Take SOPA, the “Stop Online Piracy Act,” a bill introduced in the United States House of Representatives last October (and its counterpart bill in the US Senate, called “Protect IP Act”, PIPA.) They are supposed to protect intellectual property. But opponents to the bills argue that it will have a chilling effect on free speech, that it violates the First Amendment of the US constitution (which guarantees freedom of expression to US citizens and is the first of the Bill of Rights), and that it amounts to internet censorship.

To protest SOPA and PIPA (remember that they are bills and are not yet enacted into law), prominent groups and companies are planning on taking action. Google will have something on their main page; Wikipedia will be off-line for 24 hours on Jan 18th; reddit is going down for 12 hours to protest SOPA and PIPA. That all is going on in the US. What’s going on in India?

India is an interesting case. Like that of the US, the government of India depends on a compliant citizenry: people who do as they are told, and to shut up when they are told to STFU. Of course, this is not all that difficult since a majority of Indians have been brainwashed into the belief that the government is a benevolent agency — mai baap — which hands out goodies to favored groups and therefore has to be obeyed. The trouble is (from the government’s point of view) that some people are not very cooperative and insist on exposing the government’s lies. This simply would not do. These people write stuff and say things that could be damaging to the government’s case.

The government has a two-pronged approach to this problem. First, do something about the “demand side.” If people cannot read and write, they are unlikely to be exposed to the truth. The way is therefore to control the education sector and make it dysfunctional enough that even after more than 60 years post independence, about half a billion Indians are illiterate. Destroying the future of the people just to keep them in the dark is one of the greatest crimes that the governments of India have committed against India. The Congress party has directly and indirectly held the reins of government for around 50 years, and mass illiteracy is one of their enduring legacies.

The Indian government has censored news reports, banned books and movies, and made it illegal for people to discuss current affairs on radio. That’s what I call the “supply side” of the matter: make sure that the supply of information is limited to what the government likes. But then came the new threat: the internet and with it access to the world wide web of information.

As long as the internet was just text based, the government was not too worried. What scared them into action was that the internet became multi-media. Not just text, you could watch videos and listen to a variety of opinions, and you did not have to be literate to do so. That, as you can imagine, put a spanner in the carefully designed works of the government to keep the people uninformed through illiteracy.

So here we are. The country is being run by a bunch of crooks, headed nominally by the most despicably dishonest man, the appointed prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. His master is an Italian woman who rules her minions with an iron hand. Among her hand maidens is one Kapil Sibal, a man who is roundly despised and is perhaps a cretin. Sibal is in charge of internet censorship. He regularly tells internet firms to censor content that will damage the carefully built images of his master and her family.

The Center for Internet & Society has an informative article, “Invisible Censorship: How the Government Censors Without Being Seen” by Pranesh Prakash (dateline Dec 15, 2011.) Here’s an extended excerpt:

Government Has Powers to Censor and Already Censors

Currently, the government can either block content by using section 69A of the Information Technology Act (which can be revealed using RTI), or it has to send requests to the Internet companies to get content removed. Google has released statistics of government request for content removal as part of its Transparency Report. While Mr. Sibal uses the examples of communally sensitive material as a reason to force censorship of the Internet, out of the 358 items requested to be removed from January 2011 to June 2011 from Google service by the Indian government (including state governments), only 8 were for hate speech and only 1 was for national security. Instead, 255 items (71 per cent of all requests) were asked to be removed for ‘government criticism’. Google, despite the government in India not having the powers to ban government criticism due to the Constitution, complied in 51 per cent of all requests. That means they removed many instances of government criticism as well.

‘Self-Regulation’: Undetectable Censorship

Mr. Sibal’s more recent efforts at forcing major Internet companies such as Indiatimes, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, to ’self-regulate’ reveals a desire to gain ever greater powers to bypass the IT Act when censoring Internet content that is ‘objectionable’ (to the government). Mr. Sibal also wants to avoid embarrassing statistics such as that revealed by Google’s Transparency Report. He wants Internet companies to ’self-regulate’ user-uploaded content, so that the government would never have to send these requests for removal in the first place, nor block sites officially using the IT Act. If the government was indeed sincere about its motives, it would not be talking about ‘transparency’ and ‘dialogue’ only after it was exposed in the press that the Department of Information Technology was holding secret talks with Internet companies. Given the clandestine manner in which it sought to bring about these new censorship measures, the motives of the government are suspect. Yet, both Mr. Sibal and Mr. Sachin Pilot have been insisting that the government has no plans of Internet censorship, and Mr. Pilot has made that statement officially in the Lok Sabha. This, thus seems to be an instance of censoring without censorship.

Backdoor Censorship through Copyright Act

Further, since the government cannot bring about censorship laws in a straightforward manner, they are trying to do so surreptitiously, through the back door. Mr. Sibal’s latest proposed amendment to the Copyright Act, which is before the Rajya Sabha right now, has a provision called section 52(1)(c) by which anyone can send a notice complaining about infringement of his copyright. The Internet company will have to remove the content immediately without question, even if the notice is false or malicious. The sender of false or malicious notices is not penalized. But the Internet company will be penalized if it doesn’t remove the content that has been complained about. The complaint need not even be shown to be true before the content is removed. Indeed, anyone can complain about any content, without even having to show that they own the rights to that content. The government seems to be keen to have the power to remove content from the Internet without following any ‘due process’ or fair procedure. Indeed, it not only wants to give itself this power, but it is keen on giving all individuals this power.

So what are we going to do about it? We, if we care, should make sure that Manmohan Singh and his cohorts like Kapil Sibal, and their master the Italian Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi, and her puppy are stopped from destroying the nation. Let’s vote them out.

This works since Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi is white and she appears to rule, suitably aided by her minions such as Manmohan Singh and Digvijaya Singh.

argentocracy – government by money

Plausible: the government takes in money through taxes and bribes, and then buys specific vote banks.

barbarocracy – government by barbarians

Definitely. The people at the top are the worst kind of people. Exhibit A: Kapil Sibal.

demonarchy – government by a demon

She Who Must Be Obeyed.

dulocracy – government by slaves

This works if you consider that the whole bunch at the top — Diggy, Manmohan, Sibal, et al — are essentially slaves to the White Woman.

foolocracy – government by fools

Arguably so. Manmohan Singh is a fool. Kapil Sibal is an idiot. And the list goes on. Fools, knaves, thieves, treachers, liars, robbers.

infantocracy – government by an infant

Not yet. But they are trying. Amul Baby, Pappu, etc.

millionocracy – government by millionaires

Not true because those in high places are billionaires — the money stolen from the people they rule over.

pollarchy – government by the multitude or a mob

Not quite. Anna Hazare is pushing for this, though.

xenocracy – government by a body of foreigners

India has had this kind of government for the longest period. Indeed so long that became a sort of a habit with some Indians. They had to go get an uneducated Italian to rule over them. Oh the crying shame.

And finally, the one that I like the best:

kakistocracy – government by the least principled and the most corrupt

India is a kakistocracy.

Alright, let’s quote Kishwar:

People attribute his pliability to the fact that the prime minister was appointed and not elected. He has never won a Lok Sabha election. But that cannot be used as an excuse to justify overlooking such gross mismanagement and loot as well as the political drift one witnesses even in areas involving national security.

In fact, his defeat in the one and only election he ever fought is related to his lack of personal integrity. He was defeated in the predominantly middle-class South Delhi constituency because people in general and Sikhs in particular were enraged when Manmohan Singh denied the role of the Congress in the 1984 anti Sikh carnage and instead attributed the 1984 massacre to the RSS. The RSS may well be guilty of many other communal riots but the ” credit” for the 1984 massacre goes entirely to Congress politicians, including Rajiv Gandhi who even justified the killings saying: “when a big tree falls, the earth is bound to shake.” The Congress Party also ensured that those who masterminded and executed the 1984 pogrom did not get punished.

Manmohan Singh is a crook par excellence. The perfect criminal is one who commits a crime that is not even known to have occurred. Manmohan Singh is a great criminal since he is not even a suspect in the on-going crimes against India.

A PM who compromises national interest, as in Kashmir, just to indulge the personal fancy of the PM in waiting, a PM who looks the other way while his Cabinet colleagues brazenly loot public funds and get away with extorting thousands of crores by way of kickbacks, a PM who is widely perceived and lampooned as a “rubber stamp” does not merit being called “an honest man” or a “man of integrity” because integrity in his job demands putting national interest above partisan politics and personal loyalties. Integrity also involves taking full responsibility for all his acts of commission and omission which have earned UPA II the dubious distinction of being publicly named as the most corrupt and rudderless government in post independence India

Wake up, India, and realize that Manmohan Singh is a criminal who is helping the other criminals (his bosses) loot India.

[Hat tip: Raja Sekhar Malapati for the link to the Kishwar article.]

Fighting to lose it all

The central leadership on the other hand seems busy consuming large quantities of the party symbol, the lotus. In history, leaders change in every institution and new groups are born. Institutions that succeed do not cast earlier mentors into political winter, especially in a summer of discontent— mainly because experience guides enthusiasm. Mysteriously, the BJP headquarters has discarded the authors of the party’s popular, ideological and strategic prominence— Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh and Arun Shourie. Once a party of titans, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee who was never afraid to speak his mind and encouraged a spirit of civilised dissent within the party, these senior leaders have been sidelined because they refuse to be part of any group and possess independent minds. Gadkari’s biggest challenge is how to manage the cabals within. In Delhi, the duel between the two Opposition Leaders in Parliament—Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj—continue to cause discomfort in the party rank and file. Political hostilities in Maharashtra went national when the BJP’s Deputy Leader of the Opposition Gopinath Munde rebelled against party chief Gadkari—an old Maharashtra hand—only to arrive at an uneasy truce.

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The satrap strife in the saffron party might end in the BJP squandering away a great opportunity to shape up as a credible alternative to the Congress, whose image has been battered by scams. . .

If that article is to be believed — and I don’t see any reason for it to misrepresent the facts — then the infighting within the New Delhi leadership of the BJP must be something unbelievable. The BJP’s ability to mount a successful (and sorely needed) opposition to the misrule of the Congress is inversely related to the degree of infighting within the BJP. The Congress party must be rubbing its hands with glee at the sorry spectacle.

What the BJP needs — and indeed what India needs — is a real leader. Someone who has the vision and the ability to motivate Indians to make India a nation of winners, not an India where the so-called leaders are whining toadies that the Congress party has promoted for so long.

While the first part of the Express Buzz article is depressing as all hell, the second part focuses on a hopeful sign for India. (It is a curiously divided article — it appears to end and then it starts off again.) That hope is a man named Narendra Modi.

His work culture in the party and in the state seems like a plan to establish credentials for a bigger platform—a worry for many in the party. BJP General Secretary Jagat Prakash Nadda says, “When I was with the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), Narendra Modi was the in-charge. He remembers every task given to a BJYM worker, in the same sequence in which it was assigned, even after 20 days and asks for compliance reports.” As Chief Minister, Modi remains always unflappable. His message to the babus is clear: “Work has to be done. If you cannot manage, someone else will do it.”

Many senior BJP leaders feel insecure that at party conclaves, it is Modi who draws the maximum applause from the workers, with nationalist rhetoric and acidic barbs against the Congress. This, perhaps, explains why many BJP bigwigs are busy building bridges with other political parties. Hoping the NDA does well in 2014, the jockeying for support for the prime post has begun—Jaitley is assiduously cultivating Kumar, while Swaraj goes about wooing Jayalalithaa.

At the BJP National Council meeting in Indore in February 2010, when BJP President Nitin Gadkari formally assumed charge, Modi tore apart the UPA Government’s policy on national security, wondering why it was in a hurry to resume a dialogue with Pakistan. “As a mature democracy, there is even greater need to talk to the principal opposition party. Did they ever feel the need to talk to the BJP?”

In the BJP, it seems, the need to talk to Modi isn’t apparent.

I think the time will come when the BJP leadership will have to talk to Narendrabhai Modi. India needs an alternative to the Congress, and Indians don’t need a BJP which is just a Congress B-team. The BJP is the only other national party and it is time it realized that and behaved like one.

Let me conclude by quoting the concluding bit of that article.

Modi’s hits

■ Stable government; Modi is the longest-serving Chief Minister of the BJP
■ Consistently high economic and agricultural growth
■ No communal riots post-2002
■ Vibrant Gujarat summit attracts record investment which shows that Modi enjoys investors’ confidence
■ Administrative efficiency, modernisation
■ Gujarat, rated as best e-governed state, is set to usher in village-level e-governance
■ Swagat online grievance redressal that enables direct communication of citizens with CM besides steps like evening courts, Jyotigram electrification scheme, Kanya Kelavani Yojana have made Modi successful.

If Modi wins, India wins. So all is not lost since Modi will win. Modi has to win because I refuse to believe that India cannot get out of the hole that the Congress has dug for it.

Note “reduce barriers to business and clean up corruption.” Reduce business barriers? OK, the government erects them; only it can remove them. But it does not have an incentive to do so because those in power actually gain from them while the country loses. The story is the same with corruption. Sure the average smalltime crook is into corruption. But for massive multi-tens-of-thousands of crores corruption, you have to be in government. The high level corruption eventually trickles down and gives support to the petty corruption that the average person encounters daily.

I think a reasonable case can be made that the biggest enemy of India is the government of India. It began with the British, and the job was eagerly taken over by FNehru, and from then on, with only a short few breaks, the FNehru clan has presided over the destruction.

I repeat that here because it bears repeating: The Indian government is the greatest barrier to India’s development.

I am quite sure that this realization is not novel and certainly I am not unique in having it. Scores of able observers before yours truly have noted it. The great Milton Friedman is one of them. In a talk he gave in India in 1963 — nearly half a century ago — he said:

[Westerners] think in terms of the large, modern corporation, of General Motors, Genera Electric, and other industrial giants. But it was not firms like this that produced the Industrial revolution; they are, if anything, its end products. The hope for India lies not in the exceptional Tatas or similar giants, but precisely in the hole-in-the wall firm, in the small and medium size enterprises, in Ludhiana not Jamshedpur; in the millions of small entrepreneurs who line the streets of every city with their sometimes miniscule shops and workshops. If the tendencies so evident in Ludhiana could be given full rein, and not hampered and hindered in every direction by governmental interference and control, India could achieve a rate of growth that would exceed today’s fondest hopes.

As this final remark suggests, the correct explanation for India’s slow growth is in my view not to be found in its religious or social attitudes, or in the quality of its people, but rather in the economic policy that India has adopted; most especially in the extensive use of detailed physical controls by government. {Emphasis added.}

Nearly half a century later, the government still exerts its baleful control over the economy. Why does the Indian government use “detailed physical controls” that are evidently so damaging to India? Because that’s the way to expropriate part of the wealth the economy produces. It engineers shortages by controlling the supply. Shortages raise prices significantly above costs which end up as profits for the controllers. This is typical monopolistic behavior.

The higher the degree of control, the greater the profits. The greater the profits, the greater is the incentive to become the controller. If being the controller affords, say, $10 billion in profits, then it is worth spending a few billion to become the controller. Also, since these profits can only be had if one is criminally dishonest, it stands to reason that it will attract the most corrupt and indeed that in the competition for control, the most criminally corrupt will emerge victorious.

So here’s the whole sordid story in outline. Certain misguided ignorant people (who need not be named here) got control of the government when the British let go of their control. The new bunch was led by one particular guy who is notable for his hubris (that he knew what’s best for everyone in every sphere) and his ignorance of his own incomprehension of how an economy works. Between the father who commanded unquestioned obedience and the uncle who thought he knew it all, India was screwed.

Hubris and ignorance among the powerful is a potently destructive mix and a sure recipe for disaster. The outcome is the disaster we see today. They set up the command-control-license-permit-quota raj. It is the best way known to humanity to retard economic development.

But what’s worse is that it set up the conditions for attracting criminals to politics. Mid last century, the degree of corruption in Indian politics was high but compared to what is the norm today, it was as if the politicians of the past were veritable saints.

It’s a downward spiral. Reports of corruption in the tune of billions of dollars have lost their power to shock and surprise. At the highest levels of the government there are criminals, and the general public just takes it as business as usual. Fact is that most people are totally unaware that those billion-dollar corruption deals affect their wellbeing, and theft of public money is coming right out of their pockets.

There is a significant middle-class educated population which is capable of actually comprehending the connection between the corruption and government control. But having the capacity to comprehend is not the same as actually comprehending. Trouble is that they have not had this connection actually explained to them. The education system does not clue them in. Then of course they are too distracted by bread and circuses (or pizza and cricket, if you please) to figure it out. But even if some of them have figured it out, they are a minority and worse still, a minority that does not bother to express its outrage.

The story becomes even more dismal when you consider what the criminals do to remain in power. They tax the productive sector of the economy and hand out largess to the unproductive sector in exchange for their votes. As the saying goes, robbing from Peter to pay Paul will always ensures Paul’s support.

To summarize: Control of the economy does two things. First, it reduces economic activity and consequently growth. Second, it gives rise to rent, which then attracts the most criminally corrupt to gain control of the government. Rent-seeking rather than good governance becomes the sole aim of those in government. The criminally corrupt are not competent to make good policy given that it was not their public policy brilliance that brought them to power. Besides, good policy generally entails a reduction in government power and control of the economy. So why would they do it even if they were advised by others who know better.

This does not have to be a counsel of despair. The reason I keep harping on this is because I believe that comprehension precedes positive change. We must first admit that there is a problem, then we have to understand the causes of the problem, then we have to figure out how to address those causes, and then do what is required.

To my mind, we have to reach, teach and breach. Reach those good citizens who are fed up of the rot, teach them the causes of the rot, and together breach the bulwark behind which the criminals govern India.

Related Posts:

The Congested-Shortage Economy. April 2010.

Manufactured Shortages and Corruption. June 2006.

Sam Harris argues that science informs our understanding of what we call moral behavior. He talks about science and human values. He claims — contrary to popular opinion — that science can help us (to some extent, in my opinion) tell use what we ought to value. In other words, I hear in his TED talk the claim that science can help us out with the normative as well, not just the objective or positive.

He uses a few telling examples such as the status of women in Islamic societies to show that different cultures have different values and all of them are not objectively valuable. He is not for moral relativism. Nor am I. I think cultures, much like many other human attributes, occur along a continuum ranging from the dysfunctional to the good. Not all of them in all their aspects are good.

Now on to Hitchens. Writing in Newsweek in Dec 2009, “The Death of Theocracy“, he makes a related point —

My colleague and friend Fareed Zakaria wrote not long ago in these pages that there was a significant difference between, say, the Taliban takeover of the Swat Valley and the launching of suicide attacks on the non-Muslim world. I said to him then and I say once more that in the long run this is a distinction without very much difference. A country that attempts to govern itself from a holy book will immediately find itself in decline: the talents of its females repressed and squandered, its children stultified by rote learning in madrassas, and its qualified and educated people in exile or in prison. There are no exceptions to this rule: Afghanistan under the Taliban was the worst single example of beggary-cum-terrorism, and even the Iranians were forced to denounce it—because of its massacre of the Shia—without seeing the irony.

But when the crops fail and the cities rot and the children’s teeth decay and nothing works except the ever-enthusiastic and illiterate young lads of the morality police, who will the clerics blame? They are not allowed to blame themselves, except for being insufficiently zealous. Obviously it must be because the Jews, the Crusaders, the Freemasons have been at their customary insidious work. Thus, holy war must be waged on happier and more prosperous lands.

India is likely to prosper relative to Pakistan and Bangladesh. I am afraid that India’s rising prosperity will provoke increasing Islamic terror. It will arise out of a mixture of envy of the material wealth of and the hatred for an infidel India.

And lastly, a news item from Indian Express: To attract youth, Gadkari seeks new Hindutva idiom

“Our credo has always been ‘justice for all; appeasement of none’. A true Hindu can never attack a Muslim, and a true Muslim can never attack a Hindu. A terrorist, on the other hand, has no religion, caste, or creed. It’s the pseudo-secular brigade that has unduly highlighted the religion of terrorists who happened to be Muslims,” said Gadkari.

I am supposing the new Hindutva idiom is an attempt to be more pseudo-secular than the Congress. Mr Gadkari is a politician and has many reasons to — how shall I put this most delicately — be very sparing with the truth. He has elections to win and therefore cannot alienate the pseudo-secular voters. But I am afraid that this tactic is not going to work.

First of all, those who are opposed to the BJP on religious grounds are not going to vote for a party that is at best a “wannabe Congress B team” merely because Gadkari makes meaningless statements about terrorists not having a religion. I think it is pretty clear to all that an overwhelming majority of terrorists are Muslims and are motivated by Islam. I am not making this up. The terrorists themselves claim that they are doing it for their god and their religion. They shout Allahhuakbar as they slit the throats of the infidels. Don’t believe me. Go listen to the videos and voice recordings; go read the transcripts; do read their manifestos; go hear them make their statements in open court defending their actions.

How dare Mr Gadkari speak on behalf of the terrorists?

I disagree most vehemently with Gadkari’s claim that a true Hindu can never attack a Muslim. In the many wars, many Hindus and Muslims have been killed by the opposing side. Is it his claim that all the Muslim soldiers who killed Hindus were not true Muslims? Or that all the Hindus who killed Muslims were not true Hindus?

How did we come to this sorry state of affairs where leaders spit on the memory of people who gave their lives in defense of the motherland?

In earlier times, I would laugh at this sort of mealy mouthed nonsense and point out the “no true Scotsman fallacy”. In July 2008, I wrote in “No true Terrorists”

The Hindu reports that an official of the “Indian Union Muslim League has asked the media and public to not to brand the perpetrators of the deed as Muslims.”

“I appeal to the media and the public not to brand the perpetrators of the Bangalore blasts as Muslims,” State president of IUML K M Khader Mohideen told reporters here on Saturday night.

“These kind of people are neither Muslims, Hindus or Christians. The Centre and the state government should take steps to nab them quickly,” he said.

That’s an example of what is called the “No true Scotsman” fallacy, a fallacy of equivocation and question begging. Here it is, from Thinking about Thinking (1975), by Andrew Flew:

Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the “Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again.” Hamish is shocked and declares that “No Scotsman would do such a thing.” The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again and this time finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, “No true Scotsman would do such a thing.”

As long as we are declaring that the self-proclaimed bombers who self-identify themselves as Muslims and their organizations as explicitly Islamic are not Muslims, why don’t we go the whole hog and declare that there were no terrorists bombings, that there were no deaths, that everything is peaceful and tranquil?

Let’s live in fairy-land as the reality is too painful and our so-called leaders are powerless to do sh!7.

Now I will not do so because it is no longer funny. We have to oppose this sort of nonsense without apology.

Karnataka High Court Chief Justice PD Dinakaran’s assets are under scrutiny and the Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan has asked him to respond to allegations that he has amassed assets disproportionate to his income.

From the Mumbai Mirror —

Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who inaugurated the refurbished Congress office at Azad Maidan on Monday, stands to lose the moral high ground she likes to take. It may unnerve her to learn that the office is neither legal nor austere.

The mind rebels on reading the phrase “the moral high ground” and the name of a politician in the same sentence. Yet Indians willingly vote into office politicians that no one doubts are corrupt and worse complicit in murder, rape, extortion and other generally nasty things. It is quite certain that these voters would shun any of their acquaintances if the latter were accused of major crimes but for some peculiar reason find it totally acceptable that the people whom they are electing to make laws are themselves criminals.

Recently, the chief minister of AP died in a crash. It appears to be common knowledge that his rise to power was associated with major violence — not unlike other politician’s rise. Yet they were falling all over themselves with grief at his demise.

Why is this so? Do Indians lose their moral compass when it comes to leaders?

Reading the news today brought to mind the truth of what that great American abolitionist Frederick Douglass (d. 1895) had written over a century ago. “Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them … . The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” A wide-angled view of India reveals that Indians are willing participants in their own oppression.

Or maybe I should be more charitable. Perhaps Indians are not so much willing as unable to do anything about it. Their powerlessness comes from their inability to reason, which could be because they are uneducated. Perhaps keeping the masses of India uneducated is deliberate. It keeps the people from revolting against those who are in power.

The wikipedia informs us about Frederick Douglass:

When Douglass was about twelve, Hugh Auld’s wife Sophia started teaching him the alphabet. She was breaking the law against teaching slaves to read. When Hugh Auld discovered this, he strongly disapproved, saying that if a slave learned to read, he would become dissatisfied with his condition and desire freedom.

I think that the people who grabbed power when the British left have seen to it through the policies that they implement that most Indians should not even become literate, leave alone become educated. I am sure that widespread literacy may awaken the Indians, leading them to demand freedom.

The slaves of America, led by people like Douglass (who was called “The Lion of Anacostia”), freed themselves. I wonder if Indians will ever become free from the tyranny that they endure. There are no lions in India.

Why do they do that? That’s the biggest puzzle, perhaps second only to the puzzle in the Mahabharata.

(In the Mahabharata, someone asks, “Of all the wonders of the universe, which is the most wondrous of all?” It is one of those occasional geniuses who replies, “Man sees death and mortality all around him all his life. But he is never quite fully persuaded of his own mortality.”)

* * *

The Bofors gun kickback story is as well known as it is old. To refresh your memory, see Seema Mustafa’s short piece of May 6th in ExpressBuzz titled “It’s the Bofor’s ghost again.”

Bofors is a story that will just not go away. It cannot for reasons that Congress president Sonia Gandhi cannot fathom. And the reasons are many. It was the first case where kickbacks in a defence deal were confirmed. It was the first case that the Indian media pursued in great detail, and with tremendous enthusiasm.

It was the first case that actually established a trail between middlemen, high flying ‘foreign’ connections and the Nehru- Gandhi First Family of India. It was the first case that brought down a government, that astounded not just the middle class but also the villagers, and that assumed a dynamics of its own that is still able to generate heat during an Indian election.

It is a story where the middlemen might be dead but the Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, a close friend of Sonia Gandhi, is alive and kicking. During his days in Delhi he told this columnist on more than one occasion that he was not really such a good friend of Sonia Gandhi, at a time when his was one of the few names to have been cleared for free entry into then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s residence. Quattrocchi has subsequently changed his tune, and now when he is actually not such a good friend of Sonia Gandhi, he makes it clear to any reporter who manages to meet him abroad that they are great friends, and know each other extremely well. Obviously, in saying so the wily Italian businessman has managed to make it clear that he knows a lot more than he is saying, and that if the Indian government does manage to get his head into the noose, he will talk. And talk happily.

. . .
The result is that in the intervening years the CBI was unable to collect evidence, although it is available in plenty, to pin Quattrocchi down in courts abroad; he himself evaded the law and the supposedly vigilant Indian machinery to get back to Italy; his accounts in London that had been frozen as these could establish the trail to the kickbacks were released as the Indian government sat back and deliberately let the reminders lapse; the money was withdrawn by him almost immediately; and then when he was arrested by Argentina under an Interpol notice issued at the time of the Bofors case, the government ensured that the case was completely botched up and Quattrocchi was able to walk out a free man.

And now to complete the circle, on the eve of the elections the CBI, under instructions, has withdrawn the Interpol notice against him and the Italian friend of Sonia Gandhi is a free man. This has been done during the elections, after it has become increasingly clear that the Congress might not be able to form the government.

And everyone knows that in case a government here is able to get Mr Q to justice he will squeal. And that could be worrisome for some.

The BJP has made some valiant noises on the deal but has not been able to explain why it did not pursue the case with the same vigour as the V P Singh government had. The Congress has been defending the decision on the record, but privately Congressmen tell critical reporters, “what do you expect us to do, we have to defend this or we will lose our job”. Of course Priyanka Vadra and Rahul Gandhi do not see what the fuss is about, but obviously they know the answer for if there is no need to fuss, there was no need to prime the CBI to save the Italian businessman. It has been a shameful deed, a gross violation of the law, and while there is sufficient information to damn the CBI, the fingers are now pointing very directly at those who are in power and in control. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is amongst those responsible. He makes a penchant of honesty; this is the time for him to explain these murky developments.

Clearly there are problems, and Bofors will not go away from media memory just because the Nehru-Gandhi family wishes it so. They should also realise that by misusing the official machinery to save Quattrocchi from the long arm of the law, over and over again, guilt and not innocence has been established. And in the public perception this is enough to keep the Bofors ghost alive. And the favourite pastime of ghosts, as we know, is to haunt.

PM Manmohan Singh is a dishonest man and is a disgrace to the proud and noble Sikhs, a disgrace to India, a disgrace to the worthy economics profession. He lacks pride in his own self. He’s a toady — one who flatters in the hope of gaining favors. A sycophant. He is what we call in Hindi भाड़े का टट्टू, a horse for hire. Granted that he is basically a civil servant and is trained to follow orders. But surely, he could have been his own man after being appointed the prime minister. Or perhaps he was appointed precisely because of his flexible morality and his ability to follow orders.

Talking of criminals brings me back to the question which I asked right at the top: what will the UPA government not do to protect the criminally corrupt? Quattrocchi is one famous case. Another case involves one Mr Hassan Ali Khan, a sometime resident of — of all places — Pune, the city where I unpack my bags.

You may be familiar with Mr Khan and his reported around $8 billion in some foreign bank. In case you want the relevant facts, please read Mr Arun Shourie’s press statement of May 12th, “The Predictable Scandal.”

That this [UPA] Government, the Government that has let Ottavio Quattrochi take away the money that had been frozen on orders of the courts; this Government which then used the CBI to let the man off the hook completely; this Government in which corruption has reached levels that were unheard of till now; this Government which has been consistently soft on terror, that this Government should now have stooped so low as to help an operator like Hassan Ali Khan by sending forged documents to a foreign Government is entirely in character.

Based on what they have been told by officials of intelligence agencies as well as of the Enforcement Directorate, the media have reported that Hassan Ali Khan

• Has been known to be connected to Dawood Ibrahim
• Has been known to have been channeling very large amounts from unknown sources into the Indian stock market
• Has had 8 to 9 billion dollars in the UBS and other banks of Switzerland
• Has been responsible for hawala transactions of over Rs. 35,000 crore through Swiss banks.

Go read it all.

The most basic rule of the social contract between the government and the people is that the government is not willfully criminal in intent and action. That contract has been repeatedly and severely violated. That the government did so and still continues to expect support from the people speaks to how enormous its contempt for the people is.

Here’s Shourie once again:

Once again, the country is being held up to ridicule – once again, the world is being shown how the Government of India will bend our laws and institutions to help the worst sorts of criminals and their associates, exactly as banana republics do.

The biggest puzzle for me is whether the people of India deserve the contempt that the Congress government holds them in. That puzzle will be solved within the week — if the UPA comes back to continue its rape of India, the people would have demonstrated that they deserve the contempt that the Congress party has for them.

PS: You may have guessed from this rant that I am very very upset. That happens. You may wish to read “Of Kakistocracies, Principals, and Agents” to understand where I am coming from.

Spencer warned that “the ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.” That observation holds with special force in the context of the misgovernment of India. If the policy makers (the bureaucrats and politicians) are shielded from the ill-effects of their policies, they have little incentive to act prudently. Eventually, as the stock of bad policies keep building up, the country ends up in ruin. We have to remember that in the main, the success or failure of an economy is solely determined by the quality of its public policies.

Allow me a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean.

First, the state of Indian roads. They are generally really shoddily constructed, very poorly maintained, and unimaginably congested. Corruption in the public works department ensures that it could not be otherwise. The residents of the cities suffer and have been doing so for so long that it is taken as normal. That’s just how it is, the person on the street says, and struggles on. The policymakers, in sharp contrast, don’t suffer bad roads and traffic congestion. The roads are cleared of traffic when the top politicians have to use them. Often times, entire stretches of roads are repaired and paved over urgently within a few days in anticipation of a visit by some politician. High level officials (such as judges) and bureaucrats travel around in cars with red flashing lights and traffic yields to them — as if they were imperial rulers riding rough shod over the plebs.

What if the politicians had to use the Indian roads regularly? What if they had to ride the local trains in Mumbai to get to work?

Second, electrical power. The chronic shortage of power is entirely man-made in the sense that is a direct consequence of bad policies. Those who made these bad policies don’t ever suffer a shortage of power, however. In the areas where they live, power is always available by decree. What if power to their residences and offices were turned off first? What if they had to suffer the summer heat without electrical fans and airconditioners?

Ubiquitous bad road and chronic electrical power shortages are just two examples of scores of other ills that arise from the bad policies that are made by people who are insulated from the consequences. One of the most disturbing aspects of current Indian reality is Islamic terrorism. In my view, Indians are suffering because the policymakers don’t suffer Islamic terrorism.

According to the Home Ministry figures, over 7,000 Indians have been killed, mostly but not exclusively by Islamic, terrorism. Average people going about their daily grind end up as terrorist targets, as do the ill-equipped cops and other professionals in charge of public safety. The politicians and high level bureaucrats never die. In fact, every terrorist attack only leads to increased security for them. Thousands of special commandos are deputed round the clock to protect them. So what incentive do they have in actually preventing terrorism?

I think that one of the first steps that needed to be taken is to bring the effects of terrorism on the policy makers. For every act of terrorism, the security of the politicians should be reduced. I do believe that if this were done, they would do their best to see that the police and other law enforcement people are successful in removing terrorism by its roots.

Related posts:

March 2006.Terrorism, the way out.

The people whose business it is to do their utmost to ensure security fail to do their job and the people suffer as a consequence of that ineptitude. All they do after a terrorist attack is to make a bunch of ineffectual and inane statements, and don’t feel motivated to prevent future attacks with any vigor nor make the terrorist pay. Why? Because they don’t feel the pain.

Pain matters. If due to some neurological injury, you were to stop feeling pain, you could be in dire danger. Pain signals that the body is injured and that steps need to be taken to mitigate the threat and to take appropriate action to heal the already damaged part.

Terrorism threatens the body of the society and damages it. It is when the pain of the terrorism inflicted wound does not reach what constitutes the “brain” of the society – the policy makers who control the mechanisms that can prevent terrorist acts and can respond appropriately when they do happen – that society is in danger. The solution is therefore simple: the brain has to know that it will feel the pain if and when injury occurs to the body. Only then will the brain be motivated to seek appropriate mechanisms for stopping terrorists, and be prepared to deal forcefully with terrorists if it does occur.

NOTES:

1. Spencer is one of the greatest of the dead white men that I admire. Why? Read his essay “The Right to Ignore the State” (1884) to know why. [Return]

Newly educated and semi-educated classes – social or intellectual – seek positions in government bureaucracies or social advocacy rather than in industry and commerce where competence is inarguably measured at the end of every business quarter. The growth of bureaucracies needed to absorb these swaggering imbeciles is precisely opposed to society’s growth and development both as direct philosophical enemy and as infinitely hungry sump to resources otherwise needed to support productive endeavors.

From “Uncle Al” in a post on the usenet years ago. I spent years on the usenet, the grand-daddy of the world wide web. I like the phrase “swaggering imbeciles” — it describes a certain ruling dynasty in a certain so-called emerging superpower.

In the tainted MLAs’ section, it is the Bharatiya Janata Party which leads the pack with 25 MLAs with a criminal record. The Congress comes second with 8 MLAs while the JD(S) has 7.

Out of the 25 MLAs in the BJP with a criminal record, seven are in the Cabinet. They are Krishnaiah Shetty, Sriramulu, Shobha Karandlage, Aravind Limbavali, S A Ravindranath, D Sudhakar (Independent) and Goolihatti Shekhar (Independent).

Among the 25 MLAs with a criminal record, three have murder or attempt to murder charges pending against them.

In the Congress, there are 8 MLAs with a criminal record, of which three have murder or attempt to murder charges pending against them.

Of the 7 MLAs in the JD(S) with a criminal record, two have murder or attempt to murder charges pending against them.

Isn’t the title of this post a contradiction in terms? How can criminals be lawmakers? Are they making laws or breaking them? Or are they “lawmakers” just so that they can get out of the reach of the arm of the law?

I just hope and pray that these MLAs got elected by fraud. Because otherwise I would be forced to face up to the reality that the criminality of these MLAs reflect the characteristics of the voters.

When a narrow, shrunken vision is preferred over a national outlook and national perspective, the Raj Thackerays emerge winners. What’s the difference between a Raj making Indians fight with other Indians and a UPA government sowing the seeds of distrust and hate among Indians on the basis of religious reservations for one community and assaulting the faith icons of the other? Or for that matter, ULFA in Assam killing Hindi-speaking Indians and outfits like Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammad murdering Hindu Indians in Jammu and Kashmir? Someone shoots from guns, another uses a microphone and the third does it by abusing constitutional authority. The result is identical – India is bruised and shrunk.

Here’s a bit more:

No politician has been ever held accountable for the national loss incurred because of his misdeeds, divisive politics and ill-governance. The more divisive and exploitative of pubic money and trust he becomes, the more votes he gets and he is hailed as a “seasoned” politician.

So why blame Raj Thackeray?

Those who get votes on the basis of dividing people and feel no remorse seeing youngsters burning themselves against their policies reap worse than the Raj Thackerays. It’s the failure of national parties and organisations that parochialism and narrow polity with a shrunken vision is allowed to play with national integration and peoples’ money. The game of de-listing, unlisting and enlisting on the basis of the colour of your thoughts divides more sharply than the buffoonery of the parochial players.

We have leaders of Yadavs, Gujjars, Jats, Brahmins, Dalits and tribals. We have champions of UP, Bihar, Bengal, Tamil Nadu and other states. If something happens to Tamils anywhere in the world, it’s the “sacred duty” of the Tamil Nadu leaders alone to feel their pain and speak up for them. When Malaysia’s Hindus of Tamil origin were persecuted, the only chief minister that spoke against it was Karunanidhi, not Lalu Yadav or Nitish Kumar. They were Tamil ‘nationals’, hence Tamils should support their cause, and similarly Hindi-speaking Indians get support from the ‘Hindi nation’ when persecuted in Assam or Maharashtra.

Raj Thackeray is not an aberration, he is the norm. The past masters of divisive politics have their names immortalized in the names of universities, railway stations, airports, national parks, industrial parks, roads, and towns. Raj merely wants his name to live on as well. In India, dividing people based on caste and religion appears to be the fast track to becoming a hero.

I recommend Tarun Vijay’s opinion piece.

Newly educated and semi-educated classes – social or intellectual – seek positions in government bureaucracies or social advocacy rather than in industry and commerce where competence is inarguably measured at the end of every business quarter. The growth of bureaucracies needed to absorb these swaggering imbeciles is precisely opposed to society’s growth and development both as direct philosophical enemy and as infinitely hungry sump to resources otherwise needed to support productive endeavors.

I like his expression swaggering imbeciles. Reminds me of the idiot politicians of India, especially the ruling dynasty.

What brought all this to mind was an item about misbehaving politicians that reader “Ad” pointed out.

About a dozen Maharashtra ministers, 30 legislators and many top bureaucrats prevented a Nagpur-bound Jet Airways flight from taking off from Mumbai airport on Monday. Reason: the aircraft’s air-conditioner was not working.

Only one of the two airconditioning systems was functioning, it appears. It is a temporary inconvenience definitely not life-threatening. The crew is allowed to operate the flight because it meets the “Minimum Equipment List”. In any event, once the aircraft is in flight, one airconditioner is sufficient. This was explained to them but they “trooped into the cockpit” and one even tried to open an exit while the plane was in taxiing.

An aircraft delayed by a couple of hours and about a hundred passengers inconvenienced is not a really big deal. Or is it? Think about the fact that aircrafts are used throughout the day. The delay of the flight ripples through the system and all subsequent flights involving that aircraft are delayed. Thousands of people are directly affected. Many more multiples are indirectly affected. When a passenger arrives about 2 hours late, perhaps a meeting is missed, or a connection to another flight is missed. The initial disturbance has second and third order effects.

The politicians of India see themselves as the kings and they regard the citizens as their subjects and the country as their fiefdom. These people place themselves above the law. They are a law unto themselves. They are not answerable to anyone, except to their overlords who are the party chiefs. They go around in cars with red flashing lights on the top. When they travel on roads, seeing the red lights, police clear the streets. The citizens wait for these red-light-on-top cars to pass by. “The toads rush by”, as my friend would have said.

India is as I have maintained before a cargo-cult democracy. Centuries of being ruled by foreigners creates a culture of servility and powerlessness that is hard to overcome. In a strict sense, Indians deserve to be ruled by toads because they “elect” to be ruled by toads. Being ruled by toads has the ripple effect that finally culminates in an abjectly poor country that is euphemistically referred to as a “developing economy.”

Comment: Sonal Vaidya writes:

Reading your post “On Being Ruled by Toads” I wonder what do you think should happen to change the situation? Will India be always exploited by the corrupt power mongers? May be a revolution is a solution.

Raj Waghray writes:

What is worse is that these old senile toads(?) are now talking out of turn outside India and that too on issues as critical as our security.

Natwar’s N-speak Baffles New Delhi

When the degree of ignorance and stupidity exceeds a certain threshold, it slides into madness. And as Euripides warned long ago, whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. Whether or not Indian leaders have gone mad is a question that I leave for you to decide. The future of India pivots on that point. My conclusion is that madness has taken a firm hold on the leadership of India and the consequences are foretold.

Tim Worstall took the trouble of pointing me to yet another sign that the future of India is in peril. Read and weep for the beloved country.

Can’t find your way around in a metropolis? Don’t know how many bus stops are there in your town? Want to know the exact size of your farm? Geo-technology may give you the answers.

The science and technology ministry has embarked upon some major projects which it claims could change a common man’s life. By 2005, the ministry is planning to provide global positioning system (GPS) for motor vehicles in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kolkata.

A central server will be set up by the ministry that can be accessed by GPS screens installed in cars. “Most sedans have GPS technology, but car owners who don’t have it can get it installed and access the service,” said science and technology minister Kapil Sibal.

This system would allow drivers to know their location and the directions to reach their destination,” he said.

The concern that the policy makers in Delhi feel for the common man is nothing if not touching. Their passion for the commonweal is awe inspiring. Imagine, if you will, the horrors that the common man faces as he drives his car looking for an address in an unfamiliar neighborhood. But the common man need not worry anymore. Science and technology (and the passion of the Indian policy makers for the common man) will solve this incredibly complex and terribly urgent problem.

Some time ago, I had written in a piece called It’s the small stuff, stupid:

I just went out to lunch in the neighborhood of where I work. A passerby stopped me to ask me where a certain company was. I said I don’t know but if he had an address, I could perhaps direct him. He only knew that it was close to the ‘Empire Building’. We spent some time trying to locate it and then finally gave up. I don’t know how long he spent walking around in the noon-day sun trying to get where he wanted to go. Perhaps he just wasted an hour, a lot of shoe leather, sweated in the heat, and when he arrived, he was tired. The opportunity cost of his trying to find a place is small but non-zero. He could have spent more time with his family or done some productive work. Add the cost of millions of people spending non-productive time searching, and soon you get a significant amount of loss.

That streets should have a name and locations along a street should have a number is a concept that should be evident to the meanest intelligence, one would expect considering that it is not exactly rocket science and that many parts of the world have had that innovation for generations, if not centuries. Yet it is a rare exception when you can find a place in India without an algorithmic description of how to get to it.

“GPS for the common man” should rightfully be listed under the LET THEM EAT CAKE category. Other items in that set: One computer in every village. Never mind that most villages lack a teacher who comes somewhat regularly to teach the children, and electricity is almost non-existent.

Deva, deva!

Loosely defined, an objective function embodies the goal of an economic agent and which the economic agent attempts to optimize in some sense. So for a commercial enterprise, the objective function could be to maximize market share, or it could be to maximize profits. For a consumer, it could be to maximize utility. For a government, it could be to maximize social welfare, or to minimize unemployment, etc. The objective function for a central bank could be to keep inflation below a specified value while maintaining adequate liquidity in the money markets, etc.

The thing about optimization in general is that there are constraints imposed by conflicting interests that define the boundaries of what is possible. In other words, there are choices that have to be made. You can have very little of one thing provided you have a lot of the other. Depending upon how much weight you assign to various constituents of the objective function, the optimization yeilds different results.

I admire the practical wisdom contained in the admonition Good, fast, cheap: choose two. That is an example of a constraint. You can either have good and fast, but it will not be cheap. Or you could choose fast and cheap, but it will not be good. Cheap fast food is not good. Think McDonalds. Food cooked at home is good and cheap but is not fast. Cars: good and fast cars are not cheap. You get the idea.

So now, given a set of constraints, one can optimize one’s objective function and the result pops out.

Back to the government. I believe that the government’s objective is to maximize short-run profits. I will use an example to lend support to that hypothesis. One can in one’s spare time construct hundreds of other examples for one’s edification and amusement (to use a phrase). The example comes from the telecommunications sector.

Which industrial organizational structure maximizes profits? Monopoly. Which maximizes social welfare? A competitive marketplace, in general, subject to some well-understood restrictions such as the absense of externalities, no public goods, etc. What did the government choose for the telecommunications sector? Monopoly. What does a monopoly do maximize its profits? Restrict supply to support high prices and thus realize monopoly rents. What was the outcome of the government monopoly in telecommunications? Years of waiting time to get a telephone connection, shoddy service, prices way above world prices.

It is really very instructive to study the Indian telecommunications sector. How the government milked it for all it was worth when it was the monopoly supplier. Around early 1990s, things began to change slowly. In 1994, a telecom policy was announced. It was flawed to its very core but it was a beginning. The flawed 1994 policy was replaced by an equally flawed 1999 telecom policy. I don’t believe that anyone other than yours truly has read the New Telecom Policy 1999. (In case you have read it, please let me know because I would like to expand the club of people who have read the NTP99.)

Now, your hopes may go up at this point. You start thinking that now at long last the government has become slowly wise and is opening up the sector for private sector investments and now we will have the benefits of a competitive marketplace and now we will enjoy telephone services at prices more aligned with world prices. Your hopes, I am sorry to say, are not justified. For the government did not give up its objective of maximizing profits. It merely decided to extract its monopoly rents in a less direct way. Instead of allowing competition in the market, it decided that it will have competition for the market. That is, will let firms compete against each other to have the license to serve the market. Firms, naturally, would be willing to pay for the license only what they could recover from operating in the marketplace (subject to a reasonable accounting profit). So the government in effect extracted at least a part of monopoly rents from the sector by instituting very high license fees. The firms in turn hope to extract that from the hapless users. Some firms will fail of course in their attempts to do that and this will lead to consolidation. In short, the consumer will be back to paying high prices, firms will have very little left over to expand capacity which would lead to high average costs (telecommunications has low marginal costs) and high prices, and so on.

I think this needs more space and I am running out of space for this column. I will continue this tomorrow.

The President is said to have informed her that according to Section 5 of the Citizenship Act of 1955, she has no right to assume the office of the Prime Minister of India and that he was seeking the advice of the Supreme Court on this issue. Section 5 of the Citizenship Act of 1955 says the rights and privileges allowed to foreigners who become citizens by application (not by birth) are conditional upon the rights and privileges granted to Indians in the country of the concerned person’s origin (in this case Italy).

The President reportedly told Sonia that he had to ascertain the legal position in this matter as there was no confirmation that all the rights and privileges granted to persons of Italian origin are reciprocated by Italy in the case of Indians who become citizens of that country. Sonia is said to have decided not to take the risk after the President’s briefing.

So there. Sort of what happens in commerce — you grant most favored nation (MFN) status to a country only if they grant you MFN. Also, you grant a certain number of landing-slots to the carrier of a foreign country only if they grant you reciprocal rights in theirs.

A naturalized Italian citizen of Indian origin cannot become the municipal commissioner of a third rate town in Italy. India cannot in good conscience reciprocate by allowing a naturalized Indian citizen of Italian origin to become the chief of the executive branch of the government.

Of course, there is a very compelling personal reason for Mrs S Maino Gandhi to not take a shot at the PM’s seat — security. Indian soldiers provide personal security to Indian leaders, not Italian soldiers. At some level deep inside, soldiers have very strong sense of nationality and duty and honor and pride and all sorts of things that make them willing to put their lives in danger for the protection of their motherland. I, as an Indian, would not trust Italian soldiers to keep their guns pointed the right way if I was to somehow get to become the prime minister of Italy.

Be that as it may, it was a pragmatic decision. A challenge in the Supreme Court of India would have been all and she would have been asked to vacate. Better to take the high road and avoid being thrown out, is my guess.

There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly… I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern. [Source]

The above, in case you haven’t figured it out, is the ever articulate President of the United States of America.

In a separate development, it appears that a very large number of Indians have decided that the best person for governing the nation is an Italian au pair who may or may not have links to a bunch of shady Italtian arms dealers. The oldest political party in the country, the Indian National Congress, could not find, among the more than one thousand thousand thousand Indians someone sufficiently white-skinned to be their leader. They may have preferred someone British but an Italian would do at a pinch. Self-government is not the most natural idea to non-whites.

It should not come as much of a surprise that once again I disagree with Dubya. Non-whites have traditionally bent over for the whites around the world. Colonialists have always been white. Self-government is not an option for brown-skinned people.

Social planners face a difficult task in the context of a ‘democratically’ run economically backward state. To win the mandate of the masses, they have to give handouts to the people. Given limited resources at the disposal of the government, the choice is often between doling out the resources to the masses for short-term consumption needs, and using the resources for investment for future growth. To the masses living close to subsistence, short-term consumption wins over long-term investment.

Alexander Fraaser Tytler wrote in his The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic (1776)

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

I am convinced that any social planner within a democracy who does not promise and deliver government largesse to the masses, is not going to hold on to his job for long. Will dictatorship follow inevitably? I am not sure of that. The next social planner will learn the lesson and to maintain his job, he will focus on the short-term and hand out goodies to the voters at the expense of long-term growth.

The lesson? Beware of boundary conditions and corner-solutions. When you hit the corners, the usual rules don’t apply. The function is not differentiable at that point.