leader.

According to the guard at the gate, “This was part of the Somoza dynasty and when they were defeated, many things had to be changed, including the names of buildings and anything else that smelled of Somoza.”

The Somoza name remains so controversial that Alvaro has had no luck in persuading the government to return a confiscated cement company and other businesses and properties that he says were legitimately acquired by his family.

Still, Alvaro Somoza, who is now 59 and makes a living running fruit farms in Nicaragua, is well received by many older people who remember his father.

Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, but in the 1960s when Luis Somoza ruled the country, Nicaragua boasted one of the fastest growing economy in Latin America.

“I knew Alvaro’s father,” said Alberto Quiroz, a 64-year-old security guard. “He would sit down and talk to average people. He was an excellent president, one of the best.”

Hoping to trade in on that nostalgia, Alvaro Somoza has jumped into politics. He was campaign manager for presidential candidate Enrique Quiñones, who finished far behind Ortega in Sunday’s election. Alvaro Somoza is also considering running for mayor of Managua, or even president, in 2016.

As for whether his name would be a liability, Somoza said he thinks it would help.

“People in Nicaragua are clearly aware that they were taken for a ride in 1979, a communist ride that promised everything and delivered little or nothing.”

But economist Mario Flores, who worked in both the Somoza and Sandinista governments, said Alvaro would face long odds because Nicaraguan history books focus on the corruption and human rights violations of the Somoza family dictatorship.

Ironically, Alvaro Somoza now sees many similarities between his Uncle Anastasio, known as “Tacho,” who was overthrown by the Sandinistas, and Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, who used dubious legal maneuvers so he could run for a third term in Sunday’s presidential election.

“Though my family did a lot of good things, they made a lot of mistakes,” Somoza said. “Not only that, but I go further to tell the current politicians: ‘Don’t make those same mistakes yourself.’ The last one, I’m telling President Ortega on a regular basis: ‘What is it that you don’t realize. Continuity is not something these people want. Didn’t you understand what happened to Uncle Tacho?’”

But things have gotten bad enough for the head of Italian bishops Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco to speak in unusually frank language.

Bagnasco denounced “behaviour that is contrary to public dignity.” Not to mention “intrinsically sad and vacuous.”

The cardinal added that this moral issue isn’t a media invention — A veiled reference to Berlusconi’s habit of blaming the media for everything from a bad economy to charges he paid for sex with an underage woman.

Bagnasco’s comments came just as Berlusconi is embroiled in yet another sex scandal — this one involving a scheme to recruit and pay young women to attend parties at the prime minister’s villas.

The Catholic Church has long remained mostly silent regarding the private lives of Italian politicians, in part because the church routinely lobbies those politicians for support.

“The church has been reluctant to break that tradition also because the Berlusconi coalition has been very favorable to the church on a number of key issues that are key to the bishops,” Vatican expert Francis X. Rocca said.

Those issues include gay marriage, in vitro fertilization and euthanasia — all opposed by the Church and Berslusconi.

Rocca says the church voicing its unhappiness with the prime minister now could have real political consequences.

“Some of Berlusconi’s most stalwart supporters are church-going Catholics, which may be ironic given his own libertine lifestyle,” Rocca said. “But polls show they’re overwhelmingly Berlusconi’s supporters. This is signal to surely to some of them that this guy’s out of favor and could erode important element of base or scare centre-right into moving more quickly to find another leader.”

And it’s not just church-going Catholics who may be straying from Berlusconi’s side. Political analyst Roberto D’Alimonte says Italy’s largest business lobby group is starting to distance itself from him too.

“In the last few weeks, the leader of Confindustria, who is a woman, Mrs Marcegaglia, has consistently criticized the government for inaction, for not having fulfilled promises that it was voted in for,” D’Alimonte said. “This has been very consistent, very loud and very critical. Which to me means this important segment of Berlusconi coalition has decided to turn against him.”

Losing the support of business leaders is a serious blow — just when Italy is under pressure to shore up its finances to avoid a Greece-like meltdown.

D’Alimonte says Italy’s no-growth economy and crippling debt could be the issues that bring Berlsuconi down.

“The economic situation is key, not the judicial charges,” D’Alimonte said. “Berlusconi has coexisted with judicial charges for 20 years. What makes it more difficult for him is the impact of the economic crisis. And today I think with some degree of caution, we can say we’re approaching the end of Berlusconi era. But still it’s hard to see Berlusconi exit from the scene.”

That’s because there’s still no viable alternative to Berlsusconi — either within the prime minister’s coalition — or among the opposition. Despite all the scandals, Italy’s fractious center-left has yet to produce a leader that disenchanted Berlusconi supporters would consider voting for.

When a mass movement emerged in Mexico this spring calling for a change of strategy in the drug war, a single image consistently appeared in the protests; the word “no” with a plus sign and a blood stain. It reads No Mas Sangre or No More Blood.

The emblem comes from a graphic campaign launched in January by a group of Mexican political cartoonists.

Cartoonist José Hernández says the campaign was the idea of Rius – the pen name of Eduardo del Rio – who urged his cartoonist colleagues to focus their criticism on the bloodshed. Hernandez says an immediate goal of the campaign was to change the media discourse on the issue of drug war violence.

For years, the dominant narrative – supported by official statements – was that 90 percent of the dead were linked to organized crime. Innocent murder victims were often downplayed as “collateral damage”.

But a major shift in public perception of just who the victims are came in March after the massacre of seven youths in Cuernavaca. One of the young men was the son of recognized poet Javier Sicilia. Within a week , the poet was helping to lead a nationwide protest movement that criticized both cartel violence and the government’s militarized strategy.

The critical groundwork laid by the cartoonists was evident, not only in the presence of the “no more blood” logo, but also in the views of some of the protestors.

At one rally, a retired woman named Winny carried a protest sign critical of mass media coverage in Mexico. She named the bimonthly political cartoon magazine “El Chamuco” as her preferred media. She says she feels avenged in the cartoons and that the information given in them is clear, concise, and precise – as well as a historical documentation.

As a hybrid of journalism and art, political cartoons rely on symbols and exaggeration to get their point across. This is perhaps why cartoonists are able to communicate certain ideas that print journalists either avoid or only touch on with subtleties.

“In Mexico, the language of politics and journalism is very cryptic,” says cartoonist Antonio Helguera. “If you don’t already have a background in the given subject, it’s very difficult to understand what’s happening. I think, that’s why so many people distance themselves from politics. In my own experience, I found that when I opened newspapers, the key to unlocking the messages were the cartoons. If you go by what the newspapers tell you directly, the messages are empty. Cartoons provide the keys to decode these messages.”

The drug war in Mexico has claimed well over 40,000 lives. Some estimates now put the toll at 50,000. Using a humorous medium like cartoons to address such a deadly issue can seem like walking a fine line, but Helguera says the limits are clear.

“We don’t direct our work against the victims of this war. We’re not laughing at them at all – quite the opposite. We focus our ridicule on the creators and promoters of this war. I’m referring to (President) Calderón and the secretaries of the armed forces and marines, the chief of the federal police and all those people. It’s against them. Therefore, there’s no risk of it turning into ridicule of victims because we never direct our criticisms against them – not even in the cases in which the victims were probably criminals – because, in the end, they’re dead. It’s just something you don’t do.”

Aside from covering current events, Mexican cartoonists have also assumed the role of popular educators. Mexico’s most influential cartoonist, Rius, has authored and illustrated more than a hundred books on topics that include philosophy, political theory and history – with a knack for making dense subject matter easily digestible.

In his 50-plus-year-career, Rius has earned a certain celebrity status within Mexico. A recent book signing in Mexico City drew a crowd of close to a thousand readers who lined up around the block.

Laura Flores – who stood in line for an hour and a half to have her book signed – says three generations of her family read and enjoy the works of Rius. She describes his books on Mexico in particular as excellent alternatives to the views and information available on television.

It’s precisely this type of education and self-awareness that cartoonist José Hernández says he hopes for as a larger outcome of the “No More Blood” campaign “because a society that’s informed and organized is less susceptible to manipulation and abuse.”

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MARCO WERMAN: In Mexico, authorities today announced the arrest of five people suspected in the deadly arson attack on a Monterrey casino last week. As we reported Friday, the attack left 52 people dead and shocked a nation already used to grizzly drug-related violence. We’re going to get a quick update now on the story from reporter Franc Contreras in Mexico City. Frank, first, what do we know about who it was that set fire to the casino and why they did it?

FRANC CONTRERAS: Well, at this stage, Marco, the governor of the state of Nuevo Leon where the attack took place is telling us that these men are believed to belong to the Cintas drug trafficking organization. They were part of the gulf cartel years ago, broke away. they were elite forces with the Mexican army and now have their own drug trafficking and criminal organization.

WERMAN: Mexicans have reacted with greater indignation than usual over this attack. There was a big protest in Monterrey over the weekend. What were the protestors actually demanding?

CONTRERAS: Well, they’re actually demanding that that governor himself and the mayor of Monterrey step down from their offices. They say that the state, in particular that very important northern industrial city, has been essentially under attack by two drug trafficking cartels battling each other for control of that very big market, a place where a lot of people are starting to use cocaine and other illegal drugs, but it’s also a very important drug shipping route to the United States into the southern part of Texas to the highways heading north. So the people are very angry. They want to see something done. The first thing they want to see is that these two major politicians resign their posts.

WERMAN: Right. Those protestors want the Monterrey mayor and the governor of Nuevo Leon out. What about President Felipe Calderon? How does this effect him?

CONTRERAS: Well, one year away from presidential elections 2012, he knows that his government is being seriously criticized for this ongoing policy of using the force of the state to fight drug cartels. We now have more than 40,000 drug-related deaths since Calderon took office in December of 2006, Marco. He’s doing everything he can to try to convince the population here that the government will protect them, but people seriously have their doubts.

WERMAN: Correspondent Franc Contreras in Mexico City. Thanks very much, Frank.

CONTRERAS: Thank you Marco.

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Marco Werman: I am Marco Werman, this is The World. Mexico is in mourning for the next three days. President Felipe Calderon made the official proclamation today. He did so in a speech condemning the killing of 52 people in a fire at a casino in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey. The fire was no accident. Suspected drug cartel gunmen stormed the casino then poured gasoline and set the building ablaze. Correspondent Franc Contreras is in Monterrey. He was outside the casino today when President Calderon paid a visit.

Franc Contreras: The Mexican President showed up in a helicopter, got out in a very solemn black-colored suit. The President came with the First Lady and set out a wreath right in front of the building that I am looking at now. You can see it’s completely charred and destroyed.

Werman: Now, in a televised nationwide address President Calderon said, “We are not confronting common criminals, we are facing true terrorists.” Apparently, the use of the word terrorist there is a highly charged word and one that Mr. Calderon doesn’t use. That must be pretty significant.

Contreras: That’s right. That is a new, sort of, language style from the President now who has been fighting this drugs war since his presidency began in late December 2006. You really have never heard him use that kind of language – “terrorism,” “acts of terrorism” – up until this point. And so, now the President is starting to edge toward that sort of political rhetoric on the situation. The President is clearly concerned about the kind of attacks that are starting to take place on more of a common basis now, a more widespread basis. Locations where citizens…civilians were not directly involved with the drugs war are now becoming the victims of it. And so, the President wants to avoid that; he knows that that could actually create political problems for his campaign to fight the drug traffickers.

Werman: Now from his vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, President Obama offered condolences and said America’s thoughts and prayers were with the victims and their families. But President Calderon, in his comments today, lashed out at the U.S. What is the source of his anger?

Contreras: Well President Felipe Calderon, in a very indignant speech also made on national television, said that, essentially, those who share a part of the blame are illegal drug users in the United States. He said people there who are using drugs and don’t make the connection to the use of drugs and then this kind of violence, they are just not getting it. He says that until those people really start to understand it – by using illegal substances and by purchasing them in the United States, they’re actually fueling the violence. So you could hear the Mexican President quite upset and aiming that directly at drug users in the United States.

Werman: We should remind listeners too Franc, that Monterrey isn’t some sleepy town. It’s a modern metropolis and has been enjoying a kind of renaissance in recent years. A $2.5 million reward is being offered for the capture of those behind the attack. Any idea who the authorities think might be involved?

Contreras: The authorities are investigating the possibility of one of two major drug cartels that might be involved in this, Marco. The Gulf Cartel has been battling for control of this major city, as you point out. This is the third largest city in Mexico and one of the largest in Latin America. It’s a location where major companies are based and it’s a place where a lot of money exists, and so, they’ve been battling for control of this location here. Because it’s close to the U.S./Mexico border, it’s an important shipping route. But it’s also a place where a great number of people are starting to use illegal drugs here as well, and so, it’s a lucrative market. So, it’s the Gulf Cartel battling its arch rivals the Zetas Cartel – those are a group of elite soldiers who broke away from the Mexican government and joined the ranks of criminal organizations.

Werman: Reporter Franc Contreras in Monterrey, Mexico. Thank you very much indeed, Franc.

Contreras: Thank you, Marco.

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Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. A frail looking 74-year old man is inspiring protests across India today. The man is Anna Hazare. He’s in jail in New Delhi. He’s fasting and he’s refusing to leave jail until authorities allow him to hold a public hunger strike with no conditions attached. To say Hazare has touched a nerve would be an understatement. Thousands of people demonstrated in cities around India today to express their support for him and their anger at their government. The BBC’s Rahul Tandon was standing amid hundreds of Hazare supporters in Calcutta today when we reached him, earlier on.

Rahul Tandon: In front of me many of them are wearing those famous Gandhi hats. They’re lighting candles at the moment, that they are holding, in the air. They’ve been here for hours today. They’re shouting patriotic slogans and many of them say they won’t leave this place until Anna Hazare leaves jail in Delhi.

Mullins: It seems as though, since Anna Hazare has been incarcerated in jail, that the protests have grown. Is that the case?

Tandon: Absolutely. I was down here yesterday in the center of Calcutta and there were a few people on the street. Across this city today there are hundreds of people gathering at different locations. Across India there are thousands of people who are gathering across different locations. I think it helps to understand that here in India, corruption has almost become a part of life. You look at every single opinion poll that is done with the youth of this country, and they say the number one issue that faces them is corruption. I think what we’re seeing is people now standing up in a peaceful way, in a Gandhian way, and saying to the government they want things to change. They are not prepared to tolerate this any longer. The key question is whether the officials in Delhi will listen to the people in front of me.

Mullins: I want to ask you about the leadership in Delhi, but first, when you say corruption has become part of life, give me an example of that.

Tandon: Anything you want to do. I sat with an elderly couple this morning. They were telling me when they were trying to get their son into school, you have to pay a bribe. When you want to get a good job in a government service, you have to pay a bribe. I was in Aslam (???) earlier today, talking to some youngsters there who wanted to become police officers. They say to get those jobs they have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars. And that means that when they become police officers, they have to become corrupt themselves so that they can pay that money back. It is in almost every form of Indian life. I think it was best summed up by an older man who is in the protest behind me, who said it is now a cancer that has affected the bones of every Indian.

Mullins: And Delhi itself, how is it responding to this? Because we should say that there seems to be a disconnect, at least from the outside here, because everybody who we are hearing in the background now is protesting for an end to corruption, and the government in New Delhi has said it is indeed addressing the corruption problem. So what’s the disconnect there?

Tandon: I think it’s the way that the protestors behind me want to tackle corruption. They follow Anna Hazare, this man who comes from Maharashtra, in western India, a man who follows those Gandhian ideals. He wants a bill placed in Parliament, basically setting up an ombudsman who can go in and check up on corruption and take action. The government says there are systems in place at the moment. They’re not working, but it’s a question of fixing the existing systems rather than following the will of one man. I think the disconnect has come from the fact that while the government doesn’t seem to realize this, this is not the voice of one man. This is the voice of millions of Indians who are speaking with him at the moment. Though I have to say there are some who say this is a middle class movement, and it has not as yet inspired the whole country – the taxi drivers, the rickshaw wallahs – those who are at the bottom of society.

Mullins: The BBC’s Rahul Tandon speaking to us from Calcutta, where demonstrations are going on in support of Anna Hazare, the 74-year old anti-corruption campaigner who is on a hunger strike to protest corruption. Thank you very much, Rahul.

Tandon: Thank you very much.

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Rahul Tandon spoke with some of the people protesting in support of Hazare:

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston.  India’s leading anti-corruption activist was taken to jail today.  Anna Hazare was later ordered released, but he refuses to leave. Hazare was arrested this morning just as he was about to start a well-publicized hunger strike against government corruption in India.  And his campaign has caught on with Indians who are fed up with back to back scandals. The BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder is in Delhi.

Sanjoy Majumder: Well, for several months now Anna Hazare has been campaigning very hard on the issue of corruption.  Now, this is something that many Indians identify with, from the smallest service to some of the biggest scandals everything in this country involves paying a bribe.  Whether it’s trying to get a drivers license, a new passport, the amounts could be small, the amounts could be spectacular if it involves a massive government contract.  The fact is almost everyone has experienced it, which is why the scent of disgust is so high. Now, Mr. Hazare has been campaigning for new legislation to make it much difficult or much tougher for people to be corrupt, especially those holding high office.  And the governments refuse to concede this point.  They’ve tried to bring in new legislation, but Mr. Hazare says whatever they’re trying to do is simply not strong enough.

Mullins: He kind of postures himself as sort of a modern day Gandhi, he was arrested just before going on a hunger strike.  He wears this white shirt, hat and glasses.  Is this kind of an intentional parallel that he’s drawing?

Majumder: Well, even if it is not intentional I think it’s a parallel that has already been made and that he’s quite aware of.  It’s not just the way he looks, but also the method in his protests.  Gandhi was the one who started hunger strikes and passive non-resistance, that was his tool against the colonial British empire.  That is exactly what Mr. Hazare has tried to do. There were a lot of demonstrations that took place, not just here in Delhi, but across the country.  Many people were arrested, but no one was throwing rocks at the police, no one was resisting arrest forcefully.

Mullins: Sanjoy, one more thing, what’s the Indian government doing when it’s arresting those people who are suspected of corruption and those people who are against corruption?  I mean, what does it have to gain?

Majumder: Well, the sense that most people get is that the government is panicking.  The fact that the government’s attempt at arresting him was to try in some ways to nip it in the bud before it got out of hand has already backfired because every time Mr. Hazare takes a march out in public he’s able to garner widespread public opinion. A lot of the people have come out you know, not necessarily as big supporters of Mr. Hazare, they’re just ordinary Indians — young people, old people, people from middle class communities, people from poorer communities, and a lot of women.  It’s a cross section of Indians who just believe that what happened today was shameful and they’re making sure the government has heard them.

Mullins: All right, the BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi.  Thank you very much, Sanjoy.

Majumder: Okay, thank you.

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